How to make multiple displacements map node

If you paint an image on the model with texture drawing, it just copies all the texture channels into your target texture. It's totally up to you, what kind of information you store in those channels. You can paint even normal maps onto a model.
If the displacement maps are just grayscale images, you mix them with add, or screen (or whatever you want) blending, and then feed the result to the Bump node (or to displacement input of the material).
You even don't need to separate the colors of your painted colored image in the photoshop - you can use 'Converter\Separate RGB' node instead, play with the levels of each channel, mix them together, and feed that mixed value to the Height input of the Bump node, or to the Displacement input of the material output node.
And images on your link are enough to play with to have an idea. If you want, you can paint some scratches with white and black brush (50% gray = no displacement) to see how it affects the look of the surface of your mesh.


Assigning a vertex to a bone must be done by first assigning that vertex to a vertex group. This vertex group must have the same name as the bone which will influence the vertex you want affected. If your mesh doesn't already have a vertex group with the name of this bone, you will need to create one. With the mesh selected that contains the vertex you want controlled, go to the Object Data tab in the Properties Panel, and under the Vertex Groups section, click the plus sign to add a new vertex group and give it the same name as the bone you want to influence your vertex. Now, in Edit Mode, select the vertex you want controlled and in the Vertex Group section, press the Assign button. If your mesh already has an armature modifier on it, then moving the bone in Pose Mode should move the vertex.

If it happens that your mesh does already have a vertex group with the same name as the bone you want to influence this vertex, then don't create a new one. Instead, go into Edit Mode, select that vertex group in the Vertex Group section, select the vertex you want to add to this group, and click Assign.

Once assigned, the weight of this vertex can be tweaked if it is too low or high by rolling out the Properties Shelf (n key) and looking for the Vertex Weights section. Listed underneath will be all the vertex groups this single selected vertex belongs to, along with the weights, which can be edited here.


UV editor vert, edge and face selection modes as keybinds?

There is already a shortcut for the UV selection type menu, it is Ctrl+Tab.

After pressing Ctrl+Tab you can right-click on Vertex, Edge, Face or Island and choose Add Shortcut.

This is much easier than trying to do it via the key-bindings editor as you can see from the complexity of the new shortcut after it is added:

To make these new shortcuts appear in all files go to File> User Preferences> Save User Settings.


You could return the sphere object from createSphere so you can access it directly later:

def sphere(x, y, z, radius, resolution=30):
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(segments=resolution, ring_count=resolution, view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(x, y, z))
    bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(radius, radius, radius), constraint_axis=(False, False, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1)
    return bpy.context.active_object

Now the sphere creation, renaming and scaling could look as follows:

first_sphere = sphere(3,0,0,1)
first_sphere.name = "RescaleLater"
second_sphere = sphere(0,0,0,1)
second_sphere.name = "leaveAlone"
# Rescale first sphere
first_sphere.scale = (1, 2, 1)

Another way to retrieve and object: from bpy.data.objects, if you know the name of the object

obj = bpy.data.objects.get("ObjectName")
if obj:
    obj.scale = (1, 2, 1)


For each curve control point create a bone (separate not parented) and hook those vertexes to bones.
Now you can totally control the curve with armature.
Next you want to connect the bones with Child_Ofs constraints to link them into a chain.
When the Child_Ofs influences are at 1.0 you have FK control, when they are at 0.0 you have IK control (this setup is called FIK - forward inverse kinematic).
You can drive the influences with custom properties so it is accessible from the Properties panel.


How can I select all creased edges with specific weight at once, can be with python

AFAIK There isn't a command for this, but here is a simple script which selects all Edge Creases with values above 0.5:

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object
me = obj.data

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

for e in me.edges:
    if e.crease > 0.5:
        e.select = True
        print (e.crease)

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

Bmesh module solution (avoids toggling into Object Mode):

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
cr = bm.edges.layers.crease.verify()

me.show_edge_crease = True

for e in bm.edges:
    if (e[cr] > 0.5):
        e.select = True
        print(e[cr])

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me, False, False)


There are various ways you could probably achieve this effect - one is to use a Refraction shader to allow light through in a specific direction and to scatter based on Roughness using the following setup :

Here the Diffuse shader provides the basic diffuse surface and the Refraction shaders are added to this to show through the illumination from behind.

I've added two Refraction shaders (the Mix shader can vary the reletive strengths) - one with a low Roughness for the 'sharp' image and the other with a high roughness for the 'glow' around it. The very high IOR of the first Refraction shader forces the rays that pass through the surface to mostly align with the surface normal - this forces the rays to form an image of what's behind the surface, without being affected by the viewing angle (as if the image of Suzanne is projected onto the surface). The second Refraction shader has high roughness and provides the 'glow' and by slightly reducing the IOR of that shader the 'glow' can be made to be more based on viewing angle - eg, in your first sample image of Eve the 'scatter' of the green on her chest is offset from the 'image' part; the lower IOR effectively mimics this.

Note that you can also change the colors of each of the Refraction shaders independently so as to tint the 'scatter' differently if required - or vary the Roughness for more/less scatter within the surface.


You can select the bottom face and use the INSET TOOL (Hotkey : I) to adjust.

But Keep in mind you have a N-GON(poly with more than 4 verts) down there, and subsurf and ngons don't work great together.

You can fix this deleting the NGON face, select all the boundary verts, extrude the verts/edges and scale them to the center


Problem with incorrect Freestyle rendering

You have a plane blocking that part of the frame!

Move it out of the way and render happily ever after.

The issue can be explained like this: even though you disabled the visibility for the camera, freestyle is using the geometry of the scene, and is creating a new border


UV map / model turned black on saving - how to recover?

This is a known limitation, currently images are not saved with the rest of the .blend file. This means that reloading the .blend or even undoing in some modes will cause unsaved changes to textures to be lost (Global undo works by reloading an older version of the .blend).
To save your images, press F3 to save it to your hard drive, and AltS to save changes to an existing image on your hard drive. Or press Image editor > Header > Image > Pack to embed it in the .blend, and press Pack again to save changes to an embedded file:

You can tell when your image has unsaved changes because there is a asterisk after the image menu in the header:

As GiantCowFilms mentioned, there is a patch which adds autosave functionality for images. It has not currently been decided whether it should be included or not:

Note, I'd like to have some better way to do this then simply adding another option, it seems a but weak and doesn't really fit into painting workflow.
But doing this by default is a bit risky too.


Here's one approach:

Create a mesh circle with 8 points in the side view:

Scale it to get the profile you want:

Delete all but the bottom corner of it:

Go to the top view and make an 8 point cylinder and align it with the circle from the side view:

Then go back to the side view and scale it so that it matches your quarter circle mesh:

Subdivide the vertical edges and then drag the points to the right and down to match your profile:

Go to the top view and delete the edges on the left half:

Delete the back faces:

Select the vertices in the back and snap them even with the right side:

Add a Mirror modifier:

Grab the middle vertices and pull them downwards:

Select the edges to the right of the middle:

Subdivide them:

Select the new edge and do Edge Slide to move them right up next to the middle edge:

Add a Subdivision modifier, and you can see we've got that pointed crease in the middle:

If you then go to the front view and pull up the middle verts a bit:

Then go to the side and delete these faces:

Select the upper row of edges:

Subdivide:

Select the new edge and Edge Slide it up near the top edge:

And that's got you pretty far along on the top visor already:

You can do the bottom similarly, but it's almost straight, so you wouldn't need as many edges.  Just make another cylinder in top view, cut it in half, mirror it, and move the edges where you want them.

I hope that's enough to get you going.  Sorry if it's too much detail as I don't know your modeling skill level.  Good luck!


Weird lighting and how many tris for games

Generally you want to keep the rule to making a really high poly mesh and then baking the normals of the hi resolution mesh on a low poly version of it. So you get the illusion of a really high poly looking model in game. That's what all the next gen games are doing. If anything , it's defintely not the foot of a character you want to spend your polygons on ... any artist must know it's the face and the eyes of a character that would require the most details. Cos that's where your audience will focus on.

As for the feet of your character , it's not the shader looking strange but rather you need to improve the model, or rather improve on your observation of real life objects. You can use GLSL shader to improve the viewport's feedback while you sculpt. I will add a few images below.

You can observe here that I have a high poly model on the right. And a low poly one on the left. After sculpting I bake those information out onto the low poly version to get this ...

From here on out , I will leave it to you to run through google for tutorials
using keywords in your search eg. Blender Baking Normals and Blender High Density Mesh Sculpting and Blender Dynamic Topology Sculpting.


You parented the rig to the body.

But you should be parenting the body to the rig, so you select the body then hold SHIFT and then select the rig (in object mode) then press CTRL+P then choose with automatic weights. After that try moving the bones in pose mode.

Don't forget to let me know if that works or not.

You might have to remove the first parent to do this.

Good luck.


I found that I can fix the Fabric material setting lower value to the Reflection Weight than default 1.0:

Result:

However, the same doesn't fix the Bronze material, so additional answer would be very appreciated.


How to connect faces between 2 edge loops?

In your particular situation, it looks like the bridge tool is what you want. Select two or more edge loops with AltShiftRMB, and then connect them with W>Bridge Edge Loops:

Fill
To do exactly what it looks like you are trying to do in your screenshot (connecting two vertices with an edge), select the two vertices and press F to create edge/face.

If you have the bundled F2 addon enabled you can create a new face from the selected edge and the surrounding vertices by pressing F again. The side on which the new face is created is controlled by the cursor position.
Knife
The knife tool is for cutting edges into existing faces:


Can I use something similar to "Slide Vertices" to create new vertices and edges?

Here is a related question: Duplicate and slide edge (rip from boundary)
I don't think there is a way to do exactly what you want in vanilla blender. But there are a few things you can try depending on what you want to achieve exactly, and what kind of mesh you're working on.

Just for a quick reference, instead of sliding verts with Shift-V, you can do the same more quickly by just pressing GG while your vertices or edges are selected.

The first thing that comes to mind is the Offset Edge Slide tool. Not to be confused with normal Edge Slide. All you have to do is select the vertices you want, and then press CTRL + SHIFT + R. This will slide your new vertices where you want, but as a downside it will do so symmetrically. So you will have to clean up the side that you don't want by just dissolving.

Here's an example video:

Another option that could work how you describe is just a simple extrude. The key is to change the snapping options to edge, and when you are extruding hold CTRL and hover over the desired edge. Once you've completed the extrusion, you will need to merge duplicate vertices by pressing M and selecting "By Distance" since this method will create duplicate geometry.

Example video:

Hope this helps.


Fatal Python error: GC object already tracked

OK, I solved the crash situation changing the handler from :

frame_change_post

to

frame_change_pre

Which makes sense...


What are you trying to do with the dilate/erode node?

That is what is turning your image into B&W.

Remove that node and your image is fine:

The Dilate/Erode node expects an input of a single channel (not RGB), and will output a single channel as well: a single channel will be a Black and White image.

The Dilate/Erode's node is mostly used is to expand or contract the edge of masks.

To work with a color image (RGB), you would need to split the channels of the image, and use dilate/erode nodes on each of the channels of the image. Then the channels can be recombined, as in thid example from the blender manual

But I suspect that you are looking for a way to create some glow... Use the Glare node instead.


Why does the behavior of snap seem "weird"?

I believe you need to use the 3D Cursor for this.

In few words, you need to position the origin of the object in the right place first, then position the 3D Cursor where you need the object "by it's origin" to snap to.

Select the breaker.
In Edit mode select the bottom faces of the breaker, or a central vertex/edges/faces.
Shift + S > Cursor to Selected, now you have the 3D cursor at the bottom of the breaker in the center.
Go to Object mode.
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+C > Origin to 3D Cursor, now you have the origin of the breaker in the bottom center.
Select the plane, in Object mode, Shift+S > Cursor to Selected, again this will position the 3D cursor in the center of the plane.
Select the breaker, Shift+S > Selection to Cursor, now you moved the object "breaker" with the new origin that you positioned in step "5" to the center of the plane.

Hope this helps.


Do I need a subdivision modifier to create a hard-surfaced object

This is really a subjective topic and I don't think it can be answered with 100% certainty for you. Some high-level modelers will use sub-d's on a model like this, while others will not; it just depends on the the person and not necessarily the model, although the model itself is a factor.

You also have to consider how the model is going to be used: Is it going to be for a game or animated in some way? Will it have a UV map? Just a still image? If so, how big will the image be and how long are you willing to wait for it to render? A sub-d model will render better generally, but will take longer. All these things must be taken into account.

One thing to note: When you say "hard surface" that doesn't exclude a model with subdivision surfaces on it, and you can have organic models with no subdivision at all -- it just depends on what you are trying to achieve. Just understand that it will be more difficult to get smooth, rounded areas without some level of subdivision.

You'll just have to try it both ways (or a combination of both) and find out what works best for you. There's no rule that says you have to only do things one way. That's the best answer I can give you.


Assigning texture to material in Blender 2.9

The little dot on the right side of the Base Color slot is for keyframing. You can click the yellow dot on the left side of the color to get the drop down menu for textures.

If you click the actual color panel you can choose the base color.


You don't have a mesh, you have a curve that is filled in (i.e. set to 2D curve type).
Curves have no face / edge / vertex options. If you want to convert it to a mesh (something that has vertices and faces) use Alt + C and select Mesh from Curve.


object data properties(vertex group section)>Normals>auto smooth|| This will fix the issue.


What does the term "support loop" specifically mean?

Basically, support loops mainly apply when using a Subdivision Surface modifier. Loosely put, the modifier acts to take an "average" of the angle between two faces, and then creates a curve to smoothly transition between the normal vectors of the two faces. See the images below:

By adding loop cuts or "support loops", you can control the size (area) of the faces that are being averaged (in one direction only if necessary) which in turn affects the degree of the averaging.

By adding more loops, or changing their position, you can change the "roundness" of your object. This is often used as a method to sharpen the corners of objects with a Subdivision Surface modifier applied. If you look at the effect of the two loops near the "corner", you can see that this is similar to how the Bevel Modifier works (by default) to sharpen edges.


UV-mapping. How I can get the correct scale on the x axis?

Alright, here you go, I assume this is what you're looking for?

To achieve what I did in the above picture, you have to mark the seams on the sides of the curve, like so:

Notice how the edges I selected turns red. The red indicates edges that are UV seams, meaning that when you unwrap your mesh to a UV image, it "cuts" along the red lines.

Then you simply unwrap it with the "Follow Active Quads" option, and there you go!

Hope this helps.


Left hand isnt deforming even though its properly weight painted?

It's not properly weight painted:

As you can see thoose are the vertices which doesn't move as expected; in the "N" panel, vertex weight tab, you can read their assignements: HandL and ArmR.

You can use the vertex group tab to remove unwanted weight (armR) and apply some weight on the desired vertex group (maybe armL.003).

In the armature modifier enable theese little two buttons to see the poses also during edit mode.

If you used some automatic weight assignement and automatic flip names, the problem came because all names should END with .L or .R (not armL.003); .l and .r are OK too, but always on the end of the name.


How to edit object deformed by a curve modifier

In the modifier there are two options that will allow you to work in edit mode.

The first one will allow you to display the modifier in edit mode.

The second will allow you to edit the mesh while is being deformed by the modifier:


Displacement is entirely the wrong place! Displacement is for elevating or lowering the surface (like if you wanted to emboss something).
What you want to do is alter the texture coordinates somehow.
In this case, probably just rotating the UV map 90 degrees will do the trick. You can do this in the UV Editing screen.


Add transition while switching scenes in BGE

There are several options:

A) show a transition animation before leaving the current scene

B) show a transition animation when entering the new scene

C) both A) and B)

D) switch from the current scene to an intermediate scene (showing transition) to the new scene.


Select all the faces with inverted normals

If you select all and merge vertices by distance (alt + m) to avoid separate faces, you can then use Recalculate Normals function (shift + n outside, or shift + ctrl + n inside). If that does not work, it means there is simply no way for the algorithms to determine what the right direction might be - if for example you had a few separate planes in random orientations in the mesh of the object, there would be no way to determine what you want to consider the right direction for normals or even what would be consistent for all of the separate planes for your situation without you specifying that. In that case you need to manually select them and set the normals as you like.


How can I add "trim" to a curved surface?

It's a shame Blender doesn't directly have an 'Offset Even' tool, along  the perpendiculars to the edges being offset. A 2D curve can do it, so you could start with the trim, and build the plate away from it.. but starting with the plate as a mesh...

.. the E 'Even' option in the  GG edge-slide tool means 'even along the crossing edge-rings', not a perpendicularly even distance from the loop itself. The illustration shows a sort of worst-case, with all the crossing edges vertical, so their density changes across the width. A simple  GG (above) doesn't work.
If you're building the trim outwards from the plate, you could:

Extrude the edges to be trimmed towards the center of curvature of the plate, like the rim of a Solidify modifier..
AltE Extrude the new rim faces outward along their normals
Delete the surplus faces.

This method. though, builds the trim inwards.

As in 1. above, extrude the curve to be trimmed (top, in the picture below). This extrusion won't do anything except to tell the next operator what to do..

.. Which is I inset the region of all the faces in the original plate, with 'Even' checked, no 'Edge Rail', and no 'Boundary' inset. (Bottom, above).
The extruded faces have done their job, helping a selective inset, and can be deleted.

The new border-strip of faces can now be AltE extruded along its normals.

(I've had to tidy up the inside of the plate a bit, reconnecting the top and bottom with Bridge Edge Loops .. the topology inside your plate looks better than this, from what I can see)
Add a Bevel by angle modifier, and a Subdivision Surface..

The edge-lengths do check out.. they're pretty much the same all the way along the trim.


Model is multiple colors and renders with artifacts

There are many different reasons, a few fixes:

In edit mode, Press A until everything has been selected. Press Ctrl+N, This re-calculates normals and corrects them.
Press T Inside the 3D view, and on the left you should see a button that says "Remove Doubles", click that and it could possibly fix your problem.


How to make a minecraft character transparant

Here is a quick cycles transparency material:


Can anyone help with this rigging error? Rotating bones causes my model to shrink/be squeezed

I loaded your blend file and found the problem.
People often forget it when they start with rigging.
 - A mesh or object(s) should not be scaled before rigging-.
Sure you can scale while modelling but when your figure is done press CTRL +A to apply those scalings, before you let the bones control them.


Armature issue Importing an FBX file from Unreal Engine to Blender

This is not a mess, but an ordinary FK rig, based on "joints" instead of "bones". You can think of joints as the same entity of the Head of a Blender bone. As the location of the tail is not taken into account, the "bones" are oriented in the most useful way for editing (like best alignement with world coordinates and main rotation on the X axis).

If FK animation is enough, you can do your animation directly.

If you need a more advanced rig, you should build it using the exact location of the joints, then set a serie of copy rotation constaints from the advanced rig to the UE rig, so that the UE rig become your deforming bones, while the advanced will be control bones only.

At the end you will be able to bake your action using visual keying, only selected bones, and clear constraints options, so that the baked action will perfectly work with the UE rig only.

If this procedure sounds scary, start with an experiment with a simple animation of one body part only (i.e. one leg), and see if you can get it work.


You can't actually tessellate a sphere purely with hexagons, the geometry doesn't work out.

However, a few (12) intrusions of pentagons make it possible. That makes a sort of expanded Buckyball, or soccer ball. If that's acceptable, the only route I can find to it at the moment is to enable the shipped 'Tissue' add-on, create an Icosphere with enough subdivisions, and ask Tissue to 'Convert to Dual Mesh' it.

I could have sworn you could get to this directly, at one time, using the 'Add Mesh: Extra Objects' add-on, but I can't find it in 2.81.. maybe someone knows?


In the Timeline window -> playback, you must check "Audio Scrubbing" AND "AV-Sync". Does it resolves the problem ?


What's the fastest / most fun way to create a fork in Blender?

As you know a fork rarely comes with only one peak, it generally has 2, more often 3 or 4, sometimes more. It would be very tedious to model each and every of those peaks.
As you may know, for this kind of task, Blender comes with very powerful tools like linked duplications, dupliframes, array modifier, etc... instead of modeling each of the peaks, you can model only one and repeat it infinitely.
Here I've used Particle System > Hair. The huge advantage is that you can easily choose the amount of peaks:

You can also change the Seed value in order to make it look more natural:

I hope it helps.


So, considering how your armature is made, you should parent InverseKack and Spine02 to SpineCTRL. At the end, parent SpineCTRL and all the IK controllers and targets to the root bone. Now when you move up and down SpineCTRL, the whole back of your horse follows, as it is supposed to do.


How to launch a subprocess correctly from a blender script

Use Python's subprocess module.

This question is related and gives you some more details:

How to start a background process in Python?


Vertex Paint For Multiple Objects in Blender 2.8

this answer is for vertex color of single object

I converted it to multiple objects:
import bpy
import random
import time
# start in object mode
objects = bpy.context.scene.objects
for obj in objects:

    mesh = obj.data

    if not mesh.vertex_colors:
        mesh.vertex_colors.new()

    color_layer = mesh.vertex_colors["Col"]

    # or you could avoid using the color_layer name
    # color_layer = mesh.vertex_colors.active

    i = 0
    for poly in mesh.polygons:
        for idx in poly.loop_indices:
            color_layer.data[i].color = (0, 1, 0, 1)
            i += 1
    # set to vertex paint mode to see the result
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='VERTEX_PAINT')


Delete/disable constraint during animation

You don't have to delete the constraint - its' also not possible to animate this way.
Instead, you animate the breakable parameter of the constraint. Set the threshold value very low, and insert keys(I key or right click menu) to switch breakable on on a frame where you want.


How do you make two cubes move at the same time without one lumping at the bottom?

just check your stiffness checkbox for your inner cube.
Result:


Sketchup 3d model import with wrong topology?

Those are the result of triangulating faces, possibly because of the file format used for the exporting (e.g. .3ds will do that regardless whether you asked it to or not).

To get quads-based topology back:

It should be possible to convert them back to quads with Alt+J, but this might not work in all cases (depends on topology complexity). You will need to convert faces which were converted not in desired way manually;
use another file format for import / export, e.g. .fbx or .dae.

Note: the need in converting depends on the final result you're aiming to.


Weird Gray Blotches Showing Up During Render

You are rendering at very low sample counts. The splotches are probably created by the new denoising filter. Disabling it or incrementing your sample count should resolve this.


You can use F-Curve modifiers in the graph editor. Specifically what you would want is a cycles modifier with the cycle mode set to repeat mirrored.

Here is the documentation


How to get the collection an object belongs to?

Object.users_collection property returns a tuple containing all linked collections:

>>> obj = bpy.context.object
>>> obj.users_collection
(bpy.data.collections['Collection'],)


If I understand correctly this is the result you are after:

To achieve this you will need to mix Emission with Transparent (pure white colour- #FFFFFF) shaders in Lamp material by Light Path > Glossy Depth as below:

  Note: If you change Glossy Roughness (should be 0) even a bit, light will still be visible.


d is diffuse color

n is normal

s is specular color

e is emission I guess

m is mask. It's used to separate into different parts ; ie here you can see the red color isolate metallic objects, wich will probably use a different shader ; same for green (hairs)


What are these spots appearing along seams?

These look like jpg compression artifacts. jpg is a lossy format, which means that the saved image is not exactly what it was originally (the difference depends on the quality setting the file was saved with).

The advantage to lossy compression is that jpg files are typically very small compared to lossless formats. However it's not the best format to use during production, especially when a file is being edited and re-saved a lot. When saved in a lossy format repeatedly, the image will gradually lose quality. This process is called generation loss.

Try saving to a lossless format like png instead.


When I snap a curve's vertex to the 3D cursor the handles disappear

Blender treats a curve point as 3 separate elements: the central control point, the left handle and the right handle. This means that when you choose Selection to Cursor, each individual element will be snapped to the cursor, essentially putting the two handles and the control point into the exact same location.

As both the handles and the control point are at the same location the control point can no longer be rotated or scaled as it is the distance between the control point and the handles which determines the scale or rotation, and at the moment, there is none.

The handles are still there. If you click multiple times on the control point after it has been snapped to the location and press G you will eventually select a handle and be able to move it as normal.

As you mention, pressing V twice solves this as it tells blender to change the handle type of the point, which recalculates the handles at the new location.

To avoid this, in future you can choose Shift+S> Selection to Cursor (Offset), which will instead treat the selection as a single element and move the control point and handles but keep the distance (offset) between them.


I'm getting double curves in Animation Nodes loop

Looking through your node tree, your list of vectors creating the spline contains 12 vectors (top right list).

I think what you're trying to do is to alternate between the "point 1" and each of the 6 ship locations, and draw a curve from point 1 to each location.

However, because your node tree puts all the vectors into one list, it draws a single spline through all of those points.

If we think of the 6 ship locations as A-F, your spline is drawing

A->1->B->1->C->1->D->1->E->1->F->1

as a single spline, without "picking up the pen."

So, for instance, the spline draws from 1 to B then back to 1, doubling up.  With your smoothness of .04, this will show up as a very flattened oval, which will look like 2 lines.

You can probably see this better if you turn off the Bevel Depth temporarily.

You can cheat this by just making your smoothness = 0, and it will mostly work and draw straight lines (one over the other.)

To get separate splines for each curve, you'll need to iterate through the vector pairs and create them individually.. you can't just put them all into one spline.

HTH.

Z


How to add randomness or variability to Action Strip scale

There isn't a way to set key frames for that value, so as a last resort I wrote a little python script.  Copy this into the text editor, and click "run script". Be sure to set the MIN and MAX values, and put the name of the action in the ACTION_NAME variable.  The script will automatically choose a new random value every time you change frame.  Setting the STEP size will make it wait n number of frames before choosing a new value.

import bpy
from random import random

# Set your min and max values here
MAX = 9
MIN = 3
ACTION_NAME = "DragonflyAction"

# Set step size.  Step size of 1 chooses a new value every frame
STEP = 5

def my_handler(scene):

    if scene.frame_current % STEP == 0:
        obj = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
        obj.animation_data.nla_tracks["NlaTrack"].strips[ACTION_NAME].scale = (random() * (MAX - MIN)) + MIN

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(my_handler)

Here's a screenshot:


Ah, solved it myself. :)

(Note: Why is this set to "Clip" and not "Repeat" by default in 2.8?)


Why is sculpting causing trouble with object?

It could be due to the shading in different mode. I suggest to switch to sculpt mode and smooth out these areas and then come back to object mode.

You can also have a look at these areas in edit mode and you will see if there are distortions.


Use a wave texture except use no ondulations. Put texture coordinates to object (so it will use a triplanar texture space).


Saving and loading object name location and rotation of a selection

Surely this has been asked before?

Rather than spending any more time searching for the elusive dupe, to the export part, I'm sure it's out there

Here is an example using f-string formatting.

import bpy
context = bpy.context

def sfmt(s):
    return f"{s :10s}"

def vfmt(vec):
    return ", ".join(f"{v : 10.4f}" for v in vec)

for obj in sorted(context.selected_objects, key=lambda o: o.name):
    output = ",".join((
            sfmt(obj.name),
            vfmt(obj.location),
            vfmt(obj.rotation_euler),
            ))
    print(output)

Output of default scene, remember rotations are in radians.

Camera    ,    7.4811,    -6.5076,     5.3437,    1.1093,     0.0000,     0.8149
Cube      ,    0.0000,     0.0000,     0.0000,    0.0000,    -0.0000,     0.0000
Lamp      ,    4.0762,     1.0055,     5.9039,    0.6503,     0.0552,     1.8664

A number of other csv related questions.

How to read a csv file and use the values as x and y points in blender?

Massive import with CSV file

Moving and rotating using CSV

Generate and edit csv-file to reimport and use it with blender

How do I move an object using a csv file?

How to import a 3d object by csv file

csv file reading

Exporting coordinates of vertices to CSV

Import coordinates from CSV and create sphere at each position


Follow Path Constraint with Object with Array and Curve modifier not working properly

You've given a Follow Path constraint to your object as if it would act as a third modifier but it won't, it will just move the object along the path and the object will be affected by the modifiers independently. So I guess you have 2 possibilities: Either remove the modifiers, convert your star to mesh, give it modifiers again, and keep the constraint so that it moves along the path. Or, if you want to keep your star as a curve, remove the constraint and, in order to move along the path curve, just move the star on the X axis.


Changing the name/icon/function of menu/pie menu/panel with a condition?

So i cannot write a condition directly on the pie menu
BUT i can reffer the name,function and icon to an actual name inside of blender.

so i could create a custom properties just for the occasion

for example i can first add two custom properties with thoses codes:

bpy.context.scene["Name of my menu"]="Adaptive Name"
bpy.context.scene["Icon of my menu"]="BLENDER"

the only problem is that it need to be done BEFORE opening this pie menu.
and you can do this with the followed technique:

class BackMeUpPie_OT_Operator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "view3d.pie"
    bl_label = "Back Me Up Pie Menu"
    bl_description = " OPERATOR DESCRIPTION HEYYYY"
    def execute(self, context):
        try:
            bpy.context.window_manager["Auto-Copy Icon?"]+=1 #if i can do this its not the first time i launche the pie
        except:
            bpy.context.window_manager["Auto-Copy Icon?"] =1 #if i can't it is, so the timer cannot be
            bpy.context.scene["Auto-Copy"] = "OFF"
            bpy.context.scene["Auto-Copy Ic"] = "FAKE_USER_OFF"

        bpy.ops.wm.call_menu_pie(name="view3d.pie_backmeup")
        return {'FINISHED'}

creating an operator, that determine the icon, name..Ect.. of your cutom assets with the condition of your choice, like in this exemple above, and then just after opening your pie/menu


Object vertices coordinates are returned as an empty list occasionally

Here is a take on this.  Removed the context override on the join op, the import wavefront obj operator returns all imported objects as selected.  This is the list context.selected_objects  whereas scene.objects is all the objects in the scene.  Not sure why you would want to use context.selectable_objects for this case.

Simply deselect if not a mesh, assign first mesh obj as active (if there are mesh objs) , and then call bpy.ops.object.join().

Used bmesh for limited dissolve, takes away the need to pop modes.

Tested fine on object1.obj

import bpy
from bpy import context
scene = context.scene
import bmesh

# make a bmesh
bm = bmesh.new()
dissolve = True
filepath = "/home/batfinger/Downloads/model1.obj"

bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=filepath)

mesh_objs = []
for o in context.selected_objects:
    if not o.type == 'MESH':
        o.select = False
        print(o.name, "not a mesh")
        continue
    if dissolve:
        # use bmesh to dissolve
        bm.from_mesh(o.data)
        print("Pre dissolve", len(bm.verts))
        geom = bmesh.ops.dissolve_limit(bm, angle_limit=0.082665,
                                        verts=bm.verts,
                                        edges=bm.edges,
                                        delimit=0)
        bm.to_mesh(o.data)
        print("Post dissolve", len(o.data.vertices))
        bm.clear()
    # append the mesh object
    mesh_objs.append(o)
bm.free()
# if no mesh objs do nothing
if mesh_objs:
    scene.objects.active = mesh_objs[0]

    bpy.ops.object.join()
    # newly joined obj
    obj = scene.objects.active
    # look at verts
    verts = obj.data.vertices
    vertsx = [v.co.x for v in verts]
    vertsy = [v.co.y for v in verts]
    print(len(vertsx), len(vertsy))


Is it possible to perform operations individually to faces?

You can press ⎇ AltE> Individual faces to do this:

There is also a button in the tool shelf under Tools > Mesh Tools > Add:


color management (& grease pencil) : possible to render as it is in the viewport?

Grease pencil isn't color managed in the viewport, so no, it's a pitty but there isn't a solution for that.
Unless this question about color management will attract more people and devs to really dive into it.
I've tried to push this specific question about grease pencil, but see by yourself how I didn't even had one response:

Perhaps it's not well formulated, and my knowledge is limited related to grease pencil, coding... but still the question remains.

To be a bit more specific related to your question, what you see in your 1st picture is, on the left part, a well color managed mesh and a grease pencil stroke not color managed at all. a mesh color managed with filmic and a GP stoke color managed in default (clamped sRGB)
Resulting in the right, in a render that not correspond to what you see because everything is color managed with Filmic.

In the second image, the solution to set color management to default (what a poor choice to name a clamped sRGB color space), isn't a solution at all, since light will behave incorectly.

You can choose to change all your grease pencil color values by guessing and hope, sorry, pray that one day all part of Blender will be correctly color managed (I don't speek only about GP).

Sorry, even with my little knowledge about color management and spaces, I still make mistakes, it's not that GP isn't color managed, but it's locked to defaut (clamped sRGB)


How to make an object appear/visible along a path

To keep it simple, you might consider just using the native properties of Blender curves.

Note that in this example, the path-curve is not cyclic. It's made by converting a mesh ( a circle, scaled in Edit Mode in Y ) with one of its vertices V ripped, then converted to a curve with two ends at the same place.

A curve can have a renderable bevel profile .. either its own, (a circle with variable resolution) or another curve you assign for the purpose, which will be swept along its local Z.
The profile can be tapered along its length, using another curve
The start and end points of the bevel along the curve can be set, and animated. So the curve can be made to 'grow' along its length.
The taper can be mapped either to the entire curve, or just the part which is beveled.

The illustration shows a curve, its taper, and its profile.

Your hexagon can be given a Follow Path constraint along the main curve, with its 'Offset' animated in sync with the curve's Bevel End setting.

..or maybe with the taper mapped to the beveled section:


You can use "Bevel" on selected edges.

Select the edges that you want to round, then hit Ctrl+B to bevel them. Scrolling your middle mouse button wheel you can choose the bevel resolution.

Bevel comes in different "modes" that you can cycle using M during the tool's operation. Unfortunately neither of these modes can be used to force a predominant axis. For fine adjustments you will need to edit your geometry before or after applying bevel.


How can I control multiple points of a cloth sim?

Instead of constraints you could hook the left extremity to an empty and add the vertices of the opposite extremity to the pin group. Put the Hook modifier above the Cloth modifier. In the Physics properties, increase the Quality Steps up to 20 to make it work correctly. You don't tell about what's supposed to happen after the last picture of your gif, does the extremity on the right stay still?

Even simpler, you could give up cloth simulation and use a Curve modifier:


Is there a quick way to set the origin to the "bottom centre"?

Enable viewport pie menu addon from the preferences(Edit -> Preferences or  F4 -> p):

Ctrl + Alt + X will call a pie menu with an option:


Your specific problem (based on your blend file) is a faulty heart mesh. If you press z to see the wireframe mode and this will become obvious. You need to have a mesh that does not contain inner geometry or walls, or double edges/vertices, which this mesh contains both. Unfortunately the tutorial and method you were following to create the heart is "simple", but rather faulty and bound to get you into trouble in the future.

These mesh issues caused an inaccurate polygon in the cutout, which could be fixed fairly easily.

You could also clean up your cutout mesh, but it's not worth the work. I recommend making a more accurate and stable mesh, using the following steps:

Create a cylinder (shift+a).
Go to edit mode (tab).
Turn on proportional editing o, and change the mode to sharp.
Select the top, center vertices, and scroll the mouse wheel while grabbing them (g) until you have the desired result.
Do the same for the bottom.

Here is an animation demonstrating the process.

To perform the cut, use the following steps:

Add a boolean modifier and set it to difference.

Select the mesh which needs the hole in it. (not the mesh to make the hole!)
Go to the modifiers tab and add a boolean modifier.
Set the type to difference, and the object to the shape to make the hole (your heart shape).
Apply the modifier.
Select and delete the heart shape (or just move it away).

There now should be a heart shaped hole in the mesh.

If you want another option, enter edit mode (tab), add a little more geometry (ctrl+r for loop cut) and use the cut out tool (k) to manually cut out the geometry. Before doing this you will want to switch to orthographic view (numpad 5) and top view (numpad 7) to get the proper cuts. Then disable limit selection to visible (see image) so it will cut all the way through the mesh, and click where you would like to cut. When you are done, press enter to finish the cut. If you would like to cancel push esc. I hope this helps.

Here is my blend file.


It's a circular dependency: the Ik bone is moving the forearm, which is moving the ik bone, ........

Select your armature, go to edit mode and unparent the ik bone from the forearm. Then you can parent it to another bone which is not part of the IK chain.


Make transparent object not layer up itself

You can use the transmission depth which is number of transparent points the ray has passed through, this is on the Light path node:

The result image


How to have an object exert a force all around it?

There is no build-in method to do that.

You need to write your own Python controller. But it is not that hard.

I suggest you use a near sensor to identify objects around your force source.
It does not only detect the objects to be affected it also sets up the range of your "force field".

To adjust the strength of the force you can use the optional property "strength". It tells how much the force would be at the location of the source object. It will be linear reduced by the distance of the affected object and the source object. At the outer range the force strength will be 0.0.

Usage:

Place this snippet in a python file force.py

import bge

PROPERTY_STRENGTH = "strength"
DEFAULT_STRENGTH = 1.0

def applyForceFromHere():
    if not allSensorsPositive():
        return
    sensor = getDetectionSensor()
    affectedObjects = sensor.hitObjectList

    maxRange = sensor.distance
    source = getOwner()
    strength = getOwner().get(PROPERTY_STRENGTH, DEFAULT_STRENGTH)

    for affectedObject in affectedObjects:
        sourceToObject = affectedObject.worldPosition - source.worldPosition
        direction = sourceToObject.normalized()
        ratio = max(0, maxRange - sourceToObject.length) # linear interpolation
        force = direction * strength * ratio
        affectedObject.applyForce(force)

def getDetectionSensor():
    return bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors[0]

def getOwner():
    return bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner

def allSensorsPositive():
    for sensor in bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors:
        if not sensor.positive:
            return False
    return True

Apply following logic to the source object:

Setup a near sensor (must be the first one)  with a distance that covers the area you want to have, ensure to enable [True Level Triggering] at the sensor that activates the force field
Setup a Python controller in module mode with Module: force.applyFromHere
Ensure affected objects are physics objects (dynamic, rigid body, softbody)

How does it work?

When all sensors are positive and any of the sensors triggers the controller the function applyFromHere() will be executed. Each run will apply exactly one force or no force at all. There will be no "duration". Either you trigger the controller or you do no trigger it. Forces will only applied when triggered. That is the reason for [True Level Triggering]. This is not necessary when you do not want to have your force field active.

The near sensor provides the affected objects (only physics objects) within the distance. The Python controller calculates the

distance to the source object
direction to away from the source object
ratio (linear interpolation) with

1.0 at the location of the source object
0.0 at the distance and further away

the strength of the force

With that the Python controller applies the individual forces to each single affected object.

Remark: The duration of the force is the atomic minimum (one frame). The Python controller is no actuator. Therefore you need to run it again and again and again to get a continuous force.

Hint: You can enter a negative strength

I hope it helps


How can I add a collection using Python?

BlendDataCollections.new(name)
Recommend use the python console to figure out:
>>> D.collections.new(
new()
BlendDataCollections.new(name)
Add a new collection to the main database
...

>>> my_coll = D.collections.new("MyCollection")
>>> C.scene.collection.children.link(my_coll)

Demo on how to create a new collection and add the default cube using CollectionObjects.link(object):
import bpy

# New Collection
my_coll = bpy.data.collections.new("MyCollection")

# Add collection to scene collection
bpy.context.scene.collection.children.link(my_coll)

# Get cube object
obj = bpy.context.scene.objects.get("Cube")

if obj:
    # Link the cube
    my_coll.objects.link(obj)


Which programming language is used in Blender?

Blender is written in 3 languages: C, C++, and Python.

C - for Blender's [startup/main-loop/shutdown] and most internal functionality, tools, drawing, GUI and editors.

C++ - physics, audio, game-engine and Cycles render engine.

Python - The interface definitions, addons, most format import/export and some tools.

More information can be found here: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/FAQ


Add a sphere
Enter edit mode Tab
Select top vertex and select more CtrlNumpad + until you reach the part you want
Delete X vertices


"Automatically merge vertices at the same location" is on...

So, turn it off to solve the issue.


How to place a .png texture with transparency over a material

The image texture node has two outputs, the color data and the alpha (transparency channel) data of the image.  The color data only holds the red, green, and blue of each pixel.  So if you plug it into a shader's color you will probably just get black where there is supposed to to transparency because those pixels are really black, but invisible.  You need to use the alpha output as a mask for placing the face over the skin shader.

To do this take whatever shaders you are using for the blank skin and mix them with a diffuse (or whatever other shader[s] you want for the facial features) based on the alpha output of the image texture.


How to remove light bounce / reflection from objects?

Maybe disable the Diffuse option in the Obect panel > Visibility > Ray Visibility?


Why does mesh shrink when using shape keys?

Shape keys work by smoothly, but blindly, moving each vertex from one location to another. It's likely that as each vertex is blindly trying to get to its destination, the intermediate result is this shrunk version of your mesh.

Shape keys are "dumb." They do absolutely nothing to maintain volume, do any kind of skinning, or anything "smart" like that. It's a SUPER simple transform.

I wish I could upload images from where I am, but imagine a plane with 4 vertices. You have a Basis key that looks like the plane, and then you have a Flipped key that moves the vertices in an X pattern. The top-left vertex goes to the bottom-right, the top-right to the bottom-left, etc. So that the end result is also a plane, but it's upside-down and backward. Each vertex is going to go straight to its designated destination without any concern for any other vertices, so you can imagine that exactly half-way through the process, they're all going to be basically a really tiny point in the middle of what used to be a plane. Something similar is what's happening to your arms, there.

This is what rigs are for ;-) Rigs can preserve the relative position of the vertices so that they don't do weird things like this.

EDIT: For some reason, my image isn't supported on this site, but you can find it here.

In this animation, I add two blendshapes, basis (which you always have) and key1, to the default cube. Then, I select all the verts in edit mode and rotate them around the x-axis (this will be hard to follow, if you can't see the gif). This is now my key1 blendshape. The point of all this is that it doesn't matter that I rotated the verts. If I were using keyframes, the rotation would matter, but not with blendshapes. When I adjust the strength of key1, each vertex will move along the shortest path between its two positions, regardless of where any of the other verts are. This means that all the verts pass very closely to each other about half-way through the transition, which makes a really skinny prism.

This is basically what's happening to the arm. Each vertex is blindly moving to its designated destination, and the intermediate result can sometimes be undesirable.

The solution might be adding intermediate shapes, but this is not the way blendshapes are usually used.

I hope that helps!


I'm afraid there is no way to fully fix this issue, but you can help slightly.

In file > User Preferences > System under "Solid OpenGL lights" (1) you can see three sets of colours (2).

Editing all of these to a full white, (Clicking on each then adjusting the colour to the brightest white.) will help your issue.

EDIT: After viewing your edited post, i can say this is what my answer does. But like i said only to a extent. But, i have noticed, if normal's are pointing inside of a object, it is darker, the dark side of your object is unusual.

Try selecting the darker side in edit view with faces selected, then hold down 'CTRL' and press 'N'  this recalculates the normals. Also another thing to try is checking them manually. To do this, press 'N' then while in edit mode scroll down until you see a section called normals. (1)

Then click on one of the three boxes, i prefer faces (2) for normal things, but sometimes it doesn't matter what you prefer.


It's dangerous to flip a mesh with S + (X, Y, Z) -1?

Modelling wise you will most likely end up with inverted normals. This may cause invisible/missing faces or an inverted in-side-out model effect, with unexpected material shading. This can be easily fixed in edit mode by selecting all faces and flipping them or recalculating them with Ctrl+N.

Cycles is mostly immune to inverted normals in most regular materials, but it may still give adverse effects under certain situations when materials use normal maps or vector normal input.

Negatively scaled objects may also adversely affect certain simulations, like physics, fluids, smoke, certain modifiers, and/or constrains and rigging, that read or rely on object transforms.

Other than that nothing intrinsically wrong with it, it is the only quick method to invert an object after all.
If you no longer need the object to be an instance of other, or it is already an isolated object data user, then you may apply the scale with Ctrl+A > Scale.


The error message gives a hint:

TypeError: driver_add() takes no keyword arguments

So pass the index as positional argument:

bpy.context.object.driver_add("location", 2)


How do you make a lamp light up glossy surfaces?

I think your problem is that light is being reflected of the ground plane, but not into the camera. (see specular reflection)

  Shouldn't reflective surfaces still brighten up a bit when a lamp hits them

It's not a matter of "brightening", the light has to hit the plane and then get bounced into the camera.

Diffuse objects scatter light, so they bounce some light into the camera regardless of the angle. Completely glossy objects (no Roughness) will bounce light without scattering it at all, and slightly rough glossy surfaces will scatter light slightly:

To visualize this in 2d:

As you can see, the camera will not receive any light from the (slightly rough) plane. Except for light reflected of the diffuse object:

Workarounds:

To work around this, you could:

Add more lights. You could add a light in front of the camera and behind the object which bounces light off the plane into the camera:

Increase the world background brightness (in the real world there is almost always some ambient light) You could make it so the world appears black to the camera while actually emitting a little bit of light by means of the Lightpath node:

Add a tiny bit of diffuse reflection to the glossy shader:

The diffuse shader input color brightness controls how much diffuse is added. (black is none)
Mix some diffuse reflection into the glossy shader. (with a mix shader) Note that this is slightly different than adding.

Replies to comments:

  Thank you for this great response! Unfortunately, adding additional
  lamps on the far side of the object has absolutely zero affect on what
  the ground looks like. The ground has not seemingly changed one pixel
  with the addition of another lamp or with the moving and re-adjusting
  of the lamps and their strength. It HAS affected the candle though,
  and the candlestick has a glossy finish, so I don't understand why the
  planar floor won't do what the candle base is doing.

It depends on the angle of the surface and the camera. (and the type of lamp)

To get a feel for this you might want to try playing with the view (with viewport rendering on) with just the plane and a couple lamps to get an idea of how this works.

  I should add that I wanted the candle to appear to be the only light in the room. I made the flame an emission source and that lights up just fine, but when the candle and candlestick are lit up but the floor is not it just looks weird

In that case you probably don't want to add extra lights. (you might even want to remove all the lights except for the candle flame)

Keep in mind that in an actual room there is some indirect lighting from the walls and other objects. You could set the world to a very dark color (but not black) to simulate this.

  In the end you were right. I had my floor as a glossy surface, with a roughness of .100 which apparently makes the surface too glossy to reflect light? I had to make it a .2 or higher to get any sort of light reflection off the object. Although I feel like even a polished brass sphere should glow when a light hits it.

Again, an object is only visible when light bounces off it and into the camera. AFAIK, there is no such thing as "too glossy to reflect light", it's just not reflecting light where you want it. (i.e. the camera)

The reason increasing the roughness makes reflections more visible is that it scatters light in more directions, increasing the probability that some light will enter the camera.

I think the solution you want here is to mix some diffuse reflection into your glossy material. This will bounce light in pretty much every direction, making sure everything is visible to the camera.

  If I had any questions left, I'd ask if there's a way to adjust the
  intensity of an emission source that isn't actually a lamp? As it
  stands I have the flame set as an emission 'texture' but i put a lamp
  inside the object and adjusted the lamps brightness to compensate for
  the flame's lack of brightness.

I'm not sure what you mean by emission texture, but if you are asking what I think you are asking:

You can make an emission shader that appears the color set in the Color input while emitting more light than a Strength of 1:

Only an emission shader with a strength of 1 and 20:

With the above node setup:

Example renders:

Completely black world with some diffuse mixed with the glossy materials:

Completely black world with only glossy reflection:

Only glossy with a mesh light (selected) affecting the glossy floor:


If the property doesn't allow for drivers, it cannot be driven with a driver.

It can be driven through app.handlers though:

import bpy

def my_handler(scene):
    # this code will be run on every frame change
    loc = bpy.data.objects["rigMeenuTeen"].pose.bones["eyes"].location
    bpy.data.textures["mouth shapes"].image_user.frame_offset = int(loc.x)

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(my_handler)


Temporarily extrude edges

You’ll be able to round the corners with the bevel tool (Ctrl+B) by extruding the boundary loop just to feed Blender with some faces to work with and then deleting the extrusion.


Compositor nodes are not affecting rendered video

To bring the result of your nodes to the VSE you need to have an Output->Composite Node at the end of your node chain. On the VSE add a scene strip (Add Scene->Scene) and disable Open GL Preview.

NOTE:

If you just want to render the events in the compositor as a file to later rework on the VSE then you need to disable the sequencer temporarily. Then your file output nodes will work as expected.


As it is a brushed metal you should use an Anisotropic node. It is a Glossy node but it stretches the reflection on a certain axis (Z by default but you can plug an Input > Tangent node in the Tangent socket if necessary). Also plug a b&w texture to give it apparent vertical lines.


Can Cycles renders be done from the command line?

Yes you can, This will render a single frame

blender --background filename.blend --render-output //test_ --engine CYCLES --render-format PNG --use-extension 1 --render-frame 5

This will output a file named test_0005

While experimenting, I more or less substituted CYCLES with the parameters I found here. You can check the link to see what they mean and or do.


How to arrange objects in outward facing circle?

You can model this shape quite easily with just two modifiers.

First add a Cone, set the Vertices to 4 so that it is a pyramid, and lower the Depth to 1.

Set the origin at the bottom of the pyramid. Now Rotate the pyramid so that it is pointing towards the negative Y axis.

Add an Array Modifier, and a Simple Deform Modifier. For the simple deform modifier set the Type to Bend, the Angle to 360, and the Axis to Z.

Use the Count in the Array modifier to change the diameter of the cylinder.

Last add another array modifier to the ring of pyramids, to get more then one row.


How can I bake a metallic map off my model in Cycles?

Plug the metallic input into the roughness input of the principled shader and then bake the roughness map (texture) of the texture plugged in.
I hope it will work...


In the Background image panel (N in the viewport), you can choose to have the background image in Front, instead of Back, and set the opacity level


How do I reset the 3d view from this state?

Press the button next to the word Default. It will display a bunch of preset views to choose from. However you have corrupted the Default 3d view. So go down to the bottom of that large window with the line on it and look for the clock icon in the corner. You have expanded the Timeline view. Click the clock and choose the 3d view symbol instead


How to get rid of sharp edges when using subsurf modifier?

As we see if we enable the Face Orientation option in the Viewport Overlays, you have some flipped normals, Blender can't smooth correctly between the faces. In Edit mode select all and press ShiftN


Set Object's "Viewport Display" according to Workspace

Just ran into this issue and I accidentally solved it by going to solid viewport shading instead of material viewport shading in the top right of the viewport. Hopefully this helps anybody else looking for an answer.


How to fill in/collapse an indented cylinder onto a face

Are you going to make this a super high resolution mesh later? You're going to want to clean up the faces that have 5 or more sides before you continue to progress. But that's an aside. The main thing you want to do at this point is get rid of that cylindrical shape. What you need to do about that is switch to face select mode, and alt + shift + right click the edge that flows with the shape of the round loop of the cylinder. This should select the entire cylinder. Delete these faces while still in face mode.

Now switch to vertex mode. Select the vertex where the floor of the object and the wall meet at the beginning of the remainder of the cylinder's curve. Make sure your 'pivot point for rotation and scaling' is still set to 'cursor'. Select the remaining vertex points that form the remainder of the cylinder on that side, and merge all of the points to one of the end points. Do the same thing on the other mirrored half of the mesh. Select the vertex.

If you need a more in depth explanation, lemme know.


How do you change the background color of the 3D viewport?

To change the default background color, it's in the Preferences as explained here.
To change the file's background color you need to display the Viewport Shading panel, choose Background > Viewport instead of Theme, and change the color below.


There is a much easier way to project an image onto a plane.

Enable the images as planes addon under 'user preferences'
Press 'SHIFT + A' -> Mesh -> Images as planes

Then search for your image and voila!

This does not really answer your question but it should work out fine for you I guess.

If you really need to fix the problem you're facing:

Get into 'edit mode'
Select all (press 'A')
Go to top view in ortographic projection
Press 'U'
select 'project from view'
Go to image editor en scale your UV's if necessary
Done!

If you still have problems after these steps, try recalculating the normals.
(shortcut: 'CTR +N')


Algorithm for random distribution of circles in a square

This simple script to place a number of num_circles circles with radius radiusin a refined rectangle (aligned to global axes) speficied by xmin, xmax, ymin and ymax by trying random locations until it not colliding with an existing circle. This is certainly not the most efficient way of doing it, but it should be fine for smaller problems and if the relative area covered is not too high.

At some point the script will not find a free spot anymore and throw an error. If you increase max_tries, the algorithm is more likely to find free spots at the cost of additional computation time, but the needed time raises extremely fast if you need a higher covered area. It is hard to get much higher than 50%.

from mathutils import Vector
from mathutils.noise import random, seed_set
import bpy

# Specify parameters
seed = 0
xmin = -1
xmax = 1
ymin = -1
ymax = 1
radius = 0.1
num_circles = 68
max_tries = 10000

# Init
seed_set(seed)
sx = xmax-xmin-2*radius
sy = ymax-ymin-2*radius
xminm = xmin+radius
yminm = ymin+radius
existing_locations = []
sce = bpy.context.scene
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_circle_add(location=(0,0,0), radius=radius)
ref_circle = bpy.context.object

# Loop
for i in range(num_circles):
    j = 0
    searchOn = True
    while searchOn:
        if j > max_tries:
            bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
            ref_circle.select = True
            bpy.ops.object.delete()
            raise ValueError('Found no more room for another circle')
            break
        j += 1
        new_location = (xminm + random()*sx,
                        yminm + random()*sy,
                        0)
        for existing_location in existing_locations:
            if (Vector(existing_location)-Vector(new_location)).length < 2*radius:
                break
        else:
            new_circle = ref_circle.copy()
            new_circle.location = new_location
            sce.objects.link(new_circle)
            existing_locations.append(new_location)
            searchOn = False

ref_circle.select = True
bpy.ops.object.delete()
sce.update()


Bezier Curve - Edit Mode - how does the Spin menu item work?

The reason Spin is greyed out is because currently the UI file for that menu item is

layout.operator("curve.spin")

Which points to an operator written in C

source/blender/editors/curve/editcurve.c

void CURVE_OT_spin(wmOperatorType *ot)

Inside that operator is a poll to check if the current state of blender warrants showing the menu entry as clickable.

ot->poll = ED_operator_editsurf;

this sets the value of ot->poll to whatever the value of ED_operator_editsurf is,

source/blender/editors/screen/screen_ops.c

int ED_operator_editsurf(bContext *C)
{
    Object *obedit = CTX_data_edit_object(C);
    if (obedit && obedit->type == OB_SURF)
        return NULL != ((Curve *)obedit->data)->editnurb;
    return 0;
}

this tests if the object is in edit mode, it would be, and also tests the type of the object, which in that case is not OB_SURF, not a surface type curve.


Cycles is not using the materials created by MakeHuman

I'm guessing that the Make Human importer sets up a Blender Internal Material based on the Material that's in the file you imported.  This is not automatic yet for Cycles rendering yet.

First you have to go to the Materials Tab and click the 'Use Nodes' button.

Now you can up the Node Editor and add an Image Texture.  Next, plug the Texture's Color output into the the Shader node's Color input.


Check you Active Camera (Render Camera) Clipping Plane Near and Far. Viewport is not the same as final render Near and Far clipping plane.


Blender 2.8 only renders the first frame of an animation

Alright, I had this issue too until a few minutes ago, now it got sorted. What worked for me is changing the composoting nodes. Basically making sure that everything ends up in the "composite" node and not just the "viewer" node.
A safer way I found is once I know how I want the result with the "viewer" node, just get rid of it and point the nodes to "composite"
I hope it helps.


Create Indian dish 'idli' texture and rough edges?

Simple speaking, with basic sponge textures or wall pores textures we can make idli textures.

found a "sponge texture" from google images.

then converted it to blackandwhite image using Photoshop

and used that blackandwhite image to covert it to NormalMap image Filters>3D>NormalMap(or)BumpMap.

Made a simple scene containing a plate and idli. Making chutney would take quite a time.. so just added a plate and idli. Then unwarped idli and added above textures and hence this final render fellow indian.

or for detailed texturing try what @Robin Betts said in comments section.


How do I save a rotated HDRI from Blender?

add camera, rotate it on 90deg. by 'X' axis., and select Panoramic Type with Equirectangular Panorama type.
use Cycles render engine with just 1 sample.
don't use Filmic View transform.
set Output dimensions as environment map.
render an image and save it in EXR or HDR format!


In 2.71 the boolean modifier works in the game engine.
The limitations are that the modifier is static, the way the booleaned object looks at the start of the game is how it is going to stay. You can for example rotate the base object (the object with the boolean modifer) and it will rotate properly, with all booleaned intersection moving properly. However if one of the target objects (objects used as the object to target in the modifier) is moved, it will not change the mesh at all.

If both objects are showing, it may be that both objects are in the game. Move the target objects to a different layer that is not in the game.


If you are trying to achieve a more organic render you could use an image of a book end or stack of paper as a texture and bump map. The "paper ends" image I captured for the texture/bumpMap is at the bottom of this post. I'm throwing it out to the Public Domaine CC-0.

The body of this book is a cube with some loop cuts which has a Lattice Modifier creating the bend. Then mirrored.

The two top pages are Bezier Curves which are Extruded. The Resolution of the curves was turned up to smooth the resulting curve.


Why are my render times 30+ minutes, but other people's are ~3 minutes?

You have Square Samples ticked under your Sampling render settings. It squares whatever sample value you have setup.

You have 128 samples specified so 128^2 = 16384 so you are basically attempting to render with 16384 samples which is a lot.


Differences between dissolve and delete?

Delete removes vertices/edges/faces and leaves nothing/a hole in their place.

Dissolve combines faces into one big face (ngon) or removes edges only as a separator between faces.

Dissolving an edge between two vertices can be reversed by re-connecting them by pressing J with both vertices selected.

Limited dissolve dissolves (combines into big NGons) all faces that have a certain angle between them (less than 5° by default). Limited dissolve therefore turns large areas filled with many faces into one large face.


Probably the best way to approach it is to use a flat shader (color shader) without diffuse, the other way is to use the objects' normals in order to create a "fake" light and keep them always consistent regardless the light conditions in your scene (as it is done in most NPR approaches).
this is how a flat shader would look like (just an emission shader in Blender's context)
Emission Shader (flat)

and that's how an NRP would look like
Dot Product (Geometry Position)

or like this
Dot Product (Geometry Normals)

check the material setup here:

the second vector in the Dot Product node (math vector) will be  the source of your fake light.

Keep in mind that Dot Product gives also negative values, so you may need to clamp it for certain occasions


Adding edge wear to (relatively) low-poly mesh

There is a new option I saw a tweet about today, and I can include the picture that was uploaded - it involves the experimental bevel shader. Maybe you can try that out.


You changed the clipping value for the 3D View, but you should change it (with camera selected) in:


My object which throw flame does not appearing during rendering?

For the issue of the flame not appearing during render, there are two things you might want to consider that caught my eye upon looking at your scene.

First, is the material. You haven't created or assigned a material to the particles for your flow object- 'Plane'. Create a material for your flame, and assign it in the render tab> materials drop down (highlighted in yellow)

Second, is the emitter type to display(highlighted in red). Currently it is set to none. Select another option (halo works well for fire), and you will see your flame in the final render.


Your lights are de-activated in the viewport - No light, no shadow (click the eye icon)
Emission shaders don't receive shadows
If you plug a color into the output of a shader, it is automatically converted to an emission shader. Try with a principled bsdf or a diffuse shader
Your scene is not up-to-scale. Your couch is 3 meters high and 9 meters wide. The lighting won't be realistic if you don't try to respect realistic proportions
Turn way up the power of your point light

If you want a cartoony look you can use the "Shader to RGB" node after the shader. Also use ambient occlusion to add to the realism


Is it possible to have multiple seperate node editors in one project?

AAAAAnd I figure out how to use scenes to get different node editors in half an hour, what are the odds? (Just add a new scene whenever you want to do different effects in node editor in the same project and then add those scenes to the VSE)


Bake the animation of a rig following another rig

Go to Pose Mode and select all bones of your character's rig.
Select Pose->Animation->Bake Action like below:

then select Only Selected Bones + Visual Keying + Clear Constrains + Overwrite Current Action


How do you animate the Inception spinning top?

I have created a simple example for you.

First, the origin of the object must be at the tip of the totem.

In Edit mode, select the vertex end of the tip and press Shift+S to move the 3D cursor there.

Next, switch to Object mode and press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+C to move the origin to the 3D cursor.

You are now set up for origin.

Second, you need to edit the animation.

Notice the shape of the curve in the graph editor in GIF which I attached.

The Z axis, which is the rotation axis of the totem, is animated by linear interpolation.

Then apply a sine wave key animation that fades out to the X or Y axis.

I hope this helps.


Create vertex groups - go into the weight editing mode, select the outer part L and assign a weight to it shiftK (when vertices are selected).
And select this group in displacement modifier


UV mapping texture get sliced? in some area

I figured it out!

It's turn out that in order to achieve the result I want, I must use smart uv project instead.

I believe that the cause of this problem is that normal unwrap does strech the texture a little, while smart uv project doesn't

Normal unwrap result:

Smart uv project result:


I believe this shadow on the glass material is not normal, it follows my camera creating a weird effect, please help me fix it!

Just wanna say that I was able to fix this by myself.
Seems like the problem was the refraction depth being set to 0.


Unity only respects bone transform and shape deforms, this is a function of the FBX export process.  You should either apply certain poses into shape keys, or redo your animations with an armature.


2.8 How to Duplicate Collection without keeping it "linked"?

The feature to duplicate collections (without linking) has been available since commit e7ea99af1b0d933b9323be39d8b1c6f683bfba52. Therefore this feature was included in the release of 2.80 and subsequent versions.

There are two options in the context menu of the Outliner for duplicating collections, Duplicate Collection and Duplicate Linked.

The screenshot shows the context menu of the Outliner in version 2.81

Duplicate Collection calls the bpy.ops.outliner.collection_duplicate() operator and does precisely what you intend.

  Recursively duplicate the collection, all its children, objects and
  object data.

The old behavior with the linked object data is now called Duplicate Linked which calls the bpy.ops.outliner.collection_duplicate_linked().

  Recursively duplicate the collection, all its children and objects,
  with linked object data.


Change or update audio start with video texture start frame

Here is a workaround solution

A custom property, named "audio" is added to the movie texture, with a value of the soundstrip name.  Every time the script is run it updates the audio strip, pointed to by the audio key, to have the same frame_start as the tex.

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
sequences = scene.sequence_editor.sequences_all
# all the textures with audio custom prop
textures = [t for t in bpy.data.textures if "audio" in t.keys()]

for t in textures:
    audio_strip = sequences.get(t["audio"])
    if audio_strip:
        audio_strip.frame_start = t.image_user.frame_start


How do I fix this simple intersecting geometry?

You could:

Delete 'Faces only' the curve-shape, leaving a network of edges
Knife Project the network down onto a plane

Delete away unwanted parts of the plane
X > Limited Dissolve unwanted edges (there may be some minor repair work to do)
Extrude the result, which is then OK for a Boolean.


For Facebook to interpret an image as a 360-degree panorama, it needs to have the following properties :

It must be in 2:1 aspect ratio. eg, 4000x2000 pixels
It should be in JPG format (it seems that the panorama settings are ignored for PNGs!)
It needs the EXIF tag 'ProjectionType' set to 'equirectangular'.

For more information see this Facebook link about Editing 360 Photos & Injecting Metadata.

To achieve this, once you have rendered your image (using an Equirectangular camera - which should be oriented level with the horizon rather than tilted) and saved it in JPG format, use a tool such as 'exiftool' (or another tool that allows you to manually specify EXIF tags) to set ProjectionType - eg, with the following command line :

    exiftool -ProjectionType="equirectangular" <filename>.jpg

This will add the relevant EXIF tag to the image (saving the original as an '_old' file). The resultant file should now be successfully interpreted by Facebook as a panoramic image.

EDIT : Here's an additional source of useful information - http://atterer.org/tech/android-exif-tags-xmp-pano-panorama-exiftool, including additional tags that should allow you to tweak the panoramic view as desired (NOTE : I don't know which of these are actually honored by Facebook, but worth a try) - replace the settings with your own image dimensions, etc. :

    exiftool -UsePanoramaViewer=True -ProjectionType=equirectangular  PoseHeadingDegrees=180.0 -CroppedAreaLeftPixels=0 -FullPanoWidthPixels=8000 -CroppedAreaImageHeightPixels=4000 -FullPanoHeightPixels=4000 -CroppedAreaImageWidthPixels=8000 -CroppedAreaTopPixels=0 -LargestValidInteriorRectLeft=0 -LargestValidInteriorRectTop=0 -LargestValidInteriorRectWidth=8000 -LargestValidInteriorRectHeight=4000 filename.jpeg


How to add a custom object entry to the add menu?

Blender 2.8x

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator("YOUR OPERATOR BL_IDNAME")
    # bl_idname should be in form of "something.something"
    # or YourClass.bl_idname

def register():
   # register classes so blender knows about them
   bpy.utils.register_class(MyOperatorClass)
   # this adds your menu to shift-a add object menu
   bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_add.prepend(menu_func)
   # if you want to add to mesh menu use INFO_MT_mesh_add
   # other menu classes you can find in \scripts\startup\bl_ui\
   # by looking into the files there (i.e.: space_view3d.py)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(MyOperatorClass)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_add.remove(menu_func)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Blender 2.7x

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator("YOUR OPERATOR BL_IDNAME")
    # bl_idname should be in form of "something.something"
    # or YourClass.bl_idname

def register():
   # register classes so blender knows about them
   bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
   # this adds your menu to shift-a add object menu
   bpy.types.INFO_MT_add.prepend(menu_func)
   # if you want to add to mesh menu use INFO_MT_mesh_add
   # other menu classes you can find in \scripts\startup\bl_ui\
   # by looking into the files there (i.e.: space_view3d.py)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.INFO_MT_add.remove(menu_func)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Twist like SimplerDeform but with bones?

I would try to use a bendy bone with controllers (see here), then add a bone at the base of the bendy bone (I'll call it "rotator" from now on). The opposite bendy bone's controller will be parented to the rotator, and its rotations will also be driven by the rotator.

In theory, this will make the opposite controller rotate arround the bendy bone base and rotate it twice the amount of the rotator's rotation. The bendy bone would form a perfect half-circle shape, without any wrong deformation.

Duplicate the whole thing and invert it to get the other half, and you have your simple-deform-like rig.

I did a test, you can download and retro-engineer it.


Have you tried the blender 3d printing add on?. If that hasn't worked, I'd suggest exporting a selection and attempting a different workflow. That article's goal is to create a mold, but the software it uses (Meshlab, Meshmixer) can help you accomplish some tasks. Some very complex models I have found hard to do everything automatically. Further, if you are working with slicing, I would recommend chitubox. It automatically hollows models and creates supports.


The basic key to a good subdivision surface result is having a loop of faces along either side of any edge that you want to harden. In your case, you have supporting edge loops on the extruded sides of your arch, but not on the large flat surfaces:

I used the bevel tool with the following settings to create face loops around each of the edges that needed to be hardened. This could also be done with the bevel modifier, using either angle or bevel weight as the control.

Here is the result with subdivision. Note that because the top and bottom are completely flat, and surrounded by face loops of quads, it doesn't matter that much that the geometry as a mess, as long as none of the n-gons are too concave. They can even be made all tris:


You bevel doesn't work well with the cutter because there are overlapping edges.

You could just lower the bevel amount from 0.1 m to 0.09 m. This pulls the bevel back enough to avoid overlapping edges.

Another option would be to move the problematic boolean modifier above the first bevel modifier. This way the boolean would work better but you would need to adjust the bevel modifier more to get as deep bevel.
Extra:
Also remember to give your cutters smooth shading and auto smooth to get cleaner holes.


for this part of your object, you'd rather:

Begin with a cubic shape.
Add some vertical edge loops.
Round the faces with the Proportional Editing option (Sphere Falloff mode).
Give it a Solidify modifier.
Round the angle edges with bevels (ctrl B).
Smooth your object with a Subdivision Surface modifier.
Sharpen the edges with additional edge loops.
When you're happy with the thickness, apply the Solidify.


How do I merge vertices into another polygon?

To create a new face (polygon), select the vertices or edges with Shift and right click, then press F.


"Diffuse" blurry is caused by the texture resolution, but the long stipes of blur are probably caused by the bake advanced settings.

After the texture is baked, Blender apply a margin on the UV island edges. From the manual page:

  Baked result is extended this many pixels beyond the border of each UV “island,” to soften seams in the texture.

Inside the orangish area you can see the texture, outside it the margin. The blurring effect is probably caused by the interpolation between pixel color that occours during the boundary extension.

Margins are not bad. They are useful to hide the seams; problems occour when they overlap with the islands in the neighborhood.

Try to lower the margin size or increase the space between the UV islands  to avoid overlapping in the baked images.


How do I find the exact meeting point of 2 lines?

This works 100% with perpendiculars, still trying to find a method for non-perpendiculars.

Enable edge snapping.
turn the transform orientation to normal.
make the pivot point median points.
use the transform (should be Z) handles to drag the point to the edge.

Done


cycles transparent image textures in lookdev (blender 2.8)

I found the solution

You need to first switch the render engine to Eevee, go into the shader editor, and now you will see a setting to change the blend mode to Alpha Blend. Now it will work in lookdev and you can change it back to cycles.


how can I position an object at a moving bonehead?

You don't tell enough but if you just need a basic animation you can do it this way:

Create a 3 bone armature. Top horizontal bone is parented to right bone.

Switch to Pose mode, select the left and right bones, open the N panel (on the right of your 3D View) and in Transform > Rotation, choose the XYZ Euler mode instead of Quaternion. Create a first pose for those bones, then a second at 180° (on the Z axis for me), and in the Dopesheet click ShiftE > Linear Extrapolation. Now your bones rotate indefinitely.

Still in Pose mode, select the top bone, go in the Properties panel > Bone Constraint and give it a Track To constraint (might be a Copy Location as well) with the left bone as Target, a Head/Tail value of 1, To > Y, Space > Pose Space/Pose Space. This bone will follow the movement.


Python console.

Bit of "educated guesswork" going on very little from question. I'll try and cover all bases here

Using python console, C = bpy.context

The armature object has context, in pose mode

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

>>> C.mode
'POSE'

The active pose bone

>>> pb = C.active_pose_bone
>>> pb
bpy.data.objects['Armature'].pose.bones["Bone"]

The pose bone belongs to the armature object which has context. Alternatively the id_data pointer tells us which ID object to which an object belongs.

>>> pb.id_data
bpy.data.objects['Armature']

The armature associated with this object.

>>> pb.id_data.data
bpy.data.armatures['Armature']

It would be really handy if in future you posted some pertinent code.


From left to right:

Create a circle and in edit mode shift it

Delete a quarter of the vertices

Duplicate/rotate 3 times

Join the vertices

Rotate each circle (say) 10 degrees

Convert the mesh into a curve

Curve settings:

Give it extrusion. As the extrusion is along Z, rotate the knot around X so that it is Z up and apply the rotation.
Shader: get the U of the UV that is along the curve and add a color ramp.
a better, quicker way

Start from a plane instead of a circle.
Add subdivisions.
Next steps are the same.


Shift+A Add Circle (Press F6 and set the vertices 6)

In the Edit Mode Press F key to fill the faces and extruded with the E key.

Now Add Plane and rotate little to get some shape and angle of the pointer of the screwdriver

In Edit mode of plane extrude the plane with the E key to some thickness to plane.

Now in Edit mode of the plane. Press Alt+D Duplicate the plane in X axis and move forward and press Ctrl+M to mirror the plane. Press Ctrl+N to flip normals.

Come out of the Edit Mode Select the Plane and Shift select the Extrude circle and Press Spacebar and type align object and press F6 and select x axis

Come out from Edit mode of Plane and select the extruded circle. Add Boolean Modifier. Select the Operation to Difference and object to plane. Apply the Modifier and delete the plane. Now you can get the shape of the pointer of screwdriver.


Trying to figure out how to model this shape

With the Red Marking with the Bezier curve set handles to vector Press V and trace out the letter like this. With the Blue marking make sub divide verts.

After tracking with the vector handle. Now select the blue marking (sub divided) and make it free handles (Press V) and pull it up and with the side handle adjust it.

Final result

Press Alt+C convert to Mesh.

Press A to select all and Press F to fill faces

Now select the faces and Press E Extrude.


How does UV mapping effect value of a pixel in cycles render?

I have replicated this behaviour by unwrapping the default cube, going into the UV/Image editor and drastically scaling up the UV map by a factor of 9999999.

This would appear to be a problem with the Interpolation of the image - the problem is no longer evident if you switch to 'Closest'.

To explain this a little, the Interpolation setting comes into effect when the point in the image does not exactly match the position of a pixel - in which case Blender attempts to produce a value some way between that 'closest' pixel and its neighbours, effectively to try and 'blend' the edges. The extremely large scale UV map will be causing rounding issues with the floating point coordinates and this is most likely resulting in overflow. When Blender is trying to determine how much to blend between two adjacent pixels, the calculation appears to be triggering a divide by zero or overflow, resulting in a corrupt color being returned.

The solution is to simply re-scale your UV map to a more reasonable range - or use Closest interpolation.


Part of my object doesn't show it's texture in cycles

The problem is that you've plugged your Image Texture into the Normal socket of your Principled BSDF. It's not the way it works, you need at least to put a Vector > Bump map between these 2 nodes, and ideally it's better to use a b&w height picture, created from your original picture with a software like CrazyBump or else...


In object mode, Hit Ctrl + A, and select the menus one by one as shown below:

After applying please try to generate it


If you want to use the cloth simulation, you have to assign both ends to bones.

You also have to create the Pinning group for the cloth simulation. At the pinched end, I used only a few vertices for pinning, otherwise the circular structure will remain rigid.

Animate the right hand bone twisting.

This is the result with a cloth simulation.


Here is a procedure for baking the color from a 3D scan to a UV map in Blender: https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2015/03/24/RealSense-3D-scan-Vertex-Color-to-UV-Map-Blender

Follow this process for both meshes (the head then the body). Then try to join them. If the textures are baked and applied via a UV map, both colors should remain when you join the meshes.


Is it possible to see glare streaks in transparent areas too?

This is a solution that worked perfect for me. Seperating and mixing one glare color channel with glare alpha output works great and supports nearly all situations, even for other FX nodes.

Here the node tree:

And the file:


How to get rid of unwanted zigzag effect on edges?

Does this sort of shift around as you rotate in the viewport?

This looks like a clipping issue. Go into your View tab on the right and muck with the Start and End values under "Clip."


How can I save UV coordinates into .obj when using curves

Turn on "Use UV for mapping" in the texture space options in the Object Data tab of the properties window:

Turning on this option will generate UV maps for when you convert the curve to a mesh, or export the curve to .obj, since .obj doesn't support bezier curves and converts the curve to mesh as part of the export process.


Want to run two scripts when I change to edit mode

Not sure if this is what you are looking for (and maybe there is a way to do this without scripting).

This add-on will let you activate edit mode (with face select) by pressing ctrl + shift + Q in 3d viewport (see comment in code to change hotkey).

I have modified the Operator Simple template (Text Editor, Templates->Python):

import bpy

bl_info = {
    "name": "Set Edit Mode",
    "description": "Set edit mode with face selection",
    "category": "Object",
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
}

def main(context):
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(use_extend=False, use_expand=False, type='FACE')

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.simple_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Object Operator"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        o = context.active_object
        return o is not None  and o.type == 'MESH' and \
            context.mode != 'EDIT_MESH'

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

keymap = None

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(SimpleOperator)
    c = bpy.context.window_manager.keyconfigs.addon
    if(c):
        m = c.keymaps.new(name='3D View', space_type='VIEW_3D')
        # Hotkey - ctrl + shift + Q
        i = m.keymap_items.new("object.simple_operator", 'Q', 'PRESS', \
            shift = True, ctrl = True)
        keymap = (m, i)

def unregister():
    if(keymap != None):
        keymap[0].keymap_items.remove(keymap[1])

    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SimpleOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Color ramp with displacement node problem

When you are shifting the color ramp tabs like you do in the 2nd picture, what you are doing is telling blender to make most of the texture either black or white with only a little bit of greys in the middle. Only the colors that are mid-grey will remain grey, every other color will become either black or white.

The problem with this in this case is that, for displacement, blender interprets black as the very low and white as the very top. Lots of black means lots of low aid lots of white means lots of peaks with very little in between. If what you want is to make the peaks less high, what you want to do instead is make the whites less white. Change the white tab on your color ramp to a grey and the peaks will be lower. The darker the grey, the lower the peaks.

light grey peaks:

mid grey peaks:

dark grey peaks:


Rendering a stereoscopic image in Blender 2.77

OK, after some fumbling around I found a workable, if a bit hacky, solution for this.

The main issue here is that Blender's compositor, according to this question,  was designed assuming all frames and image are the same sizes, and thus wasn't really made for handling different sized renders or composing images of random dimensions.

Anyway it's a bit of a involved process that will rely on a three scene system Scene A, Scene B and scene Size

Create you scene Scene A regularly (set up your render objects, meshes, lights, etc)
Make sure you add all objects to a certain group with Ctrl + G (that we shall call for the sake of example Group) including lights but excluding your camera objects
Make sure this group's center is at the scene 0,0,0 coordinate
Create your camera object wherever desired but do not add it to the group
Set up your render size and render preferences all as desired
Now add a new scene Scene B to your blend file using the option Copy Settings

In the new scene add a new group instance of the previously created Group
Make sure this group instance center is also at the scene $0,0,0$ coordinate
Go back to Scene A select your camera object and link it to Scene B by pressing Ctrl + L > Make Links > Object to Scene > Scene B
Go back to Scene B and select the linked camera and make it's object unique by pressing U > Object. This will keep the camera settings linked and in sync with the previous one, but allow you to move them independently.
Now Place this camera as many units to the side as desired. If you want them both centered, you may want to consider moving one $X$ units in one direction in Scene A and the other one $-X$ units in the opposite direction in Scene B. If they are somehow rotated in global coordinates you may double press X > X to move them in local $X$ axis.

Your scene should now be setup, now you need to setup the rendering system to automate image assembly.

Add a third empty scene called Size using the New option from the menu. This scene will only exist as a hack to setup an image size. Disable everything in the render layers so it will render instantly. The only important thing to do here is to make sure you setup render size double the width of the previous Scene A and Scene B.

Say if scene A and B have both a rendering size of 800 x 600 (and this must be kept in sync manually) scene Size must have a rendering size of exactly 1600 x 600 so images can be correctly combined side by side.

Add a camera to the scene Size (anywhere is fine, it won't be used much anyway) and set it as active.

Now you must specifically set up compositing in scene Size and configure your compositing nodes as shown bellow so Blender will automatically fetch the renders from the other scenes and compose them into one large stereoscopic image.

You must always render from scene Size from now on to obtain your stereoscopic images automatically, and you will probably have to update each scene's render manually from the little rendering buttons in the nodes themselves (instead of just pressing F12) to render from other scenes, otherwise Blender will probably render them in the incorrect size because it was never meant to render this way.