#ASC-CDL stands for the American Society of Cinematography's Color Decisions List
It's designed to create a standardized protocol to share basic color correction data across different systems from different vendors. It is a protocol that can be applied to either scene referred linear or log-like encoded imagery. The following outlines scene referred as Blender’s reference space is scene referred. Care must also be taken regarding white points and chromaticity, as using the CDL on work encoded differently to your reference will yield randomly different results, and the CDL is not a means to uniform grading changes alone. Reasonable advice is to not grade work prior to compositing, and grading should be the very last step of a pipeline.
It should be noted that applying the CDL on linear and log-like data has two completely different results. They include:

Log-like data will change contrast on slope adjustments, while linear will change exposure. Multiplication is a power function on log, and a scale on linear.
Log-like data will change exposure on offsets, while linear will literally be uniformly offset. Offsets are multiplication on log, while simple addition on linear.

The functions that the ASC-CDL node provides in blender are:
#SLOPE , OFFSET and POWER:

Slope:

Scene Referred Data is multiplied. 0 remains unchanged. Slope can be any number greater than 0. Default Value is 1. Corresponds to a uniform exposure adjustment when Power and Offset remain untouched.

Offset:

Data is added. Raises or lowers overall brightness. Offset can have positive or negative values. Default value is 0
Note: Blender's CDL node currently allows for negative values via the strange "Basis" entry box because of Blender's decision to not permit negative values in the UI. (It is best to leave this one untouched, unless you absolutely know what you are doing).

Power:

Data is multiplied by itself ^ amount of times. Power can be any number higher than 0. This function is considered "non-linear", as it changes the shape of the transfer function. The default value is 1
To expose the values and do precise numeric editing of any of the values click on the color box at the bottom of the big color circle to expose the RGB values used for the node's transform operations:

NOTE The CDL works only via RGB values. Working on HSV or HEX does not work correctly due to their nonlinear encodings. Also, the input to the CDL node must be scene referred RGB ratios. No other colour encoding model will work, so avoid any transforms in your node chain that change the format from RGB.
Even though the node in Blender is arranged differently, the order in which the transformations should be executed is SOP
The final formula to calculate combined transformations is then:
Slope= input x slope
Offset= (input x slope) + offset
Power= ((input x slope) + offset) ^ power
Also note that blender does not provide functionality to affect saturation as part of the CDL node. To control saturation on scene referred data a custom node group needs to be created to operate after the CDL node. Maybe a topic for a new question.
#Difference with Lift, Gain and Gamma
Lift, Gain and Gamma vary in definition between different systems and manufacturers.
In the case of Blender's color balance node, it is vaguely defined like this on the manual:

Lift Increases the value of dark colors. Gamma Will adjust midtones. Gain
Adjusts highlights.

There is no explanation on what that means, and where the thresholds for shadows or highlight begin or end.
The Code
To appreciate the nuances of the difference, it helps to look at how the formulas behave, and in particular, behave with scene referred data.
Here's the code for the ASC-CDL node:
float x = in * slope + offset;
return powf(x, power);

And here is the code for the Lift, Gamma, Gain node:
float x = (((linearrgb_to_srgb(in) - 1.0f) * lift_lgg) + 1.0f) * gain;
return powf(srgb_to_linearrgb(x), gamma_inv);

So aside from looking like mumbo jumbo gobbledygook, I'd encourage you to look at the line in the Lift, Gamma, Gain operation where it takes the linearrgb_to_srgb(in) - 1.0 value. Sadly, aside from an extremely myopic function name, there is a subtract from one, and an addition to one in there. This is the tell-tale mark that some bad assumptions are at play.
The Mangling
This speaks volumes about the nature of the formula. That is, it is display referred the moment you make grotesque assumptions about the values you are feeding into it. In this case, the 1.0 represents a maximum assumed value.
Of course, in scene referred imagery, there is no such thing as white, no such thing as black, and no magical values you can lean on that mean anything in particular. Cycles generates just such scene referred values, and as such, feeding a Cycles render through Lift, Gamma, Gain will not only not work at all, any results it delivers will be absolutely and critically broken beyond belief.
So, using Lift Gain and Gamma only works on information with a range of 0 to 1, making it unusable for those trying to work with higher dynamic ranges with much larger values.
The CDL has no such limitation. It can work on RGB values of any range.
Many formulas passed down through Stack Exchange and other sites with information all too frequently assume things about RGB that shouldn't be assumed. While Lift, Gamma, Gain is one such display referred assumed formula, there are many other traps like this. The AdobePDF specification lists many of them, and many of those formulas have sadly ended up in scene referred image manipulation applications. Screen, Overlay, Hard Light, Soft Light, etc.? Yes... all display referred and all will mangle your imagery.
The Standard
Beyond the basics of the formula simply not working, the ASC-CDL is a canonized function defined by the Academy. That means there is a specific specification that stipulates that in order to call itself the ASC-CDL, it must abide by the specification. Further still, because of this, you can find ASC-CDL transforms in many different applications. Unlike Lift, Gamma, Gain, if an application chooses to implement the standard, you can be reasonably sure (bugs notwithstanding) that it is identical across applications, assuming the caveats in the introduction are held to; different input data formats will yield different output even with identical CDL values.
Use and Reuse
Finally, because the ASC-CDL is a referential baseline, you can also find unique applications for the ASC-CDL, such as the ability to apply hand-crafted ASC-CDL values into a colour management system such as OpenColorIO, enabling an imager to quickly use Looks they have generated previously. Not only are you able to use a variety of different techniques to achieve this, as expressed in the previous notes, you can be quite certain that the formula is the formula you expect.
#But where is the "List" part of the Color Decision?
Even though ASC-CDL nodes in other apps have the ability to save their settings into a file, so that it can be used across different programs and vendors, Blender does not offer such capabilities yet. Manually creating an .XML file with the data is possible, and the color decisions translate (and can be reversed) across platforms. The beauty of this is that if you are saving to OpenEXR with no color correction baked into the image, you can set looks that can be reproduced on other systems. Or if the color correction has been baked into the image in an EXR file, it can be reversed on other systems for further grading.
How to create the text file would need to be the topic of other question.
In the end, it is up to an educated imager to be aware of the upside and pitfalls, and choose their tools based on solid foundational knowledge.
For more information on wide dynamic range rendering please refer to this post: Render with a wider dynamic range in cycles to produce photorealistic looking images
See also Mike Most's discussion about the CDL.
Main source used: ASC-CDL_Release1.2 by Joshua Pines & David Reisner, 2009


Ok I got it here. It's hard to do this in only blender. Using photoshop would simplify this..
    The idea is simple. Open photoshop (or GIMP whatever..) => load the image in => Cut it into two (Each one has a focal point, near and further) => Export them as PNG => Load the two images into Blender => Composite them, blur each one at a time to fake this defocusing effect!


There is no native support to that kind of device.

If it comes with a joystick driver you can use the joystick sensor.


How to make a prism with different shapes at each end?

add 13 vertices to your triangle, select all with A and connect with LoopTools > Bridge (tools tab in T panel). Can't screenshot now.


In the original video's strip, there are two handles, one at each end. Simply pull the right side's end out with the mouse button. (Left button I think)
Beware of any faulty or black frames that might be present at the end.
These can be sliced off with SHIFT-K.  Delete those.
Once the very end frame is valid video pull the handle to the right and this will extend that last frame out for as many frames as you like. You can use this extension to fade the scene out to black by keyframing the strip's opacity.
Take some abience audio from another part, copy and lay that with the silent extension, fade that out over the same frames as your inserted fade to black.
You can copy/paste the original audio strip, into a free strip and if I remember rightly, you might also be able to duplicate it with SH-D and simply drag the copy up to a free strip.  Once the copy is established, it can be sliced up to extract whatever you want, lay it where it's needed.


Can I "skin" edges to be a round pipe, not rectalgular?

Sure. You can use two modifiers, either the bevel modifier or subdivision surface modifier. Bevel is nice if you don't want to add any loops along the axis of the screw.

Using Bevel :

Wireframe :

Using subdiv :

Wireframe :


Is there a way to introduce a random size for children particles?

I have found what appears to be a solution, however it might be a bug/unexpected (or unsupported) behavior. What you do is you pretend you are going to use the Simple mode, set the random size, and then switch back to Interpolated mode. Some reason the random size data is "remembered" and now the particles are random sizes.

This appears to render correctly, and changing other particle settings doesn't appear to affect it at all.


Can you make custom seams "between" faces?


How to raycast a list of heights with ray cast

Object.ray_cast takes three parameters: origin, direction and an optional maximum distance.

The parameters origin and direction should both be lists/tuples of length 3 or mathutils.Vector, e.g.

sol = obj.ray_cast((posX, posY, posZ), (0, 0, 1))
location = sol[1]

If you're not sure about whether the original surface is below or above the target, you might want to offset the origin in the function, e.g.

origin = Vector((posX, posY, posZ))
direction = Vector((0, 0, 1))
sol = obj.ray_cast(origin - direction * 100000, direction)
location = sol[1]

Additionally, you have to keep in mind that ray_cast uses local space coordinates. If your target mesh is translated or rotated, you have to convert origin and direction from world space to the target's coordinate system first, and maybe convert the result vector back to world space afterwards. Or you temporarily create a copy of the object with transformations applied so that world space and local space are the same and then cast with the temporary object.


How to switch all lights on/off at once in Cycles?

You could just use instances. (Copying with Alt + D)
Or, after the fact, assign the same Data Block to every light here:

Alternative with Drivers:

Add a driver like this to the Strength of every lamp. That way you can maintain more control over individual lamps.

This uses the zLocation of an Empty and multiplies it with the Strength. You would simply use the same Empty for all Lamps. That way you can control them all at once.

Update for Color

Here's an example to control the color in a similar way.

This is the node setup for the Lamp.

Then add the following drivers accordingly.

This is relatively intuitive to use.


Boolean: one operator and multiple objects

In Blender 2.91, a feature will be added to support boolean operations on collections. (Commit ab7608af1bd4).


How can Image files be properly organized?

No, you are right. When blender encounters files with the same name (regardless of where they are from), it assigns a .### to the end of the newly loaded file’s data block name (same is true of any data block being introduced into the blend file, actually). As you said, though, the filepath property of the images are still different, and the images are not equal. You can look at this property with:
>>> bpy.data.images[“datablockname.png”].filepath


As far as I know, there isn't an add-on or method that can graph more complex mathematical functions in the way you want. As an alternative, you can put your equation into nodes and then render it with a Volume Scatter shader.

Begin with the default cube. Add a new material, and add a Texture Coordinate node (Shift + A > Input > Texture Coordinate) and Separate XYZ node (Shift + A > Converter > Separate XYZ):

Then, create your equation using Math nodes (Shift + A > Converter > Math). Here, I created your example equation:

Now, add a Color Mix node (Shift + A > Color > MixRGB) and set it to Multiply. Plug the texture coordinates in to one slot, and a Value node in to the other. This will scale our window:

Finally, multiply the output by 10 to increase the value, then plug it into the Density of a Volume Scatter and a Volume Absorption shader added together:

This will nicely display the function when rendered, though the shading isn't ideal:

click for larger image

To optimize rendering, change the following settings:

Although it doesn't give you a workable mesh, this can definitely give you a renderable graph.

We can also improve the look of it by coloring it:

click for larger image


text already baked before fluid simulation

In the Physics>Fluid menu, try changing the cache path to somewhere else (this should be an empty folder)

Also if you press "bake" when the fluid is already baked, Blender will automatically overwrite any previous bake in the same directory.


This script will select all the objects that have a similar volume to the selected object (by similar I mean the same rough scale - tens, hundreds, thousands, etc):

import bpy, bmesh

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh( bpy.context.object.data )

ref_obj_name     = bpy.context.object.name
reference_volume = float( bm.calc_volume() )
ref_vol_scale    = ( '%.0E' % reference_volume )[-3:]

# Select all the objects in the scene that have a similar volume (of the same scale)
for o in [ m for m in bpy.context.scene.objects if m.type == 'MESH' ]:
    if o.name == ref_obj_name: continue

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

    vol       = float( bm.calc_volume() )
    vol_scale = ( '%.0E' % vol )[-3:]

    if vol_scale == ref_vol_scale:
        o.select = True


Why does a duplicated object not mirror correctly?

The problem is that the X-Mirror option of the Mesh Options tab works by editing the mirrored vertices only when there is an exact X-mirrored counterpart (in local space).

Symmetrize does indeed create a copy on the other half and, in principle, if you are very careful, you can work fine with that X-Mirror option enabled. The problem is that if you accidentally duplicate vertices only one of them will be moved along with the mirrored one, the other one will remain static, which is what appears to have happened in your case.

As you can see, this is not a very good way of working with a symmetric mesh. Another complication arises when you want to add new vertices. You need to symmetrize every time so the X-Mirror option has mirrored vertices to work with.

There is a much better way of working with symmetric meshes, which is with the Mirror modifier, which works by copying every vertex from your mesh on the other half (in local space). At every time, you have an exact copy on the other half. Adding vertices or moving them also adds them or moves them on the other half. No need to use symmetrize. When you have the finished model you can click Apply on the modifier to make the changes permanent. At that point, the mesh becomes one and the mirroring stops working.

When you wish to add details that shouldn't be mirrored use a new object. Since modifiers are attached to the object, a new object without the Mirror modifier won't be mirrored.

Here is a .blend with the Mirror modifier used on your mesh. I used a separate layer so make sure to be on the correct layer. Notice that the X-Mirror option is disabled now. Also, I left the bridge unconnected so you could understand why you should check the Clipping option of the Mirror modifier. To see that, just move the edge loop of the bridge so it meets with its mirrored edge loop.

If you want to see the mirrored mesh in "edit mode" too, click on the last of the icons showing on the Mirror modifier settings. You can hide the mirrored mesh too if you click on the eye icon.

As an aside, the arm had duplicate vertices. While you are editing, make sure to select the part of the mesh you are working on and press W and Remove Doubles to not end up with duplicate vertices.

Also, to get better results on the curvature of the arm, try editing by extruding edge loops instead of using proportional editing. The basic workflow is by using an orthogonal view, pressing E to extrude the edge loop, then moving it where you want it, then pressing R to rotate it and S to scale it if necessary. If you are done and the result is not smooth enough, you can apply a Subdivision Surface modifier.


How do I make an object partially transparent in the 3D view?

In the bottom right area of your top photo, there are 2 settings visible: Blend Mode and Shadow mode, both are defaulted to opaque. Set Blend Mode to alpha-hashed, alpha-clip, or alpha blend. The other controls shadows cast by the transparency - you may or may not need it. You still can control the degree of transparency using the alpha value.

Alternatively, you could always enable x-ray mode at the top next to the viewport preview selection buttons.


Trying to render with GPU but it is not working

Only the 'Cycles' rendering engine can make use of the GPU. The 'Blender Render' engine (which you are using) only has the option to use CPU.

You can change to the Cycles render engine on the top toolbar, but it is very different to the 'Blender Render' and objects will need different materials made for them:

Once 'Cycles' is chosen the 'Feature Set' and 'Device' settings will appear in the Render panel.


How do I make a fluid simulation so it retains its shape till it touches ground?

One way to do this:

You will need two hammer head objects.  One of them is simulated as fluid, one of them is not.  I will call these the "hammer fluid" and "hammer static" objects for short.

Your "hammer fluid" object should be located in the position where you want the fluid simulation to start (i.e., the first frame where the hammer head touches an object / the floor).  For convenience let's call this Frame 100.  Using keyframes, the viewport and render visibility of the hammer fluid object should be set to OFF from frames 1-99, then ON starting at frame 100.  Once you have added the object to your fluid sim (as type "Fluid"), you will want to give it an "Initial Velocity" that is appropriate to whatever the hammer head was doing at the moment (e.g. falling straight down, moving side to side, etc.).

Your "hammer static" object should be visible from frames 1-99, then invisible starting at frame 100, again using keyframes.

From the viewer's perspective, the object will seamlessly transition from the static object to the dynamic object on frame 100.

In terms of the fluid domain, obviously it should be given the fluid material. It should also be invisible from frames 1-99, visible starting on frame 100. You would give the simulation an "offset" (Physics tab, Fluid section, under Time) equal to the transition frame times -1.  So in this case the "offset" would be -100.

Quick tip: you won't be able to bake your fluid sim unless you're on a frame where the fluid domain object is visible!


How to align vertex selection to an edge/vert?

You can use Vertex snapping set to Active.

Select all the vertices you want to move
Make the aligning vertex active (white), by clicking it on/off while holding shift
Set snapping to Vertex > Active
Move cursor over the target vertex


As I hit any of the keys, a force is added to its direction.

This makes them separate. But you say you want them combined.

So combine them. Don't apply them immediately, but gather them together, then apply a vector with the length you want.

The easiest way is to just add together the different impulses, normalize the resulting vector, scale it to the desired size, and apply the scaled result to the object.

Example:

from mathutils import Vector

combined_force = Vector()
vector_length = 10.0

if is_forward_key_pressed:
  combined_force += Vector((1.0, 0.0, 0.0))

if is_backward_key_pressed:
  combined_force += Vector((-1.0, 0.0, 0.0))

if is_left_key_pressed:
  combined_force += Vector((0.0, -1.0, 0.0))

if is_right_key_pressed:
  combined_force += Vector((0.0, 1.0, 0.0))

combined_force.normalize()
combined_force *= vector_length

game_object.applyForce(combined_force)

This calculation would occur at most once each frame, instead of repeating it for each key pressed.

A more complex way would be to track the direction as Euler angles, Quaternions, or Matrices, and calculating a final vector from those.


all Photoshop generated images (PNG, JPG, TIFF, PSD) show all black when loaded in Blender 2.8 as reference images

Turned out it was a problem related to the pc I’m using, as I’ve tried the same images on two other machines (another Windows and a Mac) and Blender worked fine showing all references correctly.


Change this setting to reflect the actual image size.


Objects, shadows and reflections not rendering in EEVEE

As Jaroslav mentioned in his comment this is an intrinsic limitation of EEVEE's rendering system, and in fact a broader shortcoming of screen space effects in general.

Since they are, as the name says, computed in screen space, only currently visible on screen objects are actually accounted for, as such, for performance reasons, as soon as an object is out of view it is discarded to save memory and rendering steps, and thus is no longer rendered.

This generally isn't a problem for direct lighting and visibility, but can have nasty side effects in inter-object relationships, like shadows, reflections, refraction, indirect lighting, among others.

There really isn't any elegant workaround or solution to this.

Luckily to minimize the effect the developers added an overscan option.
As of commit Eevee: Implement Overscan option it can be set in the Properties Window > Render Tab > Film > Overscan.

It is an option that internally increases render size, while keeping the field of view intact, virtually creating an invisible buffer area around the camera where objects are no longer directly visible to the user but still accounted for in screen space effects that need it.

  EEVEE: Implement Overscan option

  This option make the internal render size larger than the output size
  in order to minimize screenspace effects disappearing at the render
  edges.

  The overscan size added around the render is the maximum dimension
  multiplied by the overscan percentage.

This is a workaround however and doesn't really solve the underlying limitations. While it may slightly reduce these kinds of issues, it does so at the expense of performance.

If this is still insufficient you can improve the situation by using reflection probes to get proper reflections.

If those are still not giving good enough results, it is likely a sign that you are probably reaching real time rendering limitations, and may actually need to change render engines to something more robust with proper raytracing like Cycles or third party solutions.


cant get the sub-surf right (Blender guru beginner modeling tutorial)

I guess your mesh has something different in the bottom: I think you have a single bottom face (N-gon), which is causing this issue...

if you have this (sorry for the horrible mesh, I'm before breakfast...)

subsurf behaves well

while if you have a single N-gon face

subsurf behaves like in your model

if unsure, share your model through

http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

then edit your question and post the provided link...

edit:
after getting your file I found that this model has (still) several issues: at the base there are still n-gons, ruining the subsurf effect, but overall it has some other modeling issues... giving aso bad mirroring results.

About the ngons, this what you have one side

and the opposite is even worse

then below you have some faces with inverted normals

then again, its quite irregular on lines that are supposed to be quite linear instead: this ruins both mirror and subsurf

eg: here

Nothing terrible, and it can be corrected, but I suggest you to try to model keeping an eye on such things, because it helps you model better, and get better results. First, I recalculated normals (select  all in edit mode, then CTRLN)

Then I tried to remove those ngons, getting something like this

if you enable subsurf now, it looks better, but not at its best:

it lacks some subdivision at the base, eg:

with this further subdivision,

the base becomes more defined when you subsurf later

Here is the file a bit corrected (imho, it could still be improved)

Hth, Marco


Blender FBX importing of animation is rather limited - only handles baked animation (that is, animated curves that are a bunch of points with linear interpolation between them), for transform (loc/rot/scale of objects and bones) and shape keys influences.

Beyond that, not sure which version of the FBX addon you are using, but FBX importer often finds many 'animation stacks' compatible with an object in FBX file, it converts them as Blender actions, and (at best) randomly affect one of those actions to the object. So suggest you check the Action Editor, and re-assign the desired action to your object.


Yes. You can select Tab into Edit Mode, select one vertex of the shoulderMesh, FootMesh, etc. chunk, and key Ctrl + L. If the chunks really are separate, this should select only one chunk. If they are not truly separate, Box or otherwise select the chunk.

With the chunk selected, go to the Properties panel > Object Data tab > Vertex Groups panel. Find the corresponding Vertex Group (should be named after your bone), make sure the Weight: value is set to 1, and click Assign.

One Vertex Selected:

Ctrl + L keyed to select entire chunk:

Vertex Groups panel. Assign button visible while still in Edit Mode. Weight at 1 guarantees maximum weight assigned:


Why does the material show black in preview?

The material shows up as black in render because it has the Reflectivity factor set to 1.000, which means it reflects the world (which is set to very dark color) in 100%.

Try to decrease the Reflectivity of the material.

The object displays no textures, because the file has no packed files (image textures) within. Add your own texture using a Texture panel.


No fluid generated when baking data + baking mesh (2.90.1)

When there's no emission, look first at the emitter (Circle, Inflow). Your "Circle" object, although converted to a mesh, may have insuffient surface areas to emit anything.  I checked the Is-Planar in the screen-cap below, and all started to work, even after reducing the Domain's Resolution from 200 to 100 (faster simulation, less accuracy).

I had a similar "dripping blood" for an animation.  It took some patience to get the effector animated to occasionally drip and not occasionally pour.   You might want a few, smaller circles with animated "Use Flow".  Or instead of a circle with "Is planar" (inaccurate), consider using a cylindar, and adjust the Z-dimenison (smaller == less flow).  Or continue to use your circle but scale X&Y.


View layers, that previously are been here:

Now moved in top right corner:

This animatable checks

Now presented it view layer settings:

Per layer settings for exclude, holdout and indirect only, that previously are been here:

now can be setup in context menu:

You need to know that EEVEE doesn't supports holdout and indirect only at current time.


Color differs from Cycles render in Video Sequence Editor

You definitely have an issue in color management, specifically regarding transfer curves, but from the information you provided it is impossible to conclusively explain exactly why or how.

A PNG, if encoded correctly, should display as it was encoded in the VSE. If you somehow managed to mangle up the transfer curve when storing it in the PNG, via the "View as Render" awfully named checkbox for example, all bets are off.

So to properly diagnose this:
1. What were your render settings with regards to color management? Did you happen to check the "View as Render" toggle somewhere?
2. What file format did you save and how? For example, is it possible the file format was saved differently and merely labelled with the PNG extension?
3. What are the color space settings for both render and the VSE?


The issue was that your image was duplicating at the top, Under image mapping change the drop down from repeat to extend.


Bone heat weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones error hair

Automatic weights is an useful shortcut to speed up the weighting process, but every complex character will need some handmade fine tuning: you can rely to automatic weights only if the character is a single-piece mesh, manifold, no doubles, no crossings, ecc .... In your case there are lots of different spare parts. The hair, in particular, has inverted normals; after you recalculate normals you can select all hair mesh, then shift select the armature, go to pose mode, unselect all, select the head bone and Ctrl+P, "bone" option: in this way, hair will be strictly parented to the head bone, without any weight issue. Then you will have to fix all the dress problems ... Good luck, and start using manual weighting (my favourite way is "with empty groups": this option creates empty vertex groups that can be manually weighted in edit mode).


Switch Object key "D" not working on sculpt mode 2.92

I got it to work on the 2.93 alpha version currently out, by ticking Developer Extra options and enabling it on the Experimental Tab. Can't get it to work on 2.92 though, since the option isn't there.


All External Data i.e. images, scripts, VSE Strips, etc. are found and utilized through a Path. A Path may look something like the following, which would use Image.png and find it on my Desktop.

/Users/ShadyPuck/Desktop/Image.png

If the Path leads to a directory that doesn't exist or attempts to use an Image Name that isn't in that directory (in other words, it can't find the file), Blender will return pink.

What you need to do is locate the correct files for each pink instance in Blender's File Browser window.


Transparency options are all greyed out?

I didn't realize you moved this to a new question...try this:

In the Material, make sure you select 'Transparency' with Z Transparency under Render Pipeline Options.

Also under 'Options', turn on Face Textures and Face Textures Alpha. Under the Texture itself, make sure 'Use Alpha' is checked in the Image section.

Oh also connect the Alpha from the Material to the Output as before.


You may want to setup your own layout configuration.

I'd suggest:

Open Blender
Make necessary changes you want to the windows so that you'd get to the exact screen you want every time you open the Blender.
Press Ctrl + U {or go to top-left corner and click on File > Save Startup File > Save
Startup File (confirmation)}
Now, close the Blender application window and try to re start the application. You'll see the applied changes to your interface.

Something like this:

You can learn ways to setup the configuration reading the documentation here:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/interface/window_system/screens.html

There are tons of videos on customizing the layouts/ start-screen. One that I can recommend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqPJJGzqrQk

Hope that helps!


Connecting two points with a line/curve via Python script

Using API methods rather than operator.

Using methods outlined similar to those in Bezier-Spline with Python adds unwanted point .

Method to create a 2 point bezier curve object, with each end at defined global locations and the origin in the middle.  Notice the left and right handles types are set to auto resulting in a straight line.. (perhaps a poly would be simpler in this situation)

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

def add_bezier(v0 , v1):
    v0, v1 = Vector(v0), Vector(v1)
    o = (v1 + v0) / 2

    curve = bpy.data.curves.new('Curve', 'CURVE')
    spline = curve.splines.new('BEZIER')
    bp0 = spline.bezier_points[0]
    bp0.co = v0 - o
    bp0.handle_left_type = bp0.handle_right_type = 'AUTO'

    spline.bezier_points.add(count=1)
    bp1 = spline.bezier_points[1]
    bp1.co = v1 - o
    bp1.handle_left_type = bp1.handle_right_type = 'AUTO'
    ob = bpy.data.objects.new('Curve', curve)
    ob.matrix_world.translation = o
    return ob

As an example of usage, select a mesh object and run  script below to add curves matching each edge.

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
ob = context.object
mw = ob.matrix_world
me = ob.data

for e in me.edges:
    pts = [mw * me.vertices[v].co for v in e.vertices]
    o = add_bezier(*pts)
    curve = o.data
    curve.dimensions = '3D'
    curve.bevel_depth = 0.010
    curve.bevel_resolution = 3
    scene.objects.link(o)

Note should you wish to not use the global coordinates, could make a single axis aligned curve, and align it using the methods outlined in Align Object to Vector using python (consider using an end as origin)


Why is Blender rendering my vertical image distorted?

To expand on @rjg's comment, your aspect ratio (just below the image dimensions) makes your image's pixels non-square, thus squashing the final result.


Select the grab tool (G) and ensure the brush is large enough.
To sculpt properly, you need enough polygons to operate on.
If you don't have them, consider retopologizing via the remesher option in the sculpting mode and experiment with different voxel-size levels (smaller makes more polygons) of to find the outcome you want!
Don't go too low too quickly or you will lose the ability to make coarse changes to the sculpt: One's workflow should begin coarse and become fine over time when sculpting in detail-passes!


Add a plane.
Connect your texture to emission brdf in the plane's material
Add a camera above 2 meters the plane and make output size to equal width and height with desired resolution
Set it to orthographic and scale it to match the plane
Enable the emission pass and disable combined
In the compositor connect the emit pass to file output
Render as animation.

Repeat this for each kind of map if you have more than multiple maps.


Another option that is available if the machine are on the same network, is to enable placeholders and disable overwrite in the render output settings, then have each machine render to the same network folder. Each machine can then render the same frame range but each will render different frames.

While getting a little more complex, there is also a network render addon included with blender.


If one of your textures has an alpha channel, you can connect it like this. In the image below, I mix a Moss Texture (with transparency) with the BaseColor of a Concrete PBR Material, using a MixRGB node, and the Moss Texture's alpha channel as a mix factor.


Use the operator
For the time being whilst using Scene.copy() produces a zero user scene, using the operator instead, does not
bpy.ops.scene.new(type='FULL_COPY')

A new scene created via newscene = scene.copy() does not pick up  the window using it (as a user) when context.window.scene = newscene nor does the one being unset lose a user.   I imagine this will be fixed sometime soon.


How to make radius of one edge bigger than of a rest

Select edge you want to bevel 10 mm and Assign to Vertex Group
Add Bevel modifier > Amounth 0.010 > Limit > Vertex Group
Add Bevel modifier > Amounth 0.002 > Limit > Angle


1.

It might be that your panels are arranged in a non-default way.

If you use Blender Render or Blender Internal renderer (which is the default in a newly installed Blender):

Find the Diffuse panel and change the color there

If you use Cycles renderer:

Find the Surface panel and change the color there

2.

It also might be that you have created the material in Blender Render and then switched to Cycles renderer, or vice versa - which makes the material color slot disappear since the Blender Render and Cycles materials are not compatible (unless you know your way in complicated node setups).

In this case, easy way is to just remove the incompatible material from the minus button and add a new material by clicking 'New'.

I hope this helps :)

If not, post a screenshot of your material panels to the first post, that would be helpful.


Picture - saving in high resolution versus low resolution

(Assuming Blender 2.80)
Go to the tab shown in the screenshot and increase the pixel count for the x- and y- axis and set the percentage to 100%. Doubling the resolution quadruples the render time though.


Weird behaviour when using a normal map with a glossy node

Your normal map is just too strong. Turn down the strength:


This is what Custom Orientations are for.

In the Transform Orientation dropdown, there's a '+' sign, which will create an orientation from your current selection. You have the options in the operator to name the orientation, use the orientation immediately after creation, and/or overwrite the previous orientation, to avoid clutter.

If you create an orientation from an edge, or 2 vertices, then the Y of the new space runs along the edge. (I believe the Z is in the mean direction of the vertex-normals, and X is at right-angles to Y and Z)

If you create an orientation from a face or 3 vertices, then Z is the normal of the defined plane, (I think X and Y are the tangent and cotangent, and it's not easy to know which edges determine those, as a user)

So for example, to flatten to a plane normal to an edge and at one end of it, it could be:

Set Pivot to 'Active Element'
Select the edge and create an orientation from it
Select the vertices to be flattened, making the one at the end of the edge active
SY0 scale the vertices to 0 about the active vertex, in the direction of the edge.

In your case, you could also create an orientation from the opposite face, (the one you want to align to), and with the same selection of vertices, SZ0


Go to Edit --> Blender Preferences --> Enable Tooltips

Also, holding Alt while Tooltips are disabled forces the tooltips to show.

(I am using Blender 2.8 by the way)


Is Color Management applied to ColorRamps?

To answer the subject line, no.

But wait, there's more!

None of the UI in Blender is colour managed. That's right. With the exception of the HSV picker, which has a rudimentary bit of management flopped on it by way of the view transform, none of Blender is colour managed. One idiot can only bang on this drum for so long before they get a bit exhausted.

In your particular instance, the colour ramp is mapped from 0.0 to 1.0, which means absolutely nothing under a scene referred model, other than an arbitrary range of values up to 1.0. Filmic uses values that extend up to around 16.0 scene referred, so the colour ramp would need a colour transform selection on it to make it useful in this context.

So it is up to you folks! Filmic was crafted with the hopes of exposing the most basic concepts of colour management to the experienced pixel pusher with the hope that they will take up the torch and put pressure on the software. That is, it is up to you folks to put the pressure on the developers to get the damn software to work properly before adding further fluff.

Another interesting tidbit: Blender won't display correctly on every Apple product since 2015! Curves? Same problems as you cited here. And many, many more including problems of wide gamut references, mangled up blend modes from the display referred Adobe PDF specification, etc!

Good luck!


Exporting a Blender image sequence animation to unity

You can't export modifiers through fbx, even less modifiers with animations. Model animation wise, fbx can only store skeletal animations and shape keys.

For this particular one, you have two real options:

Apply each frame as shape key (go to each frame individually, make copy of the modifier, then click "Apply as Shape Key". As result you should have key for each frame in "Properties > Data" tab. Fbx will export shape keys to unity (called "blend shapes" in unity), though you will need to use unity's animation tools and/or scripting to cycle through the blend shapes. There's also unity plugins for doing this.
Script that in unity. For that simple and seemingly random displacement script/shader works just as well if not better and more efficiently. (details of implementing this are not topic of this site but of Unity answers or Game development SE)


When freemoving an object in 3D view, it doesn't respect traditional up/down/left/right.
It's keeping the same distance from your viewport camera, which can be confusing.

It's a consequence of navigating 3D space using a 2D mouse cursor/screen.
For precise movement you need to use the arrows.


Yes, this is possible (out of the box).  The mirror modifier has a mirror UV option, so you can mirror either the U or V (or both) texture coordinates.  So for example, you can model the left hand side of a head with the mirror modifier enabled for X and U.  Then unwrap it to the left-hand side of your texture.  The mirrored right-hand side of the mesh will have its UV co-ordinates on the right-hand side of the texture, so you can have something different there, e.g. a scar drawn on the texture's right cheek which appears on the right cheek of the mirrored model.


I have to run a for loop in blender, but screen is not being updated

This is how scripts are intended to be run in Blender. You should not attempt to update the interface while running a script - that can cause problems with other processes in Blender.

If you need some functionality that runs in Blender while the rest of Blender is functioning at the same time you should make a modal operator. There are a few examples included with Blender that you can reach from the Text Editor's header menu Templates - > Python -> Operator Modal... :


Apparently this happens when you start building your mesh with a mirror modifier and forget to apply the modifier BEFORE applying the armature to the mesh. Just go back to the point before applying the mesh, apply mirror modifier so you have only on mesh and try again.


It was a simple solution. I had to remove the weight painting from areas connected to the upper arm too, not just the upper arm. When I symmetrized, it copied all the weight painting on my right to left but kept it assign to the same bone/vertex group.


There is an option to do that, actually.
Make sure you're in Blender Render (internal) render mode, though, otherwise it won't work, in my experience.
In Fbx export options, under Main, look all the way down at "Path mode". Set that to "Copy" and make sure to check the little file-in-a-box button to the right (called "Embed textures").


Creating a translucent acrylic-like Shader

Just use a glass-shader in combination with a volume absorption-shader. The color is emitted by the light.


I tried on my Blender 2.78 and it renders this image:

Maybe it's what you want. I don't know.
I see the last node (before the composite one, I mean) is a blur.
If I delete it the image is this:

Is that what you want?

The compositing takes some time to process, and while he does in the Render on the Image Editor window is transparent. Maybe you din't wait enough to complete the compositing.


Blender 2.79 : you will find these options in User Preferences:

File > User Preferences > Themes > 3D View >  vertex colors and vertex size :


Python - draw custom panel in UI region only for 1 object

You would do this with the poll() method. It's a function within the operator class which returns true or false whether the operator can run within the given context. I can't remember for certain if the UI becomes visible/hidden or just active/inactive as a result... Could be either or.

The 'operator_mesh_uv.py' template has a pretty straightforward example for how it's used. It tests if the user is in edit mode, but it could just as well check if the active object is the correct one.

class UvOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """UV Operator description"""
        bl_idname = "uv.simple_operator"
        bl_label = "Simple UV Operator"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.mode == 'EDIT_MESH')

    def execute(self, context):
        main(context)
        return {'FINISHED'}

You could store the active object in a variable when the operator is registered and poll against that. Or you could manually add a custom property to the designated object. That way the information is stored within the blend file across sessions.

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return ("mycustomproperty" in context.object)


Here is what I came up with (Since it wont be animated I decided not to use smoke sim).

I used grease pencil D+Mouse click to draw the smoke.
Convert stroke to curves then in the curve menu I had the fill set to HALF and extruded until it looked good.
Then convert it to a mesh ALT+C.
I brought it into sculpt mode with a smooth brush and fixed all the wrinkles and odd looking things. Then used the blob brush to add thicker bulges where I thought they looked good.
Duplicated the smoke and changed how it looked with more sculpting and scaling.
The material added is just a simple diffuse (Principled BSDF) mixed with a transparent shader using a noise texture. I added a 2nd mix shader and transparent node to bring the overall transparency down.

Hope this helps.


You are getting this error message twice:

Which means you are currently operating on two separate meshes.  Each mesh has a face selected so neither is able to complete the operation.
If you join the objects by selecting them in Object Mode and pressing Ctrl + J you will be able to run the operation normally.


Can I use a USB drive as memory for rendering?

This is not possible. A USB drive is a storage medium, much like your hard drive.

The only possible useful way of using it, would be adding or moving the operating system's swap (pagefile.sys on Windows-based computers) to this drive but even if Blender would make use of it directly, it would be very slow.

Unfortunately there is no cheap way to replace RAM with something else.


How can I relocate the Transform tool in Sculpt mode (Blender2.81)?

Thank you for your answers!

I guess i wasn't clear enough but my problem only concerned with Sculpt mode.

However i've found a solution: Expand Mask by Topology (shift+a) and transform gizmo automatically jumps to middle of the unmasked are. IMO still an unintuitive and cumbersome method, but better than nothing. It'd be great If we can manipulate the tranform gizmo in sculpt mode independently.


How to generate a Transparency "Gradient" Shader?(Eevee)

I'm not sure to understand your node organization, in my opinion you should choose between the alpha and the transparent solution, which would give the ColorRamp plugged into the Alpha socket:

or the ColorRamp into the factor of the Mix Shader between the Principled BSDF and the Transparent:

Also, maybe deactivate the material Show Backface option?


Have it so animation has transparent background to overlay stuff in video editor (transparency)

By default, if you add a scene to the VSE, it comes in with alpha already, so you shouldn't need to do anything else. If you are rendering the scene, you'll need to enable transparency under the render settings. Go to your render tab, find the "film" section, and enable transparency. Next time you render, the VSE will update with the transparent image. Likewise, if you turn off transparency, the VSE will update with an image without any alpha. The viewport defaults to transparent, no matter the settings in the viewport or in openGL render settings.

Once you have the scene in the VSE, you need to change the strip's color blending mode to "alpha over" - then you can put that strip over your other media and the scene will be overlaid.

First is Cycles, then BI. (Thanks Sambler)


How to add an animated time controlled text effect to the VSE

You can use Animation Nodes to do this very easily:

You can do all sort of editing like:

The Frame Rate input is hidden by default, show it like this:


Blender 2.74 Depth-of-field is okay at 3D-viewport, but not in Render

You have to achieve the in-render DOF through the compositor. Run your combined image through the Defocus node as well as your Z pass output. The output will be the image with DOF as it was in the viewport render.


Only part one part of the model is being rendered

All what you need to do is move black part a little bit higher, because you have two faces on exact same level - overlaped. Blender can't know which one is on top.

Anyway: I recommend you search for some tutorials about topology and animations.


Go to the Edit menu, untick the box next to 'Lock Object Modes' so it is off.
This will allow switching to another object (and whatever mode its in). So, you'll have to switch the other objects mode to Sculpt. Once the objects individual modes are set to sculpt, you can switch between them and still be in sculpt mode.
I think the hotkey name is "view3d.select" you can search for it by name in the keymap editor.


Vertex count appears incorrect after removing doubles

With the standard API (bpy), the editmesh is flushed to mesh when you change mode. What you access is the mesh, which is still in the old state as it was when you entered editmode. What you want is the editmesh's vertex count, but you can't directly access it with bpy.

You could change mode to flush changes, but there's actually a better way in recent Blender versions:

# Load the objects edit-mode data into the object data
bpy.context.object.update_from_editmode()

If you work with the BMesh Module (bmesh) and a wrapped bmesh, the number of vertices will be immediately updated - but you may still need to flush changes from bmesh to mesh after adding/removing geometry or Blender will crash:

import bpy
import bmesh

me = bpy.context.object.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

print(len(bm.verts)) # 8 (in case of cube)

bm.verts.remove(bm.verts[0])

print(len(bm.verts)) # 7

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)


Blender - 3D view does not refresh with my python script

Ok I found the answer,
The while loop is not the way to do it because it freeze the render until it get out of it.
I have to code a class without this while loop


How to convert ZBRUSH .ZBP to a .jpeg or .png that I can use in blender sculping

If you can open up ZBP files to view it in a photo viewer( I have no experience with ZBP), then you, if you are using windows, can take the snipping tool in windows accessories and take a snip of it. It will be either a PNG or JPEG, I'm not sure, but it sounds like you are okay with both. If you are using an apple product, Control+Shift+4 will allow you to take a snip.


In 2.72, a Gaussian Blur effect was added to the VSE.

Simply keyframe the size to start at zero and increase to the amount you want.


Use the add images as planes addon to create a plane that has the video as texture for an emission shader.

Then add the text and give it a glass shader and place it in front of the plane.

For additional integration you might want to use the video as background for the world, that way the video will also be used for the reflectinons on the glass.


How do I get the object to follow the Mixamo Rig

There is an Armature of Trooper and Armature of Lightsaber consist from one bone.

Parent Lightsaber to this bone - select Lightsaber add Armature modifier > Object = Armature.001 and Vertex Group > Bone

Parent this bone to Troopers hand bone - in this case seems to me enough to select bone in pose mode add Bone Constraint > Copy Location > Target Armature > Bone mixamorig.RightHand and enable Offset to adjust proper position in hand.

On frame 60 the left hand if shifting so you would have to compensate that by Lightsaber rotation in that direction. Since Rotation Constraint doesnt use offset (like Loc does). You will need

add Empty
Parent to bone "LeftHandMiddle1"
for Lightsaber add Bone Constraint > Track to Empty
position Empty somewhere in a middle of fist

For animating object holded by two hands would be better snap hands and animate object. Like here Rigging two handed weapon. Animation from mixamo has quite a lot shifted hands so they dont match for holding stick (like lightsaber), fingers are also out of healthy human position :) nothing for camera close look.


Specific answer for the task at hand (image segmentation) is given by the bpycv module. This isn't the same as a general compositor -> bpy solution, but posting here in case someone else also happens to (somehow) miss bpycv, yet find this post.


There can be different situations, but the concept is that the stack order of operations is important:

When you duplicate (or mirror, or copy and paste inverted, etc ....) something, the copies will retain all the issues of the source: this is the reason why your right side of the character is piloted by the left bones (probably you copied or applied the mirror AFTER assigning wheights).

One of the  correct sequences could be:

Finish half a mesh, set a mirror modifier and apply it (so you have a complete mesh).

Finish half a rig (Left side); rename all bones with a name which ends with .L (or .l); select all .L bones and copy and mirror them; while all new copied bones are selected, choose "Armature - Flip names";

So, when you have  a complete mesh and a complete rig, you can go with automatic weighting and everything will work as expected.

Remember that - before parenting - you could need to ALT P clear parent and delete all vertex groups of the mesh, to "clear" any previous unwanted setting.


Two colors on one material on many objects with one blinking at a time

Use the pass index (= Object Index in Object Info Node) to mix the shaders. You can animate it if the blue object should change over time.


Link a Texture to Displace Modifier using Python

I had a similar issue and solved it this way. I was trying to create a blobbiness effect:

Make base object:

import bpy
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(subdivisions = 6, size = 1.0, location = [0.,0.,0.])
base_geometry = bpy.data.objects['Icosphere']
base_geometry.name = 'Base_Geometry'

I add this by default, you can't apply modifiers in edit mode, this assumes the object is already selected:

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

Make texture:

tex = bpy.data.textures.new("Voronoi", 'VORONOI')
tex.distance_metric = 'DISTANCE_SQUARED'

Make the modifier, set settings, and apply:

modifier = base_geometry.modifiers.new(name="Displace", type='DISPLACE')
modifier.texture = bpy.data.textures['Voronoi']
modifier.strength = -0.2
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA',modifier='Displace')

Hope it helps


I am using a Magic Mouse but am not able to select any vertices or faces

I also work with a magic mouse and only changing the Blender user preference is not enough. You also have to change the right click settings in the system preferences of your apple system. So .. check Secondary Click for right click on the Mouse preferences.


Increase thickness only on specific parts of a 3D model

Some modifiers have an option to affect only specific parts of a model defined by a Vertex Group.

The workflow is like this:

In Edit Mode select the vertices you want to affect, create a vertex group by pressing the Plus Sign on the right of Vertex groups.

Click then on Assign to make the selected vertices part of the newly created group.

To use the modifier on a specific vertex group, select it from the list available groups:

Vertices that are not part of that vertex group will not be affected by the modifier.

NOTE: If what you are missing are faces on the mesh, the solidify modifier will not fill those gaps. It will only make the surfaces of existing faces thicker.


For this kind of mechanical weight-assignment..
Through the 'Vertex Groups' panel in the object's Data tab

Select the vertices whose weights you want to modify
With the relevant group selected in the panel, set the value in the slider beneath it, and hit 'Assign'.

Or, in Edit mode, Vertex.. ( it might help to have 'Vertex Group Weights' checked in the Overlays, to see the weights as colors)

If the  active vertex is in an existing vertex group, then the Vertex Weights  dropdown will appear, as shown

Set the weight of the active vertex, in the indicated group.
Hit 'Copy' to copy the weight to the other selected vertices

Or, in Weight Paint mode..

With Vertex Masking switched on, and having tabbed out to make your vertex selection and back again, if necessary
Hit ShiftK to fill the selection with the current Brush setting.


Edit Many Materials at Once [Insert a Group in all materials node chain]

Look for Links.
Requested clarification, am making same assumption that you're after adding your group node between BSDF and Material Output.
Similarly to Look for Links method from this answer.  The concept is to look for a certain link in all materials and, if it exists poke a group node inbetween.
Edit To reflect your Node Group

Name of Node Group (groupname)
Name or Index of Input Socket (in_socket)
Name or Index of Output Socket (out_socket)

If there is no node group with groupname as name, do nothing print message.
Look for all node materials links (links) between BSDF  and into Material Outputs "Surface" socket.  Looking at the node type avoids error if the node has been renamed.
If there are links then add a new group node and plug the bsdf out into designated in socket and out socket into material output surface socket. (Need a drink)
Shift the  material output by 120% of group node width, and put groupnode where output node was.
Test script, as always back up first.
from bpy import data

# details of groupnode.
groupname = "NodeGroup"
# sockets to link by name or by index
in_socket = "Shader"
out_socket = 0

# get the group node
group = data.node_groups.get(groupname)

if group:
    # find all the links to poke groupnode into
    links = [
            (mat.node_tree, link)
            for mat in data.materials
            if mat.use_nodes and not mat.is_grease_pencil
            for link in mat.node_tree.links
            if link.to_node.type.startswith('OUTPUT_MATERIAL')
            and link.to_socket.name.startswith("Surface")
            and link.from_node.type.startswith('BSDF_PRINCIPLED')
            ]
    while links:
        nt, link = links.pop()
        # make a groupnode assign it group.
        gn = nt.nodes.new('ShaderNodeGroup')
        gn.node_tree = group
        # put group node at location of output node
        # and move output to accomodate.
        gn.location = link.to_node.location
        link.to_node.location.x += 1.2 * gn.width

        # the sockets
        group_in = gn.inputs[in_socket]
        group_out = gn.outputs[out_socket]
        # make new links
        nt.links.new(link.from_socket, group_in)
        nt.links.new(group_out, link.to_socket)
else:
    print(f"No groupnode named {groupname}")


Ambient Occlusion vs Environment Lighting?

I wouldn't think of Ambient Occlusion as part of your scene lighting, it's really a tool to art direct your image, and (if you output it to a render pass) for extra flexibility in the post production of your image. As Duarte already mentioned it is not physically accurate but is much faster to calculate so it can be helpful to increase the visual appeal of the render.

If you look at many artists' making of videos, you'll generally see that the AO pass is added on in post and not usually as part of the scene render. It's technically a localized shadow effect that gives you more control over the contrast in crevices and surfaces that are close to each other.

I generally think of it as a tool to give you more control over the image, it's more of an art direction tool than a realistic lighting tool. I think it's more helpful to think of it that way. I know you can have AO enabled and combined into your raw render, but it's much more powerful as a post effect.


Shader for reflective black plastic surface

You can get this result with just the principled BSDF.
If you look closely at your reference image you'll see the environment.  As mentioned in the comments those highlights are what we want to reproduce, and the ones you see in this image are coming from an HDRI environment texture.  This isn't even a particularly good HDRI for taking an image of something so round, perhaps.
You could approximate this by setting up some large area lamps focused on your object.


How to fix Cloth Simulation from this odd compression

If the fabric curls up like this or explodes the collision detection is usually to blame. But it takes only a few steps to fix this.

Add a floor: Add a plane, scale it up, add & apply a Subdivision modifier (3 levels, type: Simple), and add a Collision physics to it
Fix the door:

Swap the order of the modifiers to 1. Subdivison, 2. Cloth ←→ 3. Solidify
Change the levels of the Subdivision modifier: 2 (Viewport) and 2 (Render)
In the Physics tab, use the Silk preset. For some reason, your door plane is way too stiff. (Presets are in the drop-down menu right next to the Cloth section; the icon with 3 dots and lines).
Change the Distance of Object Collision and Self Collision from 15 cm to 5 mm (0.005 m). The default value of 15 cm is too high for your tent in real-world size.

Optimization: Remove the Collision from the 2 branches objects. It has no effect on the result since the fabric slides only briefly over the left branch and is attached to the right branch anyway. But the removal will speed up the simulation.
Run the simulation. It should run smoothly. If you get single vertices that go crazy for a second ("spikes"/"fireworks") increase the Cloth → Quality Steps from 5 to 9 and they should calm down.


Answer to Ratt :have you considered Creating a patterned carpet

Thanks very Much. I did not created a new mesh because I wantted to keep this. So I just made a simple texture and add it to the mesh:


How to resize selected part of uv image in python?

At last, i've found an answer:

#edit the object
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(0.1, 0.1, 0.1))
#edit the image's selected part size
bpy.ops.uv.smart_project(island_margin=0.4)
#come object to first status
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(10, 10, 10))

I know, it's a kludge. But it's a pretty kludge, and works! :)

Thanks everybody.


This behavior is normal for Blender including versions before 2.80.

Weight > 0 belongs to new or selected Vertex Group.

One bone can affect different groups with blending by weight by design.


I don't know if there's a faster way:

Put the origin of the object you want to snap on its bottom face (first in Edit mode select the face, put the 3D cursor on the face with a Shift S > Cursor to Selected, then in Object mode set the origin to the 3D cursor (header menu bar > Object > Set Origin).

Enable the Snap with these options: Face mode / Align Rotation to Target / Project Individual Elements.

Snap the cylinder to the face you want.

To align the cylinder with the cube, select the cylinder, then the cube. The cube being the last selected, it is said "active", it has a yellow line all around.

Go in the header menu bar > Object > Transform > Align Objects.

In the Operator box (bottom left) choose Relative To > Active and the axis you want your want your object to be aligned with (press Shift to select 2 objects.


how to show reflection of a different object in cycles

I slapped together a quick example. In short -
The visibility options for the first object (Suzanne) have glossy, shadow and diffuse turned off.

The second object (cone) has only visibility for glossy enabled.

This results in Suzanne not being visible in the reflection and the cone just being visible in the mirror.

Depending on what you're needing, there might be more involved ways of doing it via compositing, but I hope this answers your original question.


How to hide custom shapes' object for bones in armature?

Unlink these objects from the scene:

import bpy

bpy.context.scene.objects.unlink(bpy.context.active_object)

Pros:

There will be no clutter, even no extra stuff in outliner
You will be able to still see them in the dataview outliner.
Bones will still use them as shapes
They won't be deleted with file save
It will still work with file linking

Cons:

You will have to link them back to scene to make changes, so do this last
Other people won't know what's going on, it's not standard and I would do this only on personal projects
It might not work with future blender releases, its a hack.


Two steps would help to solve what happened in your case:

Set the Alpha percentage of Overlay to some non-zero-percent value;
Press Reset Transform button right behind the texture selector.

As shown below.

Btw, your texture stencil is on the upperleft corner of the 3D Viewport, which can be seen if you maximize the 3D view.

Shortcut tips when working with texture stencil and texture mask stencil:

For Texture Stencil:

RMB: Stencil translation

CtrlRMB: Stencil rotation

ShiftRMB: Stencil scale (Allow constraining on X/Y axis)

For Texture Mask Stencil:

AltRMB: Stencil translation

AltCtrlRMB: Stencil rotation

AltShiftRMB: Stencil scale (Allow constraining on X/Y axis)


I think you're missing one main point: a UV map is needed to make a correspondence between the mesh faces and a texture to paint to. And this UV is to be set up in the texture panel.

So the recipe is the following:

Have a mesh object
Go in edit mode Tab
Select vertices and unwrap (there is several ways to unwrap, I consider here the simple one): use U the "smart UV project" and validate

Create an image
Go to the texture panel
Choose the texture type as "image or movie"
Choose the image created above
Set the mapping to UV

Now you can paint:

Note that there are possibly several slots to paint to and you can add other textures or texture types from the "slot" tab available in paint mode:

In complement, here is how to create the image:

Open a new view
Set it to "UV/Image editor"
Use the "image" menu then "new image"
Validate the panel that opens, eventually renaming the image as you want


Weird fuzz/shading error on a render of a house model. Help?

The problem on the triangle of your house is that there are intersecting meshes. To fix the issue, go into edit mode and hit W>Remove Doubles. also make sure that you don't have an duplicate objects.

To fix the noise, change this setting:

The higher you set it, the less noise you will get, and the longer your render-times will become.


How to let Mesh Deform modifier work as expected

For very rough cage, especially when using larger cage to control smaller target mesh, you need to set a higher value for Precision.

So, two ways to solve this:

Try to scale down the cage object;
Try to set a higher Precision value in the Mesh Deform modifier panel. (5 might be relatively appropriate for this particular case)

Note:

Normals on cage mesh are used to determine the inside/outside of the cage, so make sure they are pointing outside. Flip them if not.
The cage mesh has to be a closed mesh (manifold) to work well. When in Vertex or Edge selction mode, You can press ShiftCtrlAltM to find the non-manifold edges.


Pie menu goes away after selecting an option

Pie menus are not intended to stay there and if it would be possible it would be a terrible workflow to get used to. I'd reaaly like to see popups like Shift + A stay but pie menus don't even have the right layout and would take up way too much space.


Quick and dirty workaround: Save a copy of your file, delete the unwanted keyframes, and export.


I think he's not extruding, just moving up, no? He must have activated the Proportional Editing option, and perhaps Random type?


I think I found the issue.. I was pressing the "disable in viewports" instead of "hide in viewports" ... it seems to be working now.


How to swap Y and Z axis on export to Collada

No. Blender's Collada exporter does not have a convenient way to do this. Your best option is to rotate the object as you mentioned.

Note that just rotating the object might be insufficient for some applications, e.g those which actually care about Collada's up-axis specification (which can be either Z_UP or Y_UP).

If you're working with one of those, you'll also need to manually edit the exported file.


The Shrinkwrap modifier is probably what you're looking for. It has a mode called "Project" that will just translate the objects along one axis until it reaches the target.
You probably won't be able to use the Shrinkwrap modifier on the fences themselves, though. You'll probably have to create a strip of edges that goes on the ground where you want the fence to be (you can make it not renderable, so it doesn't show up). Then you'd use the Shrinkwrap on that to make it stick to the terrain. Then you'd use Dupliverts to make a fence piece on each vertex of that strip.
There may be a simpler solution. I hope this idea will get the creative juices flowing...
From the Manual on Shrinkwrap:

The Shrinkwrap modifier allows an object to “shrink” to the surface of another object. It moves each vertex of the object being modified to the closest position on the surface of the given mesh (using one of the three methods available).

From the Manual on Dupliverts:

Duplication Vertices or DupliVerts is the duplication of a base object at the location of the vertices of a mesh. In other words, when using DupliVerts on a mesh, an instance of the base object is placed on every vertex of the mesh.


To copy/paste keyframes you use the highlighted buttons below:

To fix the other issue You need to unpin the animation in the NLA editor as shown below and the animation will be there after frame 30 normally


You can disable automatic switching to perspective from orthographic via preferences:

Menus → Edit → Preferences → Navigation → Orbit & Pan → Auto Perspective (remove tick).

I personally make use of Quad View, which splits the viewport into four regions: Top Orthographic, Front Orthographic, Right Orthographic and User Perspective. Also handy to enable "box" mode so any zoom / pan done in one area is synchronised with the others:

Menus → View → Area → Toggle Quad View
Sidebar → View → Quad View → Box


How would I cut across a plane using a die-like mesh/curve?

To cut the shape on the plane with a curve object you can use Knife Project tool. Place your curve object above the plane, while its selected hold Shift and select the plane, switch to Top View, then Orthogonal View by hitting 5 on the Numeric Keypad and change to Edit Mode.

Then In Edit Mode select Knife Project in Tools tab.

To avoid errors in the mesh, before using Knife Project tool you can subdivide the plane few times or convert the curve object to mesh.


What is the process for applying a realistic texture over an emission object (ex a fluorescent lamp cover)?

Add a texture to control the strength as well.
So you would have a texture for the color and one different for strength.
To further control the strength you can add a math multiply node (or any other math operation you want) before the strength socket.
using the image from the reference:

For even more control you can add a Light path node and make it so that the camera doesn't see a brighter version of the emitter. Use Is Camera Ray, to control the mix between the visible emitter and the one that illuminates objects.

If you want the lights to flicker in animation just add keyframes to the multiply value or to the emission strength.


Recalculating and flipping normals not working—but manually re-adding the faces does? (Simple mesh)

The mesh has some inside faces, and Blender is confused by it :).

Select the inside faces through Select > All by trait > Inside Faces
Delete them with X > Faces
Done.

Credits to @John for finding the best solution for his own problem :).


You have this huge n-gon (a face with more than 4 vertices) which is a problem when using subdivision surface (and more generally, it's a problem for pretty much everything else too).

From looking at the model I think you had a picture of the profile of the glasses, you then extruded a plane following the profile, then extruded the plane inward to get the thickness and then you just pressed F to fill the remaning hole. That's not going to work. You need quads everywhere. You can either fill each quad manually or try to bridge the loops, but this model is a bit messy.


Why my monkey is rendered with only a mesh?

If you right-click that dropdown you can assign a shortcut key, but personally I don't use this feature very often, so I've never set one.

The usual way is to use the Z key to change the viewport rendering mode (note this is for all objects in the viewport).  You can also use the buttons in the top right of the viewport.


Can not intersect duplicated loopcuts into model

Try deleting the face loop under the duplicated portion, then using W>Bridge Edge loops (WE):


You can perform a "double side material" node setup with the geometry node (selecting the backfacing option). The following image presents half a cube where the exterior is grass and the interior is gravel. The backfacing option uses the same UVmap but shows the texture for the other side of the faces, so from your steps, you can ignore step 8 and step 9. The same technique is used to create double sided pages, in a book or similar.


In order to do that , grab those image textures and mix those with a mix rgb node . Then set the mix mode to multiply and factor to 1. In case it's a png image then don't forget to use alpha as factor. Alpha value won't work in eevee . So set the blend mode to alpha hashed.
Hope that helps.


Well thats interesting, you have discovered that animating the strip's "offset" value only produces a linear f-curve.

But you can change this curve so that the animation speeds up and slows down, instead of proceeding at a fixed rate. It will look more natural.
Change one of your windows to an F-Curve view, like this.
 See how the animation curve is a straight line.

Or you can press the T-Key to get this menu, choose Bezier (or any of the fun ones on the right, 'back' is my favourite).

Animating the Strip's Offset value will look far more natural now. Did you know that when you animate pretty much every other value in Blender, you will get the bezier curve automatically? Its just this one value doesn't do it like that.


See that little rounded corner where edges meet?
Hover over it, then click-and-drag it in whatever direction you want to create a new tab.

To remove a tab, right-click on that tiny darkened line that separates the tabs and select 'Join Areas'


Mesh A changes after joining it to mesh B

I too dont understand why the smoothing is happening. But you can fix it by clicking in the flat option, and flat shading should be applied to the whole object again. Maybe someone else can explain what is happening.


How can I scale a set of vertices to the size of another set of vertices?

In the begining, create shape keys you'll use for animation (as NoviceInDisguise suggested, thanks):

Then, in Edit mode you select the vertices you'd like to scale. To not mess up pivot center, select only vertices located on one plane. Turn on snap during transform with Shift + Tab, set the Pivot Point to the median with Ctrl+<:

In this case you don't need to remove doubles, and now it's possible to use shape key, created before. In Object mode drag the slider and test how it works:


Rendering appears all grainy and dark after using Diffuse BSDF

Your matierial is flawless and gorgeous. It's your lighting setup you need to fix. Move your lamp a little further away from your objects and crank up the strength. I put it about halfway between your objects and your camera and put the strength to 3000. Also on the lamp, lower the bounces. If dark sharp shadows are what you're going for, lower the size of the lamp to zero, as well. That will reduce some of the graininess. A lot of it is also simply render samples. Go to your light paths and pick 'Global Illumination' from the dropdown. Increase your render passes to 200 or higher. If you find it's rendering slowly, go to performance and change the tile size to a multiple of 8. (I just went with 8).


Normal Map Node - Can't See A Difference In Render

You have the mapping nodes in the wrong place. The image texture should be connected to the normal map node, the mapping node should be connected to the vector input of the image texture.

To keep the two image textures aligned, connect them to the same mapping node.

You should also change the colour space for a normal map to Non-Colour.

Note that the mapping node looks different in 2.81


It may be because your UV map is deformed. Check in the UV editor and if your map seems deformed: in the viewport select the top of your counter in edit mode, go in top view by pressing 7 then press U and click Project from view. (Scale your UV map afterwards to get a decent result)

It should work after that ;)


Car Suspension - Getting Contact Depth and Speed From rayCast()

OK! Here is the deal.
As I already told, I obtain the length of the contact ray already. I will not discuss it's obtanation here, it is just rayCast() method with some more math.
Now I do suspension_length - ray_distance.
This returns the contact depth or x value. To get the speed of it I make a property exdepth for my suspension and after the end of frame I store the depth(x) value into it. Than on start of frame I compare them like so: x - exdepth and than I get the contact speed value(Vcontact).
And that's it - issue solved;)


How to split mesh into several smaller ones with respecting UV map?

I believe I have a way. This is what I did, and it worked perfectly.

Shift + A > Mesh > Plane.
Go to the Properties panel > Object Modifiers tab and add a Subdivision Surface modifier. Use these settings:

Key Tab to enter Edit Mode, U to open the Unwrap menu, and select Unwrap.
Split the 3D Viewport and make the new panel a UV Image Editor. Open your image in the editor.

Tab out of Edit Mode.
Add a Displace modifier. Click the new texture button. Use these settings:

Go to the Properties panel > Textures tab. Load in your image from the dropdown menu.

       You should now see your texture displayed on the plane in the 3D Viewport. Note that you
       may have to adjust the Displace modifier > Midlevel: value for your texture to sit right near the
       origin point. I have to use 0.836.

Tab into Edit Mode. Key W to open the Specials menu and select Subdivide. Key T to toggle open/close the Toolshelf. Change the Number of Cuts to 3.

In the UV Image Editor, key S, then .25. Additional UV Editing may be required, but this should start you.
Key Ctrl + Tab to open the Mesh Select Mode menu and either key 2 or select Edge.
Select these edges:

Key V to Rip the edges.
Select these edges:

Key V to Rip the edges.
Key Ctrl + Tab to open the Mesh Select Mode menu and either key 3 or select Face.
Key A once to select everything.
Key P to open the Separate menu and select By Loose Parts.
Tab out of Edit Mode.

Note that one reason the separated planes may not look the same as one intact planes is that the separation provided each plane with an additional two subsurf levels, effectively. You would have to turn down the subsurf to 4 on each midget plane to get the midget planes to look the same as one large plane.

Here is the .blend file:


How to Render Composite layers for timeline video creation

Easy Peasy - I was trying to use Render Image to render my animation sequence, not render animation.  After doing another project I realized I need to render animation either as a series of images (preferred) or as a single video output.  I was thinking that Render Animation was not for the image sequence but for the movie output.  Now I see that is part of the output format for Render Animation. ;-)


I just discovered custom functions which are a way to expand driver functions using python. This way I can use any complex geometrical calculation in a driver with the help of numpy and math.


Need help with clothing my character mesh

Lets see if this helps.

Select all the faces of the mesh your want to make clothes for.
I did face select, then i highlighted all the faces. (Photo above)

Duplicate that mesh by hitting 'Shift + D', then press 'enter'. After this you want to scale the mesh by going to your tools manu and hitting the 'scale', 'shrink/fatten', or 'push/pull' tab. (photo above and below)

To make the mesh "baggy" or thicker you can add a modifier like 'solidify'. (photo below)

change the 'thickness' value to get the desired results. (photo below)

these were my results.(photo below)

Thats it! now just shape your clothes to the desired shape and/or add a subdivision surface modifier to make it smoother. Then if you want you can sculpt the clothing, but thats all up to you.


Where is "view selected" inside Blender 2.80?

It seems the feature is now called Frame Selected

You can find it in View -> Frame Selected
The default shorcut is . on Numpad


How to find back-faces and delete them with python?

If you know a little bit of python you can modify and expand upon this snippet:

  from: http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/routines/r_dot.htm
           When deciding if a polygon is facing the camera, you need  only calculate the dot product of the normal vector of      that
  polygon, with a vector from the camera to one of the  polygon's
  vertices.

  If the dot product is less than zero, the polygon is facing the camera.
  If the value is greater than zero, it is facing away from the camera.

this could be further optimized, but I think that obfuscates the concepts. Run this code from 3dview (a 3d view context) either through a camera or user/perspective view - with the object you want to work on selected and in Object mode.

from mathutils import Vector

def get_locals(context):
    region = context.region
    rv3d = context.space_data.region_3d
    obj = context.active_object
    vertlist = obj.data.vertices
    return region, rv3d, obj, vertlist

and

def select_front_facing(context):

    region, rv3d, obj, vertlist = get_locals(context)

    # neat eye location code with the help of paleajed
    eye = Vector(rv3d.view_matrix[2][:3])
    eye.length = rv3d.view_distance
    eye_location = rv3d.view_location + eye

    for idx, polygon in enumerate(obj.data.polygons):

        vert_index = polygon.vertices[0]
        pnormal = obj.matrix_world * polygon.normal
        world_coordinate = obj.matrix_world * vertlist[vert_index].co

        result_vector = eye_location - world_coordinate
        dot_value = pnormal.dot(result_vector.normalized())

        if dot_value < 0.0:
            polygon.select = False
        else:
            polygon.select = True

Here is a short working demo, you can run this from text editor:
https://gist.github.com/zeffii/5766177

I use it in my basic SVG renderer, to fake a wireframe material which occludes back-facing, it isn't perfect for all possible use-cases but it works to 'select back-facing'. You can run the SVG renderer directly from the Text Editor, and it will set every front facing Polygon to the select == True state.


How can I add an image as a texture that looks exactly like a background image (full brightness and unaffected by lighting)

This is the original browser window with the Blender render window on-top showing the default cube rendered over original page, which was clipped as an image.

And this is the node setup that created it.


Around 2:00 minutes at the step 4 of the video tutorial : compose the texture atlas.
This texture is simply a single large image composed of several buildings facades and roofs images found on CGTextures.com.
So this is simply a copy/paste process.


Appearently, I created a duplicate of: How to roll the viewport?

For a quick answer:

use CTRL + SHIFT + SCROLLWHEEL.

Thanks to  @Ray Mairlot


Armature mesh edit snaps back returning to Object mode

this post was helpful for a better understanding of Shape Keys and the purpose of the 'Basis" key:

select 'Basis' Shape Key
in object -> Edit mode, make my modifications to the mesh
exit object EDIT mode and the changes stick


Visual C++ Runtime Error 2.69 Startup (Fresh Installation)

Blender 2.69 uses and comes with Python 3 meaning that there is no necessity to install Python 2.7.5 or any other version at all. Due to the changed syntax, etc. you'll most likely run into syntax errors or non-executable code.


The rotation which was done in Edit mode can't be reset as it would be possible with rotation in Object mode. Depending on the case, it's possible to use workaround.

Create an empty. While still in Object mode, enable Snap During Transform and choose Snap to Face as type of element. Enable Align Rotation With the Snapping Target button.

Grab empty, hovering the mouse over faces which should be rotated along world axes. I.e. in case of building this will be faces representing the floor.

Once empty is snapped, it gained new rotation values. Parent object to the empty with Ctrl+P.

Select empty and clear its rotation transforms (Alt+R). Object will follow changed rotation and should become aligned along world axes (or at least roughly aligned).

Clear Parent with (Alt+P) by selecting Clear and Keep Transformation.

Select empty, then delete with X.


This may be what you are looking for, if it is then I will circle back around to explain the details.


Animation node addon overwrite keyframes standard animation

I'm not 100% what I had was the what you're asking ^ but I had a similar thing where i had keyframed location and used animation nodes for rotation. even though i never enabled Transform output for location it still became 0 location when rendering even though in the viewport it looked like it moved perfectly.
my solution was to take the object transform input node and plug it's location into the object transform output node.
which seems weird but hey it worked for me and maybe it'll work for whoever reads this in the future.


It is hard to tell conclusively without looking at your mesh.
Possible reasons for this kind of shading artifact are:

You may have a non-planar quad. (where not all the vertices that make up the quad are on the same plane)
You may have an n-gon. (despite from the screenshot it looks like a quad)

In either case adding a Weighted Normal modifier to your object should fix the problem.  However if you would like to go a bit deeper into this I would suggest first identifying the issue. (you can share your blend file here, we can take a look)

If the issue is having a non-planar face (quad), there is a Flatten command. (you can go into edit mode and press F3 to search.)
If the issue is having an n-gon, selecting the face in edit mode should tell you in the status bar how many vertices it has.  Probably there are two vertices very close to each other due to boolean operation.


Enable Alpha & Specular Color for textures through python

To set MaterialTextureSlot.use_map_alpha on all texture slots on all materials.
    import bpy

for mat in bpy.data.materials:
    for ts in mat.texture_slots:
        if ts is not None:
            ts.use_map_alpha = True
            ts.use_map_color_spec = True


Terminator artifacts
As gandalf3 pointed out, you are suffering from terminator artifacts. I have seen this before in my own models, but didn't know that there is a name for it :-). This is one issue with normal mapping. Blender uses the normal map to calculate the final shading at a particular point on the model, but it can't use the normal map to determine whether or not the light is hitting part of the model. Blender only uses the physical model to calculate where the light hits. Normal maps are only a form of trickery used to make the model appear to be higher resolution than what they actually are; they don't really add new geometry.
The reason it didn't appear when you were using Blender internal is probably because the lighting was different (judging from the picture). You will have to either use subdivision to make the lighting calculations more accurate, or adjust your lighting so that the dark area is lit.


Using Armatures with Grease pencil object

Basically, every GP layer can be parented to a bone in the N properties panel. Each bone can control more than one layer, but every layer is controlled by a bone only, so you will have to create multiple layers. Use the "mantain volume" bone constraint to achieve "squash and stretch" effects.


Novice needs help with slicing section off a tapered cue

A couple of ways I might do this:

Using the KNIFE tool with Cut-Through enabled (K, then Z) to slice through the mesh at your desired angle. Though note this is likely to result in Tri's or Ngon faces, which might not work well if you have a subsurf on the mesh.

Select the faces you need to flatten and use the 'Flatten' command (press space, search flatten) - then rotate the selection or use proportional editing to move the flattened faces to the desired angle.

Hope this helps!


Creating Divided Highway using Nurbs Curves?

You cannot extrude a complete branch from a vertex mid curve but you can extrude (E-key) a single vertex out (t just hangs loose from the main body of the curve), then extrude it back to the fork location.

Use another curve object that is just a small straight line to bevel the shape of the road.


Cannot enter edit mode after moving item to another layer?

To enter Edit mode the active Object ( not an : Empty, Camera, Lamp ) should be on a visible layer.


See through object in Blender game engine

I have found a solution. I was using a uv map as the texture for the plane. However, if I change the render mode from multitexture to GLSL, and use an image as an texture, it will display the plane correctly. It looks like there was a problem with the plane is under where I am, so it will show "through" the plane.


How to loop over the API for creating a generative code?

You can take advantage of the dir() method in python to access "public" attributes of any object. You can use it for each modifier in the selected object :

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

for mod in obj.modifiers:
    print(mod.name, 'Modifier')
    for attr in dir(mod)[4::]:  # We skip the first 4 attributes which are internal
        print('  ', attr, ' --> ', getattr(mod, attr))

Exemple with an object with an 'Array' and a 'Curve' modifier :


How to export UVMap to paint with external tools

Once you unwrap your object. Use Export UV layout in the UV/Image_Editor

Then choose the format in which to export your image and the size you want:

Create your texture in Photoshop:


Why is my normalmap rippled and pixelated?

There is a Mirror modifier on the model on the X and Y axis. So you have four parts UV mapped to the same place after you export( I'm assuming you had the "Apply modifiers" option checked). The artifacts are "layering" caused by the normals being baked four times to the same area. Either apply the modifier and remap the UVs, or export without the modifier applied and bake.


How to make UV loft like 3ds Max in Blender using curves?

In Blender 2.68 which will be released soon. has this built-in (but as a mesh tool).

Any recent testing build will have this available.

Access from the Face Menu: Grid Fill


Use skinning and cloth simulation at the same time

For the cloth I recommend using the cloth simulation instead of rigging it.

The problem you might have encountered when trying cloth simulation ("cloth drops") is the wrong order in which two modifiers are: For the human body the collision modifier comes before the armature modifier. This is a problem because the movement and also the location of the objects collision isn't affected by the rig.

Here is how to fix it:


Water droplet particles appear dark and muddy (2.8)

I assume this is under Cycles.

Double-check that the Base Color is full white.  By default, a "fresh" Principled Shader uses 80% linear white (i.e., all RGB channels=0.8, not 1.0).  In addition, you'll want to change the IOR to 1.33, so the drops are water, not glass.

Beyond that, you can try replacing the Principled BSDF with a Refraction BSDF (also with 100% white color and IOR=1.33).  This looks brighter in some lighting conditions and darker in others -- overall, I think it looks brighter for drops viewed head-on.

If that's still not bright enough, you may want to try turning the alpha down a bit on the Principled BSDF or consider a Mix Shader to mix a Refraction (or Principled) BSDF and a Transparent BSDF, to let a little extra light through.

Here's a denoised render of four droplets, from left to right -- Principled BSDF with default 80% white and IOR=1.5, Principled BSDF with 100% white and IOR=1.33, Refraction BSDF with IOR=1.33, and mix 70%/30% (i.e., factor=0.3) of Refraction BSDF with Transpartent BSDF.


In your example you can set the timeline on the 9th keyframe, then hover the mouse over the right side of the dopesheet timeline and Ctrl click (select all keyframes from here to the end), then press G 2 enter. Now you're ready to draw your Inbetween.


mesh rotation error after i attached the bones

Once you've parented your mesh, you often need to corect the IK Pole Angle so that the mesh doesn't get twisted by the IK:

Also, always bend a bit the knees and elbows in Edit mode so that Blender knows how to bend these limbs once rigged:


Make the camera go and return on the path?

You can achieve this using the following steps:

Create a path with the desired shape
Switch to Edit Mode, select all control points and duplicate them Shift + D and unselect all
Border select the point were the Camera is supposed to turn around
Create a segment between the two select control points by pressing F
Add a Follow Path modifier to the camera, tick the Follow Curve checkbox
Press the Animate Path button in the modifier

With the two points being in the same place the camera turn will be very sudden, but I assume this is what you want, judging by your description.


Particles (hair) size and random size in blender 2.79a not available in advanced

It is normal and documented here:

https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/2018-January/103452.html


Is there a conflict between GPU rendering and the Firefox Browser in 2.8?

I finally worked this out. If the Firefox browser is open on my computer, the GPU render time increases from 6 minutes to 1.5 hours per frame. The solution is to close that browser and then the render times drop again. Don't even have to restart Blender. And once the render is running, I can open up Firefox again although it does seem to add about a minute to the render time.


TL;DR: The B value in your Math node does that.

Your current node setup is quite simple: It picks up the current frame, multiplies it by B, and sets the result as your object's Z rotation value.

If you think of it, the "speed" in which your objects rotate is basically B for each frame.
Depending on your animation's frame rate, you can get easily a value per second.

Let's say you animate on 24fps, then its B*24. Here 5*24 = 120° per second.

Now if you want an explicit representation of that in your node tree, it's simple, you just have to make so that you give how mutch degree per second you want and it divides it automatically by you animation's FPS and sends the result to your B value.

Select your math node, hit ⇧ ShiftD to duplicate it and move it to the left.
Set your new Math node to Divide and connect it to the B value of your first Math node.
Press ⇧ ShiftA → Number → Float. Connect it to the Divide's A value. This will be your degrees per second.
Press ⇧ ShiftD to duplicate that float node and connect it to the Divide's B value. This will be your animation's FPS.

Unfortunately, I can't find a way to make it automatically pick up what's used as frame rate in your scene settings so you will have to set it manually. But here's the result:

Notice you can add label to your nodes by selecting them and opening the sidebar with N.

For animating values through time in animation nodes, see this post.


How to focus the camera to rotate around spots in SCULPT mode?

The same key (numpad ./del) will focus on the last part your cursor touched. This does mean you need to click somewhere for it to work, but the only other way I know of is to lock your view to the cursor (in the view>view lock tab of the sidebar) which is a bit more finicky.


Can I get vertex's coordinates result of cloth simulation?

You can use the dependendy graph to do that (supposing the simulation is already baked):
import bpy
import bmesh

# Set the frame considered as the result of the sim
bpy.context.scene.frame_current = 30

# Get the dependency graph state for this frame
dg = bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()

# The object
obj = bpy.context.object

# The mesh from the object and dependency graph
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_object(obj, dg)

# Take the coordinates
for v in bm.verts:
    print(v.co)

del bm


Change the export stl file code from Exported from Blender-x.x.x to object name

Slippery Slope.
Would investigate doing this in a post pro way, Using something like sed   or python, to run thru stl files and automate the bothersome edit, rather than updating the addon code.
That said, a quick edit to change the header when writing to ASCII
stl_utils.py
def _ascii_write(filepath, faces):
    from mathutils.geometry import normal

    with open(filepath, 'w') as data:
        fw = data.write
        header = _header_version()
        fw('solid %s\n' % header)

        for face in faces:
            # calculate face normal
            fw('facet normal %f %f %f\nouter loop\n' % normal(*face)[:])
            for vert in face:
                fw('vertex %f %f %f\n' % vert[:])
            fw('endloop\nendfacet\n')

        fw('endsolid %s\n' % header)

change the code (circa line 205) from
header = _header_version()

to
header = filepath

or to hack it just to use the filepath stem "/path/foo/bar/stem.extension"
from pathlib import Path
header = Path(filepath).stem

or to hack it just to use the filname (with extension) "/path/foo/bar/filename"
from pathlib import Path
header = Path(filepath).name