How to animate spirals on packed spheres using Animation Nodes?

By looking at the gif above, we will divide our implementation into two parts:

Sphere Packing, where we try to find a list of locations and radii for the sphere such that they are non intersecting and look packed.
Generating Spirals, this part is relatively easy, all we have to do is find a parametric equation for the spiral over the spheres and replicate it over the list of locations and radii we have got.

Sphere Packing

There are multiple algorithms we can use to generate point locations and radii. Some are iterative, others are generative (but expensive), and others are "approximative." We don't really care about execution time because the output is readily cached. Perfect packing is not needed either since smaller circles will usually go unnoticed.

Our algorithms will be as follows:

Initialize an empty vector and float lists for locations and radii.
Define a function that generates a random location, preferably uniform in density.
For some arbitrary number:

Generate a random point $p$.
Loop over the point and radii lists and compute the smallest signed distance between the point $p$ and the nearest sphere surface point.
If the signed distance is positive (meaning the point is outside all of the existing spheres), append that point $p$ and radii (which is defined as any scalar that is smaller that or equal the positive distance).

The smallest signed distance between the point $p$ and the nearest surface point is equal to the distance between $p$ and the nearest sphere minus its radius.

If the distance is smaller than the radius, then the signed distance will be negative, telling us that the point $p$ is inside of the spheres, and that's why we don't append it. Moreover, the radius of the sphere at point $p$ has to be smaller than the positive distance so as not to intersect the other circle.

To find the smallest signed distance, we loop over the point and radii lists and reassign an initially infinity float parameter if the current signed distance is smaller than the value of the parameter. This is is the equivalent to a KD Tree search except we are subtracting some value defined as the radius.

Next, we create a loop that has an arbitrary number of iterations controlling the maximum number of spheres. However, it does not strictly define the number of spheres itself! The loop has two main parameters: (1) a vector list that will include the spheres locations and (2) a float list that will contain the radii locations. Both inputs are undefined, meaning that they are initially empty lists that we will append to later. In this loop, we generate a random point (we will talk about that algorithm later on), compute the smallest signed distance using the loop we created before and append the sphere location if it is positive. The append condition is implemented as a form of reassign condition for both lists. It is important that we copy the lists at each iteration, ensuring the append doesn't overwrite the original list rendering our reassign condition useless. I chose to define the radius as the positive distance bounded by some arbitrary constant called the Max Radius, though any other positive value less than the distance will work.

Again, the random point generation is a choice and it may vary based on our needs. I can see that in the reference gif, the random points are uniformly distributed inside a circle, so our random generator can be created as define in the document about Disk Point Picking, that is, the random point is defined by the parametric equation:

$$
\begin{aligned}
x &= \sqrt{r} \cos t\\
y &= \sqrt{r} \sin t
\end{aligned}
$$

Where $r$ and $t$ are uniform random variables, $t$ ranging from zero to two $\pi$ and $r$ ranging from zero to some max radius. Th result would be something like this:

Had I used a normalized random vector, it would have been like this:

Spiral

All we have to do now is generate a spiral on those spheres. A possible parametric equation would be the ones described in this question and answers, that is:

$$
\begin{aligned}
x &= \sqrt{1-t^2}\cos (a \pi t)\\
y &= \sqrt{1-t^2}\sin (a \pi t)\\
z &= t
\end{aligned}
$$

Where $t$ ranges between negative one and one and $a$ controls the number of revolutions. Which results:

But since sin and cos and periodic, we can animate them by adding a phase shift:

We can now transform this by some transformation matrix defined by the sphere locations and radii. Create a spline from it. And we are going to put that in a group to be able to use it easily.

Final Implementation

By looping over spheres, randomizing some of the parameters and transforming, as follows:

We get:

You can now render this as you wish. Maybe through in some random colors or make it particles like the reference gif.

Blend File:


Invert the rotation value in all keyframes on X and Y axis

In the graph editor set the 2D cursor in a Y loc equal to 0, turn the pivot point to be 2D cursor, select all keyframes you want to invert and press S Y -1 Enter.


"Not a Number" appears when you excede a range. This means your object is too close/far away. Move it closer or away.


Ok so seems blender's interface is a bit unintuitive for newcommers, because after I put the text strips to the top, the main strips at the bottom and the effect strips in the middle, everything worked perfectly and as expected.

You really have to keep in mind the order (top to bottom) of your strips since they determine the layering of your, I guess, masks? It is also important which effects are applied to which strip, because similarly my speed effect (speed to zero for a freeze frame) didn't work with my transform if I applied both to the main sequence.

So top to bottom order and effect attribution are pitfalls as far as I can tell.


Simultaneously see Eevee and Cycles renderings

Maybe an old question but worth mentioning that YES, it is indeed possible. Though may be seen as a workaround:
First place all your settings as you'd like them with Eevee set as your renderer. This includes activating AO, screenspace reflections, irradiance/reflection objects etc. Any setting that is relevant to Eevee basically. This doesn't include lights.
NOTE: HDRI will be independant from Cycles world settings if you're using an irradiance object to bake the lighting.
When you have it all set, split the window to have a second 3D view, then switch to Cycles as your renderer. In the one view set the shading mode to rendered (shortcut: Z) which will be Cycles, and set the other shading mode to material preview for Eevee.
In the material preview window, make sure that the extra options "Scene lights" and "Scene world" are checked.


using three.js how to add texture to .OBJ object

In your example you're creating the material but not applying it to the Mesh(es) loaded from the OBJ yet. You can do that as follows:

// Create a material
var textureLoader = new THREE.TextureLoader();
var map = textureLoader.load('./diffuse.png');
var material = new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial({map: map});

var loader = new THREE.OBJLoader();
loader.load( './my-model.obj', function ( object ) {

  // For any meshes in the model, add our material.
  object.traverse( function ( node ) {

    if ( node.isMesh ) node.material = material;

  } );

  // Add the model to the scene.
  scene.add( object );
} );

three.js r89. Documentation for THREE.OBJLoader.


ColorRamp outputing unsollicited color variations despite using constant mode

I got it. I noticed that this happened even with only a #FF0000 background without any object on it, checked every possible option, and found a culprit: Output properties > Post-processing > Dither. I switched it to 0, and no more color variation. The only problem left is that colors are not always the exact ones, but they are always the same variation at least. #00FF00 becomes #01FF01, but it's always that, which is far better.


Apply a Follow Path Animation to a Collection of Objects (using Blender 2.8)

If your collection is essentially a group of objects that form an entity like a truck, then i would suggest to use an Empty and parent all the objects under the collection to it. With that empty you can then build the follow path animation.
Using the empty also allows to have the objects in the collection keep their location relative to each other, which can be helpful in case you want to animate parts of the truck along the path.
For this you would need to do the following:

Add an empty to your scene and position it to where you want the origin of your truck to be.
Select all objects of the collection by RMB on the collection and Select Objects.

Add the empty to the selection by holding Shift when you select it, making it the active object.
Press Ctrl+P to bring up the Set Parent To menu and choose the first option, Object.
You can then if the empty is not already in the same collection, drag it in there in the Outliner, which will result in all objects in that collection being put inside the empty. The empty, different then the collection though can be animated, as it has a location, rotation, scale and origin.

From here on you can proceed with your plans using the empty to affect the entire collection of objects representing your truck.
Instead of a constraint, you can also select both the empty and then the path to follow as active/last selected object.
Pressing Ctrl+P Set Parent To followed by the Follow Path option, which will be available if the active selection is a curve/path object.

Update: Instead of the mentioned Empty in the solution, a simple object can of course be used as well. It may be needed to hide or reduce the mesh to a minimum of 1 vertex, but the functionality the Empty was chosen for would be achieved as well. Based on the comment by grb2020, this seems to be a solution specifically of use for Apple developers due to restrictions with the export/conversion or lack of such for the Empty. Thus i'm gonna call it placeholder.
Happy Blending


To move an edge along an object without deforming the geometry (too much), with the edge selected, press keyboard shortcut G + G to perform an Edge Slide:


How to reduce amount of array values in each iteration in array modifier?

One way to do this is using the particle system set to Grid distribution :

make a pyramid ( default cube with the top face resized )

add a particle system to this pyramid :

change the particle size / grid resolution /pyramid mesh  to get the desired results
in the modifiers tab of the pyramid convert the particles to a real mesh :


With the 'Separate XYZ' node, you're extracting the Z value of the Generated texture-space of the plane. That is 0 for all the plane's shading points, since the plane has no Z dimension.

When plugged into the Vector input of the Voronoi node, that is implicitly cast to the vector (0,0,0).

The Voronoi function is therefore being evaluated at (0,0,0) for all shading points in the plane, and returning the same value at all points.

Knock out the 'Separate XYZ' node, and you should start to see some results which depend on the shading point's (XY) location in the plane's Generated texture space.

If you haven't already, I would recommend installing the shipped 'Node Wrangler' add-on. One of the things you can do with it is quickly preview the output of any node on the way down the tree by sctrl-hift-clicking on it. With your current set-up, for example, you would be able to ctrl-shift-click on the Voronoi node, and see that its output is a blank, uniform color, or even put a little reroute in the Z output of the Separate XYZ node by shift-right-dragging across the noodle, and ctrl-shift-click on the reroute, to see that the Z is 0 everywhere.


I'm not quite sure what you are doing here, but it looks like you are trying to divide that n-gon up.

The knife tool is k, with it active click the first vertex, then the next.  This should result in the polygon being split along the resulting edge in the way you expect.


Video Editor shows SVGs as transparent image - can this be fixed?

You need to convert SVGs to a raster format (Tiff, PNG, JPG, EXR, etc) before you can load them into the VSE.

Support for SVGs is limited.

As an alternative you can load the SVGs (paths only) as curve objects into the 3D environment, and add a scene strip to the VSE.

For more info on support for SVGs read: Why can't I import a SVG file from Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape?


Workaround for Resuming Fluid Simulation

In Blender version 2.81+ now Mantaflow fluid and fire simulator is used which gives you the option to pause and resume fluid and fire bakes.


How to extrude and scale with an even offset?

Using "Inset" is a method to do this.

Select the face to "extrude", then press I to inset.

You can then inset a face almost like extruding and scaling, but evenly.

The inset tool is also useful for many other things, but this is one of its benefits.

Note: If you have a face that you would like to add a frame to, select the face then press I. You do not need to delete the face or anything. The "inset" tool is designed to inset :P


In the particular case of the teddy bear in the tutorial referenced by the original poster, because the leg and bottom of the leg objects are approximately symmetrical around the center axis of the leg, mirroring the object, and rotating the object will have similar results, except that it appears that mirroring may result in the normals of the faces of the object being flipped. With a more complex mesh, however, mirroring and rotating the objects will not have the same result. An example of this would be an exterior rear view mirror on an automobile, such as this one:

[

In this case, duplicating the object(s) and using the mirror tool (CTRL - M) will yield a right side rear view mirror. However duplicating the object(s) and then rotating it 180 degrees will not have the same result; instead the right side mirror will have the glass facing forward, and the mounting surface in the wrong orientation.

Note 1: Original photo at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Wing_mirror_with_indicator_light.JPG/297px-Wing_mirror_with_indicator_light.JPG


You have selected the armature are already in edit mode for the armature hence you are only able to edit the armature and not the mesh.

Go back to object mode.
Press A twice to deselect everything.
Select the mesh only and not the armature. If you are having trouble selecting the object then go to the outliner and select the object by clicking on Kanout.mesh.
Now enter edit mode.


The thing with triangular sides is camera. Your final render will be looking through that. You can view it by pressing Numpad 0. You should not delete it, because blender might not work as you expect when rendering.

The circular thing is a lamp. All the shadows will be calculated using the orientation and location of the lamp. In the nutshell - you need a lamp to prevent your scene from being completely dark.

You need these things to render your final image, but if you really want to delete these just press A one or two times to activate them and then press Del or X key to delete them.


How to solidify a complex 2D Render from Pix4D for 3D printing

If I get how your model is done now, I would select the outer edge, and then extrude it down Z enough.  Then Scale it to Z 0 (zero) to equal the bottom extruded edge loop. Then fill the bottom face pressing F key.


If it is something symmetrical, you may also be able to get away with using an array, and offsetting it however you see fit as well.


I found a way to solve it myself. I pressed "n" to open the sidebar, then I went to the create tab and there it was.


how to get number of selected vertex and the number of total vertex with python?

You have multiple questions there:

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.active_object
if bpy.context.mode == 'EDIT_MESH':
    bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)
    verts = [ v.index for v in bm.verts if v.select ]
else:
    verts = [ v.index for v in obj.data.vertices if v.select ]

print(verts)
print(len(obj.data.vertices))

and for the second question:

bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.data.objects[name]
# fix shortcoming identified by Omar :
for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    obj.select = ( obj == bpy.context.scene.objects.active)


As @gandalf3 pointed out, you can check out the answer here.  I'll redo it with a bit more detail though.

I'll assume you've already UV mapped your plane (select plane, go into Edit Mode, U > Unwrap) and you already set up the texture in the Materials tab to look like this:

So, you render and the alpha appears as black.

To fix this, you go into the Node Editor and you use the alpha information to set where the plane should display the texture image and where it should have transparent material.

Render and you should have transparency.


You must unwrap the low poly version first. That is how your bake will have coordinates to match up from low poly to high poly. If you tried to bake normals first, you would get an error because the program would not know where to put them in your image.


It seems that your sphere isn't UV-unwrapped.
You need to enter edit mode, select all vertices, press "U" on your keyboard and then choose a projection mode that fits your texture. I'd guess that "equirectangular" might be the correct option.


As Rigify is a very flexible tool, a pose that works for a Rigify Character will not work with a different Rigify Character. To transfer poses (and animation) from a rig to a similar one you should do a "retargeting", which is an option that some softwares have (like UE4), but not Blender, unless there is some addon that I don't know.


How to extract side-view outline (e.g. top view) of a 3D object to 2D surface?

Bmesh Approach

Projecting onto a plane such that proj is our vector normal to the
plane and the bounding box center is on the plane.
Split mesh into two sets of vertices those with normals pointing
towards and away from proj
Project them onto the two planes each side of projection plane Local Y projection of random icosphere "flatrock" showing intermediate result with scale_factor thickness 1, and silhouette edge mesh in orange
Bisect    the new flat ended mesh, keeping only the bisection result.

Test Script, projects using the local Y axis producing a front on silhouette mesh that can be converted to curve. Adjust proj (could use 3d view matrix)  and scale_factor which controls the thickness of flattened mesh.

Edit: Updated for 2.8. For prior version see revision 5

import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
viewlayer = context.view_layer
ob = context.object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(me)
scale_factor = 0.1
c  = sum((Vector(b) for b in ob.bound_box), Vector()) / 8

proj = Vector((0, 1, 0)).normalized()
T = Matrix.Translation(-c)
S = Matrix.Scale(0, 4, proj)
verts = [v for v in bm.verts if v.normal.dot(proj) > 0]
bmesh.ops.transform(bm, matrix=S, verts=verts,
        space=Matrix.Translation(-c - scale_factor * proj))
bmesh.ops.transform(bm, matrix=S, verts=list(set(bm.verts) - set(verts)),
        space=Matrix.Translation(-c + scale_factor * proj))

#bm.to_mesh(me)
bmesh.ops.bisect_plane(bm, geom=bm.verts[:] + bm.edges[:] + bm.faces[:],
        plane_co=c,
        plane_no=proj,
        clear_inner=True,
        clear_outer=True)

copy = ob.copy()
sil = bpy.data.meshes.new("silhouette")
copy.data = sil
scene.collection.objects.link(copy)
viewlayer.objects.active = copy
copy.select_set(True)
bm.to_mesh(sil)

This time showing result of looping on 3 principal local axes for proj in Matrix.Identity(3):

Y projection of Suzanne.  Showing how backfaces on opposite side of planes create some internal geometry which could be tested for and ignored

result of script on object with 60K+ verts ran in a couple of seconds on old computer


Add a new material and go to compositing then add image texture into the diffuse bsdf


ok, applying the scale to my emitter object seems to have done the trick, thanks heaps!


Solidify adds curved ridge - How to get rid of it

select edge loop

E -> S

select edge loop (faces)

CTRL-E -> extrude along normals

then you get:


How to hide certain objects in reflection in Eevee

This link should help describe what you are looking for but it shows an older version of blender.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/44649/how-to-get-rid-of-an-objects-reflection#:~:text=In%20the%20properties%20window%20go,disable%20Ray%20Visibility%20for%20glossy.
The image below shows where to find the these settings in Blender 2.9.
If you select the object you don't want to reflect, in your case the pan and the egg, then toggle the "Glossy" option under "Ray Visibility" in the "Visibility" settings in the objects properties.


I think the problem could be that you are using the light path node at the end, try this, I hope it helps.


One option is to use shortcuts in the Outliner editor - V for visibility of the objects, S - for selectability and R for renderability. Note that mouse has to be over the Outliner editor while using the shortcuts.

Open the Outliner. You need to point to Blender which objects' settings you want to edit. As they are unselectable, press A which will create blue overlay over the objects and will select them for the Outliner actions.
Press the shortcut for desired operation, in the case of the question - S for selectability.

Note that this is toggle, so it will invert current state of the adjacent property; if object-A was unselectable and object-B was selectable, objectA will become selectable and objectB the other way around.


motion paths work like this. Although for some reason in this example head and tails were switched by machine. could be bug.


You need to use the Sharp profile.
It's the only one that bends 'inwards'.


Can I use blender to create a model and 3D print it for some real device

Yes, you can do this.

To get realistic measurements, go to the Scene tab in the Properties panel and then find the Units section and select Metric.

Keep in mind, though, that once you export, all the coordinates are still in "Fundamental Blender Units." There's no information stored in the model about what measurement system was used to make the model. The target system (SketchFab or Shapeways or whoever) will just make an assumption about what units the coordinates are in (often centimeters). You'll have to do a little testing to synchronize Blender's unit system with your target's unit system. It should be a very straightforward conversion, though.

I'd recommend making a unit cube in Blender and exporting that to whatever your target system is. See how they interpret its size. You can then use the Scale setting in that same Units section to control what unit a Fundamental Blender Unit maps to. If your 1m^3 cube is interpreted to be 1cm^3 by the target system, then you just have to adjust your scale by 10^3 or 10^-3 (I'm not sure which).

The smallest length Blender can handle is 1μm. It can't go smaller than that but that should be enough for your use. You can simply type in units (cm, m, mm etc.) but for μm you have to use "um".

It would also be worth your time to take a look at  the addon measureit. It will make measuring things in Blender much easier.


Making a Video using only text, correct way to do this?

Since Blender 2.76 (or more exactly since the Gooseberry Branch) there is a new Text Effect strip that you can add in the VSE which should help you do what you want to. There are already enough tutorials out there if you need some help.

Just Add Shift+A an E̲ffect Strip... T̲ext. You can animate it's opacity if needed and change it's size and position.


Function that prints the location of all the vertices of an active object

Assuming your object is selected, the following code should work:
import bpy

for vert in bpy.context.active_object.data.vertices:
    print (vert.co)

I will also point out blender has an integrated terminal where you can type incomplete python statements (e.g bpy.context.active_object.data.) and press tab in order to print a display of the possible completions. This is very useful to quickly navigate over the properties of bpy objects and gain quick intuition on what you can and can't do.


In the preview sidebar, you'll find Prefetch Frames:


How to separate objects created using mirror modifier in Blender?

In fact I got the solution in some other place.

To make the hands separate objects just Tab into edit mode, select all verts (A) and hit P.

Choose Separate by loose parts.

Tab into object mode and they will be two separate objects.


Error messge: Generation has thrown an exception: list index out of range when wanting to generate rig

My best guess: you tried to partially delete the face.
Unfortunately you can't selectively delete parts of the face (as of 2.82a, later versions may provide more flexibility).
Either keep the whole face or delete all bones that belong to it.

Some info may be found here:
https://developer.blender.org/T53842


Custom properties on an action, any place for UI visibility?

Can also add a custom property panel to the Action Editor, much the same way as it is added to other parts of the UI.  Import the rna_prop_ui.PropertyPanel class and set the path from context to "object.animation_data.action" and the type to bpy.types.Action.

The default bl_label if not defined otherwise is "Custom Properties".

import bpy

from bpy.types import Panel
from rna_prop_ui import PropertyPanel

class ACTION_PT_custom_props(PropertyPanel, Panel):
    bl_label = "Action Properties"
    bl_idname = "ACTION_PT_custom_props"
    bl_space_type = 'DOPESHEET_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    # required for PropertyPanel
    #COMPAT_ENGINES = {'BLENDER_RENDER', 'BLENDER_GAME'}
    _context_path = "object.animation_data.action"
    _property_type = bpy.types.Action

    @classmethod
    def poll(self, context):
        obj = getattr(context, "object", None)
        ad = getattr(obj, "animation_data", None)
        action = getattr(ad, "action", None)
        return action is not None

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":  # only for live edit.
    register()


How to use a curve modifier in-game (work around)

You can't use curves as they are not supported. But you can get the effect your are looking for via armature.

Create an armature to control your cord. Parent the cord via Armature Deform to the armature <ctrl+p>.

In pose mode add an IK-constraints to the top bone.

You will see the cord will follow the target in preview. To make it do the same thing in the bge use the armature actuator.

If you move the target while running the game, the cord should follow as much as it can.

I hope it helps


I don't think there is a way (as per my limited understanding). But in your case, I think to simplify the mouseclicks (without having to press Ctrl), you can select an edge or a face, and Select the Extrude to Cursor (same as Ctrl+RMB), and just click away :)

Like this (I'm not pressing Ctrl+RMB)


Is there a way to loop in some way, the w slider on 4D nodes?

You can use a 3d texture and animate the movement of the coordinate space.
I have a sample scene here with a large plane that is just meant to show how the coordinate plane is moving, and a cube representing your object.  Right now they both have Object Coordinates showing.

Using a Mapping node, we can rotate the coordinate space.  If you use these coordinates to generate noise and animate the z rotation, the noise will be rotating about your object.

If you don't want rotation but instead a more linear movement, you can add a second mapping node in front to offset the origin and thus offset the point of rotation.  Doing them both in one mapping node still rotates from the center.

From here, every 360 degree rotation still puts you right back where you started, but indeed you could map out any movement you wanted.
If you find the effect is not to your liking from some angles, I bet it would be possible to combine this with a W value that climbs to a certain value and falls back down, and it may not appear such a sudden change.


Difference between bpy.data.objects['Armature'] and bpy.data.armatures['Armature']

Document here
bpy_types.Object is a container wrapper for inner data to communicate with Blender Scene and other stuff.
You can rename your bone and armature:

>>> C.object
bpy.data.objects['Obj Armature']

>>> C.object.data
bpy.data.armatures['Real Armature']

And with the tree display in outliner, that should be clear that Object has Pose properties and the armature itself doesn't.


Previous answers will work, but two other options need to be given.
1. Booltool addon - add a Solidify modifier to the Plane object, and then shift-select your target object and choose Difference bool brush.
2. With all the faces selected, you can use Shift-K to draw the knife tool through the mesh in edit mode so that it creates a cut even through odd ngons. After, you can select this new loop and use V to rip and then select one side and separate like explained before.


For the Soft Body to follow a path you need to have the Soft Body Goal enabled. The Soft Body Goal can either be defined for all vertices (if you don't specify a Vertex Group) or for specific vertices - with associated weights - as a Vertex Group.

Think of the Soft Body objects as a combination of two meshes. One is the 'actual' mesh - and this can be animated - if you disable the Softbody modifier in the modifier stack then the mesh will revert to that form.

The other 'mesh' is the Soft Body mesh. This is separate from the 'actual' mesh and its vertices are moved by the Soft Body simulation. Any simulated vertices flagged as being a 'goal' vertex will attempt to move towards the corresponding 'actual' vertex - with the strength determined by the Goal Strength and the Vertex Group Weight. If you set the weight to '1' then the simulated vertex will always exactly match the corresponding 'actual' vertex whereas lower weights will experience a smaller pull towards that 'goal' location.

Since you're seeing the Soft Body fall under the pull of gravity that indicates that you are not using the Goal - so despite you animating the 'actual' mesh, the simulated soft body vertices will not be 'pulled' towards it - so it ignores your animation.

So get it to follow the animation simply enable the 'Goal' and set a suitable Goal Strength to follow your path while still allowing it some sift body "wobble" - or use the Vertex Group so that only some of the vertices have a 'goal' and the rest will be pulled along with them following the soft body simulation.


How to connect shape key animation as driver to rotate a bone in pose mode

i managed to write one. if anyone else looking for same thing, below is simple function to test and could be starting point.
select facecap head mesh and rigify jaw master (in pose mode)

def bindFacecapToRigify():
    obj = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
    sk = obj.data.shape_keys
    # driver details (skname:'pbone','prop','axis','dir'),
    skname = 'jawOpen'
    pbone = bpy.context.active_pose_bone
    d = pbone.driver_add("rotation_euler",0)
    d.driver.type = "AVERAGE"
    var = d.driver.variables.new()
    var.targets[0].id_type="KEY"
    var.targets[0].id= sk
    data_path = "key_blocks[\""+sk.key_blocks[2].name+"\"].value"
    data_path = "key_blocks[\""+"jawOpen"+"\"].value"
    var.targets[0].data_path = data_path
    d.driver.expression = "var"


Why rotation with snapping is not working?

This might seem a bit long-winded, but... a variation on this..

Set snap to 'Active' and 'Vertex', and in the snap panel, set it to affect rotation
Set Pivot to '3D Cursor'
Set Transform Orientation to 'View'
Establish one end of the snap. With all selected, make the vertex at one end of the source (moving) object active, and snap it to the corresponding end of the target edge. ShiftS > send the 3D cursor to the same spot. It will be the center of rotation.
Establish the plane of rotation. ShiftD duplicate the vertex at the other end of the source object, and snap the duplicate to the other end of the target. With all source vertices selected, F create a temporary triangular face, and ShiftNumpad 7 align the view to the face
Delete the duplicate vertex, (and the face, with it)
With all source vertices selected, and the loose end vertex active, R rotate it into place.

This takes longer to describe than it takes to do.. usually there are convenient faces / whatever already hanging around.. you wouldn't have to create them specially, as in this example. Maybe, instead of using the View orientation, you would create a Custom Orientation from a selection of vertices, edges, or faces (either existing, or temporarily created for the purpose).


Faster way to rotate top view by 180 degrees

You can use ShiftNumpad 7 then Numpad 9.

After that Numpad 9 will invert the view.

Globally: Numpad 9 goes to the opposite view. But for top and bottom view using Shift set it to rotate 180 degrees.


Why can't I transform faces, edges, or vertices without transforming the whole object?

You need to turn off proportional editing

Or use the shortcut: O key.
Proportional editing in action:


I managed to get this right using python.

grs = bpy.data.groups
grs.remove(grs["Group"], True)


Cycles -- Scene rendering as completely white?

Looking at your Outliner, it seems that at least some of your objects are restricted from being rendered.


Background images will only be displayed in:

Camera Prespective view (Numpad 0)
Any of the preset Orthographic views:

Front/Back (Numpad 1 or Ctrl Numpad 1)

Right /Left (Numpad 3 or Ctrl Numpad 3)

Top/Bottom (Numpad 7 or Ctrl Numpad 7)

To toggle between Prespective and orthogonal view use Numpad 5


Simulation

Unfortunately since it's not yet possible to vary the IOR inside an object, it can't be simulated completely.

However, you can at least use a smoke simulation to distort things based on simulated airflow.

Create a fire simulation where the hot air should be. It doesn't have to be very high resolution:

Move the domain to an empty layer (e.g. layer 2), then setup a material for it with some random noise:

This will result in something like this, which we can use to distort the rest of the scene:

Create a new renderlayer and set it to mask the layer the main scene. Also set the main scene renderlayer to exclude the smoke:

Note that I set the number of samples taken for the smoke render layer to 1, and disabled the main passes (using only the emission pass).
Then setup the composite nodes:

Result:


Why is my texture stretched over my model?

In the orange node, change the Flat to Box or Cube.


How would I make a hair particle travel across a surface?

In this approach :

The field in green does not emit particles but has a collision setting :

The emitter is a band along the field side :

The particles are driven straight forward by a curve set as curve guide field :

As we want the vehicles to stay above the terrain, their center is set at the bottom part of them :


If the problem is related to having a PYTHONPATH environment variable set, you can do the following so you don't have to modify your PYTHONPATH variable. I am running 2.75a and this fixed my problem.

Make a batch file somewhere like your desktop

To do so, create a blank .txt document and name it blender.bat (MAKE SURE THE EXTENSION IS .bat and not .txt)

Edit blender.bat and add the text below

set PYTHONPATH=""
cd C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\
start blender.exe

Your blender path may be different, so make sure you find the correct path
run blender.bat

This will temporarily set the PYTHONPATH to "" (nothing) during your blender session but is restored after you close.


There is no way to change this behaviour.

  View all Sequences Home
  Zooms the display to show all strips.

But there is a similiar command.

  View Selected NumpadPeriod
  Zooms in the display to fit only the selected strips.

This will zoom to the selection. An alternative would be to quickly select all then view selected.

A, (A,) NumpadPeriod

This will preserve the height scale.


use # to define how many decimals you want.
I think you have to export them in steps to avoid the padding  with zeros

from frame 1 to frame 9 use #.obj
frame 10 to 99 use ##.obj
frame 100 to 999 use ###.obj


Can you paint over an existing image texture in Texture Paint?

ok...yes is possible, but I don't know where to duplicate it in the texture painting panel, but in the shader...
first add your texture with image texture

second: duplicate image texture with shift + d ... and click in the number next to name

and ready select one and edit
or you can save copy,and open your original texture again.


The point is you have rotated the mesh in order to align it to the reference image.

But this is difficult to do that and to align the mesh with its origin (which is used by the mirror as point of symmetry).

Generally, reference images are rotated and scaled before so that they are aligned to the 3D view axis.

But you can correct it:

Reset the Z rotation to 0°
Snap the 3D cursor at the object origin (in object mode, having the mesh selected: ShiftS then 'cursor to origin')
Enter edit mode
Activate the mirror
Set the 3D cursor as pivot point
Select all the vertices
And try to rotate/move the vertices so that the mirrored part is well aligned and mirrored

Once done, come back to object mode and rotate to check if your mesh is OK comparing to the reference.

Your blend file, a bit (but not perfectly) corrected :


how to create a mesh whose faces reduces to zero as approaching towards center?

One way is to use the Array modifier

Starty with a cylinder and a Bezier Circle
Add an Array Modifier > Fit Length and target the Bezier
Add a Curve modifier and target the Bezier

Changing the Bezier diameter changes the number of bristles. You can also include vertex instancing etc...


Your code hides the cursor. Nothing more nothing less. It just contains quite a lot of unnecessary "decoration".

This is the core of the code:

import bge
bge.render.showMouse(False)

As it says it hides the cursor.

It does not make your game ignore the mouse input. You didn't mentioned how your game deals with mouse input. Therefore you get a very generic answer:

let your logic ignore the mouse input

When you provide more details you might get a more specific answer that fits your current situation.

Recommendation

  ... the cursor to be disabled to prevent the game from clicking other menu buttons ...

I suggest you disable "clicking". There are many options to do so:

remove the clickable object (when you need clicking again - add another clickable object)
add a sensor that indicate if clicking is active or not e.g. via property

switch states to enable/disable clicking


How do I use texture maps in Cycles nodes?

There are some things you missed :).

Maps to use:

Diffuse. Plug into Base Color input.
Roughness. Plug into Roughness input.
Normal. Use with Normal Map node and plug into Normal input. Select UV map to use.
Displacement. Use with Displacement node and plug into Displacement input.

You need to enable material displacement through Options > Displacement > Displacement and Bump (works only in Cycles)
Only works if your geometry is subdivided.

Bump. Don't use here, since you have a Normal map (which works better)
Specular. Don't use here. (It's more complicated, but I won't address that here)
Ambient Occlusion (AO). Don't use with Cycles, use with Eevee.


I figured it out, the issue wasn't with the Suzanne heads but with the box they were in. It's collision was set to Convex_Hull making the box solid all the way through instead of being hollow. Therefor causing the Suzanne heads to fly outwards. Simply changing this setting to Mesh did the trick. Thanks to everyone who tried to help.


Exclude certain hair particles from face instancing

You can use a boolean list as an iterator to switch between a list with only the end point and a list with a center point appended:

Of course you can also define the condition by the index of the spline. To do so, you can generate the boolean list as follows:

You start with a boolean list of Trues and turn the elements at the input indices to Falses. The parameter boolean list should be reassigned and used as an output.


can a mesh be smooth without creating "holes"

As @RobertGützkow pointed out, this is caused by disconnected vertices.

Select all vertices (Select > All), A
Go Mesh > Clean Up > Merge By distance, Alt+M
Done.


What methods can be used to cut irregular shaped holes in flat beveled surfaces with clean topology?

I don't know if this will help you (maybe post your blend file?) but I recently learned about the Offset Edges plugin (needs to be downloaded and installed from file).  This works something like the way I would expect the "Shrink/Fatten" tool to work with a loop of edges--it will extrude them (or duplicate them, or move them) inwards or outwards in a way that does not distort the outline of the loop.

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Modeling/offset_edges

How you might use that here, in a sample file that is maybe a little like your example.

The face to be created is between the top edge of the cylinder and the surrounding square edge.

Since these are two separate edge loops, we will offset each of them separately.  First the square edge, using Mesh-->Edges-->Offset Edges-->Extrude

Then offset the circle loop using the same command:

Now we can fill our remaining face, either using Mesh-->Faces-->Fill or Mesh-->Edges-->Bridge Edge Loops:

Et voila, the ugly triangle topology of the filled flat face does not impact the edges (in this case) because it is "buffered" by a margin of proper topology.

How this may work out in your case is hard to say for certain, but it's worth a try.


If you want to have an Array going around a rotation you need to create a Curve that it can follow. For example you add a Circle.  On your Array Modifier you only set the Count and enable the Relative Offset the other fields stay at default. Now you add a second Modifier which is called Curve and select the added Circle as Object.

Here is an example file:


What is Inverse Kinematics?

There are two main ways to pose a chain of bones:

"Forward Kinematics" (FK) is the normal way of manipulating a bone chain, based on parent-child relationships. You need to rotate each bone individually.

Inverse Kinematics (IK) is another way, where the movement of the chain is determined by a "target" bone (and optionally a "pole target" bone) instead of the normal parent-child relationships. Basically you position the end of the chain, and the IK solver calculates what the rest of the bones need to do in order to make that happen.

Why do we need the Inverse Kinematic constraint in rigging?

We don't need it, it just makes life easier. Often much easier.

When should I use it?

In every situation where you need the end of the bone chain to be in a specific place - like characters grabbing something, or the foot on the floor while walking.

What does it do to the armature?

Rotates the bones of the chain into position according to the two control bones (target, pole).


How to set up Vector for a radial Voronoi Texture without a Texture Seam

Got it working now.

did it like @RichSedman post instructed and changed some things, now it looks like this:

compared to the old one:

now i wont get my knots cut in half where the texture used to have a seam:


Design dyson roller with unknown broken area

After viewing your model, here's what I did:
#select the meshes then ctrl+A to apply all transformation.
#select the object go to edit mode and select all the vertex by pressing A once or twice. And then shift+N to recalculate normals.
Your mesh had some flipped normals which caused the issue you marked.  Here's the File after applying the fixes I mentioned.


I found that you can achieve this by creating a low-res copy of the sculpted mesh (I used the decimate modifier for this). Then binding that to the armature and weight painting it. Then binding the high-res mesh to the same armature "with empty groups." Then adding a "data transfer" modifier to the high res mesh and using the low res mesh as the source for the vertex group data.
this transfers the vertex weights from the low-res to the high-res mesh by interpolating values from the nearest vertices. It's not perfect but with a little blurring of the weights after transfer it does a pretty good job.
I did find that you need to apply the data transfer mod before posing or things seem to come undone a bit.
Hope this is helpful to someone someday.


Some part of the armature is not visible anymore thought the mesh in weight paint mode

Mate. You have X-Ray turned on for both the Armature and the body, so it's the same as if you did not have X-Ray turned on for either of them. You show edit mode with wireframe on, that's why you see everything. If you went to Solid view, it would look exactly the same as in Weight Paint. If you want to see bones through the body, you have to turn X-Ray on for the Armature, but not on for the body and if you want to see body always on top, you have to turn X-Ray on for the body, but not on for the Armature.


How to NOT duplicate data when copy-pasting?

The "object" doesn't store the actual data, like the mesh. That's stored in a datablock.

Each object normally has its own datablock, but you can assign any datablock to any object (of the same type), effectively creating linked clones. When you edit one object, you're actually editing the datablock, so any other objects with the same datablock will change in tandem.

Anything on the Object tab (the orange cube in the screenshot below) is part of the object, not the datablock. These settings will not be shared between objects.

The datablock selector


Using Blender Internal.

Why fake it with the power of 3d at your fingertips ;)? Although these icons have a flat style, there is still some depth to them for that realistic feel.

Add a sun lamp, adjust the angle (45+ degrees is good), set it to Ray Shadow, increase the soft size and samples, change the shadow color to a medium gray and enable ambient occlusion (use a small value). You would be surprised the control you have over the shadow. Also increase the height of the actual logo so it can cast a longer shadow. The base object needs to catch the shadow but in your example you have it set to Shadeless, if you still want that flat look, change the shader model to Fresnel. Finally set the camera to an orthographic type if you don't want the final render to be affected by perspective.


I'm sure you could do it procedurally, but if you want to use an image texture you could go this way:

Unwrap your object with the Smart UV Project mode. Give it a black image texture.

Switch to Texture Paint mode, load a forged carbon image texture, choose Brush Mapping > Stencil (Cmd to move, CmdMaj to scale, CmdCtrl to rotate), paint the surface of your object, it will paint over your black image.

Mix your image texture with a Glossy node, play with the Glossy value and the Mix factor.

If the glossiness depends on the grey value, use the image as a factor in the Mix factor. I don't know forged carbon but you might also want to play with Clearcot, in that case use a Principled instead of a Diffuse.


How to render some of view layers only (instead of single or all of them)

If you have several layers, every layer has an "Use for Rendering" option. Tick this on all the layers you want and untick all you do not need. That's it.

The python property is ViewLayer.use, which you can access for each layer per data-block: bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].view_layers["LayerName"].use or per scene in context: bpy.context.scene.view_layers["LayerName"].use.


How to reload all text editor scripts at once

Here's a script who does the job:

import bpy

# https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php209369-Synchronizing-text-with-changes-from-outside

def execute():
    """ Check modified external scripts in the scene and update if possible
    """
    ctx = bpy.context.copy()
    #Ensure  context area is not None
    ctx['area'] = ctx['screen'].areas[0]
    for t in bpy.data.texts:
        if t.is_modified and not t.is_in_memory:
            print("  * Warning: Updating external script", t.name)
            # Change current context to contain a TEXT_EDITOR
            oldAreaType = ctx['area'].type
            ctx['area'].type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'
            ctx['edit_text'] = t
            bpy.ops.text.resolve_conflict(ctx, resolution='RELOAD')
            #Restore context
            ctx['area'].type = oldAreaType

execute()

you can run the script in the text editor or console, and it will reload all scripts which are into text editor and have been modified.


How can I make an object emit a single particle with predefined frequency

If the frame rate of the output is 25, and the particle system duration is 200, we need 16 particles to have one every half second.

You can for instance use a mesh with a single vertex (if you want the drip to be at an exact position):


A vertice-only cluster is to be wrapped in a 'skin'.  The cluster has no edges or faces, just a host of vertices on their own.

A plane was laid on top that was large enough to accomodate the vertice cluster in the X/Y axis' and raised to be comfortably above the highest peak in the cluster.

It was then subdivided with at least as many subdivision/vertices as the vertice cluster.  I subdivided all four edges with the value of 100.  If that's not enough subdivide all four edges by 2 (or more), then again by 100 to produce 200 x 200.

Both the subdivided plane and the vertice cluster have their respective 'scale'  "Applied" with CTL-A.

The Shrinkwrap Modifier was used on the plane to in essence, lay a 'skin' over the cluster, citing the cluster as the target and  choosing "Nearest Vertex" option.

The settings can be tweaked to suit and  once satisfied, the modifier can be 'Applied' to convert the generated skin into hard mesh.

This is then 'smoothed' in the tools panel which can still leave it a trifle 'blocky' so the "Smooth" modifier was also used, it's own settings tweaked to give the final result.  That modifier was also 'Applied', leaving the shape in it's finally meshed form.

Not sure if this is exactly what you're seeking, but it should be a start at least.


Coordinate/attribute not working to mix textures through factor

Use the same method however, use vertex paint instead of weight. Use the Attribute Node and the name of the Vertex color layer (default is "Col"). For example, use pure black for rock and pure white vertex color for snow.

Also, not sure what kind of displacement you're trying to achieve but you cannot use a Mix RGB node as input to the Displacement output which expects a vector. Use the Displacement node in between.


Is there an easy way to create a model with multiple texture inputs and then easily switch between them?

In Object Properties tab add a custom property:

Right-click its value and choose Copy As New Driver:

Go to your shader and put a Mix RGB node as a switch between the two textures, right-click its Factor input and choose Paste Driver:

In 3D Viewport select your object (in Object Mode), press N to open the Numbers panel, expand Properties section and change the property.


Converting a mono audio strip to a stereo audio strip

In the Sidebar check mono.
Duplicate the audio Shift + D to a new channel.
In the Sidebar set Pan value to -1 in one audio strip and +1 in the other.


Is there any way to make the spiral's depth from circle shape to solid flat shape?

Starting from a mesh (the first image in your question), you can use a cast modifier, set it to cylinder and tune the factor value:


How do I add more than 8 channels to the VSE?

The VSE can have a lot more than 32 strips. You will find a scroll bar to the left of the VSE that you can use to scroll up/down through the list of strips.

Use  MMB to pan around the VSE.

Use ⎈ Ctrl MMB to scale the vse display, so that strips may be smaller/larger so that more strips can be visible at the same time.

This same control works the same in most editors.


Blender 2.8 My soil shader looks too glossy

I think you have to set a brighter color to your color ramp, and try playing with the position of the handles. Pure black makes glossy, pure white makes rough.


Object, mesh, material, material slot, face, material assignment: How do they work all together?

Questions

Q1. Slots can be stored at Object or Mesh level to suit your needs.
Q2. Slots color faces. Slots at the Mesh Data level can be shared.
Q3. I do not believe your statement is true in all cases. I reordered slots and did not see same result as stated in your question.
Your probably know this. You can switch to shared data by choosing the existing data item.  You can stop sharing by clicking on the number which is greater than 1 in the mesh data panel, seen in the image below.  The image above shows Duplicate and Duplicate Linked.  The User Preferences can also fine tune these settings.  A Blender Material contains a sequence of slots which can be assigned to faces.


Blender Internal

If you're using Blender Internal with Raytracing as your Gather mode, the following will work. Raytracing is realistic, but it requires a certain number of samples, otherwise it will be grainy.

In the World settings in the Gather section, change the samples to something like 10 or 12:

Cycles

If you're using Cycles, you can turn up the render samples in the Render panel under sampling:


you have to use the removeParent() function, since both .children and .parent are read only :

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner

for child in own.children :
    child.removeParent()


Removing Parent (Bone relative) but keeping animation

I did not find a solution to my problem, but I did find a great alternative. Looking at another question I learned that constraints would be much better for parenting in an animation.

Link to other question here: Animate the parenting of an object

Hope this helps anyone else with a similar problem


The reflection on the glass is awful because you don't have it enabled. Turn up the Specular parameter and adjust the Roughness to get the desired effect:


How to automatically get a Add-on folder's path regardless of OS?

Ah, got it.

Paste this to the Python Console to get your add-ons path:

bpy.utils.user_resource('SCRIPTS', "addons")

Also see the wiki.


I found it! According to docs library override doesn't work well with overriding animations. While I didn't actually animate turrets inside their file, I marked some properties (rotations) as properties for animation - that was enough to break the behavior of library override.

Docs:

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/files/linked_libraries/library_overrides.html#editing-an-override


You can hide edges using Bmesh, and it won't hide the faces they're attached to. Users of Sketchup might find this handy but it isn't something you'll find very much use for as your proficiency with Blender increases. But the option is there if you need it.

To run this script you would first select the edges you want to hide, then open the TextEditor window, paste this code into it and press Run.

This example assumes we have a mesh object in Edit Mode, and you have a few edges selected.

import bpy
import bmesh

# Get the active mesh
obj = bpy.context.edit_object
me = obj.data

# Get a BMesh representation
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

bm.faces.active = None

# Modify the BMesh, can do anything here...
for e in bm.edges:
    if e.select:
        e.hide = True

# Show the updates in the viewport
# and recalculate n-gon tessellation.
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me, True)

to unhide the edges you press Alt+H, while in Edit Mode


How do I make an abstract 3D waveform-deformed surface?

This can be done using a Displace modifier.

Add a sphere.
Add a Displace modifier.
Create a new texture for it.
Choose the texture type "Distorted noise" and play with the options to get something you like.
Copy the Displace modifier and change the Strength and Midlevel for more sharper edges.
Add a Subdivision Surface modifier and set type of subdivision to Catmull-Clark (default).


How can I make a conveyor belt FBX that spins without rigging?

If you want to make the belt "spin" without any rigging, I'd suggest animating the texture offset of the material applied to only the belt inside of Unity.
This will give the illusion of the belt "spinnig"
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Material.SetTextureOffset.html

Just increase the x or y offset every frame in

void Update ()

And make sure to multiply the increment by Time.deltaTime so the speed is consistent across all framerates


How to duplicate an object along an edge without warping or rotating it

Instead of arraying a plane along the curve, try arraying a simple vertex. Tweak the constant offset in the array modifier to get the desired offset.

Then create the object you want to instance. Set its parent to the "Arrayed vertices" object. Go to the parent object and in the object properties. Set the instancing to "Verts".

Don't forget to add a high enough resolution in the curve properties or else there may be unwanted interpolation.


How do I emit particles from the opposite normals?

In order to do this,you can just set the Emitter Geometry's normal value, under the Velocity tab, to a negative number.

Normally, the slider is limited to positive numbers, however, you can just click the middle of the field and type a number in.

Here is a question about this topic:
How can I set sliders to values outside the limits allowed by their slider?


this should be easily accomplished with a screw modifier.

all you need to do is create the profile of the dog bowl.

Once you do, it will be imperative to put the vertex that marks the center of the bowl on the origin of the object. you can do this by selecting this vertex and Shift+S>Cursor to selected Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C>origin to 3D cursor

Now add the screw modifier. you can set the amount of turn it goes for higher detail.


1)You need to set the units

2)then you can adjust the scale of the grid.
If you need the grid to be exactly one mile long, you need to put in 330 (5280 feet divided into 16 sqares)

3)If you encounter problems with clipping you need to adjust clipping in the N panel, or/and in the camera settings


Create a lattice that has no depth, and is as large as the torus and place it near the torus, where you want it to make contact with the cyclinder:

On the torus add a lattice modifier and select the lattice as control object:

Select the lattice and add a shrinkwrap modifier with the cylinder as target, Mode project, and select the correct axis for the projection:


Objects clipping when I switch to orthographic mode Blender 2.8

I've been having the same problem and fortunately we are not alone and somebody has already reported this bug. You can find the current state of it at the link below. It looks like it's been resolved and we're just waiting on an update now.

Bug report
https://developer.blender.org/T61632

Specific commit with the fix
https://developer.blender.org/rB4bbd1b9610f6d85079ea5bc31fc1949f8409a1a4


Moving armature-bone moves the whole character

The bone is doing what it's meant to be doing; there's nothing wrong with that. The difference is that in the second image the legs have an IK rig (shown by the yellow bones on the shins of the legs), meaning that when the body moves it will bend the legs accordingly. You'll need to set that up and then you should be all good.


How to implement Quadratic Bezier curve SDF using Blender's node

I have found the reason. The problem is in my node tree. You only need to change the multiply node to the division node in the image below. I was so careless and made such a stupid mistake. Thank you for your attention to my problem. Also, Blender can indeed handle complex numbers.

And here is the expected effect.


Looks like going to append, opening the .blend file, then choosing objects, then the car and all of that works, it imports the objects and the textures.


Thanks to lemon/atomicbezierslinger, they were exactly right!

I had a few animations placed on objects that I had decided not to use, yet had not deleted. The frame 1 keyframe of these animations was set to 0 - resulting in the effect described above.

Simply deleting the animations (since I am not using them) fixed the issue!


Ensure that the Pivot Point is set to '3D Cursor'.
In edit mode, select the faces you want to move radially.
Hit 'Shift-S', then select 'Cursor to Selected'. The 3D Cursor should now be in the center of your selected faces.
Hit 'S' then 'Shift+Z'. This will scale your faces in X and Y but not Z.
Move your mouse or enter a value from the keyboard and hit enter when the faces have been moved radially to the correct position.


How can I make a "Movie Clip" node start at a certain frame of the scene?

Replace the "movie clip" node for an "Input Image" node and use Movie as source.

Frames will give you control on the source's duration (in frames): How many frames do you want to use?

Start Frame is the frame in the scene at which the video clip will start playing.

Offset allows you to select the first frame of the video source.

Cyclic Will make the cycle of frames start over, if the number of frames is different that those on the scene or if you are using any offset. If you want to hold a frame, before or after the specified number of frames or freeze a frame you would need to disable this box.

Auto Refresh if disabled you will not see the sequence of images change.


how do i achieve this simple text animation?

As commented above and assuming you're talking about "Chapter 26" at around the 20+ second mark -

A problem I can see with trying to do this in the VSE is coping with the text itself. It will be seen rising between the bottom edge of the video and the black box.

Doing this in Blender's 3D window/workspace would be a straight forward job with no problems. To use it again and again, simply edit the text and re-render.

Pretty much all of the elements and where they're needed have been placed into the 3D set/stage and placarded.

All settings needed to produce your overlay video have been preset prior to uploading.  All you need to do is assign your own output folder and path for the output video/image sequence.  DON'T RENDER BEFORE YOU DO THIS!  You could end up with umpteen dozen files sitting somewhere!

To view the animation properly, get yourself into the camera view first, (numpad's Zero key) and then press CTL-A to set it going.  (Don't blink)

As you're already overlaying a background video with text, we'll stick to that plan here and output the result using the "OpenGL" animation render, (top left of 3D window, under "Render")

All settings as setup in the Blend file should work straight off, except for the output folder and your own background video.

The main settings -

In the rendering properties panel at extreme right, set the "Shading" tab to "Transparent".  The Post processing tab's boxes should be unticked for safety until actually using the VSE.

The output folder should be set to one created for this job because there's going to be a host of single-frame files.  You don't want extras in there, causing mayhem!

Set the ouput format to "PNG" and make sure to press the RGBA button at hard right.  You won't have a transparent overlay video otherwise.

What should end up being produced is a sequence of alpha layered video frames in the form of PNG files, ready to import as an "Image Sequence" in a seperate instance of Blender, and it's VSE.  This time the "Sequencer" box should be ticked in the "Post Processing" tab.  This is normally the default anyway on a newly fired up instance of Blender.

Explanatory -  Have a look at the Blender file to see that I've simply laid text, mask, and solid black plane flat near the 'ground', the camera directly overhead and looking down.

An "Inviso" mask moves in unison with the black box/plane and used to conceal the text ascending in the Y axis.  Only those parts that are higher in the Y axis than the mask will be visible.  The text is also placed higher in the Z axis than the solid black rectangle and will be seen to slide up 'inside' the black area.

If desired it can slide down to be concealed again, or using the same
video sequence but within an additional strip in the VSE, the video can be reversed with that button in the strip's properties. (Press N)

As far as dispensing with the text and black box, you're only limited by your imagination.  A simple fade in the VSE would do!

-=============-

'Inviso mask' - This is a term I've adopted for the effect we get in Blender when rendering using OpenGL and giving a 2D plane a material slot with Transparency set to 0.008, Specular set to zero.

When the effect is active, objects and parts thereof that end up behind the mask can be -->selectively<-- rendered invisible.  This is most useful for a variety of applications.

One example -
https://i.stack.imgur.com/mP991.jpg
The smaller cube whilst physically in front of the image can be placed behind some item within the photo by using an Inviso mask fashioned to match the exact shape of that item, such as the tree trunk above.

Another -

This uses inviso masks to hide the outer portions of the 'open parchment'.
A detailed explanation is here -

Reduce Curve Deformation
(scroll down to the post describing a simple 'Parchment Scroll' opening and closing)...

-================-

If you find the mask not working on your hardware, go to the black box/plane's (not the mask) material panel, open it's shading tab, and tick the "Shadeless" box, just for a second or so, untick it again.  For some reason Blender needs a slight kick, get it talking to the graphics card(?).

Run it again and it should be ok

The Blend file -


Textures won't show up when I render an animation

This is because you have a scene strip above your rendered image sequence, which will display the same thing as the default viewport in solid shading (no textures), unless you set it to something else like textured or rendered (rendered will be very slow because it has to render each frame. You also have to disable openGL preview for rendered to work):

However, assuming the image sequence below it is the rendered animation, then you can just remove the scene strip.


Is there any way to import blender animations to unity.?

You can't directly export blender materials to unity. The standard shader in Unity features an emission slot though, which will accept a glow map (or simply just a color).


UV unwrapping a hollow cylinder sequentially

Did you try the cylindrical mapping option?

Select your cylinder and go to edit mode.
Select all faces.
Go to either front Numpad 1 or side view Numpad 3.
Go to orthographic view mode Numpad 5.
U --> Cylindrical projection.


applying multiple textures on the same face

A common setup for attaching 2 textures to one face is to mix them in the shader graph. The setup below shows a very basic setup for 2 diffuse textures mixed together to form one. If your "superimposed" image (the letter in your case) has an alpha, you can connect it as a mask for the mix factor to place one image cleanly on the other. However, if it does not have an alpha mask, a general purpose (b&w) mask can usually be created pretty easily by converting the color map to b&w and using that. If you end up needing instructions for how to do this, I will be happy to add them.
See image below:

EDIT - Hey, I checked out your .blend file, but unfortuately, it didn't come wuth any images. Often it doesn't matter, but in this case, where the positioning of the one image is important, I need to see that image. To pack all the resources into the .blend file, go File > External Data > Pack All Into .blend. If you send me the file with the images, I should be able to help.
See below:

EDIT 2 - Hey. The problem was rather simple, you have UV islands in a place where they are getting info from the letter logo. See the image below.

I'll also upload the .blend file, but i'm not sure it will work becaus I had trouble packing the textures. At least you can see where I placed the islands.
File is here -
Hope this helps


Grap the Transform Tools add-on: https://github.com/tin2tin/VSE_Transform_Tools


How to Save Particle Combing Data to a Normal Map Image File in UV Space?

I do not have an answer for you, although I can provide you with a few nuggets of info that will come in handy.

Here is some python code that shows you how to dump the coordinates of the root and tip of the hairs:

import bpy

def dump_particles(ps):
    for p in ps.particles:
        print(p.location)
        #print(p.fuv)
        print(p.hair_keys[-1].co_local)
        print("_")

dump_particles(bpy.context.active_object.particle_systems[0])

The major stumbling block is that the barycentric coordinate of the hair is NOT exposed via the python API.  (see also How do I comb hair in python?)

This makes calculating the position of the hair in UV coordinates much harder (although you could probably reverse-engineer it from the location if you are willing to do a lot of analytic geometry).

Even once you do figure out where the hair is in UV space, you'll need to choose how to interpolate to compute the values for the image you want to use as a normal map.  (Maybe compute the dual of a voronoi diagram and use barycentric coordinates again).


How to save a texture from texture atlas

Since the image is being displayed in the UV/Image Editor you can go to the menu in the bottom left of that window and choose Image > Save As Image.

This is standard functionality of the UV/Image Editor, whether you're using the Texture Atlas add-on or not.


@batFINGER gave me the right idea which is to reference drivers. They don't have the related math issues as they're mathematical equations.

Basically Right Click -> Context -> Add Driver. I didn't need to reference another property as I'm happy to use frames as my baseline for this animation so I could set the rotation to frame / 360 / 30 / 60 / -1 for a clockwise rotation of a second hand at (360 / 30) = (circle / fps)` (or 6 degrees every second)

I'm parenting an empty so I can drive the clock backwards/forwards or set a time with it, but overall this seems like a solid start.

Hopefully this helps someone else with a similar question. Thanks for the help.


Ground surface have to keep own relief under water surface;
In original picture probably presents some specific HDR environment map producing specific light, hard to achieve with common light sources.
I'm not shure you need decimate modifier (but this not really important).

Well. I tried to reproduce original picture (but without HDR environment). Afraid it will took much longer time to write what I've done than time I had spent doing this scene :)


Because Follow Path will take into account the location of the object relatively to the world origin, so when you move the curve AND the planet object, the planet object moves twice as it is attached to the curve, and as it changes its location relatively to the world origin.
To fix that, you can either:

Duplicate the curve and planet and only move the curve, the planet will move along, or
Move both, then select each planet and press AltG (to bring back to world origin)


It is pretty simple. If you look at your scene from upwards you see it well:

Your silhuette / cross section / whatever you want to call it is offsetted on the Y axis. As spin pivots around the 3D cursor, you want it to look like this instead:

Now the results are as follows:

Also, for practicality's sake, I would encourage you to look into the screw modifier. It does the same thing as spin, but you can edit you cross section in real time. (These settings seem to work the best with your scene.)

Also, you have duplicate vertexes (the one selected, the second and third ones from up and the one at the boundary between the foot and the upper part of the glass). You can spot them when they break smoothing and by looking at the surrounding edges. If you select only one of the pair of vertexes as shown below, the edge starting from the other one (here the edge that goes down) doesen't get a gradient.

They can do all kinds of evil (though they may sometimes be used to guide subdivision). If you try smoothing the mesh in this scene, it looks weird. You can fix this by selecting all vertexes and doing W > Remove doubles. It looks like this when fixed:

I hope this helped.


Select a file from an invoke menu rather than ImportHelper or Panel

Well, I've come up with a dirty workaround, by creating a new ImportHelper operator and added it to the menu. I couldn't think of a smarter approach that's why I'm not marking the answer as the correct answer.


You can delete most of the edge-loops in between. That will make your life much easier. You can probably only keep the lower two as well as the upper two. Add one on the middle to adjust the arc. Subsurf should do the rest.


Experiencing problems with UV unwrapping walls containing openings with Archipack addon

i found out that the boolean modifier isn't applied automatically by archipack. Apply it manually and holes will be cut :-)


If you turn on Proportional Editing (the icon in the header to the the left of the magnet), then switch over to edit mode, you can select the two vertices at the very end. Then scale them closer together and scroll your mouse wheel so that the proportional editing circle starts to pull in as much of the surrounding mesh as you desire.


Creating a Specular using two color channels?

Ok so I spent a lot of time on this last night, and I don't want to all go to waste, so I'm just gonna post it, in the hopes that you might find ANY part of it helpful. If this doesn't help you at all, let me know and i'll delete this answer - it is simply far too much to put in a comment.
I think I understand what you're trying to do, but without access to an image texture with shader values embedded in the color channels, I'm shooting blind somewhat. Hopefully this setup, or some close rearrangement, is able to give you what you are looking for. I'm not really familiar with defining specular highlights this way, so I'm doing my best to translate it to what I know.
Generally, when making cell shading, I simply drive a Diffuse BSDF through a Shader to RGB and into a ColorRamp set to constant, with three or four harsh cutoffs.

If I am trying to cell shade an existing texture, I use a MixRGB shader set on multiply and mix the texture with the result of this ColorRamp, to apply the "harsh shadows" from the cell shading to the texture. As you can see from this image, I multiplied the texture by the ColorRamp values twice so I could have an extra strong contrast for this example image. You may or may not need this.

Now, on to your specific case (to the best of my abilities)
You said the blue channel defines the "easing" of the highlights - I think this represents the shadow level cutoffs like I specified in the ColorRamp.  Here's where I'm divided though. The wording (easing) suggests the presence (or lack therof) of a gradient between the different light levels - cell shading is generally defined by the lack of a gradient, therefore I think this would be represented by the "constant" cutoff I used on the ColorRamp, as opposed to "linear".  However, I do not know how much this also includes where the light cutoff points are.
This brings me to my next issue - the red channel - the "intensity" of the specular highlight. Does this mean the brightness at certain cutoff levels? if so, does this mean that the blue channel determines where the "light level containers" are, and the red channel determines what actual "light level" they each get filled with? I have to assume that it must be something like this, because the only other use of "specualr intensity" I can think of refers to how much the specular reflection takes on the hue of the diffuse color, which generally only applies to shiny metallic items, which I don't generally associate with cell shading. Maybe that's the case here - maybe they're trying to use metallic values to drive the hue of the "shaded" area - I don't know and if that's the case, I have no idea how to do it.
So, given all that I know, and all that I don't know, here's where I am:
I was thinking some setup SOMETHING like this might get what you want, but I don't have the image with the separate channels, so you'll have to try it yourself. Maybe if you just switch up the node connections randomly you'll miraculously stumble upon the answer. I've done all I can - the more I look at it at this point, the more I feel like my eyes are bleeding.

The brief explanation is this (though keep in mind I'm totally lost at this point). I used the reflection ray to drive the mix of the shadow cutoffs based on reflection angle with the "easings" in the blue channel. I have no idea if this is even necessary. Anyway, I then used this "shadow combo" with as a mix factor between the original image (if there is one) and white "highlights" . I have no idea what to do here if there is no "original image" texture to work with.
Anyway, I then combined this "shadow+image highlight" combo with the brightness and color values of the red channel, using the shadow values as a factor (because it gets info from the reflection ray - again I don't know if this is the right way).
So that's it. Hopefully by playing with some arrangement of this setup you can come up with something at least workable.
Let me know if it works out.
Cheers


Simplification of the topology of a mesh object

I have found a solution. The problem was that BlenderGIS imports the shapefile incorrectly and I first have to remove several vertices (with bpy.ops.mesh.remove_doubles (threshold = 0.001). Then the decimate modifier will work,too.


A group of particles. Note the outliner windows shows a group of two spheres.
Press keyboard t to show information panel.  To create a group you may select both spheres and press keyboard Control G. The information panel allows you to type in name.

In the forces you may want  to turn off gravity, gravity = 0.  You may also want to emit all particles quickly.  Start = 1. End = 2.

Single Object Particle

Convert the text to mesh and use particles. Note the vertices of the mesh in edit mode are highlighted. The particle object will be a sphere.


I try to parent an mesh to an armature but it shows up as a ghost child

The reason why its greyed out is because the the parent and the child are not in the same collection. So if you select the greyed out child and press M to and move it to the collection containing the parent object it wont be greyed out anymore.


Just have to plug the alpha value of the decal into the factor socket of the mix node. Hope it is useful for someone in the future.


Cycles Render displays wrong UV wrapping in material mode

You can do it with math so it's shown in the 3D view as well if you must:

It seems it gets a bit confusing on exact 0 and 1 on the coordinates as you can see at the edges, but if we extend the last 0.5% or so of the image it seems to work fine:


How do I create array of objects of alternating color?

Array modifier has a UV offset option. If you shift each instance by one in U in the modifier:

then, you can use this information in the shader:

In this example, the step value is 5.
We divide X from the UV by five, take the floor of the division then modulo it by two to alternate the colors.
So that:


With a Python script you can populate a Color Ramp in the material according to the color specification. With the curve's UV coordinates you can color the bevelled curve with the correct color.

I start with a manually created Bezier curve with its bevel object set and the material assigned, as well as the node tree for the material. It's also possible to create the whole curve object in Python, just as I think it's possible to set up the node tree.

In the Data tab of the bezier curve under Texture Space activate “Use UV for mapping”.

I supply the coordinates of the curve's points and their color values in a csv file called point_data.csv within Blender. If your files are stored in another format or in an external file, you'll have to modify the code accordingly. Perhaps you might also want to supply the handle positons instead of using auto-handles.

x, y, z, r, g, b, a
-1, -1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1
-2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1
-1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1
2, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0

This is the script that was used to generate the image above. The coordinate grid was added manually to check if the color positions are correct.

import bpy
import csv
from itertools import tee
from mathutils import Vector

material = bpy.data.materials['Material']
ramp = material.node_tree.nodes['ColorRamp'].color_ramp
# Clear the color ramp of all elements but the first
# which can't be removed
for e in reversed(ramp.elements[1:]):
    ramp.elements.remove(e)

# Modify an existing curve object instead of creating new one
curve = bpy.data.objects['BezierCurve']
curve.data.splines.remove(curve.data.splines[0])
spline = curve.data.splines.new('BEZIER')

# Read color info from internal csv file.
# Could also load from external file.
point_data = bpy.data.texts['point_data.csv']
lines = (line.body for line in point_data.lines)
reader = csv.DictReader(lines, skipinitialspace=True)
reader, line_counter = tee(reader)
line_count = sum(1 for line in line_counter)
for i, line in enumerate(reader):
    vals = {k:float(v) for k,v in line.items()}

    ramp_position = i / (line_count-1)

    if i==0:
        ramp_element = ramp.elements[0]
        ramp_element.position = 0
    else:
        ramp_element = ramp.elements.new(ramp_position)
        spline.bezier_points.add(1)

    ramp_element.color = [vals[c] for c in ['r', 'g', 'b', 'a']]

    spline_point = spline.bezier_points[i]
    spline_point.co = Vector(vals[c] for c in ['x', 'y', 'z'])
    spline_point.handle_left_type = 'AUTO'
    spline_point.handle_right_type = 'AUTO'


Animating a material change along an axis of a mesh

Something like this ?

The principle is to mix your materials (the mix shader factor) upon a coordinate of your object.
Here I set the first key frame to -3 meters for X and the last one to 3 meters for X (I dont know why these values work, I had to try to find them...).

Edit : the blend file

Edit 2 : to make the transition sharper, add a "math/less than" node, as shown here


Using Blender with cell fracture and trying to add collision via Python

First thing - you loop through all objects and then run bpy.ops.object.select_pattern() which will change your selection. It would be better to run a loop as for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects: Which will let you select the objects you want the script to alter.

The operator bpy.ops.rigidbody.object_settings_copy() will copy the rigid body settings from the active object to the rest of the selected objects. You don't need to write a script to do this as it is already available. Press T to show the toolbar and under Rigid body tools you will find a button to Copy from Active.

There is an addon called Copy Attributes Menu that you can enable and it will Allow you to copy modifiers from the active object to selected. Unfortunately it doesn't copy the collision settings. You can copy the collision settings individually by right clicking on a value and selecting Copy To Selected. This can be done with many properties.

If you still want to write a script you can start with something like -

import bpy

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    obj.modifiers.new(type='COLLISION', name='collision')
    obj.collision.permeability = 0.3
    obj.collision.stickiness = 0.25

For a collision modifier, you can only have one so always using modifier.new() is ok, no matter how many times you run the script. With other modifiers you may want to test whether one already exists before creating a new one.


Rigid body simulation requires mass input every time

Rigid body always need mass to work properly.

You can`t apply forces to 0 mass rigid body.

Rigid-body dynamics studies the movement of systems of interconnected bodies under the action of external forces. The assumption that the bodies are rigid, which means that they do not deform under the action of applied forces, simplifies the analysis by reducing the parameters that describe the configuration of the system to the translation and rotation of reference frames attached to each body.

Wikipedia

EDIT

Try if this Works


How can I make particles collide with each other?

There is an Add-on called Molecular. It makes the particles act as Rigid Bodies. The particles can be linked to each other as well.

Here is a teaser trailer that the coder made.

Just download the .zip, go to File > User Preferences > Addons and click Install from File. Select the .zip. Check it to enable it. If you need more help installing, let me know.


Background image (movieclip) final render appears flipped

Thank you to the people that replied.

OK, so the issue was that i had an object made linked to my video, when I created it i had flipped the horizon. I worked on some other objects, worked on camera tracking as well(in other words forgot about that object). When I remembered I had this object i hide it and flipped the backdrop image to its original horizon. So, when I was rendering the hide element was showing.

Yay!!


Python: how to get name of active render layer

bpy.context.scene.render.layers.active.name gets the name of the active render layer.


You could keyframe the visibility and the renderability of the shot object in the outliner (RMB over the icons and insert keyframe:

Disable visibility and renderability in frame 0 and add keyframe
Enable in frame 11 and add keyframe


You've changed the camera aspect ratio on Y. Use 1 on X and Y and then change the resolution X and Y to make it look like what you want.


How can I do a 3d animation where inbetween frames are jumping to one value to another without easing in?

Many different ways:
If you want no interpolation between two keyframe you can set the interpolation mode to "constant" in the user preferences panel.

You can also do it after the programming: open the graph editor, select all keyframes and press T and choose constant interpolation mode.

Another way is to use the dopesheet (expecially useful if you want some keyframes to "jump" and others to have a linear or bezier ease interpolation): select the first keyframe of the "jump" section and copy it near the last keyframe (one or two frames before).

The video you posted seems to be not completely "jumping": it uses short interpolations but not constant at all. The constant mode is also very useful during the Blocking phase of the animation, for preparing the "animatic" version of the movie.


Cant get Fine, crisp displacements using displace modifier in 2.8

The displacement modifier is for non-adaptive displacement that needs to act on the mesh outside of just rendering it.

The displacement modifier only works on existing geometry and won't create new geometry. Adding a subdivision modifier above it can help, overall it is limited to coarser displacement of the mesh due to the performance limitations of generating lots of geometry this way.

The alternative is render time displacement, which can take advantage of the subdivision surface modifier's adaptive subdivision feature. This is the part of Cycles that was originally part of the experimental feature set. To make this work, you need to set the material's properties to use true displacement (or the 'both' option) and feed your displacement into the displacement socket of the material output in Cycles.

Adaptive subdivision is performed at render time, as part of the rendering process, and tries to only generate geometry where it is actually needed. As part of these calculations are based on the camera position, it makes no sense to do this outside rendering.

for more info see https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/materials/components/displacement.html


How i fix this texture rotation in most of the mesh faces in cycles?

If you have UV unwrapped and your texture looks wrong then usually best to look first at the UV unwrapping (mapping).

Before creating complicated shading node setups its often a good idea to simply check the UV mapping using one of Blenders 2 UV grid textures instead.

To do that, in the UV editor create a new image: Image > New > give it a name (in this example I name the new image Grid ) then  from the Generated Type menu choose either UV Grid or Color Grid

Next in the Node editor assign this new checker board image to your mesh.

Now lets look at your perimeter wall when it is mapped to this checker board image :

The Checkerboard texture looks rotated and differently scaled on each wall.

From your PBR node setup it looks like you are wanting to use a seamless red brick texture on this wall.

For that to work you will need to have the scaling even on each section of wall, with minimum distortions and ideally without any rotation.

The Brick texture will be aligned horizontally so you should aim to ave the UV islands of the wall also mapped horizontally.

To achieve this you will need to add few more seams so that with a new UV unwrap the perimeter wall will be   broken into 4 UV islands.

Unwrap the perimeter wall again :

The checkerboard texture is looking better but we can see in the UV editor that the uv islands are aligned vertically.

Select them all and rotate 90°.

Now you should be able to use this UV unwrap in your original PBR node setup.

It wont be perfect. I think if I were doing this I would have the tops of the walls as separate UV islands and edit those in the UV editor so that they could be mapped to a part of the red brick texture that looks like the top of a wall but I'm trying to keep this simple.

Here you will find another example of UV unwrapping a wall :
How to unwrap model so its perfectly proportioned?

There are different ways or laying out UV's depending on what you want to do with them.

Don't worry about the perimeter wall now taking up so much more space in the UV square. It shouldn't effect what you seem to be trying to do.
The perimeter wall is using the wall1 texture and now covering 50% of the UV space.
What about all the rest of the model ? The ground (grass001 material) the buildings (wall2 material) etc etc well think of those as different layers on the same UV map.
Each material will be on its own "layer".

The UV unwrapping (mapping) work flow will be:

Select all the mesh which uses material_1 and UV unwrap that, Check the Unwrap using the grid texture and edit those Uv's as required. Laying out the islands so that they are aligned and scaled to the grid.

When you are happy with the layout of the mesh using material_1 repeat for the next material.

When you are finished, if you select all of the mesh the UV's will look a complete mess in the UV space because each material will be stacked (layered) one on top of the other in the UV space. But selecting one material at a time they should look good (understandable).

I recommend you spend a couple of hours watching YouTube videos on the different ways of UV unwrapping depending on how they will be used.

Also...............

Your L shaped building has most of its wall inside out (flipped normals)

Something to think about : I added a 1.80 meter high character to your scene, looks tiny standing beside the well. Unless you have good reason its usually a good idea to model to scale 1:1 .


Bear with me: is it possible to use an Xbox One to render a Blender scene?

XBox One does not run any old Windows app, it runs apps developed for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP).  To run on an XBox One, Blender would have to run everything that accesses the operating system through that API.

The biggest stumbling block for that would be OpenGL, as XBox's interface to the graphics hardware is done through DirectX. It doesn't support OpenGL at all.

Based on that, I'd say it's not possible.


Should I be using loop cuts near edges to give my game models harder edges?

Haven't worked on game models, but this method does solves it for me. Another method is to probably increase the crease at the edges.


How do I add a red dot on a specific part of a 3D model?

Is the following what you're trying to do?

You have a material on your surface.  In Edit mode, cut new edges to define the area to be filled with red. In the picture below, I've moved vertices, but that'll muck up your UVs so just cut new edges without moving them.  Select the area to be assigned the Red Dot material. Create a new material slot by clicking on the + sign and create the red material. Click on Assign.  Then you can come out of Edit mode.


Objects don't show up in the screen layout

you might of hit H and they are hidden. check this by going to the outliner and seeing if there is a eye beside the object if not click where the eye should be or press alt h in 3d view. also check that the two other icons are visible in the outliner.


What is "Offset" in the fluid simulation "Bake" settings?

This is pulled from another link on baking.

Simulate objects falling into water

original answer by gandalf3♦

The Offset just "offsets" the frames that are being read from the cache.

Time: Note that baking always starts on frame 1, these settings control the behavior of the fluid (e.g. for slow motion effects)

Start: The number of seconds into the simulation to start caching data.

End: The simulation time of the scene End frame in seconds.

Offset: Number of frames to offset reading of the cache. This is the only setting which you can still change after baking.


How does this works? verts = [[float(i) for i in r[:3]] for r in rows]

Use the excellent csv module built into Python for that. The Python documentation has plenty of examples on how to read and write CSV files.

Once you have a row, you can convert individual bits to other objects, like so:

vec = mathutils.Vector([float(coord) for coord in row[1:4]])

The explicit conversion to float is necessary as CSV is untyped, so every field is returned as string.

The [f(x) for x in collection] construct is called a list comprehension, and is also explained in the Python documentation.


Try enabling the "Sewing" checkbox from the Shape sub-menu in the cloth settings and then, when you bake or view the preview animation, it should pull the cloth pieces together.


The ability to alter the values has been removed. Adjusting the values was removed in 2.69. Up until 2.71 you could adjust the camera only option.

While you may not be able to adjust the values from the operator you can access and adjust the values used for the border. For the final render they can be found at scene.render.border_max_x... Note that min to max values are 0.0 to 1.0 so the clipping is a percentage of the render size. You should be able to alter these values in a frame_change_pre handler.

I think cropping the image in the compositor would be a better approach. You can keyframe the settings of a crop node to move it around.

Some other options are to animate a mask in the movie clip editor (part of the camera tracking) or use object pass index and animate an object to create the mask.


How to set up min/max/default value for node group socket via Python?

You can access it through the NodeGroup object's inputs:

glossinessFactorInput = bpy.data.node_groups["NodeGroup"].inputs['Glossiness Factor']

glossinessFactorInput.min_value     = -5.0
glossinessFactorInput.max_value     = 5.0
glossinessFactorInput.default_value = 1.5