Like in this answer https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/5521/1853 Change the origin of the object where you need it and rotate the object using the new pivot point.

To animate, go the frame where you want the animation to start and press I to create a key frame for the rotation. Move then to a different frame, rotate your object and press I to create a new key frame.

To swing the hammer in an arc motion change the origin further away from the handle.


Shading - How do I remove overlapping seams in X- and Y-direction while using vectors?

As I wrote in the comments, some seams are inevitable. Even on a cube, if a side is 1.1 m long, and a tile is 0.2 m long, then 5 tiles will fit completely and half of a tile will be cut off in middle (giving an impression of a seam). What if you don't have a cube? Any non-vertical face will be visible from side as a diagonal line, which will not be compatible with squares that you look at en face.
Another way to look at it is this: if you were able to procedurally draw squares on an arbitrary figure without seams, it would mean you tessellate that figure with squares, which I think is fair to say is impossible - spheres in Blender are made either from triangles or from heavily stretched quads (and some triangles on top and bottom if you don't cast a subdivided cube into a sphere).
So while some seams (on the left) seem to be unavoidable, the seams inside NSWE, top, bottom sides can be avoided (on the right):

I came up with a basic setup like this:

By increasing Epsilons, you remove the inner seams by removing the normal-aligned axis information from the vector:

You will still get seams on areas between those "flattened" areas.
You could improve that node setup, or maybe instead create a black texture and use R/G/B information, and draw on that texture:

Best to draw in Add mode to add flattening (use the color of an axis visible on the gizmo: X:red, Y:green, Z:blue), and Subtract mode to remove flattening. I'd recommend falloff set to constant.
Perhaps a better idea is to make that information only offset the coordinates, so you're not forced to draw on an entire side of the object, and can just draw on a part of a square on one side of a seam.


Making a material fade off(progressive transparency from front to back) based on the location of its geometry

You can try something like this:

This is the same set up from your previous Question what was added was a gradient texture node added to the beginning of the chain of nodes. I put the color ramp node so you can control where the falloff to transparency ends.


Game Engine - Change an image based on property?

Figured it out. I made multiple planes and assigned different textures to each, then changed the visibility of each plane based on the property.


How do I create a right column when I have a 2-rows layout?

Split the two editors separately, but make sure the splits align vertically:

Note that once the vertical splits are aligned, they become locked.

I actually wrote a feature request on the wiki a while ago asking to improve this behavior.


Use a camera data/view vector node.  Because this provides a camera space vector, you can use a vector transform node to transform it into a world space vector like you want.

The "camera" being referred to here is not the camera I have in the scene-- notice the axes and camera position, notice that the same sphere is different colors in different viewports.  The camera being referred to is whatever eye is looking at the scene.  In the case of a render, that's the camera, but in the case of a viewport, it's whatever your viewport is using as a "virtual" camera.
Another way to do this, in Eevee, is to use geometry/incoming, then reverse the vector.  In Eevee, the incoming is vector is always the view vector (but reversed, to point at the camera.)  In Cycles, this vector doesn't always refer to the view vector, but instead refers to the most recent direction any particular ray that hit the object took.


Blender export fbx file holes in mesh deformed

The problem are the faces with more than 4 edges (ngons), in your case, most of them have 6 edges.

What you can do is select all the faces around the windows, the press CTRL+T to convert them to triangles and then ALT+J to convert them to quads.

Notice how I set Max Face Angle and Max Sharp Angle to 180º.

You also should remove unnecessary vertices like these:

By pressing ALT+M to merge them before converting the ngons to tris then to quads.


Having non equal numbers in the "Time remapping" fields results in a "warped" time: the timeline frames and the animation frames cease to correspond 1-to-1 to each other.

If setting these Time remapping values to 40 and 100 wasn't intentional, revert their values to 100 and 100.


Nigeria Female headtie ( called Gele in Nigeria)

You could begin with an extruded circle, then some bevels, some additional extrusions if necessary, and deform it a bit with the Proportional Editing option on. Then give it a Subdivision Surface modifier:

For the other side, duplicate and mirror your object. For the node, create a profile shape and a curve, use an Array and a Curve modifier to make the profile follow the curve, then apply the modifiers and again, rework a bit with the Proportional Editing so that it looks a bit more natural (needs to be improved of course). Give it a fabric texture:


Blender 2.81: How do I import the rig correctly?

I don't know why exactly this is happening (I'm using 2.82a and having the same issue), but since you have so few bones which are misaligned, I find that I was able to go into Edit Mode and manually adjust them in less than five minutes.

Regretably, this is not the answer you were hoping for. But it seems to work.


These linked files are in:
bpy.data.libraries

You can have their filepath with for instance:
[lib.filepath for lib in bpy.data.libraries]

The path is relative to the current blend file, so you can have absolute path with:
[bpy.path.abspath(lib.filepath) for lib in bpy.data.libraries]

In the documentation:

Libraries
Path utilities


If HalfKiloByte is correct and you want to collapse the levels of the tree view, you do that by pressing the icon to the left of the name, at which point the hyphen in the circle will be replaced by a plus sign in a circle icon. For a more thorough explanation of the outliner editor window, you might want to view Neil Hirsig's tutorial.

However, the items to which you refer in the two illustrations are different. In the upper illustration accompanying the original post, the upper triangle with an orange background, whose name is (in part) "Mesh 29 Group 30 Grou" is the name of an object. The next line down, whose name is (in part) "Mesh 29 Group 30 G" is a mesh, which at the moment is the only constituent element of the object named in the line above. Both meshes and objects are namable, but they cannot be merged, as they are different date types. The lower illustration is of a different mesh and object, which appear to have the same name "luger". The only differences between the second illustration and the first is that the first illustration exhibits an object containing a mesh which has (at least) five materials assigned to it, and possibly more materials, or other data elements—textures or modifiers, while in the second illustration, there are no other data elements assigned to the mesh (evidenced by the lack of an icon containing a plus sign in a circle), and that the mesh object is opened in edit mode (evidenced by the fact that the triangle next to the second occurrence of the name "luger" is on a white background.

If you want the object and mesh in the first illustration to look like the second, delete all subsidiary material elements.


Create a circle and go into edit mode. I adjusted the number of vertices to 16.

In the Properties Panel, add a Screw Modifier to the object. Set the axis to Z and raise the Screw property until the proportions are correct.Apply the modifier if you wish.

In face selection mode, Alt+rightclick on the face loops and assign them a new material.


Can You Edit a Mixamo Animation In Blender?

The short answer is "yes" it can be done

First you need to convert your animation into something that blender can understand, like FBX or Collada..

My very first search for "import Mixamo to Blender" was an auto-complete suggestion from Google, implying that it's common. And the first 5 hits all seemed pretty useful.


It looks like your UI might be zoomed in. Try just pinch-scaling it.

(I don't know how to do this with just a mouse, but there's probably a way.)


Modelling and texturing specific wood flooring

The small bumps can be done using a normal map which essentially are images that tell Blender that the surface is not smooth, and to extrude the mesh in and out on the flat planes according to the normal map. There is a pretty good tutorial on how to generate normal maps from texture images here.

To apply the normal map to your object, head over to the shading workspace.

Add a new image texture node and open the normal map image. At the bottom of the image texture, make sure you select "Non-Color" under the Color Space drop-down menu.

Connect the color output into a Normal Map node, and that into the Normal input for the principled BDSF node.

If you want to go even further with realism, consider checking out this tutorial by Blender Guru. It's using an older version of Blender, but the same principles still apply. The only main difference would be in setting up the nodes for the reflection maps and all.


How to distort a generated node (not image) without using compositing?

Apologies.. I felt I had to make a tadpole with a longer tail to illustrate.
You can distort a procedural texture in exactly the same way as you would distort an image texture: by distorting the whole space containing it.

The straight object space, XY > RG, and the procedural texture made in it
This is a straight tadpole: it was constructed as a set of functions and masks of ordinary Object space, because I thought it was easier to have 0 in the middle, but it could have been UV, or Generated space, shifted a bit, depending on how you want the space to behave.
To put, say, a wobble into the tail, you can manipulate the coordinates that the tadpole-making part of the tree uses, before you start making the tadpole, just as you might manipulate your given UV coordinates, before giving them to an Image texture to tell it where in the image to find a color.

The part of the tree which distorts the space, and f(X) as greyscale, which will be added to Y
To put a wobble into the Y of the procedural texture depending on X, you come up with some function of X that you can add to the Y coordinate, before handing the Y on to tadpole-making. Supposing it was just Y => Y + sin(X), that would put a sine-distortion in Y along the entire length of X, and you might have to mask off the head, to stop it being distorted, along with the tail.
This chunk of tree is just a more controlled version of that - it so happens it doesn't need a mask, because raising a negative number to a fractional power results in 0. The power also crunches the wave horizontally as the X goes positive. (Note our original Object X is multiplied by a negative before giving it to the power function, so positive X is then on the left)

The distorted space, and the resulting distorted tadpole
TL;DR
This is what happens to the Object space when the grey f(X) bands are added to its Y .. and the resulting distortion of the tadpole,when built using the X and Y's of the new space.
As you can see from the green value-field in the tree, you can keyframe the phase of the sine-function to animate the tail and move the head up and down, all in one.


To imitate the border, simply use a gradient as a mask between two Principled BSDF shaders.
As for the top material, glass with higher roughness works pretty well.


What are the Change Brush Size shortcuts in Sculpt mode using Maya Navigation?

Ok, I've found them; the keys were bound to B for the size, Shift + B for the strength and Ctrl + B for the rotation of the brush.

To find this, I first switched to the default layout and searched for the actions bound to F, noted the entries were named 'Radial Control', switched back to the Maya layout and searched for that name.


is there a software to download python scripts?

Add-ons are written in Python. So after downloading your add-on file(s) it will be either a .py file or a .zip file depending on the add-on.

To install it, you go to file->user preferences->add-ons tab->install from file (found at the bottom)->choose your downloaded add-on->then the add-on information will appear after installing it->click the checkbox and the add-on will be active


Some edges are not shown in object wireframe mode?

Blender doesn't show ALL edges by default in object mode.

To make all edges visible, go to Display Panel  in the Object Context
and check the "Draw all edges" box as in the picture.


The perfect way to ensure the expected edge to be lined is by using Freestyle marks:

Select all edges you want to draw as edges, CtrlE > Make Freestyle Edge;
Only toggle Edge Mark in Freestyle Line Set panel. As shown below:


Is it possible to control a value in all of my materials with one click?

How to tweak values inside any material with a driver in the current scene's properties :
Step by Step :
Go into the Scene properties, expand the Custom Properties foldout and click on Add to add a new custom property.
Right click in the field, choose Copy as New Driver
Then right click into the field you want to be driven by the custom property, and choose Paste Driver
Now the purple fields get updated when you change the custom property in the Scene properties.

Notes :

You neeed blender 2.81 + to have access to the "Copy as new driver" context choice
Notice the purple tint in the driven fields. That means you can't change directly the values anymore. If you want to get rid of the driver, right click in the field then choose "Delete Driver"


After playing around with the settings I tried enabling Fractional Obstacles inside the Liquid settings in the physics tab. This solved the issue for me. I think that the reason things like this were happening was that the obstacle was represented as a bunch of voxels, so in the fluid's perspective, it looked like a bunch of stairs. Checking Fractional Obstacles will probably smooth out the surface depending on the ratio.


I made a custom shape with the knife tool but I cant use the subsurf of it for sculpting

An n-gon is face with more than 4 sides. 3 sides = tri,  4 sides = quad, 5+ sides = n-gon. Although the use of tris and n-gons are sometimes a common part of modelling, both of them can be responsible for shading artifacts, especially near edges that are shaded smooth. More importantly to your scenario, is that blender calculates subdivisions best based on quad-only based geometry. See the example images below. The first images shows 2 planes - one with quad topology and the other with tris and n-gons. The second shows what happens to each of them (topology wise) when a subsurf modifier is added.

See the difference? This is one reason why people argue that you should keep your geometry as quad based as possible. A MULTI-RESOLUTION MODIFIER is a tool that aids in this pursuit. It is a modifier that can quickly reduce whatever geometry you have to being quad based (among other things) without loosing too much detail. Once the surface of your pommel is quad only, you can then subdivide and get the results you are looking for.


What problem is being displayed in this shader?

I believe it's the fact that the resolution of the mesh is so low that the angles from face to face are so sharp that the SSS sees it as a corner that is thinner and thus lightens it up (expected from SSS, but rather extreme). The sharper the corner the brighter. As soon as i added a lvl 1 subsurface modifier, it made the surface smooth enough geometry wise to calculate the surface as if it was one rounded shape.

The fact that if you change the shading to Flat Shading the brighter lines along the sharp folds of the faces becomes even more pronounced makes me sure that SSS really only gives that result because on the low resolution surface.

Here a comparison with a quadsphere with just one point dragged out to create an extreme that the SSS instantly shades as it did in the file shared.

Also visible here is that the quads seem to be internally triangulated and the resulting edges are generating the thinner corners or folds which get calculated by the SSS algorithm. Specifically the "Volumetric" version used in Random Walk as that is a volumetric approximation of a physically based volume scattering.

While it was not asked for a solution, i would still think that a level 1 subdivision modifier should get rid of the pattern.

This result i got from rendering with 128 samples at full resulution and only lvl 1 subdivision surface modifier. I had to remove the background and replace with a color, as the image was missing. Also due to the camera setup being a bit stubborn, i deleted it and created a new one for a simple close up. If you did not use anything on the camera.

This is with the adjusted Principled BSDF shader.


How do I create a vertex group from selected vertices in edit Mode with Python (Blender 2.8)?

This is the better and simplified solution that I could do:
import bpy

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(use_extend=False, use_expand=False, type='VERT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.mesh.extrude_region_move(MESH_OT_extrude_region={"use_normal_flip":False,
"mirror":False}, TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(0, 0, 0.5), "orient_type":'GLOBAL',
"orient_matrix":((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), "orient_matrix_type":'GLOBAL',
"constraint_axis":(False, False, True), "mirror":False, "use_proportional_edit":False,
"proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1,
"use_proportional_connected":False, "use_proportional_projected":False, "snap":False,
"snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0), "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0,
0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "cursor_transform":False, "texture_space":False,
"remove_on_cancel":False, "release_confirm":False, "use_accurate":False})
bpy.ops.transform.edge_bevelweight(value=1)

# New Vertex group from selected vertices

bpy.context.object.vertex_groups.new(name='New_Vertex.000')
bpy.ops.object.vertex_group_assign()


Remeshing deletes the insides of the mouth

There is no way to keep a closed mouth from resealing when remeshing, but you might be able to find an easier way to unseal it, perhaps with Boolean. But anyway, why are you remeshing the head over and over?


Did you try preferences?
Preferences>navigation>Zoom method>Continue
Enable "Zoom to Mouse Position"


While loading a scene unclick Load UI option:

If your file has already opened, you need to reload startup file first (File -> New)


Can I get back film emulation looks into 2.80?

Warning: The following approach may currently work, but it's not officially supported and may cause bugs and/or crashes when running Blender.

For this you need a copy of Blender 2.79b which you can download here. Use one of the appropriate one for your OS that comes as archive (.zip, tar.bz2, tar.gz). We will need this to get the old color management files.

Open the directory where you have Blender 2.8 installed and navigate to 2.80/datafiles. There should be a directory named colormanagement. Rename this to colormanagement_new.
Extract Blender 2.79b archive somewhere on your system. Navigate to 2.79/datafiles and copy the colormanagement directory CTRL+C.
The back to the directory of the Blender 2.8 and paste into 2.80/datafiles CTRL+V. You should now see the old options in the color management panel when running Blender 2.8.

If you want to revert the changes simply delete the directory you copied into 2.80/datafiles and rename colormanagement_new back to colormanagement.


Is there a way to convert a Nurbs curve to Bezier?

Under Edit Mode in the Tools tab of the Tool Shelf there is a button labeled Set Spline Type to switch between several curve types like Poly, Bezier or NURBS.

Under 2.8+ this can be set from the 3D View header menu > Curve > Set Spline Type.

Spline type is stored as a per-curve spline property. A spline is any connected sequence of vertex in Edit Mode within a single curve object, that means each  different spline within a curve can have its own independent type.


You could try a different approach, and use a skin modifier on a mesh object for something like this.

In edit mode mark a vertex as root, select a vertex and choose Mark Root in the modifier. Also add a subdivision surface modifier to smooth the result.

You will likely need to scale the skin down some initially, in edit mode do this by selecting all and using ⌃ Ctrl + A to resize.


How to define states for window/operator base class?

Since the instances of the operators only exist for the duration of their execution, instance attributes aren't a suitable solution for storing the state. Once the execution is finished the operator is destroyed and subsequent calls to execute() or invoke() will not have access to the previous state. Class attributes, also known as static variable in other programming languages, could be used since all instances of the class access the very same variable. Therefore the state remains, even when one particular object ceased to exist.

The example below demonstrates the lifetime of an operator and the difference in using a class or instance attribute. Since the operator instance gets destroyed once it's finished executing, the instance attribute always remains "1" no matter how often the operator is called.

bl_info = {
    "name": "Class vs Instance Attribute",
    "author": "Robert Guetzkow",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "",
    "description": "Demonstrates the lifetime of the operator.",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "3D View"}

import bpy

class EXAMPLE_OT_class_attribute(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "example.class_attribute"
    bl_label = "Increment and print class attribute"
    bl_description = "Increment and print instance attribute"

    x = 0

    def execute(self, context):
        EXAMPLE_OT_class_attribute.x += 1
        print(f"EXAMPLE_OT_class_attribute: {EXAMPLE_OT_class_attribute.x}")
        return {"FINISHED"}

class EXAMPLE_OT_instance_attribute(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "example.instance_attribute"
    bl_label = "Increment and print instance attribute"
    bl_description = "Increment and print instance attribute"

    def __init__(self):
        self.x = 0

    def execute(self, context):
        self.x += 1
        print(f"self.x: {self.x}")
        return {"FINISHED"}

classes = (EXAMPLE_OT_class_attribute, EXAMPLE_OT_instance_attribute)

def register():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(cls)

def unregister():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.unregister_class(cls)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    for i in range(5):
        bpy.ops.example.class_attribute()

    for i in range(5):
        bpy.ops.example.instance_attribute()


I'm very inexperienced when it comes to rigging, but I'll try to point you in the right direction, your rig lacks the collarbones, as scuh you expect their behaviour to be included in the shoulder.

this guys right here.

I think doing your own rig can be agreat learning experience and you can also tailor it to your own needs, I'd suggest importing the rigify rig and studying it a bit to see how it works, also looking at a few anatomical references to understand where you should insert the bones into your model.

Also skinning is very trial and error, try animating different movements and seeing how your model reacts, most high end rigs have corrective blendshapes which iron out some kinks when doing certain movements, or bulge out muscle when flexing, many ways to skin a cat.


Looking for advise on modeling/faking lots of rope

best way to do so imho would be to use normal maps over simple geometry (curves in this case), you may find it out hard to keep the correct uv coordinations, so you may use either the Mapping node in materials node editor or convert it them to geometry and do the uv's properly. First way seems to be more legit.


You can take a good, proper snapshot of your viewport using "Viewport Render Image"

Alternatively, you can add a wireframe modifier, with the thickness set rather low, and uncheck "replace original". You must also set the "Material Offset" to 1. Then, give your mesh 2 different materials - one to represent the wireframe, and another for the base mesh. This is what it looks like in rendered preview - it can then be rendered as normal:

The last option, if you have lots of objects, and don't want to have to manually add a wireframe modifier and materials to each of them, is to use the cavity overlay. This doesn't have as strong a wireframe effect as the modifier, but it is still visible. You may or may not want to strengthen the effect with a matcap.
This effect looks best in solid preview mode (not rendered), so if you're going this route, capture the image with the viewport render option I listed above.


You want to control the bone roll (Y axis rotation) of the pop-up bones.  This is done most easily with a locked track constraint.  Unfortunately, constraints don't play nicely with IK.  But it's entirely possible to make it work, using an additional bone.
Start by entering edit mode on Armature Popup.  Start by selecting the head of Popup_Center and snapping the cursor to selection (shift s menu for me.)  Now, select Popup_L and duplicate it.  We'll rename that bone to defPopup_L.  Now, with defPopup_L selected, recalculate roll to cursor (ctrl n menu for me.)  Finally, parent defPopup_L to Popup_L.
Change to pose mode.  Delete the (duplicated) IK constraint on defPopup_L.  Give it a locked track constraint, targeting the head of Popup_Center, set to Lock Y axis and Track Z axis (recalculating the roll set the Z axis to point at the cursor.)
Finally, set your mesh object (chiclepopup) to use this new bone instead, by renaming the Popup_L vertex group to defPopup_L.
Repeat this process for Popup_R if you'd like: duplicate it, parent the duplicate to the original, set the roll with a recalculate operation, give it a locked track constraint instead of IK, with appropriate settings, and make sure your mesh is using your new bone for deformation.


Can't select or interact with downloaded objects unless in edit mode

simply export the blender 2.79 file as an .FBX file to Blender 2.80

blender 2.79b or earlier are not 100% compatible with 2.80 or later, you should use another format such as OBJ (object) or FBX which is the one that works best for me personally


How do I export a blender game to be played within my website?

There is no way to do this.  As described here you can create only Windows, Mac and Linux native applications from BGE.

If you want to create a 3D web application from blender, you should
use a specific addons:

Blend4Web
Verdge3D

Both looks the same, but main difference between them is that Blend4Web uses JavaScript as main scripting tool, Verdge3D uses special block-style logic editor


This type of material is super easy to do in cycles. First break down what you want to do.

You want to have a gradient (three color stops).
You want the gradient running along the Z axis.

With that as our objective, we don't even need to touch any UV mapping.

Start by getting a gradient running in the direction you want (Z axis).
There are several ways to do this, but I like to simply split the generated texture coordinates, and use the Z component. That is the gradient, no other nodes needed.

All that is left to do is run that (think of it as the direction data) in to a color ramp node to colorize it the way you want.

You can do all that with a Separate XYZ node plugged in to the Generated socket of a Texture Coordinate node. Then take the Z output of the Separate XYZ node and plug it in to the color ramp. (Like in the image below)


This node has been replaced by Sound Falloff and Sound Spectrum when the falloff workflow was introduced.
Your node network should look like this :

Basically AN now generates a tweakable falloff from a music file input, in real time, there is no need to bake it anymore. The falloff can then be used to achieve a great number of effect. Here we use it to scale the pegs up and down and to change their material property so they appear to be reacting to the sound waves :


How To Curve Road Without Array Modifier?

You may use a Spin Tool.

Snap the cursor (Shift+S-->Cursor to Selected) to the bottom vertex of your plane, select the edge and then press Alt+R to spin it. Play with the settings in a Tool Shelf (T)- change the Center X position to make the curved part of the mesh longer.

Continue modeling using spin tool and close the road (remove doubles when finish).

TEXTURING
Select one edge in the middle of the mesh, then press Ctrl+E-->Mark Seam. Enable Face selection mode, select the whole mesh, then unselect and reselect one of the faces. Press U-->Follow Active Quads-->OK. Change the viewport shading to Textured.

Go to UV Editor and scale the UV island to fit the pattern scale as you like.


As others mentioned, you can have the object's dimensions in the side bar. But understand it's only the objects panel from a bounding box. In your case, the dimensions are calculated from a box kind of like this :

If you want more precise measurements, ex something like that:

You can use the MeasureIt addon. AFAIK it's included in Blender.


You can use Input > Attribute node to feed Vertex Colors to Diffuse node and than Bake Diffuse Color as usual.


Blender 2.76 Cycles texture baking strange artifacts

Usually, this happens when the two meshes are intersecting. Avoid this enabling the cage option into the bake panel and set a distance maybe 0.05 (5 cm) in your case should do fine.

A normal map has mostly a blue tint indicating the z direction that the faces are pointing towards, In your case, as the meshes are intersecting you get this strange variation of colors because sometimes the hires mesh is on one side of the low res mesh, sometimes is on the other side.

Creating a cage (and not choosing an object as a cage) is like inflating your low-resolution mesh and projecting towards inside from a certain distance to find the high res object.

If you have a complicated shape and usually the concave shapes that simply "inflating" it makes it intersect with herself might need a cage object ( with the same number of verts as the low res object).

Also, shade smooth your high-resolution object.

P.S. You might want also to give a bit more distance between the two UV islands as they might overwrite each other.


How can I drive the Switch nodes True/False value?

It works for me with the plain Expr: abs(var) < frame. So basically you just need a Boolean expression (omit the if in your expression) for it to drive the Switch. Basically any numerical result below 1.0 will result in Off and starting from 1.0 and above will result in On.

You can put something like (abs(var) < frame) and (abs(var) + var_001 > frame) into the box to evaluate only True during the duration of your Strip after you changed your var_001 to the frame_final_duration.

Furthermore you could Copy'n'Paste drivers if you want to use them again.

When you want to use your own function to add more complicated stuff like conditional expressions, stick to the Example code in the documentation about the Driver Namespace:

  This script will add a function to the driver namespace, which can then be used in the expression driver_func(frame):

import bpy

def driver_func(val):
    return val * val    # return val squared

# add function to driver_namespace
bpy.app.driver_namespace['driver_func'] = driver_func

But giving your variables meaningful names as soon as possible is a good practise... ;-)


How do I change the location of the "Temp" folder to be a relative path?

that field seems to accept only EXISTING folders, while "//" stands for "current folder", but it is referred to the "current SAVED file".

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/data_system/files/relative_paths.html says "You cannot enter relative paths into a new untitled blend-file. Save it before linking to external files."

the "temp" path in user preferences probably is needed absolute (and existing) because blender needs it even for itself to, eg, save the quit.blend file, useful to recover the last session (even if not saved), and that file is saved in the "temp" folder. So, blender MUST know well where exactly it is...

I mean this recover function could not work, probably, without being sure of the "temp" folder


When using a baked normal map it is inverted on half my model

If you made the UV's while the mirror modifier was active then the UV's for both sides should be overlapped, the bake is only correct for one half of the model.

If you hover over the UVImage Editor and press Ctrl+P (Unpack), you should end up with distinct islands for all the geometry.

Now you should re-bake.


Node setup for alpha and translucency maps

Albedo -> Color

Roughness (Non-Color Data) -> Roughness

Translucent -> Transmission

Normal (Non-Color Data) -> Normal (Tangent Space) -> Normal

Alpha is used on a mix shader to control the mix of the principled shader and transparency.


How to get thick lines around windows via UI settings?

Hey there its a regular default theme But with user preferences>interface>line width  set to Thick.

its useful on tablets like the surface pro where the small hires screen makes panel manipulation somewhat tricky. Hope that helps, Happy Blending.


How to assign different background images for different 3d views?

I have attached a file with 3 views. Try hitting Num 7 , Num 1 and Num 3 to view the different elevation views. Everytime you add an image to the background you will have to click on the "Add image" button. I believe that may be the reason why you could not get more than one image to show up on your viewport.

Alternative Methods

However there is a better way of working with image plane. Using import image
as plane. Here you get a polygon created to match the aspect ratio of your image and the image is applied as a shadeless material. This gives you more control in positioning your image planes and make them visible in all views including the
perspective views.

Note : You may also want to turn on lock transformation for the planes.

Here is the download for the alternative method.


Every time I try to select a single object, it selects everything in the scene. How do I separate them?

I think the problem you have is that you added the cube in the edit mode of the character(?). This results in the cube being a part of the character object.
If you really want to have seperate OBJECTS (not only meshes), you have to add the cube in Object Mode. (Mode selection is on the bottom-left corner of the 3d editor).
Another way is to seperate the meshes by selecting the part of the mesh you want to have in a seperate object and pressing P and clicking selection


how to delete an object without deleting its particles in Blender 2.83.0

You could name the particle system and instead of the object, put that particle system on an empty. This would mean the particles would appear but the empty would be invisible.


How can i make a translucent material on Cycles?

I would use a subsurface scattering (SSS) shader (rather than a translucent shader) mixed with a diffuse/glossy shader mix (or whatever you are using for the base surface shader).

SSS basically makes the rays scatter when they hit the surface of an object, meaning the rays don't come off the surface at the same place they hit it.  The amount of scattering is determined by the scattering radius multiplied by the scale value on the shader.  SSS is usually used for organic things such as skin.

You can check out this question and this question and the documentation to learn more about SSS.


if you are using cycles:

In the node editor, add an input > texture coordinate node and a vector > mapping node.  Plug the generated output of the texture coordinate node into the vector input of the mapping node and the vector output of the mapping node into the vector input of the environment texture node.  You can then tweak the values on the mapping node to move, scale, and rotate the environment texture.


It seems this addon is for rendering Light fields.

From the wiki:

  Description

  This script helps setting up rendering of lightfields. It also
  supports the projection of lightfields with textured spotlights.

  Usage

  A simple interface can be accessed in the tool shelf panel in 3D View
  (T key).

  A base mesh has to be provided, which will normaly be a subdivided
  plane. The script will then create a camera rig and a light rig with
  adjustable properties. A sample camera and a spotlight will be created
  on each vertex of the basemesh object axis (maybe vertex normal in
  future versions).

  Vertex order

  The user has to provide the number of cameras or lights in one row in
  an unevenly spaced grid, the basemesh. Then the right vertex order can
  be computed as shown below.

  6-7-8
  | | |
^ 3-4-5
| | | |
y 0-1-2
  x->

  There is also a tool to create a basemesh, which is an evenly spaced
  grid. The row length parameter is taken to construct such a NxN grid.
  Someone would start out by adding a rectengular plane as the slice
  plane of the frustrum of the most middle camera of the light field
  rig. The spacing parameter then places the other cameras in a way, so
  they have an offset of n pixels from the other camera on this plane.

What are light fields?

Light fields were originally invented to allow advanced tweaking of a rendered image that would normally only be possible with defined geometry (i.e. a 3D model):

  Light fields were introduced into computer graphics in 1996 by Marc Levoy and Pat Hanrahan. Their proposed application was image-based-rendering - computing new views of a scene from pre-existing views without the need for scene geometry.

This even works for photographs taken with a special camera:

  LightField cameras (also called plenoptic cameras) have a microlense
  array just in front of the imaging sensor.

  Such arrays consist of many
  microscopic lenses (often in the range of 100,000) with tiny focal
  lengths (as low as 0.15 mm), and split up what would have become a
  2D-pixel into individual light rays just before reaching the sensor.

  The resulting raw image is a composition of as many tiny images as
  there are microlenses. Here’s the fascinating part: every sub-image
  differs a little bit from its neighbours, because the lightrays were
  diverted slightly differently depending on the corresponding
  microlense’s position in the array.

  Next, sophisticated software is
  used to find matching lightrays across all these images. Once it has
  collected a list of
  (1) matching lightrays,
  (2) their position in the
  microlense array and (3) within the sub-image, the information can be
  used to reconstruct a sharp 3D model of the scene.

  Using this model,
  you have all of the LightField capabilities at your fingertips: you
  can define what parts of the image should be in focus or out of focus,
  define the depth of field, you can set everything in focus, you can
  shift the perspective or parallax a bit, … You can even use the
  parallax data to create 3D pictures from a single LightField lense and
  capture. All of this can be done after you’ve recorded the image.


Fire Adaptive Domain rendering like a solid cube

You have a material plugged in to the Surface for the domain. Because you are rendering a material on the surface of the domain nothing else will show. You need to delete that and add a smoke and fire node set up, which gets plugged in the the Volume input.

Here is an example smoke and fire node setup for cycles.
The top frame labeled Smoke is the default node setup from "Quick Smoke." Which is accessible from the 3D view header then Object > Quick Effects > Quick Smoke.

Briefly, what is happening there is your material is getting the smoke sim data from the "density" in the Attribute node. That is fed in to the two volume nodes, Scatter and Absorption which together normally make a completely dense, uniform volume. However with the data from the smoke sim, it changes the density in some parts of the object, making it take the exact shape of the smoke sim.

The bottom frame Fire is what is giving the flames the color you will see in the render. Similarly to the density, the "flame" in the Attribute node is where we get the fire data to add in.
(Credit goes to Andrew Price for popularizing the use of the ColorRamp node for controlling the color of the fire. Prior to that it was common to use a black body node.)

Then all that gets combined with the Add Shader and pluged in to the Volume input of the Material Output node.


Just click on the tiny drop down arrow to reveal the header again.


The light is being reflected inside the bulb.How to fix it?

To implement this, you just have to ensure that the light from the filament is not bouncing off or interacting with too many surfaces (in technical terms 'bounces').In our case, if the light from the filament comes through the front of the bulb, it means the emission ray from the filament is converted to transmission ray (at the front portion of bulb) and reaches camera. Which means 2 bounces. But in the case of the additional reflections, the bounces are more.

So all we have to do is, make the rays which have more than 2 bounces invisible. We can get this bounce information from 'Ray depth' of 'Light path' node.

  Ray Depth is the Number of times the ray has “bounced”, i.e. been reflected
  or transmitted on interaction with a surface.

In material node editor, Shift+A and Input>Light path. Also, we can get the 'greater than' operation from math node. Shift+A, Converter>Math and change the operation in the drop down menu to 'greater than'.

Check out the following node setup for emission material of the filament.You can do the same for the rest of the materials that are getting reflected.


Adding custom split normals enables sharp on edges between smooth faces?

It turned out that this actually was a bug in Blender. This Bug has been fixed and the fix will be in Blender 2.75 Then my initial code snippet will work as expected.


Face shading differs for adjacent faces in same object

The problem is that your faces are triangles. Triangles are notoriously difficult to smooth-shade.

The short answer is that you need to convert your triangles to rectangles (quads).

To do that, you can take advantage of a built-in Blender tool: "Tris to Quads." Select all the faces that you're having trouble with. Then press space and type "tris to quads" and then select the matching command. This will automatically combine triangles into quads, where possible.

But this might not quite work the way you want it to. If it makes awkward quads, you might have to undo that and try something slightly different. Try changing to "face select mode" and then select two triangles that would make a tidy quad. Then press space to run the command again. You might have to this for each pair of triangles, but it'll make the shading much more smooth.

So, avoid triangles where you can. Use quads as often as possible.


Is there a way to subdivide a face without using ctrl r and creating unnecessary polygons?

Yes you can, by creating "n-gons". Bad for topology, usually but it can be done like this:

in edit mode select just the side edges of the slope then subdivide them enough (use edge tools > subdivide - CTRLE):

you get edges subdivided as you want along their length. Now activate vertex snapping, and in side mode select vertices like this

then (with all those vertices selected) grab them along global Z and snap to their bottom unselected vertices

then do the same but on global Y with their upper unselected vertices

you get this in the end:

of course this is just a simple example...


Don't worry guys. I figured out the reason behind the problem and fixed it.

The story behind it:

One day, I went looking for new art software (because I've been using Inkscape a lot; i still do, honestly), and I came across Medibang. When I installed it, it didn't look all that interesting to me, so I uninstalled it immediately. In the middle of that, though, came a message that said whether or not I wanted to get rid of "MdpThumb64.dll", and if I chose "No", it would cause no harm. So I clicked "No" on that message and went on with my day.

After that, every other time I went to get on the computer, it would always take a while to load up everything , and I was thinking that the .dll file was the problem, so I deleted it and then felt instant regret doing that. I then went to a DLL-downloading website, and downloaded the .dll from there. I never should've trusted them, because that's when the chaos finally ensued.

I went to Blender, clicked off and on the window again, and it closed itself (which was the main problem here). I could only assume the fake .dll file was behind all this, so I did a System Restore (in which the restore point was all the way back in January of 2019), tried the click-on-and-off thing again, and nothing happened. It never closed on itself after that, therefore I finally solved the problem.

I guess it turns out that there was no "MdpThumb" DLL file on Windows to begin with. (hehe)


How can I set the geometric resolution of a primitive?

Blender 2.8
In Blender 2.8, after adding a UV sphere, a flyout appears on the bottom of the 3D viewport:

I have no idea on how to access that with a keyboard shortcut.
earlier versions
If you press T before adding the UV sphere, you should see the "Transform" panel which allows you to set the  segments and rings.

If you already have the UV sphere and want to modify it instead of creating a new one from scratch, you could use the Subdivision Surface ("Subsurf") modifier.


Distorting one corner of a sculpted wall

There isn't any Distort tool in Blender since mesh is not an image and it can't be transformed that easily however you can work with modifiers and edit mesh data depending on another mesh, basically transforming one according to vertices of another one.
First prepare the dummy mesh which will be used as a cage
Add a cube or extruded plane (since in your case wall object is flat surface) and scale it so that it roughly matches your wall but is slightly bigger. Note that dummy object has to be closed one (no holes and preferably as little details as possible; default cube should do fine). Position it on the same place as your high density wall object (like when baking normals to lowpoly).
Then grab the high density mesh you have and add a Mesh Deform modifier to it
Since it requires vertex group enter Edit mode, select all vertices and add them to new vertex group (shortcut Ctrl+G).
Then in modiifier settings choose that vertex group, select dummy object to act as transforming cage.
Finally in Mesh Deform modifier settings click Bind
Note that this operation can take a while depending on mesh complexity and hardware resources you have.
Then once it's binded in Object mode select cage object, enter Edit mode for it, select vertices in one corner (to match your example) and grab them towards another corner. High density mesh will follow their transformation.

Note that additionally you can hook vertices of the cage object (cube) to an empty  and grab empty in Object mode in order to skip entering Edit mode for the cage (which can be computational heavy operation).
See more about Mesh Deform


You can add a File output Node, then add as many sockets as you need in your multilayer EXR, and connect them to your renderlayer sockets node:

renderlayers_node = scene_tree.nodes.new('CompositorNodeRLayers')
outputfile_node = scene_tree.nodes.new('CompositorNodeOutputFile')
outputfile_node.format.file_format = 'OPEN_EXR_MULTILAYER'  # 'OPEN_EXR'
outputfile_node.base_path = base_path
outputfile_node.file_slots.new('Z')
scene_tree.links.new(renderlayers_node.outputs['Image'], outputfile_node.inputs['Image'])
scene_tree.links.new(renderlayers_node.outputs['Z'], outputfile_node.inputs['Z'])


Blender text-editor is not good for coding, but using external one is cumbersome because the code still needs to be debugged regularly in blender and the blender console and outliner dataview is also very usefull. Switching back and forth would be an annoying experience for me even if the codes (external, internal) could be synced (which they can be with scene_update handlers..).

There was couple years ago an attempt to improve the Text-editor (using Scintilla that many external text editors use), but it seems dead.

So some time ago I wrote this addon to improve some Text editor functionality so I don't have to go the external path. Nowadays I would code some of it's parts differently and better (especially the multithreaded minimap updating) so any feedback is very welcomed. Here are the features:

Start and End with right-click in any Text-editor window (it also ends with F8 because when scripting an addon you need to reload with F8 and that is not possible because this addon is a modal operator. So you need F8 + F8 + Right-click>Start_again )

When started it adjusts the text-editor to the addon preferences, so you don't have to set line_numbers, syntax_highlight, text_margin etc. every time you open new text-editor window (this is frustating blender behavior, these settings should be global..)

It follows blender theme colors. The default ones are bad, so here I give you a good ones so its usable:

It adds a scrollable and clickable code minimap with syntax highlighting, which fades out when window is too small. It is done in another thread and has lazy updating to not lag the text-editor (python is slow for this). It can be disabled in preferences with just setting huge Hide Panel threshold:

It adds markers to visualize indentation, and it displays the scope of defs and classes (you can see it above in the gif). The scopes could be minimized but this didn't make it into this release because when blender crashes you would loose the hidden code parts (the lines were removed from text and stored in custom property). You can see the toggle icons when you hover over line numbers.
Autocompletes brackets and "",'':

Use Alt+C for magic:

put things in lists:

evaluate expressions (it knows pi, e, phi(golden ratio) and g(grav accel)):

stringify words when cursor just after the word:

Correct Home and Shift+Home behavior. Will move to first letter of line or to the previous indent. Alt+Home now moves to the line beginning:

Make comments with Alt+D. (Remove with Ctrl+Shift+D - this one is not new):

With multiple text-files it displays tabs to quickly switch between (blender has tabs but does not use them where it should..)

All this was good enough for me not to use external editor. Multiple variables highlighting and multi-editing (like Sublime has) was planned but abandoned. Maybe if enough people will be interested I could further improve this. But I don't see Blender addon python api strong enough to do this properly, this should be done in Blenders code for performance (like that scintilla patch).

There is also this paid addon that does blender api autocomplete and is very nice.

In your workflow I don't see much room for optimization, except for auto-reloading your script with bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_pre handler. You should be able also to return to the start state with ctrl-z so you don't have to restart blender but that depends on what you are doing if that would work.


First time to try water simulation but I can't do it

In the newly updated fluid simulation (Mantaflow) you need to enable ‘Mesh’ in the settings. This uses the fluid particles (that you can see in your screenshot) into the final mesh. You may need to re-bake the simulation to see the result (there are some known issues with Replay cache mode not always auto-detecting that the simulation has changed and needs rebaking - try changing the Resolution or change the cache to Final to allow it to be baked).


Depth of field is not being rendered in Blender Internal

You need to use the compositor :)

The Camera settings sets an object as your focus point and the Defocus node uses this for calculations. Or, leave it blank and use the Defocus node settings for distance calculations.

In the Render layers settings, ensure you've added a Z pass.


Copying UVs from a high to low poly model?

You can try the "transfer data" tool (the modifier also works, sometimes...).

Here is a "HD" mesh with UV and texture

And here is a LD mesh without UV

Select your LD mesh first and then add your HD mesh to the selection with Shift+Right click. The last selected object is considered as active.
Open the tools bar with T. In the Tool tab, scroll to Edit and click on "Data Transfer: DATA" button

Select "UV" in the menu.

Choose the options that looks the best.

The UV has been transferred from the HD mesh to LD mesh.

Now you can create the seams from UV islands from the UV menu in image editor.

The LD mesh has Seams, UV and the texture is OK


Is radial symmetry possible in texture paint mode?

Radial symmetry is a pretty new thing for Sculpt mode, and probably there hasn't been anyone that thought it was needed yet in Texture Paint mode. The operator would need to be reworked to use in Texture Paint, but as for a work around I don't know of one yet.


Are Blender 2.79 and Python 3.7.X Compatible?

As the answers to the linked question stated, Blender comes with its own Python version. This is correct for Blender 2.7x and 2.8x.

You can have more than one Python version installed on your computer anyway, but the specific reason for why this works in Blender is a quite old concept, that dates back to the time, when shared libraries were invented.

If you start any software that uses shared libraries (or any other form of additions), it first starts to look for them in its own installation directory. If it doesn't find there, what it's looking for, it tries the directories that are stored in the user variables and then the system variables. If it still doesn't find what it's looking for, it throws an exception error.1)

In short - ideally you don't have to do anything, since Blender has its own Python version and 3.7.X makes entries to the system variables during install. However, if you want to use even more Python versions, you either need to add another system variable for each version or make use of pyenv.

1) A variant to this behavior called DLL Injection enables good things like ENB or ReShade, but also bad things like viruses.


How to align 2D UV map for wood slat ceiling

Maybe a screenshot of your UV Editor would help to understand where the problem comes from.
Here is a try, I've unwraped the mesh, aligned the 2 parts and inverted one with SX-1. The small problem is that the planks may look a bit the same:

A solution would be to shift the UV a bit, it will work fine if all your planks have about the same width, otherwise they won't align anymore:


How can shape keys of a linked object be controlled?

To my best knowledge, your first assesment on having the shape keys be driven by bones or other control objects is correct. That is to say, shape keys can be controlled with drivers.

Often with corrective shape keys you've a setup where the shapes are driven "behind the scene" by the bone transforms. In case you require manual control over the shape keys, you can create a proxy for the controlling object in the scene you linked to.

You might be interested in reading up on drivers and checking this vid on proxies.


Hair children don't seem to respond to changes?

Particle systems still seem to be a little buggy sometimes. I recently had a similar problem. The way to "fix" this is to press G to move the object and then hit ESC or rightclick to cancel the transform. That way it snaps back to its position before and the particles update. While this might be a possible workaround, there might be a better solution because obiously an instant update would be a lot more convenient.


Emission shader that glows on the center of the object and is dark on the edges

The disconnected Shader socket on the Mix node will be providing what is effectively a ‘black’ material. The Mix mixes between what is on the’top’ input with what is on the ‘bottom’ socket based on the Factor - with 0.0 and less giving the ‘top’ one on the output, 1.0 and above givinn the ‘bottom’ one on the output and values between 0.0 and 1.0 giving a mix between them. Therefore, to ‘invert’ your result you could either manipulate the Factor (eg, mathematically subtract it from one) or, alternatively, just swap te Shader inputs - so the emission is connected to the bottom one and the top one is unconnected.

Another option here is to add a Color Ramp between te Fresnel and Factor and you can then manipulate the ramp to change the effect.

EDIT : For a more controllable transition you could use vector maths and a Color Ramp as follows :


Issue

Domain is too long. If you set Divisions to 120 means longest side of domain is divided by this value. For domain of this lenght it means "big" voxel cell.

You can try by your self, go to edit mode, with Ctrl+R close to center of long edge (when yellow loop appear) type 120, so domain become divided by this number. From there you can see that emitter is inside one voxel and rising smoke expand into two others.

Solution

You would have to increase divisions, but for this type of domain totally unreasonable. Depend on animation type you can try something else.

Make domain shorter and enable Dissolve, so smoke disappear in specified amount of frames. From your file I see you already use it, so parent domain to your train and enable also Adaptive domain.

Or try particles instead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL0G5oOjdtk
For stady camera, like viewing incoming train with long smoke trail, you can try to use more domains https://vimeo.com/246353861

Once I tried shape keys for incoming car. Long domain with same divisions for far shot, but when car become closer I animated domain lenght into shorter. So for close up view domain became with enough division in camera view. I even didnt expect it can work, so there was offcourse issue, in a moment of resize domain smoke like exploded :) https://vimeo.com/177600070


On top of other forms of interpolation, blender does use Bezier curves in the Graph Editor

The interpolation modes for segments of a curve can be determined by selecting a point in the graph an pressing the T key.

Or on the menu Key->Interpolation Mode:

Moreover the default interpolation mode can be determined in the preferences (CtrlAltU)

Some examples.


Plane is not appearing as blue in render

For some reason your object has shadow catcher and dupli faces selected. Both prevent it being displayed in render view.


Multiple TEXTURE Displacements (mapping) in one scene

(I'm not totally clear on you question but I'll give it a shot.)

You can combine several displacement textures one using Mix RGB nodes.

Let's say you have a situation like this where I'm combining two textures used as displacement:

Now I want to add some voronoi noise to the whole thing, so I would just combine the bump map with a mix RGB node like this:

But as noted in one of the comments using true displacement on the material nodes is still at experimental stages and might yield unpredictable results. It might be better to combine multiple displacement modifiers, and maybe use an empty to control the coordinates for the deformation.


When sculpting cloth nothing happens, object turns dark

"object has non-uniform scale, sculpting may be unpredictable." --> so you need to select the object in object mode and press CONTROL+A and then select SCALE.
in this way you reset the scale of the object. It has to be 1:1:1 (check it pressing N on the viewport and go under Item's tab)


Is it possible for light sources in Cycles to have nonphysical falloff like in BI?

Yes. There is a node called Light Falloff
you can plug in to the Emission shader strength.
It has three outputs: quadratic or Linear
or Constant You my even do some math with the ray
length and plug the result in the Light Falloff
node strength and use the Constant output.
The example is only a demonstration nothing useful.


Short answer:
This is caused by a rotation of the model (90 degrees on the X axis), as you can see in the picture you posted here:

If the object was "unrotated", so to speak, it would be oriented with the car's length along the Z axis, rather than the Y axis.
You can see this by clearing rotation (AltR), or just typing in "0" in the X rotation box.
The object dimensions reflect the unrotated object, which is why the largest dimenions of your car in the Z axis, rather than Y.
To fix this, instead of clearing rotation, apply the rotation (this will make the current rotation the "zero state", and the dimensions will be calculated accordingly). To do this, press: CtrlA to open the "Apply Transformations" menu, then choose Rotation.
Why this happened:
As you know, blender uses a Z up axis system, as is more common in Math.
However, many other 3D apps use a Y up axis system which might be more intuitive to laypeople, who are used to only 2D axis systems (where Y is the "up-down" axis).
OBJ files are also normally saved with Y-up coordinates. So when Blender imports OBJ files, it automatically rotates them by 90 degrees along the X axis so that they will be oriented correctly within Blender.
Since the people who wrote the OBJ importer didn't know for sure whether users will always like this (I assume), they did not apply the rotation.
Which is why objects imported from OBJ files are always initially rotated by 90 degrees in X, and their dimensions reflect this.


Stacking cycles renders in the compositor?

You can use the File Output node to do this, however there are some issues.

Node setup: (click for full size)

The pink highlighted value in the Math node is a Driver that returns the current frame number. You can quickly create this driver by typing #frame in the value field:

You can also do this for the Seed value in Render settings > Sampling as a quicker way to get a different seed each frame than animating.

Creating:

Add the composite nodes and #frame drivers.
Set the file output node Base Path to a directory that is not the main output location set in Render settings > Output.
Optional. Change the subpath (i.e. the name, though you if you have / or, in case of Windows, \ characters in the subpath field, blender will create new sub-directories accordingly.) of the output image slot by selecting the file output node and pressing N> Properties region > Properties > File path in the Node editor:

Render the first frame. All that is actually necessary is that a file called image0001.png (where image is the subpath of the output image slot in the File output node, 0001 is the scene Start frame, and .png is the file extension for the output format selected in the File output node) is created in the location specified in the file output node.
Click Open on the Image node and navigate to the placeholder file in the File output node output location, and click open.
Change the image source to Image sequence, set Frames to the number of frames in the scene and set Offset to -1.
Render the animation (CtrlF12)
The last frame in the output location specified in the File output node will be the finished image.

How it works:

This node setup uses this solution for averaging the images:

  If you render 5 images with 10 samples each, the second image should be mixed with the first with a factor of .5 (or an alpha of 50%). This will effectively result in a 20 sample image (as you pointed out, it's not quite the same as 20 rendered samples, but it's reasonably close), so the second image should be mixed with a factor of .33 (alpha of 33%) and so on.

The node setup uses the File Output node to output the averaged result of the previous frame and the next frame to a separate directory.

The images written to that directory are read by the Image sequence node on the next frame and used for averaging with the now current frame. The result is again written to that location with the file output node, read again, averaged with the current frame, written again, and so on.

Problems:

On the first frame there is no image for the image sequence node to read, this should not be a problem since on frame one the mix factor is 1/1 = 1 so only the raw render will be used.

However, there is a bug/limitation that causes the file output node to output a completely transparent (or black if you are only saving RGB channels) image for frame one, due to the lack of an image for the image sequence node to read. The image sequence node then gives a transparent result, which sets the transparency of the mixed result to 0.

Also see this related post.

This causes a problem next frame when the image is mixed with the false black/transparent image, which causes darkening/decrease in opacity. This darkening will be quickly mixed out to be unnoticeable in subsequent frames, but it does mean that the image is not 100% accurate.

As a workaround, you can either:

Add a Mask node and an Alpha Over node to to ensure the top input of the Mix node is always filled and always 100% opaque: (click for full size)

Or render the first frame by itself and replace the incorrect black image with the raw render of the first frame manually. Then render the animation starting from frame 2.

Result:

Rendering 15 frames at 10 samples gives this result:

A single 10 sample frame:

The final combined result:

A 150 sample render:


Is there a way to switch UV checker on and off fast while working with UV editor?

You can use the Node Wrangler addon to preview the checker texture

Enable Node Wrangler addon in Preferences > Addons
Use Ctrl + Shift + Leftclick to quickly preview the checker texture in the Shader editor
You can change the texture type in the UV editor


Displace modifier on specified region of hollowed cylinder

Use vertex groups. Select the vertices you want to displace, then go to "object data properties" in the properties tab, and create a vertex group. Assign your selected vertices to the group, then under the displacement modifier, choose your group in the box were it says "vertex group".


How can you make meshes transparant in sculptmode?

In Cycles add a material to your plane and set up material nodes as pictured below (Mix Diffuse and Transparent nodes). With the viewport shading type set to Material set the Factor of the Mix node to adjust transparency as you like. In Material header-->Settings panel under the Viewport Color set the Alpha to 0.000.


Is there a way to see thumbnails of all the materials in a scene?

What you really want is an old todo item. In two ways things already possible though.

Browse the materials in memory for linking (menu button to left of button where you can change material name). It shows icon-size previews. Blender already supports popups with larger previews (used for matcaps, brushes). Something similar could be coded to be used here too.
You can inspect materials (with previews) inside any other .blend file with using the File->Append browser, it allows to go into a file and see materials. Set file browser to view thumbnails. This type of browsing could be used for linked large collections of materials, textures or images too.


Issue with Camera-to-view hotkey? (ctrl+alt+num0)

It looks like everything is working as correctly to me.
Your original viewport view isn't centered. It may look like that to you because the cube is near the center of your monitor, but it's actually down and to the right of the actual viewport itself.
To center your view on an object (or any number of selected objects), press "." on your numpad, then align your camera. That should resolve the issue :)


As you asked if someone could fix it (well i tried):

I would like to roughly tell you what i did, so you could do it too, next time.
After converting the path to a mesh ("Object-Menu" -> "Convert to" -> "Mesh from Curve/Meta/Surf/Text") and cleaning it reasonable, way to many points.
I separated the parts and made the main body from just the outer line extruded with a n-gon face. The rest was separating all the parts based on what layer they go. Like some framing of the text was cut out of the body and the text then set inside the cut out part giving it that depth.

If this is what you were trying to make is questionable, in the file is one pendant object that was the union of all parts, as well as a pendant in parts.
In case you want the faces that are cut in the body to be rather outside, just select all the vertices in the inner part of the body from the side-view and move them along the "Z" axis up. Would have liked to clean it up more, hope this helps you.

Btw. i was missing those bells, could not find them in the file.


How to make local single-user copy in Python API

object.data = object.data.copy()

makes localized copy of linked data-block.


Is there anyway to make blender print errors in the UI?

I created a little utility addon that let's you easily run Text datablocks of your .blend (doesn't need to be saved) in the Python Console. Errors will show up there:Run Script in PyConsole (Menu)

You may also check out the Script Runner addon:
http://goodspiritgraphics.com/software/products/script-runner-addon/

It should be possible to run scripts like with Script Runner, but in the context of the Python Console. Some more info:

http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_69_release/info_tips_and_tricks.html#executing-external-scripts


In the Tools panel > Slots tab, you need to disable the Mask option, and come back to the Canvas Image you're using in your material (called AliBody-Color Diffuse Color)


Can I use Blender to create a virtual museum/gallery to exibit my students paintings and sculptures?

Yes you can do that in blender. The simplest way to import the images is to enable the "import images as planes" addon. Then just create the geometry of the rooms and add lights as needed.


You can use masks to isolate your objects from the background. These masks can be animated with keyframes or attached to a tracker to stay on the objects. But it is quite cumbersome.

Masking tutorial: http://learningblender3dsoftware.blogspot.de/2012/10/blender-264-tutorial-intro-to-masking.html

Video tutorial which covers masks in combination with Trackers: http://www.blenderdiplom.com/en/tutorials/all-tutorials/424-tutorial-sin-city-effect-in-blender.html (click the third link below the video: "8:50 - 12:40 ...")

Blender wiki: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.64/Mask_Editor


Set up shortcut for object interaction mode

By default, the TAB hotkey will toggle between object and edit modes.

As of Blender 2.8, CTRL+TAB will display a Pie menu like in Ariso's answer; but without the need of an addon.

You can also set your own shortcuts for object interaction modes.

Go to Edit > User Preferences
Click the Input tab.
Expand 3D view > Object non modal
Click Add New and expand the created shortcut to edit it.

For the identifier, type object.mode_set.
This will bring a new box that will allow you to set a specific mode.

Example of custom setup where hotkeys F1, F2 and F3 are respectively mapped to the object, edit and draw mode.


How to get blooming effect in cycles without compositing

As Jachym Michal says you can create a box with volumetric. A lighter solution is to fake the glowing with a Layer Weight/Facing node:

Create your object.
Create a sphere that contains your object (here displayed as wireframe) and give it a Subdivision Surface modifier to make it smooth.
Give it the following material, which is a mix between Emission (with the color of your cube) and Transparent, with the Layer Weight as Factor in the Mix Shader.

Of course you can increase the Emission' Strength. Also the node organization can be improved with a second Mix Shader to add more transparency, or you can control the Layer Weight with a ColorRamp, or add noise, etc... And you can scale the sphere on whatever axis you want if the object is a long one.


Why are the deformation bones offsets from the Meta-rig after generating?

Seeing a similar sounding issue, I noticed that the meta-rig set up before generating had a translation that suspiciously matched the offset of the deformation bones seen afterwards (seen from the Transform->Location: in the properties panel)

If I first made sure to apply any transforms to the meta-rig before generating (Ctrl-A) that removed the offset. Maybe some un-applied meta-rig transform is the cause of the offset for you too.


What is it called when you type math directly into a property?

Despite saying it's not what you want, what you've described is a driver. It might sometimes be called a 'Scripted Expression' (and the Blender Manual now refers to it simply as an 'Expression'), but it's still just a type of driver.
Type #frame * 10 into a property field, e.g. the 'X' location of an object, and press Enter and the property will turn purple, indicating the expression has automatically been turned into a driver. This driver can then be tweaked either by clicking on the property again or by looking in the 'Drivers Editor'.
The types of commands that can be typed into property fields are called 'Simple Expressions'.
An example of the keywords you can type into a property from the Blender Manual:

Globals
frame
Constants
pi, True, False
Operators
+, -, *, /, ==, !=, <, <=, >, >=, and, or, not, conditional operator/ ternary if
Functions
min, max, radians, degrees, abs, fabs, floor, ceil, trunc, int, sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan, atan2, exp, log, sqrt, pow, fmod

Note: You need to have a # symbol in front of the expression, e.g. #frame * 2. In the case of 'Constants', 'Operators' and 'Functions' (but not frame), if you omit the # Blender will simply change the property to be the result of the expression, but it won't be driven by it.


why .stl-model in blender differ from .stl-model in makerware?

That is the result of non-planar faces.  STL files only support tris (partly for this exact reason).  So when you export a mesh to .stl, Blender will automatically triangulate all faces.  So if a face's vertices are only slightly non-coplanar, in Blender it won't look strange, but once the model is triangulated you will definitely be able to see the extra edge placed across the face.

The solution is to either model in tris, or to manually make the non-planar faces planar.  The latter solution is probably your best bet now, though it is kind of ugly.

As a side note I noticed that some of your normals are inverted (the darker faces), this might cause problems if you are planning on 3D printing your model.  To fix this simply select the faces and hit Ctrl+F > invert normals.


How to texture paint across all objects that share the same material/image?

If they already share all the same UV space, then temporarily you could then join them together until the paint stage is done.


This is remarkably easy to achieve in Blender.

The text & font, once decided is typed in, converted to Mesh with ALT-C, given a Material slot and coloured white.

It's shading is set to "Shadeless", no Specular, and best rendered using a Hemi Lamp, not a Sun.

If you use a Sun,  set it to "No shadows" as a precaution, or remove the shadowing in the text's material properties at bottom.

Give the text a texture slot and use your video or image.

If it's video, in the image tab tick on the "Auto Refresh" box.  Tick the "Cyclic" box also when looping is necessary.

Edit: (15/4/2017)

At this point we come to a choice -

If you want a kalidascope effect, do a UV unwrap and select the top choice "Unwrap".  i.e. you select "Unwrap" twice, or press U from Edit Mode and select "Unwrap".

If however you want the video to be spread across the text normally and without distortion, in the texture Properties (at right) open the "Mapping" tab and select "Generate".  (it's usually defaulted to UV)

The video should now appear in the text and play. (Press CTL-A)

-=====-

The choice as to whether to use the Blend file to lay the text over another video, or store it as it stands in a bunch of single frame image files (.png) will decide what you do from here.

For example, you can simply load your background video into the "Background Image" panel and drag it's opacity to full - OR - add a 'plane' under the text in the 3D window and texture that with the background.

This would avoid filling a folder up with single frame png image files.  Choose the output as say - H264 with RGB highlited.  One single, good quality file.

This was my choice here and rendered out using "OpenGL".  (Top left of 3D window - "Render-->OpenGL render animation")

-=====-

If it's deemed desirable to store this as an alpha layered video, then read on those who don't know how...

In the Render properties, open the "Shadings" tab and select "Transparent" at the right.

Make sure the Post Processing panel boxes are both unticked.  (No nodes are used)

The text can now be rendered out on a transparent background by setting the render output to a folder of your choice and  the format  set to PNG (images),  it's RGBA button clicked at far right.

Back in the 3D window press "N" and open the display tab, tick the "Only Render" box, untick "World Background".

You should be ready to render now.  I did this in OpenGL and also checked that it worked using Blender Render.

A lot of single framed images will be produced.  (These can be zipped and bundled into a single file for storage)

You can test to see if the transparency is there by loading one of the images into Gimp or the VSE.  A checkered pattern should be under the text.


How would I make each one of these faces a separate "plank?"

Here is a non destructive technique I like to use that works for simple cases, when you don't want to break the model apart or need to separate into different objects.

Add an Edge Split modifier to your base mesh
Solidify it a desired distance
Now add a Bevel modifier and limit it to Angle
Enter Edit Mode, select and the desired edges
Press Ctrl + E and Mark Sharp
Adjust Bevel distance as desired, if necessary disable Clamp


Can i use scenes in VSE to group video tracks?

If you add scene2, blender does not import the Video sequence but the 3D animation, hence the cube. You could export scene 2 in a movieclip and then import it in scene 1

You could group the clips (in scene1) by selecting the strips and then CTRL+G. ( ALT+G to ungroup)


How can many faces be mapped to a texture?

My advice is to switch your leave settings from Hexoganol to Rectangular. This will make single planes without cuts (extra edges) with 1 origin and it will unwrap as a single plane (like resetting the uv map). It is then easier to make adjustments for the direction of the leaves and will effect all the leaves in the same way (from the root). I don't know of any other workflow's for this situation.


Advice or workarounds to use Nvidia Drivers in Mac OS Mojave

Blender developers have indicated (Dec 2018) two  main obstacles to Blender using GPU on a Macbook:
1) Apple have not been properly supporting OpenCL (in addition to not supporting CUDA).  Consequently Blender had been crashing when attempting to use GPU on MacOS-Mac.  Outside Blender developers' control.
2) Macbook GPUs are not sufficiently powerful - not designed for intense long-duration usage as required for big renders (GPU gets so hot its lifetime may become shortened) - and also they found no overall speed advantage over CPU-only (possibly in part another consequence of poor support by Apple).  In that case, I doubt there is any hope at all in trying to use linux (on same machine) as a workaround.


Blender only rendering one frame from animation - Using Cell Fracturing


You chose circle from the mesh category. on the left side (or using Shift-A in the scene window) go to create and then to curve and now the select circle.(The function of this circle is different from the one you choose from mesh category)


How to restrict proportional editing of vertices to an edge loop?

Select your edge loop, shift H to hide the other vertices, then play with your edge loop, and when you have finished, alt H to make visible again.


I once had a complicated mesh that was too big for blender. I ended up using MeshLab to simplify the mesh. It might be worth taking a shot. Here is a tutorial on simplifying a mesh.


Unable to rotate multiple spheres in a circular pattern

The way animation with key frames works is that only specified data values (e.g., location and rotation) AT the key frames are remembered, not how they got there.

If you focus on just one of your spheres -- say the one at the top left -- at the first key frame, it's in the top left position with a particular orientation.  At the second key frame, it's in the bottom right position having been rotated 180 degrees.  The way Blender animates between these two keyframes is to, roughly, linearly interpolate between those locations and rotations, so it moves the sphere in a straight line from the top left to the bottom right, and it smoothly rotates it 180 degrees around its axis while doing so.  It does this separately for all 10 spheres, so they look like they all just move independently to their new positions along separate straight lines, ruining your animation.

There are two approaches to fixing this.

First, you can add more key frames.  If you added key frames each rotated an additional 30 degrees for a total of a 180 degree rotation of your arrangement, then Blender would interpolate between those states and show you a pretty smooth rotation.  This is probably the easiest method to incorporate into your current animation.  It's straightforward and flexible, though a little tedious.

Second, you can change the structure of your arrangement so Blender's method of interpolating object data between two key frames leads to the correct result.  Hypothetically, if you selected all ten of your spheres and typed Ctrl-J to join them into a single mesh, and then set the origin to the center, then they would rotate as a unit based only on the rotation of that new, single object.  If you had two key frames, one with a rotation of 0 and another with a rotation of 180, then a smooth linear interpolation between those two rotations would give an animation that smoothly rotates the entire arrangement.  (There would still be an ambiguity -- Blender wouldn't know if you wanted to rotate clockwise or counterclockwise, so you'd probably want to add a keyframe at the halfway point to break the tie.)

Now, this method wouldn't work for you.  Once the spheres had been joined into a single mesh, you couldn't easy animate them independently any more, so it would ruin the rest of your animation.

There are ways around those, though they may be a little advanced.  You could parent the ten spheres to an invisible rotation object that only gets used when they need to rotate together.  Or, you could keep two copies of your objects around -- one with ten separate spheres, and another joined mesh for rotations, and then swap them out (make one invisible and the other visible) between frames as needed.  I don't have a lot of experience with animation in Blender, so maybe someone has some better ideas.

In the meantime, extra key frames are probably the easiest way to go.


First use the picture as a background, draw all the lines, use shift ctrl B on vertices to create round corners, then join the vertices to fill the whole shape, then you can begin to extrude down. Afterwards, create some bevel to sharp the edges before you put a Subsurf.


How to make a particle system fade out in transparency?

Not sure if this is best/cleanest way to do it but here is what I figured out.

I made a hair particle system on a sphere that uses smaller spheres (the stars) as objects to imitate the look of stars like in your render. Then I made this node setup (pictured below) for the material of the star that uses the mapping of the sphere that is holding the particle system to affect a color ramp. That then controls the factor of a mix shader that fades between a transparency and emission shader.

Hope that helps!


How to clip Background Sky Texture to above Horizon

You can use Generated texture coordinate with World to read Z axis on -1 to 1 range. Here -1 is straight under, 1 is straight up and 0 is the horizon. Taking it from there, you could simply use Math node to test for Greater than 0. Math node returns 0 for under 0 and 1 immeadiately above 0 so you can achieve a sharp mask.

For smoother options you could use Color Ramp node, it even conveniently ignores anything below 0 in the range.

EDIT: Here are couple setups for Color Ramp. First ColorRamp range from horizon to Zenith, horizon is on the left of the ColorRamp at value 0.0.

And here we have shifted the -1 to 1 range between 0 and 1 by adding 1 and multiplying by 0.5. Horizon is in the middle of the ColorRamp at value 0.5.


As The basicTroublemaker answered, just use 'ReplaceMesh' in stead of 'Add Object'. This way only the visual apearence will change and nothing else.


Blender reverses X-axis when exporting Z-forward

You cannot export to left-handed system in Blender (not with default 'orientation toolkit' used by most exporters at least). As @sambler said, this only performs rotations (and uniform scaling).

Note that switching something as complex as a Blender scene from right to left handed coordinates is a nice little nightmare (think about animations, parenting, etc.), afaik nobody ever seriously worked on this topic so far.


You have to insert the Box component before the split.
        box = layout.box()
        split = box.split(factor = 0.75)
        col = split.column(align = True)

        col.label(text = "select your armor here", icon = "OUTLINER_OB_ARMATURE")
        col.prop(obj, "ArmorHelmetEnum", text = "Helmet")
        col.prop(obj, "ArmorChestplateEnum", text = "Chestplate")
        col.prop(obj, "ArmorLeggingsEnum", text = "Leggings")
        col.prop(obj, "ArmorBootsEnum", text = "Boots")

        col = split.column(align = True)
        col.label(text = "")
        col.prop(obj, "helmet_color", text = "")
        col.prop(obj, "chestplate_color", text = "")
        col.prop(obj, "leggings_color", text = "")
        col.prop(obj, "boots_color", text = "")
```


As a first shot, if you have used a 'Follow Path' constraint,  -Z tracking, Y up, then ensuring the Tilt of all the curve's control points is set to 0, and setting the'Twist Method' to 'Z up' in the curve's Data tab > Shape panel should be enough.


Transparency was enabled on the model. It was on the material that had the texture for the whole model. Since it was one big texture, the whole thing was transparent. It was the tab Transparency under the shadow options for the material.


Having trouble making an indent using the Boolean modifier

You can use boolean, but as you want to end up with only quads you should use less vertices so that it will be easier to correct the topology.

Here are 2 tries, one with a circle printed with Knife Project tool then correcting the topology with some vertices merge, additional edges, the other using W > LoopTools > Circle.


When I use array modifier to the bezier curve, the last part of the curve was not covered

Since your shape is uniform along length, consider using the star as a bevel.
Then you don't need the array modifier, and you have overall better control.

Convert your star shape to a curve (Mesh > Convert to > Curve)
Select the spiral, and choose your star shape as a Bevel object
Adjust to your needs


Cannot copy mirror some bones between keyframes

It looks like your arm bones are not well oriented:

In Edit mode, select the right upper and lower arm.
ctrl R 180 to make a 180° rotation

now it works


How can I accomplish the Iron Man in helmet effect around the head with out a black or green screen?

You can try this and see if it gets you close to where you want to be:

It's going to be subjective, so play with the Mix Fac to see if that does the trick for you.

ALTERNATIVELY You could start doing something like this as well.
For the right transition, you may have to layer a few more iterations of things before you nail it ( Somthing Like this ).

!!Appended Since Comments Below!!

Here's an example of layering some of these effects (It May be a poor one, but it should give you a little more perspective). Also I've attached the blend so you can look at the setup a little closer.


It's a bit unclear what the geometry is, from your screenshot. But, Paul pointed out, it is a bit bad geometry.

Som of your edges looks like they are at least 90 degrees. With smooth shading your normals will be interpolated without much control from you. A cube with 6 sides and smooth shading tries to be spherical (without much success). Look here:

If you intend it to be round. Add geometry to interpolate the normals with more control. Add a subdivision modifier like this:

If you intend intend it to be a cube, but with rounded edges, bevel them. Or add support loops and add a subdivision modifier.

Here are an example of both. The upper two is with support loops and subdivision modifier. The lower two is with bevel (no subdivision). The two to the right is in edit mode with face normals visible. See how they are interpolated.

In your case, add more geometry. I would probably go with support loops (ctrl + R) and subidivision modifier.


Blenderguru's Coffee tutorial: Coffee does not reflect correct in Viewport/Rendering

I checked your file and everything seems to be working fine.
With such low samples, Denoiser can introduce some artifacts, so perhaps that's what happened.

Viewport (64 samples)

Render (128 samples)

Render (128 samples) + Denoise Node


Textures show up in 3D View but not in Cycles Render

The main problem is not your node-setup but the use of the textured viewport mode. this mode is not very reliable for previewing as it only displays the last selected texture of our node setup and doesn't take texture coordinates and transforms into account. if you want a texture preview without using the rendered view, switch to material view instead.

Your node setup

Delete unused nodes
Don't use color ramps as an input for color ramps (take the node socket's color into account!): The color ramp's input only takes the value of a pixel but no actual color information and translates them to the color gradient. basically your first color ramp is almost useless.
The mix shader expects two shaders as an input (green socket), don't mix a color and a shader with it
same here, connect the mix shader directly into the material output and put the diffuse shader between the color ramp and the mix shader


After setting the scene scale in the Blender Properties panel so that the units report 6m, you can adjust the grid scale under the display properties, in the 3D view Panel (press N hovering over the 3D view), until you get the result you want.


Wierd unwanted painted textures refusing to be deleted

The image shows you deleted the texture brush, but not necessarily the texture material. Check those are all deleted or disabled. If you want to start on a blank image again, just add a new image in the UV window.

From your other image it looks like you are adding each image in a separate material which I assume you wish to use for texturing. You should rather have one material where you can add multiple texture slots - those textures once loaded can be used in the texture brushes. Make sure you save your new image and link it back to the new texture in material tab.


Why is the texture mapped differently in these Two Cuboids?

In your image it looks like the texture mapping is created on the mesh prior to changes made by modifiers (whether it is generate or UV or whatever doesn't matter here). This is causing the texture to appear to be split in half on the one with the boolean.

If you clicked apply on the boolean modifier they should look the same.


Text Render a bit noisy, even at 200 samples

Your object is casting shadows on the plane. Not because of the font/text properties, but because of the way Cycles (path tracing) works. To avoid your text being seen as a shadow caster by Cycles, you can turn off the ray visibility of the text object:

In the outliner, select the object Text.thing
Go to "Object" context
Open the "Visibility" section
Open the "Ray Visibility" subsection
Uncheck the "Diffuse" and "Glossy" property


I'm not sure if I can help. On my iMac behaviour is much weird than on your.

But definitely is incorrect dimensions you operate with - Location of your object in your file is
X = 119 Y = 448 Z = -28 (miles)
Clear Location Alt+G brings object to zero coordinates, it fixed glitching.

Than I wanted Apply Scale Ctrl+A that is always recommended, but it doesn't worked as supposed to. It brings scale to one as, but Dimension jumped back to original object scale (5 miles).
I had to use Apply Scale Deltas.
So try those steps if they help in your case as well.
From your View > Clip > End 1893939412 miles I see you fight with scale/dimension. In general - it is always better to Apply Scale. Also you have set in Scene Properties > Units > 0.0254 that is something I don't know what represent (since 1 km = 0.62137119224 mi), but I never used this feature.
After all this, when I tried add Hair Children worked fine.

BTW opening your file in 2.9x is even crazier disco :)


Keeping the animation running in a Python script triggered by Always sensor in bge?

I would connect an always sensor into a python controller to run a python script that tests for the file and handles it accordingly.


How to save a node setup for easy access in default scene

That's one use case for Node Groups.

Select all relevant nodes and group them with Ctrl+G. This way the created group is accessible within all material node trees, located in the Add menu: Shift+A > Groups > Your Group Name
Save your config as well as the created node group as part of your Startup File under File > Defaults > Save Startup File


Use the Re-Mesh modifier set to Blocks mode:

The Octree Depth attribute will change the size of the blocks (the Scale value gives finer control), a higher value and the more (smaller) there will be. Notice that the size of the blocks also depends on the size of your mesh, irrelevant of not applied scale, etc.


mesh won't deform (in pose mode) once parented to bones

Automatic weighting can fail if there's a badly-formed polygons in the mesh. In your case, there are several overlapping vertices in the character's mesh. After executing Remove Doubles on the mesh, automatic weighting works as intended.

As an aside, you're not supposed to use the metarig object as the character's rig. In the Property space > Object Data tab (armature icon) for that object, there's a Generate button that will create a separate full-featured armature object, named rig.

The metarig is provided as an intuitive way for you to indicate where joints, bones, etc. are supposed to be. The script uses the metarig to decide where all the "real" bones and control bones go. That rig object generated from the metarig is meant to be used as the character's armature, not the metarig itself.


How do I change the track object of an Edit Object actuator?

Edit Object Actuator
The way you change an Edit Object actuator's object to track is with object.
Here is what the if statement section of your code looks like.
if sens.positive:
    actu.object = sens.hitObject
    cont.activate(actu)

Steering Actuator
The way you change the Steering Actuator's object to track is with target.
Here is what the if statement section of your code looks like.
if sens.positive:
    actu.target = sens.hitObject
    cont.activate(actu)

I initially thought you were using a different actuator (Steering) that is why both methods are listed.


I didn't exactly understand your desired result, but you could maybe use "to sphere", to get something like this:


Prevent the light source from appearing in the reflection

In cycles, go to your material that emits light. Your setup should look like this:


Thanks for posting the video, it makes it much easier to help you.
Your shot is by no means a complex shot. Even though your camera barely moves, there is plenty of information there.
To effectively reconstruct the scene you need to pay attention to parallax, meaning paying attention to how tracked elements that are close to the camera move at different speeds in the frame, than those elements that are far away.
The elements that are close to the camera and the furthest ones are the most useful to reconstruct 3D space.
The emphasis should be in trying to accurately track elements that are in fixed in real life, but at different distances from the camera. You effort should be in tracking elements in foreground, middle and background.
In this particular case add more tracking points on the cracks on the walls and the railing, as well as features in the lamp post behind the child, and then the background buildings and, most importantly: in the tree behind the building (which seems to be the object that is the farthest away). Don't track any of the cables, as they don't really have any distinctive features.

One more thing that is crucial in this kind of shots, that use a wide angle lens very close to the subject, is to determine the lens distortion correctly.
Please take a few minutes to read very carefully through the comprehensive post on motion tracking on this same site, to understand how to make better use the tools that will help you reconstruct the scene:
How can I get better results when doing camera motion tracking?


One thought: use the "Sky" texture through a Color Ramp populated with colors that meet your desired aesthetic