Since nobody answers, I found a temporary solution:

The iTaSC IK solver features some velocity constraints: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/rigging/armatures/posing/bone_constraints/inverse_kinematics/introduction.html


You can preview the backface culling in Blender with the check box in the shading panel. To fix your problem, just tab into edit mode, then hit Ctrl + N to recalculate normals.


I found the problem.
I entered the error into google and found the solution. I used backslashes instead of just slashes. This was the cause of my error.

Sorry for waisting your time. I should have googled the error right away.

AliSot2000


python script that reads text file containing coordinates and creates a path/curve for object to follow

You can run this code straight from Blender's Text Editor.

You'll see a lot is the same for creating a simple vertex-edge based mesh, but this snippet:

imports x,y,z as a list of coordinates
creates a curve object and prepares it to accept the vertex coordinates
transforms the list of coordinates to flat list
this means
[x1,y1,z1], [x2,y2,z2], [x3,y3,z3]
becomes
[x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2,x3,y3,z3]
uses 'foreach' to push the flat list of coordinate components onto the .points.co's.

code:

import csv
import os
import bpy

filename = 'circle.csv'
directory = '/home/zeffii/Desktop'  # <-- if you have linux or osx
# directory = r'c:\some\directory'  # <-- if windows, the r is important
# directory = 'c:/some/directory'  # <-- if windows (alternative)

fullpath = os.path.join(directory, filename)

with open(fullpath, 'r', newline='') as csvfile:
    ofile = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=',')
    next(ofile) # <-- skip the x,y,z header

    # this makes a generator of the remaining non-empty lines
    rows = (r for r in ofile if r)

    # this converts the string representation of each line
    # to an x,y,z list, and stores it in the verts list.
    verts = [[float(i) for i in r] for r in rows]

if verts:
    # curve coordinates require a 4th 'W'(weight) component,
    # the +[0.0] adds that for us
    out2 = []
    [out2.extend(list(i)+[0.0]) for i in verts]

    # has one coordinate by default, we add one fewer than we need
    num_points_to_add = len(verts) - 1
    curve = bpy.data.curves.new("path_name", type='CURVE')
    polyline = curve.splines.new(type='POLY')
    polyline.points.add(num_points_to_add)
    polyline.points.foreach_set('co', out2)

    obj = bpy.data.objects.new("obj_name", curve)
    scene = bpy.context.scene
    scene.objects.link(obj)

points to note:

by all means use your own file-names :) , but as a convention if you are using comma separated values, it helps to use the .csv so you know even without looking at the content of the file, that is stores data that way. Also the first line of the file should describe what each column contains ( see the example curves.csv in the other post)
my csv reading code expects the first line to have column information, the line 'next(ofile)` can be commented out if your data starts straight on the first line

If your csv isn't formatted in a standard way, you can try using this script and adjust it to your specifications.

Judging by the coordinates you're importing you might want to scale the input up by 1000 times so the resulting curve/object isn't too small to see without zooming in. If it were up to me i'd change the line where the value is cast to a float and add a scalar multiplication to go from -4.934860e-06 to -0.493486 . If you don't know what the e-06 means it's a scientific notation to quickly show the size of a number without adding 6 zeros between the decimal point and the significant digits.

# (or 100000, or more.. depending on the total object extents)
scale = 10000
# the r[:3] here means you are only interested in the first 3 values on every line.
verts = [[float(i)*scale for i in r[:3]] for r in rows]


Cycles color diffuse baking results in black image

You cannot bake a glossy material.  I think that is your problem.  By looking at the picture, it appears that the handle is the only thing that does not have a glossy material.  Try removing the gloss material from the blade and changing it to a diffuse material.  You shouldn't have a problem after you change that.


In the UV editor:

Select all and Pin all UV coordinates
Select the UV faces that you have added
Reset UVs and Unpin them
Unwrap
Select all and Unpin


Is there a way to put a copy rotation constraint with an influence higher than 1?

1.0 is the maximum influence for any given constraint, so setting it beyond 1.0 is impossible.

Using the Transformation constraint, you could easily map any kind of simple transformation from one object to the other. In the following example, the object being constrained will rotate twice the amount of Cube_target's rotation in the Y axis.

Checking Extrapolation will extend the transformation beyond stated range of values.


In your second example, the shape changes, because your are transforming the mat_rot by the matrix_world, but you need to do it the other way around.

obj.matrix_world = mat_rot @ obj.matrix_world

Further, your code should be streamlined to apply the transformations at object level (and not through ops).

from mathutils import Matrix
from math import radians
import bpy

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(location=(0, 0, 0))

obj = bpy.context.active_object

mat_rot = Matrix.Rotation(radians(45.0), 4, 'X')
mat_sca_x = Matrix.Scale(6, 4, (1, 0, 0))

mat_sca_y = Matrix.Scale(6, 4, (0, 1, 0))
obj.matrix_world = mat_rot @ mat_sca_x @ mat_sca_y

And finally, you can rely on other methods than ops, to add your geometry. See this answer for details on adding geometry from scratch.

from mathutils import Matrix
from math import radians
import bpy
import bmesh

# Create the object and mesh datablock.
me = bpy.data.meshes.new("me")
obj = bpy.data.objects.new("obj", me)

# Apply the transformation.
mat_rot = Matrix.Rotation(radians(45.0), 4, 'X')
mat_sca = Matrix.Scale(6, 4)
obj.matrix_world = mat_rot @ mat_sca

# Add the grid as the mesh
bm = bmesh.new()
bmesh.ops.create_grid(bm, x_segments=1, y_segments=1, size=1)
bm.to_mesh(me)

# Link the object to the scene.
scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.collection.objects.link(obj)


The simple way to solve your problem is to use a Boolean modifier and intersect with a really big box spanning z=-1..1 , but eventually you will want to do something to a mesh that isn't so simple.

You're going to want the bmesh module:

http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_67_release/bmesh.html

It has access to the vertices, edges, and faces of the mesh with the ability to add, modify, and remove any of them.

For an example I'll include the code from http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/squish-mesh-axis.html :

import bmesh
import bpy

def stretchAxis(mesh, idx, tgt_min, tgt_max):
    """ Squish/stretch the vertex coordinates of a mesh so that their .co[idx] ranges from tgt_min to tgt_max. """
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_mesh(mesh)

    min = bm.verts[0].co[idx]
    max = min

    for v in bm.verts:
        val = v.co[idx]
        if (val<min):
            min = val
        if (val > max):
            max = val

    # remap co[idx] from min..max to tgt_min..tgt_max
    for v in bm.verts:
        old = v.co[idx]
        v.co[idx] = (old-min)*(tgt_max-tgt_min) / (max-min) +tgt_min
    bm.to_mesh(mesh)
    bm.free()

#
# squish or stretch all the selected meshes to a specific thickness along a
# specific axis.
#

idx = 2 # the z coordinate
for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if (obj.select):
        stretchAxis(obj.data, idx, 0, 1)
        obj.location[idx] = 1
        obj.scale[idx] = 1

Although this example does not alter the TOPOLOGY (faces and edges).  It only adjusts the position of the vertices.


Joined eyelids to mesh, but they remain stationary when animating

When you add some vertices to an already skinned mesh, the added vertices have no weight relatively to any bone, so you have to weight them manually (or do a new automatic weighting): the eyelids are supposed to move with the head bone.

To do so, select all the vertices of the  eyelids, go to vertex group tab in the properties panel, select the head vertex group and click assign.

If the eyelids doesn't move exactly with the other head vertices, check how the vertices near the eyelids are weighted in the "N" properties panel and weight the new vertices accordingly.

For a more complex rig you could add some new eyelids bones, parent them to the head bone, and assign eyelid vertices to them, in order to animate the eyelids. In this case you'll have to create some new vertex groups exactely named as the new bones and repeat the procedure above.


Why does adding a subsurf modifier cause this large flat face to deform?

Thanks everyone! I now know that i should stick to four points as much as possible and I fixed it! I tried to make a grid on the huge faces and I got rid of as many triangles as possible and I'm very happy with the result :)

Now onto the rest of the guitar!


How to create a mesh from metaballs which will always work with a Boolean modifier?

There is CubeSurfer addon for meshing sph particles. Metaballs in Blender were very slow, but they were optimized recently. It is worth testing which is faster.
I don't know if CubeSurfer guarantees manifold mesh. But I am 99.999% sure that it doesn't. Now 100% sure after your test.
I dealt with similar thing many times (booleaning fluid mesh to have smooth surface where it collides with glass - so it renders nicely).
The solution is to export the fluid mesh in frames where the boolean failes as .obj files, then manually edit those meshes so they are manifold, and substitute them in frames where the boolean failed.
The detection and exporting can be done automatically. Also the substitution if the files are named to indicate which frame they belong.
I don't know any algorithm for blender that can automatically fix a non-manifold mesh to be manifold. It would be quite complex, as it is not an easy task.
There is this paper about it, uses Cutting and Stitching.
The boolean modifier will not fail on every non-manifold mesh, only when the non-manifold piece intersects or is inside the booleaned mesh.
Also putting a smooth modifier before the boolean might cause the boolean to fail less. But it won't fix all the non-manifold problems.
So to solve it you would have to write your own particle mesher that guarantees manifold mesh. Or to hire someone to do it for you, or find a very good soul to do it for free. It's quite a job to do.
Or use a program that can do booleans on non-manifold geometry (which is totally possible, blender just uses open-source library for booleans that is not able to handle non-manifolds) or which can repair non-manifolds. Some programs that could do this are listed here.

Geometric Modeling Based on Polygonal Meshes
...this package provides source code implementing useful repairing algorithms such as Gueziec et al's cut-and-stitch for conversion to manifold (IEEE TVCG 2001)...

Also MeshLab is a nice package worth trying. It can be scripted for automation. With others I have no experience but they might be even better candidates. You just wan't them to be able to process a series of obj's.

Another approach you could take is not to boolean at all, but rather use a volumetric material with very high density with clipping. You just need to figure out the math that clips, depending on the shape you want to clip with. From your pictures looks like you need to cull with 2 planes, the planes face the camera with the local Z axis:

This though produces some wood-like artifacts:


How to split a beveled surface to two parts to use different materials

No script here but this is a possible node setup:

to get this:


Trying to animate the camera in Blender 2.8

If your playhead is at the beginning of the timeline with the camera selected, then do the following:

Move the camera where you want to start (press 0 to look through it)
Insert a keyframe (press I)
Move the playhead on the timeline
Move the camera to a new spot
Insert another keyframe (press I)

...etc


How to make smooth curves and rough edges

Here's one approach:

6-sided circle
Fill (F), and Knife cut (K) using Ctrl to hit center of edges
Drag out back edges. (Scale thinner if you like)
Add loop cuts (CtrlR). Assuming you might want to bend the aerofoil.
Extrude (E) perimeter edges
Maybe pull out the middle edges of the side? and put in a holding edge-loop (CtrlR).
Add a Mirror modifier,
And a Subsurf modifier.


To remove all armature influence, you will need to remove the parent and remove the armature modifier from the mesh.

Select the mesh object and press ALT-P -> Clear Parent to remove parenting. Go to the modifier properties and remove all armature modifiers with the X on the right. Do not apply the modifier nor apply it as a shapekey.


It is possible that the Source of the image is either incorrect, or you have changed the file location since making the .blend file.

Press Nummpad 5 and then Numpad 1 to get into an orthographic view were the image would normally be view able from
Click on the folder icon next to the file location
Find where the image is located and accept the location (make sure it is correct)
Your image should now appear in the background of the scene


UV unwrapping wrong but render is correct

@FrederickSteinmetz was right. I exported all objects to a single .obj file in which the currently selected UV map of the 'scarf' object was included. The render instead used an UV Map Node to refer to another UV map.
To resolve the issue I selected the correct map with (Select object -> Object data -> UV maps; Blender 2.80


How do I rotate a group of vertices without deforming its shape?

Its called Shear and is accessible through the hotkey ⇧ Shift⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltS or the menu entry
Object/Mesh/Curve/Surface ‣ Transform ‣ Shear


Clear custom split normal data just for selected faces

You can aim a Data Transfer modifier at a vertex group. Vertices in the group will receive the data from the chosen source. Those not in the group will not.

Top left, below: A cylinder with two regions of faces split out, and left where they were, so the normals do not interpolate. Top right, an intact version of the Cylinder.. ('Form')

.. Bottom left, the 'D_XFer' vertex group. Bottom right, the normals partially transferred from 'Form', to the cylinder with split faces,  according to the group.
If you apply the modifier, its result becomes a Custom Split Normals layer.
So, the steps I was thinking of go as follows:

ShiftD make a duplicate of your problem object
Clear Custom Split Normals on the copy, (giving you some unwanted loss of smoothing, as described)
Assign the vertices whose smoothing you would like to restore from the original to a vertex group.
Give the copy a Data Transfer modifier, targeted on the vertex group, with the original as its source object.

This should pick up the desired normals from the original, leaving the others cleared. When you apply the modifier (in Object Mode), a new Custom Split Normals data layer will be  created on the duplicate, which is a partial copy of the original's. So you will have 'Cleared Custom Split Normal Data for selected faces.'
There may be better approaches altogether, repairing topology by remodelling? or simply reassigning split normals from scratch, using 'Autosmooth' in the object's 'Data' tab 'Normals' panel?... but this is a way to transfer some normals, but not others.


Can Blender be used to composite HDR photos?

I think the term you're looking for is tone mapping.

In the photography world, "HDR" is used loosely to describe the entire process of shooting multiple photos at different exposures, combining them into a 32-bit image with a high dynamic range, and then tone mapping it down to an 8-bit image that you can display nicely on your 8-bit monitor.

In the 3D world, we can render 32-bit images directly and therefore don't need to go through the process of combining exposures to make an HDR image (we already have one), so we can proceed straight to tone mapping.

There is a special node just for tone mapping actually:

And with a bit of tweaking you can do this:

If you'd like to play with it, here's the original .hdr file: http://adaptivesamples.com/files/original_untonemapped.hdr - this was made by taking several bracketed photos and merging them to an HDR, but the same method applies to raw 32-bit renders.


As stated already, you need to set an audio codec, also some video formats don't support audio.

A combination that does work is H.264 for the video (selected from the Output panel) and AAC for the audio (selected from the Audio codec dropdown on the Encoding panel).


Any way to temporary hide wire frame in edit mode (2.80)?

You can just press Shift + Z. Also you can customize it as you want in preferences.


No I think there is something seriously wrong with the outliner window. Prior to 2.8 selecting something in the outliner positively selected it in the 3d viewport. The outliner in 2.8 is erratic. Selecting something in the outliner does not necessarily select it in the 3d.


How do implement material without a texture image?

Image texture is just a storage of information. In your case, a normal map will suit for 100% sure.

I use the polymer gun grip material for it, you can find it here

Basically you can do almost any materiel in Principled BSDF now.

You will need a normal map to fake the wavy surface. Connect that image texture to a normal map node to control strength. The connect it to Normal socket. The Transmission should be 1.0 in your case, and the main Roughness should be around 0 as well.


You can simply bake the light/shadows and then use them as a mask.

Bake a Combined Pass (default settings work fine)
Use the resulting BW texture as a mask for a MixRGB node
Done

Have some tan Suzanne...


The solution to this issue is to make sure you use consistent frame rates. One of the videos I pulled in changed the frame rate from 30 FPS to a custom frame rate which screwed the other clips. Setting the frame rate back to 20 FPS fixed this issue for me. I know you can use handbrake to set all of your videos to the same frame rate; however, if you are like me and just want a simple solution of
setfps <video-name> <frame-rate>

or at least a handbrake-like program that uses mpv for previews instead of VLC, I am unsure what program to use.
As an update, you can use FFmpeg to reencode a framerate!


The best solution I have found is .FBX.  Tried a lot of others including OBJ but settled on this.

In my case, SolidWorks files opened in Rhino, saved as .FBX, import that into Blender.

There are lots of export options when saving to .FBX in Rhino, had to set Maximum Angle to 2.0 (instead of 1.0) in order to get the rounded surfaces to appear round, and not jagged.


How to reduce poly number when you start creating object in 2.8?

Here you go:

Hope you can see it there.


How do I export items from Blender to Tinkercad

Short answer: Yes, you can. But first you have to decide what format you want your design to be in. But it will export both 3D objects (which I believe TinkerCAD does accept) and .svg files, which, as far as I know, are intended for curve/vector data.


python: pie menu to display the pivot center modes

It already is an operator.

There is no need to create another operator to call an operator, so it can be given a shortcut.

Can add a keymap to it directly. The field to data_path ignore if appears disabled, select and type in the required RNA path from context.

shortcut set to  ⇧ Shiftz (disabled the toggle render shading)

or created via code (example)

import bpy

wm = bpy.context.window_manager
kc = wm.keyconfigs.user

km = kc.keymaps['3D View']
kmi = km.keymap_items.new('wm.context_pie_enum', 'Z', 'PRESS', shift=True)
kmi.properties.data_path = "space_data.pivot_point"

Alternatively it can be added as an expanding pie menu item in your original question code via

op = pie.operator("wm.context_pie_enum")
op.data_path = "space_data.pivot_point"

To call an operator from code, all operator properties must be passed as  keyword arguments

bpy.ops.wm.context_pie_enum(data_path="space_data.pivot_point")

The first argument of an operator call can be a string if it is one of the operator context enums, eg 'INVOKE_DEFAULT'. See error message in question for full list.  Another type of argument is a dictionary of context override members.

bpy.ops.wm.context_pie_enum('INVOKE_DEFAULT', data_path="space_data.pivot_point")
c = {"area": context.screen.areas[4]} # will need more than just area.
bpy.ops.wm.context_pie_enum(c, data_path="space_data.pivot_point")


Cant apply texture to object because it is missing UV coordinates

Since Blender 2.8, curves have a UV map all the time.
If using versions before 2.80, as mentioned in this post, you need to enable the Use UV for mapping option in Properties Editor > Object Data Tab > Texture space panel:

Alembic export with UVs enabled in export options should work just fine.
I wasn't able to test on your scene since the curve object was empty. But theoretically it should work.


Parenting Objects to armature changes position

i took a closer look on the rig and this is what i found:

All objects of the character were parented to the body and had no vertex groups, only body was parented to armature and had vertex groups. They were parented to the body-object, but the armature had no influence on them still.

2. There are too many separate objects. It makes the character incredibly difficult to weightpaint. Keep the model as simple as possible - or - as complicated as really necessary.

3. There were different transformations on the model and the armature.
Im not 100% sure, but this may have caused the shoulder bug. I assume the shoulders had a transformation related to the world origin - and the armature had a transformation related to the world origin too.
When you parent the object to the armature with weights, the transformations get mixed up + there is additional influence from the rig.
Anyone please correct me, if I'm wrong.
But to avoid such errors, make sure the armature ist centered and the model as well. Also make sure you apply all transformations before parenting.

4. Loops of armor is not matching to body at some parts. That makes trouble in weightpainting. Extrude armor from body, if you can.

5. trouble with automatic weightpainting
-->arms too close to head -> arm bones deform head
--> model character in t or a pose to avoid that

You would have to parent "Ellenbogen" bones to root bone, not arms. Otherwise you get depedency cycle between those bones and that makes arm unusable.

Here is your file back: https://we.tl/t-IP1Wo7iwz9
I hope my answer was helpful and let me know if it helped.


apperently most of the original nodes from McPrep were useless, so i kept the original texture node and used 2 emmision ones, a mix shader and a light path to make it look like a normal glowstone block


You can first store the expected neutral pose to pose library for further use.

Go to Object Data tab,  Click  button in Pose Library;
Click  on the right-hand side to add/store pose based on current pose;
Adjust the armature to the expected neutual pose;
Click  again to store it.

Then you can apply either one of them back to the armature object by clicking  on the right-hand side.

You can press Ctrl A > Apply Pose as Rest Pose, if you want to apply the neutral pose to rest pose (the real zero transformation, not offset) by then.


How do I extrude ledges evenly on my villa model?

Enable the Offset Even option in the Last Operation box:


Messed up Topology (Shading?) due to the usage of the Knife Project Tool

I have had the same problem with shading after using the knife / knife project tool. Unfortunately, I believe there is no sure-fire way to fix this.  One way that may work is to slightly bevel all the edges.  Another is to set the shading of the faces to flat, and leave the shading of the others at smooth.


Cannot get rid of shadow under transparent texture

The texture in your picture is not fully transparent. Since the Transparent node is set to fully white, your texture is not fully transparent in its background. Otherwise the material setup is fine.

Notice the eclipse shadow only appears behind the texture and is the same color as the surrounding shadow. This means you probably have an error in your light path setup. A simple reason could be that the transparency passes is set to low, and Cycles cuts off the light rays not allowing them to pass through the transparent material often enough.

Fix this by increasing your Transparency bounces in Properties >Render >Light Paths:


How do I stop Blender 2.8 from creating extra faces when I just want to stretch pre-existing faces?

You must have overlapping vertices. Before pulling the edges, select all (A) and altM > Merge By Distance to make sure you've deleted those vertices (check the Operator box on the bottom left of the 3D view to play with the threshold)


Precise Mechanical Rigging (Intuitive method)

After a lot of trial and error here's what I could come up with.
It is not perfect and will glitch out at extreme cases, but otherwise works for the most part.

It relies on a system of three empties and relations between them.

The $Start$ $Empty$ - Has a Location constraint to prevent it from going anywhere away from $-0.90$ to $0.90$ in the $X$ axis

The $End$ $Empty$ - Has a Location constraint to prevent it from going anywhere away from $-0.90$ to $0.90$ in the $X$ axis and $0.2$ to $1.8$ in $Z$ direction. Additionally it as a Limit Distance constraint set to On Surface preventing it go further away than $1.8$ from $Start$ $Empty$

Lastly $Tracking$ $Empty$ is parented to $Start$ $Empty$ and has a locked track to the $End$ $Empty$.

The $Upper$ $Arm$ also has a Copy Location on $Z$ axis only from $End$ $Empty$so it keeps position correctly automatically


Why are my render animation pictures after frame 100 only gray?

You inserted the scene in the Video Sequence Editor but the clip length stayed at 100 frames. In the Post Processing tab in Render settings Sequencer is checked so its being taken into account when rendering.

Solution: Uncheck the Sequencer in Render Settings or re-add the scene in the sequencer so the strip is 120 frames long. I recommend option 1.


If you want to assign a key that always inserts the LocRotScale key at the current time, you have to do the following:

Go in the Blender Preferences, under Keymap and search for "Insert Keyframe".
There will be an entry under Outliner, unfold the "Insert Keyframe" by clicking on the small triangle in front of the checkbox.

You need to copy the "anim.keyframe_insert" for your own new "one button function"
Clear the search and open/unfold the User Interface keymappings.
At the bottom of the list you will find a button "+ Add New", click that and it should look like this, a new keymap line with "none" set in it

Where there is "none" you paste the "anim.keyframe_insert", and once you confirm it, the keymap changes to this:

There is a darkened "Keying Set:" and a "Confirm Successful Insert" that needs some attention. Select the "LocRotScale" in the dropdown-menu of the "Keying Set" and unhook the "Confirm Successful Insert" option, it should now look like this:

Now there is only one thing left, assigning a key (hopefully not used yet) to have the functionality per "one button".
For that just click on the big button right beside the "anim.keyframe_insert" textfield and then press a key. You can afterwards add some modifiers like "Alt", "Ctrl" .. etc.
When done, you can test it without having to close the Blender Preferences to adjust it or find a better key.

Happy Blending


Why is one of the lines / edges visible on my mirror

If you (try to) select one of the triangles defined by the problematic edge, you will see that it's actually a quad:

So the edge there is not defining any face. Blender doesn't display edges defining faces in Object Mode, but it does display edges that don't define a face. In a way your problem proves the usefulness of this approach, as thanks to that, you noticed a problem with your topology.
You can simply select the edge and press X, then E to remove it. If you want to divide this quad into two triangles, then after removing current edge select appropriate vertices and press J to Join them. This will cut through the existing face like with a knife tool, instead of adding an edge on top of existing topology without changing it.


Linking transformation but not other data (ex. Modifiers) in two objects

For arrays from object offset, parent the object to the array.  Empties cannot have modifiers of any kind, so I'm not sure what you're talking about with it acquiring the array.  This is likely a misinterpretation of something, but if it's not, then it's a bizarre bug.  A video of the problem, or a file with explicit instructions to recreate, would be necessary to answer in more detail.

Selecting the empty will not select the barrel.  Regardless of selection in viewport or outliner.  I wish there was an interface to make Blender behave like you describe, it would be useful for a few specialist things.  Again, I suspect you're misinterpreting something, and video or file+instruction would be necessary to give more detail.

To answer the explicit question, for perfect linking of transformation data, use object constraints.  "Copy transforms" copies all data.  You also have "copy position", "copy rotation", "copy scale", all pretty self explanatory.  Generally, you'd be using these world->world space, but there are times that you could parent an object to an empty and use local space coordinates to achieve other effects.  (However, again, I strongly suspect that there's some misinterpretation of what Blender's doing here, and even though it answers your explicit question, I doubt that it will do what you expect it to.)


Where is transparent view in blender 2.81

The shortcut Z to show the shading pie menu still exists in Blender 2.81 and 2.82. However it's 4 to enable Wireframe mode, 2 is for the Material Preview mode.

You can also enable Wireframe mode by clicking on its icon.

If you're referring to the X-ray mode, it can either be toggled through Alt+Z or by clicking on its icon.


You need to enable auto-smooth normals. The reason why the coffee is being shaded so weirdly is because you've enabled smooth shading which averages out the normals. As a result, some of those flat faces start getting the strange shading as if they were a curved surface.

So go to Mesh Data > Normals > and enable Auto Smooth. Then increase the angle slightly so that all of the rounded faces that should be smoothed out are smoothed out. However, if you increase it too much, it'll start smoothing out the top face again and you'll end up with the strange shading again.

Edit:

You also seemed to have forgotten to delete some of the geometry from the cup object. that intersecting with the liquid is probably part of the reason why it looked so weird. And please turn down the viewport subsurf modifier on the cup down from 6...there is no reason why that cup should have millions of verts.


You can have as many rigs as you like it is pretty much the same as adding objects. You might be confused when you started your animation in the Timeline. You will only see the keyframes of the selected object.

I would recommend to learn about Actions ( parts of an animation like: walk, jump etc.) and the NLA-editor this allows you to reuse already created actions to assemble an animation from actions.


Physics in blender 2.8 - can't interact with objects while simulation is running

I guess you looked deeper into this by now but as I'm also trying to achieve the same thing as Ben Clark might as well post my findings here.

I've done some messing and discovered that providing the object is set to be a passive rigid body you can grab it, move it where you want it and then reset the sim (timeline) and it will react correctly.

https://gyazo.com/987177ca2f87fef851519d8e12be3511

To me this looks like something to do with the physics caching system, maybe someone knows how to turn that off? :)

For a quick and dirty workaround, fascinatingly real-time grab physics still works with rigid body constraints.
Wouldn't be helpful if you want to just wack a cube wall with another cube though...

https://gyazo.com/75cdc85da98a0e7a3f67175c4386c9ee

Cheers!


Ok I am not sure exactly what you are trying to do.

In edit mode make sure you have the option to select faces.
Click random faces on the top and along the sides and corners, then Hold Ctrl and then hit the + on keypad about 15-20 times to make sure you got the entire top lid selected.
Hit P to seperate the object, Position the top lid how you would like it to be open, follow the link "how to create a hinged door" suggested in the above comments section.
Once the object is where you want it, select everything and hit CTRL+J to join it all back to one.

keep in mind nothing is modeled on the inside where the computer screen would be, so you would need to put something there


Solidify faces as separate objects that touch

You can press ALT + s  to begin scaling along normals.


Find the name of textures linked to an object in python?

This is a more direct version of the original script.

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object
if obj:
    me = obj.data
    if me.uv_textures.active is not None:
        for tf in me.uv_textures.active.data:
            if tf.image:
                img = tf.image.name
                print(img)

Note that you now need to access the face's image though the uv_textures data-layer, in this case we assume one exists and choose the active one. me.uv_textures["UVTex.001"].data would work too if its present.


The last control point on one end is hidden, in edit mode  :

Press Alt+H to show all hidden points
Select the two end control points and hit F


Missing Node Editor Header Bar at Bottom

If header somehow disappeared and there isn't way to use "+" button to get it back, try using Toggle Header command from Space menu. In the current editor window it will hide the header if it's present and open it if it's hidden.


In many cases, doubles are useful

Let's say you want to use a Subdivision Surface modifier to get a shape like the one on the top :

One of the way to do that is to split the mesh into two pieces, like shown on the bottom, but keep them on the same position like shown on the top. (please note that it's not a really good way to do that ; you should use a Edge Split modifier or Crease edges)

A similar case but with a Bevel modifier :

More generaly, you can have two pieces which are touching, or even glued together, but are not the same physical object ; and you want to keep them separated for various reasons.


Trouble adding two normal maps to an object

This may not answer your question and I cant even explain what is going on but maybe this can help you.

Since I cant explain this answer I will take it down if I get yelled at or downvoted. lol

This is for using 2 normal maps (or more):

I have never plugged a normal map directly into displacement socket. I don't know if that is causing the problem or not.

I attached the .blend file so you can just append the node tree if you want.


How to cut cylinder in a bending shape without deformations?

To get straight lines using the bezier curve you can set a low amount of resolution:

(You could even draw the path as a mesh and than convert to a curve with Alt+C to get a similar result.)

Than assign as a "Bevel Object" of the curve the wanted profile section.

To get the individuals cylinders, you can enter in the curve edit mode, select a pair of adiacent vertex and than separate them from the curve object with the P shortcut. Repeat the process for every couple of vertex of each segment.

Now that we have individuals cylinders that follows the given segments of the path, we should convert them to mesh to operate with Boolean Modifiers to get the shape of superposition parts (intersection) and the cut shape (difference).

While in edit mode you can translate the cap faces along their normal to extend the cylinder to the chosen lenght.

If you can use not only rect cylinders but also oblique cylinders to avoid the part in which you have to bool the parts (can be tricky), you can convert th curve to mesh before splitting and than Rip (V) the edge ring on the path angles and than slide it slightly.


In your case, I would separate the pillars from the rest of the mesh, if they are buildings. Otherwise, they are okay.

There are lots of techniques for unwrapping, but here are a few things to keep in mind.

You can use more than one UV map on an object. For example, you could "project from view, bounds" for the top of the mesh, and use a texture for the ground surface, then unwrap the sides of the pillar on a different map, and use a different texture for that.
Smart UV unwrap usually does a pretty good job, and you can base your unwrap on that if you want.
It is not always necessary to unwrap an object, if you want it to be textured. Your best and simplest bet may be to use generated coordinates with box projection.
You usually want to mark seams on sharp angles, and places that are hard to see, like the bottom of your pillars.

I noticed you are using "Blender Render", not Cycles. Are you sure that is what you want to do? From my knowledge, texturing can be easier in Cycles and many of the tips I suggested only work with Cycles nodes, as far as I know. I don't know very much about Blender render though.

Just some tips, I hope they help. Here is an example of using box projection on your model.


There isn't a direct importer for .skp files into Blender. Given your situation of being on linux at the moment, your best option is to get access to a windows machine and export to either .obj or .dae and import into Blender. If you are using the free version of sketchup, you might have to go through a few more steps.

There is an article of an extension on how to do this here.

To run Sketchup on Linux you can use wine for instructions With a web search this was found.

Or perhaps an extension on Sketchup might be http://sketchup2blender.com/blendup-get-started


Try giving both pieces the same origin, and parent one to the other using the "child of" constraint. Animate it's effect off once it needs to fall away from the other piece.


Is it possible to use two GPUs in viewport rendered preview, and not only for final render?

Yes. Open User Preferences and go to the System tab. Under Compute Device, select CUDA and multiple gpus (should be the one with (2x)). Next in the Render context, make sure that Device is set to GPU. It should now use both for rendering in the viewport.


Using geometry nodes, how can I toggle between different geometries, similar to shader editor?

You can do that quite easy with a Point Separate node.

In the image above I've created a mesh with a single vertex. The node network splits into two paths based on the attribute value do_monkey, which is set by the Attribute Fill node (or by anything else that you need).


Projecting a grid of points unto a model and displaying collision output

Not a scripted solution, but you can achieve a similar effect using a particle system.

Create an emitter plane and a particle system. This will have all the particles emitted at frame start = end = 1.000 and a lifetime long enough for the collision.

Set the emission to grid and assign a velocity in the correct direction in the Emitter object box. Leave all the other options to their defaults (Newtonian physics with all the forces = 0) and in Field weights remove the effect of Gravity by setting gravity to 0.

Last, you would like to render the particles as lines. Select Line under Render, set Tail to zero and Head to some value between 0 and 1. Use a high trail count and set Length as long as your particles lifetime. Also, tick Length in frames.

Now, make sure that all the objects that you want to detect have a Collision property (with default values).

(Now you can also add another plane - as a "sensor" - behind the emitter and make it collide with the particles that are coming back, killing them. Then you can render the dead particles as dots on the sensor)


face vertices causing weird indention in model

If we take a look at the inner topology, here is what we can see (below). You have inner faces, i.e. edges that are common to more than 2 faces, it is not good because when you'll try to smooth it, it will tend to create artifacts as it will try to smooth with all these inner faces as well, so select all these faces and delete.:


How to apply driver based on geometry-node-generated coordinates

It seems, thanks to a few useful comments, that geometry nodes exclusively work after the geometry drivers have been applied; but also that this can be done through animation nodes.


Cannot add modfiers to objects, don't appear on menu

curve: You found in: add-> Curve -> Like this image
but, I think you want to model your object right?


Cegaton's comment provides the right answer but leaves out a crucial detail. First, make sure all of the vertices whose assigned textures you want to flip are selected, then switch to the UV editor window, and press the key sequence S - X - 1 - - [hyphen].

ns


First, select both objects, and press Ctrl+J. Then, go into Edit Mode, select the both rings of vertices on the ends of the gap, press W and then select Bridge Edge Loops.

In order to have different texturing for different parts, you'll need to make the different textures into different materials, (so if you want two textures, you'll make two textures,) and then, select vertices you want the material to be put on, select the material you want to put on them, and press the Assign button, which is under the material name.

Read: Add different materials to different parts of a mesh? (frequently asked question)


Making masks with shading nodes that accounts camera ray

Solution

The mask effect can be achieved with rendering objects in different scenes and combining them in compositor after.

Compositing with Eevee:

Compositing with Cycles:


Problem creating black tinted glass material

Doesn't look like glass. Use a glossy shader.


The solution: You have to append the rig multiple times instead of duplicating it. Duplicating will basically make another instance, while appending again will make an entirely new armature/mesh in the .blend file.


Applying a polygonal (hexagonal) grid to a surface

example

try to keep your nodes in order

investigate:


You've scaled the armature in Object mode, you need to apply the scale in Object mode and it will work correctly (CtrlA).
About your deformation problem: After parenting With Automatic Weight you need to give some corrections in Weight Paint mode:


How can i display the Exact Same Colors that are in the Texture

Just connect your image texture directly to the material output without using a shader first. In the image below, the cube on the left is connected directly, and the one on the right is connected through a Principled BSDF with default settings. The light is directly between them.


What is happening to Suzanne's eyes during this use of the Boolean modifier?

You are using a non manifold mesh. Basicly, non manifold means, in layman's terms, not water tight.

Here is an example:

The cube has a hole in it. In Suzanne's case, its the fact that her eyes aren't attached to her head.

Here is a quick way to fix Suzanne:

Note: I use the loop tools add-on accessed by W


Freestyle does not keep track of mesh edges selected as feature edges.  It is not trivial to identify the mesh edges corresponding to the feature edges from the information Freestyle can provide.

Freestyle feature edges are ordinary straight edges between two vertices.  It would be possible to map the feature edges to input mesh edges (to some extent, because the mapping involves comparison of vertices that are floating-point real numbers).  To make it possible, you need to apply all mesh modifiers, since there is no way to select dynamically generated edges (e.g., by a subsurf modifier).  Anyway some programming effort using the Blender Python API is required.

Depending on your application requirements, another solution could be to visualize Freestyle feature edges by creating a new curve object.  The script viewmap_to_curve.py shown in this link is a style module you can use as it is in the Python Scripting mode of Freestyle.  All visible feature edges will be converted into a single curve object named Viewmap at the location of the feature edges in the 3D space.  This allows you to look at the feature edges from a different view point (as illustrated in this blog article).  By a bit of Python programming to extend the script, it is possible to select feature edges of a certain edge type, e.g., to visualize only silhouette lines.


Why does only selecting one face select multiple faces occasionally?

You probably made a linked Duplicat by pressing Alt + D insted of Shift+ D.

You can unlink them like here.

[.


Bubble like fur with displacement modifer

Looks like the job for a Voronoi type of texture.

You may have to invert the Strength parameter of the modifier to a negative value get the displayed result.

Adjust the size value and play around with intensity and distance metrics to get the perfect feel.
Distance Squared gave me the closest feel to what you show. Make sure your mesh subdivided enough, high density is required for sharp corners.


programmatically create tracking markers and set per frame coords?

Found MovieTrackingMarkers.insert_frame
clip = bpy.data.movieclips[0]
width = clip.size[0] # 848
height = clip.size[1] # 480
bpy.ops.clip.add_marker(location=(424.0/width,240.0/height))
bpy.data.movieclips[0].tracking.tracks.active.name="test"
clip.tracking.objects[0].tracks[0].markers.insert_frame(10, co=(212.0/width,120.0/height))
clip.tracking.objects[0].tracks[0].markers.insert_frame(20, co=(106.0/width,110.0/height))
clip.tracking.objects[0].tracks[0].markers.insert_frame(30, co=(53.0/width,55.0/height))

Well, that was fun:
use dlib and opencv to track face landmarks


How to extrude curves without changing thickness?

Draw the desired squiggly curve, e.g. by Add | Curve | Bezier

Add a flat path object of the desired width, e.g. by Add | Curve | Path

Select the curve, click the object Data context, click the Bevel Object dropdown, and choose the flat path object, e.g. "NurbsPath" -- this will sweep the flat path object along the squiggly curve.

If you want a mesh object instead of a curve object, use Object | Convert To (Alt-C)


Blender Armature Rotation causes Scaling

I did not realize that if I opened up the object and looked at the modifier for the armature, I would have the option to preserve volume! It seems that is the setting I was looking for. I have an inkling that what was said in the answers here about the distance between the root and other bones might be the reason. Either way, once applied, my doorknob no longer shrinks.


It is necesary to have two materials and assign the respective faces to them according to texture they should be using. One material for the head and one for the body. Each using it's own texture.

How it's done:

Add new material to the object in Properties by pressing the light grey button on the right with a white + in it.

Name the old material "Head" and disable the Body texture in the Texture tab.

Name the new material "Body".

Select the "Head" material and press the dark grey button with the black arrow pointing down and choose "Copy Material" and then select the Body material and click this arrow again and press "Paste Mateiral".

Then go into edit mode, select one face which should be using the body texture and press Shift+G and choose "Image". This selects all faces that have the same texture mapped.

Now while having the faces selected click on the Body material and press the "Assign" button to assign selected faces to the material.

Then go into the Texture tab and uncheck the Head texture.

It should work now!

One tip: always name your materials, naming objects is also good, but materials are more important because they get reused often.

Fixed blend file: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/29840


What do you mean by import? It is already a blend file, so you can only append or link data from the file into another file.

If you are appending some parts, make sure you are selecting everything you need and, in that case, that you change your render engine to cycles before rendering (it will render grey otherwise).
It should render correctly, that model doesn't have much for textures, the most noticeable is the chair color.

In the viewport, everything will look grey if you are on 'solid mode'. See more on that here: http://www.blender.org/manual/editors/3dview/shading.html


How do I create the left to right CRT refresh effect with material nodes?

This can be done by quantizing the x and y generated coordinates and combining them to get a unique value in $[0, 1)$ for each pixel. Then it's just a matter of creating a falloff for the scan lines.
Create Pixel Indices
The y coordinates have been inverted by the subtract node so that the scan lines will start at the top.
Here I have created a plane with a $4:3$ aspect ratio like a CRT would have, and for the material, I have assigned a material that takes the floor of the $x$ multiplied by horizontal resolution (640). This gives an index from 0 to 639 for each column of pixels.
The same can be done to the $y$ except multiplying by the vertical resolution (480) giving an index between 0 and 479.
By multiplying the row indices by the horizontal resolution, you can get an offset of 640 for each row that can be added to the column indices to get a unique index for every pixel.

I like to work in the zero to one range, so I will divide the pixel indices by the total number of pixels $640 \times 480 = 307,200$. This will result in what looks like a smooth top to bottom gradient, but it is actually a quantized left-to-right, top-to-bottom ordering of pixels each with a specific value in $[0, 1)$.

These values are essentially the domain of the yet-to-be-created falloff function.
Make it Repeat
But before we make the falloff function, let's create an offset that can be used to move the falloff along the scan lines.
To do this I have created a subtract node with the subtrahend being driven by the expression #frame/480/9. This means that in nine frames, the domain will shift by one scan line (480 total scan lines).

So that the scan lines will repeat once the end is reached, I added a Fraction math node.
Recap:

Falloff
To create the falloff function, I will use three exponential functions: one for the short, initial flash of the electron beam, one for the slightly longer colorful trail, and one for the faint ghosting.
This is the first function.

The important values are the divisor of the second node and the factor of the last node. They are the length of the trail and the brightness respectively.
To create the other two functions, just select everything after the subtract node, press ⇧ Shift⎈ CtrlD and move 'em down twice.

Adding these all together with the values I used gives this.

Making a Picture
To make it actually draw something, you can simply multiply the above output by an image texture. (I've added a dark gray to the image so that this CRT isn't an OLED.)

Final Nodes


Blender 2.8: Texture doesn't show up in Shading tab / UV Unwrap

Take a look at your image, below:
the first one is in UV Editor and the second one is in Image Editor, that's why the second one doesn't have the UV's, check out the red arrows.
Hope that helps.

Good Luck


The answer is in the example code.
When executed over the splash screen button, it prints to console
Note have added
def dump(obj, text):
    print(text, obj)
    ...

to the dump method to inform which of the button context members are not None
button_operator <bpy_struct, WM_OT_splash at 0x7f474dff47e8>
<bpy_struct, WM_OT_splash at 0x7f474dff47e8>.__doc__ = None
<bpy_struct, WM_OT_splash at 0x7f474dff47e8>.__module__ = bpy.types
<bpy_struct, WM_OT_splash at 0x7f474dff47e8>.__slots__ = ()
<bpy_struct, WM_OT_splash at 0x7f474dff47e8>.bl_rna = <bpy_struct, Struct("WM_OT_splash") at 0x7f477da08e48>
<bpy_struct, WM_OT_splash at 0x7f474dff47e8>.rna_type = <bpy_struct, Struct("WM_OT_splash") at 0x7f477da08e48>

Going by blenders naming convention the class instance above of WM_OT_splash correlates to window manager operator type splash --> the registered operator bpy.ops.wm.splash() with bl_idname = "wm.splash".
Ok can change up the script to get the operator from the button context.
def execute(self, context):
    op = getattr(context, "button_operator")
    if op:
        print(op)

    return {'FINISHED'}

Lets run this new code over the run script button
<bpy_struct, TEXT_OT_run_script at 0x7f9606bf4a68>

Looks familiar off to the python console. Examples of the active operator (last registered operator run) and how to get the options used in the last run of the operator.  IMO the py console is a great place to peck around and work out how things work.  The example script that prints the dir of available properties is another
>>> op = C.active_operator
>>> op
<bpy_struct, Operator("TEXT_OT_run_script") at 0x7f4755ffa708>

>>> op.rna_type
<bpy_struct, Struct("TEXT_OT_run_script") at 0x7f477c30cde8>

>>> C.window_manager.operator_properties_last("text.run_script")
<bpy_struct, TEXT_OT_run_script at 0x7f9606bf4b08>

To get there quickly, Feel there is a nicer way to do this, anyway
Get the operator, get its bl_idname from the class name.
If there is a property attached to the button it is reflected in the button context. From the operator get its properties (minus rna_type) to find which belong to the operator.
Get the operator from bpy.ops invoke it and use the settings of the button.
Following writes info re the operator and also invokes it.
def execute(self, context):
    op = getattr(context, "button_operator")
    if op:

        foo, bar = op.bl_rna.identifier.split("_OT_")
        keys = set(op.bl_rna.properties.keys()) - {'rna_type'}
        kwargs = {k : getattr(op, k) for k in dir(op) if k in keys}
        print(foo.lower(), bar, kwargs)
        op_callable = getattr(getattr(bpy.ops, foo.lower()), bar)
        # run the op
        op_callable('INVOKE_DEFAULT', **kwargs)
    return {'FINISHED'}

Which if run over the add custom property to workspace in 3D view UI, prints the following to console
wm properties_add {'data_path': 'workspace'}

and runs the operator adding a new custom property to the workspace.


You can find the Grease Pencil layers controller the Properties panel of the 3D Viewport

Press the button under the cursor in the picture to remove the acrive layer and, consequently, all the strokes contained in it.


You Can Use The Hotkey Instead Of the transformation panel Which Is (R) Button In The Keyboard To Rotate ,And Choose On Your Keyboard The Axis You Want To Rotate Around (X) or (Y) and (Z)
And Type Your Rotation Angle Or Move Your Mouse.


how to specify a scene to load in blend4web web player

The load attribute should be used to load a scene, this attribute contains relative path to a JSON file.
https://www.blend4web.com/doc/en/web_player.html#webplayer-attributes


In Blender Version 2.79b go to "Blender File" in the Outliner. Find the material you want to remove and right click it. An option to delete it will be presented to you.

Be warned that this will permanently delete the material with no undo.


Export to glTF with PBR materials ( facebook integration)

You're doing good to use the PBR node inside Blendere but include the textures (make them internal), then save the .blend file.

THEN export to .GLB, it should work. Relative path issues mess the drag-drop on Facebook post.


How to share variable among more than 2 operation

Finally, I solved this problem using static variable.

class SelectFace(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_label = "Select Face"
    selected_faces = None
    def __init__(self):
        SelectFace.selected_faces = None
    def execute(self, context):
        SelectFace.selected_faces = ... # get selected faces.
        .....
class OperationAboutSelectedFaces(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_label = "Operation About selected Face"
    def __init__(self):
        selected_faces = SelectFace.selected_faces
    def execute(self, context):
        # some operation to "selected_faces"

Thanks for your advice.


Take some Mesh, Snap Faces, Parent, Apply forces separately
Take a beveled cube  or some mesh you choose and parent to  an empty.  Create 6 new mesh planes. (Alternatively you can duplicate faces and separate.) So now we have six plane meshes in the locations of a cube and the empty. Snap the separate planes to the beveled vertices as indicated in the image. Parent the empty to the six child planes. Not shown. The empty controls the six planes.  Animate the empty.  Each of the 6 separate planes can have a distinct force attached by you.  Estimated time with practice 8 minutes or less. Please inspect and improve this proposed answer.

You may get a shape that suits the effort by taking the standard cube in
Edit Mode and Beveling the vertices. Image above.

Snapping a face and changing the object rotation if that suits you.

Plane and Triangle Snapped to corner faces. Image above.
This may have the same result of your idea with vertices.  There are 33 ways to do things in Blender.  This method seems reasonably simple.

Four Planes snapped to corner faces. Image above.  Two forces enabled.  Please excuse the busy screen capture.  Part of the point is to show axis if that suits the effort.
Snapping. A random video ... please choose a better one.
https://youtu.be/Sl_Otq4C9UU


The Animation Nodes addon (AN) is a "Node based visual scripting system designed for motion graphics in Blender."

It allows the creation of procedural animations. Furthermore, it can achieve many effects that are otherwise only possible through programming.

To get a better impression of what is possible, check the showreels for 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Download Animation Nodes Addon.

You can find the official documentation here. It also includes a list of most of the tutorials creators.

Check the official Blender Artists thread where the community collaborate, share their work and provide information about AN.


How do you create a human model from one photo?

A couple of quick thoughts.  First, regarding the camera movement, you could bake the image onto your mesh using a couple of different UV unwrappings, then tidy up the colors using texture paint.  I don't know if you have a high resolution version of your image but with the one you posted there's not a lot of detail to work with, you'd have to put in a bit of effort to get it to look halfway decent.  Here is an extraordinarily primitve demonstration of the concept (I didn't even use a human mesh, just a cube extruded into a vaguely human shape):

To do this, I would first unwrap your person mesh with a "project from view" unwrapping looking from the camera view.  Then position the uv faces so the mesh silhouette directly overlaps the human silhouette in the image you're working from.

Use that image as the diffuse color of your person mesh, and because of the unwrapping from the camera perspective it should look correct.  The sides will be distorted and the back will just be a mirror of the front, you'll fix that later (at least, the parts that will be seen).

Now duplicate your person mesh in place.  Give the new mesh a new material, and in this material add a new image texture (not connected to any shaders) that will receive the baked colors.  You also need to re-unwrap the duplicate person mesh to something where the faces do not overlap - you could use "smart UV project", the neatness of the unwrap isn't very important.

Then bake the colors of your first mesh to the texture in your second mesh using "bake selected to active."  I'm not going to go through all the steps here because that process is covered elsewhere.  Don't forget to save your baked texture externally.

How do I bake a texture using Cycles bake

Now you can clean up the texture using texture paint, taking advantage of the cloning brush, for example, to copy colors and textures from other parts of the mesh.

A different idea: the free MakeHuman program seems to be designed specifically to assist in making human figures (meshes and armatures) that match a reference image.  There are various tutorials on YouTube.  This might be faster than modeling from scratch, and the results will definitely be higher quality than the quick/hacky method described above.


Transform each iteration of an array modifier within defined limits

Make sure each sheet is a separate object. If it's not : in edit mode, press P -> separate by loose parts.
Make sure each object has a decent center
Select all sheets -> Object -> Transform -> Randomize transform

Select delta, an make sure only "rotation" is checked.


I can't make a particle system in cycles render! :(

just scroll up on the tab then you'll find the add particle system option. Click on it and the thing will expand down the page


Deform camera path to the shape of ground surface

You could use the shrinkwrap constraint on the camera with the distance set appropriately to keep it a fixed distance above the surface. If you place this constraint below the follow path constraint on the stack it should work fine. This won't deform the path itself, rather it will modify the distance above the surface that the camera is after its position is set by the path.


What is the proper way to update a portable Blender installation while keeping user settings?

You should not replace the whole 2.## folder version with a previous one.
In a best case scenario that will not only roll back any updated versions of the addons the new version may bring, but also override any new presets, builtin Python scripts, UI scripts and bundled Python versions along with your personal config, essentially rolling Blender back to the previous installed version.
Worst case it will likely completely break your Blender installation, especially between major versions, as old scripts and presets may be incompatible with new APIs and binary file changes.
You should only copy the Config folder inside the 2.## which should contain your bookmarks file, startup.blend and userpref.blend.
Alternatively you can use Blender command line launch parameters to achieve a fully functioning portable installation with a proper dedicated folder for user data and addons.
Blender supports several launch variables, a few of them are BLENDER_USER_CONFIG and BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTSwhich allow overriding the default folders for user configuration (where startup files are saved) and the folder for users scripts and addons, where third party installed addons, presets, keyconfigs and scripts are installed.
The trick is to launch Blender from a batch file that sets this to your custom desired location.
Here is an example, in a plain text editor like Notepad paste the below lines of code and save them to the same folder as Blender.exe, give it a any name like "Blender_Portable" but make sure you specify the file extension as .bat not .txt.
SET BLENDER_USER_CONFIG=%~dp0Portable_Data\Config
SET BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS=%~dp0Portable_Data\Scripts

if not exist %BLENDER_USER_CONFIG% mkdir %BLENDER_USER_CONFIG%
if not exist %BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS% mkdir %BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS%

start Blender.exe

It should be setup in such manner that the file system would look like.
Blender Portable
 └Portable_Data
 │ └Config
 │ └Scripts
 └Blender.exe
 └BlenderPortable.bat

Adapt to your own needs, you may want Blender installation contained in an independent subfolder separate from the rest of the setup.


It looks like your retopology mesh is marked as X-ray. This makes the mesh visible through all other objects.

Uncheck it and all will be fine.

See the image below.


how is it possible to set alpha over as default for strip

You can't change the add/import settings, but you can batch change settings by selecting all strips needed, right click and select Copy to Selection.

Many properties will add values to full selection with +alt pressed, but it doesn't seem to be implemented for the blend modes.


Normal map baking creates distorted normal

For people who are having trouble with this, the solution is to make sure the models are directly on top of each other.


How can I optimize the code to parse lines in a file?

Suggest not adding a new mesh for every object,
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add

Instead you can add a sphere once, then reuse the mesh between all objects changing their scale. Its also possible for each object to have their own material so you can still share object data but have different colors.

Though you could even make do with a single material for all and just use object color.


How to specify a different value for a node parameter, part of a node group, for different materials

I didn't get your question, do you mean you want to duplicate the node group to different materials? ctrl+c and then ctrl+v in new material's node editor would work but I think you have to enable the "copy attribute" add-on


How can I lay down an object on a plane?

One solution is to use Blender's rigid body physics simulation. Basically, you simulate the object falling and settling on the floor from gravity.

In the Properties > Physics panel, turn on both Collision and Rigid Body for both your floor object and the object you want to lay down.

For the floor object, change the rigid body Type to Passive.

Press AltA to animate the physics simulation. You should see object fall down to the floor and eventually come to rest. Press AltA again to stop the animation. If you want to apply the final position to all frames, select the object and press CtrlA>Visual Transform, then turn off the physics for those objects in the Physics panel.


cant see edit mode in front viewport blender 2.8

You are probably viewing the back of your model rather than the front. Press CTRL+1 to view opposite side or/and ALT+Z to toggle transparency.


How to join two objects with curvy conjunctions

You can either use metaballs or sculpt brushes to make it look like the same object. However, I personally prefer metaballs if you are animating them.


I have the same issue on a Mac Pro 5,1 using an Nvidia 980GTX with 4gb of ram. It'll CUDA error on a simple scene sometimes.

• What I can find help is to shut all other apps down reopen Blender and try again.

• Reboot, only open blender and try again

• I use a 4k monitor, sometimes, halving the resolution can make it work.

I think it's a known error, that I really hope it's something that's addressed in the future.

Is this only mac users or do windows / linux users suffer the same problem? I might make a bootcamp or linux partition if there's no issues there.


Fixing Boolean issues between objects with matching edges/vertices

Okay so I found one way to fix this

Duplicate one of the two offending meshes
Apply remesh to the new duplicate
Separate a part of the mesh that included the offending vertices from the newly remeshed mesh
Delete the offending vertices and vertices that overlay with the new piece from the old mesh
Stitch together the old mesh and the newly remeshed part

The reason I needed to restitch the old mesh with the remeshed piece is because the remesh destroyed edges and faces that didn't fall along the remesh grid (aka curves and diagonals)

Still looking to see if there are simpler/less destructive ways around this though


Object becomes invisible after I join them

Change display type from Bounds to Textured under Properties editor > Object Properties > Viewport Display > Display as ...


Weight transfer producing undesirable results for clothing(2.78c)

I suggested projected face interpolated in the comments, but in your case "nearest face interpolated" works better. The reason is 'projected' projects along faces normals and in your case, some faces normals does not point to the base mesh.

Here is your file back:

Note:

Often, data transfer has to be tuned, and so you need to retry often. That's why I find easier and quicker to use 'data transfer operator' instead of the modifier.


How would I create a ribbon around a hat?

Alright!

I experimented quite a while for this. Cloth sim seemed to be a good alternative, especially this tutorial.

But eventually I found that modelling by hand the results are better, at least for the ribbon:

Start by selecting a portion of the hat:

Duplicate it Shift+D. Scale it along the normals Alt+S. Separate it P. Assign new material to it if you wish:

Add some edgeloops Ctrl+R. Deselect all A. In the vertex mode, go to 'Select' > 'Random'. Enter 15%. Deselect the top and bottom edgeloop, or the edges of the ribbon:

Slide the vertices all the way down GG. Select all A and in W select 'Remove doubles':

Add some horizontal edgeloops Ctrl+R:

Select all A and deselect the boundaries or edges of the ribbon:

Go to 'Mesh' > 'Transform' > 'Randomize'. I used these values:

Select all A, W > 'Smooth'

Then, select horizontal edgeloops in edge mode one by one and slide them GG in order to form tighter creases. Also scale them by their normal Alt+S in order to make nooks and crevices, or hills and valleys, or something like that:

Maybe add some more horizontal edgeloops Ctrl+R, maybe select all and smooth again A, W > 'Smooth'. Maybe select an edgeloop and add bevel Ctrl+B. This is the creative part, go nuts. Finally, add a Solidify modifier (and move it to be the topmost in the modifier stack) to give it some thickness:

That's it.

I hope this was helpful :)

.blend

In the .blend file there is also my simulation test, which doesn't look bad either (maybe it's even better for some situations), especially after you apply some of the methods mentioned here to the simulated mesh. Just play the timeline Alt+A to see the simulation in action. After that, it's handy to Apply the Cloth modifier and continue modelling from there:


Is there a way to batch render images from several cameras?

I actually hacked together an addon that allows you to do this (windows compatibility only and only Blender 2.8 tested). Once installed it adds a panel to the Output Properties tab with a button for rendering all stills and a button for rendering all animations.

https://github.com/astonfuture/render-all-cameras-blender-addon


No Generate Button for Meta Rig in Object Mode

To solve the problem:

Select the Human(Meta-Rig) then enter the Pose Mode

Select Object Data Tab

Now you can see the Generate Rig button


When UV Mapping, can my mesh contain triangles or N-gons?

Short answer: no, triangles don't matter, but N-gons might.

Here is an article demonstrating some of the triangle's downfalls.

I have heard people talk about triangles being hard to work with before, but that has mostly been in the context of animation. They can also be difficult to model, because you cannot use some functions, like a loop cut, on triangles. As far as I can tell, it shouldn't affect unwrapping in any substantial way. I usually try to stick with quads, because for a few minute reasons, they are generally easier to work with, but a few tris in my mesh has never given me any problems.

They shouldn't give you any problems either, because you say you are learning for game design. Remember, most game engines actually triangulate the mesh anyway, before taking them in the game. The engine doesn't think of them as quads anyway, it thinks of them as triangles, so having some triangles in the mesh shouldn't be a problem.

So if there are some extra tris, I wouldn't worry about it.

N-gons, however, are good to be avoided, especially if there is any type of animation or deformation to be applied. This is because if you have, say, a circle of six points, where one point is lower than the others, how is the computer supposed to draw that face? faces, by definition, must be flat. Depending on what engine you are using, these N-gons will usually be broken up into triangles, so that the engine can show something that fits the shape. However, usually you want to control where edges are, and you may not be happy with the way these N-gons are handled in your engine. This is one of the causes of polygon flickers while in game, and meshes looking wrong.

So N-gons should almost never be used, if possible, except on completely flat surfaces that will not be deformed.

I hope this helps, and if anyone has anything to add or correct, please do.


The side issue can be gotten rid of by clicking anywhere on your screen. It's a part of Blender.
It's used to set how you want your scaling, moving, rotating, added object, etc.
Example: You added in a UV sphere but you don't want many vertices so you change the sphere using it.


How to conditionally drop frames in the VSE (Video Sequence Editor) based on a dynamic condition?

You can do some cuts programmatically with Python and it should be well possible to use this black/white information as a source for the timing of these cuts. I've already done such cutting of sequences with Audacity Text markers from a file:

import bpy

f = open('cuts.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8')
data = f.readlines()
data = [w.replace(',', '.') for w in data]
f.close()

#bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].timeline_markers.clear()

for s in bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].sequence_editor.sequences_all:
    s.select = False

for i in range(0, len(data)):
    entry = data[i].split()
    start = int(bpy.utils.time_to_frame(float(entry[0]), fps=None, fps_base=None))
    end   = int(bpy.utils.time_to_frame(float(entry[1]), fps=None, fps_base=None))
    print(entry[2] + ': ' + str(start) + ' ' + str(end))

    for s in bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].sequence_editor.sequences_all:
        if s.frame_final_start < start and s.frame_final_end > end and s.channel == 2:
            print(s.name)
            s.select = True
            bpy.ops.sequencer.cut(frame=start, type='SOFT', side='RIGHT')
            for s2 in bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].sequence_editor.sequences_all:
                if s2.select:
                    s2.mute = False
            bpy.ops.sequencer.cut(frame=end,  type='SOFT', side='RIGHT')
            for s2 in bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].sequence_editor.sequences_all:
                if s2.select:
                    s2.mute = True

Now the only problem remaining should be the detection of the black/white stuff. There's a great solution from W-Sfax: Blender: Access Render Results pixels directly from Python

import bpy
import numpy as np

# switch on nodes
bpy.context.scene.use_nodes = True
tree = bpy.context.scene.node_tree
links = tree.links

# clear default nodes
for n in tree.nodes:
tree.nodes.remove(n)

# create input render layer node
rl = tree.nodes.new('CompositorNodeRLayers')
rl.location = 185,285

# create output node
v = tree.nodes.new('CompositorNodeViewer')
v.location = 750,210
v.use_alpha = False

# Links
links.new(rl.outputs[0], v.inputs[0])  # link Image output to Viewer input

# render
bpy.ops.render.render()

# get viewer pixels
pixels = bpy.data.images['Viewer Node'].pixels
print(len(pixels)) # size is always width * height * 4 (rgba)

# copy buffer to numpy array for faster manipulation
arr = np.array(pixels[:])


Invert displacement movement controlled by null?

Use a Vector Math node set to Multiply by (-1, -1, -1) to get the opposite of the input Vector. You can also use a mapping node to do the same thing with the Scale fields.
Also, FYI semantically, the inverse and the opposite are not the same thing.


Many operators work on only the active object and some will work on all selected objects, removing a modifier is a case of only working on the active object, the active object is the one that has it's properties displayed so is the only one with a visible modifier list.

You can delete modifiers without using operators, this way you don't have to change the active object and it also doesn't matter if the modifier has been renamed.

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
for o in scene.objects:
    if o.type == 'MESH':
        for m in o.modifiers:
            if m.type == 'SMOKE':
                o.modifiers.remove(m)


How to remove an Dissolved Edges without removing the Vertices?

Before the operation open up the tools panel of the 3D View.TAfter the operation, uncheck Dissolve Verts.

Alternatively, remove Only Edges and Faces X, then fill in the missing faces.


Model not smooth and imperfect after mirrored in Blender

It looks like you are using a "subdivision" modifier before the "mirror" modifier. That causes the rounding of the border you see in the lips.

Try to put the mirror modifier first (i.e. at the top of the list, use the triangle buttons to move a modifier).

And what I usually also do in this kind of situations, is set the "clipping" option in the mirror modifier, select all vertices in the mirror plane and move them back and forth a bit to "lock" them on the mirror plane (a small movement along the mirror axis shows you very quickly when the vertices "lock").


It's possible with a little addon:

bl_info = {
    "name": "Cycle Cameras",
    "author": "CoDEmanX",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 65, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Ctrl + Shift + Left/Right Arrow",
    "description": "Switch scene camera to next or previous camera object",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "3D View"}

import bpy

class VIEW3D_OT_cycle_cameras(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Cycle through available cameras"""
    bl_idname = "view3d.cycle_cameras"
    bl_label = "Cycle Cameras"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    direction = bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        name="Direction",
        items=(
            ('FORWARD', "Forward", "Next camera (alphabetically)"),
            ('BACKWARD', "Backward", "Previous camera (alphabetically)"),
        ),
        default='FORWARD'
    )

    def execute(self, context):
        scene = context.scene
        cam_objects = [ob for ob in bpy.data.objects if ob.type == 'CAMERA']

        if len(cam_objects) == 0:
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        try:
            idx = cam_objects.index(scene.camera)
            new_idx = (idx + 1 if self.direction == 'FORWARD' else idx - 1) % len(cam_objects)
        except ValueError:
            new_idx = 0

        context.scene.camera = cam_objects[new_idx]
        return {'FINISHED'}

addon_keymaps = []

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    kc = wm.keyconfigs.addon
    if kc:
        km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name='3D View', space_type='VIEW_3D')
        kmi = km.keymap_items.new(VIEW3D_OT_cycle_cameras.bl_idname, 'RIGHT_ARROW', 'PRESS', ctrl=True, shift=True)
        kmi.properties.direction = 'FORWARD'
        addon_keymaps.append((km, kmi))
        kmi = km.keymap_items.new(VIEW3D_OT_cycle_cameras.bl_idname, 'LEFT_ARROW', 'PRESS', ctrl=True, shift=True)
        kmi.properties.direction = 'BACKWARD'
        addon_keymaps.append((km, kmi))

def unregister():
    for km, kmi in addon_keymaps:
        km.keymap_items.remove(kmi)
    addon_keymaps.clear()
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

An operator to cycle through available camera objects is bound to CtrlShiftLeft Arrow to go to (alphabetically) previous camera and CtrlShiftRight Arrow to go to next camera.


You can model only one segment of a pattern then repeat it on x and y axis with array modifiers.

If you need a repeating pattern on complex object try tissue plugin

http://www.co-de-it.com/wordpress/code/blender-tissue

Here is fast preview of the workflow, you just create some planes make some loop cuts move edges up and down

add array modifiers to see the pattern, add more planes, then increase array count and add solidify modifier, you can always adjust or modify your main object later...


Deselect first and last vertices of a path with Python

The two verts with largest angle between two linked selected edges.

  the angle between the first and the last edge may be different but
  it's always larger than between all the other selected edges

Going by images in question you have a closed loop, if the two verts are ends of selected edge path, see below.

Test Script orders a list of selected verts, orders them by "edge angle" if they have two selected linked edges else assigns -1.  The last two vertices are deselected.

Note this is only a proof of context. Getting the angle of three verts a, b, c, edges ab, bc, could also be done via checking dot product of normalized edge vectors.

import bpy
import bmesh
from math import degrees

def edge_vec(e):
    return e.verts[1].co - e.verts[0].co

def edge_angle(v):
    edges = [e for e in v.link_edges if e.select]
    if len(edges) == 2:
        e0, e1 = edges
        return edge_vec(e1).angle(edge_vec(e0))

    return -1

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
ob = context.object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
verts = sorted((v for v in bm.verts if v.select), key=lambda v: edge_angle(v))

if len(verts) >= 2:
    for v in verts[-2:]:
        print(v, degrees(edge_angle(v)))
        v.select = False

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

EDIT

For the case here, where the verts in question are at either end of an edge path, it would be a matter of looking for selected verts that have only one selected edge in their link edges

verts = [v for v in bm.verts if v.select
         and len(e for e in v.link_edges if e.select) == 1]


GG is not actually a keybinding, G starts the grab operator and that reacts on certain keytrokes while it's running modally. It uses a modal map (keymapping) for this ability.

You can edit modal maps in User preferences > Input, but not call arbitrary operators (in fact, only sub-operations defined by the operator in C, like Select or Deselect in Border Select op).

For python-scripted operators, there's an event argument passed to modal() and you can check for keystrokes (event.type, event.value etc.) and react in whatever way.

Detect G keystroke in a modal operator:

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntProperty, FloatProperty

class ModalOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Move an object with the mouse, example"""
    bl_idname = "object.modal_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Modal Operator"

    first_mouse_x = IntProperty()
    first_value = FloatProperty()

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'MOUSEMOVE':
            delta = self.first_mouse_x - event.mouse_x
            context.object.location.x = self.first_value + delta * 0.01

        elif event.type == 'G':
            self.report({'INFO'}, "G")
            context.object.location.x = self.first_value
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        elif event.type == 'LEFTMOUSE':
            return {'FINISHED'}

        elif event.type in {'RIGHTMOUSE', 'ESC'}:
            context.object.location.x = self.first_value
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        if context.object:
            self.first_mouse_x = event.mouse_x
            self.first_value = context.object.location.x

            context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
            return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}
        else:
            self.report({'WARNING'}, "No active object, could not finish")
            return {'CANCELLED'}

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Transform Modal Map - what (sub-)operations a possible during the modally running operators:


Why does Cycles sampling give diminishing returns?

Cycles and all other path tracing render engines use Monte Carlo integration. The probabilistic error after N samples of Monte Carlo integration is:

This means that to halve the noise you have to take roughly 4x more samples.

Actually, we can do a bit better. You mention skipping samples in directions that have already been sampled, and we do this to an extent. Cycles uses Quasi-Monte Carlo integration, which means it uses a sequence of random numbers that is distributed well over all directions to avoid such duplicate samples.

Quasi-Monte Carlo has better convergence than basic Monte Carlo sampling, but it's difficult to quantify and depends on the scene and settings. The integral for global illumination is high dimensional which makes things quite complicated.

To halve noise you need somewhere between 2x and 4x more samples in practice.


Why don't I see the full range of a color ramp gradient after using modulo?

Try this setup. The key is the MAP RANGE node.


How do I add ambient occlusion or show shadows for the craters in my moon object?

I guess there are several solution, but you could simply use the Input > Ambient Occlusion node as a factor between 2 Emission nodes. Use a ColorRamp between the AO and the Mix Shader if you ever need to tweak the contrasts:


This is a bit unlikely because your mention of "vertex group", but a problem most similar to "render border" is when active camera's Clipping distance is too limiting for the scene's size. For example, the following scene is using default camera:

Lower-right object is of regular size, and intersects the camera's Start/near clipping distance. While upper-left object is 10 times larger and bumps into the camera's End/far clipping distance.

If this is the case, relevant settings you need to adjust are in Properties window > Object Data tab > Lens group for the camera object.


You either need to be in Pose Mode or have an armature object selected, otherwise the panel won't be displayed. This happens because the panel implements a poll() function that checks for these two conditions.


Groups and Layers in 2.80 were scrapped and merged into the same thing now for 2.8.
These things are called Collections.
Open an Outliner Editor. Click the "Display Mode" button in the header and select "View Layer" from the dropdown menu.
You can make a new collection by right-clicking and pressing "New".

Then you can rename your new Collection.

Then in the Properties Editor, you assign your collection to be simulated in a particle system.


Texture is pinching and artifacting on the rounded edges of a mesh

Intro
Spheres can be generated with multiple approaches. Every approach has its down- and upsides. It depends what you are trying to achieve.

Sphere from Primitive Sphere
The problem here is the vertex on top.
After applying subdivision you will get some interesting topology, looks cool but it's maybe not what you are looking for. I call it the tomato topology.

Sphere from Icosphere
Subdivision can be done while you enter parameters for the icosphere. There will not be a tomato topology. But there is a catch, you can't do loopcuts nor loopselections. Also it can cause problems if you use it with boolean modifier. Short: The triangle faces are causing issues down the line.

Sphere from Cube
With this approach you will be able to have quad topology without tomatos.
Loop selection is also possible.


Run ModalOperatorTimer automatically on animation playback

Solution to the above problem is to use Handler rather than a Modal Operator.
Thanks to @Chebhou for his help in this thread and here.

Below is a working solution to execute on playback using handlers:

import bpy

def refreshNow(val):
    mat = bpy.data.materials['Material']
    nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes
    nodes["Mix"].inputs[0].default_value = nodes["Mix"].inputs[0].default_value
    bpy.context.scene.update()
    return val

refreshNow(0)

bpy.app.driver_namespace['refresh'] = refreshNow
def my_handler(scene):
    refreshNow(0)

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(my_handler)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


All Reflections in Blender are Completely Black in look dev mode

I'm posting this only so I can post a screenshot. This is from my copy of blender (2.83) using the same settings you outlined. If all your settings are the identical, it's got to be some kind of bug or problem with your setup. See image:

EDIT - I downloaded your .blend file, changed nothing and took a screenshot. This is what I get - take is as you will:


Is there any way to put camera inside the sphere?

Try flipping all the normals toward the inside of the sphere. Then what ever space scene you map to it can be seen from inside it.


How to keep a bone in-between other bones?

You need 4 constraints:

Copy 100% Location from 1st bone
Copy 50% Location from 2nd bone
Copy 100% Rotation from 1st bone
Copy 50% Rotation from 2nd bone

But if the reason for the middle bone is to fix the deformation, you should fix that in the weight painting. If the reason is to keep the volume of the middle part, then it is ok.


How to increase light samples for world volumetric scattering only

You can use Branched Path Tracing for doing this:

Number after "Volume" multiply samples of volume on that value


Try the Edge split modifier. It will duplicate any sharp edge in your model before smoothing, making it looking sharp too. Look at this image:

Top left is an object without smoothing. Top right is with smoothing. It is not looking good. I only want smoothing along the top portion that is curved.

Bottom left is where I have added the Edge split modifier. This is the normal setting. This means any edge sharper than 30 degrees will be considered sharp (not smooth).

If this angle is not suitable, you can also manually select what edges should be sharp, see bottom right. Select edges, hit Ctrl+E to bring up this menu.

Here is an image of the settings for the Edge split modifier. It is very simple. You can control the angle cutoff and if you want to use manually marked edges.


Beginner’s help - How to make a disk with perfect semicircular edges

You could think of the discs  as a doughnuts with their tops and bottoms filled in..

Alt - select the midway loops of a torus, created by with the appropriate major and minor radii
V - drag rip the edges and hover-L select the inner faces
X delete them, Reselect the boundary loops
F fill the top and bottom


Pixelated paint strokes on transparent Blender-created texture

Richard Marklew, a mod at BlenderArtists.org answered my question:
Fix

It seems I was supposed to hook up the transparent texture's Alpha to "Fac" of the Mix Shader in the node editor. Fixed it easily.

Edit: I'll mark this as the Answer in a couple of days due to the account limit.


in preferences
Click ‘Input’ - Change the ‘Tablet API’ to ‘Windows Ink’.
http://www.easynlight.com/en/supporteasycanvas/?faq=75
worked for me :)


For 3D Printing, what you need is a "watertight" or "manifold" model. Both terms mean that there are no holes in the exterior of the geometry, but more importantly, no internal faces, which is what you have here.
A great addon for checking your model is the 3D Print Toolbox, which comes standard in Blender, you just need to turn it on!
The simplest way to fix this is to use a Remesh modifier, this will recalculate the object into "voxels" (3D cubes) of a specific size that you can define based on the exterior. This, however, is VERY CPU heavy! It's REALLY slow to calculate!
There is a MUCH better remesh option though. It lives either in the tools panel in the sculpting mode, or under the Remesh tab in the Object Data Properties tab.

0.1mm setting is more than good enough for 3D Printing. But be warned, this is still quite CPU intensive!
For your model, you may need to leave it for a few hours depending on how powerful your PC is!


You might have a scene such as this.

Scene:

(1) A model/mesh of a humanoid with animated walking.
(2) A cloth plane/mesh that is serving as a cape for the humanoid.

Assumptions:

(A) Let's assume that (1) is a high-res polygon mesh.
(B) Let's assume that (2) is a high-res polygon mesh.
(C) Let's assume that (1) is a collision object for (2).

The amount of collisions for (C) is going to be very high, especially since (A) and (B) is true. There are many possible solutions:

Solutions:

(I) Reduce the subdivisions for (1), resulting in low-res humanoid.
(II) Reduce the subdivisions for (2), resulting in low-res cape.
(III) Create a copy of (1) and reduce the subdivisions for only the
copy. Disable the original humanoid mesh as a collision object;
enable the copy of the humanoid (low-res) as a collision object. Now,
the cape will collide/simulate with the low-res humanoid instead of
the high-res humanoid. Finally, make sure to bake/cache/save the
simulation for the cape; now only render the cape & the high-res
humanoid (don't render the low-res humanoid).

You can do (I), (II), or both (I) & (II). However, I think the better solution is (III) where you make a low-res copy to stand in as a collision object.

Feel free to offer any follow-up questions/comments.


How to achieve Incandescence with Cycles materials

You coud mix a diffuse shader with an emission shader using a gradient ramp.


The cause is almost definitely your clip distance. You can make the objects you are looking at bigger or change the clip distance by pressing N in the viewport and changing 'Clip Start' to a smaller value.


Delete hidden connected face "inside" the mesh

This hidden face is one of types of non-manifold geometry, hence it can be selected using dedicated operator for this purpose - Select > Non-manifold (in 3D View header menu).

Note that this doesn't work in Face Selection mode (though MeshLint addon selects it even in Face Select mode, so you could use it as a reference).


How to correct these normals along bevel?

I think it was the material itself somehow causing it. I changed it to a basic material and none of the problems are showing.


There is a mod of the addon that works:

cd ~/.blender/*/scripts/addons/

git clone https://github.com/chromoly/blender-ScreencastKeysMod.git

then activate the addon

3D View > Properties Panel >Screencast Keys


Subdividing a face with subdivided edges

As a general rule you should avoid ngons and triangles.

To deal with the big and ugly ngon in the center of the screen,  select opposing vertices and Join them with using vertex connect: Press the  J key.

Then do that on the cross section.

Then get rid of all of the triangles and ngons and make every possible effort to use quads.

For some ideas on how to deal with changing topology see Johnson Martin's page on:

http://topology-guides.tumblr.com/

An example from that page:


Blender is only rendering a composite of a movie clip that I made and not the full scene, which I want it to

This is  the expected behaviour: if in the post processing tab compositor and sequencer are checked, the output will be overwritten by what is resulting in the compositor and sequencer windows.
So, to solve, uncheck thoose options or create in the compositor a render layer input and plug it in the compositor output node.
Be sure that no video sequence is in the VSE window also (or it will overwrite the output if checked in the post processing tab).


As @Lord Spectre said, blender.exe is a launcher to blender-app.exe.
From this thread on BlenderArtist:

When the devs moved Blender windows compilation to use mscv2013, it broke the OpenMP support for windows (that makes some functions multithreaded) (while legacy mscv2008 builds were still working good with OpenMP)
This nasty problem was noticed first in a sculpt mode report in which a simple brush stroke on even very low poly stuff was pulling CPU usage to 100% (without any actual performance gain) instead of the +/- 30 CPU use.
As a solution, the devs went with a "launcher" that would apparently set some variable to lower the impact of OpenMP breakage , the discussion between dev can be read on the august mailing list "[Bf-committers] OpenMP issues with msvc2013 builds".


Searching the error message in the source code shows 3 occurances, it appears that the "Copy Modifiers" operator is only available for some freestyle settings.

blender-2.69\source\blender\editors\render\render_shading.c
            BKE_report(op->reports, RPT_ERROR, "The object the data pointer refers to is not a valid modifier");
            BKE_report(op->reports, RPT_ERROR, "The object the data pointer refers to is not a valid modifier");
            BKE_report(op->reports, RPT_ERROR, "The object the data pointer refers to is not a valid modifier");

As described here Add the Same Modifier to Multiple Objects at Once? you could link the modifiers using Ctrl-L (Make Links) and select Modifiers.

Python:

bpy.ops.object.make_links_data(type='MODIFIERS')


Cycles performs this conversion automatically when a color channel (yellow socket) is a connected to a float/scalar channel (grey socket). As a result, there is no need to have an option on image textures to replace the alpha channel with the merged color channels. You can simply plug the color output directly into the float channel and it will use the luminosity.


Launch Blender cycles render from terminal with tiles rendering view

Ok I manage to solve my problem adding some line to my python script. This is the result:

import bpy
bpy.data.screens['viewport'].scene = bpy.data.scenes['scene']
bpy.context.window.screen = bpy.data.screens['viewport']
bpy.context.screen.scene = bpy.data.scenes['scene']
bpy.ops.render.render('INVOKE_DEFAULT', animation=False, write_still=True, use_viewport=False, scene="scene")

This makes me see the tiles rendering the correct scene and at the end it save the image in the dir specified in the render settings tab.

Now I've come across other issue but this is another story.

Thank you guys!


How can I make a 3D wireframe object hollow?

It isn't necessary to use python, you can use Boolean modifiers to do this.

Add a boolean modifier to one of the spheres for every other sphere which intersects with it:

Then apply all the modifiers either by click apply for each one, or by pressing ⎇ AltC > Convert to mesh.

Result:


If you go to File > Append or press ShiftF1 , you can navigate to the blend file, open the Group folder and import the group.

Appending the group will create a unique copy of it in the new file. If you want to keep working on the group in the original file and have any changes there be updated in the new file, you should Link instead. Go to File > Link or use CtrlAltO. Note that if you link however, you won't be able to edit the linked group.

Related - How to add an object from another scene?.


You must disable X Mirror and Topology mirror in the
Mesh Options panel.

See the image below.


No option to choose Left/Right click select in the 2.8 Preferences

You appear to have been using an older version of 2.8 with a custom keymap prior. Even through reinstalled, the custom keymap was kept.

The way hopefully not to get the Preferences Panel at the top of the Keymaps is to switch to a default keymap like Blender which strangely also has a few of the changed keys which were in the custom keymap.very strange