Smart UV unwrap might work, but this is how I would do it.

make a seam with Ctrl+E along one of the edges of the cylinder.
Select the circle edges with Alt+click (m1 or m2, however you have it set).  Mark that as a seam with Ctrl+E.
Select everything (if your cork is a separate object from the bottle).  Press U to unwrap.  You should get a rectangle and circle in the UV editor, position these how you want.

As a side note, it looks like you have a lot of fireflies.  You may want to follow this article: https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/7-ways-get-rid-fireflies.  In short, use a larger light source and use multiple importance sampling (properties/world/settings).


How I could replicate this bumpy texture?

If you'd rather not spend the poly-budget until render-time, you could do it with a Cycles (only) displacement shader. The features seem to be following the topology, so you could U UV unwrap your object with the 'Reset' option. That will make all the quads occupy the whole 0-1 UV space.
For render-time displacement to work,at the time of writing, Cycles has to be set to 'Experimental', and the material has to be set to 'Displacement', or 'Displacement and Bump' in its Settings panel.
The object has to be subdivided sufficiently to resolve the displacement detail. However, Cycles can decide how much render-time subdivision is needed, on a per-pixel basis, by giving the object a Subdivision Surface modifier, and checking 'Adaptive'.
Then you can use this sort of shader-tree:

To get this sort of result:

The 'Subtract' and 'Multiply' nodes could be a vector 'Mapping' node, if you prefer, and the 'Vector Curves' could be a 'Color Ramp' node, if you'd find it easier to use.
EDIT: Thanks to commentary by @Chris, about problems he encountered with this tree, I think it would actually be easier to use RGB Curves than Vector Curves.. the 'C' combined adjustment becomes available.. it behaves better. Here's his .blend, given the easier set-up:


A "true" gaussian blur is not limited by distance - if the 'centre' point is strong enough it would have an effect on even the most distant pixels in the image (the gaussian distribution falls off towards zero as the distance increases but never actually reaches it). For efficiency, the Gaussian blur in Blender is limited by range in each of the X and Y directions - so the value falls off with distance but cuts off at the edge of the range. Since the range is determined only in the X and Y directions this forms a 'square of effect' of the blur from any pixel in your image.

This would not normally cause a problem since relatively low intensity pixels would naturally drop off to very close to zero at the edge of the range when the gaussian blur is taken into effect. However, in your case you have extremely large values for your bright points. This means that the gaussian has not dropped quite so close to zero at the edge of its range to be unnoticeable and so the edge of that 'square of effect' is noticeable.

The only solutions I can suggest are to either limit the brightest stars to lower values or to blur them in multiple stages to 'spread' their impact more evenly - eg, instead of a single Blur of 20x20 you could use one at 10x10 to soften them out followed by another at 17x17 (I picked these values 'by eye') to produce the following :

(The left-hand side is the 'single' blur (showing the square artifact edge) while the right-hand is the 'double' blur)


How to use Displace and Solidify modifiers to produce constant thickness

You can use custom vertex groups in the Solidify and Displace modifiers in order to keep the inner surface intact.
First add a vertex group to your mesh.

In the solidify modifier, expand the Output Vertex Group foldout, and set the Shell group to be your new vertex group.
Also, in the displace modifier, set the vertex group field. You might need to invert the effect with the double sided arrow next to the field.

Result (with a subdivided plane for simplicity)

On Suzanne (probably not the best model for that since there is a lot of mesh intersection but I hope you get the point)


Part A) Assessment with Blender 2.7x.

(i) here are all the areas that may need some more attention because they are all overlapping quads.  The entire texture will show up on every one of these quads as a tile.

(ii) In the following area, there is a noticable overlap of the UV faces.  This tends to happen when there are non-planer poly's along a curved surface.  Separating this island into two pieces using a seam along the affected should help to clear this up.

(iii) The bottoms of the feet look like this for me(still have not checked 2.49b)

(iv)  The spikes on the head are very long and cannot be unwrapped as a continuous piece without heavy stretching.

(v)  As a general guideline, I feel it helps to imagine the UV's as being made out of paper which has a picture printed onto it and since paper does not stretch, it's good to avoid stretching the UV's by marking seams at any sharp transitions.  I tend to mark seams at all 90 degree angles.
For a model that is roughly spherical shaped, I use the axis as guides to follow the 90 degree guideline

(vi) The following image shows where some of these mysterious unmarked quads are coming from.  They are internal faces that I guess happened from repeated extrusion operations.

(vii) Now in the following image I have Unwrapped the model again after adding a few seams and deleting some hidden faces and there is just one little stray UV island and when it's selected, it reveals a part of the mesh that is a bit tangled and has an overlapping redundant quad that should be removed.

(viii) Once you have a cleanly unwrapped model, it's a good idea to inspect the UV's by zooming in and panning around to check for problem areas that are not immediately obvious.  In the following image I've circled a quad that comes to a very sharp point.  This is certain to cause problems with baking.  Pixels from neighboring faces are probably going to bleed over the sharp tip and cause noticeable artifacts.  A vertex can be selected and manually moved over so the quad is more properly shaped.

(iv)  One other thing that helps to reduce UV mapping errors is to zoom out so the UV's are really small and verify that you can see a clear distinction between all of the islands.  When a model is far away from the view and rendered, the UV's will also be very small and the renderer will have a hard time mapping the texture to the proper coordinates.  This causes colors from one island to bleed over the edges of other islands, it shows the seams.  With normal maps it can be even worse because there will likely be some very noticeable flickering.

I'll post the repaired .blend file in the comments when it's ready.  I've baked an AO texture using Cycles to show the results.

The baked map is being displayed using Blender Render(Internal)/GLSL Shadeless Material.


The armature is there, it is huge.
To see it select the object on the outliner and on the 3D viewport press Numpad Period

You might need to adjust the clip start and end for the viewport...

Alternatively use the scale option on the importer to make the size more reasonable:


When your (not specified yet) emitter consists of an object that adds other objects from it's own position, you can parent it to another object. This way the newly added objects will be added at the current position of the emitter.

This is useful on engine trails, smoke, fire.


Create a plane that renders nothing behind it?

Give the plane a holdout material. This should make it block everything behind it and yet be completely transparent.

I will try to update the answer with screenshots soon.


Unable to scroll wheel zoom with a Wacom Intuous Pro - Seems to think I'm Pressing Shift?

To solve this simply change one of the touch ring functions, in Wacom Tablet Properties, to "zoom". This will stop the issue.


Cannot find the action editor in Blender since 2.5x

The Action Editor is a mode of the Dope Sheet


Enabling GPU rendering in a background script in 2.79

In the end this approach worked, the server I was rendering either didn't have cycles enabled or I saved in the blend file to use CPU.


Can I combine my GTX 980Ti with another card like GTX 1660?

You cannot run two graphics cards on the same tasks unless for Nvidia graphics cards unless they are the same make and you are using an SLI Bridge. You can have them on two seperate tasks if they are different but not the same. I have this motherboard but for Intel unfortunately, I did not know about thread rippers at the time. Could have had 6 more cores on top of ten for what I paid. But, this is the best I think. Works great on dual boot with CentOS. Just do not install gnome on it. Go with a Plasma KDE desktop. Gnome will most likely cause the login screen in CentOS to take along time to load if even at all.

https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-X399-Designare-EX-Motherboard/dp/B07662S766/ref=pd_sbs_147_9?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07662S766&pd_rd_r=540bdb43-7b92-4671-bb17-a62503bac9b1&pd_rd_w=5KI67&pd_rd_wg=yGvMq&pf_rd_p=7c0dad87-8a25-4c4f-9349-026039ea6cb3&pf_rd_r=2039ZHRGX36XF8JRM04J&psc=1&refRID=2039ZHRGX36XF8JRM04J


Getting the scene an object is in (blender 2.9)

object.users_scene seems to show the scenes using the object.
Blender's Python Console is very useful when finding this stuff out. If you start typing and hit Tab Auto Complete shows you all the options you have:


As commented by @RobertGützkow, you have Snapping enabled:

That means your vertices will be snapped to the closest face while moving them. You can disable it altogether or hold CTRL while moving.


How can I render the way the render preview renders?

Yes, you can easily do this.

In your render settings under Performance just check: Progressive Refine.

Use very high samples and just stop the render, when you are satisfied with the way it looks.


Crumpled cloth/paper-like black artefacts on render

Is it possible that you are using a Musgrave-noise as input for a bump-node for your surfaces?
If so, you should add a "Clamp"-node in between, as Musgrave can deliver values outside the expected bounds.
(There used to be a great answer with this info some months ago, but I couldn't find it any more to link it here, sorry...)


can I install Blender internal render engine into 2.8 so I can open my old projects incompatible with Cycles and Evee?

If you want to keep using Blender Internal, you'll have to use Blender 2.79 and prior versions. You cannot add the old render engine back into 2.8.


Moving Square to Sit onto Sphere's Face?

3 techniques at a minimum are possible.

Particles and Duplication on faces and Inset Faces.

Consider particles in the selected object in the image below.

The orange cubes are particle objects rendered by the particle system.

Consider duplicated objects in the select object in the image below.
The selected sphere is the parent of the cyan cube.  Duplication panel ... select faces.

The cubes location are determined by the sphere.  They are moved off the sphere for discussion purposes.

3rd Technique for Trapezoids placement.

Create Cyan UV Sphere. Edit Mode. Mesh Select Mode Faces. Select All.

Inset Faces. Accept Inset. Keep Selection.

Scale Mode to individual Origins.
Scale To Taste.
Switch Mesh Select Mode Vertices. Invert Selection.  Delete Vertices.
Some of this is visible in the Info Window in the image below.

For discussion purposes a yellow sphere was placed in the middle.


How do I stop both my path animations starting at the same time?

The option Fixed Position let you control the position of the car from the starting point of the path (0) to the end (1).

To animate the position of the truck, go to frame 300 and set the value to 0, then press I to add a keyframe.
Do the same for the last frame of the animation and set the value to 1.

This method allows you to use the same path as a "Follow path" constraint for multiple objects.


Why is rendering only showing images from the previous render?

In Render Properties, look at the Post Processing panel. Disable the Sequencer checkbox and Blender will re-render from your 3D scene rather than from the frames in the VSE.

That said, to avoid this kind of thing from happening to myself, I've gotten into the habit of either using a separate .blend file for sequencing or creating a new scene in my .blend file that's specific for sequencing. That way, you can render from your "work" scene and do your VSE work from your sequencing scene. It's a pretty handy workflow.


Get list of attributes of a bpy.data struct?

I know of 2 options : Either looping through object.bl_rna.properties.items() (I think this is the preferred way since this is supported by the API) or looping through dir(object), which is the python way so you might break things if you try to use these attributes if they are not exposed to bl_rna.

Actually I see a third option, which is looking in the official documentation, which at least gives examples and explanations about each attribute.

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

print('Using bl_rna :\n')
for prop, value in obj.bl_rna.properties.items():
    print(prop, value)

print('\nUsing dir(object) :\n')
for attr in dir(obj):
    print(str(attr), getattr(obj, attr))

etc.

etc.


How do I make the operator parameters panel appear in the sequence editor instead of the 3d view?

When adjusting options is support, pressing F6 will bring up the operator options in most blender windows.

Another option may be to setup a panel in the properties sidebar that shows your operator options.


Transform, Move, Rotate, Etc. icons missing

What you are looking for are called gizmos. You can turn them on/off in the gizmo menu. In 2.80 these are turned off by default.


Apply filmic color management to an EXR file - post processing in photoshop

Photoshop and other software of its ilk are display referred imaging applications. While PS will load an EXR, it does not possess the quality of controls one requires to properly manipulate scene referred photographic imagery.

To deal with a strictly display referred application and suffer as little quality loss as possible, save to a display referred format such as a 16 bit TIFF using the Filmic Base Log Encoding. It would then be possible to sculpt your own 'S' shaped curve to adjust contrast, or convert the Filmic set to the limited LUT format that Photoshop can understand.

DaVinci's Resolve has the granularity and more industrial tools to properly manipulate EXRs, although it will require a proper chain of nodes to do so. For further explanation along these lines, feel free to check Filmic's issue tracker where some help has been offered regarding the details of such an implementation.

https://github.com/sobotka/filmic-blender/issues/40


One way to do this is by using the Mask modifier :

select the two meshes and click  Ctrl+j to join them
in edit mode assign each word to vertex group
add Mask modifier and add the vertex group
in animation Right click on the icon next to the vertex group in the modifier and select add Keyframe
clicking  the icon will switch the visible words

result :


I have the fix. It is so easy. Select your rig in object mode and apply the scale with CtrlA > Scale.


Transforming (morphing) one object's shape into another's

Morphing objects with different vertex count is impossible AFAIK with the blender tools, unless you use a scripting. Here's a temporary solution though. It uses a to sphere tool.

I have three objects here with a different vertex count. I'll use a sphere as a midpoint for all transformations.

Add a shape key (Key 1) and set its value to 1.000. Enter Edit Mode and use To Sphere tool (Shift+Alt+S,1). Then hit Ctrl+V-->Smooth Vertex. Hold Shift+R to repeat it (set smoothing value to 1.000 in a Tool Shelf) unless the vertices are relaxed. Then repeat the to sphere operation.

Do the same with the other objects (every one should transform to the sphere of an equal size). Finally keyframe the shape keys values and visibility of the objects on a timeline.


You can scale a background image by using the slider found in the Background Image panel:


Adaptive doesn't work well so far with subdividing UVs so yes, likely one should apply usual Subsurf and then add another one with Adaptive turned on to bring amount of edges to the same quantity and avoid faces subdivision without UVs subdivision.

Although you can reduce the problem a bit (not all of it) by enabling Use Subsurf in the unwrap options while Subsurf modifier is present in modifier stack.

Then UV map will be changed accordingly to the level of subdivisions at the moment of unwrapping (you can unwrap with Subsurf at level 4 and then bring it back to 2, like is done in the example below):

First one from the left is original object with Wire turned on (with Subsurf modifier changing it).

Those 2 to the right are rendered copies - second from the left is its copy unwrapped with Use Subsurf, roundish defromations are almost only in the corners. Third one is usual unwrap without Use Subsurf with some strong deformations only except for the middle parts of faces.

If you aren't searching for some good looking subdivisions you can use Crease to make hard corners and avoid supporting loopcuts altogether (or crease supporting loopcuts thus leaving deformation between them and avoiding it in other areas). Working with UVs for Subsurf will become much easier.


It's available under Texture Paint.

Go to Texture Paint.
Select Clone Brush.

Hit CTRL where you want to take sample from.
Adjust Radius and Strength then paint on the mesh.

When you are done with painting don't forget to go to Slot tab and Save all images.


New to Blender, how to make texture paint transparent?

In the latest version of Blender (version 2.82), you can setup brush, alpha blend, render engine and nodes like this to get your results:


First off you can just drag an image right onto the object to add the image.
Now before you get too excited, there are some things you have to do to get it to work before it will render like that.

First, you have to be using the Blender Internal render engine for the drag and drop to add the image to the object.
To actually get the texture to render you have to use the material, and the texture panel. (more on why it "no clicky-worky? no typy-worky?" later.)

My answer explains how to set up a material and texture for the BI. Only difference is you have already imported the image, so instead of clicking on the Open button, click on the drop down button to use a image already in blender.

Now for cycles

My answer explains the procedure for using images in cycles. Just know that you drag the image in to the node editor, not on to the object.

Now to your "no clicky-worky" problem, I think that stems from the different render engins, cycles and the blender internal. See this question for help on that.


Grease pencil color while actively drawing

You can do this by  changing the stroke color in the properties panel under the Grease Pencil Colors. Change this to whatever you want it to be, and it will be the stroke color as you draw.


Quick way to get current opened filename in a script?

It's in bpy.data.filepath.
This is the absolute path to the currently open blend file, see is_saved, and is_dirty too.


Inherit particle animation birth time in particle systems in 2.90-3.0?

you will hate the answer, but that's the only one i know:
make a collection for your movie-planes and render them as particles:

Copy and move your movie planes to that collection.

Change your startframe in the shader editor for each movie as you like:


If you install Blender while there is an existing copy, does it uninstall the existing copy?

Not in the conventional sense but yes, it will simply overwrite the common files in the directory and you will get a new executable, new scripts if any were added etc. Since there is a major version difference it will create a new config folder for 2.74 while keeping the 2.73 folder. (I have a few old folders going back to 2.52!)

By uninstall you are asking if it will remove your settings, the answer is no. However, on installing the new version it will use the newly created 2.74 folder so it will appear as it did out of the box the first time you used it. To get your previous settings and scripts, you can simply press Copy Previous Settings on the splash screen. If you want to keep the old version separate, change the install directory.

So, you don't need to uninstall the old version, if the folder is getting bulky delete the older version folders as you don't need them. Same goes if you use the zipped portable version.

See my similar answer here Where is the startup file stored? for a bit more info.


How to procedurally generate a veiny skin material?

You can generate a skin material with veins like this using wave textures, musgrave texture, and translucent materials. The waves are distorted to get the meandering of veins. Different wave textures are combined with different orientations to get the veins running in different directions. The musgrave textures is used to make the veins appear and disappear in different areas.

The bright spot is from a lamp below the 'skin' illustrating the translucency.

This material is generated as shown below:

A good reference for generating veins in skin is at https://gooseberry.blender.org/shading-kenny-the-caterpillar/

The blend file:


You use smooth shading on a non-manifold mesh, which does not work properly.

Non-manifold means e.g. that some edges have more than two faces, and therefore the surface is not closed but has forks. It is impossible for Blender to tell how to shade these faces properly.

For your mesh, one way is to seperate the floors into a new object. This way the mesh will be manifold again, but unconnected.

Another option is to assign hard edges, e.g. using the Edge Split Modifier. This way some edges are shaded flat and others smooth. Flat shading works with non-manifold mesh the same as with manifold mesh. Because in this case the non-manifold spots have large angles, shading problems will be solved.


My Sculpting Object Is Darkened And Can't Be Sculpted

It looks like the mesh is f-masked. to undo this, select the F Mask bush and select subtract. you can now make the mesh editable with this brush.


I solved, I had to check the version of the Python used by Blender. To do this, you need to go in the bin folder (located in the same folder as the lib one), and check the version of python in there and then use the appropriate version of PIL library.


Modifying a rig made in Rigify clears the animations

If you regenerate the rig, it generates a new one and replace the previous. But animation data stored separately in Data blocks. So what you need to do:
Open Dope sheet and change its type to Action editor. In the center of the header you will see the data block:

Press Shield icon to make sure, that block will not be removed. And keep in mind the name of it.
Then regenerate the rig and address to action editor again. You will see something like this:

Click on this icon and browse your data block here. Once you are done the animation will be restored.

When you will get familiar with data blocks, you will be able to transfer animations between files and rigs, store different animations for the same rig and mix them together in NLA editor!


Limit driver amount to only a certain part of a rotation

Rotations in blender are natively in radians.  To linearly map 90 to 135 degrees to 0 and 1 we can use

 (r - radians(90)) / radians(45)

will give us 0 when r = radians(90) and 1 when r = radians(135).

To be sure the end points are taken care of, (The shape key min max should do this too) and the driver expression returns 0 for angles less than 90 and 1 for angles greater than 135.

 min(max(0, (r - radians(90)) / radians(45)), 1)


Here a workaround if someone else encounters this issue in the future:

Simply bake your animation and export it as albemic file (.abc). The animation playback will be slower, but as you import the albemic file you will find a transform cache in the constraints tab. In the transform cache you can simply scale and offset your animation to your likings.


How to align mesh for Seamless Texture Baking?

Two things to make it work.

1. Make your camera Orthographic
This will help you avoid distortion in corners, and will make it 'infinitely flat'.
It's like using an infinitely long lens.

2. Make the array 1:1 aspect ratio
Your chainmail array is ever so slightly taller-than-wide.
Move the rings a bit along the X axis, so they fit nicely.

Voilá. Seamless.

Notes
If you want the mail evenly-spaced, you'll have to adjust the whole array (I was just lazy).
I also moved the camera a bit, instead of moving the whole array.

Adjusted .blendfile is here


How to approach the modeling of paneling on walls and floors?

This can be done with the Array Modifier and a few modelling tricks.

First start by adding a defining shape for your panel, in this case it is a wall panel. Make sure that the edges join together properly:

Add an array modifier to see how it tiles and for reference when modelling in the next steps:

Now start adding some details to this shape, beveling edges and doing basic extrusions:

Now start modelling other pieces, like pipes, wiring, etc. and then join it to the mesh using Ctrl+J:

This is the basic technique, feel free to experiment and make it your own. Standard texturing and materials methods apply. I would very much recommend watching the BlenderGuru tutorial on making a space corridor as well.


Is there a substitute for poke face option in Blender 2.65?

If @batFINGER's suggestion doesn't work for you for some reason, then, with Pivot set to 'Individual Origins', in Face mode you can I inset all your faces a little way (or by no distance) :

.. With 'Individual' checked. (This illustration has to be in a later version, but your adjustment should be available in the T toolbar region.)
Then S0 you should be able to scale all faces to 0, followed by the old AltM > B .. or W menu .. 'Remove Doubles'.


Poly / Bezier curve from a list of coordinates

This should work:

import bpy

# sample data
coords = [(1,1,1), (2,2,2), (1,2,1)]

# create the Curve Datablock
curveData = bpy.data.curves.new('myCurve', type='CURVE')
curveData.dimensions = '3D'
curveData.resolution_u = 2

# map coords to spline
polyline = curveData.splines.new('NURBS')
polyline.points.add(len(coords))
for i, coord in enumerate(coords):
    x,y,z = coord
    polyline.points[i].co = (x, y, z, 1)

# create Object
curveOB = bpy.data.objects.new('myCurve', curveData)

# attach to scene and validate context
scn = bpy.context.scene
scn.objects.link(curveOB)
scn.objects.active = curveOB
curveOB.select = True


What is the unit of measure with the ruler tool?

By default it uses blender units (BU), which are equivalent to meters. You can specify imperial or metric units in Properties > Scene > Units:

Also see:

Blender units vs metric
How do blender units and meters, feet, or yards correlate?
What is a sensible scale to work with?


"Copy To selected" How do i copy only the material diffuse colour?

I think a small python script is the only way. This script only works for Blender Render.

import bpy

active_obj = bpy.context.object
active_obj_material = active_obj.active_material

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    if obj != active_obj:
        obj.active_material.diffuse_color = active_obj_material.diffuse_color

I use active_material so that objects with more than one material will use the material that is selected in the list, rather than forcing slot1 to always be used.


Create default scene with Screen cast keys addon enabled and turned on

I believe this will keep an addon enabled. You can paste and run it from the Script Editor. Just replace the string with the name of your addon. If it's not working then you're probably using the wrong addon name.
import addon_utils

addon_utils.enable('shortcut_VUr-master', default_set=True, persistent=True, handle_error=None)


You can simulate the ellipsoidal bokeh created by anamporphic lenses by changing the ratio on the depth of field settings.

The defalut value for ratio of 1:1 will give you a circular shape, while a larger or smaller number will make the defocused elements deform in an ellipsoidal shape.

A value higher than 1 will deform the defocused areas on vertical ellipsoids (the most common anamorphic lenses will compress the image on a 2:1 aspect)

Conversely to deform horizontally use numbers smaller than 1

To create custom shapes for the bokeh (As described in this link: http://www.diyphotography.net/can-you-make-computerized-shaped-bokeh/):

Create a plane with a hole that has the shape of the bokeh you want.

Place the plane really close in front of the camera (adjust the clipping distance if necessary, so that the camera can see the object)..

Set the depth of field on the camera, and render.

Click on the image to enlarge

Click on the image to enlarge


How to manage the shapekey's position faster?

No, as far as I know, this does not exist in blender without a modification.

Solution: Open all of the shape key filtering options and click the (az) symbol; This will alphabetize your list, and since all of your shapes are so organized in the first place, all you have to do is rename a brand new shape to it's proper category and it should end up there automatically.

This should put all shape keys under their proper headed, as long as the all the headers are like the ones you show above.


Transparent image planes near each other are black

Go to the Light Paths panel in the Render tab and increase the transparent bounces (you'll probably be fine just setting them to the max value of 1024). Basically Blender is terminating the light rays after they go through a certain number of transparent objects.


Using one baked texture uv map for other objects of the same overall geometry

Answer:
1. -name all textures
2. -select object you want material assigned to
3. switch to edit mode on the selected object.
4. go to the materials subsection on the tools bar
5. select material you want on the object
6. press assign - and the material is assigned to the selected object -

material is assigned to the object, and can be viewed in the texture view..
repeat as many times as required.
QED


When you have the vertex selected the mouse wheel will work when you are actually moving the vert. Select the vertex, press G (move) and as you move roll the mouse wheel. Make sure prop ed is switched on (shortcut O).


There might be few point that you want to know:

You don't get enough subdivision times, usually not going further then 2~3 times. Ctrl1~0 within object mode can set sub-modifier.
Your mask (I guest?) topologies are not suitable for subdivide, it has some holes with special case that blender nowadays can not resolve well. See the reference: Subdivide
The smooth shading AFAICT use Gouraud Shading in the view-port fast rendering. There is fake normal in the calculating pipeline, you might confused that by another common shading: Phong Shading.

No need to worried about it since in Cycles render, it use try tracing with other method to calculate the color and normal.


hi you must use the round function...

in line 14 add something like this:

bevelWV = round(bevelWV, 4)


using the node editor with multiple entry points

Both behaviours work independently of each other but not together, it seems that I cant switch between entry points?

Indeed, the current setup depicted on the screenshot suggest independent behavior.

  Also clicking any other object in the scene (no behaviour defined on the object) stops either entry point working / behaviour being carried out.

You need to connect the miss socket with some socket before the switch select node.


Coordinates of corners of camera view border

There are 2 things to consider here:

The camera frame. The camera frame is not as simple as you might expect since its effected by the field-of-view, aspect & x/y shift.
The 2D view pixel coords, The user can pan & zoom the view, so this also has to be calculated.

This script gets the camera bounds and prints the pixel boundaries.
import bpy

def view3d_find():
    # returns first 3d view, normally we get from context
    for area in bpy.context.window.screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
            v3d = area.spaces[0]
            rv3d = v3d.region_3d
            for region in area.regions:
                if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                    return region, rv3d
    return None, None

def view3d_camera_border(scene):
    obj = scene.camera
    cam = obj.data

    frame = cam.view_frame(scene=scene)

    # move from object-space into world-space
    frame = [obj.matrix_world @ v for v in frame]

    # move into pixelspace
    from bpy_extras.view3d_utils import location_3d_to_region_2d
    region, rv3d = view3d_find()
    frame_px = [location_3d_to_region_2d(region, rv3d, v) for v in frame]
    return frame_px

frame_px = view3d_camera_border(bpy.context.scene)
print("Camera frame:", frame_px)

See API docs for the important functions used here:

bpy.types.Camera.view_frame
bpy_extras.view3d_utils.location_3d_to_region_2d


*edited -- How might I create a material like a chunky liquid?

Metaballs with displacement for the small details. Try a refractive shader like the glass shader and maybe add some volume scattering.


Separate an advanced model into two sections

Yes there is a way.If they have different textures then you must have applied two different materials.Then you can go in edit mode and select the leaves by material and separate them.


I had this problem and in my case it was because my mesh was originally huge and I scaled it down by 1000 times.  Then when trying to move vertices, they were moving very slowly.  Once I applied the scaling, then the movement was normal again.


This is more or less a problem with the UV unwrapping of the object.
Go to edit mode and check out the UV layout with the subsurface modifier on.
If it looks messed up, then try to unwrap the object again, or use "Project from View". Only use project from view if you are not going to view the other side of the object. Play around with the UV layout until you get a nice result for the entire cube.


The Z Direction setting is within the Falloff section of the Force Field settings and as such it defines how the force reduces in strength as you move along the z-axis. With it set to 'Both' it will decay in both directions, set to +Z in the positive direction only and with -Z in the negative direction only.

Note also that the rate of falloff is determined by the 'Power' - with the Power set to 0 the force will always be distance^0 which will equate to '1' and so no actual falloff regardless of your Z Direction setting. Use a power of '1' for linear falloff, '2' for exponential fall off (such as with natural forces, gravity, etc.).


How to set the render-output using arbitrary values?

While Blender has no build-in support for this feature. You can do this using Python:

From Within Blender

Add a script into your file, call it render_path.py (for example).

Press Run Script (only need to do once)
Enable the Register option in the text editor (so it runs automatically).

Here is a sample script.

import bpy

def render_filepath_set(scene):
    scene.render.filepath = '{file}_{scene}_{camera}_####'.format(
            file=bpy.data.filepath.rpartition('.')[0],
            scene=scene.name,
            camera=scene.camera.name,
            )

bpy.app.handlers.render_init.append(render_filepath_set)

From the Command-Line

A similar method can be used, by running a script from the command line, first create a file.

render_path.py

import bpy
scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.render.filepath = '{file}_{scene}_{camera}_####'.format(
        file=bpy.data.filepath.rpartition('.')[0],
        scene=scene.name,
        camera=scene.camera.name,
        )

And run it with:

blender --background /d/untitled.blend --python render_path.py --render-anim

Or, you can avoid using a Python file and simply pass in the script on the command line (using --python-expr).

blender --background /d/untitled.blend --python-expr "import bpy; scene = bpy.context.scene; scene.render.filepath = '{file}_{scene}_{camera}_####'.format(file=bpy.data.filepath.rpartition('.')[0], scene=scene.name, camera=scene.camera.name)"

This isn't practical to manually type in of course, but can be used when running Blender as an automated task (shell script / bat file... etc).


How to view object in edit mode without global transformation?

The only way that comes to mind is to not transform the object directly, but through another object (eg: an empty), using a "copy transform" constraint.

Disabling/enabling the constraint shows the object in its initial state (disabled), or in the transformed state (enabled)


Am i allowed to sell a Blender project including the Blender installer?

Take a look at https://www.blender.org/about/license/

"Free to sell your work" seems very clear. It doesn't include Blender and it also doesn't include addons, as long as they don't use different Licensing Models.

You may distribute blender with your work as a dependency, but you obviously may not declare it as your work.


Does keyframe 0 have a "special" use case in blender?

'0' may be the starting point for programming, but blender is aimed at artists, who may well not have any programming knowledge, for which a zero-starting counting system may not make any sense. Of course, the artist may have programming knowledge and be aware of zero-starting counting, but it is not presumed.

Frame '0' has no significance or importance over any other frame. If users choose to consistently do something with that '0' frame then that would be an individual choice, and not a standard convention (as far as I'm aware).


How to use "bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges" on selected edges

I assume you are doing edit operations

Make sure you are using bmesh.from_edit _mesh to get the selected edge information. When doing from_mesh all edges will be selected.

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(my_mesh)
selected_edges = [edge for edge in bm.edges if edge.select]
bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges(bm, edges=selected_edges, cuts=100)
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(my_mesh)

Note that .faces has an .active helper property what does this for faces. A similar API for edges is not available, hence you need to use the list comprehension.


I guess this largely depends on the amount of realism you're going for...

If you're going for something hyper-realistic like what you see in movies like Cats&Dogs, then you will probably have to model part of your dog's face in Blender and try to match materials and lighting to the footage. That model can then be parented to motion trackers so it matches the movements of your dog (and possibly the camera).

Another, more lo-tech approach would be to take existing footage of your dog opening and closing her mouth and then simply retiming/reediting that footage to match a voice track using Blender's VSE.

Yet another approach might be to distort/morph/warp the footage to give the appearance of your dog opening and closing her mouth in sync to the voice track but: A. I wouldn't know off the top of my head how to do that in Blender (or if it is possible at all - though I suspect it is) and B. the end result would probably look nowhere near as convincing as the first two approaches.


How can I get a list of all objects named 'foo*'?

If you want to use shell style globbing (*.foo, *.*abc, [ab]*.bar) (as is used in the question), you can use fnmatch, either fnmatch.fnmatchcase or fnmatch.fnmatch for case insensitive matches.

import bpy
import fnmatch

scene = bpy.context.scene

foo_objs = [obj for obj in scene.objects if fnmatch.fnmatchcase(obj.name, "foo*")]

Otherwise you can simply do...

foo_objs = [obj for obj in scene.objects if obj.name.startswith("foo")]

For more powerful pattern matching: check on Python's built-in regular expression (re module)


You can get an intersection using raycast BVH tree node. I have used your node set up and added an icosphere and an empty and have always execute option ticked in AN as shown. Just grab the empty and move it around.

Make sure the always executing box is ticked so it updates when moving the empty.

And if you want to find the point on the mesh nearest to the intersection just add these three nodes.

If you move the empty below the mesh it will not work as the Ray Cast BVH Tree is just projecting downwards in -z direction from the empty. To solve that, tick the"Start in infinity" box in the Ray Cast BVH Tree node, it will then project in the  opposite direction aswell.


If you have enabled the autosave
File> Recover auto save.


Snap to mesh issues with Z and X axis constraints

There is another way to solve this (that may work), using the shrinkwrap modifier. Do this before joining the objects.

Create a vertex group with the vertices you want to snap.
Add a shrinkwrap modifier.
Set your vertex group as the one affected.
Set mode to "Project".
Select the axis to project along.
Tick both positive and negative (maybe you need to do this).

Like this:


UVs looking weird when using the solidify modifier

Your flat mesh likely has smooth shading enabled, which only becomes visible once you give it thickness. In object mode you can select your object and applied flat shading by using Object > Shade Flat.


I've found a method to do it. It's not perfect but it works :). It uses a Particle Instance Modifier.

Add a Cube (place its origin point in the same place as emitter's origin point). Scale it along the Z axis, then Subdivide, so it has the same number of loop cuts as the number of segments of your hair particles. Go to Object Mode and apply its transformations (Ctrl+A).

Go to Modifiers header and give it a Particle Instance Modifier. Enable the modifier's settings as pictured below.

It may not work properly though. If something's wrong just rotate your Cube 90 degress on the X axis (or Y, or Z, depending on your situation).

Now add an object which will be following your strands and rotate it perpendicular to your Cube. Select it, then the Cube and enter the Edit Mode. Select the opposite 3 vertices, as pictured below and press Ctrl+P-->Make Vertex Parent.

Go to Object Mode and place the following object (Torus in this case) wherever you want. Select a Cube and move it to another layer to see only the hair particles.

EDIT:
You may precisely parent any object to a chosen strand's segment. In Edit Mode select any vertices, then enable an option as pictured below (marked in red) to see where their location on the instance is.

Add a new object and parent it to selected vertices.

Then place it on a proper segment's location.

Now the object copies the location of the strand's segment.


Texture not showing up in render preview

As can be seen below, you have accidentally paused your rendering, preventing Blender from initializing your render.

Simply unpause it by clicking on the button again. Cheers!


Which bpy.data.objects option controls the color of the object's texture?

If you use in bpy.data.objects.active_material.material.diffuse_color you can set the diffuse color, and there are some other properties that may be useful here and here

In my experience, materials are tricky with scripts. You need to remember that materials are separate from the objects, so if the same material is assigned to every cube, changing it for one material will change it for all of them.


Edit Mode Transform Median X, Y, Z location. How to read the N-Panel

I didn't see a response but this is the code that I used:
I think the original author was CodeManX

    def calcpivotpoint(theobject):
        ob = theobject
        me = ob.data

        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
        verts_sel = [v.co for v in bm.verts if v.select]

        pivot = sum(verts_sel, Vector()) / len(verts_sel)

        return ob.matrix_world @ pivot


My Context Menu Is Gone For Edit Mode And Object Mode

That should be this option in the preferences:


Weird clipping after applying mirror modifier and merging vertices

Caused by the same thing causing you to not be able to select the loop of vertices. Delete the face created by the vertices.


how to view selected keyframes in clip graph editor

I'm not sure of what you are refering to "view selected".

Do you mean to only display the curves of selected components ?
If so, push down the little arrov button in the graph editor's header :

Do you mean to focus the view on your selection ? Simply hit the numpad . (dot) key.


I finally understood what this script does! It is not displayed through any button or menu as expected at first. That´s logic because there is no code that refers to any button or menu. As a script it can not do anything either because it only contains the definitions of the functions but there is no call to any function. The only way to visualize its action is through Open the user File -> User Preferences, Select the Addon section. You write in the search box the name of your addon, in this case "My Test Addon". Once you show it, you give it to the square on the right, a checkbox, that action will enable it, if you press the checkbox again, you will disable it. Each time you enable it, it will write "Hello World" in the console (to see it click on Window-> Toggle System Console) and each time you disable it, "Goodbye World" will be written.


When I do this UV unwrap the cube becomes transparent and shows vertical and horizontal lines

The lines are most likely a problem with the image Alpha channel. However, the Blend file you uploaded does not include the image - you need to select 'Pack' in the UV editor to pack the image into the file before you upload it. However, load the image into an image editor and check the Alpha channel to ensure there are no lines or other noise present. Also, set the Image Texture node to 'Clip' rather than 'Repeat' - this way the other 5 UV faces (outside the UV boundary in your image) definitely won't be picking up any content from the image.

As for the cube becoming transparent, you do realise that you're using a Transparent shader for the red shading...? Replace the Transparent shader node with a Diffuse shader node and it will no longer be transparent.


How to set a specific value for multiple shape keys?

small script to set them all to a new_value except the basic shapekey :

select the object
copy paste and run the script

import bpy

new_value = 0.5

for shape in bpy.context.object.data.shape_keys.key_blocks:
    if shape.name != 'Basic' :
        shape.value = new_value


You cannot.
Blender is different software, it does not work identically to other 3d packages. It might not be very reasonable to expect it to.
What you could do is set the pivot point to cursor and use the scale cage tool:

Or you could set the transform pivot to 3d cursor and scale after setting the cursor to cube's sides with s operator that might be more convenient for using numeric keyboard input in operation because you don't need to hold the mouse down:


The issue resolved. There was a plane which I hid at the start of the project right behind the scenery and in front of the sky.


Select object by clicking it (not based on origin)

Use Alt+click to choose which object to select in the menu listing all objects underneath your mouse position, even if their origin is far from the zone.


Move another mesh along a surface when animating

Here's one way, it's not perfect, because of the limitations of the Clamp To constraint.

Duplicate a central loop of your key, and Header > Object Menu >
convert it to a curve. Extend the curve to tip-base level on both sides.
Place the origins of your tumbler-pins at their tips.
Assign them each a Clamp To constraint, targeted on the curve.

(It's sensible to get this constraint working on one tumbler to begin with, after settling the curve, making sure its scale is applied, etc.)
Because of the way the constraint interpolates the curve, there's some drift in the horizontal direction. You can eliminate this with another constraint on the tumbler: Limit Location to fix it in all axes apart from  up-and-down.

If the whole lot is to be parented to other parts for rigging, it might be better to do that first.

the curve remains editable to make small adjustments to the pin positions, if necessary. Excuse the grotty .gif


How to use texture paint in Blender Render

Never mind I got it, I had to add a texture image then select the texture that I had on the UV map.


Script to scale objects resets scale when scrubbing through frames

I'm pretty sure your scale is keyframed. Just like when you scale manually and there are scale keyframes present, it will ignore your changes (unless you use auto-keying) and reset to the scale saved in the keyframe. FBX often have everything keyed by default export options of the program they were created with, even if the property isn't animated. If that's not the case, please don't downvote, but provide more detail, maybe share the .blend. Thank you.


Area.width

The screen is made up of areas, each area has an x, y, width, height attribute.

Python console test code:

>>> for a in C.screen.areas:
...     a.type, a.width
...
('PROPERTIES', 346)
('CONSOLE', 931)
('VIEW_3D', 346)
('TEXT_EDITOR', 931)

Region.width

within each area there are regions. Commonly there are 'HEADER', 'UI', 'TOOLS' and 'WINDOW' regions.  For the 'VIEW_3D' region the N panel is region type  'UI'

>>> for a in C.screen.areas:
...     if a.type == 'VIEW_3D':
...         break
...
>>> a.type
'VIEW_3D'

>>> for r in a.regions:
...     r.type, r.width
...
('HEADER', 931)
('TOOLS', 1)
('UI', 335)
('WINDOW', 931)

If you are writing UI code to go in the N panel then can get the width directly with

context.region.width

Related:

Is there a way to determine the left 3D view sidebar's current width with python?


It would be helpful to see your node setup, to know which rendering engine you're using (Eevee, Cycles, or Blender Render if you're using 2.79 or earlier) and which version of Blender you are using.

However, I attempted to reproduce your issue using an approximately similar shape and this is what I found:

A rough approximation of your flat rendered shape.

A jury-rigged version of your shading here.

Node setup for this shading.

If this is what your node setup looks like, this is incorrect. You should add a Shader node first, connect it to the Surface input of the Material Output node, and add your to that Shader node, as shown below.

Result of above node setup.

I hope that this helps, but more details will help illuminate the problem!


Micro displacement is sensitive to normals.
Make your model smooth (shading smooth) ensure normal continuity across edges.
Doing so will prevent displacement discontinuity on sharp edges.


Any single array can only contain instances of one object. But in a sense, you can, because you can nest arrays. You can have single element arrays; arrays of arrays; the start and end caps of an array can be arrays. That's sometimes useful, but start and end caps won't merge, if that's what you need, and offsets can sometimes be a bit tricky to set up.

One way to get a variety in evenly distributed objects is to use a particle system: here, distributing a Group of objects on the vertices of a 24-vertex mesh circle.

Make a Group of your objects, give the distributing mesh a particle system, and then set it up something like the illustration. (You don't need Physics, or anything like that). If you need to order your objects, you can 'Use Count' to set up repeating sequences.


You can deform the object to it's final shape first, and then you select APPLY AS SHAPE KEY.
Then, go to the vertex group menu, and select SIMPLE DEFORM under SHAPE KEYS
Finally, you will see a slider named VALUE. turn automatic keyframe on, and then start deforming the object through time.
In that way you don't even need armatures


What ways are there to cut object in multiple separate meshes?

First make a backup of your model / .blend.
Also, experiment on throwaway objects first, to get a sense of what's going on.

If you know exactly where you want to cut you can slice (bisect) by plane using the boolean Modifier. You can position the plane manually, or dial in its location/rotation values in the properties panel.

With these settings:

The direction that the plane faces (its Normal) determines what part of the object will be cut away.

Using multiple planes you can make wedges, note: here the planes are both facing towards eachother.

The last step is you apply the modifiers from top-to-bottom and you'll get a manifold (closed) mesh of that wedge:


Where did "Free unused nodes" checkbox go?

It was removed because, according to Sergey Sharybin:

  It was basically doing nothing, for ages.

I presume he means that it wasn't having much of an effect as opposed to people not using it.


How to access character (physics type) via python to update it's jump force in real time?

Current api (2.78c) GameObjectSettings.jump_speed

GameObjectSettings is part of bpy which only work inside of blender and only in Blender, this means that your game using bpy and bge only will work inside Blender because bpy will not work in standalone and you dont want that if you are making a game but if you are makin sortsof simulation and you will be using always blender then you can use bge and bpy.

You can access jump_speed:

from bpy import data

data.objects["Cube"].game.jump_speed = 50
print(data.objects["Cube"].game.jump_speed)

As soon as you run the script 50 will be the value for jump force in physics property panel:

here you can found some (old) good bge python tutorials

If you want in game dinamically change the jump speed you can use the next script portion was extracted from one of the tutorials, thanks to Goran Milovanovic

script

from bge import logic
from mathutils import Vector
import math

class MoveWSAD:
    """
    Goran's 2.6x FPS base-frame

    2011 - Goran Milovanvic - nilunder.com

    """
    def __init__(self, cont, own):
        self.cont = cont
        self.body = own
        self.sen_key_w = self.cont.sensors["W"]
        self.sen_key_s = self.cont.sensors["S"]
        self.sen_key_a = self.cont.sensors["A"]
        self.sen_key_d = self.cont.sensors["D"]
        self.sen_key_space = self.cont.sensors["space"]
        self.sen_col_onground = self.cont.sensors["onground"]
        self.speed_ground = 4
        self.speed_jump = self.speed_ground * 0.8
        self.main = self._inAir

    def _getMoveVec(self):
        forward_back = self.sen_key_w.positive - self.sen_key_s.positive
        left_right = self.sen_key_d.positive - self.sen_key_a.positive
        velocity = Vector((left_right, forward_back, 0))
        return velocity

    def _onGround(self):
        vec_velocity = self._getMoveVec()
        vec_velocity.magnitude = self.speed_ground
        if self.sen_key_space.positive:
            vec_velocity.z = self.speed_jump
        self.body.setLinearVelocity(vec_velocity, 1)
        if not self.sen_col_onground.positive:
            self.main = self._inAir

    def _inAir(self):
        if self.sen_col_onground.positive:
            self.main = self._onGround

"""Strapicarus 2017"""
class Player:
    def __init__(self, cont, body):
        self.body = body
        self.move_wsad = MoveWSAD(cont, body)
        self.main = self.walking

    def walking(self):
        if self.move_wsad.sen_key_space.positive:
             self.change_speed(1)
        self.move_wsad.main()

    def change_speed(self, speed):
        if self.move_wsad.speed_jump < 20:
            self.move_wsad.speed_jump += speed
        else:
            self.move_wsad.speed_jump = self.move_wsad.speed_ground * 0.8
        return

def main(cont):
    if not 'init' in cont.owner.getPropertyNames():
        cont.owner['player'] = Player(cont, cont.owner)
        cont.owner['init'] = True
    cont.owner['player'].main()

main(logic.getCurrentController())

LogicBricks

Physics panel

EDIT ADDED

Well a just download your blend and you put the right blend this time (i forgot to mention that before answer), and i test
¿if i change the loc z in motion actuator the character will jump higher? and YES it works.

So you just need increase the loc z value to set the jump speed for that motion actuator:

And if you want a python way here is to:

jump.py

from bge import logic

def main(cont):
    jumpact = cont.actuators['jumpSpeed']
    colsen = cont.sensors['Blue']
    if not 'init' in cont.owner.getPropertyNames():
        cont.owner['init'] = True
        cont.owner['_onair'] = False
        cont.owner['jumpSpeed'] = 0.0
        print('init...')
        return

    if not cont.owner['_onair'] and colsen.positive:
        if  cont.owner['jumpSpeed'] < 10.0:
            cont.owner['jumpSpeed'] += 1
            jumpact.dLoc = (0,0,cont.owner['jumpSpeed'])
            print('adding jump speed')
            print(jumpact.dLoc.z)
        else:
            cont.owner['jumpSpeed'] = 0.0
        cont.activate(jumpact)
        cont.owner['_onair'] = True
        return
    else:
        cont.deactivate(jumpact)
        cont.owner['_onair'] = False
        return
#    print(dir(jumpact))
#    print(jumpact.force)
#    print(jumpact.linV)
#    print(jumpact.torque)
#    print(jumpact.dLoc) #FOUND IT ! xD

main(logic.getCurrentController())

Logic editor

Blend file


Is there a way to play/pause the VSE from Blender's text editor with a hotkey?

In the user preference > input ... you should be able to

Go search the VSE section and Text editor section.
Copy those shortcut that you want to invoke from VSE into the text editor section.
And you should be able to invoke VSE commands while your mouse is hovering upon text editor's screen estate.


How to use python to copy video settings from the compositor to the 3D viewport

OK!!! I finally worked it out.

In case anyone else needs this, here are examples:

Set-up Variables

clip = 'your.video.filename.mp4'

bg = bpy.data.screens['your.screen'].areas[n].spaces[0].background_images[0]

node_im = bpy.data.scenes['your.scene'].node_tree.nodes[clip]

Copy Video and Properties

bg.image = bpy.data.images[clip]
bg.image_user.frame_start = node_im.frame_start
back_im.image_user.frame_offset = node_im.frame_offset

Notes

Blender automatically assigns e.g. 'your.video.filename.mp4' as the image reference when you load a video into an image node. You can change that if you want, but beware that if you reload the clip, the field will revert to the clip's filename.

Finding 'n' from 'areas[n]' takes a bit of trial and error, especially if you have a complex screen.

for area in bpy.context.window.screen.areas: print(area.type)

outputs a list of the areas of your screen, so at least you can narrow down which are viewports.

After that:

bpy.data.screens["your.screen"].areas[n].spaces[0].background_images[0]

will tell you what,if any, image has been assigned to areas[n]'s background.

I have to say I'm surprised that this hasn't come up before - seems to me that duplicating a video background node in a 3D viewport would be a common need.


Credit to Polytoots on youtube, learned the following from his tutorial.
I was able to solve the artifacts by editing the normal maps. I exported the normal maps and opened them in GIMP to use a clone brush to clean up sites of distortion. (any image editor can work, I encourage one with a clone brush :)
A normal map example that I did (same principle for all of them)


You can change the strength of each magnetic field independently to allow for variation. Use the "Strength" input to determine the force of the field.

Along with the strength value, you can also change values such as noise, the seed of the noise, flow and collision to fine tune the force fields to your liking.

Refer to the Blender Documentation for more information on force fields in Blender.

If you want a magnetic force field to push objects instead of pulling them, you can input a negative value in the strength input.

To select a force field, you can either find it in the objects list (The list at the top-right of your screen by default) or click on the empty object in your 3D view (An empty object is a coordinate rather than a mesh). It should look like this in your 3D view:

Hope this helps.


You could try putting empties where you want to attach them to the cloth (you can parent vertices and empties), then parent the empties to the rope armature.


Try changing your transformation orientation


Do procedural textures save render time and memory?

this is a great question!

Procedural textures made in Blender do take quite a hit on a render's speed, as well as the memory that is used. This obviously scales with how complex the texture is, so it's difficult to predict exactly how much the texture will slow it down.

Unfortunately, I don't know the technical details of how procedural textures are computed during a render, so I can't help with that. Maybe someone with more technical experience knows the answer :^)

In general, here are my experiences on the matter. It's normally efficient enough that for general usage you can go ahead and mix noise to your heart's content. If you have very large procedural textures, (let's just go with >100 nodes) it might be worthwhile to
use Blender's baking functionality to bake them to images. This would be much more important if you plan on doing animations, because the extra time on a single frame get compounded with every other frame that the animation uses.

So ya, I'd say it's generally good! Just know that you can bake them down to images if you plan on doing an animation or something.

I hope this helps, and good luck!


If you want use this model in a new blender file, save the file with this model. Open the new blender file that you want to import it into. Select File then select append, navigate to the old file where your model is, double click on the file name and go into objects, select your model/object name and then press the append button and your object should be imported with the shaders that are assigned to it.


can i change the size of my thumbnails in the thumbnail browse list?

No, there no option to do this currently.

However there is a patch in the tracker to support this: https://developer.blender.org/T27830(It's not expected you should make your own patched Blender builds, just noting that it may well be supported soon)


Once you have geometry that can follow an edge loop you can make edges as sharp as you want. CtrlR is the hotkey for creating loops in Edit Mode. Loops require quads. Below I have the example to start...

...and then adding an extra loop to sharpen even more.

I did cheat a bit here as the loops do cross - but it still works and I think acceptable.


How to reverse particle Cache in Blender 2.79

It's possible (although likely not advisable - but I found quite interesting) to manipulate the actual blendcache files to change the order - although you should avoid points where particles are created or destroyed (ie, stick to sections where particles are only moving) or you can get strange results (eg, particles staying in place when they should have died or jumping erratically to new locations).

Start by giving the cache a name and set it to be a Disk Cache.

Baking the cache should now output a number of 'bphys' cache files - one for each frame (or sub-frame). For example :

myparticlecache_000000_00.bphys

Each of these files contains the state of the particle system at a point in the animation. By manipulating these files - swapping them, for example - you can manipulate the sequence.

For example, if you had, say 72 frames (0 to 71) and reversed the sequence by renaming frame 000000 to 000071, 000001 to 000070, 000002 to 000069, etc., ..., 000071 to 000000 then the behavior would be reversed.

In Unix bash shell you could achieve this with a script similar to the following :

mkdir reversed

ls -1 *_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]_*|cut -d'_' -f2 > _ordered
ls -1 *_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]_*|cut -d'_' -f2 |sort -nr > _reversed

paste _ordered _reversed > _combined

cat _combined |sed 's/^\([^ ]*\)    \(.*\)$/cp myparticlecache_\1_00.bphys reversed\/myparticlecache_\2_00.bphys/' >reverse.scr

This will produce a script (reverse.scr) to perform the 'copy's as follows :

cp myparticlecache_000000_00.bphys reversed/myparticlecache_000071_00.bphys
cp myparticlecache_000001_00.bphys reversed/myparticlecache_000070_00.bphys
cp myparticlecache_000002_00.bphys reversed/myparticlecache_000069_00.bphys
cp myparticlecache_000003_00.bphys reversed/myparticlecache_000068_00.bphys
cp myparticlecache_000004_00.bphys reversed/myparticlecache_000067_00.bphys
cp myparticlecache_000005_00.bphys reversed/myparticlecache_000066_00.bphys
cp myparticlecache_000006_00.bphys reversed/myparticlecache_000065_00.bphys
....

Running the script and copying the files back from the 'reversed' directory over the original bphys cache files, restarting Blender and playing the animation in Blender should now produce a reversed particle animation (albeit with potential glitches at the start and end when particles are created/destroyed).

Note : The above scripting is specific to 'bash' shell - you'll need to come up with another method of renaming the files depending on your environment (eg, Windows batch file, python, whatever).

Also note : manipulating the cache files in such a coarse manner is purely at your own risk. While it won't break anything important (and you can always delete the cache files and re-bake) it might mess up your animation and produce unpredictable results.


How do I add a downloaded texture to an object in 'simple' mode

Just to provide a quick gif, if anything changed in 2.92.

Click Base Color > Image Texture
Select Open (it will open a new window)
Navigate to your texture

(to have textures visible on your model, you need to be in Material preview)


Why do you want to calculate the velocity by yourself? It's already provided by the API with getLinearVelocity

Alternatively - in case you really want to do it yourself - you could use the "Skip" Setting in the Always Actuator to tell Blender it shall execute your own velocity calculation only every n-th game loop.

Hope this helps!


Insert a FloatVectorProperty into a customized interface

According to the API, min and max are floats so the correct definition is:

my_floatVectorProperty = FloatVectorProperty(
  description="Something",
  default=(0.0, 0.0, 0.0),
  min=0.0,
  max=100.0
)


Apply different textures to faces of an object

Select the faces you want to add the texture to, then go to the material editor and add an new slot by pressing the +, next hit assign. Hope this helps.


I closed and reopened then tried unhiding again because I was running out of ideas. And it worked. No idea why, and can't duplicate it the problem either so I have no explanation.


How to modify the size, position, and always on top status of the active blender window for windows OS through python

import ctypes
from ctypes import wintypes

#Get Active  #https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/winuser/nf-winuser-getactivewindow
#Set win     #https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/winuser/nf-winuser-setwindowpos

#SetWindowPos FUNCTION
SetWindowPos = ctypes.windll.user32.SetWindowPos
SetWindowPos.restype = wintypes.BOOL
SetWindowPos.argtypes = [
    wintypes.HWND, #hWnd
    wintypes.HWND, #hWndInsertAfter
    ctypes.c_int,  #X #pos
    ctypes.c_int,  #Y #pos
    ctypes.c_int,  #cx #new width
    ctypes.c_int,  #cy #new height
    ctypes.c_uint, #uFlags
]
#HANDLE
Active_W = ctypes.windll.user32.GetActiveWindow()

#FLAGS
SWP_HIDEWINDOW = 0x80 #HIDE
SWP_SHOWWINDOW = 0x40 #SHOW
SWP_NOMOVE     = 0x0002 #NO MOVE
SWP_NOSIZE     = 0x0001 #NO SIZE

#EXAMPLE ON TOP -> because -> -1
#SetWindowPos(Active_W, -1, 0, 0, 0, 0,SWP_NOMOVE|SWP_NOSIZE )

#EXAMPLE ON TOP CANCEL -> because -> -2
#SetWindowPos(Active_W, -2, 0, 0, 0, 0,SWP_NOMOVE|SWP_NOSIZE )

#EXEMPLE DEPLACE
#SetWindowPos(Active_W, 0, 2550, 0, 0, 0, SWP_NOSIZE )

#EXEMPLE RESIZE #column size
#SetWindowPos(Active_W, 0, 0, 0, 100, 1000, SWP_NOMOVE)


Can you replicate Optics Compensation in VSE?

You can directly undistort footage in the Sequencer, once you have it set up correctly in 2.8.

Open up the movie clip editor and open your footage.

To properly choose some distorsion value, we will have to be able to preview the result. Go to the top right of the movie clip editor, click on Clip Display and check Render Undistorted. This will give us the undistorted view of the footage live in the movie clip editor.

Open the Track rider N > Track and go to the Lens Panel. Here are the Lens Distorsion parameters K1, K2 and K3. Change their values and see how the footage (un)distorts itself. It can help to draw a Line Annotation to evaluate the straightness of lines.

Once you are satisfied with the undistorsion go to the sequencer. (You will have to load up all the footages in the movie clip editor which you want to use in the sequencer if you want to undistort them there.)

Add the created movie clip to the sequencer by pressing ⇧ ShiftA > Clip > YourClipName.mov.
Open up the properties panel N and go to the Strip rider. Go to the Adjust > Video panel and check Undistort Clip. The added clip will be rendered undistorted directly from the sequencer.


Adding additional automatic weights to my original mesh without redoing it all

Mark the hands with a vertex group (we'll call it "dtHands".)  Duplicate your mesh.  Autoweight your duplicate.  Give your original a data transfer modifier, targeting the duplicate, copying vertex groups on the basis of topology, limited by dtHands vertex group.  Hit "generate data layers" button as necessary.  Test deforms, possibly smooth out the border of dtHands group to make a more even transition.  Apply the data transfer modifier then delete the duplicate.


Go into edit mode with tab, and then press W, and select remove doubles. The reason this is happening is that the differnet faces of the mesh are not actually connected, so by removing the vertecies in the same position you connect them.

If it doesn't instantly work, try increasing the distance in the right hand toolbar.

Also, it looks like you need to press ctrl+n to recalculate normals.


fSpy doesn't work with vertical pictures

This is the portrait (vertical) picture from the picture above, it didn't turn to landscape.

I do use Fspy very well, and it is far better than Blam. And since I've been using Fspy, I've not encounter any error


Completely removing scene (including all objects/materials it contained)

Maybe you can consider starting with a new blend file (empty), then you pass to addon the source blend file. The addon can link the scene/collection from the source file, render and remove linked. Then repeat the process.

Or, to follow your initial setup, you could put the whole scene in a "root" collection and then call bpy.ops.outliner.collection_delete (hierarchy = True). In theory with hierarchy = True it should delete all the objects contained.


Can the orientation of objects emitted from a particle system be controlled?

The mesh should be rotated in Edit Mode so that the nose points into the emitting direction, then the will always point to the flight direction.

The rules to prevent clumping:


How to view the system console message after Blender crashes?

On windows just run blender from Command Prompt:

Win Key+R

In field type cmd and hit OK. Inside the console navigate to your blender.exe with command

cd c:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\ (or whatever your path is)
instead you can also navigate to the folder in the Explorer and SHIFT+Rightclick on the Folder and select Open Comand Promt here

and then type blender.exe

You can also use command line arguments.

Now even if Blender crashes, you will still see the program output in the console.
On OSX use Terminal app and run it like

cd /Applications/Blender
./blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender

On Linux open terminal and run

cd <blender installation directory>
./blender

You can start blender (or blender.exe) with the option --factory-startup attached to check if a addon or a setting caused the crash


How to twist object maintaining uniform section?

Your topology lacks some horizontal edge loops, that's why it shrinks on its middle, so go in Edit mode, CtrlR then scroll (or +) to increase the amount of edge loops, then let's twist again!


Export transparent material in GLTF in blender 2.8

Transmission (of light, such as glass and water)
UPDATE: Blender 2.91 and above support exporting transmission directly as shown in the original post above, using glTF's KHR_materials_transmission extension.  Not all renderers support this yet (and notably, ThreeJS requires alpha-blending to be enabled for the material, which deviates from the transmission specification).  Adobe Dimension, Microsoft's BabylonJS, and Google Filament are among the rendering engines known to support transmission in glTF.
Alpha Blending
glTF 2.0 has always had an alpha blending mode available, but it's intent is just to be "coverage" (like medical gauze tape), not a physically correct optical translucency (as the latter was considered too high a target for the initial release of 2.0).  Basically this means that low alpha values will dissolve the entire material, including specular reflections.  Even so, the mode is often used to emulate clear materials like glass, particularly for situations where real transmission support is not available.
To control the blend mode, look for a settings panel near the bottom of the material properties set of panels.  Blender offers many choices here.  glTF supports three of them: Opaque, Alpha Blend, and Alpha Clip (along with the "Clip Threshold" value in that case).

NOTE: Eevee must be the selected rendering engine, to reveal this blend mode setting.  The user's selection will be remembered and used by the glTF exporter even when other engines such as Cycles are selected.

The alpha values come from the "Alpha" input on the Principled BSDF node, and when exporting to glTF, they are stored in the alpha channel of the base color texture.


Never mind, apparently changing the start and end key frames in handlers were messy and it would only be changed once. Make the script changes the current key frames and avoid abstracting the handler methods would solve the problem.


You have enabled Warp in the Influence panel under Texture.15's tab

With that map you are displacing the geometry's vertices. I can't tell you why a Wrap with 0 influence mess all up and disabling it fix the problem, but is definetly that option that you have to check.


More than 32 colours for gradients in Cycles?

These are some node groups to accomplish colorRamps mixing based on the UV coordinates and certain scale ( in this example it's 8 ), which give as a total of 256 color,  this is the final setup :

and these are the node groups needed :
"Equal to" node group : compare two numbers and output one if they are equal else a Zero

"Mapper" node group : remap the input ( by scaling) and output an integer number ( 0, 1, 2...) for controlling the color switches

"ColorRamps" node group : a group of colorRamps sharing the same factor input

"Decoder" node group: switch only one of the outputs to one if the input is equal to it's order

"ColorMix" node group: switch between colors based on the input if input = 5 the output will be the color-5

this will allow you to combine multiple color ramps as follow :
for this example ( scale = 8 ): colorRamp zero will be used for U coordinates from 0.0 to 0.125 ,and colorRamp one from 0.125 to 0.250 and so on. You can try any scale equal to or less than 8 .
Note : since color ramps are separate there will be no transition between them but you can fake this by repeating the last color of the previous node as the first color of the next one.
test render :


Parent the objects in the group to an empty. Moving the empty will move all of the objects along with it.


Why do I get a 'Failed to set value' error when trying to add a 'Copy Location' constraint to my rig?

If you want to use this constraint between bones, try to use bone constraint in pose mode.


I have added another variable  to save the state and toggle it every time, 'Done' indicates whether you have subtracted or not during this pulse :

def main():
    cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
    own = cont.owner
    Ray = cont.sensors["Ray"]
    Bool = own["Bool"]
    Done = own["Done"]

    if Ray.positive and Bool and not Done:

        own["Done"] = True
        print("have nothing to do")
    elif not Bool :
        own["Done"] = False

main()


Node for setting render colour, regardless of lighting [Blender 2.78a]

When you save the final image to disk, Blender applies the nonlinear sRGB gamma correction curve. Internally Blender works with a linear color model, which in general is also true for the color picker.
If you want your final image to have certain color values you have the option to apply gamma correction to the color that you pick by adding a Gamma node with the value 2.2, which is a close approximation to the non-constant sRGB gamma value. In this case this would lead to RGB values of 128, 48, 255 in the final image.

Alternatively, instead of adding the gamma node you can enter the desired colors in hex format as Blender's color picker does compensate gamma correction in hex mode. For this particular color this would be 8033FF. The color values in the final image here would be RGB 128, 51, 255 as originally intended. But if you later decide to use colors not expressible in hex format you would have to make trade-offs there.

If it's necessary to exactly match some values then I assume you would have to calculate the RGB values yourself by using the formula mentioned in the sRGB Wikipedia article.


Fit timeline to first/last frame via python

You have to set a custom context, because the operator requires a specific context in which it can be executed. Otherwise the check implemented in its .poll() function will return false and execution fails.

You can accomplish this by iterating through the areas to find the timeline (which is now called DOPESHEET_EDITOR instead of TIMELINE in Blender 2.8). Then you also need the correct region with the type WINDOW. Once you have both you can create a custom context.

This script requires that you have the timeline open as an area somewhere in the UI.

import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.frame_start = 50
scene.frame_end = 100

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'DOPESHEET_EDITOR':
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                ctx = bpy.context.copy()
                ctx['area'] = area
                ctx['region'] = region
                bpy.ops.action.view_all(ctx)
                break
        break


How can you render out just the audio from a video in VSE?

Blender isn't a good choice if you are only outputting audio, blender will still render an image for each frame. You can delete all objects in the scene and choose blender render or set samples to one with cycles and use a small image size (50x50) to cut the render time.

If you are only extracting the audio from a file, you would be better off not using blender, using ffmpeg in a terminal it is much quicker to copy the audio track from a video without any conversion.

ffmpeg -i vid.mp4 -acodec copy audioonly.mp3

You may also want to use audactity to open the video file and save out the audio.

If you do want to use blender, in the output settings, select ffmpeg video. For container select one that supports multiple codecs, such as mpeg-4 and then for video codec choose No Video (2.7x this shows as None).


Settings to make viewport playback drop frames in order to keep up with actual animation speed?

Look on a timeline view.  There's a dropdown labelled "Playback".  If you click that, you'll get a pop-up menu.  In that menu, there's a field labelled "Sync".  Click in that field and select "Frame Dropping".


Here is a bit of a brute force approach, base object is context object, checks global vert positions against those of other mesh objects in the context.selected_objects collection.

import bpy
import bmesh
# tolerance to use
TOL = 0.001

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

base_obj = context.object
base_mesh = base_obj.data

bbm = bmesh.new()
bbm.from_mesh(base_mesh)

# a list of global locations of base_mesh_object verts
locs = [base_obj.matrix_world * v.co for v in bbm.verts]

#meshes of selected objecst that aren't base_mesh
mesh_objs = [o for o in context.selected_objects
               if o.type == 'MESH'
               and o != base_obj and o.data != base_mesh]
# their meshes
meshes = [o.data for o in mesh_objs]

for o in mesh_objs:
    def tol(v1, v2):
        return (v1 - v2).length < TOL

    # are there other objects sharing this mesh?
    if meshes.count(o.data) > 1:
        # what to do?
        print("passing on ", o.name)
        continue

    bm = bmesh.new()
    #bm.from_object(o, scene)
    bm.from_mesh(o.data)
    update = False
    for v in bm.verts:
        # find if any global v pos match our list
        rem = [l for l in locs if tol(o.matrix_world * v.co, l)]
        # if so remove
        if len(rem):
            update = True
            bm.verts.remove(v)

    if update:
        bm.to_mesh(o.data)

    bm.free()

A bounding_box search to eliminate objects that can't have  corresponding verts.  Would make an interesting live edit operator.

Somewhat related https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/40979/15543


Howto convert Step(*.stp) to AutoCAD(*.fbx) with python Script (and also decimate the face ratio)

Is there a way to import *.stp File in to blender, with out converting the *.stp file in to *.stl or other by Blender acceptable type with external tools?

Unfortunately no. The current import tools available in Blender do not allow (to my knowledge) to read and / or interpret NURBS input data. Some way or another, this always has to be processed by an external application first, and then be brought into Blender in a second step.

There are a few tools out there which can assist in this, you already mentioned FreeCAD which does a good job on less complicated input files. Many times however you're stuck with proprietary commercial software. A solution that works well is Autodesk Showcase. It reads many industry standard formats, allows for dynamic tessellation of parts / files, gives you a nice visual representation, and exports well to .fbx, which is the preferred format (for me) to bring stuff into Blender. Main advantage: With this pipeline, custom split normals are generated and imported correctly.

  After I've imported an object with 'bpy.ops.import_mesh.stl(filepath=stl_in)' do I get with 'bpy.context.object' to some thing like number_of_surfaces/polygons?

Of course. You can use len(bpy.context.object.data.polygons) to get the polycount of the active object. len(bpy.context.object.data.vertices) and len(bpy.context.object.data.edges) are the vertex and edge counterparts. In essence, bpy.context.object.data.polygons and the like are Python lists, where you can access each individual face / edge / vertex.


You probably need to set a higher cache limit in your preferences. It is under the System tab. The default is 4 GB which may not be enough for what you're doing.


The option that you are looking for is now called GAS


Correct syntaxt to call object.draw_type = 'BOUNDS' as pie command?

read wm.py I promise this will be an eye-opener.

This has nothing to do with pies, pies are just specialized menu representations.  The property you are setting is an Enum ( a simple drop down in the UI is generally a representation of an Enum )

If you want to set the value of an Enum but don't want to present a dropdown, then you use wm.context_set_enum.

    if context.active_object:
        obj = context.active_object
        set_draw_type = layout.operator("wm.context_set_enum", text="Object Solid", icon="MESH_CUBE")
        set_draw_type.data_path = "object.draw_type"
        set_draw_type.value = 'BOUNDS'

wm.context_set_enum is defined in the class WM_OT_context_set_enum,
which delegated the execute function to execute_context_assign (also found in wm.py)


blender texture paint problem: color combining with texture during stencil painting

i solved it, i had accidentally painted some strokes of another texture so now the result i was getting was combination of two, i used the symmetry to solve it as left side of my model was fine


Blender 2.8 - where is Multiple Importance Sampling?

It is under the Properties Window > World Settings > Surface change Sampling from Auto to Manual.

Multiple importance sampling is only available for volumes, under Volume > Sampling change from Equiangular to Multiple Importance.


Material - Duplicate then Unlink Material from Original

This can be done via NLA editor: simply Push down an Action on duplicated material and delete created NLA Track. Original will remain untouched.

P.S. I'll post some images later if needed.


Make blender unaware of user/system installed add-ons

In my customized, local install I needed to create an empty config/ folder inside the 2.XX/ folder (the one that contains datafiles/, python/, scripts/ already - in my case 2.67/). As soon as blender sees this folder it completely ignores any user/system add-ons (and everything else too I suppose - startup files, configuration, etc.)

I found the answer here: Need guidance for creating no dependancies between two installs of Blender


strange bones rotation in the animations when exporting in FBX for unity

The problem was the quaternion rotation that was in conflict with the euler rotation (because i changed from quaternion rotation method to euler) and the only thing that I could do is to delete all the quaternion rotation keyframes and recalculate the roll of the bones in edit mode "shift+N" (recalculating the roll of all bones in the right way is important to export and mirror animations) because when blender is exporting in fbx it uses all the rotation keyframes and all the deforming/nondeforming bones deformations so sometimes you may see some graphics artifacts in animations so to avoid this there is an option in the armature tab when exporting called "only deform bones".


The 'normals' i.e. the direction of the faces on your chalice are inverted, or pointing the wrong way. The darkened shading of the chalice is indicative of this. This means that he fluid simulation will have trouble telling what the inside and the outside of your mesh is. On the left is your model with incorrect normals, and on the right, correct normals:

Enter edit mode for the chalice, select everything and press Ctrl+N to 'Recalculate normals'.

As a side note, your fluid domain is very large. If you need it that large then that's fine, but if you don't, make sure your domain is as small as possible. Using a large domain will use a large amount of ram compared to a domain which is small and compact.

I would also recommend disabling 'Remove air bubbles' in the 'Fluid Boundary' panel for the domain object to stop the liquid appearing through the sides of the chalice.


How to move a curve without evaluating it in Sverchok?

You can use Apply Vector Field to Curve node. Pass a vector or a matrix to it's Field input.


can I change the UV editor when colour blind?

There is no way that I know of to change what blender generates from these options without editing the code and creating a custom build.

This would however make a good feature request and it would be worth trying to get in contact with some of the devs and seeing if they can help.

That said their is a fairly simple workaround. If you want a greyscale version, you can just save the image out of blender and use your preferred image editing software to convert it to greyscale. Then whenever you want to check your UVs, just load this converted image from disc rather than using blender's generated options.


how to orient of Z-local-axis through a given Point

You could just assign a Damped Track constraint to object 'A'. (You can set any axis to track the target)..

If at some stage you want to remove the constraint but leave 'A' in place, you can CtrlA > 'Apply Visual Transforms'


image texture on plane leaves average color of image in 3d-view

When using an Image Texture you need to UV unwrap your mesh.

To do this, go into edit mode, select all vertices, and press U > Unwrap.

What is happening, is Blender has no coordinates to map the texture to, so it takes the average image color and uses that as the texture. When you UV unwrap the mesh, you are telling Blender what vertices go where in relation to the texture, and Blender can then project the texture onto the mesh.

If you now go to the UV/Image Editor you can see and edit how your mesh has been unwrapped:


Why does my mesh rotate face down when i delete my bone?

Are you sure the bone you are deleting is not the parent to any other bone, because if that is the case their parent would become NULL and the tranformation they were inheriting will become garbage (or maybe just 0 in Blender).
So make sure you undo parenting prior to deletion.


Rendering does not reflect the new rotation of my character after using Blender's Python API's rotation_euler function

Update your scene using bpy.context.scene.update() and you should get the result that you expect.

So your code should look like this:

for i in range(0, 8):
    model.rotation_euler = (0,0,2 * pi * i / 8)
    bpy.context.scene.update()
    bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)


Found the issue, the children particles were too many for rendering.


Use a Solidify modifier to give thickness to your plate, apply it, then try again. Boolean needs thickness. If you don't want to give thickness to your object, use the Knife Project tool.


Quality loss of animation when exporting to After effects

FIXED

Enable bloom in passes. Go to view layer properties -> Passes -> Effects -> Bloom
In compositor tab, add "Mix" node and change it to "Add" and connect nodes accordingly as shown on screenshot above.

Hope this helps


Is there a way to interpolate animations with arcs?

Use the Graph Editor to edit the animation curves. This will allow you to have full control over the shape of the animation. In the graph editor you can select a specific channel (such as the Z Location) and can then add keyframes by way of the Key/Insert Keyframe menu (or I shortcut) and these can be manipulated by grabbing and rotating the bezier handles (assuming it's set to Bezier - the default interpolation mode).

Once you've adjusted the curve it is useful to use the Motion Paths panel to visualise the new path (as in LeoNas's answer).


see if you have 'Manipulate Center Points' checked on. If so, turn it off.

ps:Point Lights don't rotate.


Normal map baking does not reflect details

When baking a normal map from highpoly mesh to lowpoly, several conditions have to be taken into account (assuming lowpoly is already unwrapped):

Highpoly must be selected first, lowpoly - last. So lowpoly should be active, i.e. selected last. Also they have to be in the same place in 3D space.
Lowpoly must have image to be baked to. If Blender Internal, It's simply a matter of assigning image in UV/Image Editor while mesh in Edit mode (or by using a material). If Cycles, Image node with this image should be selected in Node Editor.
In Render Bake settings, Selected To Active has to be checked.

This will make Blender to bake the normals from the secondary selection to the primary selection in 3D Viewport.

Also read:

Baking normal maps from highpoly to lowpoly
Bake normal maps
Baking Normal maps in Blender Internal | Baking Normal maps in Cycles


How can I make a realistic cement shader with old/cracks/crumbling/paint chipping on top of a texture?

Here is what I have been able to come up with:

Here are the nodes:

Click to enlarge.

The shaders:

The bare cement shader is just a mix of diffuse/glossy with a cement image texture controlling the diffuse color and the glossy roughness (after going through a color ramp for fine tuning).

The paint shader is a straight mix of glossy/diffuse with a light, desaturated yellow color on the diffuse shader.  On the paint I also use a high contrast grunge texture, sent through a multiply node, to mix in some grunge.  For the grunge just send a grunge texture through a color ramp with some grimy colors on a diffuse shader.

The mask:

When paint wares off in real life it doesn't fade out and slowly reveal what's underneath of it, it chips off; it is either there or it isn't.  to simulate this I send a noise texture sent through a math > greater than node.  The greater than node gets rid of any grey in-between areas.

The bump-mapping:

One of the biggest selling points for realism I have found is bump.  The biggest thing to keep in mind is that in real life the paint will conform to the surface it is on.  So in your material you want it to use the same bump mapping as the underlying surface (the bare concrete).  However it will slightly fill in the crevices and the bumps will not be quite as distinct.  To simulate this I use the same bump map for both shaders, but I use a smaller strength on the paint shader.  In terms of the bump itself I am using part image texture (same as the one for the bare concrete color), and mix it with two different sizes of voronoi (inverted with color ramps) using two bump map nodes.

Further reference:

Here's the .blend file:

Unfortunately due to license issues I can't include the image textures in the .blend so you will have to use your own.
See my answer here for a more detailed look at levels of grunge.
Check out this post on BA where I have a very similar shader for chipped paint on wood.


Recommended Samples and other settings to remove fireflies?

A great way to reduce the number of fireflies is to clamp. In the Render panel, under Sampling, you'll see Clamp Indirect. This will remove any bright pixels (fireflies). Start with a high value, maybe 1-3. Then work your way down until all the fireflies are gone. Clamping does darken your render, so it's important to use the highest number possible so that you keep as much brightness as possible.

32 samples, no clamp

32 samples, .5 clamp
You can further reduce the noise with more sampling, or, you can use denoising if you are in a dev version.


How to use array modifier with follow path constraint (Cableway Chairs)

A simple Array modifier will deform your object, so you can use 2 methods:

With Follow Path constraint:

Give your chair a Follow Path constraint.
Duplicate your object with AltD (linked duplication), and press Enter so that the copy stays at the exact same position.
Play with the constraint Offset value to place the copy before or after the original object.

With Duplifaces:

Create a curve. Put its origin to its beginning point to make it easier.
Create a plane at the exact same point. This plane will be used as a base for your chair.
Apply the curve and the plane scales.
Give the plane an Array modifier, choose Constant Offset or the Relative Offset value, choose the Count value.
Give the plane a Curve modifier with the curve as Object. The plane should be duplicated along the curve.
Keep the plane selected and in the Properties panel > Object > Instancing, activate Faces.
Parent the chair object to the plane, the chair should be duplicated on the planes.
If you want the chair to stay vertical along the curve, create a single vertex instead of a plane.
To animate, move the plane on the right axis.


BGE - how to keep child off, and pose for armature?

Just re-parent the first metarig - all you have to do is press CtrlP.


How to bake multiple fluid simulations in one scene?

Here we share our results based on the method explained {here} and {here}.

The idea is simple:

  1) define domain, fluid, obstacle etc
  2) assign unique folder for baking cache
  3) bake the fluid one
  4) remove domain and fluid associations

Repeat the above as many times you want (here in the following example we did it three times).
Trick:  Indeed, for the following example we just baked once. Then we copied domain+obstacle two times. Relocated them on the scene. Duplicated all the cache on the disk two times in two folders that later we assigned in the above algorithm :))

We also used offset frame just to make the fluids a little bit different in stage:)

Note: domains can overlap or whatever, but notice that the fluids do not interact each other but overlay.


The metalic look of the material looks opaque

You need to setup an environment texture.
Go to our ressources in texture link and find the "HDR/JPEG Skydome Images" section. Check the links to find a HDRI environment texture and set it up in your world shader as an "environment texture" (not the usual "image texture").
in shader nodes, select world

Add an "environment texture" node and connect it to the background shader.

This is a basic world setup. Be aware that HDR images can be big files


Convert an image with black background to a black and white

to create a mask from BW image you can use this nodes :

you can change the threshold for different results


Convert rotation from sign switching to continuous in Animation Nodes

This signed representation is called a Directed Angle. To convert that to a non-directed angle, simply add $2\pi$ if the result is negative as follows:

This is assuming you angles are in radians, if they are in degrees, you should be adding 360 instead.


Why do some objects not show up in the camera view?

The Blender camera has clipping.  It has a start and end distance.  Basically it limits the rays from the camera that Blender has to render, and that can speed up render time (varies).

So right below the panel in the upper right of your screen (and the default view layout), click on the camera icon, and then under "lens", you can find the clipping start and end.

Go to your camera view (numpad 0 or view -> camera) and increase the "end" value until your entire scene is properly in the camera.  Also, make sure that the camera can currently see the most of the scene (maybe at it's furthest away point) when you do that so that it doesn't clip some things in certain positions.  I recommend increasing the "end" value past that point at least some just to make sure it is good.


It appears you have zero surface faces along that wall in the corner denoted by square dots along the top corner edge. You will have to eliminated them as it interferes with the subdividing function.


Why does my cloth simulation mesh glitch after editing its geometry?

So, I figured out what it was... I removed geometry from a vertex group that I had pinned, and added it again without reassigning the new vertices which caused everything to wig out.
Turns out the solution was as simple as adding selecting the new vertices I was adding and assigning them to the vertex group and that solved it.


ParticleInstance modifier doesn’t list any particle systems

Looks like I needed to add the ParticleInstance modifier to the hair model, not the monkey model.