How do I copy the normal axis orientation from a mesh face to an Empty hooked to the face OR a bone parented to the face?

You don't need to separate faces to different objects, but you have to separate them. One way is add EdgeSplit modifier, set angle to 0 and apply it. When you have separete faces, just set Pivot point to "Individual Origins" (it's where you setting Median, 3D cursor, etc.) and Transform Orientation to "Normal". Now if you press [R] for rotation, you can press x,y or z for locking rotation to one axes in global world, but if you press x,y, or z again, the rotation will be around each individual face normal. Hope it will help.


As you wished, you got it. You can use it exactly as you wrote it:

print(Arma.getActionName(3))
/// Action1

Here is the API.

Here is the commit (in August 2015 by Mateo de Mayo (@mateosss)).


The artifact is probably due to the Color Ramp transition method Ease and the fact that your ramp control points are really close to each other. Even though this is inside the planet, it impacts your final render because of the 2 step compositing. I suggest trying B-Spline which should produce smoother transition.

An alternative is to use RGB Curve and play with the curve shape which may give you more control than the ramp for this purpose. Note the Vector Handle vs Auto Handle which impact the shape of the control point, respectively sharp and smooth.


It looks like the normals of the bottom part are inverted, resulting in a transparent look due to back-face culling.

Try recalculating the normals with ⎈ CtrlN in edit mode (↹ Tab) with everything selected (A). Note that it's possible to create topology which cannot have consistent normals, which could be why this didn't work for you before.


No transparency in rendered background, is this a bug?

I filed a bug report and did some testing. Seems like the cause of this problem might have to do with my graphics drivers.


How do i make round bottle look more cubic with really soft edges?

Start with an octagon
WS Subdivide  a copy of it
Make another copy, and S scale its orthogonal vertices in to make it squarer.
Make a copy of that, and subdivide it, too.
With the copy, instead of subdividing it, CtrlShiftBbevel all its vertices.

When making the variations, they won't be side by side as illustrated: shift them up in Z to keep them out of the way, and vertically lined up. You can ShiftD make copies of those to work with, any time you like.

You now have all the profiles you will need for your bottle, bar a bit of tweaking.

Now assemble the bottle vertically, working your way down by  E sometimes extruding from copies of your profiles, and sometimes using  Ctrl E > 'Bridge Edge Loops' between them.

You can use the shipped add-on Loop Tools > circle to make the profile circular at the neck.

The profiles shown here are: the neck, just above the ridge, and the smooth label area.

The closer the vertices on the profile are to one another, the sharper the crease in the final surface, after subdivision. You can vary the bevel on the squarer profile to achieve that. This example has 2 levels of Catmull-Clark, in a  Subdivision modifier, and the profiles are shown with the subdivision.


You need to parent the mesh to the rig, so you've selected them in the incorrect order. Once you do that you should get a list of armature deform options in the parenting menu when you apply the parenting.


Grid Fill Loops are not connected by wire/boundary edges

If it was possible to Grid Fill the selected edges, you would get edges that are shared by 3 faces.

It is technically allowed topology, but is not considered correct topology. Most tools don't produce this awkward topology because it is rarely desirable due to how normals and subsurf are calculated.

In the image above I duplicated the edge ring so it isn't joined to the original edge ring, then did a Grid Fill. If you really wanted to make a problem mesh you could remove doubles and it would merge the edges. But you will not be able to force the Grid Fill to produce mesh results that are considered bad.


Mismatch between 2.69 and 2.72 interfaces for Video Sequence Editor window

Found the solution.  Click on the "Current editor type for this area" icon (see picture below) and select "Properties" from the menu that comes up.  The display will change to the window type shown in the tutorial above.

Here's a detailed capture of the resulting new Properties window:

(Blender... powerful software, but what a learning curve!)


It seems to be an UV issue. I mapped identical parts of the cog to identical areas on the UV map. Substance Painter doesn't seem to like that. Unreal Engine doesn't seem to have this issue. I now applied all modifiers and smart UV unwrapped and I'm finally having no artifacts.


Flipped keyframes - weird result (walk cycle)

I believe that is the feature that allows you to copy keyframes and reverse the transformations of bones. Not sure exactly how it works but I use it for walk cycle. It reverses the initial pose of the character to form the middle pose of a walk cycle


Make sure you have the latest Blender and press N on your keyboard >> Tools >> Options >> Auto Normalize

Good Luck


Blender 2.78a sapling add-on vertical attraction

The sapling addon in 2.78 was mostly rewritten by a new developer, vertical attraction would be an option that didn't get included with the new version.


First off:

Smoke (Volume Shader) makes the scene very noisy as Cycles needs to calculate the light go through the smoke which is made up of tiny particles which light has to scatter through, thus making it very noisy (samples define the amount of times it is calculated). I find that when dealing with large objects with volume shaders, such as smoke a minimum of 500 samples should be used (unless it's a test render).

Secondly:

The animation will not look worse as it essentially does the same process as rendering a single frame apart from doing this for the amount of frames the scene has. Therefore if the render time for a single image is 1 minute, an animation (in the same scene with same settings) with 100 frames will take approximately 100 minutes.

The Fix

First, as stated before increase samples. Next adjust the light settings. This Blender Guru article explains it pretty well. Also I would watch this video by Zacharia Reinhardt.


How to speed up loading of custom external icons?

We developed a library, which solves that problem. It allows blazingly fast preview image loads in Blender.
See here for more: https://blenderartists.org/t/blazingly-fast-preview-loads-images-of-arbitrary-size-bpy-utils-previews-drop-in-replacement/1303349


Are you supposed to only be able to bisect once?

As the error said, if you want to use that tool, you need to select some edges/faces that you will bisect. So when you first enter edit mode of the cube, by default all vertices are selected, then after you bisected, nothing is selected.

Anyway, for making simple pyramid, why don't you just make from Cone, with only 4 vertices? Or use the cube, select 4 vertices from top side, then Merge > at Center.


Is there a way to calculate mean curvature of a triangular mesh?

This is an answer based on this Computer Graphics SE indicated in the comments (the one by Nathan Reed).

The math is described in this answer, but in short the curvature is calculated by vertex so:

Get all edges from this vertex
And for each edge compare the projection along the edge of the normals at it extremities
Take the mean of all that

Now, as didn't want to just code a copy of it, I propose a little enhancement:

The calculation is also vertex centered, but we go along each of its surrounding face (need to be triangulated), to calculate a curvature weighted by the angle of this face at the vertex we are calculating around.

Once the sum done over all faces, we mean this sum by the total angle around the vertex.

Making so, the curvature of a large angle will be more important than for a small angle. This is like taking the integral of the curvatures around the vertex.

I think this may be close to the theoretical calculus as it consist of taking the curvature for each cutting plane turning around the vertex normal.

In both algorithms, the base calculus is the same and this corresponds to the CGSE answer:

def curvature_along_edge( vert, other ):
    normal_diff = other.normal - vert.normal
    vert_diff = other.co - vert.co
    return normal_diff.dot( vert_diff ) / vert_diff.length_squared

But in the case we want to use angles, we need to organize a surrounding loop (ring) over the vertex for which we want the curvature, to have the several angles with the good signs.

For instance here:

We want the ring/loop:

For vertex 0: 5, 8, 4
For vertex 8: 1, 6, 3, 7, 2, 4, 0, 5, (1)

etc.

These loops are counterclockwise, as vertices of Blender's polygons are.

This is done by:

# Get vertices in the face order but starting from a given vert
def following_verts_of_vert( vert, face ):
    i0 = index_of( vert, face.verts )
    i1 = (i0 + 1) % 3
    i2 = (i0 + 2) % 3
    return face.verts[i0], face.verts[i1], face.verts[i2]

# Create the oriented ring around vert
def ring_from_vert( vert ):
    vertices = []
    for face in vert.link_faces:
        i0, i1, i2 = following_verts_of_vert( vert, face )
        vertices.append( [i1, i2] )
    result = vertices[0]
    added = True
    while added and len(vertices):
        added = False
        prev = search_link( result[0], vertices, 1 )
        if prev:
            result = [prev[0]] + result
            vertices.remove( prev )
            added = True
        next = search_link( result[-1], vertices, 0 )
        if next and next[1] not in result:
            result.append( next[1] )
            vertices.remove( next )
            added = True
    return result

(this code above is not really needed, or could be optimized, but was my first though to have a constant orientation reference for the curvature)

So that finally, the mean curvature around a vertex is calculated by:

def angle_between_edges( vert, other1, other2 ):
    edge1 = other1.co - vert.co
    edge2 = other2.co - vert.co
    product = edge1.cross( edge2 )
    sinus = product.length / (edge1.length * edge2.length)
    return asin( min(1.0, sinus) )

def mean_curvature_vert( vert ):
    ring = ring_from_vert( vert )
    ring_curvatures = [curvature_along_edge( vert, other ) for other in ring]
    total_angle = 0.0
    curvature = 0.0
    for i in range(len(ring)-1):
        angle = angle_between_edges( vert, ring[i], ring[i+1] )
        total_angle += angle
        curvature += angle * (ring_curvatures[i] + ring_curvatures[i+1])

    return curvature / (2.0 * total_angle)

Here is the compared results:

They are close, but the comparison I've used needs some explanation: the resulting curvatures are normalized so that they fit to the interval for vertex groups [0, 1]:

In short, this vertex group assignment compares the contrasts but not the values.

This is done so:

def assign_to_vertex_group( obj, group_name, curvatures ):
    vertex_group = ensure_vertex_group( obj, group_name )

    curvatures = [abs(c) for c in curvatures]

    min_curvature = min( curvatures )
    max_curvature = max( curvatures )
    vg_fac = 1.0 / (max_curvature - min_curvature) if max_curvature != min_curvature else 1.0

    for i, vert in enumerate( obj.data.vertices ):
        vertex_group.add( [vert.index], (curvatures[i] - min_curvature) * vg_fac, 'REPLACE' )

Here is the blend file with the 2 scripts named : cgseSimple and cgseSimple2.

Note:

Also included Mike's implementation (mike text) + the same rewritten a bit (mikesPaper), for understanding and comparison purpose. But from all that, it is hard to know what is the more accurate (how to determinate which is true?). I was not able to understand how this algo is able to determinate curvature orientation (convex vs. concave inclinations).

Also tested all that on big meshes (not included due to the blend file size limit). But that accentuate the diff between the different approaches.


You have a couple options:
Parenting:
You could Parent (CtrlP) the other objects to an empty or another object, and then rotate that empty/object.
Keyframe all the objects:
Select all the grouped objects by selecting one and the pressing ShiftG> Group, then insert keyframes for them all by pressing I> Rotation.


I am unable to extrude this plane along z-axis.Why?

Going from what you already have selected, all you have to do is press E. Blender will automatically start the transformation locked to the face normal, which in your case is along the global Z axis.

As lemon pointed out in the comments, from the view in your screen shot (orthographic view) you will not be able to perceive any change in height.


How to stop cloth-physics from catching on pointy surfaces?

Most of these come with larger simulation times, try to keep the subdivision to a minimum.

Increase the substeps of the simulation to prevent the geometries from ever intersecting.
Increase the quality of the collision with the Quality slider.
Increase the (minimum) Distance of the collision. Note that this will also create a gap between the object. I would advise to simulate with an offset animated collider, which can be repositioned after baking.
Replace the animated object with simpler geometry. Recreate the basic shape with concave meshes, with evenly distributed triangles while trying to keep the edge angle at a minimum. Hide these helper collision for rendering.


Bezier curve between faces of different meshes

Loop over both the polygon centers and polygon normals of both mesh and create some between each two centers using the normals as handles:

Or by using the Instancer node:


How do I get the path my script is running in?

Python has a built-in __file__ global to access the path a script is running at. You can use it in your script by using this code snippet:

import os
script_directory = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))


How to add detail to a mesh without subdividing all of it

I recommend to have separate mesh objects. My rule: "What is separated object in reality should be separated object in 3D too", because it simplifies many things: modeling, texture mapping, material setup, animation, etc.


Subdividing a simple plane does not work

You have subdivided the edges and not the faces. If you go to vertex selection and zoom in into one of the edges, you will see many many unnecessary vertices. To fix this, just select your corner vertices (change to vertex selection, pressing Ctrl+Tab), Shift+RMB  the corner vertices, then press Ctrl+I to inverse selection, press X and delect all the unnecessary vertices.
Press a until corner vertices are selected and press F to fill. Then Ctrl+Tab to face selection, then you can subdivide the faces.
If it crashes, by the amount of vertices built, you may to this, select just the corner vertices, press P and seperate by selection.
Exit the edit mode, delete the old object (that has huge amount of vtx), go to your new object  that has just the desired vtx, select all by pressing a, press F, change to face selection, subdivide.


Blender script keyframe in loop doesn't affect first element

It looks like you have more than one problem:
One try using obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='location', frame=frame_num)

instead of

scene.frame_set(frame_num)
    ob.keyframe_insert(data_path='location', index = -1).

Also, you set frame_num = 20 inside your while loop... which should cause an infinite loop.

How to keyframe_insert without moving the object


Enabling cloth physics for an object moves its transform position

I had the same or a similar issue right now, though I know I'm late.
I wasn't at frame 1 so the cloth simulation had basically ended - my object had already "fallen" and was therefore further down the z-axis. Going back to frame 1 solved it. If you weren't able to solve the problem, maybe this will help you too or anyone else encountering this.


Blender Eevee how to render Bloom effect when using transparent background

I found a workaround with composting:
1- Enable Bloom pass in View Layer before rendering

2- In Compositor, Add the Bloom pass to the Alpha of the image, use a ColorRamp node to control the bloom effect, and to convert it at the same time to black and white.

Check the original Alpha in the image above and compare to the next image with Bloom added via the ColorRamp node.

3- now we need to use the outcome as the new Alpha pass instead of the original one, for that, I used a Select Alpha node, linked the original image color pass to the color, the new alpha pass to the alpha.
You can see here how the bloom effect shows on the transparent background, now I can fiddle with the ColorRamp node to get the better result, but I find it easier to temporarily add a background in the compositor using an Alpha Over node, to see the results, then I can remove before final render. I also need to mention that I found it gives better results when I use "Ease" mode in the ColorRamp node, but this depends on the desired effect and the project at hand.


Why do the particles in my keyed particle system not hit 2 of the 8 faces of the target mesh?

If I understand keyed particles correctly, they are particles whose position gets interpolated between a start particle of one particle system and a goal particle which belongs to another particle system. I guess something with the matching of the start and the goal particle goes wrong. I guess this is a bug.
To solve this problem, you can disable "Even Distribution" in your goal particle system:

The result looks like it should:

Considering the faces that seem to be unselected in Object mode: If you disable 'Only Render' in the display settings all faces are marked in object mode. Otherwise only the particles are painted in orange, but since the two faces do not get any particles, they don't light up.

Edit: The distribution also works correctly when you set Emit From to "Verts". But then it will only target the vertices of the faces, and that is probably not what you want.


How To Make a Radial Gradient Sky in Blender Internal?

You may do it using Blend texture with the Quadratic Sphere (or Spherical) progression type.

In World header set its type to Real Sky.

Then go to Texture header and set the texture type to World. Add a new texture and set it as Blend.

In Colors panel check the Ramp checkbox and set the colors transition using sliders. Set the colors interpolation type to Ease also. In Blend panel set the progression type to Quadratic Sphere (or Spherical). In Mapping panel set the coordinates type to AngMap. Experiment with settings below. Check the Horizon box in Influence panel also.

You may also try to set the colors interpolation type to B-Spline and add some sliders with slighty different hue to have a better control over colors transition.


How to get UV stretching (angle or area colors) with Python without looking at viewport?

Normalized Edge length vectors.
Started writing this answer for How to check if UV distortion exists using Python? and lo and behold when I returned to post it had been closed, hence have added an answer here going only someway to answering this question
For a very rudimentary test could  walk around each faces loop, make vectors of edge lengths for both mesh and UV, normalize them, and compare. The big expectation here, i suppose is that the meshes polygon verts are coplanar.
Note in hindsight for this test to be robust  would first  triangulate then compare lengths, as a quad can be flattened to a diamond to a line.
List vertex colors from a bmesh
import bpy
from bpy import context
from mathutils import Vector

ob = context.object
me = ob.data
uv_layer = me.uv_layers.active

for f in me.polygons:
    verts = [me.vertices[me.loops[l].vertex_index].co for l in f.loop_indices]
    uvs = [uv_layer.data[l].uv for l in f.loop_indices]
    lvs = Vector((v1 - v0).length for v0, v1 in zip(verts, verts[1:])).normalized()
    luvs = Vector((v1 - v0).length for v0, v1 in zip(uvs, uvs[1:])).normalized()
    print(f"{f.index} :  {(lvs - luvs).length}")

Simple test run.
As a test have done little more than added a cube with default UV, pulled on one of its vertices

Displaying stretching by 'ANGLE'. which correspond to results below, the two lightest faces 0, 5 and third-ish as distorted face 3
0 : 0.19459002803218287
1 : 0.0
2 : 0.0
3 : 0.0722531723959878
4 : 0.0
5 : 0.19134772084616544

Edge angles.
The answer here describes how to find the interior angles of each edge. Similarly to above could calculate for both mesh and UV and compare. At most the angle can differ by 180 degrees in which case would color vertex red.
Areas

TBH little confused re the viewport display when in 'AREA' mode above the most bent out of shape face in relation to its original square UV, displays as blue.
Anyway assume this could be done very similarly by using some arbitrary point (geo center for example) and calculating the area of each triangle.


One way of doing this without modifying the actual mesh at all is to use a texture to define the transparency of the mesh:

Cycles:

To create something similar to the AltB option, you could:

UV unwrap using U> project from view:

Use the UV coordinates to define the transparency of the mesh by using this nodegroup:

Blender Internal:

Enable Z transparency in Material settings → Transparency, and set alpha to 0:

To make the texture to affect the transparency of the material, enable Alpha in Texture settings → influence:

Another way to do this is by modifying the mesh only when rendered.

e.g with a boolean modifier:


Use the compositor. Those are all post-render settings that you can apply in the compositor. Here is an example of a simple Gaussian blur (in 2.79 because that's what I have on this computer still. Sorry. ):

You can easily google how to add what ever filter or effect you need by using blender compositor. Using compositor rather than editing the scene to create the same effect can save ages of render time as well. You can do color correction, mist and fog, DOF, vignette, and way more with the compositor.


Bone Heat Weighting Failed. No solution works

The solution is to scale up your object, parent, then scale back down (if you want to). I gave it a quick test with a single bone, which failed at default size, but worked after scaling both objects by a factor of 10.

The reason this works is because the automatic weighting system has a hard time with vertices that are very close together. Scaling up spreads everything out, making it easier to calculate.


Cannot parent my mesh to armature with automatic weights

The problem is mostly due to the fact that both the rig and the mesh aren't perfectly symmetrical, you have to make sure both your mesh and your rig are properly lined up.

I recommend makign sure the central row of vertices of your model are straight, by scaling along X to 0, then line up the bones in the central column of your armature, delete the limbs of either side, and make sure you can properly skin one half.

Then follow this answer on how to properly mirror a rig

as a side note, your thumb bones aren't attached to your hand bones, and you have some aberrant geometry on the hat and on the neck watch out.


"expected a string enum" error when attempting to add text strip

You are passing a string into the function instead of the actual arguments. Since effect_strip_add doesn't have any function signature that takes a string as first arguments you're getting the TypeError exception. The concept of keyword arguments is explained in this section of the Python docs.

The proper way of calling the function is passing each of the arguments.

bpy.ops.sequencer.effect_strip_add(frame_start=fStart, frame_end=fEnd, channel=tChan, type='TEXT')

bpy.ops.sequencer.effect_strip_add is documented in Blender 2.8 Python API with the following function signature:

  bpy.ops.sequencer.effect_strip_add(frame_start=0, frame_end=0,
  channel=1, replace_sel=True, overlap=False, type='ALPHA_OVER',
  color=(0.0, 0.0, 0.0))

  Add an effect to the sequencer, most are applied on top of existing
  strips

  Parameters:

  frame_start (int in [-inf, inf], (optional)) – Start Frame, Start frame of the sequence strip
  frame_end (int in [-inf, inf], (optional)) – End Frame, End frame for the color strip
  channel (int in [1, 32], (optional)) – Channel, Channel to place this strip into
  replace_sel (boolean, (optional)) – Replace Selection, Replace the current selection
  overlap (boolean, (optional)) – Allow Overlap, Don’t correct overlap on new sequence strips
  type (enum in ['CROSS', 'ADD', 'SUBTRACT', 'ALPHA_OVER', 'ALPHA_UNDER', 'GAMMA_CROSS', 'MULTIPLY', 'OVER_DROP', 'WIPE', 'GLOW',
  'TRANSFORM', 'COLOR', 'SPEED', 'MULTICAM', 'ADJUSTMENT',
  'GAUSSIAN_BLUR', 'TEXT', 'COLORMIX'], (optional)) – Type, Sequencer
  effect type

  CROSS Crossfade, Crossfade effect strip type.
  ADD Add, Add effect strip type.
  SUBTRACT Subtract, Subtract effect strip type.
  ALPHA_OVER Alpha Over, Alpha Over effect strip type.
  ALPHA_UNDER Alpha Under, Alpha Under effect strip type.
  GAMMA_CROSS Gamma Cross, Gamma Cross effect strip type.
  MULTIPLY Multiply, Multiply effect strip type.
  OVER_DROP Alpha Over Drop, Alpha Over Drop effect strip type.
  WIPE Wipe, Wipe effect strip type.
  GLOW Glow, Glow effect strip type.
  TRANSFORM Transform, Transform effect strip type.
  COLOR Color, Color effect strip type.
  SPEED Speed, Color effect strip type.
  MULTICAM Multicam Selector.
  ADJUSTMENT Adjustment Layer.
  GAUSSIAN_BLUR Gaussian Blur.
  TEXT Text.
  COLORMIX Color Mix.

  color (float array of 3 items in [0, 1], (optional)) – Color, Initialize the strip with this color (only used when type=’COLOR’)


Why does dragging the middle mouse button sometimes translate my selection instead of rotating my view?

Try changing the mouse. The mouse might be faulty


It is repeating either because you've unwrapped every quad to the whole UV coordinate space (each quad becomes a square going from x:0,y:0 to x:1, y:1), or because of this setting on your Image Texture node:

What this "Repeat" means is that if a particular point of a mesh is mapped (in the UV map) to a point (texel) outside the texture (e.g. x: -5), then it should be "wrapped" from the other side, so for an image 2048 pixels long, the x: -5 becomes x: 2048-5 = x: 2043. This repeats, so x: -6000 becomes x: 2048-5000 = x: -2952, which becomes x: 2048-2952, which becomes x: 2048-904 = x: 1144. The effect is that a mesh with UV map spanning from x: -6144 to x: 2048 will repeat (horizontally) 4 times.
Go to the UV Editing tab, edit your mesh, select all faces (3, then A) and on the left side see if some of the quads go outside the texture - if so, select everything there (again 3, then A) and scale it down (S) until it fits. If you only see a single quad, then you need to properly unwrap the mesh.
How can I mark the seams to UV unwrap a torus?


Ok i finally found it, you have to call

bpy.context.active_editable_fcurve

from graph_editor context, active F Curve doesn’t seem to exist as a property out of context afaik !


Why is the Compositor not showing any nodes?

You probably accidentally deleted all the nodes.

Simply add a composite node with Shift + A > Output > Composite.

If you want to feed it the render from your scene, add a Render Layers node:

Shift + A > Input > Render Layers


How to offset multiple smoke instances by time?

If you look at the point cache files, the default filename follows the format: [identifier]_[frame]_[index].bphys. Unfortunately, the [frame] in the filename doesn't actually correspond to the cache's actual frame number.

That means, the only way to offset a cache's frames is by parsing the contents of each file (e.g. writing a python script). Apparently, modifying the contents is not that straightforward. This page explains a little (towards the bottom). Glancing at the blender source code, it looks like you'll need to edit the points time, dietime, and lifetime; some cache files may also store the previous cache point's time data too.

If you know C, It may be easier to just write a patch for Blender to add the feature. That way, you can make use of the read/write methods from Blender's source. You could also request the feature; perhaps there is a developer who is familiar with the code who can easily add it.


The first issue is that you have set the hair material to be a 'Mask' material. You can disable this by going to the 'Transparency' panel in the material options for the hair material and un-ticking the box next to 'Transparency':

If you want to use transparency for the hair you can set it to 'Z Transparency' or 'Raytrace'.

To get the hair to render as transparent you need to tell the material to use the transparency of the image you are using. On the hair material go to the texture panel and under the 'Influence' panel make sure 'Alpha' is turned on.

You can then turn the 'Alpha' value in the first screenshot to '0' as you are giving full control of the alpha over to the image.

Finally, because you are now using transparent textures, which will cast transparent shadows, you need to set both materials to 'Receive Transparent' in the 'Shadow' panel of the material options:


Run blender straight from the command line...then watch the console for the errors. If blender quits, the info will be printed out. Also, add printouts or setup a python logger to "view the contents of variables."

I can't really think of any other ways to help other than these suggestions without seeing the code (or even a description of what happens when the "bug" occurs).


You should probably report this as a bug to Chaos Group.

They wrote the exporter and created the Blender build.


Create a cloth with two control points at each end? [video example included]

Maybe this file can point you the right way:

For simulation these kind of hairy strings, Soft Body Simulation is great. It's relatively fast to calculate, and it works on mesh edges by definition. In the sample scene, I just created an edge and subdivided it a few times. Then I added both end vertices to a group called Pinning, and created a hook for each end.

After that, I added a Soft Body Simulation to it, setting the Goal like this:

So very stiff, high damping, Goal Strength to 1 (so the end points will stick to the hooks), and choosing the Pinning Group to define the goal. When playing the animation, you get this:


Blender VSE track/clip increase waveform height

Hold the Ctrl Key and middle mouse button and move the mouse up to zoom in.


How to remove Mesh Data of a Blend File?

Well it was more easy than I thought. Just go to the Outliner, change to the Blender File. There you can see all the data of the actual .blend file

Select all the unwanted meshes and right click Delete .
That's all.


Mapping planets with spherical coordinates

well I would say create your UVs like you want them to look,
then bake the texture using  an equilateral environnement texture plugged in an emit shader with object as coordinate (assuming object pivot point is at the center)


How to remove the edge of shadeless object?

I found the solution which is quite simple.

Basically, when I change the color in Diffuse, I input the RGB in the range of 0 to 1 instead of 0 to 255. I guess Blender has some algorithm to handle it, which I am not quite sure.


How to make a texture from the view of the camera live (cycles)

You probably won't be able to make it happen in real-time, you will need to set your security camera as the active scene render camera, then save the rendered video of it. Then set the texture of your tv screen to that of the video. You could get away with doing a lower sample and lower resolution video if you don't get too close to the screen.


How do I use Proportional Edit Correctly?

When the proportional editing tool is activated and being used useful usage information is displayed in the 3D View header.

The tool makes use of the mouse wheel for adjusting the radius of proportional influence, bigger values meaning more proportional movement.


Serial data from arduino not received properly

There are two problems with your code on in the sending and one in the receiving part.

You get from serial.read() a bytes object, but your self.x should be an integer, so you have to use int() before the assignment (see at the bottom for the code).
The next thing is, that you receive exactly one byte, but your string with the number can have more bytes, to overcome that you could use serial.readline() to read a whole line and modify the sending code as follows.

You send the integer from the arduino as sting, but you can't know how long it is on the receiving end. So you should terminate the string with a newline: Serial.println(i) will automatically append an \r\n for you.

The whole code would have to be modified like so:
receiving:

# ...
def modal(self, context, event):
    self.x = int(ser.readline(10))  # read a maximum of ten digits (only because
                                    # there could be an error in the sending code)
    # ...

sending:

# ...
void loop()
{
    for(int i=0; i<350;i++)
    {
        Serial.println(i);
        delay(100);
    }
}


Blender 2.8 - I want to ALWAYS see the axis gizmo when moving an object

Of course there is a way.

Just click the gizmo, instead of dragging it.
Then use the pop-up menu to adjust the values, and the gizmo stays visible.


You don't tell a lot about what's the issue and you're trying to do.

From your last picture it might be that the orientation of your bone is not aligned on the others. Display the axis visibility in the Properties panel > Object Data > Viewport Display > Axes. If that's the case, select it in Edit mode and CtrlR + value to rotate, or ShiftN to automatically align.

Also, maybe you should try this:

Make sure that your arm has enough topology.

For your armature, in the Properties panel > Object Data > Viewport Display, choose Display As > B-Bones (bendy bones) so that they you can twist them (CtrlAltS to scale in Edit mode).

Select your forearm bone and segment it.

Give it a Copy Rotation constraint, Space > Pose Space/Pose Space. You can reduce its influence if you want.


Create jet colormap using blender gradient texture

You can use ColorRamp to calculate the spectrum.

Set the two border colors (Blue and Red)
Set ColorRamp node to HSV > Far
Add the Gradient Texture node


Draw grease pencil over render without live rendering

The Background Images features for Cameras lets you do this easily. It lets you choose an image that will show in the Camera, with a variety of options for placement. If you choose Render Result and leave the rest default, then your render will exactly overlay the model. You can then hide the model and paint your grease pencil as needed.


Some of these I know for a fact are possible. The Leaf Object parameter answers 3 of your 4 questions. First, you'll need to create a leaf, either with a Nurbs Surface, or a simple mesh (either method will work, but if you plan on texturing the top and bottom differently, I'd go with a mesh). Then when you add your Sapling Curve, in the Leaves settings, set the Leaf Shape to "DupliFaces" and the Leaf Object to the name of the mesh you created to be your leaf. The varied leaf sizes has its own parameter toward the bottom right "Leaf Scale Variation". Unfortunately, the Leaf Object parameter doesn't allow you to add Groups of objects, but you may be able to use the a particle system instead to achieve color variation in your leaves. Hope this helps!


Weight paint different from Unreal Engine

It could be a normalization problem: in Blender if  a vertex has a sum of weights different than 1.0, an automatic normalization gets applied, while probably UE uses another algorithm. Try to normalize your weights before exporting (in weight paint mode, weights menu, "Normalize All", then enable the "Auto normalize" option during weights adjustments).


Not sure if that is your case but sometimes when there is not a proper flow of the loops in the modeling or when is not properly triangulated or quadrangulated that could happens.


Maybe you have the X Mirror option enabled in the Properties panel > Active Tool > Mesh Options?


The last version of blender that was officially compatible with Windows XP was blender 2.76. Versions after that probably won't work. You can download previous version of blender here.

To quote Martijn Berger (a blender developer) from here on why support for XP was dropped:

  We implicitly dropped Windows XP when switching to python 3.5. Python
  has the so called PEP system and PEP 11 "Removing support for little
  used platforms" defines the support for windows XP to be over at the
  same time Microsoft stopped supporting it. Since python 3.5 released
  after XP died it does not support XP.

  While it might be possible to backport python 3.5 to windows XP i
  think that we should not do this.

  So blender 2.77 will not run on XP. The 32 bit release requires Vista
  or newer and the 64 bit release Windows 7 SP1 or newer.


@scurest had the correct answer for this one. With Blender version 2.92 it seems undoing Mesh - Normals - Split is a bit harder:

Select the object and click "Clear Custom Split Normals Data" in properties editor - Object Data Properties - Geometry Data. (See image below.)
Press TAB to enter Object Edit mode (or select it from viewport top left corner).
Press key a to select all (or use Select - All from menu).
Select Edge - Clear Sharp from the viewport top menu.

It seems that with Blender version 2.92 the action Mesh - Normals - Split does both adding custom split normals data and marking all affected edges as sharp. To undo that, both must be fixed.
This is documented at https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.92/modeling/meshes/structure.html#modeling-meshes-normals-custom


Is there a way to add 2D guide lines to my view that help you align?

You can use the Grease Pencil, and set the Stroke Placement to View, like this:

You can hold Alt to create orthogonal lines


image get distorted on uv sphere when rotating texture

so i have found the answer.

use AnimAll add on.

open tools panel by using T then go to Animation tab then check UVs and insert a key frame.

move to another frame then insert another key frame (by using tool menu T)

Move Uvs on any axis then insert another key frame.

go to object mode(will not work in edit mode)

switch to rendered view.

ALt+A

your UVs will animate.

enjoy.


Disney-Style Rendering, Eevee or Cycles?

I would suggest Cycles since PRMan is actually quite accurate in light calculate and the latest version also contain the ray tracing option/ability to render the scene.

Despite EEVEE is aiming for accurate light result, but it is still a little bit far away from the word accurate. It could speed up the scene setting and light setting, but you will need to switch to Cycles for a better result.

And Disney style use a lot of graphic effect and trick to mock the fluffy touch of the scene and also making the scene match the real world scene. Beside that, the final clip we saw has been post-processed in movie editor like Premiere or whatever they use. Making it more difficult to achieve the same image effect in Blender only.

So you might try using Cycles + Photoshop to tweak the style, not EEVEE unless you are familiar to deal with all the lighting problem that EEVEE might meet. And you can also use both EEVEE and Cycles to do different part of the scene rendering and merge them in post-processing stage.


Apologies but actually it seems that one is able to edit 4k H.265 footage in the VSE, am I right? I was able to bring in 4k H.265 footage in the vse without any convertion and do a soft cut at least.


Order of vertices added using Python script and bmesh

Short answer is no, however...

BMesh only ensure vertices are added in-order when they are added to a newly created (or converted) mesh (which is OK for importers and geometry generators).
Once vertices are removed you cant rely on this.

Best use a list of your own to keep a reference to vertices added if you need this.

Sorting

if your really need to ensure some order, you can sort verts using the same method used with Python lists eg:

bm.verts.sort(key=lambda v: v.co.x)

However it would be inefficient to sort vertices every time you add once.


Okay, so the problem isn't with the constraints, but with the keyframes on "main".  On frame 75, main is keyframed to a quaternion with a W component of about -0.997, but on frame 77, its W component is 1.0.  That takes it through an entire rotation.
If you edit the frame 77 keyframe to set the W value equal to -1 instead of +1.0, it will stop rotating through the extra rotation on frame 76.
If your goal is rendering in Blender, this fix may interact poorly with some NLA (if you blend out the animation, or blend over an animation with a positive W.)  That's a solvable problem with extra strips to hold the W at negative values, but explaining it would probably require an actual example of the problem.  If your goal is game animation, it's probably not going to be an issue, as game engines tend to interpolate quaternions differently from Blender.  Unlike Blender, game engines are likely to use "shortest path" quaternion interpolation, which automatically removes issues like this.  (I wish that Blender could do the same thing, and hopefully, with some changes to how Blender handles quaternions that are already under discussion by developers, I'll get that wish.)


Can I create a separate Volumetric pass for Blender Cycles 2.70?

There is not a Volume Pass, but you can make one by subtracting everything else out of the beauty pass.

From http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?380260-Cycles-Volume-Pass

  Since there is no default Volume Pass checkbox in Cycles yet I put together a compositor node group which just simply extracts it out of the beauty pass by subtracting diffuse, glossy and transmission component. To handle volume pass separately, blur it for example and than add it back without a noise can be rather time-saving.

There's also a node group you can download from that thread and examine.


Is there a way to make render preview less fuzzy

The quality for the 3d viewport (in rendered view for cycles) is determined by the number of samples for preview.

For 2.79

Or samples for Viewport in 2.8.

You can use more samples, but be aware that it will make the interface less responsive.

Do a search also for Render Border, where you can just render a section of the image


I had the same problem -- digging around the blender bug tracker I found this ticket: https://developer.blender.org/T47940 which describes the problem.
I was also using open source gpu drivers.

This is fixed (at least for me) on the latest builds; not yet on the official version (2.77a).
If you still have the problem, try a newer version from here,
https://builder.blender.org/download/


Placing bone at each vertex -> How do I then connect each bone exclusively to that vertex?

You can complete the code from the indicated answer by the following:
Keep bone names as they are created.
Loop over these names to create vertex groups and assign the corresponding vertex.
Parent the object to the rig and add the armature modifier.
names = [] #Will keep bone names
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
for i, l in enumerate(zip(points, normals)):
    bone = amt.edit_bones.new(str(i))
    bone.head = l[0]
    bone.tail = l[1]
    names.append(bone.name) #Add name
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()

for v_index, name in enumerate(names):
    #Get the group
    group = obj.vertex_groups.new(name=name)
    #Link the vertex to it
    group.add([v_index], 1, 'REPLACE')

#Parent and add modifier
obj.parent = rig
modifier = obj.modifiers.new(rig.name, "ARMATURE")
modifier.object = rig

The complete code
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

def AddBonesAtVertices(obj, length, use_normals):
    if not obj or obj.type != 'MESH':
        return

    points = []
    normals = []
    data = []
    for v in obj.data.vertices:
        p = obj.matrix_world @ v.co
        target = v.normal @ obj.matrix_world
        dir = target - p
        dir.normalize()
        dir = dir * length
        n = p + dir * (-1)
        points.append(p)
        if not use_normals:
            n = Vector((p[0], p[1], p[2] + length))
        normals.append(n)
        data.append([p, n])

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

    amt = bpy.data.armatures.new(obj.name + "_vBones")
    rig = bpy.data.objects.new(obj.name + '_vRig', amt)

    bpy.context.collection.objects.link(rig)
    objects.active = rig

    names = [] #Will keep bone names
    bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
    for i, l in enumerate(zip(points, normals)):
        bone = amt.edit_bones.new(str(i))
        bone.head = l[0]
        bone.tail = l[1]
        names.append(bone.name) #Add name
    bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()

    for v_index, name in enumerate(names):
        #Get the group
        group = obj.vertex_groups.new(name=name)
        #Link the vertex to it
        group.add([v_index], 1, 'REPLACE')

    #Parent and add modifier
    obj.parent = rig
    modifier = obj.modifiers.new(rig.name, "ARMATURE")
    modifier.object = rig

objects = bpy.context.view_layer.objects
obj = objects.active

AddBonesAtVertices(obj, 0.5, False)


Cut away all the connecting edges between the top and the bottom of the cube. (check the edge select -> remove only edges)
Join both meshes.
Select remaining edgeloop on top (top side of the former cube).
Select the edgeloop to introduce.
"Bridge Edgeloops".
Select the edgeloop you introduced.
Select remaining edgeloop on the bottom.
"Bridge Edgeloops".


What are the reasons why automatic normal recalculation might fail

I had a series of models in a Blender file where the Mesh Normals were pointed both inward and outward. Pressing Recalculate Normals fixed a few of the 15000 faces but not all. Trying to select inward faces failed, nothing lit up after trying to select them.
I found that the recalc would fail if the model had doubles or had Non Manifold mesh.  Deleting the doubles and removing the non manifold meshes was the answer. Once gone, the Recalculate repaired all the inward facing faces.


Rendering a still image (not animation) with motion blur

Why do you need to create an animation?
Because you need transformation, both in space and time.

For motion blur to exist there has to be a notion of before and after. An object (or the camera) was in one place in frame 1

and is in a different place in frame 3.

Depending on the distance the objects moved, and the shutter speed set in the motion blur settings, you might see the movement in frame two represented as a blurred image.

You certainly don't need to render an animation (frames 1, 2 and 3) you can render just frame 2 and the motion blur should be there as a still image.

Notice that in this example even in frames 1 and 3 there is some motion blur because of the magnitue of the transformation from frame to frame(relative to the shutter speed).

If we were to render frame 0 and 4 the cube would appear static because there is no transformation from frame to frame anymore.


Your setup is fine. You take depth Values (a number of some value per pixel representable as an grey scale image). And dependent on this number you chose a color from the HSL spectrum.
So you just need to scale your depth value right to controle for which depth wich color should apere.


How to make Hair without use of particles system?

This technique is called poly-hair.

There are a couple of different approaches but these are the basic steps:

1) Render/download a hair patch

Create and render out a hair patch created with the particle system.
Bake a normal map for extra detail in your render as well.

Make a couple of them so you get some variation.

2) The patches

Model a couple of hair patches and UV un-wrap them to match your rendered hair patches.

3) Placement

This step will take the most time if you want a realistic result.
Place and edit each strand individually. Layer them on top of each other, make them blend well, ...

This image might help this explanation.

Look on youtube and google for more detailed steps and info on the shading.


Create and save preset nodes in the 2.81 blender, for example for material and texture

So you mean, you need a technique which can help you make a library of your node setups so you just have to click to import.

There are some free/paid addons out here to do this action.

https://blendermarket.com/products/node-kit (paid)
https://blendermarket.com/products/nodecustombuilder  (FREE available but can also be purchased to donate to the developer)

If you want to achieve this natively in blender without any addons,
Just save your favorite node setups in your dedicated node group blend file.

Whenever you need that node setup or material,
You can go to file > append > your dedicated blend file and apeend node group or material you like


Window cut pinching after bevel applied to windows edges

It looks like this topology is better looking:


faces falling below the sculpted face when re-topologizing

The reason for the faces being below the surface is that the vertices and edges that make up the faces in those regions are not on the highest points of your mesh. When the faces are made, they connect in a straight line, which in this case goes through a portion of your mesh. The two ways to deal with this are to add more vertices so that the faces can follow the contour of your mesh better, or reposition your vertices so that the detail is better preserved. If your end goal is baking normals, you will want both objects to be as close as possible. Here are a few tips to make your retopology process a bit easier:

1) Instead of starting at one point and working your way around the ear, start by identifying where you want your edge loops to be, and what details you want to highlight.

2) To do this, I've always found it easiest to use snapping set to face, and then Ctrl click to extrude a single vertex and create your edge loops. If you enable automatic snapping (the little magnet icon) each new vertex will snap to the surface where you click.

3) Place your edge loops at the highest and lowest points possible. If there is a ridge or bump, place the loop so it is on the highest point. Do the same for any valleys or indents.

4) Keep in mind that you will have to connect all of these loops together eventually, so plan where each vertex will connect to the others.

5) Finally, begin connecting your edge loops to each other. You won't have enough edge loops to simply fill single faces between edges, so add more vertices where necessary. If you use some topology guides and plan your topology carefully, it shouldn't be to difficult to add in extra detail where you need it.


I may have just invalidated the rest of my answer as I realised you can just edit the Source property of an image from the Node Editor's Properties Shelf (N) when you have an image node selected, which will update all image nodes that share that image:

This is because when you duplicate an image node the image is instanced (shared). When you edit the Source property you are editing a property on an existing image, so the other nodes that use that instanced image see the changes. When you normally browse to a new image you break the connection to the other intances so they don't update.

So, you can inform users that changing the Source property in the Properties Shelf on one image will update all the relevant images, or you can look at my original answer, below, for other solutions.

Original Answer

My suggestion would be to group the Image node within a group, with the Vector as input and the Color and Alpha of the image as output:

Whenever you need to use the same image you add the node group instead:

Obviously, this still doesn't usefully expose the image path to the user, but at least they only have to change the one image (because all other image groups will also update).

You could even place an additional one of these group nodes in a more accessible place in your node tree with instructions that this is where you can change the image (instead of the user having to dig through a particularly complex node tree):

(The description comes from a text file, so this may or may not be suitable for your situation).

An alternative solution is to provide a small script along with your material that has an interface for providing a new path which then updates the node's filepaths.

For example:

newFilepath = "C:\Filepath\To\Image"
bpy.data.materials['MyMaterial'].node_tree.nodes['Image Texture'].image.filepath = newFilepath

This changes the filepath for the image on the MyMaterial material.

If you have questions about how to provide an interface for selecting a file and returning a filepath to your script you can either ask a new question (or search this site for Existing Questions).


Is there a way to recalculate normals per animation frame?

Yup hair dynamics was enabled, and in hindsight I should just be rotating the camera not the whole object, thanks guys


How to get the angle between three faces on a non regular non flat surface

Here's a slightly different approach.

The solution below treats the three faces as a triangle.
The script calculates all 3 triangle angles, then sums the two smaller angles to find the answer.

As shown in the image below, they are equal to the angle between the edges of the
larger angle within the triangle.

import bpy, bmesh
from mathutils import Vector
from math import degrees, acos

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh( bpy.context.object.data )
centers = [ f.calc_center_median() * bpy.context.object.matrix_world for f in bm.faces if f.select ]

if len( centers ) == 3:
    # Face centers as triangle vertices
    A, B, C = centers

    # Triangle edges (sides)
    AB = B - A
    AC = C - A
    BC = C - B

    # Triangle angles
    a =       degrees( acos( ( AB.dot( AC ) ) / ( AB.length * AC.length ) ) )
    b = 180 - degrees( acos( ( AB.dot( BC ) ) / ( AB.length * BC.length ) ) )
    c =       degrees( acos( ( BC.dot( AC ) ) / ( BC.length * AC.length ) ) )

    # The smallest angle between the two triangle edge vectors equals
    # To the sum of the two smallest angles within the triangle
    angles = sorted( [ a, b, c ] )
    print( angles )
    print( "All: ", sum( angles ) )
    print( "Two smaller: ", sum( angles[:2] ) )

else:
    print( "Invalid number of selected faces" )


Moire Like Blinking when preview rendering problem

The display glitch you are seeing on your model is a common 3D graphics artifact called Z-fighting.

From Wikipedia:

  Z-fighting is a phenomenon in 3D rendering that occurs when two or more primitives have similar values in the z-buffer. It is particularly prevalent with coplanar polygons, where two faces occupy essentially the same space, with neither in front. Affected pixels are rendered with fragments from one polygon or the other arbitrarily, in a manner determined by the precision of the z-buffer.

Basically what is happening is when two coplanar faces occupy the exact same space Blender doesn't know which of the two faces to render.  The faces are "fighting" which one is closer to the camera.  So due to floating-point calculations in the distance to the camera (z-buffer), various points of the shared surface are rendered as one of the faces, and other parts are rendered as the other face.  This results in the strange looking Moire-like glitch you are witnessing.

To fix this problem you can first try to remove double vertices with W > Remove Doubles.  This will merge vertices which occupy essentially the same location, you can adjust the tolerance in the F6 parameters menu immediately after removing doubles.  In some cases removing doubles won't be enough to fix the z-fighting, in these cases you will just have to go through manually and remove the overlapping faces.

I suggest you read up on manifold and non-manifold geometry.


Right now I use the good plugin MesaureIt. It is built in in Blender and can be activated in the preferences. However it lacks the possibility to measure difference shapes (boolean operator) but it is far best solution I have found till now.


Apply Bevel/rounding to junction of two combined forms

I don't know whether you're using subdivision - so these approaches may not be your way.... (all the operations are under a subdivision modifier, level 1 or 2)

starting with a cube, add some edge loops (CtrlR), to support its sharp edges, and to halve its sides. Then cut the diagonals you can see, using the knife tool (K).
bevel the central vertex (CtrlShiftB)
inset the new face  (I) to make room for a bevel
extrude (E) the inset face
maybe scale the top face (in my case, Z is up, so that's SShiftZ), bevel (CtrlB) the edge at the turn to the extrusion, adjusting the profile with the mouse wheel to increase divisions, (you could do that, and change the profile and offset of the bevel at the bottom of the toolbar region while the tool is active, if necessary.)

But as you can see, that results in sharp turn, not very like the profile you illustrate, and there's not much room to move edge loops around.

So the bottom row in my illustration doesn't use beveling at all, and just tweaks the heights  and scales of the horizontal edge loops on the dome.

Edit mode>edge ..Alt select an edge loop

SShiftZ to scale it in XY

GG to slide the loop up and down without significantly altering the profile

GZ to move it up and down and alter the profile

If the subdivision modifier's' "Display modifier in Edit mode" box is checked, you can visually adjust the modifier's result to your profile. But be aware, if the subdivision level is changed, the profile may fatten or shrink.


To switch to Pose Mode you just need to select the armature object and make it the active object (=highlighted in orange). It's called RootNode in the outliner. You have selected it but additionally, you have selected the mesh Genesis2Female-skininstance and this mesh is the active object. That's the reason why you can't switch to Pose Mode.
The deformation of the mesh in the pose mode works but the bones are all very tiny and they all stand vertically upwards. If the model was imported as an FBX file you can adjust the import settings for the bones. See this question: Rotate all bones in rig by 90 degrees
Edit: You wrote that it was imported as collada file. But there are also options for the bones in this case. Try Fix Leaf Bones.


Can I restrict viewport render to inside the camera

Pablo Vazquez has created an addon called the Amaranth Toolset which (among a ton of other useful features) adds a way to do exactly what you are looking for.

Once the addon is installed just go into camera view and hit W > camera as render border.


One method:

Add a Plane and scale on the "X" axis to form your rectangle.

TAB into Edit Mode and add four Loop Cuts (CTRL + R) positioned where you want your hole to be.

Select all by pressing "A". Extrude by pressing "E" + "Z" to constrain on the z axis.

Scale in by pressing "S" + SHIFT "Z" to constrain to the x and y axis.

Select the inner top face and press "X" and "Only Faces" from the drop down menu to delete it.

Add a Subdivision Surface Modifier (View and Render set to two.

Tab into Object Mode and set shading to Smooth. Tab back into Edit Mode and add Loop cuts to tighten up you corners.

Repeat for all your corners.


Decompose image into albedo and shading with cycles

The basic idea is there in Cycles lighting passes, Cycles just breaks things down further than those images do. Here's the overview of how to reconstruct those albedo+shading+spec images:

Albedo = diffuse color + glossy color (Cycles splits albedo out by type of light interaction. In our case, we don't care, so we just sum them)*

Shading = diffuse indirect + diffuse direct (diffuse shading is split by direct vs indirect, so we need to sum these)

Specularity = glossy indirect + glossy direct (same deal as diffuse shading)

  the original idea of albedo and shading contains only 3 (albedo * shading + specularity) and (2) the shading concept is usually referred to as a 1-channel grayscale image, while the difuse lighting image (direct + indirect) is shown as 3-channel color image.

The problem here is it does not account for transmission, colored light sources, coloration of bounced light, or colored specular reflections. Accounting for all those is why Cycles throws out 4 different light passes, and all of them are RGB. It also doesn't account for self-illuminating surfaces, hence why the emit pass also shows up in Cycles.


surface area of a mesh using Python code in Blender

One way is to sum bmesh face.calc_area() for all faces.

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.active_object

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(obj.data)

area = sum(f.calc_area() for f in bm.faces)
print(area)

bm.free()

Will give result in objects local space would need to allow for scale.  eg if the object is scaled by (2, 2, 2) would need to multiple result by 2 x 2.  Or apply scale before calculation.


Triangles

As @ideasman42 points out in this answer, you can press:

  F, ⎇ AltP

  F (creates a face)
  ⎇ AltP (poke face, creating a triangle fan)

Quads

As @David said in this answer, you can use grid fill by:

Using ⎇ Alt +  Right Click, to select the edges
Pressing Ctrl + F and then selecting Grid Fill (can be done by pressing G after the previous combination)


Automated vectoring or knife tool / autotracing

I see a couple of options depending on what you are after.

The lazy, easiest one would be to use the texture to control the transparency of your object. This would keep the poly count low, but you would not be dealing with real geometry.

Other option is to trace the shape on a program like the one you mention, or inkscape, illustrator or similar, and convert it into vector information, save it as SVG.(probably you can download the svg file directly on the same website you got that pattern from...) Import that into blender and use Knife Project or some form of boolean (you'd need to extrude the curves and convert to mesh to do that). Note that you'd have to rework your topology, as anytime you use booleans or knife project you'll end up with very ugly n-gons.

Imported SVG:

Knife Project:


How to move non-rotating objects together with the rotating ones on the same axis?

Id make it one whole object and then parent the wheel to the solid objects, everything needs to be parented. You can then use paint weights and constraints to get the different parts to animate correctly with bones/nodes.

Parenting should be some thing like a web tree. This is a over simplification but i think it works.

Hull has no parent, Doors and Mirrors is parented to the hull, Axel is parented to the hull, suspension is parented to the Axel and the wheels are parented to the suspension.


Unable to install molecular addon in blender. cmolcore is undefined

The molecular addon created by Pyroevil has not been updated for several years.

You can find a couple of forks of this addon, the one by scorpion81 has been updated to work with 2.80 and also has a branch for 2.79. There is another fork by PavelBlend that has more recent changes. Both of these offer some pre-built copies of the addon from their releases page. If you get a git snpahot of the addon then you will need to compile the addon to get it working, you will need cython and a c/c++ compiler for that.

If you have no luck with these forks, you might want to report an issue to one of these projects on github to see if they can help you.


There are numerous possibilities as to what causes this. I tried to list them in order of likelihood

your material for the lamp's glass material does not look transparent (you can set it to translucent, but be ready for some serious noise)
your lamp is too weak for cycles
your lamp's cycles visibility options don't make it show up where it's supposed to illuminate.

There's more, but please make sure the ones above don't apply and if not send another screenshot with the lamp selected, meaning showing its settings as well as its place in the outliner.


Does anyone know how to rig a truck/trailer so that the trailer follows the truck in a realistic way?

I actually managed to make it work using Bones and kinematics.
Basically I used the description from:
How to IK rig legs

.. to create an inverse kinematic constrain.
But additionally I added a copy-constrain from the "target_bone" to the foot and then it worked. (target copies from foot)

I cascaded it 3 times to get an articulated trailer:

Edit: Here is the dependencies I have for one instance:

From How to IK rig legs :

'foot' is child of 'shin'
'shin' has IK constrain from 'control'
'foot' copies rotation from 'control'

At this point you should be able to move the foot and the shin changes accordingly

My Addition:

'control' copies location from 'foot'

Note: that these constrains must be bone constrains (i.e. in pose mode) not object constrains.


The two answers you already got for this on your previous question are really the most accurate ways I know to do this. but if you're looking for something simpler then here are a couple more options for you.

You can snap everything to Blenders grid by either turning on the snap function here

or by holding Ctrl as you move your objects.

Move objects along axis by entering a value, eg. if you have a cube that's 2 units long along the X-axis and its origin is in the middle and you want to add another flush along side on the X axis, Duplicate the cube and press G, X, 2 to move it along the X


Adding the percent symbol on the end of a number sequence in animation nodes

You can use the Join Texts node (maybe "Join Strings" in your version) to concatenate multiple texts.


Blender Game Engine Animations Float Above Intended Location

Animation relations

Animation poses of Location, Rotation and Scale are relative to the Parent. If there is no parent the operations are relative to the scene.

This means when you parent the animated child to an object it will remain where it is. Playing a pose the object will update according the that pose relative to the new parent.

In Blender you can switch to another frame to show the effect e.g. left or right as this updates the object according to the new frame.

Within the BGE you see the effect as soon as you play an action.

Solution

As you do not want that, you should ensure to create the keyframes i while the animated object is already parented.


How to preserve shape keys with decimate modifier?

For this you must re-create all shape keys for each LOD-version of your mesh. You can try to do this. First making LOD-version by applying Decimate modifier to copy of your high-poly mesh with all shape keys deleted.

Then, sequentially turn on each shape key on your original high-poly mesh and apply Shrinkwrap modifier to previously made LOD-version as a shape key targeting that high-poly mesh with shape key turned on.

That is, add Shrinkwrap modifier to low-poly ('decimated') mesh. In your high-poly mesh turn on particular shape key by set it value to 1. Select your high-poly mesh as a target in Shrinkwrap modifier. Click 'Apply as Shape Key' on Shrinkwrap modifier. If all went good you would had particular shape key transferred from high-poly to low-poly model.


Hei

You can disable selection from all the things in scene. It will be easier to generally zoom in and out after this.


Camera Changes Its Position After Rendering

Your camera has a keyframe on the first frame of your animation, and that is what is being rendered.
If you move the camera but don't record a new keyframe the camera will reset to that keyframe at frame 1.


Rendering: Excluding a layer while keeping it's influence (Masking?)

It should work if you replace the transparent with a holdout shader. However that doesn't solve the Memory issue.
There's a fairly easy solution, which of course doesn't work in all cases.
In post you can use the Z-pass in order to combine renderlayers.
Compositor -> SHIFT A -> Color -> Z-Combine.
It is intended to do what you want, but it will produce strange results when MB or DoF is involved.


I do a lot of similar things (book mockups with different finishings for presentations etc.). The way to go is definitely a setup in the same material. The idea is for each material to have its own shader and mix them together with a mix-shader-node and a bw-image (the white parts of the image represent one material, the black parts the other material).
If the logo changes you can simply swap the image for the mix-nodes.

This is the image I used for the mix-node:

This is the general node setup:

the blue part defines which parts are gold and which are bricks
yellow and red are the different materials (you can add normal maps, bump-maps, albedo etc...)

and the final result:
(I just grabbed a brick-texture for demonstration-purposes)

A few tips: to add realism you can use the mix-node-image as a bump-map for your gold-ink-material and mix the normal maps of the different materials.
you are also not limited to 2 materials, just add another material and another mix-node with a mask... unlimited materials. yay


You can use Curves and animate the Start bevel and End Bevel factors:

  These options determine where to start the Bevel operation on the
  Curve being beveled. Increasing the Start Bevel Factor to 0.5 will
  start beveling the Curve 50% of the distance from the start of the
  Curve (in effect shortening the Curve). Decreasing the End Bevel
  Factor by 0.25 will start beveling the Curve 25% of the distance from
  the end of the Curve (again, shortening the Curve).

These settings are in Properties > Object Data > Geometry:


Fluid simulation - direct access to surface possible?

You can export or access the simulation data in many ways:

obj or other mesh formats that gives you surface vertices locations per frame. Depending on your application you can use a Shrinkwrap modifier and a subdivided plane to keep the vertex count constant between frames
render Z-depth images of the surface from camera from above, giving you every visible surface point location in space (this has same limitations as that shrinkwrap trick)
you can use python and scripting to generate any custom data you want and to export it. With python api you can for example cast rays where you need to sample the surface and measure distances

One thing to note is that Blender's fluid simulation is meant for visuals, it is not meant to be scientifically accurate. You may find that in real world the fluid behaves a bit differently.


Mesh is on the inside of the object in certain areas?

It looks like you've got a subsurf modifier enabled. You can disable it in edit mode so that the subdivided mesh doesn't block you from seeing the wireframe.


How to cut a rectangle out of a cylinder?

Your shape is a little bit more complicate than just rectangles on cylinder, but if I had to do the basic shape of rectangles on cylinder, as it is a pattern repeated around a circle, I would do it with a Simple Deform modifier / Bend mode:

First create your pattern with a plane that you rotate, subdivide, extrude, as it is symmetrical on the X, Y and Z axis you can use a Mirror modifier with the Clipping option activated.

Repeat the pattern with an Array modifier. Enable the Merge and First Last options.

Apply the rotation of your object (ctrlA) to make sure it is. Give your object a Simple Deform modifier, choose the Bend mode and a Deform Angle of 360°.

Now as you are going to add a Subdivision Surface it's hard to keep a rectangle without completely messing the mesh. Here is the topology I would personally use: Create a bevel on the 90° rectangle angle, join some vertices, dissolve some edges, add some edge loops to sharp the angles, as below.

You can continue to work on your basic shape so that it looks more like the real one.


Is there a way to not affect non manifold edges by sculpt bruhes.?

I'd try adding those vertices to a vertex group and then using a mask modifier with this group as the modifiers target.


This function should do the trick:

import bpy

def color_vertex(obj, vert, color):
    """Paints a single vertex where vert is the index of the vertex
    and color is a tuple with the RGB values."""

    mesh = obj.data
    scn = bpy.context.scene

    #check if our mesh already has Vertex Colors, and if not add some... (first we need to make sure it's the active object)
    scn.objects.active = obj
    obj.select = True
    if mesh.vertex_colors:
        vcol_layer = mesh.vertex_colors.active
    else:
        vcol_layer = mesh.vertex_colors.new()

    for poly in mesh.polygons:
        for loop_index in poly.loop_indices:
            loop_vert_index = mesh.loops[loop_index].vertex_index
            if vert == loop_vert_index:
                vcol_layer.data[loop_index].color = color

#example usage
color = (1.0, 0.0, 1.0)  # pink
color_vertex(bpy.context.scene.objects['Cube'], 1, color)


You are looking at a render result. Click the "x" to clear it.


Accessing data in the UV layout in Python?

Turns out I need to get into the EDIT mode and select all vertices, and then perform the projection.

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.uv.smart_project()
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

After that, accessing data is as easy as the solution given in Get/Set coordinates for UV vertices using Python.


Open up the User Preferences Window and switch to Input tab
Expand the 3D View -> 3D View (Global) keymap and add a new item (Scroll down and click the Add New button.
Enter the operator name as wm.call_menu
Enter the operator parameter Name as VIEW3D_MT_view
Assign your desired hotkey.
Save user preferences (Click on the Save User Settings button.


It looks like the hand also has X-ray mode on, so the two are interfering. Go into the object menu of the hand, click display, and then uncheck X-ray.


Import Zbrush model to Blender and retain polypaint, materials?

I think that you'll need to bake your polypaint in Zbrush, so you can import the diffuse into Blender. If your model is too high poly you might want to create a low poly version so you can bake the polypaint of the high poly to the uv of the low poly.


Use Spline IK instead.

Here's some documentations for you to explore:

Spline IK - Blender Manual
Creating an IK and Spline IK switch in blender for beginers ans advance by the luwizart Animations
Spline IK - Unreal Engine Documentation

More tricky to setup, but does the job quite right.
Have fun with that.


Yes, if you render still frames and your process is aborted, already rendered  frames are saved and you can start a new render from a different frame. More advantages are listed in in Blender manual here.

In short, set your output to still format (e.g. JPG, PNG or MultiLayer) and render the animation. Once you are finished with this, use Video Sequence Editor in Blender to produce AVI/MP4.

The detailed description includes 15 steps, which are covered in Blender manual here. AVI/MP4 approach is called "Direct approach" there, frames - "Frame sequence approach".


In object mode, try to select Object > Apply > Scale. Do not forget to select Even Thickness in Solidify Modifier.


Subsurf revealing a topology problem, but there isn’t one?

Thank you, Jachym Michal! It was inverted normals.

Mesh->Normals->Recalculate outside


You could try something like this.

The object I used for this is a simple UV sphere (I scaled mine up in edit mode to make it bigger - this might affect mapping values, I'm not sure - just be warned you may need to adjust those). Anyway, for the material, the main objective is to make 2 "spheres" using  Gradient textures. You need to make a large one and a smaller one - The large sphere will be your Volume, and the smaller one will be used as a Mix Factor to "subtract" from the larger one. In the image below where I show the smaller sphere, I inverted it just for the image example - The regular (non-inverted) output is what makes the mix factor, it just doesn't display well in a 2D image because it's a volume.

You can see from the mix with a Transparent BSDF (or Volume absorption if you want a "void" in the center), that the center sphere is "missing". It's a bit faint in the photo, but this is due to the nature of volumetrics.

The last thing I did was make a "noise volume", colored similarly to the colors in your image. You can use whatever texture you already have (as a volume).

Lastly, I multiplied those values with the large sphere's "color" to transfer the dark (absent) areas and the colors. The final result looks like this (In my image, I added the values to themselves a couple of times with an add shader to make them brighter - you may or may not want to do this).


Rendering objects only for left or right camera in 2.8

Managed to solve the problem by creating three collections.
In left scene is collection "left", and the collection "right" is instanced here but not rendered.
in right scene is  collection "right", and the collection "left" is instanced here but not rendered.
And finally collection called "both" is linked to both scenes.

For linking or instancing a collection from another scene you have to go to "Scenes" view in Outliner, this enables to see collections from other scenes. You can then right click on the collection you want to link or instance here.


To complete this workflow using data transfer I recommend:

Check that armature modifier switched to weight:

Join this two parts (Ctrl+J):

Then apply Data transfer. In unknown reason, it doesn't works with armature even if it first. (maybe, it is because it doesn't grab original mesh from source object)

Then, finally, fix weights using weight paint mode.

Draw weight with needed bone selected.


How can i save already done UV maps when merging two objects

So you're using Blender Render but I've got the solution. First merge all the columns, then in the Properties panel > Object Data > UV Maps, change the name of the UV map you're currently using, use the one you're using for the temple itself (it is called UVMap). Join everything, it works.


Is it normal to wait 50 min for baking a "simple" fluid animation?

This seems quite normal - fluid simulations are very CPU intensive to bake and the workload increases exponentially based on the simulation Resolution (eg, doubling the Resolution results in 8 times the number of 'cells' in the domain (2x2x2)).

If you look closely at the video, shortly after the guy hits 'Bake', the mouse jumps to slightly above the bake button. Most likely he paused the video midway, allowed it to complete the bake, then carried on as if it had only taken seconds - whereas, really, it likely took a similar amount of time as you are experiencing.


First, yes it is supposed to happen. If it is expected or not depends on whether on not you have read this answer. :)

The reason this happens is because bones in blender are not Z up like everything else, but the Y axis is up.

Here is a picture set up the same as yours, but with the axis display turned on for the armature.

You can easily "fix" the offset by changing the rotational space from World to Local with Parent. (You will in most cases want to use local with Parent space anyway.)

Try rotating the bone in edit mode, then see what the constraint does with Offset turned on and the Space set to World. (Hint, you will end up needing Local with Parent.)


How to make an interactive two-finger robot gripper and grab things with it?

Instead of Softbody physics, consider Rigid Body physics for the robot parts (this will keep them from jiggling when they interact with something; that is, they'll interact, but they won'd deform their own shape, which is what you want). Rigging is actually extremely simple for hard surface models like this, and your best option for what you want to achieve. You don't have to automatically weight the bones, either, which might not give the desired results in this case, since it likes to use falloff (good for organics, not so much for robots).

What you'll want to do first is set up your bones so they lay inside your model, with the joints where you want the bending to happen. Now you'll want to head over to the bone tab, found in the section of the workspace where you usually go for your physics stuff. It should look like a little bone. Click this, and you can change a few things to make your life easier. Mainly, X-ray. It should be on by default, but if it isn't, this is where you'll find it. Also playing with contraints is useful, if you don't want to fool with with exact degrees of rotation while you're manually moving your bones. Adding a contraint limited to the range of motion of your grippers will physically prevent you from moving the bone too far, so you're freer to eyeball it. Just a few more steps, and you'll be on your way! Hide your armature via the outliner window for now, or move it to another layer. We need to work on the robot itself. All you need to do is make vertex groups for each rigid piece. (Each piece should have it's own corresponding bone.) Once you have them named, bring your armature back (your collection of bones) and rename the bones to match the vertex group they're supposed to control. When you finish, select your mesh, then your armature, and parent them.


Making several holes in cillinder that are offset from cylinder center

Add your cylinder, and make it the proper size for the baseplate.

After that go ahead and add another cylinder. Go into edit mode (Press Tab), select all vertecies with A and then move the cylinder out to the first hole position, and scale it properly. Exit Edit mode when you're done. Your thing should look like this now.

Add an empty next. (Shift A -> Empty and select whatever you want). Select the small cylinder now, and go to the modifiers tab. This will be on the right hand menu and looks like a wrench. Hit "Add Modifier" and select "Array". Uncheck "Relative Offset" and check "Object Offset". Set your empty as the object, and set the count to whatever you desire. This is what the modifier should look like.

Select your empty again, and rotate it around the Z axis by 25.7° (Hit R, then Z, then type in 25.7). Leftclick when you're done. After that select the big cylinder again, and add a boolean modifier. Set the type to "Difference" and in the objects section select the small cylinder. If you're not happy with the positioning at this stage you can move the small cylinder around in edit mode to get it lined up properly. Hit "Apply" on the boolean modifier of the big cylinder when you're happy. You can delete the small cylinder and the empty after that, if you want to. This is what I'm left with.

To recap what we've done: We've taken a small cylinder, and copied it 13 times (that's the count in the array modifier). After that we've told blender to offset it based on an object, and selected an empty for that. We've rotated it by a desired angle, and the small cylinder copied that angle as well. After that we substracted the small cylinder from the big one and are left with the final product.


What are the class naming conventions for blender?

The use of strict class naming is more prevalent within blenders source code than within third party addons. While CamelCase is common I don't think there is a strong convention for class names, however, the name used in bl_idname is visible and used within blender so does have some conventions, with a view to also help prevent naming clashes.

For a panel the convention is CATEGORY_PT_name and if not set will be the class name. Similarly, menus use CATEGORY_MT_name. Common categories are Object, Mesh and Material. Both of these can often be found duplicated into class names, often using class names instead of setting bl_idname. Within blender's builtin operators you will find most use this naming (with CAT_OT_name) for operator classes. There are also examples of CAT_UL_name used for UILists.

For an operator, the bl_idname must be two words separated by a ., the first word should be a category while the second is the operator name. Operator bl_idnames are added to bpy.ops so if you have bl_idname='mesh.beautify' then the operator can be called from python with bpy.ops.mesh.beautify() and is added to a panel with layout.operator('mesh.beautify').


Blender cloth animation isn't working properly?

Make sure you hit the self collision check box in the cloth modifier setting as and keep the quality steps high to get a good cloth simulation(The more the quality step the better the quality and slower rendering).

I hope this helps.


What is the Easiest way to Animate the rigid body properties of a large group of objects

[Select the rigid body object and copy their properties (except for animated).]

Select all rigid body object to be modified.
Alt click on the Animated property. This will change the property for all the selected object to the same value. Now all object have animated enabled.
Use this script to key the property on all of them.

import bpy
sel = bpy.context.selected_objects
for ob in sel:
    ob.rigid_body.keyframe_insert(data_path="enabled")
    ob.rigid_body.keyframe_insert(data_path="kinematic")

Now all objects are keyed.

To remove all Animated keys on a frame, execute the script but replace keyframe_insert with keyframe_delete.


Select faces in Edit mode
Switch to Vertex Paint mode and press Face selection masking for painting button (3D view -> bottom panel -> button with cube icon (next to layers selection)

Press ShiftK to fill selected face with the selected color.

This way, you can also normally vertex paint your model but painting will be limited to selected faces only.


Modeling tenement house only using photographs from random angles and mostly useless blueprints, what could go wrong... but I have to fix it

This is a nightmare to set up and many blender modellers would use a program called fSpy.

The program is free and allows you to set up your camera to photos perfectly. You'll need to also download the blender fspy addon.

In fSpy, once you've set up your lines in the program, save your fSpy file then go to your blender file and import the fSpy file. File > Import > fspy and browse to find your file.

That will set up your camera perfectly. I do recommend watching the tutorial for using fSpy however.

Document tutorial:
https://fspy.io/tutorial/

Video tutorial:
https://lesterbanks.com/2018/11/perfect-camera-match-fspy/

Download fSpy:
https://github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy-Blender/releases

blender addon link:
https://github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy-Blender


It's generally bad practice to make the colors directly dependent on the topology of the object (there are exceptions, of course).

Instead you should use a Texture.

A texture is usually an image which is mapped to the surface of your object based on a UV map. There are other kinds of textures and mapping techniques as well, e.g. Procedural textures.
However, in this case you probably want to UV unwrap and use an image texture.

For example, I can UV unwrap this sphere:

and then texture it with this image:

Result:

As you can see, the texture is not dependent on the topology of the mesh.

I recommend you check out some tutorials on texturing and UV unwrapping in blender. There are many good sources out there (google is your friend), but here are a couple of places to start with:

Blender Cookie
Blender Guru
The Blender wiki

Also check the beginner's reference on meta.


Joining animated model to a quick fire effect

select fire object

go to object constraints in properties panel

add copy location constraint

select target object


How do I rotate a bone without effecting the connected bones?

Go into Bone Edit Mode of the Armature. Tab
Select the spiked_boulder bone and duplicate it. ShiftD
For further convenience, let's scale this bone down, so we can discern it later on. Let's name it spiked_boulder_rotation.
Parent spiked_boulder_rotation to spiked_boulder. CtrlP
Assign/Parent the spiked boulder mesh to the spiked_boulder_rotation bone.

Now you can animate the movement of the spine in a standard fashion. The child spiked_boulder_rotation will rotate along its parent moving the geometry. Now animated the Y Rotation of the spiked_boulder_rotation if you want to additionally rotate the spike geo.


Black lines through every part after importing GLTF

Those are empties (what you get from doing Add > Empty > Plain Axes in the 3D Viewport). They are created for glTF nodes that have no mesh, no camera, aren't a bone, etc.
You can try running this script from the Text Editor to hopefully clean up some of them that aren't necessary. Save beforehand.
import bpy
while True:
    dead = [ob for ob in bpy.data.objects if ob.data is None and not ob.children]
    if not dead: break
    for ob in dead:
        bpy.data.objects.remove(ob, do_unlink=True)


Blender is only the first step. After you render the Transparent 3D font Layer with Blender you will need to place the output in the Aftereffects composition.


Blender Origin was unintentionally move, set back to 0 0 0

All of the above is correct, but it leads me to wonder something. Doesn't applying all transformations (CtrlA) force the origin of an object to return to the world space origin? And in one step? If so, wouldn't this be what the OP wants? If not, what am I missing?


Collada Export Options Panel Not Showing in 2.82

Found the answer. The panel is now part of the File Browser panel. I had not expanded the right hand side of the browser panel. I just noticed a little '<' at the top right and that popped open the panel with Operator Presets and the other options.


Using a scripted expression driver to combine two angles

I assume you mean that you want a "convex combination" of the angles, so that:

0 will return an angle that is just BeginAngle
0.5 will return an angle halfway between BeginAngle and EndAngle
0.33 will return an angle that is closer to BeginAngle than EndAngle

In that case, you can use the scripted expression:

(1.0 - 0.33) * BeginAngle + (0.33) * EndAngle


Parsing XML is very simple in Python3. You can use the built-in xml module for that.

To bind the data to a texture is slightly more complicated, but it can be done too using Blender Game Engine's videotexture module.


Alright, I fixed it. Thanks Ray Mairlot for sending me related posts.

Instead of a Mix Shaders with Diffuse BSDF, I am now using a MixRGB, and it works perfectly.


LIVE UNWRAP!
Thanks to moonboots comment, looking up proportional editing and uv map made me find the video that introduced the technique I was talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXyIhYcYmoo
Turns out I needed to have Live Unwrap checked and transform my pinned vertices on the EDGES of my unwrapped mesh.


Is there a way to match audio and video length in blender precisely?

What @batFINGER says is true. If you have your blender anim set at 30fps, but your video is really playing at 29.97 fps, the sound track and video tracks will get imported at different lengths.

presumably because sound is imported as a single item with a timespan, and the video is imported as a range of frames, each being dropped in a frame slot. Someone else may know for sure.

You just need to play with the FPS until the two strips align.

In the first image I have imported a 6mb video at 24fps. The two strips show as different lengths.

In the second image, the strips line up. But I had to use a custom '15fps' because I have a cheap android phone.

Shouldn't be too much of a pain to sort through the dropdown options.

If you need a unique frame rate, you can select 'custom' from the Frame Rate dropdown. (it's the first item, and looks like a title.) Enter something close to actual frame rate. Then you can use the divider '/' field to adjust.

You can see in the images the resulting frame rates are: 31.01, 31.37, and 31.71 respectively.


Scaling keeps resetting after set keyframe in Blender action

my first 3d animation professor used to answer every question with the same initial answer... "Did you apply Loc/Scale?" not applying it to your mesh can result in the stranges things...

Also, I fail to see what is changed? your settings for scale are the same on frames 3 and 5. It looks like you put whatever you keyframed is on frame 0, and frames 1 - 20 all have the same data... since your animation is set to run from frame 1 to 20 I don't believe it ever reaches frame 0 to take on whatever changes you made in that frame...

...and what change are you making anyway? a single frame in the begining of the animation with out anything to change too just makes the single change to the entire timeline... you need a starting value and a target value.. such as the scale of x in frame 1 being 1, the scale of it on frame 10 at 2, and the scale of it at frame 20 being put back to 1, (which would cycle the bone up and down with a bit of a hitch at the end...)

Anyway, I could easily be wrong, but I think your best bet is to keyframe inside your animation timeline, and make sure you have applied your mesh's rot/scale


Found the solution! I had to roll back to original nvidia driver for my graphics card, install the latest CUDA software and reinstall blender. Working like a dream. Thanks for taking the time to assist.


To improve:

Add thickness to the glass. Otherwise, it will be considered as a big block of glass, which certainly makes it unrealistic. You can add a Solidify modifier to it, with a very small thickness value:

Add a "skybox" to hold all objects in. It can be told from the reference image that there seems to be an indoor lighting setup, so you may want to build a simple "photostudio" for that, instead of an open boundless world:

Here is one solution for the lighting setup:

Set a background plane with material nodetree like this:

Create a box with the same material on each face:

In the box, add a few area lamps:

Tweak everything until satisfied.

A test render with comparison:

EDIT:

After reanalyzing the reference case, since it seems a bit "fake", it is very likely that the bulb material can be simulated without refraction property, which means, no glass shader needed, and no Solidify modifier needed.

So it could be a mixture of Glossy and Transparent:

Test render with comparison:

NOTE: Since no calculation for refraction, it is much quicker to render. Time can be dramatically saved in this way.


Need help with modelling a Juice Spout Pouch

You can select the bottom edge loop by going in Edit Mode with  Tab, and choose the edge select mode.
Then select an edge from the bottom while holding down the Alt key, and press  F to fill your bottom.


How do i turn off individual lights using falloff in animation nodes?

You need to know how to access and modify each light's energy. Then evaluate the falloff in a subprogram and tweak each light's energy.
In order to know the property's name, you have to activate "Python tooltips" in the preferences :

Then hover you cursor over the field :

So, given the point light, you access its energy with an attribute node and the path data.energy. Similarly, if you want to access the color, you would use data.color.

For ease of use put all your lights in their own collection.

Add your falloff object (I chose a cube), tweak the fallof type and connect it to your subprogram.

Result :


I think you are simply not using the good import menu entry.

There is another SVG import tool installed as standard addon in Blender.

Only the second one (on bottom above and which is corresponding to your link) has import options.

Alternatively, it is also possible that the wrong addon has been activated:


Those look like they're just Invert Nodes (Add > Color > Invert). You can right click a node and rename it to whatever you want - I'm assuming that's what the person did in the tutorial.


Experimental sub surface modifier making the mesh look layered, seemingly not due to ngons?

Right I've forced myself to sit down and fix the ngons now and there are way more than I originally thought. The mesh looking strange on the 2 last pictures actually doesn't appear when I move from rendered edit mode to rendered object mode. I apologize if I have wasted anyone's time!


This is due to protected layers on the armature. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/armatures/properties/skeleton.html#protected-layers
Also, keyframing your poses is always a good idea, and quite the opposite of hacky. If you aren't keyframing your poses you're hanging by a thread, and opening yourself up to various ways of losing said posing, this being only one of them!


How to turn off the stats displayed when playing a game?

Either disable it with python:

bpy.context.scene.game_settings.show_framerate_profile = False

or untick the checkbox in the render settings panel:


Shadow artefacts when rendering with bevel-modification

It is possible that you have duplicate geometry, or that the corners are made up of 2 unconnected faces. To clean up your mesh, you can try Mesh > Clean Up > Merge by Distance. This will "snap together" all vertices that are within a certain distance of each other.
If this doesn't solve your problem, you might have to manually inspect the faulty areas of the mesh. Select the  vertex you are having issues with, and move it out of the way to see what's going on. This might help you understand how the mesh is connected, and what is causing the problems.


How to view changes made to a texture with Nodes, in Blender Render?

Your changes should be visible on Material and Render shading on the 3d viewport