How to move the camera diagnoally far away?

Move on Local Axis

You should double tap the Z key in order to move the camera in its local axis.

So the key sequence is G, Z, Z again.


Composite shadowing was the culprit. Shadows were set to be adjusted with a blueish tinge.


This seems to be a mac issue - the solution is to change the Window Draw Method in User Preferences/System - from no multisample to Multisample 2 at least.


Check the data

Chances are   the objects are saved to the library blend, . but are not linked to any scene, or collection, hence the file appears empty when opened.

Check the library files bpy.data.objects collection to confirm.

Consider adding the scene datablock to the library.


Is it possible to have hair particles [people] face towards a target

Use a Force Field:

Hair particles, even without using dynamics, follow the force fields:

In the Viewport do Add > Force Field (type "Force"). Place it where you need it to be. From the Physics properties panel, set the force to a negative value and leave the rest as it is.

The internal rotation of the base hair particle (humans) must be adjusted to make sure that the correct side points to the Force Field. In my case this is the mesh used:

Note that the "face" is looking towards negative Z, while the "head" is "up" in the direction of positive Y. The correct rotation must either be achieved in edit mode or obtained in object mode and then applied (CtrlA > Rotation)

You need neither the "Advanced" setting on Emission, nor the "Rotation" extra settings.


How to straighten all uneven edges at once

This looks like a job for the Mesh Relax addon. It comes with Blender. You have to activate it in the User Preferences.


The Emulate 3 Button Mouse setting let me use the pen to interact with objects and the scene.

The problem I was having with the rotate manipulator turned out to be a separate issue, and was fixed by changing the selection mode under User Preferences>System from automatic to OpenGL Occlusion Queries.


This shape can be modeled using Extra Objects addon or in a manual way.

Extra Objects addon has preset accessible for rhombic triacontahedron. You'll need to activate addon in User Preferences, see more on how to activate / install an addon.

With addon enabled, from Shift+A menu find Mesh > Math function > Regular Solid. Then you'll tweak its parameters:

In Last Operator panel load preset:

Or change parameters for Source, Vertex Truncation and Dual.

To model it manually:

Start with icosphere, 1 subdivision.
Poke faces with Alt+P.. This will create geometry necessary for the middle of rombes.
Select one newly created vertex (from poked ones).
Select similar with Shift+G > Amount of connecting edges. Scale them out along normals a bit.
Select all, convert to quads (Alt+J).

As resulting faces are non-planar (i.e. not all vertices are located on the same imaginary plane), make them planar using Mesh > Clean-Up > Make Planar Faces with around 4 iterations (thanks to Leon Cheung).


I have been getting issue abput clipping

It looks like the faces on the top have inverted normals, i.e. they are inside out. Turn on Viewport Overlays > Face Orientation in the 3D Viewport. The inside/back of faces is shown in red, the front/outside is blue. They should all be blue on your object.
To set the correct orientation, select the affected faces (or maybe even all) and hit Shift + N > Recalculate Normals.


Error when baking molecular script addon

The molecular addon (and the cube surfer from the same author) are not pure python addons, they also use a shared library that needs to be compiled and located in the same addon folder.

For windows this will be cmolcore.pyd which needs to be in C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.7.3\scripts\addons\molecular\ If the library file is there then you may have downloaded the 64bit version by mistake.

If you still can't get it running you may need to compile a version specific to your machine. You can find the source files on github, read the cython docs for how and if you have any problems compiling ask for help on stackoverflow.


How do you change what object the node editor is editing?

You need to make sure you are not in the "World" node settings and that you are modifying the right slot if your objects has several materials.


How to render emission materials in 3D viewport?

Do you know about the rendering view and object view?

If so then your emission is too powerful that it becomes white. Reduce its strength.

For the fbx the materials are directly tied to the render engine so exporting it results just the model, there is no solution so far.


Perform assembly/alignment of two objects

One easy way is to use vertex snapping and the origin point.

Make sure your sphere is oriented correctly.
Enable Vertex snapping > Median
Check Only origins and snap your origin point to the top vertex. Then uncheck.
Select your sphere and snap it to the other object's top vertex

Snap the origin point to the top vertex

Snap the sphere to the other object's top vertex


Why are my hooks and sewing not holding my cloth in place?

While I had created Vertex Groups, I had failed to assign specific vertices to the groups.


It seems the only way the player collides with the walls is because go that small white box. You could either get rid of the box and just use the character, or stretch the box upwards so it collides with the walls on top too, although this may be unnecessary.

To make the restarting game properly work, you the game property called 'obs' should be set to boolean and 'True'. Also, delete the sensor for the collision with the property of 'prop'.


Emission Object is in front of every other object

Please consider using the [alpha over node].

For transparency in Cycles render use Panel Film Transparent.

[ Alpha over node ] respects transparency alpha.  In your example opaque black cube would be opaque over all parts of the blurred white cube.

Alpha is transparency and its effects are only visible by compositing two or more layers.

In the image above the white emission cube in layer 2 is blurred.  The sphere and yellow emission cube are in layer 1.  Yellow emission is to increase legibility of explanation.

Two render layer specifications use different visual scene layers in the image below. (Layers and Scenes have some difficult terminology in Blender which could be improved)

3D Views with object visibility in layers in the image below.

Note the checkered background for transparency. Using [object index] is a complement or replacement to layers.


I once had to do something similar, and I've used two different solutions.

1) Simply add an alpha channel to the image, or create a separate grayscale alpha map to use alongside it.

2) Inset the mesh, with the resulting face being close to the edges (or further, as desired).  Then go to Vertex Paint mode, and set the vertices along the edge to black, and the other vertices to white.  The Vertex Colors are exposed to cycles via the Input->Attribute node, where you type in the name of the Vertex Color dataset (Col by default).

To get the transparency, you plug the alpha (either a map, channel, or vertex color attribute) into the factor input of a Mix Shader node, with one input being Diffuse BSDF (or whatever you're using) and the other being a Transparent BSDF node.  You can use the Color->Contrast node on the alpha input to make it less gradual, or use a Converter->Color Ramp instead.

The image below demonstrates the second technique, using vertex colors:


Why is the NLA Editor the Only Animation Editor in 2.8 Without a Hotkey?

In Edit > Preferences... > Keymap > Window you'll find the Shift+F* shortcuts as "Cycle Space Type Set". Open up one you don't use and change its type to "Nonlinear Animation". Or you can create a new shortcut and set it to screen.space_type_set_or_cycle, then add the type.


how to replicate spline and randomize bevel

you can do it like this:

result (i just took an arbitrary curve):


Adding mirror reflection on the picture frame that can see the content inside and the reflection of the environment

EEVEE

Create a plane

Set primary shader to Diffuse BSDF

Plug Diffuse BSDF into a shader to RGB node and route that node to a ColorRamp

Plug the ColorRamp’s alpha into a Principled BSDF shader’s alpha, and then that into a Material Output surface

Go to Render settings, Film section, and check transparent

In the plane’s Material tab, ensure Blend Mode is set to “Alpha Blend”

Make sure that you are in Rendered View (it does not work in Material Preview) and your Reflection Plane is placed slightly above the mirror surface. You can increase the Distance parameter inside Reflection Plane just to be sure that it covers everything.

Cycles
For the mirror material:

Set metallic to 1

Set roughness to 0


Quick smoke + fire not rendering properly in 2.81a

In the end, it was possible to "jog" Blender into rendering a frame of a burning basic torus using the default settings for Quick Smoke + Fire. I changed CUDA settings to CPU only and replaced the Output shader with a fresh default one. The fire + smoke then F12 rendered, if slowly.

When I then turning GPU Compute back on (and all GPUs + CPU on as well in CUDA settings in Preferences), the fire + smoke still rendered, and a lot faster. Have the Blender devs added GPU support to Cycles with 2.80? If so, thank you! I just find it strange that the Material Output shader needed replacing to get the physics effect to run.


Hair particles are in fact trajectories of regular particles ; the regular particle need to have a motion, so it needs physics. Of course this is not a real motion, as it don't vary in time, but a path, a trajectory.

To reduce render time, you can turn off Hair Dynamics, which is the motion applied to every hair particle. It is off by default.

It's kinda weird to use hair particles to render actual objects. A regular particle system would work fine and is much easier to configure.


How to slow down an object following an animated path?

Never mind, found it! If you click the bezier curve (or circle in this case) and go to the Data tab, scroll down to see Path Animation, and increase the frames which decreases the speed.


There are two ways to do this:

Parenting

just make your object a child of the cam, and it will copy its location and rotation.
select first the camera, then the object.
press Ctrl+p

Object constraints

drivers
Right-click on x/y/z location


Yes, you can do color correction in both the compositor, and in the color management tools of the Scene Tab.

I would use the Scene Tab option for Black and White, as it is pretty simple to do.

My recommendation would be to render one frame, get this set the way you like it in the UV/Image Editor, and then render your sequence.

Here's a look at the compositor (NOTE for just B&W adjustments, BrightContrast Node might be all you need). For rendering an existing Image Sequence change your Input to Image Sequence. If you want to influence color there is a Color Balance node just for this reason (although you could just play with grayscale values here as well). This is a huge topic, so this is not definitive, just a good starting point. You could use all sorts of things like color ramps, blurs, etc... to get the "LOOK" that you are going for.

If you find that you need to animate the color balance at any point in your timeline, you can keyframe any slider value by hovering your mouse over that value and hitting I as well.


CG Masters explained their modelling techniques much more thoroughly in their Hard Surface Modelling course series. I'll try to explain it here.

They are using the Shrinkwrap Modifier to avoid shading issues. When you are using many modifiers such as Boolean and Subdivide Surface modifiers, it is common to encounter strange/unwanted shading (such as creases and sharp edges) on the surfaces.

Thus, to avoid those shading issues, they create two meshes, a base/guide mesh and a detailed copy mesh. The base mesh has a minimal amount of detail on it, its purpose is to provide the proper shape and shading to the detailed mesh. The copy mesh has all of the details, such as boolean cutouts, on it. Since this results in shading issues, they use the Shrinkwrap Modifier to stick the Copy mesh onto the Base Mesh. Doing so transfers all of the normals from the base to the copy, fixing the shading while keeping the detail.


Object always appears in front of the other

It seems you have x-ray enabled for that object


How do I stop vertices being hidden by the Subsurf modifier in Edit mode?

There are times that the unmodified vertices of a mesh will be inside the surface created by a Subsurf modifier.

Personally, I regularly flip between view subsurf levels while I'm modeling, anyway. (Ctrl0to5 on the keyboard) Then you can edit the model in its unmodified appearance, which is often less confusing than another option, (illustrated)

which is to 'Adjust edit cage to modifier resullt'. this will result in the appearance of sliding points around on the curved, subdivided surface.


Flat quads (or, why is my mesh so funky?)

As you already suspect, in three-dimensional digital graphics computer basically only know how to draw two things: Lines and Triangles
There are a few other primitives types (point clouds, volumes, voxels etc.) but for the sake of simplicity lets focus on the former two.
Historically speaking, in the first 3D modelling software you could only model with triangle based geometry, because it's the only unequivocally definable 3D structure with three points. Even Blender itself a few years ago as of versions pre 2.63 (when BMesh geometry engine was introduces) was still only able to define faces with 3 or 4 sides, not more.
As technology evolved it started being practical to define faces with more than three sides.
A quad, as you correctly stated is not unequivocally defined by those four points, it is not however mathematically undefined. Since computers only know how to draw triangles, in the background the software is trying to silently triangulate the shapes for you as best as it can, as you can see bellow.

Simple shapes are trivial, but more complex shapes (where supported by the software) are even more difficult to triangulate, and may often generate artifacts from unexpected or uncontrollable tessellation. That is one of the reasons why you will often hear people say you should strive to have a quad dominant topology.
Blender doesn't explicitly allow tessellation control, but other software or mesh engines some times have tools that allow controlling how a shape is triangulated (as is the case of 3DSMax 3D Polys, but not meshes).

TL;DR
Should you be worried by this? No, not in most cases.
This is normal behavior and non-planar shapes are totally expected (if not the norm) everywhere in your mesh. Modelling with planar faces everywhere would be extremely hard, or certain shapes would be downright impossible to achieve.
Some extreme cases can some times cause issues and should be avoided though, like concave planar faces, or very high distortion quads, but most others occurrences should be fine.
There are builtin tools in Blender to help with these, like the Mesh > Cleanup > Make Planar Faces, to help detect where issues might occur.
What you seem to be missing is the concept of subdivision. Except for hard-edge models most organic shapes are frequently modeled using a Subdivide Modifier, that will take care of automatically smoothing your surfaces. It will soften your geometry angles, while retaining a simple enough base mesh to work with, so that quads appear to have a smoother appearance.


Thought I would update this answer a little, This works for 2.79 (Cycles) and 2.8 (EEVEE)

This is also partially taken from Rich Sedmans wonderful answer.

Sorry for so much bloom (but I love the way it makes the glitter sparkle :P)

The trick is to have the incoming geometry node plug into a glossy shader, with a very low roughness value.

This is just copying and pasting the Geometry node, glossy node and use the factor input of the mix shader to control the small speckles.

Be sure to change the scale factor on all to Voronoi textures so the speckles show up in different spots.

Just change the color of the glossy shader to whatever color you want the flakes to be.

EDIT

I created the node in a more user friendly group, I also attached the blend file.


How open file browser to save a new blender file

There is no need to use code to save stuff. It's quite simple, actually. Blender's file browser isn't like the one built-into your computer. You have to go through your drive's file system from the root to locate the destination folder that you would like to save your project to. First, select your main drive. While there, you will see a "users" folder. Double click on it, and then select the folder with the account name that you are using. Then you will find a long list of many folders. You'll also see folders such as documents, music, videos, and any other library. Click on the library that you wish to store your project in, and then select your folder, and name your file, then click "Save As" (or press enter) to save.

Hope that helps!


Armature with automatic weights is deforming mesh

Mesh normals are inverted which is the main cause of the issue.

To correct it, enter edit mode, select all and use ShiftN to recalculate normals.
Also the mesh is scaled and rotated. Preferably, apply scales and rotations before parenting CtrlA in object mode.
Last point, the armature is not in rest position: set it to it or set the current pose as rest pose.


Updating cylinder's properties using a scipt

An example using a custom property with an update method.

import bpy
from bpy.props import FloatProperty
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

def bond_strength(self, context):
    self.scale.x = self.scale.y =  self.bond_strength
    return None

# create a custom property on all objects
bpy.types.Object.bond_strength = FloatProperty(name="Strength",
                                               default = 1.0,
                                               precision = 4,
                                               update=bond_strength)

# adds a slider to UI object properties panel. # would be in a custom Panel
if True: # only need to run this once
    def show_strength(self, context):
        self.layout.prop(context.object, "bond_strength")
    bpy.types.OBJECT_PT_context_object.remove(show_strength) # put in unregister
    bpy.types.OBJECT_PT_context_object.append(show_strength)

# add a primitive
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=1.0)

#create more
cyl = context.active_object  # newly created cylinder

for i in range(4):
    cyl = cyl.copy()
    scene.objects.link(cyl)
    cyl.bond_strength *= 0.5
    cyl.location.x += 2


How can I remove this seam down the middle after mirroring?

I think the vertices that should be in the middle of your character, are slightly beyond the axis, like that :

In Edit mode, select all your vertices (A) and move them to the left* until they "stick" to the mirror axis (this is what Clipping does).

*left in my example, maybe right in yours


I can see two approaches:

Upgrade blender's python API to support interactive PyOpenGL auxiliary windows
Upgrade blender with built-in Vive support

I suspect #2 will be cleaner.  #1 would allow people with less understanding of blender's guts to do some nifty stuff, but it would probably require a core blender coder the same level of expertise and time to accomplish as #2.

There is also the problem of user input.  When you have the Vive on your head you have access to a pair of upgraded mice, but you do not have the keyboard.  There are solutions, but the paradigm does not exactly mesh with the existing UI.


Solution 1

If your image has alpha channel or you can create it¹, you can use it to mix your original shader with a transparent shader.

Your node setup adjusted:

¹Since you mentioned psd, I assume you use PhotoShop. Use the magic wand or (polygonal) lasso selector tool to: Select and delete what should be transparent; or add a mask and fill those parts of the mask with black. You may have to setup the image to enable the alpha channel.

Solution 2

If your image has black background, and is only black where the logo should be transparent, you can use that as a condition for mixing your original shader with a transparent shader.

Your node setup adjusted:

You may use other values (between 0 and 1) in the Greater than node as the threshold for masking the darkest parts of the image. Also, you may use Less then node insted to mask white areas of the image (in case your background is white).


Multiple objects with equal spacing on Follow Path constraint?

Instead of a follow path constraint, use a Ctrl + P > Follow Path type of parent on your object.

Adjust framing as necessary, then go to the 3D View Menu > Object > Animation > Bake Action. Tick to activate all the options.

Then with your object selected go to the Properties Window > Object Tab > Duplication > Frames

Also see Is there a way to convert a constraint to a keyframe?


it's not a problem of configuration, surely something will be damaged in your folder in .appdata where it hosts temporary blender configuration, I do not know if you use linux or windows, but I'll give you an example in windows that is the most common
you would have to delete that folder inside .appdata and restart blender, if the problem is solved it would be everything, but if the problem you got, it means that your blender is damaged, and it would be more difficult than you think to be doing a debug, my choice would be to reinstall blender cleanly, deleting all traces of the previous installation, that means using blichbit or ccelaner and eliminate what you find from blender in .appdata

NOTE: it is important that before doing all this, make a backup of all your addons that you have added, because when you delete this folder you will lose all
or you can make a list of the ones you have and download them once more


difference between Linesets and Linestyle?

As I got it, a lineset is a complete "set" of properties, and also has one of the available linestyles, amongst many other indipendent properties and settings.

You can make each lineset behave in a way that it's applied to different rendering "selection methods".

By "selection methods" you can choose one or more of visibility, edgetypes, facemarks, groups and image border.

Eg: the simplest to explain an understand is perhaps groups: you could have two cubes, each has its own group. Then you can make the cube of Group1 to have a totally different "lineset" than the other, using two of them, each targeted to a particular group, like this:

while the other cube has a different group and, thus, a different lineset, which also has different linestyle (but is not mandatory: it could have same linestyle, but behave differently from the other lineset for other settings...)


How to make Gems/Emeralds look like this in Cycles?

Texture the gems with handpainted textures with worn edges - to keep it stylized. Also make some roughness texture for the edges so you get more variation in the shader. You can also create multiple materials (for edges, flat pieces,..) and mix them using mask. Go with a glass shader for the surface, you can also mix multiple glass shaders with different IORs to get some fake dispersion effects.
Make the gem fairly transparent and shade the inside of it with volumetric shaders. If the gems will be animated this volumetric part could have some procedural changing clouds inside. Something like this: Volumetric tests
Add a light source of some kind inside the gem. There could be some cloud volumetric emission shader inside. Or add some nice backligh/light-from-bottom etc.
The glow, color correction or some more stylization add in compositor with nodes.


Subdividing Causes Strange Edges / Issues on Shape

It's not the best topology but just quick example.

First thing I've done was to delete half of the mesh and add Mirror modifier to reduce work.

Next I've created Outer Edge Loop just by extruding vertices.

In the same manner I've filled rest of the mesh with faces with some Reduction Loops, this was needed for making all of the faces quads (more on this you can find on topologyguides.com).

I haven't used any "automatic" methods, it's just extruding E and filling F with a little help from F2 add-on. It's all manual work.


What is the workflow to create animation in Blender?

This depends on your personal workflow and/or the workflow of your contractor/employer.

Basically (if we wanted to create a simple animation, with just a character) (in my experience) it's always something like this (some of the following tasks are usually - but not always - done by different artists):

Concept phase (Where rough concepts and ideas are gathered and refined - mostly 2D)
Concept models (Very rough models to proof the concepts work in 3D and in general)
Sculpting (Basically "creating" the character in 3D, with all the small details. This results in a highpoly model)
Retopologize (Highpoly models are hard to work with, so you take the model and "rebuild" it, with less polygons. Sometimes - often in games - you have a polycount budget. So your model isn't allowed to have more than x polygons/tris. This results in a lowpoly model)
UV-Unwrapping (In order to "paint" your model (e.g. put a texture on it) you need to unwrap it and create a UV-map. This UV-map is also used for baking)
Baking (You can transfer all the details from your highpoly model to your lowpoly model via a normal map (texture). This normal map and some other maps are generated by "baking")
Texturing (Basically paint your model. This is where the grey chunk gets fancy ;) )
Rigging (In order to animate your model, it need a skeleton. Rigging is basically giving your model a skeleton, which you can animate)
Animation (The skeleton - and with it the model - gets animated)
Lighting (In this stage, lighting is set up. Also arround this time, everything is put together (if that's not done via compositing))
Rendering (Everything is rendered. In small/simple scenes you can put everything in one scene and render it out. However, in more advanced and bigger scenes, the stuff to render is usually split up in several renderlayers, which are then put together in compositing)
Compositing (Like described above, this is where the different parts of the renders are put together. This is also where mat-paintings and VFX are "put in")

I hope this helps you understanding the basic workflow.
As you can see, 3D and CGI is a very complex topic.

Greetings


Make a hole with Boolean but without 'fill cap'

You can make the paprika hollow non-destructively by using a solidify modifier before the boolean:

Like you mentioned, because this is a modifier, you can tweak the thickness whenever you want.


How to get distance from camera to all points in a mesh?

Simple Vector Maths

Blender uses vectors , so this becomes a simple matter of subtracing the global camera location vector from each global vertex location vector. (links)

The global location of the camera is camera_object.matrix_world.translation.   The global location of a vertex is its local coordinate (For vertex j in mesh me : me.vertices[j].co) , multiplied by the matrix world of the mesh object. (ob.matrix_world)

Test script, prints the camdist list to system console. camdist[i] is the global distance of me.vertices[i] from the camera.

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

cam = scene.camera
ob = context.active_object

if cam and ob and ob.type == 'MESH':
    camloc = cam.matrix_world.translation
    mw = ob.matrix_world
    me = ob.data # mesh
    camdists = [(mw * v.co - camloc).length for v in me.vertices]
    print(camdists)


Curve modifier not working, Can only deform along z axis

Not really sure what is worng with your curve specifically, but replacing it with a Bezier Curve instead of a NURBS Path seems to solve the issue.

Converting didn't seem to be enough


Gradient (spherical) on combined surfaces not working

If your aim is to have the gradient make the textures you have mixed "fade off" into the distance, then your problem is likely that you have your Blend Mode set to Opaque. Change it to something like Alpha Blend. See Below:


Setup bones on cloth sim so that you can transfer it to Unity via FBX export

Without edit bones.

Edit bones can be a little tricky, in script below instead have added the default single bone object, copied it to match number of verts, joined and constrained to the empties.

IMO this is a little easier to use for something like this and avoids dicking around with edit mode and heads and tails.

Select a mesh object in object mode. Run Script.
Adds an empty vertex-parented to each vertex.
Empties added to a collection and linked to scene.
Add a single bone armature using the operator.
Make a copy, select and link to scene for each other vertex.
Join to original.
For each pose bone, constrain to each empty.
Make the constrained pose the rest pose. (Else all bones are Y up at origin)

Test script.

import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
ob = context.object
me = ob.data

mtcol = bpy.data.collections.new("Empties")
scene.collection.children.link(mtcol)

for v in me.vertices:
    mt = bpy.data.objects.new(f"Vert {v.index}", None)
    mtcol.objects.link(mt)
    mt.parent = ob
    mt.parent_type = 'VERTEX'
    mt.parent_vertices = [v.index] * 3

# add an armature
bpy.ops.object.armature_add(location=(0, 0, 0))
for i in range(len(me.vertices) - 1):
    ob = context.object.copy()
    ob.data = ob.data.copy()
    scene.collection.objects.link(ob)
    ob.select_set(True)

bpy.ops.object.join()
arm = context.object

for pb, mt in zip(arm.pose.bones, mtcol.objects):
    con = pb.constraints.new('COPY_LOCATION')
    con.target = mt

# set constrained pose as rest.
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE')
bpy.ops.pose.armature_apply()

Can a punishment be implemented for using the word "vertice" in a Q/A?


Would the automatic removal of double vertices ever be undesirable?

One case would be if you didn't want to lose sharp edges.

When you apply the edge-split modifier, it will be splitting off faces based upon the angle. It will actually be splitting them individually so there will be doubled vertices. If you remove doubles, you'll lose the sharp edges.


Image textures and procedural textures are not the same. If you want to view a procedural texture as an image, you would need to create a new image in the UV editor, and Bake your procedural texture to that image.

You'll get different results depending on settings. So, play around a bit.

First, set up your texture. I am just using 'Marble' at default settings. Set 'Mapping' to use UV.

Next, in the UV editor, create a new image to store the texture data.

Then, under 'Render' in the 'Bake' tab, select 'Textures'.

Hit 'Bake'.

Once you bake the texture to an image, F3 to save the image to disk. Then you can change your Texture type to use an image, select the image you just made.

Now, edits made to the image will affect your texture.

Different Texture types are handled differently in the background. So, procedural textures have a separate toolset from image textures, and video textures.

The UV/Image editor is for dealing with image and video textures. But, when your using procedural textures, the tools are all in the Panel for which ever procedural type you picked.


Blender becomes very slow with large amount of objects sharing mesh data

You're sharing one object data (Primary) among +2500 objects, but with this line:

bpy.data.meshes.new('Sphere')

... you're also creating +2500 orphan mesh data. It's easy to add several MBs to Blender's memory usage (verifiable through System Monitor), just running that bit of code:

import bpy

for i in range(1, 2500):
    bpy.data.meshes.new('Sphere')

The orphaned obdatas won't be reclaimed until loading new scene or quitting (to see them, select a mesh object, click the dropdown button to the left of the obdata's name in Properties area's Object Data tab). For scenes large enough, in systems with low RAM, this could slow down the whole system.


Fluid Simulation is not working when a object is used as fluid obstacle

Aside from making the resolution high, you would need to subdivide the fluid, and increase the fluid speed and duration to match your animation. I.e. if you are running a 500 frame animation at 50fps, set the fluid time: (1 to 500/50). This will match the fluid speed to your animation so that it doesn't go slower than normal. Lastly, if you don't have the computer memory to run the sim at a high resolution, scale up the objects while keeping the domain at the smallest you can. It needs to be bigger than the fluid objects, though.


Fire Simulation completely disappears from scene (2.8)

You need to bake the simulation in Smoke > Cache otherwise it won't be saved to disk. If you don't, the simulation will be recalculated the next time you open the file and play the animation. This can be time consuming, since it would need to be done every time you open the file again. If you already have a cached animation from hitting play, you can also press Current Cache to Bake which will stored the cached animation, but not calculate it for the following frames that haven't been simulated yet.


Cycles Render - Baking texture without light influence

Ok, looks like after not quitting I have managed to find the solution.
I don't know if it is a work around for my problem or not, but it works, I did managed to add my file in the engine and has no problem, it is exactly as I was hopping to be.

Solution:
You will need to make emission instead of diffuse in the node that you will bake. Here it is a little bit more to talk how exactly I managed to bake it, but I don't wish to make lots of writings here. The solution was the above mentioned. You will need to bake from 1 object to another (by copying the original obj. with SHIFT+D) and for baking solution you will choice COMBINED (leave all the selected ones there).

I hope that I will manage to record all this in a short tutorial and link it here.. I will need to find myself a decent desktop recorder.
Hope that my explanation was clear enough, if not then pm me and I will gladly explain it step by step.

Blender version that I have is 2.77

Simple node settings image:
http://imgur.com/LbvQ20A

Bake image:
http://imgur.com/CtilIUu


Try to get a stripe on my shirt texture to follow the curve of the collar

I would try laying out the UVs more organically, than just laying it out in quads. Since they are not displayed on the model that way in the end, I think it's giving it the appearance of being stretched around like that.
Could also be that since you've drawn in the corners on the UV map, that is it simply replicating those corners in your texture. So I would try to round out the lines.
These suggestions could be separate or work in tandem, but it's what I would try. Hope that helps. Good luck!


You've likely disabled Show Emitter in the particle settings. The checkbox needs to be selected otherwise the particle emitter will not be visible in your render.


You have to remove the weight the neck has on the head and the beard.

Because, the beard is weighted on neck, so it influences when you move the head.
Then you will notice the head, most specifically the chin is also weighted on the neck which makes it look like it's shrinking a little bit when you turn the head sideways, so you have to subtract the weight from that as well.


Render farm: is "pack all" all I need or should I do something more?

For a simple example, what you suggest should, for the most part, be good.

I'd also like to add the following:

Select Make Paths Relative in case someone wants to unpack the .blend file at a different location.
Double check your output directory.  Does it need to be set to a relative path? Does that path actually exist?
If you're learning in this environment, it's good to test out your render by only rendering the first few frames with a low sample rate and smaller image size so you can get quick feedback in case something goes wrong.
The bvh_* cache files can become quite large.  If your home directory has a small quota, and you have a scratch environment or another drive you can dump them on, then the solution seems to be to remove the cache folder and link it to that other space.

On *nix systems, the cache folder is:
 ~/.config/blender/<blenderversion>/cache

On Mac, the cache folder is:
~/Library/Application Support/Blender/<blenderversion>/cache

On Windows, I'm not so sure, and I don't know how it changes from one version to the next.

You might want to read through this Blender Stack Exchange entry as well:
How can I change the directory used to cache BVM


How do I make two objects pull toward each other in a zero-gravity scene?

To make the your rigid bodies attract in your scene (assuming you already added your rigid bodies), you need to do this for each object:

1- Add a Force Field: In the 3d view, press ShiftA > Force Field > Force

2- Make your object the parent of the Force Field: Shift + Right click on the Force Field, followed by your object (The order is important) > Ctrl+P > Parent

3- Make sure your origin is on the center of mass of your object:
Select your object, then in the tools panel, select Set origin > Center of mass

4- Align the Force Field to your object: Click on your object > Shift+S > cursor to selected, Click on the Force Field > Shift+S > Selected to Cursor

5- Modify the settings of the Force Field: In the properties panel physics tab, you can find the settings for the force field. By deafult, the strength is set to a positive value, which will push objects apart. To make them attract, input a negative value. Note that massive/distant objects will require a lot more strength to be effective.

Repeat this process for every object in your scene, and you will have your magnetic attraction the next time you click play.


Reconstructing the Principled Shader SSS with standard nodes

Unfortunately, the Principled BSDF node does not use the same subsurface scattering algorithm as the algorithms accessible through Cycles nodes. The paper  that the Principled algorithm comes from states:

  Our subsurface parameter blends between the base diffuse shape and one inspired by the Hanrahan- Krueger subsurface BRDF. This is useful for giving a subsurface appearance on distant objects and on objects where the average scattering path length is small; it’s not however a substitute for doing full subsurface transport as it won’t bleed light into the shadows or through the surface.

Cycles supports Christensen-Burley, Random Walk, Cubic, and Gaussian algorithms. Hanrahan-Krueger is not one of them. Additionally, the paper states that the algorithm is "inspired by" the Hanrahan-Krueger algorithm, so it doesn't even utilize it exactly.

Looking at the above quote, though, it appears that the Principled subsurface algorithm is not as accurate as those within Cycles, so it may suit your purposes better to just use one of algorithms already included in the Subsurface Scattering node1.

If you really need to use the subsurface algorithm in the Principled shader, you can find the .brdf code here on GitHub. The relevant code begins on line 110. You can convert this to OSL code and then add it into the NodeTree with a Script node.

1 Interestingly, the author of the paper that details the Principled algorithm is Brent Burley, namesake of the more accurate Christensen-Burley algorithm included in Cycles.


Can I only use "Materials" to color the model?

A "Material" is basically instructions for a renderer, and in most cases the materials are very specific to a certain renderer.  In the case of Blender, Eevee might render the same as Cycles, but not always.  In general, a Material will not work outside of its native program.  These Material instructions tell the renderer how to color and shade the surface.  The color can be either a simple flat color, or a complicated set of nodes that make detailed surfaces like wood, scratched metal, or simply an image. The Material settings typically define things like color, reflections, or how bumpy something is.
UV mapping is a set of coordinates to relate a 3D model to a flat image.  In essence you're just saying "this point here on this model maps to that point there on that image."  That's how the 3D program knows where to put a texture map on a model.  Otherwise, the program has no idea how to wrap a texture around a 3D model.
UV coordinates, being simply numbers, are easily translated when you export a model from Blender to, say, .fbx, or importing a model INTO Blender.  The coordinates of all the vertices and the UV mappings keep their relationship, so you can apply an image in a game or other program and it still looks correct.
However, as I mentioned before, a Material doesn't translate easily.  Unity has no idea what to do with Blender materials.  Blender has no idea how Mental Ray, Octane, etc. work.
In your list:
I will use only flat colors (as the videos above)

no.  You can make quite complicated Materials in Blender without using textures or UV mapping. For example:

I don't need to import a model in the game

yes. a game will have a different renderer than Blender and won't know what to do with your Material settings.

I want to share model on social media like illustration/image

depends.  If you share a model on a Blender site like BlendSwap, you can use Materials, or if you know your consumers will use Blender.

I want to export model in .fbx file format to share with someone

no. You could only use a UV-mapped image.

I want to render model in Blender Cycles (on the second YouTube video she used Blender Render)

yes. Cycles can handle complex materials.

I want to rig model and maybe to make animation

yes, as long as you render it within Cycles (or Eevee, or Blender renderer)

HOWEVER - you can certainly "bake" a Cycles material into a UV mapped texture and then use it as if were an image.  The material won't, by default, stay on an exported model.  See this answer for detailed info on baking: Export cycles material to unity


Multiply it with the object's world matrix.

loc_world_space = obj.matrix_world * loc_obj_space

where loc_obj_space is a 3d mathutils.Vector

There is an addon View3D-> Math Vis(Console) available to visualize vectors and matrices directly in the viewport.

I.e. paste the following lines to the interactive console

obj = bpy.context.active_object
lobj = [vertex.co for vertex in obj.data.vertices]
lworld = [obj.matrix_world * vector for vector in lobj]


Bone on one side distorts the other side of the mesh

This issue likely is occurring because vertices on one side have been assigned to bones on the opposite side.

When using a mirror modifier, this issue can be easily rectified by simply un-assigning all vertices from the right side—this can be done manually through the Vertex Groups area in the object data panel (just select all vertices in edit mode and click "remove" for all bone-related vertex groups whose name ends in ".r")

Another option (when using the mirror modifier) is to go through each of the right-side bones and subtract the weight from the left side. (However, when using a mirror modifier this will NOT work by selecting the left-side bones and removing weight from the right.)

If the mirror modifier is not in use, just do the second process on both sides—i.e. remove from the right bones vertices on the left, and remove from the left bones vertices on the right.


Adjust margins (padding) between Editor windows

There's not a way to do this without diving pretty deeply into the source :-/ It'd certainly be nice to make the borders wider, but we don't have that kind of access to the UI with Python.


How would you make this lacquered texture on aluminium material?

Maybe just something along these lines?

But perhaps including, as @moonboots has suggested, some small-scale noise in the clearcoat Normal.


Cannot smooth without trouble on my mesh

Thank you for your helps, it is solved.

What I have done is :

I have added a subdivision modifier

Then I have smoothed the surface. At this time, problems were still present on my mesh.

Finally, I have activated auto-smooth option

What I get is alright :

Thank you for your help guys !


There are various dxf import / export plugins, but they are not enabled by default. One of these is specifically for Import (read carefully).

In the User Preferences window find the Add-ons tab.

Then when it's ticked, the .dxf import option becomes available in the File->Import menu


Blender 2.8: Meshes disappear when hitting number keys above the letters

Welcome

You have 3 Collections (of objects) in the Outliner (see screen shot above).

When you hit the 1 key you are showing only the objects in first Collection.
When you hit the 2 key you see only objects in the second collection etc .

If you look in the Outliner when hitting those keys you will notice how the little Eye icons are being enabled or disabled.

To see all the objects in the 3 Collections at the same time in Object mode again,
you need to go to the Outliner and manually enable the relevant little Eye icons.


Is the ocean modifier better than the fluid simulation for making an ocean?

It really depends on the project you are undertaking.

For Oceans and Splashes
Any wave or developed ocean sim uses functions which are fractaly overlayed on top of each other (similar to Brownian Motion, Turbulence, etc), which produces a plausible in-the-middle-of-the-ocean effect. Note that ocean simulators by default DO NOT use any sort of fluid dynamics! As it has been mentioned in the comments, fluid dynamics is expensive and simulating a whole ocean using fluids is just something that is not done even in the VFX for your top-ten Hollywood films of last year.

Now, on the other hand splashes and sprinkles and water interacting with objects cannot be done plausibly with an ocean sim. You actually need fluid dynamics for that.

What is usually done for a shot that has a huge CG ocean and water interacting with some object in the ocean (rocks, ships, kraken, huge robots, etc...) is that an ocean sim (or a few of them, different for foreground, midground and background [something like ocean LOD]) is used for the virgin ocean part of the shot, and a separate 'water-basin' is used where the interaction with the object happens. This is a limited container (as small as possible) with actually has 3d fluid dynamics, that are going to be used for the effects as splashes, droplets, etc.

The tricky part is here, you need to somehow combine the 2 techniques seamlessly!... Unfortunately there is no perfect solution which does not involve  manual tweaking of parameters for some time (There might be some tips I am not familiar with).

For Underwater Scenes
For such scenes, PLEASE, do not use fluid dynamics!!! Overkill is a weak word to use... it might even not produce the results you would expect! Now simulating the surface of the ocean with a ocean sim, and in the case of splashes and interaction, some fluid dynamics is fine (as we mentioned earlier). At the moment you get under those waves, it is just a completely different technique. There are quite alot of tutorials and techniques which teach realistic underwater effects.
Here are some basic ideas:
- You apply a 'depth' filter which would give the impression of this blue-ish foggy abyss.
- You combine that with tiny particles generated where they will be visible.
- Volumetric effect (similar to God-rays) for any lighting natural or man-made.
- particles for bubbles, racing to the surface...
- If you are close to the surface, you might want to apply caustic effects onto the objects which are visible...
- Last but not least use your observation and imagination! ;)


Missing render preview. No automatic re-render when changes are made, etc

If you're referring to the "update automatically" option under view menu of UV/image editor, which is also used to keep rendering results, this:

which says "update other affected window spaces automatically to reflect changes during interactive operations such as transform"

Imho that has nothing to do with re-rendering automatically. That, for sure, acts on UV editing: if enabled, e.g., other 3D views in "textured" mode are updated automatically while you're still transforming your UV map in that editor. Without it enabled, the update happen only after you commit the UV editing. It sort enables a realtime results preview while editing UV.

To get something similar to what you describe, you could get that effect using another Blender editor option:

instead of using this windows setup:

you could use "area duplication" options like:

obtaining a small separate window that you can set as "rendered" viewport shading (works both in Internal and Cycles, nowadays):

Now, in this way every little change in your objects is immediately reflected (re-rendered) in the small window. Hth.


How do you cut off part of a mesh you don't want?

Switch to Edit Mode.

You can do this by going to the Tab (Don't know what to call it) near the bottom, most likely called Object Mode and clicking it followed by Edit Mode. You can also press the Tab key, which is the shortcut.

All of the vertices should be selected, which you can tell if they are orange. We don't want all of the vertices selected. Press A to deselect all the vertices, it should go from orange to black.

Now you need to select the area you would like to delete. Press B and drag over the area desired. Make sure to rotate around the model since it won't select the vertices on the other side (and I don't know how to fix that but it should work either way)

After the vertices of the desired area has been selected press X and then click 'Vertices'

Hope this helps.


For a close-up I would certainly model and texture the leaves, however, at a distance a simple alpha texture could get just as realistic of a result with much less computing power. For example if you are taking a closeup of some foliage and then zooming/focusing on a subject, modelling the extra detail would be worth the extra effort/render time. However if you just want some realistic shrubs/trees in the background, textures are the way to go. And if it is only for a very distant scene or the background is blurred, having textures for entire sections of foliage might help even more.

Basically, unless you can see the difference, there is no need for the extra polys in your scene.


What's happening RE Blender Player? Has it been discontinued?

Blender Player was a part of the Blender Game engine, which relies on Blender Internal Render engine.

Blender Internal Render engine was dropped due to the fact that its render aproach was quite outdated and with the release of Eevee as the new physically based real-time render engine, the developers would have had to take care of three render engines (Blender Internal, Cycles and Eevee).

Depending on what you want to do with Blender Player, there might be alternative solutions with UPBGE and Armory3D (no MacOS support, afaik)


UV Mapping a simple cube only shows 2 sides textured

It sounds to me like a problem with your lighting: texture viewport mode can do some strange things with your lighting. Try adding a sun lamp illuminating the other side, or switching to rendered or material view with the texture applied in the material. I apologize if I am not answering your question appropriately (I am only going off of your text because my browser won't show your picture). Hope this helps :)


On the 3D header, there is a button where you can change it from Global to Local.

Hope that answers your question :)


if you are on 2.8, animate the blast. use emission. model it. use bloom effect. If you're on 2.79 do it on post.


Brick Texture On Extruded Cylinder Shows All Mortar Color

It's an UV map problem
You may have correctly unwrapped the cylinder (or used the default cylinder which comes already unwrapped) but unless you are using the brand new (2.90) 3D View Transform option, called Correct Face Attributes, which allows the transform tools to edit the UV’s and vertex colors of your mesh while you manipulate the model, you'll have to unwrap the new faces too.
The UV island for the interested faces is probably collapsed onto a single line in the UV editor, which falls in corrispondence if a mortar.


Problem

This is caused by faces inside your mesh. The main sign of this is that the crease only appears when subsurf is turned up; the inside faces add weight that pulls the verticies inwards (according to the subsurf algorithm).

Solution

Tab into edit mode and uncheck the X box in the Mirror modifier. Your properties panel should look like this:

This will leave you with half a human. Change into face select mode:  and select these faces:

Key X and select Faces. Tab out of edit mode and recheck X in the Mirror modifier. This is the repaired mesh:


How can I turn a geometric shape into a hollow room with evenly thick walls?

You can use the Solidify modifier; To add it to a object, select said object, go to the Properties, and in the tab Modifiers click Add Modifier and select Solidify.

You can adjust the Thickness value.


Shortcut to change Type of Sequencer View

The default shortcut to change view type in the sequencer is CtrlTab

The one shortcut cycles through each display option.


The mesh is smooth, but very low poly with long thin quads. Such geometry can produce texturing artifacts - that's what you see.

You want to keep the topology in square quads.

To do so make just tileable chunk of the road (rectangle with nice topology), UV unwrap it and repeat it along a curve with Array and Curve modifiers, like so: Create a road along large terrain


How to Make Earth in Blender tutorial - How to implement the cloud shader properly?

try to switch the input nodes of the "mix shader":
- transparent shader should be the 2nd dot, while the diffuse one should be the 3rd input node (alpha channel is ok to be at 1st connection)


Fragments / light splotches in gpu render but not cpu render

Two things;

1: It actually looks like the GPU is rendering more realistically. I think the reduction in quality would be /not/ having those artifacts (though this is debatable)

2: If you're rendering with Cycles, check to see if you have "Supported" or "Experimental" selected for the feature set. This setting will certainly cause rendering differences;


Select one of the objects in object mode, change the snap element option from increment to vertex,

Press G, hold Ctrl, and move the mouse to the vertex of the other object you want the first object to align to.


How do I select parents and children together in the outliner?

Hold CTRL while selecting the parent in the outliner, you should see every children of that object highlithed in orange as well, that tells you they are selected too.


After crash, images appear as black sihoettes and all text dissappears

Turns out my graphics card, a GeForce GTX1070, doesn't have enough muscle :(
After 10 or so reboots this appeared:

The old card has no updates that work. Frustrating. I don't know what I'm going to do about this.


Hair children aren't showing in particle edit mode

You have to enable the children option in the top right corner of the window before painting your strands, then the preview is working:


How can I scale a duplicate mesh to evenly first the mesh?

The easiest way to do that, is by deleting all but one of the fingers of your snowflake, and using modifiers.

As you can see I made that snow flake with an array modifier, and an Empty as the object offset (same way as in this answer), that way I only have to model (and then change) one.

There is no easy tool to do this like scale, or even shrink/flatten.
So here is how I would do it.

With the pivot point set to 3D cursor, and the 3D cursor set to the base of the snowflake (that is so you only have to reposition it down, not both directions). Scale S up the entire finger until it is as wide as you want. (I have the original snowflake in the same spot as the one I'm scaling to be able to see the difference.)

Now move G the entire finger, except the bottom vertices in to its proper position. We are looking to get the left and right side centered here.

Here is where it gets clever, select everything, and extrude it to give the snowflake some thickness. (Don't worry this is just temporary.)
Select the two sides on one of the "branches" on the snowflake's finger.

Now press ShiftNumPad 3 to move the view to be aligned with the faces.
Change the Transform Orientation to View.

In another 3D view select the end face. Back in the view which is now perfectly aligned with the branch, press G XX to move the end face along the view's X axis.
Repeat steps 4-6 for the other branch. It should now look like this:

Delete the extra faces, by going to side view and box selecting B the top half of it, then Delete > Vertices.
Finlay move the top vertices down till they are the same space apart as the small side branches and the new side branches are.

Here in animated gif form are all the steps listed above.


Gradient along object hair particles (like grass)?

A couple problems arise from using the Object coordinates. I would use Vertex Colors:

In Weight Paint mode, use the Weight Gradient tool under Weight Tools in the T sidebar to create a weight gradient along your grass blade. Use the weight painting tools to adjust as needed:

Next, enable the Tissue add-on in the Add-ons panel of the user preferences:

Now, in Vertex Paint mode, use the Vertex Color from Vertex Group tool in the Tissue Tools panel of the T sidebar to convert the weight into a vertex group:

Last, use an Attribute node to get the gradient from the vertex color:

Result as a particle:


Need help with UV Unwrapping a gun model

Ok so the first thing I did:

Add a mirror modifier
Reduce your mesh polygon count

I did not Unwrap your model as I think that It should something you got to learn (not using the smart UV method). But your mesh should be better at this point.
Try to use as much blender modifier as possible. it is only when you want to export your mesh that you make a copy of it and apply all the modifiers.

Second advice is to thin when modeling to optimize your mesh a first time (just simple things) then pass a second time on it to check where you could improve it.

As an advice for the UV, you should try to isolate the cube areas and mark the seams (red):

Anyway, that was a long work and you still have some on this model but this is just detailing, especially the cube areas. If it as model for an FPS, you should consider deleting the faces that won't be visible for the player.
If it is a multiplayer model, you should consider the previous advice and create a low poly model to render instead of the high poly one

Good luck :D

https://we.tl/t-GxxdSrGEk5


Your HDRI is 2048×1024 only. It could be enough for lighting or reflections but not for a visible environement image (or for a very low res render).
You'll find links to HDRIs (and other ressources) here.


How can I render a material with wireframe and keep the faces showing, in the BGE?

Select your object then

Properties Panel -> Object -> Display -> Maximum Draw Type -> Wireframe

Running in game mode should use whatever material you have assigned to your object.

Object mode:

Game mode:


Equivalent of Material.alpha and Material.use_transparency

This is more complex because materials now almost always use nodes.
Whether to use alpha is controlled by the Blend Method. As a replacement for reading material.use_transparency, try using material.blend_method != 'OPAQUE'.
To fetch the actual alpha value is harder since it now flows down an arbitrarily-complex node graph. But for simple graphs you can try this
from bpy_extras.node_shader_utils import PrincipledBSDFWrapper
ma_wrap = PrincipledBSDFWrapper(material)
ma_wrap.alpha  # use this instead of material.alpha
ma_wrap.alpha_texture.image  # use this if you want the alpha texture image

This wrapper is used by the OBJ/FBX exporter. See Import & Export of Node Shaders in the manual for more about it.


How can I simulate Real camera "white balance" parameter in KELVINs

'Looks' is meant to simulate the way different films respond to light, not quite the same as white balance.

To render lights at different colour temperature, you can use the 'Blackbody' material node to convert a Kelvins Temperature to an RGB colour:


How to utilize local Rotation Axis with Animation Nodes

Use offset Matrice node with local-axis local-pivot option selected to rotate on object's local axis. You can get that option from Advanced Node Settings of the node by pressing U or from right panel.

We can use Float Range node to generate a float list with step of 6.6 for rotation.

Alternate way:

PS. Turn on degrees currently everything is in radians.


There is no Film color management in blender 2.8. Why?

The "Film" options was removed because it wasn't proper color management and the "Looks" because they were more of a post-processing filter to achieve a certain appearance. You can still achieve similar results by using the compositor to color grade your renders.

See: Combine Filmic Blender and "Standard" Film Emulation


Texture paint mode: is is possible to paint over multiple materials?

If you are using Cycles, this is as easy as copying and pasting the new overlay image texture set up into the second material so that when painting on the single image, it is references in both materials and can allow interaction in Texture Paint mode with Material Draw mode. I have a screen shot to show a simple two side set up.


In ⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltU> User preferences > Input, navigate to 3D view > 3D view (Global), then scroll to the bottom of 3D view > (Global) and click add new.

Put wm.context_toggle as the operator.
This is an operator which toggles a property given by a datapath parameter.

Put space_data.show_only_render as the datapath parameter (you can put stuff there even if it appears grayed out). You can get the datapath for any checkbox by right clicking on it and selecting Copy Data Path. The datapath can then be pasted with ⎈ CtrlV.

Assign a key combination which doesn't conflict with an existing shortcut (e.g. ⇧ ShiftQ)

Now pressing ⇧ ShiftQ (or whatever you assigned as the shortcut) in the 3D view will toggle show only render.


How can I rotate/twist a torus about its major circle?

As far as I know, there is no easy way to rotate about a curved axis.  Your best bet would be to model the segments straight, use an array modifier, then bend them.

First model a straight segment of the object.

Next add an Empty to the scene and position it at the end of the segment.  Then add an Array modifier to the segment, and uncheck Constant Offset and Relative Offset and enable Object Offset, selecting the empty as the offset object.

The Array modifier works by duplicating the geometry of the mesh and placing it at the position of the offset object, further parts of the array copy this relative transformation.

Now add a Simple Deform modifier to the object and set it to Bend with an angle of 360°.  You will probably also have to add another empty and use it as the Simple Deform origin so you can rotate the axis being bent around.

You can adjust the diameter of the torus by increasing the Array count.  Note that since my example model is 90°, I need to use multiples of 4 for the array modifier so that the teeth line up at the seam.


Why does a MixRGB node rotate my ColorRamp/mapping coordinates?

In both your cases, (with and without your Mix RGB node) you are casting a 3-component vector to a 1-component scalar Fac input to the Color Ramp node. But Blender nodes do this differently for RGB Colors, and XYZ Vectors.
The cast from Color to scalar is done with an implicit RGB to BW node; i.e. it uses the luminance of the color as its scalar result. The cast from Vector to scalar is done by taking the simple mean of the XYZ elements.
Since the Position output of your Voronoi node has a range of R and G values across the piece, varying exactly with X and Y in whatever texture-space you are using,  that explains the non-uniform interpretation of the colors as scalars across X and Y.
You could use a home-made 'Mix Vector' group, which would output a Vector, not a Color:

..but it would probably be better to find a way of achieving your desired effect without using the cast at all.


Looping Smooth Spline Generation That Will Be Evaluated in Animation Nodes

You can create some random points and use them as the handles of a spline as follows:

To generate another spline, just change the seed.


Why does the wire-frame material fades across the object?

Enable Z transparency and increase the Z offset:


Create Simple Shadow Under Object in Blender Render

"include a transparent plane with a soft shadow texture below the object in your 3D asset."

apple docs
First let me explain why you are not getting a shadow.
When you export a object you are never going to get any of the information that comes from blender's renders (cycles or blender internal). In this case the shadow.
What is a shadow? You did not model it (and information in the model is all that you can export.) A shadow is a not a "thing" like your couch, it is not even the plane under it. A shadow is something the render engine calculates whenever some geometry occludes a light source. (Essentially it is shading the render engine adds)
Think about it your couch looks very different in cycles then it does exported and displayed in scene kit, and a shadow is just something created from the render engine.
So unless you exported your all light(s) and the settings, and scene kit had a raytracer that rendered just like cycles, then you are not going to get a shadow.

Baking
This is where baking comes in. You take all that lovely data that cycles wraps your model in, and "bake" it to a texture that can be used elsewhere.
It does not matter if you are baking the full color (you would do that for your couch) or just the shadows, the process is the same.

Start by UV unwrapping the object that is going to be baked (a simple lightmap pack is sufficient.)

Create a new image in the "UV Image Editor", for VR keep it small 512x512 or 1024x1024.

Now in the material nodes for that object (the shadow catcher plane) add a Image Texture node, and set it to the image your just created (make sure that node is the active node).

In the Properties window, Render tab scroll down to the Bake section. To bake the shadows set the Bake Type to "Shadow". Now hit the big Bake button.

So to go make to the quote from the scene kit documentation:
"include a transparent plane with a soft shadow texture."
This is what they mean, somehow make an image with the shadow on it and then texture a plane with that shadow image.
Now to get this to work, you are probably going to need to invert the image because you want to drive the transparency of the plane. (Full transparent where no shadow, opaque where the shadow is.)


How do I add a new preset to the FFMPEG Presets list in Blender?

The presets are python script files. They can be found in the folder for the program.
version number/scripts/presets/ffmpeg.

Create your own and save them there, they will show up next time you open blender. To understand the options, use the existing ones as reference.

Read: Change Encoding Settings through Python API


How to disable select and activate and return to just select tool

Toolbar buttons with a little arrow at the bottom right can be expanded to reveal more sub-tools or options.

Just click continuously on the Selection Tool toolbar button to expand the dropdown, and pick any of the available tools from there.


Weird bone rotation in copyRotation Constraint

Consider two separate bones .. one for x-axis rotation, one for y-axis rotation.
Consider pose space to pose space.
Consider keyframe of pose


Can't make circular array around an empty

I may have missed the point of your question, or not understood what exactly you wanted to do, but ...

Ignore the empty and don't activate offset. Put the 3D cursor in the centre of the world (0,0,0)

Create a Bezier Circle

In the cylinder's modifier, change Fixed Count to Fit Curve.  Choose the Bezier Circle as the curve.

You'll get a vertical array of however many cylinders you need to fit the circumference of that circle.

With the Array selected, assign a new modifier - Curve - and choose the Bezier Circle as the curve.  I had to set the axis to Z to get what you see in the picture below.


Starting with the default cube, scale it in the Z direction to make it quite flat (say to 0.05). Extrude two adjacent faces to make a chevron with very long arms.

Add an Array modifier and configure it to repeat the single chevron at the required spacing. You can use the Constant offset to manually adjust this.

Create a second mesh to enclose the region where you want the chevrons. This must be manifold - ie, it needs to fully enclose the space.

Select the original mesh (the chevrons) and add a Boolean modifier set to Intersect with Object set to the bounding mesh you just created.

Select the bounding mesh and Hide it by pressing H and you should now see just the chevrons that were within the bounding box.

Finally, you can Apply the modifiers and delete the bounding mesh as it's no longer required.


Skybox problems: make islands have ZERO margin?

I like to create skybox with uv sphere, it's simpler and easier.
Do a quick search on youtube on how to create skybox in the blender that you learn in 5 min.

It will look good like this:


How should I retouch videos (repaint areas)?

First of all:.

I do strongly suggest to not put the video as texture on a plane in 3D-space. If you wanna use video input, it's objectivly better to use the sequence editor of blender, where you can add your videos and overlay them with renderings.

Second:

I think you kinda overestimate the ambition of this stack exchange community, because explaining how to do this task is probably more complicated than doing it. I don't think you will get a fully-featured tutorial on how to do this as answer, cause it's just too much work.

There are, however already tutorials how to do this already online. I suggest the following guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVPcT0dJmoY


2.91 - where can I change animation size

It's right there, where the red circle is.


Mesh with Triangulate Modifier mesh causes new faces and vertices to form with the Subsurface Modifier and Bevel Modifier

If you don't want to triangulate the faces manually, you can use the triangulate modifier. Then, add a bevel modifier, and a subdivision surface modifier:

This gives the following result:

Be sure to triangulate before subdividing!

I'm noticing that some of the circles are still "blocky". To fix this, try to go back, before you beveled it, and use a bevel modifier (not to be confused with the one above), setting a limit on the angle. Example:

No limit:

With limit (note that the less pointy edges were not affected, and will be smoothed out by a subdivision surface modifier):


Is a quad in a triangular shape still bad for topology?

A good trig or quad topology depends on what you intend to use it for.
If you want to use blender modeling function (such as subsurf, snooth and other deformations) it is better to use quad since trig can make ugly/buggy result.

Some publications say trig can be usefull in animation or game but it depend what software you use. But usually quad is  better.


There are two things to prevent those transparent faces.

For Cycles - add some thicknes to the whole wall, before extruding individual parts
For Eevee  - Set material Blend Mode to Opaque

Cycles - add thickness before extruding. Just extrude the whole plane first.

Eevee - set blend mode to Opaque


Material is stretching when using Edge Loop

The reason for the difference is the top-to-bottom interpolation of normals, inside the rectangular faces. This illustration shows 2 standard cylinders. They are both shaded smooth, but the one on the right has Autosmooth switched on.

When smooth-shaded,the normal at some shading-point inside a polygonal face is an interpolation of the vertex-normals at its corners. Those, in turn, are a (sometimes weighted) average of the normals of the whole-faces which the vertices help to define.
As you can see on the left, in pure smooth shading, because of the top and bottom faces, those vertex-normals have a Z component, looking up and down. The interpolation between these gives the geometrically cylindrical surface a somewhat spherical field of interpolated normals. Strictly speaking,this actually produces the inaccurate reflection.
On the right, switching on Autosmooth introduces the influence of per face-vertex normals. Autosmooth sets a face-angle threshold for interpolation. Below the threshold, faces are interpolated, above it they are split. The top and bottom face-normals no longer influence the radial normals, which are then aligned to the geometry. In an orthographic view, like this one, the cylinder reflects only its own height in the environment. In perspective, the reflection is more like a real cylinder's, than the one on the left.
There's a similar result from introducing edge-loops - they cut the top and bottom faces out of the interpolation of radial normals, for a truer cylindrical reflection.


How to use the new cycles mist pass in 2.68?

Not much documentation yet, but it looks like you could use it in the compositor to get a mist/fading effect.

just straight, it returns a black and white map based on the settings in Properties > World  > Mist


png resolution is wrong when opening file from the UV/Image Editor


Manipulate Vertex group names in the bmesh API

Vertex group names are stored in the object, not the mesh.

The order of groups just has to be aligned between the mesh and the object.

So yes, you have to name the group on the object.


CUDA Devices not showing up in "Render" tab (v. 2.78)

Switch to the cycles render engine:

On the info window

Select Cycles Render

and enable GPU Compute Device:


How do I change the size of the bounding box without it effecting the object selected?

I've had that trouble a lot with imported objects, and also those I've exported as .obj , and every time, it's been caused by some fragment of mesh that's somehow got into the project or obj file.  They've usually been a considerable distance away and expanding the boundary box significantly

The solution was to press 'A' to select everything in Object mode, then examine anything I couldn't account for that was hi-lighted.

You might have to search around in Ortho View in each of the three axis and also zoom back quite a way to see them.  Try ENABLING ALL LAYERS and pressing SHIFT-C to force the view to encompass every object in the entire Blender file.  Something foreign is in there otherwise the boundary box wouldn't be wanting to reach out to enclose it.

The offending item(s) are often unapproachable in that you cannot make them appear larger as you try and zoom in on them.  They can be just a dot.  Get as close as you can, select it, so it's the only object selected, and delete it!

I usually create my own models these days and haven't struck the problem for quite a while and have no files with that sort of stowaway with which to experiment again.  I'm sure those extras were separate from legitimate meshes because I don't remember ever having to go into Edit Mode to 'part' (P) them first before deleting them.

Hope this solves your problem - it's annoying when imported elsewhere because those fragments could be seen following the main object around like a distant bird, as though stalking!


If you want to include the first and last coordinates you need to add the following lines after creating the curve:

spline.use_endpoint_u = True
spline.use_endpoint_v = True

so you finaly get:

def create_curve(coords_list):
    crv = bpy.data.curves.new('crv', 'CURVE')
    crv.dimensions = '3D'
    spline = crv.splines.new(type='NURBS')
    spline.points.add(len(coords_list) - 1)
    for p, new_co in zip(spline.points, coords_list):
        p.co = (new_co + [1.0])
    spline.use_endpoint_u = True
    spline.use_endpoint_v = True
    obj = bpy.data.objects.new('object_name', crv)
    bpy.data.scenes[0].collection.objects.link(obj)


how to build mutiple targets in a loop in animation nodes?

Yes. You can create multiple targets using object instancer and simplify this process using loop.


If you have a look at any camera in Blender with local transformation orientation selected, you will see that in Blender cameras look at negative z direction, up is positive y and right is positive x:

You will need to match whatever camera orientation is used in the software you are importing from. It might even be that some axis is inverted in another software.


I-beam pointer background color inversion

It should be this setting, in the "user interface" section:


How to add holes to an extruded path object - I wish to modle a filmstrip

Start with a flat plane (film strip) and make an array of perforations (using a couple arrays) to punch holes in the plane. I have used academy 4 perf per frame here. I start with a box outside of the film plane, so that I know where it would appear o the previous film frame.

Then we array the plane, which has holes in it, and fit that to a curve. Make sure that all of the objects have their Origin Cleared at the centre (Alt-C).

BEWARE! Down't rotate the curve in the normal Z direction (up) as this will cause the film strip to pinch along the side which it would not do.

EDIT: Bonus material using a UV unwrap.


Blender shaders or objetcs does not have this kind of output to use in drivers.

You can use the Inverse square law.

$$
I \propto \frac{1}{d^{2}}
$$

Where $I$ is the intensity and $d$ is the distance. (Intensity is proportional to inverse of distance squared)

You can use this in your driver multiplied with the lamp or emission-shader intensity.

To account for surface normal (how it is rotated towards light) you would have to script a pydriver and access the mesh data inside: How to create a PyDriver in blender 2.7

Or use a dummy plane tangent to surface that will not render and get the direction and distance into the driver from there.

If you would like to account for mirrors or indirect lighting in general then forget it;)


Blender Cycles - Alpha Over Node - How to get a combination of two layers and get as result something like 1 layer over the other?

It's because Alpha Over takes transparency into account. Composite using Z-Combine node instead. You connect Render Layers' Color and Z directly to the node.


Why is the color white darkened through glass?

After some extensive testing, I have found that you need to add a glossy effect to the inner eye. For the outer eye, you need to have a mix shader with a glass and transparency shader connected to it.


Use mist with scene that has world texture/background

First, set a world background.
Then, go to the Render context in Properties and enable Transparent (in the Film panel).
Create two render layers.  For the first one, enable Mist (in the Passes panel).  For the second render layer, disable Combined and Z, and enable Environment.  Also, under Exclude, select all layers (we only want the background texture).
Create this node setup:

The value in the Multiply node controls the strength of the mist.  The result is:

(my settings in the Mist Pass panel of World context were Start:20, Depth:1000, Falloff:Linear)


How to enable an addon on startup via script?

You can enable a comma-separated list of addons through the command line/terminal, so you're able to do that through a script. That functionality is described in the blender terminal help (./blender --help).

An example would be ./blender -b --addons animation_nodes,meshlint [file] to enable animation nodes and meshlint, then load your file.

If you need to load a single python script, such as a set of operations you want to use on a mesh object, you can use the --python flag. ./blender -b --addons animation_nodes,meshlint [file] --python [myscript.py] loads blender in the background, loads specified addons, loads the file, then executes the python script.

Unfortunately, the wiki is not helpful here; it only goes over basic rendering functionality. Simply call the help flag to see everything the executable can do from the terminal. A specific thing to remember is that flags are order-sensitive. Those flags listed first will be interpreted first, sequentially until the end of the command.


How to scale a texture so it appears smaller or larger on an object, during texture painting?

From the way your question is worded, I think you want to scale the UVmap in the image editor.

Select your entire UVmap in the image editor, and scale it. a larger UV map will make the texture appear smaller and more repetitive, and a smaller UVmap will make the texture appear larger (and lower resolution)


How to manipulate position of mask layer using python

I don't think you can get the position of the mask as a whole, but you can access the coordinates of each individual point of the mask.

You can access the mask with:

bpy.data.masks['Mask']

And then the layer within the mask:

bpy.data.masks['Mask'].layers['MaskLayer']

Then you have access to the splines in that layer, which are the curves of the mask. In this case I am accessing the first spline:

bpy.data.masks['Mask'].layers['MaskLayer'].splines[0]

Which then leads you to the spline's points. The points have a vector called co (coordinates) which store the x and y position of that point. By looping over all the points in the mask and altering the co[0](x) or co[1](y) you can move the mask:

mask = bpy.data.masks['Mask'].layers['MaskLayer'].splines[0]
for point in mask.points:
    point.co[0] += 0.1


Is it possible to combine shape key values from different objects?

Yes, you can definitely do this with drivers. Here's how:

In this first image you can see that I've created 2 spheres, each with a Basis shapekey. Sphere 1 has a second shapekey called Sphere1Key, which changes the sphere to a fatter shape. This key is animated (keyframed) from 0 to 1 over 50 frames. You can see the value field is green due to the keyframed status.

The second sphere also has a second shapekey called Sphere2Key, which deforms the sphere in the same way.

For the Sphere2Key shapekey, I have right clicked on the value field and selected Add Driver.

With Sphere 2 still selected I open up the Graph Editor and switch from F-Curve Drivers mode with the dropmenu in the toolbar.

You can see in the left panel that the Sphere.001 is selected and I've also selected the Value for the Sphere2Key shapekey.

Now we just have to map the value from the first sphere's shapekey to this one.

To do this, press N to bring up the right property panel. In the Drivers area we want these settings:

Change type to Scripted Expression.
In Expr, add a variable name (I've used getSphere1KeyValue)
Click Add Variable button
In the variable name field paste in the name from the Expr box above (getSphere1KeyValue)
Change the variable type to Single Property
Change the Prop type to Key
Change the selected Key id block to "Key" or whatever the name of the id block for the keyframed data for the Sphere1 shapekey value is (The available values list automatically when you click in this field. If you're not sure what it should be you can select Sphere1 and the switch to the Dope Sheet and find it there).
Enter the RNA path to the sphere 1 key value into the Path field. You can get this value by right clicking on the Sphere1Key field in the
shapekeys panel, and choosing Copy Data Path.
The value for the Value field in the Driver panel should now update
when you scroll the timeline back and forth.
If the Sphere2 shapekey doesn't respond, you may need to click the
 Update Dependencies button in the driver panel. You should then see
 the Sphere2 shapekey copy the Sphere1 shapekey keyframed values in
 synchronization.

Note: you may notice in the gif that the numbers in the Value field are not changing while the animation runs. This is simply a UI display issue, the actual values are changing, as evidenced by the shape change in Sphere.001. If you hover the cursor over those fields you'll see them update.


Physics fluid stimulation is not showing rendering tab or being rendered in one particular project

I accidentally turned off the volumes option in filter tab under view layer properties.


Can I export blender's drawing lines for using in clipstudio?

Convert the grease pencil to a curve or a mesh.

Then export as the format you need.
Note that the format will determine what attributes will get saved as part of the file, most likely only the outline.


In edit mode, you can access to the "symmetrize" function:

Select the left part of the character
The use the menu "Armature">"Symmetrize"

It will work if the bones are correctly named (".L" or ".Left" suffix for the left part, ".R" or ".Right" for the right part).

Note that it is working also if the bones are not already created:

You can also use the "X axis mirror" option:

Note: all these functions work well if the armature is along X with no rotation. So if you have rotations, apply them before CrtlA and choose rotation)


It's a vector because you can control the amount of scattering for R, G, and B separately if you wish.  It's a bit weird because there is also a "Subsurface Color", but if you set Subsurface color to white, you can see the effect of changing the Subsurface Radius vector:

if you don't want different behavior per RGB color, just pass the color of your image in for that vector.  Assuming it's a grayscale image the RGB values will be the same.

Note that it's not really a radius per se; you can't set it to ".5 inches" for example. It's more of a relative amount of scattering per color, and multiplied by the Subsurface value.


I think I have found the answer in another thread. I don't have a link to it but people there proposed that the missing normal map sections are due to too high multiresolution. I have lowered the multiresolution from 6 to 4 and it has baked fast and nicely.


Having problem joining (make segment) two curves

Press ctrl-J to join them before going into edit mode. Then it should work.


Blender Eevee HDRI reflection makes the color surface of objects wrong

Unlike Cycles, Eevee is not capable of global illumination. The objects in your scene are only lit by the hdri - which does not create shadows. This means that the ceiling is just going to reflect the grass, even though other objects are in the way.
Setting up realistic lighting in Eevee is a science in itself, but to fix the ceiling it should be enough to set up an irradiance volume to represent the bounced light in your room.
To do this, add an "irradiance volume" and scale it on the respective axis so it just encompasses the whole room. Then, under "indirect lighting" in the "render" tab hit "bake indirect lighting". This will calculate the lighting conditions on each of the probes, which will then be used for reflections.

In the first picture you can see that the ceiling has the brown-ish look of my hdr. If i add an irradiance volume the room is properly lit, with the missing texture giving the light a pink hue.
But honestly, it takes quite some work to make lighting look realistic in eevee, especially if you want to use an hdri. I'd recommend using cycles for the final render and to check lighting, while limiting eevee for previews.


For cycles, once you have your object unwrapped and textured like you have in your first screenshot, you then navigate to the material tab, and click "Use Nodes"

Now under "Surface" you should have a drop down which says "Diffuse BSDF", followed by 3 options; "Color", "Rough", and "Norm". Click the little dot to the right of the "Color" widget, and choose "Image Texture":

In the image texture panel, click the drop down to the left of the "Open" button, and select the image that you had open in the UV editor:

Now if you go into the textured view (Alt+Z), you should see your texture applied to your object.


How to make a 3gpp file usable for the movie clip editor ?

This question comes up pretty high in searches so I thought I'd add what worked for me - converting it to mp4 with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i originalvid.3gp -q:v 0 -q:a 0 -strict -2 targetvid.mp4

This keeps the video (q:v 0) and audio (q:a 0) at the maximum possible quality.


This isn't possible out-of the box, but it can be done with a script:

This isn't an addon, just paste the script into the text editor and run it, you may want to change the variables at the top.

# frames to use before and after
FRAMES_PAD = 0
# real render 3d scene or GL preview?
USE_OPENGL = True
# handle marker switching cameras
USE_MARKER_CAMERAS = True

import bpy
from bpy import context

wm = context.window_manager
scene = context.scene
# store original output
filepath_orig = scene.render.filepath
frame_range = scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end

markers = sorted(scene.timeline_markers, key=lambda m: m.frame)

# progress in cursor (countdown)
wm.progress_begin(0, len(markers) - 1)
scene.frame_start = 1

if USE_MARKER_CAMERAS:
    markers_camera = [m.camera for m in markers]

    def markers_cameras_restore():
        for m, c in zip(markers, markers_camera):
            m.camera = c

    def markers_cameras_disable():
        for m in markers:
            m.camera = None

for i in range(1, len(markers)):
    m_start = markers[i - 1]
    m_end = markers[i]

    # just in case
    if m_start.frame == m_end.frame:
        continue

    scene.frame_end = m_end.frame + FRAMES_PAD
    scene.frame_start = m_start.frame - FRAMES_PAD
    scene.render.filepath = filepath_orig + "_######_" + m_start.name

    if USE_MARKER_CAMERAS:
        markers_cameras_restore()
        scene.frame_set(scene.frame_start)
        if m_start.camera:
            scene.camera = m_start.camera
        markers_cameras_disable()

    wm.progress_update(len(markers) - (i + 1))

    if USE_OPENGL:
        bpy.ops.render.opengl(animation=True)
    else:
        bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True)

# restore original values
scene.render.filepath = filepath_orig
scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end = frame_range

if USE_MARKER_CAMERAS:
    markers_cameras_restore()

wm.progress_end()


how to set the camera follow path using python script

Thanks for @poor 's comment. It can be done in the way of

make object A a parent of object B via Python

specifically, it needs to be coded like:

camera = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
path = bpy.data.objects['NurbsPath']
lamp = bpy.data.objects['Lamp']

camera.select = True
lamp.select = True
path.select = True

bpy.context.scene.objects.active = path #parent

bpy.ops.object.parent_set(type='FOLLOW') #follow path

you can find the objects name in python console with

list(bpy.data.objects)


Cannot install addon, even after manually moving file into the Addons folder

Okay, so I had to find another version of the file. Something was wrong with that one.. then I had to indent line 63.


Animation Nodes sockets stopped connecting

The Splines from Object outputs a list of splines by default because a curve object can have multiple splines in Blender. You can see that it outputs a list by looking at the socket transparency.

You have two options:

Use a Get List Element node to get the first element from the list.
Open the advanced settings of the Splines from Object node and switch the Import Type to Single.


Import GLTF Tilt Brush via Google Poly is throwing an error

It looks like the problem is, that Poly exports GLTF v1.0, which is unsupported by Blender and others (ThreeJS, Chronos Blender GLTF Importer)


how do I change the settings of an actuator(python)

Since you seem to be familiar with Python already, you might wanna look into the time property for the actuator in the API. Alternatively, you could just use the addObject method. If I am right it does the same thing but saves you one element in the Logic Bricks.


Front, back and bottom orthographic view do not match

There are some useful controls on the Background Images, Giovarco, that could solve Your problem. As You could see on the image below in the green rectangle, You could rotate and move the image using X, Y and ROTATION parameters so You have to rotate the TOP view 90 degrees and then use the X and Y parameters to line it up. Hope it helps buddy.

Sincerely, Jan


Should all parts of a physical object be modelled as a single Blender object?

There's a question you need to answer before asking: 'How do I draw this stool?'.
It's: 'Why am I drawing this stool?'.
If you're using a CAD package, the answer to the latter is usually given. It's to propose, or to aid, the manufacture of a real-world stool. But if you're using a visualizaton and animation suite like Blender, that's not the case.
It could be:

A stool to illustrate the assembly of stools, including the deployment of screws
A 3D-printable stool, with a manifold surface.
A pre-lit low-poly stool, for use in a limited-resources game
A hero foreground stool, with wood grain and shiny screw heads, in an
architectural visualization, or product shot.
A graphic stool, for use in a poster advertising a chain of cafés
A hacked out-of-focus background stool, only half of which is ever seen
A toon stool, which can run away from its obese owner, and attempt suicide by jumping out of an apartment window
A stool for sale as an asset to be used by other people, whose purpose is part of its advertised specification, and needs to be by-the-book
A photorealistic VFX stool, which will need to bounce off a previously filmed floor, and be shot to pieces in scene 23
.......

These are considerations unlikely to be taken into account by a CAD user. There's no single paradigm. Each stool will require a different approach to serving its purpose, while avoiding as much work as possible.


Freestyle Line Set not Showing in Blender 2.79

Got it solved, thanks to this video by Blender Nerd ( Thanks ).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ItWP3lGBGY

Basically you need to first enable / activate "Freestyle" in the Properties > Render Tab.

Then you can go to the Properties > Render Layers Tab and you'll see a new section called: Freestyle


Method 1:

The Blender documentation says:

  Use ABC if you want to import/export a large amount of scene data.

So the idea is to find a way to convert your big model from PLY to Alembic. Sadly, I didn't find any converters that generate alembic, but in their GitHub repository, there is an example called WFObjConvert. I'm not used to C++ and don't know about the conversion direction, but the line

OBJ::ParseOBJ( reader, argv[1] );

from the test files indicates that it is taking OBJ and converting to ABC.

If you get this to work, you need to convert your model to Wavefront first. That should be a lot easier due to the popularity of the format. This site should to the job for you.

Method 2:

Just use the converter and convert your file into several other formats Blender can import and try them out.

Edit:

Using an online converter isn't that a good idea with this file size. Use some offline converter like that one instead.


read_factory_settings makes all other operators call fail in a python script ran at startup

Separate into two scripts..
As commented by @scurest the read factory settings operator, naffs the contest, in this case context.window becoming None and throwing the error as shown.
Would either make a read_factory.py script
import bpy
bpy.ops.wm.read_factory_settings(use_empty=True)

and with script as above (read factory settings commented out) (-P is equiv of --python)
blender -P read_factory.py -P load_ply.py

Opening a new file with just your imported ply mesh.  (Whereas starting with --factory-startup results in default startup objects and imported mesh)
For me the issue with doing this is my eyesight isn't what it used to be, and need everything a wee bit larger than default.
Another way would be to save an empty blank.blend  Could make your startup file blank.
blender -P load_ply.py blank.blend

downside being if accidentally saved rather than save as is no longer blank.
Similar option is making a blank application template
New default file template?
(Note can add to your user config folder, eg on linux  ~/.config/blender/2.90/scripts/startup/bl_app_templates_user/blank/)
blender --app-template blank -P load_ply.py

other options commonly seen is removing or unlinking all collections / objects from scene / blend,
How to completely remove all loaded data from Blender?


You can apply the same action with two different armatures. If they contain no bones with the same name, then the action will not collide. An action contains animation graphs with names. If the action is assigned, the graphs are associated with the correspondingly named bones.

If you assign it to the ball and chain, existing keyframes won't be removed. Once you keyframed the ball and chain bones, there will be ball and chain curves created. If the character doesn't have any bone named ball or chain, these curves won't interfere with it.


A better way to make this car air vents holes?

Suggestions.  An increment in vertex density and use extrude.
The image above is an exaggeration of your subtle situation. Model progression.

Top Ortho.

Loop Cuts.
Delete Vertices and faces.
Shape the hole manually, or with Proportional edit in Edit Mode, or with Loop Tools which is an addon.
Extrusion marked by arrow and difficult to see

User Persp

Extrusion allowing flexible shaping.  You are vents are somewhat like eyelids. They need less height. Add more loop cuts and shape subtly.

Still exaggerated for readability. Image above.  You can be more artistic with technical improvements.  This is an isolated modeling suggestion.  You can see models of hand and eyes to see how many loop cuts can be reused and reduced.


Boolean intersect with plane makes object disappear

First. The scale of your plane is set to negative.

Press CtrlA in object mode and select apply scale.

Then the river object has inverted normals.

Make them consistent by pressing ctrl N

Booleans use the direction of the normals to calculate the operation.

Then use Difference to cut out the shape of the river out of the plane:

Some reasons for failed booleans operations:

Non-Manifold geometry
Inconsistent normals
Booleans don't work with curves or text
The scale for the object uses negative values


How to set a principal point for a camera

I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for, but it sounds like the lens's Shift properties.

Here's the default settings:

And here's the same camera with an X-axis shift of 0.2:

Note that this is not the same as simply rotating the camera - adjusting the Shift doesn't change the perspective. You can think of it as if you had a larger image and you cropped a side of it off.


I figured it out. Set my 3D cursor to center, set origin point to 3D cursor, apply the shrink wrap, set the target to the character, then applied the mirror modifier.