A procedural approach would be to scale a cube into single plank and give it an array modifier.

Next add a cube (or anything) and give it an Ocean modifier and a Solidify modifier. Ocean can be modified as you wish and even animated. Resolution doesn't need to be high but you can do as you wish.

Give the original cube a Boolean modifier with difference from the ocean. Everything is still easily modified at this point.


Turn on Face Orientation in the overlay dropdown and you'll see that the whole head and neck apart from the lips has the normals inverted.

In edit mode, select all and then ALT-N > Recalculate Normals.


Wanted: Cycles "Shadow Only" Lamp - Not a simple "shadow catcher" question

Use two different render layers

Put the "lamp" on a separate layer and Exclude that layer from the render by clicking on the corrisponent box in the Layer panel.

Your scene now should be affected only by the environment's light (and eventually other light sources, but not the mentioned "lamp").

In the second render layer, uncheck the Use Environment box to remove world's shader influence. The result is a scene lit by the lamp only. Enable this this time the Shadow pass in order to acquire the info about where the shadow fall.

Finish by color mixing the Composite pass from the first render layer with the Shadow pass from the second with Multiply option. Use the Factor slider to adjust the influence of the lamp's shadow in the final image


How to get that realistic palm leaf shadow?

If you need only the shadow of the leaf you can place a transparent clipart of a leaf in front of a light. The size/radius of the light source determines how soft or hard the shadow is cast. (Well, the shadow is not that dark as in your image but you get the idea.)


Lets get our thought location to be the MushroomCap texture.  Image above. Scroll down on your Blender application to see the next panel.

Your texture Influence panel settings must have [Color] checked with value 1 as in the image.  This is marked with the yellow arrow.  Geometry [normal] should be unchecked.  Please verify.  The red squiggle X means ... take away the check box in your settings.  Image above. Or you can experiment and see if you like the [normal] influence.  You are an artist.  The [normal] setting does not affect color, it affects whether or not your mushroom has indentations and protrusions, dimples and pimples as a simplified explanation.

Your textures are not present in the file posted, therefore I placed some random texture to your mushroom for testing, with no artistic effort. This new texture can change the settings in the texture panel. When you posted your file it has a common mistake .... the textures from your hard drive are not present.  The textures can be packed into the file.  You can search for a info here at BSE Blender Stack Exhange on that topic.  You may not need the correction to the file if the problem is solved.

Feel free to ask any directly related question in comments.  You can vote this candidate answer up or down corresponding to whether it helps or hurts the situation.


Is it possible to store edge data layers?

You can save "edge data" like that in the form of seams on UV maps.  Use "seams from islands" operation in UV editor to select what your seams would have been for that UV map.
Can also maintain multiple copies of your model, and use a data transfer modifier to copy seam status (or all sorts of other edge statuses.)


I figured out the issue. i went to the video sequencer and there was a random video file there which i needed to delete. i also checked my compositor window and linked the render layers directly to the composite node and everything started working properly. just in case someone else out there has a similar issue :)


Hiding the spheres with the eye icon just hides it from the viewport and not from the render.
You should un-tick the collection the spheres are in, to hide it from the render.
Or you can enable the icon that controls if an object is rendered. On the top right of the outliner, click on the funnel icon to make visible all of the other toggle switches. The one that controls the renderability of an object is the camera icon.


Bump Map is very subtle, if you need more depth, try with displacement.

Good Luck


I'm confused about how Animation Node's spline from Points node works

Your Node Tree setup is entirely correct. The data which you plan to generate is already there under the hood, but Animation Nodes offers another performance related option: That is, it only generates output if you explicitly tell it to do so in the Output Node. For large node trees with huge meshes or particle systems, this is useful as you can selectively turn off operations which are computationally intense, and enable them only before you render.

As Omar Ahmad commented, the ? sign next to the socket, which is visible in your screenshot, is meant to be a warning that currently for that socket no data is being created.

To make AN generate that Target mesh, do the following: In the Output node, make sure that the button with the little dot inside next to the Spline socket is checked:

The rest of the node tree is exactly the same as yours. If you check that button, you should now see something like this:

When you select your target and Tab into Edit Mode, you'll notice that the three particle systems control the handle positions indeed:

This is the .blend file I used for testing:


Have a video sequence be driven by an audio track

The problem is:

The scene isn´t updated because the sequencer ignores the scene when it´s not visible in the final output. We might consider this a bug/limitation or a feature. I´ll talk to the core developers. So of course drivers that depend on the values of a hidden scene don´t work as expected.

A workaround:

If you don´t use the scene for output, render the scene so that the output is pure white and add the scene in the sequencer on top of every channel and use multiply as blend mode. Of course this increases the render time a bit. The key point here is that the scene shows up one way or another in the final render.


How to achieve a flat colored render pass from material id/index for masking

You ask a question to which there is no simple answer based on your requirements:

no python - this limits any automation and implies a lot of work
with anti aliasing - this is something cycles cannot do yet on masks

The anti-aliasing issue of ID masks (first render, second without, last with):

The perfect solution would be to render the scene with each material being a different color emission shader of strength 1.0 - without python this is time consuming to set up. Low samples would be enough for this and you would get the exact anti-aliasing like in your final render.

Another solution is to give each material a different ID and render the MaterialID pass in ridiculously high resolution and then down-scale. The good news is you will get the pass with just 1 render sample!

In compositor you will get all the colored ID masks (but aliased) like this easily:

The anti-aliasing after down-scaling will not be pixel-perfect with your final render and will depend on your downscaling algorithm.


Fastest way to snap two faces together by aligning their centers in non-standard orientations?

When you have the two objects with the origins in the same location, activate snap vertex option, select the object that needs to rotate and press R, searching for a vertex of the angled face.

If the rotation is not aligned with a view, use custom orientations, and press R followed by the choosen axis twice (i.e. R,X,X will rotate around X local axis).


Using a normal map only gives the illusion that the surface is altered by changing the surface reflections at a given point. In the viewport you are viewing the shield at an acute angle so you see the true geometry of the mesh. Your second example is using an emit shader to view the bump map, by emitting light it will not show any of the reflections that give the illusion of an altered surface.

To get real surface changes you may want to try a displacement modifier. Note that this modifier will only move existing geometry, it will not add new geometry to get the final surface you want, so you may want to use a subdivision modifier before it.

A still experimental feature in cycles is textured surface displacement. While similar to the displacement modifier the displacement is performed within cycles using the material displacement. Cycles can also be set to perform some subdivision to get more detail.


Why is this arm bone bending the other way after exiting edit mode?

Its standard practice to add a slight bend in the arms when in Edit Mode, which is what Faceb is eluding to.

That said, you can quickly fix your problem by changing your Pole Angle to 180.


Blender 2.79: Apply location snaps origin to the object's original location

Well I think I very quickly answered my own question by just playing around with it a bit. I don't recall ever using it before, but apparently I applied the Location to Deltas for that object previously. To resolve, I repeated the process for the new origin location.

Set Origin > Origin to Geometry
CTRL+A > Location to Deltas

Hopefully this will help someone else who encounters this in the future. Cheers!


Particles in render not matching preview (Blender 2.8)

The viewport has still several update issues. Scrubbing the timeline back and forth and jumping to the first frame ShiftLeft Arrow can help forcing the viewport to update (sometimes).

To make sure the particles are rendering as expected I always enable Disk Cache and Bake all Dynamics (Particle Properties > Cache) before rendering, which works in this case too:

Frame 1-100


There are several ways to do what you want here's one:

Create an object, then and a Curve->Circle to act as the path for your orbit.

NOTE Make sure that the origin of the curve is in the same place as the object's origin.

Select the object and add a Follow Path constraint and select the curve as the path to follow. Make sure you click on Animate path.

Now your object will follow that path forever and ever and ever...

To control the speed of the orbit select the curve and change the Path Animation value to a smaller number of frames to go faster or a bigger number to go slower.


before you hit the render button, click the material property icon down the right corner, click on new material, you could check the render in view port while assigning materials to your mesh. i hope this helps


How do I achieve this sort of graph wireframe effect in my 3D objects? Blender 2.8

Try a Translucent Shader any shader, lol, with the blend mode (if you're using Eevee) set to additive.  The Principled shader works well : )  GL OP


How to add a custom panel to particle properties?

You need to register the class to use it.

Also bl_context = "PARTICLES" should be replaced by bl_context = "particle"

Here's the complete script

import bpy

class CudaParticlePanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "CudaParticle_Panel"
    bl_label = "CudaParticle"
    bl_category = "SYSTEM"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "particle"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.label(text= "CudaParticals Properties:")
        self.layout.label(text="CudaParticle")

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Having a UV maping problem, does anyone know what this is, and how to fix it?

From your screenshot, you have pinned vertices in your UV. This will keep those vertices in place, in this case resulting in the weird unwrap result.

The shortcut for pinning vertices is P - if you want to 'unpin' them, select them and press alt + P. In this case just selecting all vertices and unpinning then should do the trick :)


You use vertex snapping.

Hold down Ctrl when moving your objects to activate it.


Yea, I face similar trouble, but all that I have now - the combined texture is a gives you the best image. But you also can try to bake Ambient Occlusion, and add it with a combination of Color ramp - so maybe it gives you the correct result. But I'm sure that when you convert it on a gtlf format, It's not saving as ambient occlusion "slot" for material - ambient becomes a part of a texture. You can see it clearly on three.js editor - on material props, and read an answer on
Ambient occlusion in Principled BSDF


How do you make the camera's field of view bigger, so it can see more

You need to change the resolution of your render.

Click on the camera icon in the propery menu.
Change the X & Y value in the tab Dimension.


How to snap object local rotation to its nearest global axis with python

Snap closest local to global rotation.

Example of use, object with some arbitrary rotation, can see the local axes from the widget and the global axis from navigation widget, rotates in this case such that Z axes match
The columns of the 3x3 rotation matrix of the world matrix of an object is its unit vector global axis alignment.
Find the minimum angle between any and the global axes.
Create a rotation matrix from the difference between the vectors with minimal axis and transform the original.
import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix
from bpy import context

ob = context.object
mw = ob.matrix_world.copy()
R = mw.to_3x3().col
I = Matrix.Identity(3)

diffs = [locl.angle(globl) for locl, globl in zip(R, I)]
idx = diffs.index(min(diffs))

M  = (Matrix.Translation(mw.translation) @
      R[idx].rotation_difference(I[idx]).to_matrix().to_4x4() @
      Matrix.Translation(-mw.translation))
ob.matrix_world = M @ ob.matrix_world


You can increase the size of the Cube texture for the light and check Soft Shadows.

Shadows in EEVEE are created by rendering a depth texture from the light source that are then matched up with the cameras depth texture. It's then possible to see where the depth from the light fails to reach the current pixel. The downside with this technique is it requires fairly high resolution and can still cause a set of unwanted behaviours and artefacts. But that is the price we pay to get crazy fast rendering compared to raytracing.

By using soft shadows EEVEE does a set of these light depth passes at a slight offset that are then used to soften the shadow out a bit. You can adjust the Radius on the light to adjust the smoothing.


My PBR Texture looks better in Viewport than in the Render

This is because the material preview render in the viewport automatically uses an environment texture from “C:/Program Files/Blender Foundation/Blender/2.91/datafiles/studiolights/world” as the world background, but by default the rendered world background is solid grey. You can load one of these backgrounds and pipe it into the world’s background color with an Environment Texture node.


The far and close ranges for the scene can be controlled with the camera far and near clip distances.

The best format for you to export depth information would be on an OpenEXR file. Z infomation would be stored as 32bit linear data, not restricted to the grayscale values form 0 to 1 and not mapped to the 256 values of 8 bit images.


How to Toggle Selected Objects Visibility with H shortcut as in Maya

In Blender, the way selection works is a bit different. You can't really have something "selected" when it's hidden in the viewport.

You can hide an object with H, but to unhide, you generally either undo or alt-H to unhide all hidden objects. To have the same shortcut key do both an action and its opposite is pretty uncommon in Blender. The only thing I can think of is selecting all (A for select all AA to deselect all, but they are moving away from that by making alt-A deselect all).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SXSIQpYnl8


How setup Cycles Compute Device in console

In Blender 2.79 you can use:

import bpy

preferences = bpy.context.user_preferences
cycles_preferences = preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences
cuda_devices, opencl_devices = cycles_preferences.get_devices()

cycles_preferences.compute_device_type = "CUDA"

for device in cuda_devices:
    print('Activating {}'.format(device.name))
    device.use = True

In Blender 2.80 you can use:

import bpy

preferences = bpy.context.preferences
cycles_preferences = preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences
cuda_devices, opencl_devices = cycles_preferences.get_devices()

cycles_preferences.compute_device_type = "CUDA"

for device in cuda_devices:
    print(f'Activating {device.name}')
    device.use = True

Be aware that the script doesn't perform error handling for the case that the device isn't CUDA capable. You will get a TypeError with an OpenCL device.


Why are there scenes that will not render on GPU but will render fine on CPU?

It all depends on the complexity of the scene, the size and number of textures used, and also on the kind of of GPU at your disposal.

GPU rendering can be faster than CPU on most modern graphics cards with lots of CUDA cores, but it is also limited by the amount of VRAM built on the card (usually not a lot). Once you've reached that limit, the rendering process will fail.

If there is only one GPU on your system, and the GPU is also being used to feed the monitor(s), even less VRAM will be available for rendering, as some of it will be already in use by open applications.

On systems with multiple GPUs the VRAM is not shared, and Blender will only use as much memory as in the smallest one of the card's.

When you render in CPU you can use all the RAM available in your system, and once you've reached the physical limit, the OS will start virtualizing memory by caching on disk. So for very complex scenes with big textures you might only be able to render on CPU.

A possible way to render complex scenes in GPU is to spit them in layers and combine them at the end (Read this link on blenderguru.com)

Other considerations:

GPUs for laptops are in general not as powerful as the ones in desktops in terms of speed, number of CUDA cores or VRAM.

When it comes to older GPUs or with less CUDA cores, it is possible that CPU rendering might be faster. Specially if the CPU is multi-core (or multi-threaded).

In Cycles, blender will render as many tiles as there are CPU cores simultaneously. A single GPU will only render one tile at the time, multiple GPUs will render as may tiles as there are GPUs

To make rendering more efficient is important to find the size that works best for your machine. Sometimes larger sizes will render faster, but there are times when you need to keep them smaller for the machine to work efficiently.

GPUs work better with tile sizes ranging from 128x128 to 256x256, but CPUs seem to like smaller size tiles like 16x16 or 64x64.

Some operations in Cycles still only work on CPU (like smoke rendering).


Help, weird "hard edged" appear on model

You've enabled Auto Smooth, it will sharpen all the angles that are over the chosen value, here 30°, so disable it or choose another value?


I broke the new Alpha (GP/sculpt/tablet)

Never found an answer, but this was solved somehow by the Nov20 version,
leading me to believe it might have been an internal bug.
So glad it's solved; it was not fun seeing new features every week and not being able to use them.


How to find which materials use a missing texture?

For blender internal materials that is easy. Enter the image name into the find field in the outliner header. Matches will be highlighted in green with material and objects easily visible for each.

For node based materials it is a bit more complicated. While the information can be found within the Datablocks view of the Outliner it is fairly well buried and not practical to find for a large project.

Currently the easiest way to search multiple cycles materials would be to use an addon called Online Material Library(cycles materials only - not blender internal node materials). This addon is currently still considered Beta. While not included with official release builds you should find it included with custom/svn builds from graphicall or can be downloaded from the above link and installed from the preferences addon panel.

Step 1 - activate the addon (or install from file and activate)

Step 2 - Show tools. This will now be available under materials properties.

Step 3 - Save All materials.

This saves all the cycles materials in the current blend file into the folder specified above the Save all materials button. The node information used for each material will be saved into it's own file. This leaves you with a folder full of text files that can easily be searched to find the image filename you are looking for.

While it doesn't appear to have been updated for a while blender-aid may also be another option.


How to i extrude 4 faces at the same time

To extrude all the selected faces to a central point you can simply press E to extrude but then cancel the extrusion with Esc. This will leave the newly extruded geometry in the same place as the originating faces, but still selected. Then simply scale them to 0 with S0Enter.

The above actions will scale the etruded faces to a point - ie, it will taper together at the central point. To avoid this you can apply the scale in all but one direction - in your case the 'depth' of the object is in the Y direction so you could use S Shift+Y 0Enter.

Note that once you have scaled the faces together you might want to Remove Doubles to merge the vertices together.


How to simulate falling small pieces of paper to the ground?

If you want the pieces to collide with the floor, convert particles to mesh and apply rigid body. Make the floor passive rigid body and the pieces active one.


Your problem arises because the ratio of the faces you click in combination with the perspective makes you klick the lower or upper part of the smaller faces while klicking the left or rightmost parts of the bigger ones. Try clicking on the edge that leads to the next face in the direction you want your selection to go.


Making a hollow, 3-D pipe/duct: after joining two cubes, how can I delete the surface inside the pipe/duct to make it hollow?

First of all, I don't know if I quite understood the question correctly, but  what I got out of it tells me you have a shape like this:

And that you want to make sure that the intersection there is clean, and not screwy.

This can be accomplished with Loop-Cut-an-Slide tool. It can be accessed in edit mode by pressing Ctrl + R. when you place it on the upper cube, it looks like this:

Don't bother sliding it, just click and place it there for now. Next you're gonna want to turn on vertex snapping, it can be found on the bottom bar of your 3D view-port. Click the magnet to turn on snapping, then click the grid icon just right of it and change it to vertex, portrayed by a grey cube with two white studs on it

once this is enabled you can select the four vertices of the loop you added and hit G + Z to Grab them down on the Z axis.

now, if you mouse over one of the vertices of your bottom cube until an orange circle appears around it, then click to finish placement.

Now all you have to do is remove those inner four vertices to get a clean cut.

If you add two loop-cuts on the bottom cube and hitS + X
 to Scale them on the X axis and then snap them to the new bottom of your top cube. Now remove doubles and your gold!

You can also do this by simply grabbing the four vertices that you don't like and G + Z to Grab them up on the Z axis until they snap with the top of the top cube.

Sorry for the super long answer. :D hope this helps, Ciao!


Object colours disappear when I turn on 'Texture Solid'

The colors will appear once you render the picture. I had this same problem.

Go under System Preferences > Input , and look for Emulate Keyboard (turn this on temporarily). Now exit out of that and press 0 on the keyboard. The exterior should go grey and show a frame. use Shift + F to navigate and find your desired camera angle then click Render on the side of the screen in the render settings menu.


Execute Node Tree from a bpy script outside animation nodes

Find AN node tree and execute():
import bpy

anTreeNames = ["NodeTree", "NodeTree.001"]

for name in anTreeNames:
    tree = bpy.data.node_groups.get(name)
    if tree:
        tree.execute()


The simulation is set for smoke and fire, and for whatever reason the smoke is occluding most of the inner flame, making the voxel nature of the simulation very obvious. I recommend you set it to fire only, and only use the flame smoke, or possibly make the smoke not as dense (in the material settings).


Is it possible to get a random number in the node editor?

That would be through drivers. You can add an Input->Value node to feed into other nodes or add a driver to an editable value on any other node.

A simple way to get random values is edit the value and enter #noise.random() This will give random values between 0 and 1, you can expand the entry to multiply the value if you want it larger or add a minimum value.

To get more control over the generated value you can create a script and use bpy.app.driver_namespace["name"] = funcname to provide access to any function you define. The script name must end in .py so that you can register it and auto run python scripts also needs to be enabled.


Invisible and black faces after switching from Cycles to Blender render engine

Cycles materials are node materials, and the majority are not compatible with Blender Renderer. Changing them back to "normal" materials by toggling the nodes in the material tab under preferences view will fix their "blackness".


NurbsPath causes object to rotate when specified in Curve modifier. Not seeing why

You rotated the path in object mode!
Apply rotation to your path and blade if needed.
Check the origin, in your case looks fine, path and Blade should be at same location.
Also in your case looks fine, but paths arrows should look in the direction you want to let follow objects.


Baking Multiple Materials into one Object

I tried to bake with basic materials and it worked fine. you should select same image texture data block in every material node. And also we bake normals and diffuse etc separately rather than combined.

->create a new blank image in uv editor and name it (say bake.png).

-> in node editor for any material: shift+A-> image texture-> browse the created image (which is blank right now).

-> Now copy the image texture node (by cltr+c) go to another material and paste in node editor (by cltr+v) do this to every material you want to bake.

-> make sure you selected right image texture node (bake.png) in every material. Because if you select other image texture node  data will be baked into that image.
-> bake type to diffuse or combined or normals and hit bake, after baked, save image as combined.png  you may need to turn off indirect lighting in bake panel.


How to make cave pieces modular so they are seamless?

You need the vertices at each connection pint to be perfect matches for each other, and you need them to have the same uv coordinates. These are nontrivial tasks, but I do have a few recommendations:

First, consider working without a subsurf. That way you can have all cave entrances and exits be exact copies of each other.

Second, uv unwrap a cave segment with the maximum number of exits intended first, then make all subsequent caves start as duplicates. Unwrap these but pin the verts of the exits when doing so.

Finally, make sure you have exact coordinates and angles for all exits relative to each other so that your game engine can get them into place.

I have never done this, but it sounds plausible!


Hmm .... blender uses your PNG's alpha channel in a very strange way on output. Even PNG has black&white alpha it is displayed as partially transparent ... almost without transparency. So I would expect your question should be - Why PNG's alpha channel is ignored in my render?

Anyway...
What you can see as "white noise" around alpha edge looks the same as what I can get with Straight alpha

When switched to Premultiplied alpha it looks like your render ... the residue of brighter pixels is something that I can see on your original image too so I guess it is not an issue here.

But your original PNG is already set with straight and looks normal ... switch to premultiply in image properties make things even whorse ... probably wait for some better answer :) I'm confused now ...

Anyway ... reassigning Alpha channel with Set Alpha node solved issue for me. Also when I append rendered image back into blender (that is what you did, I guess, right?).

If you want to clear edge you can try Dilate/Erode node for Alpha channel ...

If you need this pixel cut from mask in final use InPaint node after Set Alpha.


If you are having troubles with doing this in one operation you may have better luck by breaking it into smaller pieces.

In edit mode goto side view and Box select one or two levels. Press B to start box select mode.
Press CtrlL to select vertices linked to what is selected, this ensures you keep each piece together.
Press P and choose Selection to separate the selected portion into a new object.
Repeat until you have separated the whole tower into smaller parts.
Select one of these smaller objects and go into edit mode.
Press P and choose by Loose Parts
Repeat for each part created above.


Is there a way to set objects' origin points to be separated from each other at certain distance in Particles System(Hair)?

Daily Blender Secrets - Fix Overlapping Particles with Blue Noise Particles add-on

Daily Blender Secrets - Fix Overlapping Particles

Daily Blender Secrets - Non-Overlapping Particles (Method 3)

First video:

Download the zip file
In Blender, go to Edit; Preferences; Addons; then select install from file and pick the zip. Tick the checkbox to enable the addon.
Select the surface of the object you want to distribute your particles onto.
Press Shift + A to open up Mesh menu and select Blue Noise Particles
Choose highest quality for more evenly spaced particles from the context menu(opens only when you initially make new Blue Noise Particles)
Select Even in Noise Type
Select Vertices in Generate
Click OK in context menu
After generating the particles, go to Render from Particles Settings and select Object in Render as
Note: Make sure it is in emmiter instead of hair
You will be prompted with a dropper to select which object you want to pick for particles.
Note: Be sure to enlarge them if you only see origin points as they may be scaled down significantly

After fumbling around this one, I had to use subdivision modifier on surface of object because if it's too low, vertices generated will be messy for particles clumping together from one point. If too high, it will take considerably long time or Blender or computer may crash from extreme high poly objects. I used collection of objects as particles. Here are the difference between overlapping and non-overlapping particles in those two pictures

Blue Noise Particles

Overlapping Particles

Yes they look practically same. Both are used with denoise node in Composite.

Second video:
(There is an issue, the method won't let you accept color random node for the particle system and instead it will produce one randomized color for all of your meshes)

Have desired particles on surface first.
In Blender, go to Edit; Preferences; Addons; then tick 3D Mesh Toolbox in Official list addons
Select the surface with particles. Go to Modifier Properties and click on Convert to turn them into meshes.
Note: Do not select anything else
Go to Particle Properties and remove particle system from the surface object
Select one active object from all of selected particles then Use Ctrl + J to join them
Press N and go to 3D-Print tab. From there, click on Intersection and go into Edit Mode
The Intersection will give a result that consist of meshes in contact with each other by faces. Press Ctrl + L to extend to whole separate meshes of selected faces that Intersection gave you.
Press x to delete them and you have one object containing all meshes that don't overlap with each other.

I refuse to give instructions for video 3 because it requires physics.


animation is not rendered if i set start at 50

Bake phisics animation before render. Press space and find Bake All Phisics:


The issue is that the active layer is not the one that is visible. So your objects are being created in layer 9 instead of layer 1.

To make layer one be the active layer press 1

To see the contents of both layers press 1 and Shift 9


How can I delete the bevel object once a curve is created?

That will depend on the shape you want the bevel to be and whether you want to keep editing the curve. For odd shapes you will need to keep the bevel object as it defines the shape. You can hide the bevel object or move it to another layer to keep it out of the way. If you don't need to edit the tubing then you can setup your bevel and then convert it to a mesh with ⎇ AltC and delete the curve objects.

For simple bevel shapes you don't need to use a bevel object. A square tube can be created by adding a bevel depth and leaving the resolution at 0.

By increasing the resolution to 1 or 2 you get a hexagonal or octagonal shaped tubing, higher values give a rounded cylindrical tube.

If you want sharper edges you can add an edge split modifier.


You can setup FPS of the scene in render settings:

But if you have video files with different FPS values in one scene, you can do this:

Add a movie strip with different fps value:

Select Video (not sound) and add Speed Control effect (Shift+A -> Effect Strip -> Speed Control)

By moving end of the strip adjust strip length to be equal sound strip:

Optionaly, you can put all this in meta-strip (by pressing Ctrl+G)

If you haven't sound strip, you can setup Speed Control this way:

Uncheck "Stretch to input strip length"

In Speed factor put {FPS of your file}/{FPS of your scene}

And extend movie clip if it needed


Beginner: black polygons while texturing

You are using the Blender Internal (BI) rendering engine, which is not physically based and thus does not interact with light realistically (as it's physically-based counterpart Cycles does).

The polygons are not actually black, they simply have no light falling on them (BI doesn't have the capacity to compute correct environment or bounce lighting). Try adding more lamp objects to the scene to illuminate the different sides of the cube, or simply drag the current Point lamp around.

Alternatively, it is recommended that you use Cycles as your main render engine, not only for the realistic benefits that it adds but because the BI engine will no longer be included (or supported) in the upcoming 2.8 release.


While there are many subtleties and nuances to your question, the following should deliver reasonable results with equipment you may very well have around you or possibly borrow.

Use a DSLR and use your widest lens. The Sigma 8mm fisheye and a full 35mm sensor allows one to capture edge to edge sphere shots, for example.
Do a bracketed exposure series of your set in enough directions to cover the scene. For example, with the 8mm above, it is three directions. If you require four photos to deliver your 360 degree view, you would require a set for each exposure. Depending on your scene's dynamic range, pan to your first position and take photos at exposure, several stops down, and several stops up. -3, -1.5, 0, +1.5, +3 stops might be required, or fewer. Shoot raw to preserve as great a range as possible for each image.
Merge each bracketed exposure set together into a spherical merged image. An example might be Hugin or other such tool.
Merge the stacks of exposures into a single HDR scene referred EXR image from the layers of stitches. An example might be Luminance HDR or other such tool.

A single exposure will fail to deliver upon the "correctly lit" aspect of your question.
It is important to understand the difference between a scene referred and a display referred image here. Where a typical JPEG or such image is a low dynamic range and being bent to fit the 0..1 range, a scene referred image attempts to maintain the original scene's ratios of light levels being cast from objects. This is stored in a linear fashion and the values can range from zero to a theoretical infinity.
When a series of bracketed photos are merged into a scene referred file format such as EXR, the original values of the scene are reconstructed. These values will much wider apart than the 2.5 stops of light a typical JPG or PNG can represent1.
Granted that the above will only deliver an accurate estimation of the lighting at the given point you photographed your HDRI images. If you seek more accuracy such as a CG element nears a wall or other object, you would need to attempt to project the light values upon a placebo object to correctly estimate the inverse square law of energy (1/d^2). Project from view with some tracking might be useful here.
For further reading:

The VES technology white paper discussing the differences between scene referred and display referred data.
A solid description of the differences of file formats and their ability to represent HDR data.
Hugin panoramic and spherical stitching application.
Luminance HDR: http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/

1: A middle grey card photographed and converted to a JPEG will land at approximately 48.45% value in sRGB. This translates to a value of 0.2 when linearized to display linear. If we double this, we arrive at 0.4 for one stop. Doubled again to 0.8 for two stops. 1.0 therefore can't express any greater dynamic range than a little over two and a tenth stops of light. Further complicating this is the fact that a standard camera will hold a wider dynamic range and curve this into the resulting JPEG or display referred format. This ends up baking both the sRGB curve and the camera curve into the resulting image, and it cannot be reasonably undone from these formats.


How to bake in Cycles without hidden objects affecting the bake

You can exclude an object from baking calculations by moving it to another layer from the object you are baking with M.  Then just uncheck the layer you have moved it to in the viewport footer before baking.


Model error apparent when uv uwrapping. How can I locate and delete errant faces?

Thank you to Mr Zak for his comment and solution.

By using the Keep UV and Edit mode selection in sync button in the UV editor ( its the one approx centre that looks a bit like a Pac Man eating a mouse pointer arrow) selected I was able to then select the two errant faces in the UV map and have them shown in the 3d view.

This confirmed that they were modelling errors, rather than say miss-aligned vertices, and I was then able to delete them.

Co-incidentally it also showed up a corner where the vertices were non-aligned rather than connected correctly. A very useful little button...


Found an Answer that actually works just right:

Export The UE4 mannequin.

Remove anything you dont want to use including MESH, IK bones, Twist bones.

Turn on snap and set it to verticies.
Then grab ends of bones that are in the wrong positions. Move them using the axis arrows onto the correct bones.
Save it for next time as it's own file

Next bring in your mesh. Scale appropriately for unreal
In object mode, select the skeleton. Press shift+C so that you scale from origin. Scale it to your mesh.

Turn on the mirror x and move bones as needed.

In object mode, select the mesh and skeleton and press CTRL+P
set them by weight when asked.

Go into weight mode and fix all the crazy stuff it will do for whatever reason.
Export to unreal.

In unreal make sure you dont choose a skeletal mesh during import.
Open the UE4 skeleton. Get to the rigging options and set it to the humanoid rig

On your skeleton do the same thing.

Go find whatever animation you want, right click on it.
Select Animation re target asset, and in the process just choose your skeleton.


Only one object has bloom when Z combining

Well, I found an answer myslef. Thanks to Bruno, I got the idea of combining the masks that the Z combine node creates for each object, so I made a setup like so:

It combines both objects' silhouettes to make a combined mask, and as you see, the depth values are correct as well.


There are no rules.
  Use what works for you :).

Sometimes bevel doesn't give good results, so subdivision needs to be used instead.
They can also be used together for easier cotrol.

Bevel modifier - easily adjustable edges, limited in tight corners (creates overlapping geometry)
Subdivision Modifier - works almost anywhere because it actually moves the geometry.

Using Bevel and Subdivision together


Blender 2.8 Eevee transparent BSDF leaving extruded text unfaced

To get a transparent material in EVEE we need to set the materials blend mode to alpha blend. When this is enabled the same time as show backface, the alpha of each face gets multiplied and makes the backfaces appear more prominent.

You need to turn off Show Backfaces in the material settings.

You also get a similar result with show backfaces when the blend mode is set to additive.


Where is the input box for setting the number of `Vertices` of a circle?

Steps

Press Shift + A and select Circle to add a new circle to the scene.

After clicking the Circle, the input box of Vertices is now shown in the left hand side menu.

Explanation

The editbox for that only appears directly and automatically after you added the circle to the scene.
If you switch to editmode after that then you can't change it anymore that way.

You'll need to undo the adding, add it again and change the value right away and THEN go into editmode to work on it further.

Alternatively you can just stay in editmode, remove all vertices and add a new circle, it'd be the same in the end.


Add new parametric curve object/type using Python

There is an extra objects addon that provides a 3d function surface that should help with how to create the mesh.

For the showing the surface in the viewport I would look at CGCookies retopology tools. If you watch the demo video you will find they draw a preview over the mesh object before creating the final mesh data.

You might want to look at the PropertyGroup or Collection types as a way to add extra data to an object.

There is a chance you may be asking too much for python, maybe you need to consider it as a patch to be added to blenders main source code.


How to get sun streaks /lens flare effect in compositor?

So I found a solution to this problem I could of course use the Flares Wizard addon as @Jonas said yet the question was how it can be done with the compositor. This is how it can be done:

Add in a sphere which should be the sun
Give it an emission material with a strength of 10
Navigate to the object properties panel and in the relations ->Change the pass index of the sphere to 1
Navigate to View layer properties and in the passes-> enable object index (IndexOB)
Hit Render
Open up the compositor and use the node setup as shown:

Then you will get this:

PS:If your sphere is too big you will need to tweak the node setup.Likewise adding in a blur node in between can smoothen out that sharp streaks...
This is the rendered result:

If you want just sun glare you can you this node setup:
(Add node near render layers node is not necessary)
Which will get you this effect :

When adding the sun beams node make sure to place the cross in the middle of the sun


How to monitor render process in a thread-safe manner?

You can add handlers for render complete process: http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_67b_release/bpy.app.handlers.html#bpy.app.handlers.render_complete

Use that to flip a flag that you can check in your main code that can check when the current render is ready before starting a new one.

Check also render_post (and render_pre) for usage in your add-on.


Scale objects together but not from a common center

Enable Transform Pivot Point > Individual Origins:


How can I orient objects duplicated along a curve extracted from a surface?

The issue is your curve has unapplied scale. Apply it with CtrlA> Scale and it will work fine (note that you will have to re-position your cone):


Why does my mesh with a cutout have strange, jagged artifacts in other tools?

Maybe rework your topology, keep only one face, use the knife tool (K to activate, C to cut perpendicularly) try to keep only quads, extrude to give thickness back.


How to import OBJ files into Blender with script?

Try adding the trailing / to your directory path. You're searching for /home/yuerno/Downloads/test*.obj instead of /home/yuerno/Downloads/test/*.obj
Or better yet, use os.path.join to put the parts together:
# Specify OBJ files
model_files = glob.glob(os.path.join(model_dir, "*.obj"))


How to set world's background without effecting the lighting?

Light path node (works for Eevee & Cycles)...


Why do interpolated grease pencil strokes deform?

The Interpolate Frames feature is used to transform a stroke from one shape into another, but not really to move a stroke from one place to another whilst maintaining its shape. That's because it draws an imaginary straight line from each of the stroke point's old position to its new position, then makes the point travel along that straight line. For a simple move and/or scale that works, but when rotating a stroke the points should follows an arc, not a straight line, so the shape ends up being squashed by the half way point. You can add a frame at the half-way point, but the problem will happen again on either sides because it's still two straight lines instead of a curve.
For this kind of transformation, instead of interpolating frames you should look into cut-out animation techniques which moves the different parts without changing their shape.


Strange shadows in 2.8 rendering with Eevee

I figured out the error. Having multiple light sources with contact shadows on appears to be the issue, I just toggled around until I had one primary light source with contact shadows on. Cross contacting generated these blips.


How can I get an object to swing from a hinge faster?

I found that in the rigid body world settings you can increase the speed which solved my problem


Rendering with AMD Radeon R5 M330 gives an error that I can't understand!

This is a bug in 2.78 which has since been fixed in master (bug T49846, fixed in this commit).

Luckily you don't have to wait, you can fix this bug yourself. Edit the following file:

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\cycles\kernel\kernel_projection.h

On line 238:

    float altitude = fabsf(safe_asinf(D->z));

should read:

    float altitude = fabsf(safe_asinf((*D).z));


Why I cannot subdivide face in this way?

When you subdivide this way, you're not subdividing a face, just one of it's edges.  Joining the new vertices up later with F still won't subdivide the original face.

Have you tried selecting both edges together, then doing the subdivide?  This should split the face up into two.

Select one edge, hold SHIFT down and select the other.
With both edges highlited, press W and do the subdivide.


Key out background and keep "halo" around foreground

You don't need to key the text. Just multiply it over the background image.

For legibility you can add a fake drop shadow, by multiplying a version of the same text displaced and blured:

Or if you need white, then use the dilate/erode node in feather mode, invert the result,  and use color dodge to add a soft white border around the letters.

Or use the black writing as a mask to have color text.


Changing node that effects to all material

Rather than using a Color Ramp, you can create a Node Group to hold your colours as separate RGB input nodes. Your materials can then use the same Node Group to make use of those colours and changing the contents of the Node Group will affect everything that uses it.
To create your Node Group, first create all of your RGB nodes and highlight them all (by dragging a box around them). In the Add menu there's an option for 'New Group' (within the Group sub-menu). This will create your node group.

You can rename the output sockets of the group using the properties panel (N).
You can then add your group (Add/Group/NodeGroup) to your materials :

Note that you can rename the node group by clicking in the Name field (it defaults to 'NodeGroup' but you can give it any name you like - such as 'Color Palette').
Making changes to the internal nodes of the group will affect anywhere that uses that group.


Rigging a character and adding controlls issue

Sometimes you gotta change the pole angle yo 90 or -90, is a thing of inverse kinematics in blender. Let me know if that helps !


Blender adding double forward slash (`//`) to image file paths on Mac

Turns out that the double forward slash is Blender's way of expressing relative file paths. E.g. ./file.jpg in a Unix filesystem is //file.jpg in Blender. So I needed to save my .blend file by turning off the default interpretation of filepaths as relative.

Turns out that this modified question is already answered here: Absolute path of files in Blender (with Python).


How to Remove these small box(edge) structure from face in blender?

On the left menu of your 3D view (activated with T) click Tools tab > Shading panel > Faces > Smooth. Also I think you have to recalculate your normals: enter  Edit mode, select all, and press Ctrl+N


How to Make Multi User Objects Single User?

Press U > Objects and Data. Then apply your modifier. Using just Object will make the object a new, separate datablock for the mesh (but will ignore modifiers). However, using Object and Data will make both the objects mesh and it's modifiers a new, separate datablock.


This is probably an issue with the nVidia graphics cards and drivers - I had the same problem, and Tyler N supplied one answer.

Right click on your Blender shortcut, and select "Run with graphics processor > Integrated Graphics." If your computer tells you that "you don't have the privilege to select the graphics processor in this menu ", click "Open Nvidia Control Panel." Under "Program settings" click Add by "Select a program to customize." Add Blender, and then set it to integrated graphics in the box below.

Another alternative would be to download and install the Nvidia 375.95 driver version, which reportedly works okay with Blender.


Input script of Mix Shader node for create link?

I finally figure it out
I need to type
material_realistic_gold.node_tree.links.new(MixShader_node.inputs[1], BsdfGlossy3_node.outputs[0])


What is the correct measurement systems for animation?

The best way is using the reference unit. for each animation you should have a proper reference footage or etc.

For example you want to create walk cycle. you start to walk in your room and observe Walking variables by taking a footage from it. when you want to use that footage, you should use a measurement system With which you understand your footage. for this example metric unit maybe is the best choice.

But when you want to simulate a animation in big scale, you pick a proper ratio of a small unit that can describe the actual scale. for example the space between moon and earth is 363,104 kilometers. you can use metric unit and set it 3.63 meter to get the best result.


Why drivering value from node editor is not working?

Also find this confusing, but this thing is a bit tricky.

Important information

I don't know why, but RNA path for nodes isn't full when copying. For me, it is not working without adding node_tree. before copied data path.

Easy way

Add another variable, which defines object data (Loc/Rot/Scale). You don't need to add variable to expression, just make sure it is in the list. And better use neutral object or Empty to avoid cycle dependecy

More complicated way

Delete current driver and add it via Outliner. In Outliner switch menu to Data Block and find object that is using this material, then hit plus sign to expand tree and find material slots -> desired material -> material nodetree -> finally node you want to drive.

In other words, you should go through the whole data tree - from object to desired node's value.

Once you find line with value (for this specific case - Default Value), select it and click Edit in the header -> Add Driver

This is very brief explanation. For more info on Outliner method, watch this tutorial vid (from 19 minute).


If you click on the image in the UV editor (1 in the picture below), the name of the image pops up and if i'm correct the name is artwork_eatsheep.jpg.001.
Then open the properties tab (N). Under image you see the source (2), here you must locate the image on your computer and load it. Then it should work.


Is it possible to leave an object unrendered?

You probably forgot to switch from Blender render to Cycles.

To switch from Blender render to Cycles, simply click on the drop-down menu near the top of the screen. It's right next to the little blender logo icon. Select "Cycles" Render from the list and you should be good.

Unless you have a version older than 2.42 (which was released in July of 2006), you have nodes. It's just a matter of opening the node view and selecting the correct material.

To open the node view, divide the 3d view area into two and then switch the second view's editor type to Node Editor.


Why can't I see my pictures in the folder its suppose to be in?

You might have a filter in the file browser selected.


Creating a UV Map from a shrinkwrapped sphere

Spherical projection

The above is the equirectangular projection of the Tissot Index Plate Carrie projection image found here Justin Kunimune / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)  onto a squashed 8 sided ngon filled cylinder.

The node set up explained in this answer https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/159492/15543
A Hammer Projection
and again using a Hammer Projection node setup as explained here of
Tissot index hammer projection image from wiki by Justin Kunimune CC BY-SA 4.0


Identifying and correctly mapping various texture maps onto a model (Blender Cycles Render)

You actually can use most of these maps at once! For the purposes of answering your main inquiry, I make the following assumptions, based on what information you've provided: You already have your model UV unwrapped and your desired maps match the appropriate sections. That is, that you have everything you need for your final image, you just don't know what they do or where to plug them in.

The good news is you've already got the basic idea down pat! You just need a little adjustment. With the sole exceptions of your base color and your subsurface color, the image texture setting that says 'color' should be changed to 'noncolor data'. Clicking on the image texture node in question where it says 'color' should give you a dropdown to select this option. Depending on what version of Blender you're using, you might not see much of a difference, but it does help Blender to understand what you want it to do much better.
The second thing you need to do is add one more node to your setup. Blender doesn't know exactly where you want the image textures to go, so it's making an educated guess. Sometimes this works out alright, but most times, it's not really what you're looking for. Happily, telling it what you want it to do in this case is very simple. You need to add a Texture Coordinate node. You'll find this in the Input menu. Plug the UV slot into the vector slot of your Image Texture node.

On to explaining your maps! While I'm not 100% certain of all the file formats Blender can use, the general rule of thumb is if it lets you see it in the file selection menu, you can use it. However, if you're getting strange results, you might want to consider making .png or .jpg versions of your map and using those.
As most of your slots and maps are labeled, you won't have too much trouble sticking them where they should go, with a few exceptions. Your thickness map should actually go in your transmission slot. This isn't the same as SSS (subsurface scattering), but it's similar in concept; it's telling Blender what parts are the thinnest, and should therefore let more light pass through in those areas. By itself, it's going to make your model see-through, which isn't what you want, but by mixing it with subsurface strength, it will remain solid and only let your subsurface color through instead of whatever's behind Elena. While you can use the thickness map in the subsurface strength slot as well (definitely do this if you're going for a more stylized look), try just playing with the slider, first, since your main magic is happening on the transmission slot.
Your specular map is an inverted roughness map. You plug it into the roughness slider, but you're going to have to invert it, first. If you look under the Color section in the add menu, you'll find the invert node. No fiddling required, just hook your map to this node, then from this node to your roughness slot.
Bonus: You can add an invert node to any of your black-and-white maps to adjust the strength; all the way to zero will make it the original strength, and sliding it towards one will decrease the effect of the map.

You only need to know one more thing to use all those extra normal maps. Masking. You've already noticed the black-and-white masks labeled as such. These go with the normal maps of a similar name. For example, 'forehead_mask' will be working with 'forehead_normal'. In a nutshell, masks serve as more complicated instructions for mixing. You plug this into the mix factor of a mixShader or mixRGB, and it tells Blender what parts to put different maps, based on how much white is in the image. Using the forehead as an example once more, the parts that are pure black will be completely the first (top slot) map, and all the parts that are pure white will be completely the second map. If I were only working with color or strength maps, I'd use the mixRGB node, and life would be easier. However, since you're mixing normal maps, which are very special snowflakes if you want accurate results, you're going to have to use the mixShader.
It's actually not complicated at all, it's just going to make your node tree a little crowded. I'd brush up on grouping nodes for your sanity, but since that's not necessary for function, I won't go into it here (feel free to message me if you want to do this and it's giving you trouble).
You will need to make a new principled node setup for every single normal map. You can reuse all the other maps if they don't come with their own. The files seem to be pretty well-organized, so they should have the same name if they do.
Once you have all your nodes set up, it's time to mix them. Please remember that order is extremely vital for overlapping parts. I don't know what your wrinkles look like, but if none of them touch each other, you don't have to worry as much. But if they do overlap, you're going to need to work your way from the lowest part to the highest part. In this case, the lowest part of the setup is the first node tree you made for the skin. To elucidate, you want each higher layer to be on the bottom slot of the mixShader; this is the one controlled by the white parts of the maps.
To mix, add a mixShader to your node tree. Plug your first principled node set up with the next-highest one. For example's sake, let's say you're adding the left cheek to the base layer. Add your left_cheek_mask map like you would any other map you've done so far, and plug it into the mix slot. Next you're going to add another mixShader and combine this result with the next one higher, in exactly the same way. Repeat this process until you've added everything you care to, then plug the final result into your material output. (The surface slot, in this case.)

From the looks of your maps, your hair, eyebrows/eyelashes, eyeballs, and inner mouth, are all separate objects. This means all you have to do is make sure you click on those pieces and add your materials to them in exactly the same way as you have the skin.

I'm afraid I don't know for certain what the hair shift map is for, without seeing any other attendant hair maps, but if I had to guess, I'd say it plugs into the tangent slot. I think the purpose is to give each hair some slight variety.

The trans maps are alpha maps. (Likely short for 'transparent', given the shape of the eyebrow and eyelash objects.) Invert them like you did with your specular map, and plug them into the transmission slot.

I hope this information helped! Good luck, happy Blending, and feel free to contact me for any reason!


How can I use local rotation on objects created with geometry nodes?

Use Point Rotate node with setting Point, Z rotation is what you need:

If you want to rotate in a random angle use Attribute Randomize in vector mode, but keep X and Y equals 0:


Will applying Decimate Modifiers speed up Blender?

Will it speed anything up if I apply all these decimate modifiers?

yes (you can try by yourself btw).
I suspect you are not using correctly blender. If you have a lot of faces, that means that the mesh comes from a sculpt operation or photogrammetry, so you DON'T have to edit the mesh in edit mode. If you stay away from edit mode, you should be able to work on your file.


How to set a given Island margin for UV?

From my tests, CTRL + P works fine and gives the correct pixel separation where the Lightmap pack actually seems incorrect.

When using the Lightmap pack it seems that the separation is not based on pixels where packing it or setting it in the UV unwrap setting it seems correct to me.

Regards,
Kyle


Wierd faces after I moved one vertex of quads

Result comes from fact that by draging only one vertex of a quad face makes face non-planar, in viewport hardly seen as two triangles (there is not any other mathematical way to result). In real life if you take plate of glass and you would take one corner lower you would have to split plate by diagonal cut between any two corners.

In your case is one face triangulated in shorter (red) direction and second in longer (green).

Yet not sure how final surface should looks like for you, but you can create like negative shape from two triangles and "cut" it out by Boolean modifier > Difference from your base mesh.

Create a new object with two triangle faces. Like that you keep faces planar.

For Boolean modifier you will need a non-manifold mesh. So extrude it by Solidify modifier to create one close mesh. It is non destructive way. So you can go to edit mode and adjust the "cut" shape anytime.

Now use Boolean modifier for your base object to Difference it.
Also I changed the viewport display mode for this object to "Wire" so you can see how Boolean modifer perform on base mesh.

Note: Blender has also an operator, you can search Make Planar Faces, that can recalculate them into flat faces, but in cost of distortions of all selected vertices.


EVEE Lighting and Volume Scatter showing through walls

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

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

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

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

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


Blender not registering Keyboard and limited Mouse Input

Thank you for stating your question clearly.

Go to c://users/yourmachine/application data/roaming/blender foundation/blender/28 <-- this last folder should be the one with old preferences and is conflicting with other 2.8 installations. Delete it.

Run Blender 2.8 choose your default selection click but DO NOT change keyboard layout.

Your Blender 2.8 version should be up to date (daily developer version or DD).

Dowload Blender 2.8 DD. Unzip and run from the unzipped folder. Your configs should be reset to defaults and you should have  no trouble driving Blender 2.8

And oh! please, please, close the antivirus totally and make sure the application is not firewalled on your windows configuration. Give firewall permissions to execute 2.8

Thank you for your consideration to select this as the answer.

BFCT_Schiller


Unexpected vertices when looping through meshes in Scene Collection

Your scripts are incorrect, you are ignoring scene objects and repeatedly printing data for the active object instead.
In both cases you are looping over scene objects with
for i in bpy.context.scene.objects:

Then you proceed to ignore them all by defining an "active object" with either obj = bpy.context.edit_object or me = bpy.context.object.data rather than iterate over i from the loops.
It should probably be something like me = i.data.


exporting video with transparent background

Alpha and codecs don't behave terribly well. At last check, only the horrific QuickTime encoder on OSX permitted an alpha channel.

As with all good work practices, it is much more prudent to encode to a still format where plausible, and deal with encoding at the very tail end of a pipeline.


Is this possible, scaling the width, height & angle of a diagram via html5 and blender?

You can't run the Blender game engine in a browser. Some options you have are:

Display pre-rendered image in the browser, you would have to render animation sequences for the water for each angle. (Bad idea)
Import Blender model to three.js using this addon.

Video Tutorial

Use a Javascript 3D graphics framework like three.js with WEBGL shaders

Related

- WebGL Water

water-simulation-in-three-js
Water


Thank you to Nathan for mentioning normals. [ https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/24636/nathan ]
For anyone who may have this problem, you select your mesh and recalculate inside normals.
I used this video for reference [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clzstqtN6YQ ]


This is a result of too low render resolution.

1000px is just too low, and upscaling makes it look blurry.
Render the image at 2000x2000px instead, and even with just 200 samples you'll get nice sharp edges (just tested it).

Bonus: How to properly connect the Denoise node for best results :).


Play movie, image, or image sequence at specified time?

Image sequence

You can specify the frame one which the image sequence starts with the Start frame property of the the image node:

Video file

I don't know of a way to do this with a video file in the compositor (there is no start frame option on the  movie clip node).

Note that this is a very trivial matter in the VSE (Video Sequence Editor) for still images, image sequences and video files:


How to create the curved effect on top of a sconce

When you see an object like this one, repeating a pattern all around a circle, you can use tools like Array modifiers, then SimpleDeform or Curve modifiers. Also it seems like there is a metallic structure, so I've tried something like that:

Create your basic shape, use a Mirror modifier to make it simpler. Enable the Clipping option.
Give it an Array modifier so that it repeats 5 times or more (?). Enable the Merge option.
Give it a SimpleDeform modifier / Bend mode. Choose a Deform Angle of 180°. If it doesn't turn around the Z axis as expected, you need to apply the rotation of the object with a ctrlA.
Give it a Subsurf modifier if you want, in that case, add some edge loops close to the angles.
You can add a glass surface on the same object, etc...


You could do it this way instead:

Extrude down:

Bevel:

Mirror, rework the topology with the knife (K) and some join (J):


Late answer, but menu bar that @so_confused was looking for is just another Blender view/panel/window, just like the Properties panel or the 3D View port. You just need to add a window/panel of type "Info" and position it where you want it (default location is at the top). It will likely show the console output at the top, which you can just hide by dragging the bar edge up to cover the console.

For those who've lost the icon/dropdown altogether, you need to pull up the hidden bar from the bottom of the panel. Here's a sample video to illustrate: https://youtu.be/uB7F4O3Ju5o


How do you create a sphere with a certain amount of edges?

Attempt at the D9

The first part of the code, is an algorithm to estimate N equally spaced points on a sphere.

Adapted from

Constructing Polyhedra from Repelling Points on a Sphere

  by Simon Tatham

  Scatters N points randomly on the surface of a sphere, allows them to
  move under mutual inverse-square repulsion while keeping them
  constrained to the sphere's surface, waits until they converge to
  fixed locations, and outputs their locations.

Once the points are determined to within a tolerance TOL they are
rotated to make one the north pole. A 1 radius UV sphere is createdand holes are bisected into the mesh by cutting with a plane normal to
the radial of each point, and moved rat along the 1 unit radius.

Image showing convex hulls of 9 points on left, and sphere with cutting planes on right.

The Code

Copy the code below, paste in text editor and run script. Change the parameters to suit. Note it might hang every now and then finding a solution , if so hit CtrlC in the system console.

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector
import random
from math import pi, asin, atan2, cos, sin, radians

# parmaaters
n = 9  # number of points on sphere
rat = .86 # how far along the radius to bisect
u_segments = 32  # UV sphere settings
v_segments = 32
thickness = 0.2  # solidify thickness
TOL = 1e-7

points = [Vector((0, 0, 1))]
for i in range(n - 1):
    theta = random.random() * radians(360)
    phi = 2 * asin(random.random() * 2 - 1)
    points.append(Vector((cos(theta) * cos(phi),
           sin(theta) * cos(phi),
           sin(phi))))

while True:
    # Determine the total force acting on each point.
    forces = []
    for i in range(len(points)):
        p = points[i]
        f = Vector()
        ftotal = 0
        for j in range(len(points)):
            if j == i: continue
            q = points[j]
            # Find the distance vector, and its length.
            dv = p - q
            dl = dv.length
            dl3 = dl * dl * dl
            fv = dv / dl3
            # Add to the total force on the point p.
            f = f + fv
        # Stick this in the forces array.
        forces.append(f)
        # Add to the running sum of the total forces/distances.
        ftotal = ftotal + f.length

    fscale = 1 if ftotal <= 0.25 else 0.25 / ftotal

    # Move each point, and normalise. While we do this, also track
    # the distance each point ends up moving.
    dist = 0
    for i in range(len(points)):
        p = points[i]
        f = forces[i]
        p2 = (p + fscale * f).normalized()

        dv = p - p2
        dist = dist + dv.length
        points[i] = p2
    # Done. Check for convergence and finish.
    if dist < TOL: # TOL
        break

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
# make one point north pole.
R = points[0].rotation_difference(Vector((0, 0, 1))).to_matrix()
points = [R @ p for p in points]

bm = bmesh.new()
#bmesh.ops.create_icosphere(bm, diameter=1, subdivisions=5 )
bmesh.ops.create_uvsphere(bm,
        diameter=1,
        u_segments=u_segments,
        v_segments=v_segments)

for p in points:
    ret = bmesh.ops.bisect_plane(bm,
            geom=bm.faces[:]+bm.edges[:]+bm.verts[:],
            plane_co= rat * p,
            plane_no=-p,
            clear_outer=False,
            clear_inner=True)
    '''
    # add visible cutting planes (using bisect)
    R = Vector(p).to_track_quat('Z', 'Y').to_matrix().to_4x4()
    R.translation = rat * p
    bmesh.ops.create_grid(bm, x_segments=1, y_segments=1, size=1, matrix=R)
    '''
me = bpy.data.meshes.new("dice")
bm.to_mesh(me)
ob = bpy.data.objects.new("dice", me)
scene.collection.objects.link(ob)
context.view_layer.objects.active = ob
ob.select_set(True)
ob.location = scene.cursor.location
# add a thickness modifier
sm = ob.modifiers.new("Solidify", 'SOLIDIFY')
sm.thickness = thickness

Alternatively could hard code in a set of  9 points.

from mathutils import Vector
raw = [
0.798313857169, -0.442003436215, 0.409057389405,
-0.552293193116, -0.798759837392, 0.238652364346,
-0.173114881688, 0.873088163724, -0.455794137855,
0.749969728716, 0.23229964104, -0.619340199553,
-0.872965308015, 0.388085187337, 0.295502044616,
-0.600669921728, -0.124465371314, -0.789749337749,
0.278179133859, -0.797203763248, -0.535800829925,
-0.105061227491, -0.0758822299659, 0.991566450448,
0.477641726235, 0.744841584279, 0.465907067653
]
it = iter(raw)
points = list(map(Vector, zip(it, it, it)))

EDIT:

Updated for 2.8, for prior version  see previous edit revision.


Why is my sculpture growing sharp and edgy when I try to (for example) grow an arm from the main sphere? Or trying to extend something?

It seems you are sculpting a 3d mesh without any knowledge of 3d in general. I think you did not subdivide properly the mesh or activating Dyntopo in your paint brush tool panel. That cause a weird mesh deformation due to low face polygons number, a topology problem.Spenting some time in watch some ytube tutorials could be a good star point.


In the dave.8.blend file you definitely have a number of faces that have the normals backwards. You need to select all the faces that look black, then flip the normal direction on them.

For reference:
Limit Selection to Visible button


Procedural generation of cavern floor for 3D printing

I found a way that works for me. I'm sure it could be made better with a few tweaks but I'll describe what I did. Essentially I want to generate topographical elevation lines on an arbitrary surface and then thicken the planes defined by those topo lines. Here's what I did.
I used a Voronoi texture, using distance squared and modified the ramp properties to invert the image and set the color stops to .35 and .5. I used an empty object scaled at 40x to map it to a displacement modifier. I could add a noise displacement modifier to this empty object to get the pattern to vary randomly if I wanted to.

Before applying the displacement modifier, I weighed the vertices based on their proximity to the edges of the tile. This kept from having ugly abrupt edges. I applied this displacement to all of the non-edge vertices in my surface plane. I then added a Laplacean Smooth to the same inner vertices. I hit it pretty hard with a Lambda Factor of 5 and Repeat 10.

Once I got the undulating surface looking good, I hit it with a Boolean Intersect with an object consisting of planes at every height that matched where I wanted a topo line. Finally I took this and solidified it up to the next topo surface. (You could also solidify it down if you wanted to.)

I then add the simple square base underneath and I'm set. This seems to be relatively simple computationally and gives great results. There are just two problems. Or maybe just one. Since the set of topo surfaces are all one object, the distance between them has to be the same so that when I solidify, the new surface can be coincident with the adjacent topo surface. So I grow each surface until it exactly reaches the next topo surface. This results in coincident surfaces though, which isn't really a clean model. Most slicers seem to do okay with it, but it nags me a little.
Likewise, if I wanted to vary the distance between topo surfaces, I could solidify down beyond the adjacent topo surface. But then I would have self-intersecting solids, and I know slicers don't usually like that.
Is there an easy way to somehow combine these individual, possibly intersecting tiers into one non-self-intersecting object using modifiers?
Honestly the coincident surfaces and even spacing of the topo lines aren't deal-breakers for me so really I'm okay. It's just a nagging little thing.


Are UI Color Ramps Possible through Python

While I don't think you can add a new property to an object that can hold the colour ramp data you can display a duplicate of an existing colour ramp in your own panel if you want to. As you want to display the colour ramp that exists within the nodes of an existing material, this can be done with -

cr_node = bpy.data.materials['Material'].node_tree.nodes['ColorRamp']
layout.template_color_ramp(cr_node, "color_ramp", expand=True)

As the name of the colour ramp node may change you will need a way to choose which colour ramp to display, or show all colour ramps in the current material.


Is there a way to deal with artifacts appearing in texture painting?

If a texel (texture pixel) is only partially covered by the UV shell, you can get this sort of error. You can see it happening in the second image. Blender has to guess whether to apply the texture or not, since it isn't clear from the UV map. To deal with this, texture paint has a function called "bleed" that will spray a little bit past the UV edge. It's located in the "options" tab of the T-panel while in texture paint mode:

When your brush crosses the edge of a UV shell, this will spray extra paint beyond the edge to pad this "vague" boundary of texels that are partially occupied by the UVs. The setting is how many pixels of padding it will make, here's some examples

Your issue is caused by either no bleed, or setting the number of bleed pixels too low.
You do need to make sure you have some amount of space between each UV shell, otherwise the padding for one UV shell will run onto a nearby UV shell.


View of my Blender file is completely messed up and I cannot seem to fix it

Welcome to Blender!

Have you tried changing the camera lock settings? Press N to bring up the sidebar. On the right-hand side of the sidebar, press the View tab then expand the View Lock options.  Here, you can toggle locking to the 3D cursor, to View, or to an object.

If you would like your view to always rotate around the selected object, press, in the top left corner, press Edit > Preferences. Open the Navigation tab, and check Orbit around selection. Please note that your viewport will still rotate around the 3D cursor if that option is checked in the sidebar mentioned above.

PS: If you're looking for a good beginner's tutorial series, check out the Donut Tutorial series by BlenderGuru


How to get an object to follow a path in Version 2.78, does not seem to work like it used to before?

From what I remember, the follow path constraint has always worked like that. The way to achieve what you are trying to do, is to add a curve modifier with the path as the deform object. Then animate the object along the same axis as the deformation axis of the modifier.


How to order a list of vertices based upon position?

What list are you referring to?

the numbers shown in the image are indexes of each vertex in the obj.data.vertices list; a list of these indexes: [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7] (8 vertices).

In the edges in obj.data.edges list you'll find the indexes of vertices that define the edge; sample: [[0,1],[1,2],[2,3],[0,4],[4,5],[5,7],[6,7]]  (8 edges).

It feels like you want to reorder edges so you can loop them based on their index in obj.data.edges; sample: [[3,2],[2,1],[1,0],[0,4],[4,5],[5,7],[7,6]].

In that case you'll need to search for a start vertex the loop. A vertex which belongs to only one edge is a fitting approach. There are 2 of those in your sample, in this code the first appearing in obj.data.vertices list is selected:

vecount = []
for e in obj.data.edges:
    while(len(vecount)-1 < max(e.vertices[0], e.vertices[1])):
        vecount.append(0)
    vecount[e.vertices[0]] += 1
    vecount[e.vertices[1]] += 1
startidx = vecount.index(1)

Now obj.data.vertices[startidx] is the starting point of the loop
Now you can create an array of edges, sorted from starting point towards end point:

edges = []
doneidxs = [startidx]
curridx = startidx
while (len(doneidxs ) != len(obj.data.vertices)):
    for e in obj.data.edges:
        if e.vertices[0]==curridx or e.vertices[1]==curridx:
            if not e.vertices[0] in doneidxs:
                toidx= e.vertices[0]
                break;
            else:
                if not e.vertices[1] in doneidxs:
                    toidx= e.vertices[1]
                    break;
    edges.append([curridx, toidx])
    doneidxs.append(toidx)
    curridx = toidx

Now you can apply the new order of edges by updating vertex indexes in the edge vertices arrays:

for e in obj.data.edges:
    e.vertices[0] = edges[e.index][0]
    e.vertices[1] = edges[e.index][1]
obj.data.update()

Run this code having the mesh selected (3D View, OBJECT mode), starting with pointing out that's the object you want the code to work on:

obj = context.active_object
...(above code)...


Make a curve be exactly a perfect slice of a circle

Try the following:

Model the train Rail as linear, uncurved Shape.
Insert a Circle with add-mesh-Circle. Use the Number of verts as a multiplier of 360 degrees,  e.g. 36 verts.
Delete as many verts as you Need until you geht the Desired bow.
In Object Mode,  use Alt+c to convert the Circle bow Into a Curve.
Apply a Curve modifier to the linear Rail from 1., Using the curve from 4. as Curve.

Be aware of that both objects Need to have applied scale,  rotation and Location.

I Hope this Helps.

Kind regards,  Karl Andreas Groß


Blender 2.81: Add hierarchy to selection

Looks like it's gone, but you can still right click the parent object and hit "Select hierarchy"
But that won't work for de-selecting it :(

Edit: And it's quite impossible to select couple of parent object with their hierarchies.


barely any options being shown within blender

The user interface of Blender was updated in the 2.80 version. Many tutorials are using an older version of Blender which looks a bit different. However the features are still there in Blender 2.8x*, just in slightly different places or on a different shortcut. I'd recommend to watch the Blender Fundamentals 2.8 for an introduction to the new user interface and Blender in general.

* There are some exceptions, e.g. the Blender Internal render engine has been replaced with Eevee and the Blender Game Engine has been removed.

The options you're looking for in the sidebar are located in the View tab. There you'll find the properties for the Clip Start, End and 3D Cursor.

Meshes can be created either through the Add menu or by using Shift+A


First, the new shortcut should not remain each time you start blender, unless you save user settings.

The only trick is finding it. Open User preferences and go to the Input tab. In 2.80+ this is now under Keymap.

Use the search field to find "delete". Alternatively, you may want to search for the key-binding, in which case you can search for "right mouse".

If you changed an existing shortcut, there will be an arrow to go back to factory settings. If it is a new shortcut you added, there will be an X to remove the shortcut.

After correcting the shortcut, click Save User Settings.


How do you paint on only one island in UV Paint view?

There is not an option or method to painting to restricting paint in the 2d UV/Image editor as it is in the 3d view. For this reason, it is much easier to use the face selection masking in the 3d view with the use of the L  key to select the linked island faces, and then paint in your solid color there.

(This is the main reason I got into making my early versions of EZ Draw addon that was originally the Artist Paint Panel addon - I had worked out a way to use curves converted to mesh and project to uv through the camera view on an image plane to use as a masking object. Spirou4D spent a lot of work fixing my mistakes and we got a working grease pencil mask as well, and this was my work around for not being able to mask or limit paint in the 2d view.)
I can recommend that you look at the Options tab and the Fill tool - turn up the fill tool to full strength and turn off the Occlude, Cull and Normal so that your brush will go all the way through the mesh. Use the Face Selection masking and drop in the base colors where you want, and then after you can then turn the occlude and other options back on so that you can go back to regular projection.

After you do, you can come back to paint with textures and brush masks/mask tool painting to rework those areas, and I think you might be able to save a copy of the flat colors as an ID image for use in the compositor, though I haven't done much experimentation with that.
Also: Select a single face in the area you want to paint in 3d view, and then press Shift+Numpad7 to align to top view and then you can quickly set your paint view without too much trouble.


Why is the fire not rendering when sphere (domain) in viewport is hidden?

Think of the fire as a object, and think of the domain as the renderer ~ you will not be able to see the fire without the domain. You can just bake the cache if it lags too much on raw playback.


I can not get "track To"constraint to work on my eyes

You just need to choose the right Track To direction, i.e. the bone axis that is supposed to point towards the Target, which in this case is Y, and it seems to work fine:


add custom texts(labels or annotations) which are always upright to user in view port

Labels in Render
An easy (but limited) way would be to parent the text labels to the camera.

Select text label RMB
Add camera to selection Shift-RMB
Set camara to parent Ctrl-P

After that movement of the camera or transforming the objects in the scene would no longer influence the appearance of the label.
Example rotating object and moving camera:

Labels in Viewport
If you want to draw labels in the view port you find all you need in Adhi's display_matrix.py script.


How to draw a cylinder with an irregular cross section, which varies along the cylinder length?

If you need to work in micrometers, it is better to select None as the Length unit and just keep in mind that the scene unit is micrometer, because Blender starts malfunctioning  if you try to scale units to that size even if you do that with unit scale value:

It is easier to create the cylinder then it may seem. We could use vertex slide functionality(shift+v) to quickly and easily specify the lengths of the radii. Vertex slide works proportionally to the edge it slides on and we want to enter units instead of proportions during the slide operation, so let's adjust the proportion to match the units by making a circle that would have a radius of 1 unit. Once you have the circle, enter edit mode (tab) select the edge loop and extrude it(e), scale it in a bit (s), extrude again and merge the loop to center with alt+m. Now you can take the vertices one by one. Slide every  vertex (shiftvv) to the center, slide it again, hit c to clamp it to the path so it can go further than the edge loop marking 1 unit, and enter the units before confirming the operation with a mouse click. Repeat this for all vertices around, once you are done, you can delete the 1 unit mark edge loop, select everything and extrude:


EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION when trying to bpy.ops.scene.new(type='LINK_COPY')

The problem can be solved by using a persistent application handler that is executed once the project file has been fully loaded. bpy.app.handler.load_post allows you to append functions that shall be executed once the loading is completed. The annotation @persistent is required in order to keep the application handler registered even though a different project is loaded. This is required since normally application handlers are freed once a new project is loaded.

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def load_post(dummy):
    bpy.ops.scene.new(type="LINK_COPY")
    bpy.app.handlers.load_post.remove(load_post)

bpy.app.handlers.load_post.append(load_post)
bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath="/path/to/your/file.blend")


I want to export vertex data of a simple object which include normal and color data as well as vertices coordinates as text file

You could use Python for exporting the exact format you asked for.
(what are a, s, and t though ?)
(I guess a is for alpha, but I don't think VertexColor data has an alpha channel. For s and t, I dont't know. Your question is not clear on these points).

If you accept other similar format, then you can export as PLY :

Don't forget to activate "Vertex Color" :

You get such a file :

The header explains the structure:
The orange line tells you you'll first have 1966 lines desribing the vertices (what you want) with columns described in yellow.

The pink tells you that you will have 500 faces with the property in blue. You didn't ask for it though. But it seems you cannot bypass them at export time.


AO is rarely painted.  It is likely baked from a high poly mesh to a low poly mesh.  Although there's nothing wrong with doing some hand-painting on top of the bake.  It is used as part of a workflow that tries to represent mesh details using texture details instead, because vertices are expensive and texture lookups aren't.
For an example use case of AO, consider a game engine with a baked normal map.  Because the normal map is not real geometry, but only tricks that manipulate the way that light bounces off the surface, a recessed area may get lighted in an inappropriate way-- after all, there is no genuine recess there, it's just flat geometry.  If you wanted, you could just darken the diffuse texture in those recesses, but there is some lighting that should reach the recess.  So you can use ambient occlusion to limit only the ambient lighting, without affecting other lighting.
This is all a trick.  There is nothing remotely physical accurate about ambient occlusion, because there is nothing remotely physically accurate about the concept of ambient lighting to begin with.  It is not a good idea from the standpoint of realistic lighting.  It is a good idea from the standpoint of balancing a good looking picture with reasonable performance-- usually, the real-time performance demanded by games.  Achieving this reasonable performance means that you can't use enough vertices to acquire the shadows realistically.
Some people recommend multiplying AO into diffuse for use in Cycles.  This is not a good idea.  If any texture artist thought that their diffuse should be multiplied by their AO, they'd just do that themselves in PS and skip the AO.  Frankly, there's no real way to use AO in Cycles, because Cycles isn't designed for the same goals that game models and textures are designed.  If you wanted to use ambient occlusion in Cycles, the closest you could get would be to composite (add) two renders, each using some subset of your lighting/world, and to multiply AO into diffuse in only one of those renders.  That would leave AO occluding only some of your lighting, rather than all of it, which is the goal of the use of AO in game engines.  So, no, in Cycles, if you use AO as properly as you can, it will not just get darker-- it will get darker in a specific way.
However, AO is appropriate to use in Eevee.  Unfortunately, the only shader with an AO input is the Specular shader.  Getting game-like renders out of Eevee, using AO, with other shaders, is again possible-- but only with compositing.  In this case, a render without your world should use straight diffuse, while a render with your world but without your lights should use diffuse*AO.  Your world is the ambient lighting in Eevee that should be occluded by AO.  Again, if you use AO properly in Eevee, it will not just make your model darker, it will make your model darker in a specific way.


Saving a rendered file with a audio track on it

Hey buddy you can do it in render tab right side panel. Just. Look for ouput section in this tab you will find Output format sect mp4 as your preference then render . You are done.


How to register a popover panel that doesn't show anywhere else in the UI

Add 'INSTANCED' to panel options
Edit   Credit to @Nilson  (finally twigged)
How to hide a panel that appears twice?

I found the solution .. and it was very simple. Just use: bl_options = {"INSTANCED"}. The popover menu is just an instance of the panel

If the 'INSTANCED' option is added to the panels bl_options  the panel is not drawn directly in the UI, it is rather instanced via the popup call.
PLEASE Note. If the region is set to 'UI' a "Misc" category tab is added, which when selected shows no panels (No others  in region and uncategorized) and  (for me) segfaults blender when selected.  The 'WINDOW' region appears a safe bet.
Test script using the Text Editor > Templates > Pythone > UI Panel Simple script modified to add to view3d UI (N) region. Making only the options edit confirms the panel no longer renders in the properties region.
import bpy

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_options = {'INSTANCED'}
    #bl_options = {'INSTANCED', 'DRAW_BOX'}
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D' # 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    #bl_context = "object"

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

        obj = context.object

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Hello world!", icon='WORLD_DATA')

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Active object is: " + obj.name)
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(obj, "name")

        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add")

def draw(self, context):
    self.layout.popover("OBJECT_PT_hello")
def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(HelloWorldPanel)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_PT_view3d_cursor.prepend(draw)

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Tip. If set an enum to a garbage value can look at the error message to get allowable values
TypeError: validating class: enum "FOO" not found in
('WINDOW', 'HEADER', 'CHANNELS',
'TEMPORARY', 'UI', 'TOOLS', 'TOOL_PROPS',
 'PREVIEW', 'HUD', 'NAVIGATION_BAR',
 'EXECUTE', 'FOOTER', 'TOOL_HEADER')

Fwiw 'HUD' adds panel to operator redo panel.


obj.closest_point_on_mesh ValueError: too many values to unpack

Look at the documentation of closest_point_on_mesh: https://docs.blender.org/api/2.79/bpy.types.Object.html#bpy.types.Object.closest_point_on_mesh

Return (result, location, normal, index):

result, boolean
location, The location on the object closest to the point, float array of 3 items in [-inf, inf]
normal, The face normal at the closest point, float array of 3 items in [-inf, inf]
index, The face index, -1 when original data isn’t available, int in [-inf, inf]

So the function is returning 4 values, but you only unpack 3.
It should be called like this:
result, point, normal, face = obj.closest_point_on_mesh(p, max_dist)


Take white background out of image with cycles?

To do that, you can use the grayscale map as the mix factor.

To mix colors:

Or shaders:

The color ramp node is only there to get rid of jpg compression artifacts.


Your mesh has 211 double vertices that mess up the shading.

Select all vertices (Ctrl+A), disable Autosmooth and go:

Mesh > Clean up > Merge by distance (this will merge 211 double vertices)
Mesh > Normals > Recalculate outside
RMB > Shade Smooth

This will ensure you have a clean mesh, normals pointing out and proper shading.


Use 3 films (front, side, top) for motion tracking?

Empties are added to the scene as a result of the perspective information obtained during tracking. So no, you cannot use the empties from one solution to track a different camera.

Watch "Track, Match, Blend" to learn how tracking data is gleaned from following features.


Deleting temporary mesh after extracting data

Yes, you need to deleted them by yourself.

If you print that mesh object in script multiple times, you will find out that the name change by adding post-fix serial number to its based name as follow:

<bpy_struct, Mesh("Suzanne.002")>
<bpy_struct, Mesh("Suzanne.003")>
<bpy_struct, Mesh("Suzanne.004")>

And if you are using Blender 2.8, in the Outliner Panel, you can change display type from View Layer to Orphan Data (what an adorable name), the meshes you created will stay at there. You can pin them by pressing the cross button, making a fake user to let Blender keep the data-block.

If you need to delete it in script, you cannot del mesh since the object data-block was already binded in to bpy.data.meshes, use bpy.data.meshes.remove(mesh) instead to delete it.


Whenever your bones kind of go off and do their own thing, 9/10 times it is because there is a cyclical dependency somewhere in your armature hierarchy.  The easiest way to diagnose this is to turn on the system console (Windows only, as far as I can tell).

From there, it will usually just tell you.

Fixing it is a matter of reorganizing your bone dependencies to not be self-referential.  What that means precisely depends on the model, but remember that an IK control bone cannot be parented to a bone it controls (i.e. a IK control foot cannot be parented to the shin it controls through IK).


Is there an easier way to remove single vertices in mesh than delete and reconnect?

You can dissolve a vertex with X > Dissolve Vertices or you could also get rid of it by merging it to the next closest one by selecting it, selecting the other choosing a merge option (AltM).


Is it possible to remove a window that is lying on top of 3 other windows in a row?

I can't find any particularly good and fast way around this, this is the best I could come up with:


I'm working with speheres now. They got a curve-mod and the displacement direction is not problematic. Rebuilding it in a more clever way sure did the trick :D