Alright, it turned out since i had two materials it was seperating them by "texture sets" which made part of my UV's disapear. So instead i deleted both my materials, added a new one, and baked.


Seperate objects by loose parts automatically in python

Ok. I've search quite a while now. But just after posting this I stumpled on the answer sigh. If any one else is interested:

Enter edit mode
press "a" to select all vertices
press "p" to separate by loose parts


How to make objects aligned according to a path or bitmap?

This can be done with a particle system where density is influenced by the image as a texture :

create a plane and UV-unwrap it.
add a particle system to this plane :

in the texture tab change the influence from time to Density :

the result :


Hide part of one object's mesh while manipulating another object

Select the vertices you want to see:

Assign them to a vertex group:

Add a Mask modifier to the object, using the vertex group:

When you quit to the Object Mode, or if you enable the modifier's visibility in Edit Mode , you should see the difference:


LMB click on the first property, drag your cursor down to the last one and you can enter one value for all of them.


Sun Lamp doesn't show when background lighting is used

Your plane is casting a shadow. moving the sun lamp will not help since unlike point, the sun lamp casts global lighting. To fix this, move your sun into the same layer as the water and select This Layer Only


You are doing right man! Don't worry i had the same problem.

FIRST Smooth your low poly (LAYER1)

SECOND UNWRAP and BAKE like you did before, the high poly onto the low poly
mesh.

END


How to unhide multiple objects in the outliner?

Yes it is possible
Just select all of them and hit alt+H on the keyboard in 3d view port


The file I made in Linux Mint 19.3 won't open correctly in Linux Mint 20

The issue was with the graphics card. I installed Pop! with built in Nvidia drivers and everything works perfectly now, GPU rendering included.


What are the benefits of the different cylinder caps?

I like the topology clean whether it's game model or not - so here are all the caps you will ever need:

If you have more sides, you can downscale these caps into them - the corresponding sub-cap topologies are highlighted (4-side cap, 6-side cap, 8-side cap):

With this you can make very clean any size cap with grid-like topology (which is very good).

If the number of sides is too big, the marked quads on next example will be a problem. This is how to setup loops in such topology to keep it again mostly grid and fix the problem:

Not only for subdivision topologies it's always good to inset the cap like so (its good for smooth shading also, thus for normal-maps etc.):

I don't like the square approach for triangles, I would prefer the vertex-to-vertex quad approach if I had. Long thin quads are bad also but still better than triangles.

Creating a triangle fan could be only pardoned in mobile game models or when flat shaded. Long thin triangles and a vertex with more than 5 edges are both the worst from topology and shading standpoint.


An fcurve is made up of splines connecting key frame points.  FCurve.keyframe_points  a set of points (x, y) analogous to (frame, value).

import bpy
context = bpy.context
# use action on active object

obj = context.object
action = obj.animation_data.action

# location fcurves
fcurves = [fc for fc in action.fcurves if fc.data_path == "location"]

# set value of all fcurves to value at frame
edit_frame = 1
edit_value = (10.0, 0.0, -1.0)

for fc in fcurves:
    axis = fc.array_index
    # remove keyframe points already at edit_frame
    [fc.keyframe_points.remove(p) for p in fc.keyframe_points
           if abs(p.co.x - edit_frame) < 0.0001]
    # insert a keyframe
    fc.keyframe_points.insert(edit_frame, edit_value[axis])

Note this wont work for baked fcurves, which have sampled points.  The value of fcurve.evaluate(frame) will evaluate curve after applying any fcurve modifiers.


Motion track markers go red and stop tracking

The tracking process stops when blender cannot accurately track an element. In other words: tracking fails when the tracked element cannot be found accurately within the search box area.

This can be because the element has moved too much and is outside the search area, or because is blurred, deformed, occluded or too close to the edge of the frame. The tracking process also stops when it has reached the last frame defined for the scene (or the first one if tracking backwards).

What are the blue and red lines?

When you track there is a path created showing the motion of the tracked element across the frame.

Red indicates motion on the previous frames, blue is for the path on future frames.

If you track forwards you will see a red track being created. If you track backwards you will create a blue path.

When you play back you can see both.

What can you do when the tracking stops?

Go back one frame (or where the tracking stopped) Change some settings and re-start the tracking process.

If the tracked object is growing in size or has moved beyond the search area make the search box larger.

(To view the search box enable the Search Marker Display or preass Alt+S)

Change the motion model. Usually changing from Loc to LocRotScale or perspective works well.

For tracked features that change in shape because of the perspective or because they change size, you might want to change the match setting from keyframe (where the tracker uses the original shape as reference to find the matching features) to Previous Frame (where it will try to match the features to those in the previous frame only)


How can I change colors of grease pencil strokes drawn in 'vertex color' paint mode?

Change from Draw mode to Vertex Paint mode (top-left of the screen) and you'll be able to change the strokes colour.
But you won't be able to just change the colour of all strokes at once, like when using a material then editing it. You'll have to manually re-paint over each stroke with the new colour.


How to disable loop playback of animation?

Currently up to version 2.74 there is no option to disable looping playback.
There is a solution with a script from CoDEmanX:

import bpy

def stop_playback(scene):
    if scene.frame_current == scene.frame_end:
        bpy.ops.screen.animation_cancel(restore_frame=False)

# or restore frames:
def stop_playback_restore(scene):
    if scene.frame_current == scene.frame_end + 1:
        bpy.ops.screen.animation_cancel(restore_frame=True)

# add one of these functions to frame_change_pre handler:
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(stop_playback)


Blender 2.77 cycles. Smoke generation stops working when I click on flow

For smoke to work you need at least two things:

A Smoke Flow Object, the source where the smoke is generated from.

A Smoke Domain that contains the smoke simulation.

When you select an object and apply Quick smoke, a new object appears. That "newly created object" is the smoke domain.

If you convert the smoke domain to flow, the smoke simulation will not work. To change the flow settings select the original object.


Yes, add a force field of type Force. Put it to the center in order to create a spherical world having its own gravitational pull. Use shape "Plane" to have a both sided flat world. As the manual says:

Shape The field is either a Point, with omni-directional influence, or a Plane, constant in the XY-plane, changes only in Z direction.
Strength The strength of the field effect. This can be positive or negative to change the direction that the force operates in. A force field’s strength is scaled with the force object’s scale, allowing you to scale up and down scene, keeping the same effects.


Is it possible to divide text object horizontally, while retaining edit ability?

Sure but you would have to convert it into another form.
If you Convert > Mesh then you cannot edit the text.
If you use the scene output then it becomes an image that you can modify in the compositor (or in the VSE but the tools are not as complete)

Set up a camera to look at the text, I have used a shadeless material. Remember to set scene property to render alpha not sky.

Add scene node to compositor (use another scene if you like). Then split the same input into 2 with a crop node. Move them separately with a Translate node.


Scale the Skin Modifier on a Specific Axis

Hiserod in the comments was able to help me
My issue is that I was pressing ctrl+a+x all at the same time, not pressing ctrl+a and then pressing x/y/z separately from that.


Geometry-based material without UV or vertex paint

You are asking for an approach which avoids manually unwrapping/vertex painting, maybe the end result is more important than how you get there. For this spherical shape trigonometry offers a solution.

Nodes Approach

This approach uses the spherical property of the object. There's a relationship between the point's normal and it's normalized position: when the point normal faces outward it's closer to the normalized position of that point.

Replacing the Diffuse shader Node with a Translucent shader in this .blend also gives interesting results.


If you mean something like this ... Knife Project should be enough ... place HoneyComb over Custom Shape, select Custom shape as second switch to edit mode and search for knife Project

Outline of Custom shape is postpro.


Cycle render not rendering mist from Blender Render

Unfortunately, transfering things such as materials, lights, and mist effects between blender and cycles is quite difficult if not impossible. I would recommend deciding what renderer your going to use BEFORE setting up materials/lighting etcetera. Be aware that using Cycles Render and Blender Internal are totally different processes and calculate the final image in completely different ways. Generally, if you're looking to make toon or other non-realistic renders, use Blender Internal. If your goal is to make realistic looking renders, use Cycles. Hope this helps!


You are in Wireframe mode. change shading mode to Solid, upper right hand corner of 3D window:

.............and welcome to the forums :)


Use Extrude Manifold tool (instead Extrude) just select front face and move forward with Snap to Vertex ...

... than move it up.

Since faces around becomes non-plannar and internally a triangulation happens in unexpected direction it is better to search for Quads to Triangles operator (that does tris in shorter distance) ...

... or you can use Knife tool to triangulate manually by longer edge.


Real time mirroring of a selection of objects?

Take all the objects that you want mirrored and add them to a Group. (Select them and use Ctrl-g).

Then create a single empty somewhere on the mirror axis, and scale its x or y axis by -1 (I edited the scale value in the properties but s x -1 would also work.  Now in the Properties > Object panel in the Duplication section change its duplication from None to Group and select the group you created in the first step.  There should be copies of all the objects mirrored along the axis that was scaled by -1.

When you create more objects that need to be part of the mirror group you can go into the Properties > Object panel and look for the Groups section and use the Add to Group button to add it to the dupligroup.


How can I parent a mesh to a vertex group?

Add a Surface Deform modifier to the eye lashes object. Then set the modifier target to the head. Click the 'Bind' button.

Now any shapekeys or armatures that affect verts in the head mesh, will also affect the eyebrow mesh.

If you make any edits to the amount of vertices in either mesh, you need to re-bind in the modifier.

It should be noted that the modifier doesn't use vertex groups like you asked for specifically. Instead, it maps the vertices of its parent mesh, to the closes points of the target mesh. Those points may not exactly align with vertices.
However, in your specific use case it seems like the eyelash mesh, and the eye lid mesh match almost exactly. So, this shouldn't cause any noticeable render issues.


How to move points proportionally to keep edge flow good?

Consider

scaling 3 vertices first which preserves proportion with the correct mode of scale (center point)
then translating by grabbing.


How to install the Avid codec for use in Blender

The later era Avid format is DNxHD, with the more recent DNxHR.

FFMPEG is capable of decoding DNxHD. If using proper libraries, Blender would import DNxHD as an 8 bit per channel image, likely sub-optimal. Blender relies on swscale from FFMPEG to convert the (typically) YCbCr planes to RGB, at 8 bits per channel.

DNxHD is not a reliable format for visual effects, nor is any codec for that matter.


Unlinking particle system datablocks from python

Copy the particle system settings

Here is a simple test script on what I believe you want to achieve.  Select object with at least one particle system.  Copies the context object, copies the settings of particle system 0, changes the start frame on copy to 22 and sets this to particle system 0 on copy.

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
ob = context.object
# copy object
obcopy = ob.copy()
# copy particle settings
ps = ob.particle_systems[0].settings.copy()
ps.frame_start = 22
# new settings on copy
obcopy.particle_systems[0].settings = ps
# link to scene
scene.objects.link(obcopy)


It's bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_make_links. For demonstration purposes I've added a 'Frame Rate' menu to 'Make Links' menu via append() method.

Frame Rate menu 'appended'

bl_info = {"name": "My Test Addon", "category": "Object"}

import bpy

class CustomFrameRateMenu(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_label = "Frame Rate"
    bl_idname = "RENDER_MT_framerate_menu"

    def draw(self, context):
        scene = context.scene
        layout = self.layout

        #frame rate properties
        layout.prop(scene.render, "fps_base", text="FPS Base")
        layout.prop(scene.render, "fps", text="FPS")
        layout.menu("RENDER_MT_framerate_presets", text="Presets", icon="SCENE")

def draw_frame_rate_menu(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    layout.menu(CustomFrameRateMenu.bl_idname)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

    # lets add the menu to Make Links menu
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_make_links.append(draw_frame_rate_menu)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

    # remove custom menu from Make Links menu
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_make_links.remove(draw_frame_rate_menu)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Further information you can find here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/34490/3710


Adding multiple shape keys with python and bmesh while creating a mesh

Alternative Route

Not using bmesh verts shape layers.
Created verts with a list comprehension, then reiterated over verts
using the vertex index to index which shapekey layer data.
Pre-made the 10 shapekeys.  Each key is a data layer on the verts that
holds the shapekey location.  The default if not set is the

Test script.

import bpy
import bmesh
from math import ceil
from bpy import context
N = 20 # total number of verts
g = 10 # verts per sk

scene = context.scene
me = bpy.data.meshes.new("Squircle")
obj = bpy.data.objects.new("Squircle", me)

bm = bmesh.new()
verts = [bm.verts.new((i, 0, 1)) for i in range(N)]
sk = obj.shape_key_add("Basis")
# make shapekeys
sks = [obj.shape_key_add("SK_%02d" % i) for i in range(g)]

bm.to_mesh(me)

for v in bm.verts:
    sks[v.index % g].data[v.index].co = (0, v.index, 2)
scene.objects.link(obj)


Ugh, I figured it out, didn't realize that 'active' was different than 'selected' in the context of edit mode.

Here's the updated script:

import bpy
import random as random
import time

dup = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]

list = []

for i in range(0,4):
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    dup.select_set(True)

    bpy.ops.object.duplicate()

    obj1 = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]

    obj1.location[0] = i*4
    obj1.location[1] = 0
    obj1.location[2] = 0

    list.append(obj1)

for obj in list:
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj # Set active object
    obj.select_set(True)

    bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
    obj.vertex_groups.active = obj.vertex_groups[0]
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all( action = 'DESELECT' )
    bpy.ops.object.vertex_group_select()
    bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(0, 0, 4.32424), orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(False, False, True), mirror=True, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)
    obj.vertex_groups.active = None
    bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()


Convert Blender Render materials to Cycles

Got it! Here is my result from camera view showing only the hole:

The first thing I did was flip all normals by keying Tab to enter Edit Mode, T to toggle open/close the Toolshelf, going to Toolshelf > Shading/UVs tab > Shading dropdown and clicking Flip Normals. This ensures that the textures display properly on the inside of the tube.

Second and lastly, I modified your node setup to this:

For the Image Textures, red_rock is still on top and brown_dirty on the bottom. I did not change how the color is integrated, but they now have bump mapping for each that is averaged by a Converter > Vector Math node. The additional Separate XYZ and other top nodes add the Ambient Occlusion shadows. Separate XYZ makes the darkness align to the local Z-Axis. The Gradient Texture mostly serves to convert the z vector to a Fac: value for the ColorRamp, which decides how much black and color there is. The MixRGB's bottom color input actually decides what color appears in the tube.

Here is the .blend file:


A decent IDE / code-editor addon for blender

There is a paid add-on on Blender Market: Link, but the add-on is also available for free from GitHub here: https://github.com/JacquesLucke/code_autocomplete. You would just need to use the green "Clone or Download" button and choose to download it as a .zip. Note that Jacques Lucke says here:

  You can buy it in the BlenderMarket but it is also freely available on github.
  Buying the addon entitles you to better support when you have questions and helps to ensure that I can continue working on my addons!

And another free one: Link

Eclipse related: Link


How do you create parallel spirals like a rollar coaster track?

So, to do what you want to do, instead of duplicating the spiral, why aren't you simply using one unique spiral and give it a bevel object made of several circles (or whatever shape you need to create your tracks)? Don't forget to choose Twisting > Z-Up so that the tracks don't tilt along the curve. If needed, tilt the spiral curve's vertices. It also could be done with an object made of several meshes, following the curve with an Array and a Curve modifier.


How to center the view on the "Time Cursor" in the Video Sequence Editor?

You're looking for "Jump to the next marker" function in the Marker menu (of any animation Editor). You can assign a shortcut to it by right clicking on it.

Once the Current frame (the green line) is on the desired marker, you can use Numpad 0 to center the view on it.


Save your materials into a normal blend file.

A blend file is a database and you can use only selected parts (data-blocks) from it. This is done using linking and appending. See this: What is the differance between Linking and Appending an external blend?

This is also possible in python: How to Link/Append a data-block using the Python API?


"Apply Scalings" parameter missing in export_scene.fbx?

I'm not sure because I'm pretty new to blender scripting but it appears to me that dropdown in question is not selecting parameters for the fbx export function, it's just applying a transformation to the objects that it's exporting using the regular mechanism for applying a transformation. That is: it's scaling by a factor, applying the transformation, running the fbx export, then scaling by the inverse factor to undo the first scaling, then applying the transformation again. So in my script, I'm basically doing the same thing.
What I'm doing that seems to be working for me is scaling by some constant factor (100 in my case):
obj.scale = (100, 100, 100)

Then applying the scaling:
bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=False, scale=True, properties=False)

Then exporting with the global_scale set to the inverse of my scaling factor:
bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(
    filepath=fname + ".fbx",
    use_selection=True,
    axis_forward='-Z',
    axis_up='Y',
    global_scale=0.01,
    apply_unit_scale=True)

and finally setting and applying the opposite scaling factor after running the export:
obj.scale = (0.01, 0.01, 0.01)
bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=False, scale=True, properties=False)

this may be a very whacky and roundabout way of doing it, but it seems to be working for me and sets my object back to how it was before I ran my script.


All white and untexturable part of my mesh

It's because these parts of the mesh don't have the Material assigned to them for some reason. Select these parts in Edit mode, then select the Material in Material slots and click Assign.


I found a workflow for this task in Blender 2.79 that does not involve any snapping or creating empties:

Make sure your "Transformation Orientation" is set to "Normal" (usually on the toolbar just below the 3D view, next to the translate/rotate/scale buttons). Also make sure your "Pivot Center" (the selector just to the left of these same buttons) is set to "Active Element."
In 3D view object mode, select the object you want to mirror.
Assuming you want to end up with the original and the mirrored copy, as shown in the question's screenshots, duplicate the object (e.g., Shift-D then return). You can skip this step to just flip the object through a face, not leaving behind the original.
With the duplicated object still selected, enter Mesh Mode (Tab).
Select the face through which you want to mirror.
Now we want to select that whole mesh, leaving that face as the active face. Hitting "A" twice should accomplish this.
Now it is time to mirror. We need to mirror in the local z-axis, set by the normal orientation of the active face. What works for me is to hit "Control-M" for mirror, followed by Space (don't know why that's needed). Then in the panel to the left, a bunch of Mirror options come up, and I click on Z.
Note that the newly mirrored copy will have its normals pointing in the opposite directions of the original. If you want them pointing in the same directions, now is a good point at which to flip them. (For projects in which I am doing a lot of reflecting through faces, I bind the "Flip Normals" Mesh action to a key for this.)

That's it, you should now have your mesh reflected through the selected face; you can Tab back to object mode and repeat the process if you want to reflect again through another face.


How to check if an object has a custom property with python?

There are two types of custom properties:

Properties global to a type, bpy.props.* for e.g. bpy.types.Object
(ob.char = "foobar")
ID properties local to a type instance
(ob["char"] = "foobar")

To test for bpy.props properties / attributes:

hasattr(ob, "char")

Or get the attribute:

# note: throws AttributeError if not existing
getattr(ob, "char")

# don't throw exception but return default (None) value if not existing
getattr(ob, "char", None)

To test for a certain ID property, use:

bpy.data.objects['Object'].get('char') is not None

get() returns the value of the custom property assigned to the given key (the property name), or None if it couldn't find the key. You can make it return anything in case the key doesn't exist, like a string:

Object.get('char', default="Not found.")


Ok, it seems that if a mask modifier is used with a subdivision surface modifier, the render and the viewport subdivisions have to be the same. I think the problem it's related to the cache of the baked simulation.

When I do that, the object renders correctly.


You can use the following. All is commented below:
import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

# Get the modifier
bevel = obj.modifiers["Bevel"]

# Get custom points
points = bevel.custom_profile.points

# Keep only 2
while len(points) > 2:
    points.remove(points[1]) #Can't remove at 0 (don't know why)

# Reset locations
points[0].location = (1,0)
points[1].location = (0,1)

# Update the profile
bevel.custom_profile.update()

Note: the window won't update until you move the cursor over it.


It never worked like this in Blender 2.8+ (using PGUp/PgDn to adjust loops).
But you can use the pop-up menu, it gives you better control.


Choose the tab at the top of the screen that says "Animation". This will put a narrow "Timeline" panel at the bottom. Change the Timeline panel to "Dope Sheet"
The "Dope Sheet" panel has another drop-down menu near the panel-changing menu you just accessed. From this drop-down menu, change it from "Dope Sheet" (or whatever it may be) to "Action Editor".
This next step assumes your model is rigged to its intended armature. Select that armature and press CTRL + TAB. This will put you in "Pose" mode and the armature will turn a light blue color. In the top-middle of the Action Editor panel, there is a button that says "+    New". Click that to create a new action. You can also rename it.
Now, This is important, click that little icon near that button that looks like a gray shield. The program does not indicate this (and they should have, sine at least 2.79) but this is the button that saves your animations. I am telling you to press it now because if you don't, you will start posing your character, save your scene, exit the program, and be startled to find it's gone when you return. You don't have to save the animation immediately, but you have to before you change Actions or close the program, so be in the habit of doing it immediately.


The reason I asked you to remove the solidify modifier was to be sure of what was causing the issue, you can add it in the settings and bake it, but when you add solidify modifier do not increase the thickness to a high amount, I have tested it and it produces the same result if I add it before or after the cloth attribute is added in physics... a thickness of 0.1 to 0.2 should do,..... the plane you used to create your cloth is thin so increase it a little bit in z axis to accommodate some thickness because solidify adds some amount of thickness.


Need some help baking, "No active image found in material"

For baking in cycles each material slot requires image texture in the node setup, and it looks like even if the material slot is empty. To fix the error, remove the empty material slot from the object.


Your edge theory is right. The face the corner is in is something called an N-gon. It is usually discouraged due to several problems with its internal handling.

When you create that edge using F, the created edge does not separate the face, so the N-gon stays. In order to actually cut the face, use the Knife Tool K in Edit Mode. Select one of the vertices. You will see there is now a square and a purple line. Now click on the other vertex and hit Enter. Now, the N-gon is separated.

The N-gon gets split into more N-gons, so you might want to use the Knife Tool more to separate it into quads and triangles (which is good topology).

Your corner is now fixed.

Documentation on Knife Tool: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/editing/subdividing/knife.html


FBX export places rotation on wrong axis

sikand

I don't know, if fbx ASCII changed from blender vers. 2.75 to 2.77 or 2.78, but it is not wrong to update.

Maybe you can repeat a test again with only the z-rotation:

I did the test this way:

New file, n-key to follow the rotation data

Before you rotate the cube, you have to decide, whether you want to rotate the cube with xyz-Euler-angles or quaternions. It will break the animation, if this setting is changed afterwards.
(I think the reason is, that keyframe interpolation is calculated, when the second keyframe in inserted and can't be done, when the rotation mode is changed afterwards)

So lets choose xyz-Euler-angles instead of quaternion wxyz for this test (the result should be the same: keyframes change at Channel: "R" and Channel: "Y"),
in object mode choose i-key and in keyframe-menu choose rotation (rotation data become yellow and a yellow keyframe is inserted at keyframe 0 in the keyframe editor),
go to another keyframe - 12 - for example, r-key followed by z-key, rotate the cube with a mouse-movement (z-axis rotation data should change),
hit i-key again and choose rotation in keyframe menu. moving the green mark in keyframe editor
should rotate the cube now, a green color indicates the "linear interpolated states" between the keyframes (maybe you can control it in the "dope sheet editor").

That the animation becomes broken, when the rotation mode is changed afterwards can be tested:
When now quaternions-wxyz is selected, moving the green mark does not move the cube anymore and no interpolated keyframes are exported to the ASCII fbx-file.
So go back to xyz-Euler-angles.

Now Export to fbx ASCII 6.1 with -z forward and y up, only choose "armat" and (shift) "mesh", animation, all actions and default take selected, export..
Compare files with WinMerge or notepad++

Do you have any info about the "default Lcl Rotation" or the 4x4 posenode matrix ?

greetings testuser

update:
Rotation with bones:

New file, delete the cube, if necessary center 3d cursor with "shift C" and add a single bone, the bone can be handled as an object and be rotated in object mode, (what one usually won't do, when a mesh is rigged - as far as i understand).

In edit mode the head (at the bottom), the body and the tail (on top) can be selected. Selecting the tail and rotating over x axis changes the tails y and z position.
Global and local transform orientation is z-up. In "object data" switching between rest position and pose position makes no difference. Thus with the rotation in edit mode
the rest position is changed, not the pose position. The corresponding changes in the fbx file can be found at "Lcl Rotation" (= default rotation, these values are also used as default values of the default take).

In pose mode you can see, that a bone has an own additional local coordinate system with the green y-axis always aligned to the bones body (change transform orientation to local in pose mode).
Perhaps this may be the reason for your bizarre rotation results ?

The global z-rotation is a bones local y-rotation (if the bone is aligned to blenders z-axis) and this is exported to x-rotation-data, when export-options are "-z forward and y-up"

When rotating in pose mode, you create a difference between rest and pose position (with ctrl A and "apply pose as rest pose" the pose can be converted to default rest pose again).

What i think is, that this local system of the bone is used for rotation, if a model is imported for example into a game engine like unity or a "OpenGL code project". Manually changing one of the values of a keyframe inside the fbx file (rotation channel
of a bone) rotates the bone over the bones local axes. When a bone (together with the mesh) in pose mode is animated and rotated inside blender, this rotation uses the global coordinate system instead and blender calculates
the x,y and z-values for the bones local coordinate system. These values are displayed under transform-rotation in pose mode and are calculated for each keyframe, when blender does the keyframe interpolation.

If you want to rotate a bone for yourself, it may be necessary to do this calculation for your own - the question is how, because the angle of the bone may be relevant..


How to make character that can be dissolved

I think I have figured it out. Just separate the model to make objects of body parts. Rigging still works.


The domain is necessary for the sim to work, but if you want to fill a shape with fluid make it an obstacle, put the "tap" inside it and, to avoid overspill, make mesh near the top an outflow.


How do I keep the two objects from penetrating each other in Blender?

The problem is that the surface Normals are facing inwards and this is breaking the collision.
To resolve this, select each object and go into Edit mode (Tab), select all (A) and select Mesh/Normals/Recalculate Outside. This should re-calculate the normals so that they are consistent with a solid object. Once you have done this for both objects, re-run the simulation and the collision should now be working correctly.
Bad normals

Good normals


I'm stuck. Help (I don't know what happened)

Just switch tabs. You guys should be good.


Check out Zipf's law (vsauce youtube video). So functionality is not linearly proportional to code complexity (software size).

Usually 80% functionality takes 20% time to code, but solving all the edge cases, weird interactions, bugs, etc. takes the 80% of time and code.

You can code a nice simple working example, but if you'd like to make it multithreaded, you'd need to link a huge library to the program and make your code more complex. And on a weak laptop you might not even see that big of a change in functionality.

If you'd like to make your program more robust, for example make sure bevel works correctly in all situations, or boolean, this can complicate the code several times more than was the complexity of the original one. It just does not work proportionally.


Is it possible to make this look more magical and see through?

You can do this by running your image through an Emission shader and then mixing That with a Transparent shader, using the image alpha as a mix factor. Then, make sure to enable "bloom" to make it glow.


Set origin to Geometry for Domain object.
Flow geometry you can hide from render in Outliner (Camera icon) and for viewport you can change Object Properties > Viewport Display > Display as Bound or Wire type, like that it is not hidden but is represented by different type.


Did you try checking either strand render or adaptive render?  That could be it.  It could also be that you don't actually have any geometry to the hair, just lines, and that you need to add a: curve - circle into the mesh, then use that as the object for the hair.


Did you save the file after making your changes?

Try reloading the recently saved file.
File >> Revert

This fixes issues like this for me most of the time.


How to pass variable (tuple) to operator invoke

I changed your code snippet a bit and made some comment. I hope that solves your problem.

import bpy

class MyOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Operate"""
    bl_idname = "object.myoperator"
    bl_label = "Operate"

    # make the variable a property of the operator
    myvar = bpy.props.StringProperty()
    filepath = bpy.props.StringProperty(subtype="FILE_PATH")

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        context.window_manager.fileselect_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def execute(self, context):
        print(self.myvar)

        # I added this here because otherwise it will through an exception at the end
        return {"FINISHED"}

# this is how you invoke the operator, but you have to register it before
bpy.ops.object.myoperator("INVOKE_DEFAULT", myvar = "Hello World")

Unfortunally you can't do the same thing with tuples (except you have numbers)...
Here is some more information on how to define properties: https://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_76_2/bpy.props.html

About tuples as parameters:

When the tuple only consists of numbers or booleans, the tuple always has the same length <= 32, you can use either a BoolVectorProperty, IntVectorProperty or FloatVectorProperty.

A more generic solution would be to use the CollectionProperty.
Therefor you first have to make a property group that contains the structure of the individual elements in the collection.
In your case you only have a tuple with multiple numbers, so the PropertyGroup would look like so:

import bpy
from bpy.props import *

class SingleNumberProperty(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    value = FloatProperty()

In your operator you can define the collection property that uses this type.

class MyOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "my_operator.my_operator"
    bl_label = "My Operator"

    numbers_collection= CollectionProperty(type = SingleNumberProperty)

In the execute function you can unpack this collection in the following way:

def execute(self, context):
    my_numbers = []
    for item in self.numbers_collection:
        my_numbers.append(item.value)
    return {"FINISHED"}

The part that was the most difficult to find out is how to pass the tuple as collection. Basicly you have to create a list of dictionaries. Each of these dictionaries need to have a "name" key. In addition to that they can contain the data you want to set on the properties ("value" in this case).

The list of dicts can look like so:

[ {"name" : "", "value" : 12},
  {"name" : "", "value" : 15},
  {"name" : "", "value" : 20} ]

So lets say you have a list of numbers and want to transform it to this data structure:

numbers = [12, 15, 20]

# long way
packed_numbers = []
for number in numbers:
    packed_numbers.append({"name" : "", "value" : number})

# more pythonic way
packed_numbers = [{"name" : "", "value" : number} for number in numbers]

The final step is to call the operator and pass these packed numbers as parameter to the collection property:

bpy.ops.my_operator.my_operator(numbers_collection = packed_numbers)


What are the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of obtaining Blender?

Windows Installers

These are useful if you want to have a version of Blender installed system-wide, accessible easily to all users. These will probably install start menu or other shortcuts and be neither installable nor removable by non-administrator users. Blender appears to be available in .msi packages. Although I don't know much about how that type of package is used, 50 seconds of reading the Wikipedia .msi article makes me think that it is sort of like Windows' own native package manager but without repositories. Blender is also available as a self-installing executable, which to an end user should be functionally equivalent to the .msi packages.

Portable pre-compiled archives (Linux and Windows)

These are very useful if you want to use multiple versions of Blender without installing any or all of them. These archives are portable and can be moved between computers on the likes of removable storage without interfering with possible existing versions of Blender. Administrative access to the system should not be required to use these.

OS X

OS X handles applications quite a bit differently from other systems. Many applications, including Blender, are directories suffixed with .app containing a directory tree with the program's executables along with any additional libraries or resources that are not shared with other applications. Usually these bundles are kept in /Applications, but they can be renamed, moved, and used anywhere much like the archives mentioned above.

Package Managers (Unix-like systems)

Many Linux distributions have pre-compiled binary packages of Blender that are distributed through repositories and installed with the distribution's package management system. They have the advantage of being automatically upgradable, although the usefulness of that depends on how quickly a particular distribution updates their Blender package and/or how up-to-date of a version of Blender you require. Like with Windows, this is a good way to make one version of Blender available to all users of a system. Gentoo Linux and the BSDs have similar systems with automatic upgrading and such, but the main difference is that they compile applications "on demand" when they're installed rather than using precompiled packages. Configured properly, this has the obscure benefit of compiling Blender with optimizations specific to your CPU, which might improve performance a bit.

Steam

Steam? I literally had to go to their website to have any idea what it was, so take this with some salt. As far as I can tell, it's a cross-platform software distribution system with a focus on games. I assume that Steam shares the advantage of automatic updating with package managers. If you use Steam for other software, I can see that it would perhaps be convenient to use Blender from it as well, but since there are so many other ways to install Blender, I can't imagine using Steam just for that purpose.


If you tried to rotate the coordinates of object's texture space and box mapping stopped working, that's because of how the box mapping works. It uses normals and when you rotate the object's texture space, the normals remain in the same orientation. To solve that you need to do box mapping with nodes instead of the function that comes with the Image node because it cannot take normal orientation into account when you rotate object's texture space. I have discussed this with someone on Blenderartists.org forums some time ago and came up with this to solve the issue:

You might want to put all those nodes into a group probably.
Here is the .blend file to play around:


Start with a default cube;

Add a Solidify and Bevel modifier;

Edit the cube, and add an edge loop;

Hit v, then enter;

Edit the Solidify thickness to a desired value;

Edit the cube, and add another loop cut, hit v, then enter;

Add in a bunch more, wherever you like;


Modeling rockers (Rocker rail's) for a chair

You can use proportional editing for the round ends and Simple Deform for the bent shape.

Use proportional editing with Sphere faloff for the ends.

Use Simple Deform modifier set to Bend for the bent shape


Vector Pass: Motion vectors for the vector blur node. The four components consist of 2D vectors giving the motion towards the next and previous frame position in pixel space. [ref: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/settings/scene/render_layers/passes.html ]

The VectorPass stores these 2 vectors using an RGBA only the node editor renders the socket as being a vector. The R+G channels are used to store the motion towards the previous frame. and the B+A channels are used to store the motion towards the next frame.

Your goal of influencing this in a material is possible by using a Transparency Shader and Emision Shader and mix those together.


I found out why myself. The long edge that starts from the corner (yellow line) isn't a sharp edge. When I changed its crease to 1, the corner filled up nicely ...


No. Previous versions are not compatible with 2.80. The only way to do this would be to export to some other format that supports all the features you need and then import to a previous version. In vast majority of cases you will run into problems when attempting this so this is not a very good idea. It's best to choose a version and stick with it from the start to the end of your project.


You can just use a Limit Distance constraint for that. Simply add the constraint in the Constraints properties and set the target to your other object. Set Distance to the distance you require and Clamp Region to 'On Surface'. This will constrain your object to remain on the surface of a sphere projected around the target object.


Installing Blender 2.78.1 - Cycles Disney Brdf

Tech Stuff first
As most Blender Branches, they are cross-platform and can be compiled for any supported operating system. Since support for compiling Blender is out of scope of BSE, I won't go into detail on how to do it. However, the documentation gives a very good starting point: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Building_Blender
Note that for adding the Disney Shader, you'll need to checkout a branch with GIT that actually contains the code. One such branch is the Experimental one.
Easy solution for quick evaluation on Windows
Some people actually go for the extra effort and provide self made Blender Builds on a dedicated website called GraphicAll. You can search for keywords there, Disney will give you this page as a result: http://graphicall.org/1192
Just download and unzip it to your hard drive (this is a Windows Build), and run blender.exe from that folder directly. You'll find the Disney Shader in the Add section of the node editor, together with the Diffuse, Glossy, Anisotropic,...


How to see through two cameras simultaneously?

Just unclick this button from both the windows. That will break the link. Press Ctrk+0 in 1 window


How to export hair as object and not getting huge file

Unfortunately all "tips" I can give you will lower the quality of your result, but it will make the file size smaller.
Here is what you can do:
under Emission:

lower Number
lower Segments


There are four main solutions of varying complexity... you may choose to do all three:

Put a lot of love into weight painting on both the leg and the sock so you don't get intersections on deformation.
Use a mesh deform modifier as part of your rig. If the leg and the sock are both deformed by the mesh deform modifier, there's less likelihood that you'll have intersections.
Use corrective shape keys... if the intersection happens reliably and predictably as the knee bends, you can make a shape key that fixes the intersection. You can then drive the influence of that shape key using the knee's rotation.
Put the sock and the leg on different render layers and make sure the sock layer is always over the leg layer. This may require some clever masking for the back of the, but it's doable.


Eyes follow me, but i don't want them to

Ohhh, that was clever!
I'm almost 99% sure it's just a trick of topology.
They eyes are sunken so they appear to rotate in the opposite direction as the observer (you!).
It's the exact same illusion as this mask:

The fact that your viewport has no or little shading reinforces the illusion.
Can you go into edit mode confirm that the eyes are sunken and when you make them flush with the face, the creepy effect stops?
If yes, then rest assured, your computer is NOT haunted.


Is there a way to choose a beginning and ending edge and auto select all the edges in between?

While this is not what this feature is intended for, on straight or simple meshes you can use Shortest Path from the Select menu with the two points selected or by selecting the starting point then selecting the end point while holding Ctrl. You can also incrementally add to your selection by holding Ctrl.


How do I produce a final rendered image using Cycles in Blender 2.8 in the Image Editor, as before?

This is still possible. You can configure it in Render > Display Mode > Image Editor


The water reflects the environment: The ocean looks blue on clear days and gray on cloudy ones.
Look for an HDRi that has clear sky in the area that is reflected by the water.
Or use a second HDRi that is used for reflections only.
Read:
How to use multiple HDRIs


I imported an armature from MakeHuman where the origin of the model was center of mass. I wanted the origin to be at the bottom of the feet, but couldn't find a simple answer. Turns out there is one.
In edit mode, I selected a vertex from each heel, then Right Click -> Snap Vertices -> Cursor to Selected to move the cursor where I wanted it. You'll have to figure out how to get the cursor where you want it on your model, but it will likely be similar.
From here, Blender 2.80 normally allows switching to Object Mode, then Right Click -> Set Origin -> Origin to 3D Cursor. With the armature, that option doesn't exist anywhere in the right-click context menu.
Instead, you have to (again from Object Mode), use the main menu up top. Select your armature, then click Object -> Set Origin -> Origin to 3D Cursor.


Thanks for the .blend file @DustyShinigami it really helped me answer the question.

To create a more dense smoke sim, you need to select the domain, then go to the node editor. There should be a Multiply node, ramp up the adjustable value. I set mine to 50 and got some good smoke. I also upped the Anistrop to 0.2.

I also recommend expanding the domain up and out as the simulation is hitting the sides and makes it look fake.

As for the waterfall, I recommend using a fluid sim if that is what you are trying to make. It is there for a reason, use it :D.

Rendering in open GL should work fine. It may be something to do with your save location so double check it. Also, make sure you have run through every frame first.

Your project looks good BTW. :P

Good luck with your project and I hope I helped,

BFB


You are probably displaying a zoomed-in render result. In the UV/Image Editor window, where your render is displayed, go to View > Zoom 1:1 (equivalent: Numpad 1). That should fix it.


The emission shader is not assigned to the mesh.

Enter edit mode, select the emitter plane, select the material and click on assign:


From Blender 2.79 onward the new modifier Surface deform makes this answer obsolete.

This code rigs simulated mesh so there is bone for every edge of mesh, such rig can control high-res version of cloth:

The code adds panel to 3dView > Toolbar > Rigify Mesh.
The mesh has to have rotation and scale applied.
The vertex count of mesh is recommended below 2000 (timed on i7 4GHz).

300 verts ~ 6s
560 verts ~ 46s
1k verts  ~ 8.2min
2k verts ~ over night

After profiling the code and going through forums the bottleneck is setting constraint properties. Specifically constraint['name'].target and constraint['name'].subtarget. The issue is that blender validates the constraints on every change to all other bones. This may be drastically speeduped with new dependency graph (hopefully). (Same as with duplicating large datasets of objects - before bmesh it took hours, now can be done in seconds.)
If the constaints will be no issue the rig can be improved so the bones rotate along edges nicer (this requires more bones and constraints).
The progress is now also printed in the console:

Known bugs were fixed.

The code:

import bpy
import time
import sys
from mathutils import Matrix, Vector

def new_bone(armature_ob, bone_name, head_loc, tail_vec, parent=None, deform=True, layer=0):
    '''Works only in edit mode'''
    new_bone = armature_ob.data.edit_bones.new(bone_name)
    new_bone.head = head_loc
    new_bone.tail = Matrix.Translation((0,0,0)) * Vector(tail_vec) + new_bone.head
    new_bone.parent = parent
    new_bone.use_deform = deform
    new_bone.layers = [i==layer for i in range(32)]
    armature_ob.data.layers[layer] = True
    return new_bone

def add_constraint(const_type, const_entity, target_obj, sub_target_name):
    '''Works only in pose mode'''
    constraint = const_entity.constraints.new(const_type)
    constraint.target = target_obj
    constraint.subtarget = sub_target_name
    return constraint

class RigifyMeshPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Rigify Mesh"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Rigify Mesh"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.operator("object.rigify_mesh", icon='OUTLINER_OB_ARMATURE')

class RigifyMesh(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.rigify_mesh"
    bl_label = "Rigify Mesh"
    bl_description = "Generates a Rig with bones for every edge of active mesh"

    @classmethod
    def poll(self, context):
        try:
            active = context.active_object
            return active and active.type == 'MESH'
        except (AttributeError, KeyError, TypeError):
            return False

    def execute(self, context):
        mesh_ob = context.active_object
        progress = ""
        start = time.clock()
        # Force object mode:
        if bpy.context.active_object.mode != 'OBJECT':
            bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
        # Generate vert groups for each vert:
        sys.stdout.write("------------------- RIGIFYING MESH -----------------\n")
        sys.stdout.write("Generating Vertex Groups (step 1/4): ")
        sys.stdout.flush()
        for ivert in [v.index for v in mesh_ob.data.vertices if str(v.index) not in mesh_ob.vertex_groups]:
            progress = "Vert %i of %i" % (ivert, len(mesh_ob.data.vertices)-1)
            sys.stdout.write(progress+chr(8)*len(progress))
            sys.stdout.flush()
            mesh_ob.vertex_groups.new(name=str(ivert))
            mesh_ob.vertex_groups[str(ivert)].add([ivert], 1.0, 'REPLACE')
        # Update mesh data
        mesh_ob.update_tag({'DATA'})
        sys.stdout.write("DONE IN "+str(round(time.clock()-start, 3))+"s"+" "*(len(progress)-9)+"\n")
        sys.stdout.flush()
        start = time.clock()
        # Get and Reset Armature
        sys.stdout.write("Cleaning up Armature     (step 2/4): ")
        sys.stdout.flush()
        if bpy.data.objects.get(mesh_ob.name+'_Rig') is not None:
            rig_ob = bpy.data.objects[mesh_ob.name+'_Rig']
            context.scene.objects.active = rig_ob
            # Clean constraints:
            bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE')
            for id, pbone in enumerate(rig_ob.pose.bones):
                for constraint in pbone.constraints:
                    progress = "cleaning %i of %i" % (id, len(mesh_ob.data.vertices)+3*len(mesh_ob.data.edges)-1)
                    sys.stdout.write(progress+chr(8)*len(progress))
                    sys.stdout.flush()
                    pbone.constraints.remove(constraint)
        else:
            bpy.ops.object.armature_add(location=mesh_ob.location)
            rig_ob = context.active_object
            rig_ob.name = mesh_ob.name + '_Rig'
        # Clean bones:
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
        for bone in rig_ob.data.edit_bones:
            rig_ob.data.edit_bones.remove(bone)
        sys.stdout.write("DONE IN "+str(round(time.clock()-start, 3))+"s"+" "*(len(progress)-9)+"\n")
        sys.stdout.flush()
        start = time.clock()
        # Add bones:
        sys.stdout.write("Generating Bones         (step 3/4): ")
        sys.stdout.flush()
        mesh_ob.data.calc_normals()
        for id, vert in enumerate(mesh_ob.data.vertices):
            progress = "Bone %i of %i" % (id, len(mesh_ob.data.vertices)+len(mesh_ob.data.edges)-2)
            sys.stdout.write(progress+chr(8)*len(progress))
            sys.stdout.flush()
            new_bone(rig_ob, "vert"+str(id), vert.co, vert.normal/4, None, False, 1)
        for id, edge in enumerate(mesh_ob.data.edges):
            progress = "Bone %i of %i" % (id+len(mesh_ob.data.vertices), len(mesh_ob.data.vertices)+len(mesh_ob.data.edges)-2)
            sys.stdout.write(progress+chr(8)*len(progress))
            sys.stdout.flush()
            v0 = mesh_ob.data.vertices[edge.vertices[0]]
            v1 = mesh_ob.data.vertices[edge.vertices[1]]
            new_bone(rig_ob, "edge"+str(id), v0.co, v1.co-v0.co, rig_ob.data.edit_bones[edge.vertices[0]])
        sys.stdout.write("DONE IN "+str(round(time.clock()-start, 3))+"s"+" "*(len(progress)-9)+"\n")
        sys.stdout.flush()
        start = time.clock()
        # Add bone constraints:
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE')
        pbones = rig_ob.pose.bones
        sys.stdout.write("Generating Constraints   (step 4/4): ")
        sys.stdout.flush()
        # Setup vertex bones constraints:
        for id, vert in enumerate(mesh_ob.data.vertices):
            progress = "Constraint %i of %i" % (id, len(mesh_ob.data.vertices)+3*len(mesh_ob.data.edges)-1)
            sys.stdout.write(progress+chr(8)*len(progress))
            sys.stdout.flush()
            child_of = add_constraint('CHILD_OF', pbones["vert"+str(id)], mesh_ob, str(id))
            context_py = context.copy()
            context_py["constraint"] = child_of
            rig_ob.data.bones.active = pbones["vert"+str(id)].bone
            bpy.ops.constraint.childof_set_inverse(context_py, constraint=child_of.name, owner='BONE')
        # Setup edge bones constraints:
        for id, edge in enumerate(mesh_ob.data.edges):
            bone0 = "vert" + str(edge.vertices[0])
            bone1 = "vert" + str(edge.vertices[1])
            progress = "Constraint %i of %i" % (3*id+len(mesh_ob.data.vertices), len(mesh_ob.data.vertices)+3*len(mesh_ob.data.edges)-1)
            sys.stdout.write(progress+chr(8)*len(progress))
            sys.stdout.flush()
            add_constraint('DAMPED_TRACK', pbones["edge"+str(id)], rig_ob, bone1)
            progress = "Constraint %i of %i" % (3*id+1+len(mesh_ob.data.vertices), len(mesh_ob.data.vertices)+3*len(mesh_ob.data.edges)-1)
            sys.stdout.write(progress+chr(8)*len(progress))
            sys.stdout.flush()
            const = add_constraint('COPY_ROTATION', pbones["edge"+str(id)], rig_ob, bone0)
            const.use_z = False
            const.target_space = 'POSE'
            const.owner_space = 'POSE'
            progress = "Constraint %i of %i" % (3*id+2+len(mesh_ob.data.vertices), len(mesh_ob.data.vertices)+3*len(mesh_ob.data.edges)-1)
            sys.stdout.write(progress+chr(8)*len(progress))
            sys.stdout.flush()
            add_constraint('STRETCH_TO', pbones["edge"+str(id)], rig_ob, bone1)
        # Hide vert bone layer
        rig_ob.data.layers[1] = False
        sys.stdout.write("DONE IN "+str(round(time.clock()-start, 3))+"s"+" "*(len(progress)-9)+"\n")
        sys.stdout.write("----------------------------------------------------\n")
        sys.stdout.flush()
        return{'FINISHED'}

bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)


Mirroring vertices not connecting right?

Argh. The mirror mod needs to be above the subsurf so it's completely mirrored.


How do I Make a Spawner for Enemies in my Game?

As non-python solution I suggest following:

create an action with location keys. Each frame the action should contain a single spawn position. e.g frame 1 = position 1, frame 2 = position 2 ...
when you want to spawn an enemy

2.a. create an random integer number in a property via random actuator.

2.b you play the action frame at the emitter (empty) via Action Actuator in property mode (using the random property).

2.c with a collision/ray/near/radar sensor check if the spawn point is empty. If so add an enemy and continue with 2. If not continue with 2.a


Keep Offset keeps doesn't work as planned

You have to go to pose mode after "Keep Offset".


Glare shows in compositing window, not in final render

You need to connect the output of the Glare node to the image input of the Composite node. Otherwise you're just viewing the result of the glare but not applying it to the compositing output.


Fluids ignore the linked object but you can create a proxy of the object and make that a fluid obstacle.  Sorry.
Hopefully, unlike me, you've moved on by now, and this isn't the worst news you've had all week.


The solution was rather simple: somehow the vertex opacity in the overlay menu was set to 0. Changing its value fixed it.


Transparency without transparent material in Cycles

I don't believe this is possible within Cycles alone but can be easily achieved via the compositor by using different render layers and the Z Combine node.

First, set up the Render Layers - go to the Render Layer properties and create a new layer (by clicking the '+'). I named my layer 'No Cube'. In the 3d window, select all (A) and then press M to move them to other layers. On the layer popup, hold Shift and click the second layer box - you should now have both highlighted indicating that the objects (all of them) are now in both layers. Highlight those objects (ie, the cube) that you want to be transparent, press M again and just click the first layer box (this time without holding Shift) - this will place those objects just in the first layer. You should now have two layers - one with everything except the objects you want to be transparent and the other with everything (including those to be transparent).

Now switch to the Compositor and create the following nodes :

Press F12 to render the layers.

The two Render Layer nodes provide the results of the render. The Z Combine node combines them based on the distance from the camera. The Maths Subtract node adjusts the Z depth of the second image so that anything less than the distance specified in the Subtract node is classed as closer than the cube and so will show through it. Anything obscured by the cube that is further than the distance specified in the Subtract node will be still obscured by the cube.

Reducing the value of the Subtract node will change the difference in distance before the obscured objects will show through. For example, setting it to a value that corresponds to only part way through the cube can produce the illusion that one object is actually intersecting with the other (whereas it's actually behind it).


v2.80: Keyboard Shortcut for Import / Export STL Files

You can do this off course (this is Blender)

The fastest way is to mouse right click on export stl button and assign a short cut. (you can press nothing but click other area to left it be empty keymap)

After you assign a shortcut to it, go into setting panel and the keymap setting, the setting of export/import will be included in Windows group:

You can assign different key map for it, and also all option that you can find on the exporting panel. The options will appear grey-out, which indicate that it is using default parameters. You can click on any of them to change the setting, override it. In your case, check the selection only button.


Strange baked Ambient Occlusion texture result?

I had other duplicate models overlapping causing the artifacts. D'oh! I thought that toggling the visibility of the other objects would prevent them from the AO calculations, but apparently I need to put the objects on separate layers to prevent affecting the AO calculation.
black artifacts when baking ambient occlusion


How to choose which origin vertex to snap from?

Although I do not know exactly how to do it the way you are asking, I do know of a way that should make it snap to the correct vertex.
Move the highlighted cube to the far left of the other object.  When you choose to snap then, it will choose the closest vertex, which would then be the right one, as said by @Robin Betts.


Set material density [kg/m³] instead of mass [kg]

I found the solution, it is directly in blender itself.
Horizontal menu bar > Object > Rigid Body > Calculate Mass
As you can see here on the screenshot:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/137448/99511
Bad thing is that you need to do it every time you change the side of the object. It is not updated automatically.


Info Header

The Info header is the header bar that contains the File menu option.

Each window in Blender has a header bar and the type of window is set by the first icon on the left-most side of every header.

For example, in this picture, the different windows are highlighted in yellow and the Window Type icon for each is highlighted in green:

In order to change any window from one type to another, just click on the Window Type icon and select the type of window you want to have. In your case, you will need to set one window to Info since it has the File menu option so you can restore the factory defaults by clicking: File > Load Factory Settings. Here is what the Info icon looks like:

NOTE: It is also possible to hide the header by dragging it's top edge down. This leaves a small grey tab with a + sign in it on the right-hand side of the window. Clicking on this + tab brings the header back into view:

You can read more about header bars here in the Blender Wiki.

Manually Rearranging Windows

However, you can also manually close windows or open new ones by dragging on the  window splitter widgets (they look like a little ridged thumb grip) in the upper right and lower left corners of every window:

Here is a demonstration of how to drag the window splitter widgets to open and close different windows, as well as how to change these windows from one type of window to another by changing the Window Type icon:

You can learn more about how to manually arrange window frames the way you would like them here.

You can also check out the answers here and here.


It is not possible to convert a fluid simulation to shape keys. The fluid sim is in essence creating a new mesh every frame. Even though it looks like it is a mesh changing a tiny bit from frame to frame, it is not. Shape keys blend between two meshes that have the same vertex count, also they need to have the same vertex order, but they will technically still work even if the order is messed up. Since the vertex count from frame to frame changes you cannot convert a baked fluid simulation to shape keys.

Also you should simulate the two together as a single simulation because the results of one sim being simulated with interaction to another after the one is already simulated is not going to look very realistic anyway.


"No valid selected objects." - Preventing me from baking material

In the bake options see if "Selected to active" is ticked ON.

This is multiple object bakes.  Tick if off and try again.

make sure yout TEXT Image node is slected too


Draw points on screen with bgl? (python)

short answer:

bgl.glPointSize(5)
bgl.glBegin(bgl.GL_POINTS)

less shorter answer:

Open template operator_modal_draw.py

In draw_callback_px(self, context) I call my function

DrawByVertices("points", verts2d, [0.5, 1, 0.1, 0.5])

where verts2d are screen coordinates [(screen.x, screen.y), ..] in my case derived from vector3 like this

from bpy_extras.view3d_utils import location_3d_to_region_2d
#...
verts2d = []
for v in bm.verts:
    new2dCo = location_3d_to_region_2d(context.region, \
                                       context.space_data.region_3d, \
                                       v.co)
    verts2d.append([new2dCo.x,new2dCo.y])

.

def DrawByVertices(mode, verts2d, color):
    bgl.glColor4f(*color)
    bgl.glEnable(bgl.GL_BLEND)

    if mode is "points":
        bgl.glPointSize(5)
        bgl.glBegin(bgl.GL_POINTS)
    elif mode is "lines":
        bgl.glLineWidth(2)
        bgl.glBegin(bgl.GL_LINE_LOOP)

    for x, y in verts2d:
        bgl.glVertex2f(x, y)

    bgl.glEnd()
    bgl.glDisable(bgl.GL_BLEND)
    #restore defaults
    bgl.glLineWidth(1)
    bgl.glColor4f(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)

    return

Result is colored points drawn on screen over 3d vertex coordinates.


High poly to Low poly Texture Baking - wrong pixels (texture map)

First make sure that your UV's have a bit of an Island margin, then place the low poly model on top of your high poly, give it a subdivision surface modifier, make it something high to closely match the high poly model but do not apply the modifier, then give it a shrinkwrap modifier to wrap it around the high poly but do not apply the modifier, than select the high poly model and the low poly after then bake.


Why is cycles rendering blurry Boolean detail

Thanks @Jackdaw,turns out it was a bevel modifier in the stack. Took it out and it was good to. Lesson of the day... Always check ya stack


Blender 2.8 - Weird experience with smoke domain

I 'solved' this by doubling the resolution of the domain. Still puzzles me why I have to for a same-sized object, and only in this project.


If your environment texture on the icosphere is unblurred:

Render everything into 1 equirectangular environment map. Blur it in your favourite 2d app (it is seamless so tile it before blurring) or inside cycles nodes with noising the mapping inputs with b-wide node pack.

Then render this blurred environment into the cube map.

If your environment texture on the icosphere is already blurred:

Render the objects inside the icosphere only. Lit them with the environment texture but exclude the icosphere to not reflect on the cube.

Blur this equirectangular inside 2d app to match blur of the enviro and merge them into 1 environment (you will need an alpha channel for this also).

Then render a cube map from this blurred enviro.


This has been asked before in different ways, so you’re not the only one. The Boolean modifier typically runs into problems with miscalculated normals, so double check your normals in both meshes. If both sides have the same wrong result, check the mode setting on the modifier. If the results are not the same on both sides but you’re sure the normals are correct, you might have some non-manifold mesh or micro-faces somewhere.
Edit: looking at the hole, and thinking about what you want, I recommend calculating the cutting cylinder’s normals to its inside, and using the “union” mode on Boolean. I could be wrong, though.


OK the problem was the theme. With ScienceLab theme the colour of selected and unselected objects is too similar for my eyes. Had to modify the theme.


The error is because one of your selected objects is not a rigid body, maybe a camera or lamp.

Instead of looping through a range and using it for an index, it is better to loop through your list of selected objects. Add a test for whether it has rigid body enabled to prevent the error.

for obj in selected:
    if obj.rigid_body:
        bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj
        bpy.ops.rigidbody.bake_to_keyframes()

And when you need the index as well as the listed items, use enumerate()

for i, obj in enumerate(selected):
    print(i, obj.name)

But here's the thing, you don't need to use a loop at all. The bake_to_keyframes operator already bakes all selected objects --

  bpy.ops.rigidbody.bake_to_keyframes(frame_start=1, frame_end=250, step=1)
      Bake rigid body transformations of selected objects to keyframes

So you are just repeating the same action multiple times.


@EVERYONE I messed with the IOR slider on the glass material and now it doesn't happen anymore... I will still post the blend file in case but I think it's fixed!


how do i store a value when using animation nodes?

I found a way to create the numbers that I needed. I created a line of vertices that were in the z range that I wanted, then made sure the vert count was equal to my particle count. I then iterated the vert locations through the loop and separated the z values and reinserted them into the translation data. Thank you for all the help and suggestions. They looked viable just a lot more complicated.


OK, so it seems fair to answer this - since the question was about selecting edge ring in UV editor.

The way to do this is by:

enabling "keep UVs and edit mode mesh selection in sync" (button in the header of UV editor)
just Ctrl+Alt+RMB an edge in 3D editor (a derived UV selection will show up in UV editor)

Were the question about straightening the resulting selection, it would seem there is no way to do this for now (version 2.67b).

[Thanks to Mr Zak for clearing the confusion.]


How do I fix the camera in animation mode?

Every time you click and drag move the mouse cursor, it goes off the camera view mode. You can fix it by repressing the button:

If you're trying to move the actual camera while viewing it(without it losing view[Viewing it live]), adjust the camera transformation here:


Why some constraints work in view port, but don't work while render? (Blender 2.8)

No, it's not a bug.

This is actually known issue called "dependency cycle"

If you open blender with terminal, you will see like this:

Dependency cycle detected:
  'OBCamera.TRANSFORM_CONSTRAINTS()' depends on 'OBEmpty.TRANSFORM_FINAL()' through 'Damped Track'
  'OBEmpty.TRANSFORM_FINAL()' depends on 'OBEmpty.TRANSFORM_CONSTRAINTS()' through 'ObConstraints -> Done'

This means that one constraint depends on second, second on first one. So current camera rotation cannot be calculated correctly, because there is no start point to start with.

To solve this, fix dependency in your scene

  I've tried "blender --enable-new-depsgraph" with blender 2.79b and it
  still works despite the new kind of the error messages

You will get same errors in 2.79:

Dependency cycle detected:
  Empty depends on Camera through Copy Location.
  Camera depends on Empty through Damped Track.

And the fact that 2.79 in this error situation doing something different, does not mean that 2.80 has a bug or something. Look at glitch with camera movement when I change frame:

The only way to solve this problem - do not build cycles in dependencies. Add an empty for follow path, second empty will follows this one, and camera will depends on first and second empties:

Camera moved a little for clarity

No dependency cycles - no problems.


After rendering, why can't I find the render on the hard drive?

As stated by other on this page, when you press F12, or use "Render Image", the rendered image is not saved automatically.
Only when you use "Render Animation", the images are saved in the path specified in the output section.
To save an image manually, go to the Image editor window and use "Save Image As" (Shortcut: Alt+S).
To save an image automatically every time, you can add a file output node in the compositor.
Alternatively, you can set the "Frame Start" and "End Frame" to 1 and press Ctrl+F12 (or "Render Animation") to render. Then the image will be saved to the path specified on the "Output" settings.


transforming a texture from one object to another

If your new model is in quads and is the same size, sits in the same place as the original then you should be able to bake the texture from the original to the new model as long as you unnwrap your new model and set up a texture to bake to that is high enough resolution to accommodate the pixels of the original texture. You would use the 'bake selected from active' option in the render panel bake tab.


Separate alpha from color in Shader Editor

It's only a partial answer to the body of the question and it's a bit hacky. You can use a ColorRamp node, set the Factor to 0 and tweak the color and alpha values of the first stop. This would effectively emulate a RGB node with an alpha output.
But you you can't use it to combine RGB values and an Apha value since the color ramp node doesn't take inputs for its color stops.


Blender allows us to pack image and other data files into the blend file.

An image texture that is packed into a blend file and not saved to disk, will export to .obj with map_Kd . in the .mtl file.

The solution is to view the image in blenders UV/Image editor and save it out to a file. Image->Save As Image or press F3.

You can also use File->External Data->Unpack All Into Files to unpack multiple files in one go.


Clamping camera to path, existing keyframe positions are thrown out when path is extended?

Maybe there's another solution but here is a trick that may satisfy you:

Create your curve, give it the right direction, put its origin at the beginning.

Create an object (here a sphere), in Edit mode select all the vertices and assign them a vertex group, in Object mode put the object at the exact same beginning point as the curve, give it a Curve modifier with the curve as Object.

Create your camera, give it a Copy Location constraint with the sphere as Target, and the sphere's vertex group as Vertex Group.

Now when you move your sphere forwards on the right axis (here the Y axis), it follows the curve and the camera follows as well. If you extrude the curve, it won't move the camera's position.


This is best done with node groups. Add a "main color" group that outputs a color to tint with. Incorporate that into the material nodes. Then, whenever you change the group, all of the nodes get the new color update.

As far as automatically adding the groups, it would be much harder (although not impossible), and it would require a good bit of python programming.


I'm not sure what you've done, but it can be rectified by opening a fresh instance of Blender, pressing Ctrl+ O, unchecking 'Load UI' in the lower left hand corner of the screen, and then opening the file.

This will load the file without the changes you made to the user interface, which seem to be the cause of the problem.


How can I modeling these case more efficiently?

Your way seems pretty sensible to me, but just in case this way introduces a couple of useful add-ons...

Delete the bottom front Ngon, and I inset the remaining front and top faces as a region, with 'Boundary' unchecked, to prevent a margin being formed at the mirror axis, or against the empty face.

Delete the inset faces

Having switched on 'Lengths' in the Property region > Mesh Display panel, take a note of the width the offset will have to be from the marked selected edges
Use the shipped Mesh:'Offset Edges' add-on > 'Extrude' to extrude the front edges back by that width, numerically entered.
There may be some overlapping vertices on the new inner edges of the cluster of loops on the short rear-facing slope. Select the problematic range of vertices and use the shipped add-on 'Loop Tools' > 'Space' to make them regular. ( I went back to make those loops regular all the way round )

E Y the offset edges to the mirror axis, letting the 'Clip' of the mirror modifier do its work
F Fill the Ngon we removed in the first place
Ctrl V >  R remove doubles.

This may well be one of those places where a Boolean is a snappier way of doing it, as Mr Zak has commented .. I'm unreasonably resistant to using Booleans.


selecting multiple items in the outliner

What you can do is using the border select with 'b', then if you want to select objects in the scene you can do right click /select


Combine 2 normal maps (1 for layout and 1 for detail)

You can mix the 2 textures into a MixRGB node. Put the MixRGB factor at 0.5, and put the Normal Map strength at 2. As they are not supposed to have the same scale, they both use the same UV map but the first one will use a Mapping scale of 1 while you'll use a bigger scale for the second one (here x 10):


I don't use a Mac, but I think this question here answers it.

  It depends where it installs to.

  If it goes into the main Applications folder, then yes, it's available
  to all users - though each user will have their own distinct prefs,
  saved under their account.

  If it's installed to /Users/[your name]/Applications, then it's only
  available to that user

This here also seems relevant.


Python- problem with "bpy.data.objects['anyobject'].select=True "

You need to set the object to be the active object as well as selected

The below code works for me, I just added a Cube at origin (0, 0, 0) selected it then run this script from the text editor (or you can run it from the console as well):

import bpy
C = bpy.context
scene = C.scene
bpy.ops.object.duplicate()
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.data.objects['Cube'].select=True
scene.objects.active = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

This is what happens after running the script:


A quick example

To make glass just model it to how u want it to look, try and keep it as random as u can.

Then just add a glass material
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRRN7yzPNQI
btw your glass should look way better if u follow the tutorial i just added the material without doing anything to it in the photo below

Also if u dont want to use cycles u can just turn down the transparency (alpha) as ive done here https://sketchfab.com/models/177e494fdada4b64b02acf041ae8cfdd

Edit: Something like this?


You are in solid mode. Materials are only displayed in rendered mode.

If you want to see a color for a material in solid mode use the viewport settings for the material.


When I select the black parts and switch into vertex mode, it fixes it. Weird fix, but it works.


How do I import multiple OBJ files into blender using python?

Manually debug your code one line at a time by pasting it into the Python console and checking the results.


If I understand your question correctly, yes, it's in the options when you press X for delete: Faces Only


How do i rotate set of models that make a bigger model(a car) to 0°?

If you select several objects and begin a rotation using the r key they will rotate as a unit, preserving relative position and orientation (unless pivoting around Individual Origins).

If the pivot point that blender picks (default is median) is not to your liking, you can change the pivot point to something like Cursor or maybe Active Element.  The 3D Cursor can be set to any coordinate using the n sidebar.


To achieve this I wrote an operator that inserts the node in the NodeTree sets it active and starts the associated Operator
import bpy

class SFX_OT_IN_Adder(bpy.types.Operator):
    """ Insert a Clock Node to the Node Tree and start it"""
    bl_idname = "sfx.in_clock"
    bl_label = "Insert Adder Node"

def invoke(self, context, event):
    node_tree = bpy.context.space_data.edit_tree.name
    Node = bpy.data.node_groups[node_tree].nodes.new('SFX_ClockNode')
    bpy.data.node_groups[node_tree].nodes.active = Node
    bpy.ops.sfx.clockstartop('INVOKE_DEFAULT')
    return {'FINISHED'}

def draw(self,context):
    pass

and put it in the node_menu
layout.operator('sfx.in_clock', text = 'Clock', icon = "CURVE_NCIRCLE" )


Blender Eevee reflection plane gives warped reflection

There was a problem with my material. I had an image sequence that was input into a normal map. For some reason a few frames of my image sequence were empty (it looked like a missing image) which would through off my normal map and give a weird reflection.

Specifically the problem came because my image sequence started at frame 31 and went to frame 220. The offset was set to 31 so and it ended up adding frames that I never had.


Background and reference images are not intended to be rendered.

To render an image, you should place it on a surface (plane for instance).

A quick way to do it is to use an addon called 'image as plane' which is in the standard distribution.

Activate it:

Use it:


Why am I getting banded stripes in my reflections?

Try setting the shading to smooth from the tool shelf (t). If that doesn't work then check your normals or do recalculate outside for the normals. If that doesn't work either check your model for errors, overlapping faces etc...


How to Place the Right Seams for UV Unwrapping

In my opinion you should try to place the seams in that way, so the UV islands in UV/Image Editor are even distributed and have a proper scale that reflects the scale of the model's elements. It is often the matter of experimenting. You should think of it as it was a real model. Try to imagine how you may cut it open with scissors and spread on a flat surface.

The example below shows how the different unwrap of the same object results in less uniform Uv islands distribution, which is less beneficial.

Here is the .blend with the seams placed: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/33446


Get modifier keys to show in Screencast when they are pressed by themselves

There is no setting which would allow displaying modifier keys alone. I looked into the source and the modifier keys are disabled in line 550 of the screencast addon:

ignore_keys = ['LEFT_SHIFT', 'RIGHT_SHIFT', 'LEFT_ALT',
         'RIGHT_ALT', 'LEFT_CTRL', 'RIGHT_CTRL', 'TIMER',
         'MOUSEMOVE', 'INBETWEEN_MOUSEMOVE']

You could right click on the screencast control to open the python source in the text editor and remove the keys want. Click register in the text editor's header and run the script. (Of course you could also save the modified version in into the blender installation folder).


Blender uses more ram than my pc has when rendering

Blender will use as much RAM as it needs to render the scene, until your system cannot provide those resources any more.
Usually, when the program needs more ram than installed on the hardware, the operating system will resort to "virtual memory", where the operating system will use a paging file (or "swap") on a hard drive to store the data that doesn fit in RAM anymore, not only slowing things down, but potentially crashing if the paging file is not large enough or gets currupted.
You have at least 4 choices:
Be patient and let the computer work, and crash and start over.
Or simplify/optimize the scene to match the limits of your hardware,
or add more memory to the system to meet your desired output,
or use a render farm or cloud computing.

As to why the specific scene you are trying to render is pushing the computer to the edge, there could be multiple explanations.
Subdividing can easily create a number of vertices that become unmanageable. The size of textures will have an impact on the resources available. Particles and simulations, deformations, moving armatures they also need heavy computing power, the number of samples, the size of the tiles, final render size, denoising and compositing will also need to RAM and CPU time. So start investigating how you can minimize/optimize the scene so that you can get something out of your computer.


How to set two different HDRI, one for environment lighting, and another for background, in 2.8 using Eevee?

To render a different background than the one used in the environment

Just enable Film>Alpha>Transparent.

Then on the compositor use Alpha over to mix over the background you want to use.

Alternatively you can use a background for the world that is only seen by the camera and not by other rays, therefore not contributing to the lights, reflectons,etc.

Set two different Environment background shaders and use the Is Camera Ray from a Light Path node to control the shader mix.


Is it possible to attach an object to the end of a curve and have the object point in the same direction as the end of the curve?

You can do it with a little trick.

Create the cube and the curve
Create a plane at the exact same position as the cube and scale it down so it is inside the cube. Do it in edit mode so that its object scale won't change
Parent the cube to the plane
Mark the plane as dupliface in the instancing section
Add a curve modifier to the plane

This is the start of the curve, though...

Edit: to do it at the end of the curve

Parent the cube to the curve
Set the curve as 'path animation' with only 1 frame
Adjust the cube orientation so that it fits the first control point of the curve


Transparent material is "see through" when rendered in Cycles

I still don't know why it appeared transparent but I found a workaround, I just used a second UV map. I didn't know you could use multiple UV maps...


The answer on your question is rather simple. What you missed in the tutorial, is that the Emission shader node is connected to Volume in Material Output node, which is correct way in this example. Yours node setup is wrong, cause Emission shader is connected to Surface in Material Output node.Fix this mistake, and everything will start to make sense in the tutorial.


How do I activate the editing box at bottom of "Tools" section?

in 3D view, use T to make the toolshlef appear/disapear.

You can also use F6 to get the specific toolbox for new objects


How to detect if a vse strip is used in conjunction with an effect strip with python?

All effect strips that have locked frame values have the 'input_1' attribute (which is set to another strip), so detecting a strip of this type is as simple as:

if hasattr(strip, 'input_1'):

You can also check for transition effects by looking for 'input_2' in the same way.


If each cube here represents a pixel, what is the fastest way to change its color so it looks exactly like the 2d image?

This is the fastest way:
1. add a cube
2. add two array modifiers to x and y axis and apply them
3. go to edit mode, use orthagonic view (num5), hit "u" and select "projection from view (boundary)"
4. hit "p" select "by loose parts"
5. go back to object mode, select everything and hit ctrl+shift+alt+c and select "origin to center of mass"


is there an easier way to use a still from a movie as a texture?

It's very easy to choose just one frame form a video to be used:

look for the frame controls in the texture panel.

Here's an example of how to use it:

Frames (how many frames you want to use from the video file, in this case just 1 since we want to freeze it, even if the original video has thousands of frames)

Start (at what point in the blender time line should this image start? In this case it will start from the very first frame of the blender project.)

Offset Set the frame number of the particular frame you want to freeze, in this case the frame with the smile is 1110.

In other words, blender will just use one image as a texture and will play only frame 1110 of the video file on every frame of the blender project starting from the beginning.

For Cycles the same options are available on the Image Texture node.


Chose file format when taking a screenshot with python

Currently there is no way, you can only save directly to a PNG.

This is caused by the way the operator works, where the options to choose the image format are only initialized when the file-selector is used.


Is it possible to make Particles follow Displacement Node?

This is a method that i used with true displacement in experimetnal 2.79

1)Use the node wrangler addon to preview the output of the displacement node

2)the values will most likeley be clamped, so you will have to normalize them in order to see the [0-1] range. Use greater then and less then operations to find what are the maximum and minumum values

3)Use add and divide operations using the values you got in 2) to get normalized map

4)Bake the height map (I used diffuse shader and baked colour)

5)Plug the baked height map into the displacement modifier


Can I export a video editor timeline to .xml or .aal?

I'm working on a script to export Davinci Resolve friendly EDL files: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?418606-EDL-export-script-help-needed!


How do you export an ambient occlusion map to an FBX file?

.fbx doesn't include textures. You can save the AO map as a separate image file and have the other person apply it to the mesh once they import the .fbx into whatever app they are using.


Material Doesn't catch light shining on it from using a Geometry and Mix Shader node

The first node setup is almost right, except that you're missing a shader between the Image Texture node and the Mix Shader. The green sockets indicate that the input to the Mix Shader should usually be the output of another shader, for instance the Principled BSDF.

Start from the node setup from your first screenshot and add a Principled BSDF. Disconnect the Image Texture node from the Mix Shader.

Connect the:

Color output socket of Image Texture node to the Base Color input socket of the Principled BSDF node
BSDF output socket of the Principled BSDF to the upper Shader input socket of the Mix Shader

Adjust the properties of the Principled BSDF to get the desired look. Specular controls the amount of specular reflections.


Why is "Smooth" shading slower than "Flat" shading in the viewport?

Since I don't know how many polys you are talking about, and what hardware you are using, there is a general answer that smooth shading is always slower than flat.  Flat shading uses one normal per face to calculate the color of the entire face.  Smooth shading interpolates between the normals of each vertex to render a smoothly curved face. Since a face is at least 3 vertices (i.e. a triangle) then smooth shading will always be at least 3x as slow as flat.

In most cases, even 3-4x as slow is a matter of milliseconds so you don't really notice, but on older hardware with a ton of faces you certainly could.


Most likely, the normals are facing the wrong direction. Unity doesn't render the backside of polygons, while blender does.

Try flipping the normals around. The reference for doing this is here.


What 2.8 BETA version still had all the tool LABELS on screen, and where can I get it?

You can expand the toolbar, as mentioned in the manual: "Expand the Toolbar to show icons on two columns instead of one or even more to show icons with titles."


How do I check on objects Y or X location independent of the other variables?

Comparing floats
In general I suggest to avoid equal compare (==) on float values. The likelihood to get the exact match is pretty low.
Even when it is very close and visually there is no difference the values are not the same.
It is better to do a range check with < and >.
Components
You might argue that you compare a vector with a list. This kind of compare will perform a compare of the components (content of the container). As the components are float consider the first section (Comparing floats).
Unfortunately you need more range checks right now. Luckily you can reduce the effort by reviewing your requirements.
Comparing position vectors
Position vectors describe a location referred by a shared origin.
To compare two position vectors I recommend to check if the distance between them is below a certain range.
You can do that by calculating the vector between this two positional vectors and check it's length:
import mathutils
import bge

owner = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
positionToCheck = owner.worldPosition
positionToCompareTo = mathutils.Vector([1,2,3])

distance = (positionToCheck - positionToCompareTo).length

nearDistance = 0.000001
if distance < nearDistance:
   print("the positions are nearly equal")
else:
   print("the positions are too different")

Comparing single components
Rather than comparing the whole container (with all it's content) you get the component from the container and perform the compare on that component only. As the component is still float consider the first section (Comparing floats).
Example:
if abs(owner.worldPosition.x - 1.0) < 0.000001:
  print("the positions are nearly equal")
else:
   print("the positions are too different")

Be aware this ignores the y and z coordinates completely. Therefore this is a check if the position is near the YZ-Plane at X=1.0.
LocalPosition vs. WorldPosition
I hope you noticed that I defined position vectors as being referred from a shared origin.
A common vector has no position. It can be anywhere. Therefore a vector alone can't describe a position. You always need the origin where the vector points from.
Typically this origin (or reference point) is implicitly provided via context.
When you use KX_GameObject.worldPosition you get a vector that describes the position from the scene origin (0,0,0).
When you use KX_GameObject.localPosition you get a vector that describes the position from the object's parent's position.
This means the vector of worldPosition might be equal (or nearly equal) to the vector of localPosition, but as the origins differ, they do not describe the same point in space.
This also belongs to objects with different parents.
Remark
The origin is not the only context. You need to consider orientation and scale too. This is typically described by the coordinate system or space (scene space, parent space).
Imagine you turned the parent. localPosition did not change, but worldPosition did due to the rotation of the referred coordinate system. The parent space turned with the parent.


This is because Ubuntu uses the alt key as a default-key.
This worked for me.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/521423/how-can-i-disable-altclick-window-dragging

regards


How to get "Add Modifiers" panel as enum value?

All available via blenders rna.
The type property of the modifier is an enum, can look up its definition via blenders "rna" system on the class, in this case bpy.types.Modifier.bl_rna
import bpy
from bpy.types import Modifier

for item in Modifier.bl_rna.properties['type'].enum_items:
    print(item.identifier, item.name, item.description, item.icon)

output.
DATA_TRANSFER Data Transfer Transfer several types of data (vertex groups, UV maps, vertex colors, custom normals) from one mesh to another MOD_DATA_TRANSFER
MESH_CACHE Mesh Cache Deform the mesh using an external frame-by-frame vertex transform cache MOD_MESHDEFORM
MESH_SEQUENCE_CACHE Mesh Sequence Cache Deform the mesh or curve using an external mesh cache in Alembic format MOD_MESHDEFORM
NORMAL_EDIT Normal Edit Modify the direction of the surface normals MOD_NORMALEDIT
WEIGHTED_NORMAL Weighted Normal Modify the direction of the surface normals using a weighting method MOD_NORMALEDIT
UV_PROJECT UV Project Project the UV map coordinates from the negative Z axis of another object MOD_UVPROJECT
UV_WARP UV Warp Transform the UV map using the difference between two objects MOD_UVPROJECT
VERTEX_WEIGHT_EDIT Vertex Weight Edit Modify of the weights of a vertex group MOD_VERTEX_WEIGHT
VERTEX_WEIGHT_MIX Vertex Weight Mix Mix the weights of two vertex groups MOD_VERTEX_WEIGHT
VERTEX_WEIGHT_PROXIMITY Vertex Weight Proximity Set the vertex group weights based on the distance to another target object MOD_VERTEX_WEIGHT
ARRAY Array Create copies of the shape with offsets MOD_ARRAY
BEVEL Bevel Generate sloped corners by adding geometry to the mesh's edges or vertices MOD_BEVEL
BOOLEAN Boolean Use another shape to cut, combine or perform a difference operation MOD_BOOLEAN
BUILD Build Cause the faces of the mesh object to appear or disappear one after the other over time MOD_BUILD
DECIMATE Decimate Reduce the geometry density MOD_DECIM

etc, etc

Example of using math node type enum to create operator. How to get custom menu items show up in the search bar?


How to select identical UV island at one time?

Personally I find Blender's default UV tools rather sad and lacking, especially coming from Modo. However, if you have $20 to spare, UV Toolkit (https://blendermarket.com/products/uv-toolkit) gets you pretty close to most major apps. It also has "select similar islands," which is exactly what you are looking for.


Your question is a bit vague, but I think from whre you are you have 2 main solutions: either keep all these meshes as separate objects, or join them all into one object.
Separate objects : In this case, select the part, shift select the armature, switch it to Pose mode, select the right bone, and press CtrlP > (Set Parent To) Bone.
One object: In this case, select the whole object, shift select the armature and press CtrlP > (Set Parent To) With Empty Groups. Then you need to select each part of your object in Edit mode and assign it to the right vertex group (the one that has the name of the bone that is supposed to control it) in the Properties panel > Object Data > Vertex Groups.