Apple Mac GPUs always hang on Cycles render start AMD ATI 6750M

Thanks a lot, on my second Mac the same thing. When I set up Cycles and start the rendering Che System Preference panel crashes, and blender creashes to :(


Problems weeding out a particle systems using a texture

try this setting in shader: the "particle info node > index" in shader helps you to control a single particle (use a math operation to filter which particles to hide).

Please note:

animate the value inside the MATH -> GREATER THAN (from 0 to the number of hairs)
you need alpha = 100% to hide the objects


Rotate a cube around Y axis m*360 degrees in 200 frames?

You can type m*360 directly in Transform>Rotation window. This would be the easiest and most transparent way to do that.


Save value on first occurrence in Animation Nodes

Attributes can be stored in memory during the life time of the blender instance as described in this answer. In this particular case, the logic is as follows. We have two variables occurred, storedValue:

If the current frame is equal to the start frame, reset storedValue to some initial value and reset occurred to False.
If trigger value is positive:

If occured is False:

Set storedValue to the value.

Set occurred to True.


How to change one property (default value) on multiple materials

This script will set all "Emission Strength"s to 0. Copy it into the Text Editor and hit the "Run" button. It will affect all materials in the file, so be careful.
import bpy
for mat in bpy.data.materials:
    if not mat.use_nodes:
        continue
    for n in mat.node_tree.nodes:
        if n.type == 'BSDF_PRINCIPLED':
            n.inputs["Emission Strength"].default_value = 0

Normally you do "no emission" with Emission Strength=1 and a black emission color though...


Change pivot or local origin of an object

One way to do this is by entering Edit mode and placing the 3D cursor where you want the new origin. (When doing this, you can be very precise by selecting vertices, edges or faces and using them as guides. If you pick several points and snap the cursor to them using Shift+S → Cursor to Selected, Blender will use the average of the selected points to determine the new location of the cursor).

You then go back to Object mode and use Ctrl+Alt+Shift + C → Origin to 3D Cursor to update or change the object origin to the location of the 3D cursor.
For 2.9+ you need to go to Object Menu, and select Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor.


How to reset Bounding Box without effecting the object?

Your object has been scaled and rotated in object mode but the rotation has not been applied.

In object mode press ⎈ Ctrl+A to apply transformations.

read: Why is it important to apply transformation to an objects data?


Keeping Texture Mode Appearance While Exporting to Unity

To make your model while rendered have that bright red color you see in Texture shading 3D view mode you can setup it in 2 ways:

Make the material shadeless:

The result:

However, it's not good approach as it's much less flexible; you will loose possibility of the material to have shadows and thus it may not suit your needs.
You can setup a texture for your material.

With that material selected ("red full.001" in your case) go to Texture tab and create new one. Select it's type Blend and check Ramp option in  Colors scroll. Delete one of the color stops, select another and copy the color from your material setup to this color stop (it may be easier to use Hex triplet for that):

Note: the texture should be checked to influence on the material (near its name in the list); I forgot to check it back when I made screenshots

The resulting material is bright, at the same time receiving shadows:

I also checked Color checkbox in Specular options in the Influence scroll (so the texture to influence on the specularity, instead of material; to return material specularity color uncheck that).


Blender crashes when decimating hi-poly mesh

Make sure you have the newest release of Blender.
Recalculate normals, then try Clean up options on the mesh.
Maybe you'll have more luck that way than through the modifier.


Don't see the cube under layout instead i see key frames. How can i get back the layout screen in 2.9

Click on the little clock icon in the top left corner of Blender's window (arrowed below).

That will bring up the window selector and you can click on 3D Viewport to bring back your editing window:


Slower Rendering in newest daily build 2.79.4 vs. 2.79

With the amount of changes that happened between versions, I am not surprised at the performance difference.

Blender 2.79a also switched from CUDA 8 to CUDA 9, which Could be slightly slower on older generation hardware.


Convert follow path animation to keyframes

Well, the answer provided in the comments is the answer to your question though I am not sure this is the best way to adjust the timing of a follow path animation.

The path animation is animated using the 'evaluation time' value when the corresponding curve is selected. Make sure to delete the modifier which is associated with the curve by default in order to set custom keyframes. If you are just planning to offset or adjust the speed of the animation you can also play with the values of the modifier

Below you can see where to find the value and how to delete the modifier.

This way you can offset the animation in a non-destructive way.


How to pass color value from input to output in custom python node

From the code above I'm not exactly sure how to give a contextually direct solution, but in an attempt to help move along the issue...

Set up a node tree reference:

tree = bpy.context.scene.node_tree
Set up a link reference:

your_links = tree.links
Make your links:

your_link = your_links.new(your_node.outputs[0],another_node.inputs[0])

To change the values you could do something like:

your_node.inputs[0].default_value = 0.3


In the screenshots shown Blender version 2.71 was installed. One should have upgraded Blender to a newer version as this functionality was added as of 2.74:

  Nodes
   Image texture node now supports sphere and tube mapping.
  12ccac6, dda3554

Thank you cegaton


How do you add single free floating vertices as primitives at a given XYZ coordinate postion

It was the Extra Objects addon.

I was going to use it to create a point primitive, so I misrembered it and used the wrong keyterms while searching for it.

I did have a neat/convenient idea while trying to figure this one out, I'm not sure if that's a seperate question or just an alternate solution though (about the point plotting box).

So if something like that exists [the enmasse point plotting box], feel free to comment it to me, if it doesn't then I guess I'll have to ask/or/find some more questions later [about making plugins, and creating a tiny little app/menu for that in blender]


How can I get Freestyle lines to show around two objects where they intersect each other?

Unfortunately, no. Blender does not support that. There has to be a physical edge there. More information (possible workaround) at this question.


It's a bit tricky, because to choose the window you want to close you'll have to first drag the cursor towards the neighboring window.

Otherwise you'll just duplicate the window.


How can I make a texture follow the shape of the mesh?

You can unwrap your floor with the Follow Active Quads mode (in Edit mode, switch to Face mode, select all the faces, make one active, unwrap), it will square the UVs:

Give your object the material you want, use the UV output socket of the Texture Coordinate:

Here is what it gives (I've given a Subdivision Surface modifier to the object):


Boolean difference modifier
A boolean difference modifier will do this for us. Simply need the two spheres and a "chopping block" object.

Two UV spheres, smaller in larger.  Use the cube as a difference boolean modifier target to cut away from the outer.
The cube is displayed as a wireframe, and can be hidden from render (and or viewport)
Could also use the inner to "core" out the slot.

Can transform, or change the chopping "cube" to for example a spin modifier created cylinder to animate a reveal.
How to use a mesh to reveal an object
Re a blurry material see
material issue - how to make blurry/emissive material?
Related
Create a sphere with multiple layers and a chunk cut out showing them


How to match cycles texture with displacement modifier?

There are two forms of displacement texture. One is the Displacement modifier, which is a modifier and runs off of a texture. You can edit the texture by clicking the checkerboard-like icon when you have the Displacement modifier open. For that, you can choose a noise texture if you want, and there are some parameters you can apply. You could also choose the "image" option, to load an image of the noise texture you're using.

A better option for you, though, would be to use the "displacement" option in the material node editor. The final node in the editor has three inputs: Surface, Volume, and Displacement. Plug your noise texture into a Displacement node (from the Vector section), and connect that to the Displacement input. Then, in the settings for the material itself, set the Displacement mode to "Displacement Only" or "Displacement and Bump". The change won't be visible in layout mode, but it will be visible in render mode.

EDIT: To help with clarity, here's a screenshot indicating the "edit texture" option when using the Displacement modifier. To be clear, the "checkerboard icon" I was referring to is circled in red.

Here's a screenshot indicating the menu within the texture edit panel where you can control what type of texture you're using. It does not interface with the node editor, to my knowledge, but you can use an image of your noise texture. To be clear, the menu is circled in red.

Here's a screenshot presenting the node setup I suggested. There's no red circle in this one; I hope you're able to figure it out anyway.

For the "Displacement Only" and "Displacement and Bump" settings, go to the Material edit pane (in the panel on the right, where you found the modifiers), then the "Settings" section, and then the "Surface" section within that section. Please note that this option will not appear if you do not have "Cycles" selected as your renderer.


How to connect 2 meshes without messing up the textures?

By "old version" I assume you mean 2.79?

What you're looking for is a UV seam. This will prevent the connecting mesh from insisting on bridging between your two original shapes directly, and allow you to position it individually.

For 2.79, select the edge between your connection and your original shape; then hit CTRL+E. You should have the option "Mark Seam" available. This should disconnect the UV map along the corresponding edge, so you can move its vertices independently of the others.

For further details, consider reading the documentation on it for 2.79.


How can I make texture repeat 'n' times in blender

Use the Min and Max Values of the vector mapping node:


Instead of using the extrude function, try using the Solidify modifier on the object and play with the settings.


How to remove a protrusion from a surface?

This is what everyone's talking about with Booleans: The Boolean modifier.

using the "difference" operation, wherever the sword object intersects the cube object, its volume is excluded.

Here's what it looks like without the head:

The surface of the volume you subtract from the sword can be as complex as you need; you could use the head object, for example. Be careful though because the boolean modifier is computationally expensive and prone to error. Stick to simple, unsbdivided manifold meshes with only one part to them for the best chance of success.

Edit: Here's the .blend file :


Is there a way to map the frame rate to keyframes?

Wait i just realized i could just use the steps interpolation in the graph editor


How to get the active vertex within a Handler?

Try reusing the bmesh instance, here I've used a global dic.  Also I've used history.active

import bpy, bmesh
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

def find_active_vertex(bm):

    elem = bm.select_history.active
    if elem is not None and  isinstance(elem, bmesh.types.BMVert):
        print("BVert", elem, elem.index)
        return elem
    return None

dic = {}
@persistent
def edit_object_change_handler(scene):

    obj = scene.objects.active
    if obj is None:
        return None

    if obj.mode == 'EDIT' and obj.type == 'MESH':
        bm = dic.setdefault(obj.name, bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data))
        find_active_vertex(bm)
        return None

    dic.clear()
    return None

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_post.append(edit_object_change_handler)

register()

scene_update handlers are called around 200 times per second, (Sample file here https://developer.blender.org/T46329 )  Using the data to load bmesh that many times probably affected the vertex weight panel.  I'd consider using a  modal timer operator instead.


All mesh, or 3D modeled virtual objects for that matter, are "hollow" or "empty inside" by definition, there is no such thing as mass, dense volume or matter inside them, with the possible exception of actual volumetric data like voxels or point clouds.

Concepts

Boolean operations on meshes are always performed as mathematical operations over the surfaces to simulate the existence of a dense "filled" object, by combining the surfaces of the intervening objects through cutting, intersecting and or subtracting operations. These operations happen only on the "shell" or faces of the mesh surface, to give the impression of having dense interior, when in reality there is none.

For that reason mostly only coherent, closed, "watertight" manifold meshes are successfully usable in fruitful Boolean operations outside of CAD applications, that use either ACIS Solid Modeling, NURBS based surfaces, or other geometry representation models more suited for these types of operations (and even these are all hollow as well, despite the application best efforts make you believe otherwise).

Open or inconsistent meshes (non-manifold) often give problems, errors, bad results, or fail completely.

Diagnosis

That being said, in your case if you can't preform a Boolean operation on your object it is most likely because your mesh is either too complex to process or has geometry issues.

Boolean operations on meshes are limited at best. If there are errors in your objects like discontinuities, wholes, inconsistent normals, overlapping geometry, or any other geometry problems that make your mesh non-manifold or non watertight they will fail to various degrees.

There are also complexity limits that can be handled. If you are reaching Blender, the algorithms, hardware, or available resources limits, you should break down your objects into more manageable chunks.

Possible solutions

There are many common issues with Booleans and very well known solutions to deal with them that have been thoroughly covered before. What you need to do is clean it your meshes and make sure these errors and discontinuities are gone.
Stuff you can try:

Removing doubles - Edit Mode > W > Remove Doubles (Alt + M > By Distance for 2.8+), to merge all open or overlapping geometry
Recalculate normals - In Edit Mode Ctrl + N (Alt + N for 2.8+)to make sure all surfaces are facing the same direction consistently.
Check for holes - In Edit Mode press Space Bar and search for Select non Manifold. That should highlight any remaining wholes, or problems with your mesh which you must then solve by hand, like overlapping faces, inconsistent normals, missing geometry, etc.
Ensure there are no coinciding or coplanar surfaces between the two operands -  These usually confuse the algorithm making it unable to distinguish in from out.
Eliminate any intersecting edges - If edges intersect between two operands (common with symmetric objects, geometric or orthogonal shapes, hard surface modeling, among others) operations will likely fail, this is a known limitation of current Boolean algorithm. Nudge them around very small distances, rotate them micrometrically to break perfect alignments.
Search for self intersections which are common in data obtained from scanned data like 3D Scans, photogrammetry, or other real world captured data. Solving this will be mostly a manual process as there are no current built in tools to handle them automatically, but you can turn on Mesh Analysis from the Overlays popover to get a good indication of problematic areas.

After that your Boolean operation stands a better chance to produce good results, if your mesh is not too overly complex to successfully be processed. If that is the case the you should break it apart into smaller objects making sure that each and every one of them involved in Boolean operations is a watertight "closed" manifold mesh.


How do I fix a boolean/bisected surface edge?

Add an Edge Split modifier to your mesh, or turn on Auto Smooth in the Object Data tab of the Properties Window

Also check for duplicate geometry in edit mode with the Remove Doubles operator.


You're using a fluid simulation, correct? If so, try adding an outflow object at the bottom of the sword.


Instancing not working the way I want it to

You need to rotate the tentacle in Edit Mode so it aligns properly.

  Orientation of the tentacle was adapted to the vertex normals of the parent mesh
   (tentacle was rotated -90° around the X axis in Edit Mode).

  From Blender Manual

Step 01 - Set up Parenting

Step 02 - Rotate tentacle in Edit mode. I changed pivot point to 3D cursor for this.


why does my hips and ribs move when i am in pose mode and I move the arm

You need to go into weight painting mode (click your model first, not the armature), shift right click on your arms/hands, and use the subtraction brush to remove the color from the areas you don't want to move.


I went with the delete all but the outermost option (well, I kept two layers of the four you had). You have a circular opening in the top of the inside of the helmet. Select all the faces of its rim. I used circle (C) select for this and panned around until all were selected.

Delete these faces (X then F)

Select one face on the unwanted geometry

Select linked (CtrlL)

Delete everything that's selected (X then F)

It now looks like this (with all selected, zoomed out and limit selection to visible disabled)

I hope this helps.


Yes. This is possible using bone constraints, but it is very annoying to setup, and tedious to use. You can create vertex groups of the target vertices, and use bone constraints (in pose mode) to have the bones follow them. The usual practice is to have one vertex group at the root of the bone using copy rotation/location/transform or child of constraint. And then use IK or stretch to to have the tip of the bone track the vertices that will move.

The limitation of this is that once the bones are constrained, you can no longer pose them. The work around for this is a second layer of bones that are children of the constrained bones. Have this second layer actually affect the mesh, as you will still be able to pose them. (Note that this only works with certain constraint setups.)

However, it seems like the better way to handle your current situation would be to use another layer of bones that you scale instead of using shapekeys. Then you can easily have your deform bones be children of these scale bones.


How can I get the full path of the selected file from the file explorer?

bpy.path.abspath()

Returns the absolute path relative to the current blend file using the “//” prefix.

TLDR; Just call bpy.path.abspath(your_path) to get the absolute path representation.

There is no reason to display the absolute path nor convert it because the user can set it to absolute or relative in the File Browser (N):

Also notice: there are several naming conventions like adding a separator to the name of your panel class or using lowercase names for functions and variables (PEP8):
import bpy

class CATEGORY_PT_CustomPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_my_panel"
    bl_label = "My Panel"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = "Tools"
    bl_context = "objectmode"

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

        col = layout.column(align=True)
        col.prop(scn, "my_path", text="")

        # Print the absolute and relative path to the console
        print ("REL:", scn.my_path)
        print ("ABS:", bpy.path.abspath(scn.my_path))

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(CATEGORY_PT_CustomPanel)
    bpy.types.Scene.my_path = bpy.props.StringProperty(name="File", subtype='FILE_PATH')

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(CATEGORY_PT_CustomPanel)
    del bpy.types.Scene.my_path

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Related

How to create a custom UI?
How to create a Folder Dialog?


Help please with an animation of a cardboard chocolate package from a dieline

In my opinion you should try something like that:

First merge by distance as it seems like you have overlapping vertices
You need to divide your sides like that in order to be able to fold them:

Then lower down the chain of bones in order to put the rotation axis at the bottom, and create 3 bones that you make children of the bottom bone in order to control the top vertices and make the fold fold:

Frame 0:

Frame 80:


Cycles procedural texture appears in preview, but disappears in final render

So it appears the pointiness output's effect in the Geometry node is significantly reduced when you increase the subsurf modifier. Multiplying the effect of the mask from the pointiness factor would likely solve the problem as well but for this particular instance simply reducing the subsurf back down to 2 subdivisions rather than the initial 4 that I was using was sufficient to get the effect I wanted.

So to sum it up, pointiness reduces with subsurf, so multiply its effect or reduce the subsurf.


Sketchup to Blender - Material not visible

You can install the add-on called Blendup. There are two versions: free and paid ($35). The free version is limited to SketchUp models with less than 1000 faces.

Just install the add-on. Select your model in File> Blendup, select the settings you need and click export. Then open the blend file which you have exported from Sketchup and switch to Material or Render mode and you will see your material.

For more details watch this video


How to constrain an object to one of it's local axes?

You would use constraints. There are all kinds of constraints, tracking constraints, IQ constraints, spline constraints, camera constraints. I think you're looking for Limit Location, though. Check here:

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/rigging/constraints/index.html


Not able to pull off simple combination of volume scatter and volume absorbtion: cycles

Wrong Add node

The Math (Add) node you are using works with grayscale values (on the left in the image below).

You would like instead to Add a shading to another shading: you must use the Add Shader node you can find in the Shader nodes group (on the right in the following image).

The color of the input/output socket is always a guide for the correct connection.


How to perform this action of creating new edges from verts (video included)

He has enabled the Snapping option (Vertex mode) and the Auto Merge option (top right of the 3D view > Options), then he selects the edge:

He extrudes and point out the vertex he wants to snap to:

And it snaps:


drop with a specific shape into a quiet liquid water surface with mantaflow

I was also trying to do something like the video. I was able to do it on blender 2.8 but not with mantacore.
After some tries I was able to get something similar (materials pending). The following images are from blender 2.90.1. If anything else needed let me know.
Water:

Ball (crosses the water object in 10 frames and has the scale of 1/3 of the water object)

CollisionBox part 1:

CollisionBox part 2:

The final result on frame 30:


How can I rotate an object already at an angle?

Thanks, Rich Sedman; locking the X and Y helped this time around, as well as adjusting the 3D cursor to further up the elbow.


Select the gun, then shift-select the bone for the hand on the mesh and then go ctrl + P > bone. the gun should then move with the bone.


Blender 2.70 Fly Mode Camera: How Do I Change the Camera "Height" For Gravity?

You can change the properties of fly navigation (including view height) in User preferences > Input > View Navigation:

Even if it's grayed out because the Gravity checkbox is disabled, changing the value will still affect the view hight when gravity is enabled by pressing Tab while in fly navigation mode.


How to force a node group input field to display a slider?

You cannot change a field to display a slider once it has been initialized as a non slider. But it works both ways, if you initialize a field with a slider (Such as a factor input in a mix RGB), and then change the input to something else, the input will keep its slider.
Explanation :

CTRL + G to group several nodes.
You can get rid of the Mix RGB afterwards.
To remap the min and max values of the slider, when inside the node group, open the "N" panel with N or click on the left facing arrow in the top right of the screen and select your slider input. You can then change the min and max values.

Note : It also works for colors for instance. In this case the RGB channels will get replaced by the factor value. Although it is considered bad practice to link different colors inputs/outputs.


How do I save an instance of a custom class to a .blend file?

I've been dealing with a similar problem; I have a number of instances of custom Python classes defined during the execution of a custom Python script, and I'd like to be able to maintain (or restore) references to these custom class instances even after the script has finished running, or after Blender has been closed and then later re-opened.
The simplest solution I've found so far is to use the standard Python pickling module, extending the base pickler and unpickler classes to build picklers that know how to recover 'persistent external references' to Blender objects. This isn't as nice as saving the custom class instances as part of the .blend file itself, but does allow me to save the custom class instances whenever my script is run, and to later unpickle them with correct Blender object references. With a few minor changes to the script, this lets me optionally run the script multiple times while actively modifying the same class instances, without losing them in between script invocations.
To illustrate what I mean, here's a simple example of a custom class instance with active Blender object references I'd like to be able to pickle to a file and re-load later:
>>> class example():
...     def __init__(self, obj, ex_dict):
...         self.obj = obj
...         self.ex_dict = ex_dict
>>> ex = example(bpy.context.object, {1:2, "dog":"cat"}

By default, I can't pickle this:
>>> with open("example.pickle", 'wb') as f:
...     pickle.dump(ex, f, pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 2, in <module>
TypeError: can't pickle Object objects

But I can write a custom pickler, unpickler that know how to store and revive references to 'persistent external (Blender) objects', like so:
>>> class BpyPickler(pickle.Pickler):
...     def persistent_id(self, obj):
...         if isinstance(obj, bpy.types.Object):
...             return ("BpyObj", obj.name)
...         else:
...             return None
...
>>> class BpyUnpickler(pickle.Unpickler):
...     def __init__(self, f):
...         super().__init__(f)
...     def persistent_load(self, pid):
...         type_tag, type_id = pid
...         if type_tag == "BpyObj":
...             return bpy.data.objects[type_id]
...         else:
...             raise pickle.UnpicklingError(f"unsupported obj with persistent id {pid}")

And with these changes, I can now successfully pickle and unpickle-with-restored-bpy-obj-references my class:
>>> with open("example3.pickle", 'wb') as f:
...     BpyPickler(f).dump(ex)
...
>>> with open("example3.pickle", 'rb') as f:
...     ex3 = BpyUnpickler(f).load()
...
>>> ex3
<__main__.example object at 0x000001BD0C4013C8>

>>> ex3.obj
bpy.data.objects['floorPanelSharpCorner.007']

>>> ex3.ex_dict
{1: 2, 'dog': 'cat'}


I found a clue here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/834254/steam-libgl-error-no-matching-fbconfigs-or-visuals-found-libgl-error-failed-t but was not happy with their solution.

I ended up reinstalling the nvidia drivers which had been removed during an abortive cuda install/removal.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-340

The version you need will be based on your graphics card and you can figure out that version with this page https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us on the nvidia site.


If you over expose your render you can see patern.

Render saved as PNG 8-bit. Nothing is pluged into Surface socket of Material Output node. Tested with Eevee, Cycles, Samples ... all same result. Even if compression is set to zero.

The only difference did PNG saved as 16-bit. Completely black. So I guess OpenEXR will work as well. So the issue comes from output file format.

... and just for lovers of generic graphics - JPEG

And as mentioned already - Cryptomatte seems to me as a better friend, especially for material. With this ColorRamp 0/1 option I can't imagine to work on more complex object.


Why are two collections of identical rigid bodies simulated differently?

In general, rigid body simulations are not perfectly deterministic. The more complex they are, the more influence the small but unavoidable numerical imprecisions have. You might be able to duplicate simple simulations somewhat reliably, but increasing complexity will mean increasing difference in results between simulation runs.
Therefore, if you want perfectly identical behavior, you will need to bake the dynamics (quite possibly it would be best to bake to keyframes in this circumstances) before duplicating the bodies.


Is there a generic way to lookup what a hotkey/shortcut does under current user prefs?

Yes, there is.

You can go to Setting > Keymap, here is all the input event user does.

And up there is a search bar. With Key-Binding search method selected, you can search your short cut by key.

If you are using 2.79b for an old favor. The same panel is in user preference > Input.

And the sequence of what you tap when operator is running (the second R) is inside the modal group keymap, you need to expand the action group to see it.


This is Happening Because this Add-on is Not Updated to 2.8 and blender 2.8's Python API is Changed and this is Compatible for its Older Versions It May Be Compatible with blender 2.79 or older
In simpler words this Add-on is Older This Should Be Updated By its Developers for blender 2.8
But If you Still wan't to use those Brushes I Have an Idea It May work or May Not
But still Idea is -
First of All Unzip the Add-on File and
It May Contain a Blend File in It or Some Images

If it is a Blend File then go to blender and File> Append > Click on That Blend File > Brushes > select all > Hit Append.
If there are Images in It in format of tiff, targa or any format then Just Go to Blender and Then Textures Tab and Click New > Set The Type To Image > and then select that Brush Image File and Just Switch To Sculpting and Slect That Image Texture.
I hope You UnderStood


Yes! (and it is easy)

Make a pen blank just like you would do in the real world, glue different pieces together, then turn them round.

I'm just using colored cubes as my wood pieces. It is literally just scaled cubes duplicated and with different materials. (I'm sure you are planing more complicated turnings.)

Now to see what it would look like turned down.

This works better if the different pieces are all separate objects. (If there not just go into edit mode and press P > Loose Parts).
Add a cylinder the same size as a finished pen blank (using real world units would help) and position it so that is goes through all of the laminated cube stack.

Do note here in these pictures I'm showing two different pen blanks. Thus I have two different cylinder objects, and twice as much work.
Back on the pen blank object, pick any of the pieces (lets use the top piece) and add a Boolean Modifier to the pen blank object. Set the Object to the cylinder object you added in step 2, and leafe the Operation as Intersect.
Now select all the other pen blank pieces, keeping the one you already added the boolean modifier to the active object, and press CtrlL > Modifiers.

Here is kind of what it will look like. (I kept the cylinder objects showing, changed them to wireframe display, but you should hide H them.)


Manual precise UV scaling:
In UV editor place your 2d cursor in the desired center of scaling, you can place it precisely from Properties tab N. In the header swith to 2d cursor pivot:

Select UV vertices and enter transform mode with S, in the header area type the exact number or an expression. You can constrain axes by X or Y.
Precise UV scaling of multiple selected objects:
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector

# center of scaling - edit this
pivot = Vector((0.0, 0.0))
# amount of scaling in each axis - edit this
amount = Vector((2.0, 2.0))

for object in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    mesh = object.data
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_mesh(mesh)
    uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.active

    for face in bm.faces:
        for vert in face.loops:
            vert[uv_layer].uv -= pivot
            vert[uv_layer].uv.x *= amount.x
            vert[uv_layer].uv.y *= amount.y
            vert[uv_layer].uv += pivot

    bm.to_mesh(mesh)


I am not an Expert about blender, but i can help you.

Start off with a cube.

Go in edit mode.

Subdivide the cube by a small value (4).

Grab the edge you want to pull inwards ONLY ON ONE SIDE!

Move the selected edge inwards. (G Key).

Exit edit mode.

Apply a mirrors modifier (use the correct axis).

Now you should have the curve on both sides.

Grab the intact face on the back.

Extrude It where you want that  "long rectangle" to be.(E Key).

And grab the tip face of the long rectangle.

Inset that face a bit.(I Key)

Extrude the insetted face inwards.

Grab The Bottom of your creation.

Extrude It Down.(E Key).

Enable Shade Smooth.

P.S.
If the model looks weird After Shade Smooth, go ahead and enable Auto Smooth Normals!

I'm Sorry this Is a bit of a weird and probably not correct answer, but i've fine my best.
Hope you Will understand It.


Checked everything, object won't show up in render

You must check the "Emitter" box in the Render panel of your Particle System settings, otherwise the mesh won't show up, only the particles.


Create a new UV map but move the textures with the polygons?

If the two UV maps reside on the same mesh you can use UV baking. If you create a material with the texture and the first uv layer, you can bake the diffuse color (or even the rendered result, if you make a shadeless material) and bake it to the second UV layer. Make sure to select the proper UV layers in the material texture slot, UV editor and active UV layer.


In Edit mode, you can use the cut tool (K) with cut through (Z) to add a small loop around the center of the hand, like this :

After adding the loop, the center of the hand is no longer large (on the bottom, the hand with the loop cut and on the top a mirrored hand without a loop cut :


Why can't I UV unwrap a rectangle in cycles?

This isn't an error so much as it is a warning.  The unwrap should have still completed (open the UV/Image Editor to check).  This message just means that you have scaled the object more in one direction than others.

When you scale an object in object mode, it is not really "applied" to the object's geometry. I like to think of scaling as a modifier that is always last in the stack, whatever you do in edit mode (or most other places) is as if it was done before the object was scaled.  So if you unwrap a non uniformly-scaled object it act like it was unwrapped before scaling, meaning the textures may be stretched or distorted.

To fix this just go into object mode and hit Ctrl+A > Apply Scale.  This will reset all the scale values to 1 and apply the scaling to the mesh itself.


Materials don't work when switching from Cycles Render to Blender Game

The Cyles engine is different than the Blender Game Engine and you can only have textures from Cycles into BGE(not exactly the same but similar quality) by baking them. (Search baking textures)

You can just go back to see your material by changing the top from Game Engine to Cycles Engine.


Change texture of an object but with fade

Well, there might be different solutions - but here is one which worked for me. It involves Material nodes with three seperate materials. You need...

one for your initial material (window),
one for your second material (curtain) and
one which controls your fading.

The last one uses the objects color, which can be changed via Python.
Here is an my minimal example using a blue and red material as inputs and a shadeless one for fading:

When running it, the materials fade within 10 seconds, driven by the timer.


Solidify: Give different thickness to specific faces

This is very similar to this question, but the method is a tiny bit different.
Instead of setting only the weak part as your vertex group. Set every vertex of your model at 0.5 weight for instance and set the weak spot at 1. Then when you set the vertex group in the solidify modifier, the weak part will get 2 times more thick than the rest of the mesh. The weight is a direct multiplier to the solidify thickness.
Example in action :


I need to delay the rigid body on a cell fractured object. How?

"Copy to selected" on "animated" checkbox works fine for me.  Select two objects, RMB on the checkbox, copy to selected.

You can also apply checkbox operations to multiple selected objects by using alt LMB.  Select one box, select another box, move to rigid body tab, alt-LMB on animated.


I made it!
DoorSetup-Fixed.blend
Red Box - Player collision + “E” key (opens the door)
Green Box - Prevents the door from pushing the player (pauses the animation)
Blue Box - Distance for the door to remain open


Work on your Pre Beveled mesh, or undo the bevel.
You have double vertices in three of your corners. (remember I'm talking about the unbeveled mesh.)

Select everything (AA) and Remove doubles found in the tool shelf or from the specials menu W.

Then in edge select mode you can reselect the top edge with AltRMB , and use the bevel tool.


Extrude along individual normals without changing the normal direction

Just check Offset Even in the pop-up menu.


Select all desired objects in 3d View (Object Mode) and go to Object > Set Orgin and choose Origin to Center of Mass (Volume):

You can also call the operator using the Search Menu:

Press F3
Search for Set Origin
Press Enter
Select Origin to Center of Mass(Volume)

Read more here: How to recenter an object's origin?


Select the faces and use "extrude individual"


If you have unwrapped an object and you are in edit mode (so that you can see the unwrapped object in the UV editor) there should be an UV menu. Here a three screenshots to show how it should look.


You will get 8 values only,

>>> obj = bpy.context.active_object
>>> obj.bound_box
bpy.data.objects['Cube'].bound_box

>>> [v[:] for v in obj.bound_box]
[(-1.0, -1.0, -1.0),
 (-1.0, -1.0, 1.0),
 (-1.0, 1.0, 1.0),
 (-1.0, 1.0, -1.0),
 (1.0, -1.0, -1.0),
 (1.0, -1.0, 1.0),
 (1.0, 1.0, 1.0),
 (1.0, 1.0, -1.0)]

for Suzanne it would be:

Here's some code I wrote about 2 years ago to get x.min, x.max, etc., and distance over the axis for x, y and z. With instructions how to use it. (I have this tucked away in a module so I just import the function when I need it)

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

def bounds(obj, local=False):

    local_coords = obj.bound_box[:]
    om = obj.matrix_world

    if not local:
        worldify = lambda p: om * Vector(p[:])
        coords = [worldify(p).to_tuple() for p in local_coords]
    else:
        coords = [p[:] for p in local_coords]

    rotated = zip(*coords[::-1])

    push_axis = []
    for (axis, _list) in zip('xyz', rotated):
        info = lambda: None
        info.max = max(_list)
        info.min = min(_list)
        info.distance = info.max - info.min
        push_axis.append(info)

    import collections

    originals = dict(zip(['x', 'y', 'z'], push_axis))

    o_details = collections.namedtuple('object_details', 'x y z')
    return o_details(**originals)

"""
obj = bpy.context.object
object_details = bounds(obj)

a = object_details.z.max
b = object_details.z.min
c = object_details.z.distance

print(a, b, c)

"""


What does this icon mean - circle next to a child in blender

That is the icon of a Material datablock, it means there is a material assigned directly to the mesh data, as opposed to the object itself.

When creating or editing Material Slots you have two options when assigning a material, it can be either assigned to the Object or the Object Data.

When assigned to the object, several object clones or instances of that object (while sharing the same geometry or mesh data) can have different materials regardless, but if the material is assigned to the Object Data all instances will forcefully have that same material.

Each materials assigned to Object Data will display one additional icon to the side of the data it is bound to in the Outliner, other materials show up below.


How to modeling an alphabet monument from image reference?

The elements of the art installation (which is at the intersection of Naripan and Braga Street, in Bandung, Indonesia; (Geographical co-ordinates: -6.920010, 107.610142)) might be inspired by, or copied from a font, but I tend to think it a bit more likely that the realization of the shapes is done from scratch, as they might be in a logo. I know there are a number of tutorials on Youtube, and in other sources on using Blender to create a 3D logo. Do a search for "Blender 3D logo tutorial", and you should come up with several.

If, as I suspect, the glyphs in the image posted in the original question are custom designed for the sculpture, it would be useful to have some idea as to the scale of the elements. Reviewing a few of images I found in on-line sources, I infer from the ratio of the size of the people I see pictured in some of the images to the size of the elements, that the height of the individual elements in the installation are about 3 meters from the plane upon which they are installed, and the thickness of the wider strokes of the element are about .3 meters. I would use image editing software to make the heights of the elements, and the width of the wider strokes as nearly the same in each image as possible. I would model the individual elements using. Unless this is an assignment the exact dimensions of the model are required to conform to the exact proportions of the orginal, this may be a case where "close is good enough". In either case, the standard modeling techniques—start with a mesh primitive, and scale, translate (move), extrude, rotate, and subdivide as needed to create the elements—should be adequate to model the elements of the installation.

On the other hand, if the shapes of the letters were different so that one could select a font and use a text object as the basis for the model, there are tutorials on Youtube covering that, too. On example of such is at https://youtu.be/48L9YU1FKPU.


Looks like you have particle system enabled for hair?


How to scale a Texture in an Atlas without seeing neighbouring Textures

Remap the coordinates.
We benefit from the fact we know it is a Texture Atlas, with regular row and column sizes. Take the UV coordinates, check the local X and Y coordinates and remap it to the current Texture by adding it to the Start X and Y of the target Texture.

Result (With a scale of 6)

Unfortunately the individual textures are not seamless as it seems, so you will see Seams every time the UV snap back to the start coordinates.
Small helping addition if you are using V 2.92+. Create two custom properties in the object properties.

Instead of the Current Column and Row nodes, use Attribute nodes, set the type to Object, and type in the name of your attributes.

Now you can directly edit the Texture in the 3D Viewport :

Also, if you want to have a random Texture with each pot when you duplicate it :
Use the Random output from the Object Info node to randomize Atlas Position.

Result :


Isn't it the origin of your mesh?

If you want to put it in the centre of your mesh, in Object Mode press Ctrl  +  Shift +  Alt +  C and select Origin to Geometry.


Blender Python path directory for file output node

You can just add ../.. at the end of your absolutepath, like this

node.base_path = absolutepath+'../..'

or if you insist on getting the actual path cleanly, you can use the python os module to split the path into parts and then join them again except the last two

import bpy
import os

 # Get absolute path:
filepath = bpy.context.scene.render.filepath
absolutepath = bpy.path.abspath(filepath)

path = os.path.normpath(absolutepath)
parts = path.split(os.sep)

absolutepath = os.sep.join(parts[:-2])

# set the path for all file output nodes:
for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    for node in scene.node_tree.nodes:
        if node.type == 'OUTPUT_FILE':
            node.base_path = absolutepath

If you want this to work even if your original path has a filename in the end, add

absolutepath, file = os.path.split(absolutepath)

before path = os.path.normpath(absolutepath)


You can't do this with Blender and OBJ files. Using Alembic files referencing geometry is possible.


Assemble / Disintegrate with Animation Nodes

We need to store previous state of falloff. This allows to stay effect of falloff even it is changed.
In this example it stores Maximum falloff of Object Controller Falloff on each execution. The values of falloff are stored in AN.falloffData. The value of falloff is reset when frame is 1. The working of this technique is well explained here
To store data to AN module : setattr(AN, "falloffData", x)
Access stored data : AN.falloffData


How to pass a soft object through a narrow channel?

What you've posted there is no soft object passing through a channel, it's actually a Cylinder with a Lattice Modifier moving through a Lattice object.

Add a Cylinder to your scene or whatever object you want to deform.
To be deformed smoothly it needs enough geometry, so subdivide it either in Edit Mode or with a Subdivision Surface modifier.
Add a Lattice to your scene (Shift+A > Lattice)
In the Lattice settings, set the Resolution W to at least 3.
Go to Edit Mode and scale the middle vertices down so that they narrow the Lattice in the center.
Add a Lattice Modifier to the Cylinder and under Object choose the Lattice.
Now you can move the Cylinder up and down and it gets deformed.

EDIT: I'm too slow. The above solution is correct, this is just a shorter version.


cloth simulation penetrates thorugh the collider

Setting up the pants as Cloth, acticating its ClothCollision and setting the legs as Collision, it should work immediately. Note that the pants can still penetrate at some spots if

resolution of your pants is too low
forces (e.g. sewing) are too high
cloth collision distance is set too low
they intersect at the beginning of the calculation already


I can help you display alpha maps, but I'm sorry I can't help you with the hair specifically.

Displaying alpha textures in the BGE

Step 1

Set the scene shading to "GLSL". Alpha textures don't work in the default "MultiTexture" setting. If you create a new game scene, you will have to repeat this step.

Step 2

Add transparency to your material!!! Unless you specifically tell blender, it won't know how to use the alpha you've given it. Check the "Transparency" option under the material tab, set it to "z-trace" and pull the drag bar all the way down to zero (0).

Step 3

Now you need to make some changes to the texture settings of your object. Assuming you've already given the material a texture, you only need to do a few things:

Enable "Use Alpha"
Enable "Alpha" under the "influence" tab


Toggle "X-Ray Mode" in the upper right-hand corner.


How can I make a box like product packet?

Set the Base material. I just used a Diffuse BSDF Orange.

Load up your image for the front of the packet. I used the a Color Grid generated in Blender.

Select required faces and Unwrap. I deliberately left a border so you can see the base material. This will create a default UV Map

Set up material Nodes to start with and Input->UV Map set to the default map connected to an Texture->Image with your image. Make sure it is set to Clip then take that through a Diffuse BSDF Shader and Mix it with the Base.

Now add a new UV Map and select the next faces and Unwrap

Now you can duplicate your existing Nodes and change the UV Map input and use a Mix Shader to combine them. I have used the same image but you can choose a different source image for the back.

Just to show how you can manipulate the unwrapped island. Scaled and rotated.

Commonly and especially for games, people will use a single image and unwrap to a part of it. I find multiple UVMaps gives me more control.


Updating material does not take affect until restart

It appears there was a bug in the Feb 15 build.  I downloaded the source from blender.org and the issue is no longer happening.


It looks like you're zoomed out a lot.

To fix this, press A to select everything, and then press Numpad . to view selected.


In the properties panel you have the tab for the modifiers. If you click on add modifiers you can choose different modifiers


You have to enable: Global Undo
For 2.8x and 2.9.
Edit > User preferences > System > Memory & Limits: Global Undo

For 2.79
Just go to Edit > Preferences > System & Setting, and check the Global Undo in Memory and Limits


How to use the smooth tool in weight paint mode?

The vertex select can be enabled in the 3D View header -

With vertex select masking enabled you can use Shift-Click to select/de-select each vertex from the mask. You can also go into edit mode, select the desired vertices then go into weight paint mode.


Blender 2.8 startup function working in addon

Ok figured it out, addons get loaded after the startup.blend is loaded, so load_post wouldn't work. Also in 2.8 scene_update_post has been replaced with depsgraph_update_post. (Which is much better imo) So i run the search and then delete the handler:

bl_info = {
    "name": "test",
    "author": "test",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "description": "Auto-fills addon search field",
    "category": "3D View"}

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def addon_search(scene):
    bpy.data.window_managers["WinMan"].addon_search = "editor"
    bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.remove(addon_search)

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.append(addon_search)

def unregister():
    bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.remove(addon_search)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


You need to change the collision type for your wheels/cups objects from Convex Hull Into Mesh, otherwise only the physics system will only interpret it as if it was covered in tape.

This of course will be at the expense of performance, more complex bounds types are slower to calculate, so you should always use the simplest bounds type that will yield an acceptable result.


Creating Identical Materials for Multiple Objects

You can of course use scripts to duplicate the material around, but I have the feeling this will create a trap for you in another corner: When animating, you somehow need to animate every single material, and this I cannot imagine to be comfortable.
I suggest a slightly modified approach: Use one single material on all white keys, and create a node setup in Cycles which will hook up to an attribute of your object. In essence, you can tell the material:

hey, if the attribute of the object which I live on has a value of X, do this. Else, do this.

In other words: If X == 5 (given that X is the value you animate), and attribute Y on the object == 5 as well, glow. Otherwise, stay non-glowing. A simple Blend file showing this approach can be found here:

Edit
Animated ID value in the Blend file can be tested here:

In this Blend file, each cube has a different Object Index, starting at 0 and going up to 6. I'm using the Object Index Node to get my source value to check against:

But you could also generate a custom property on each object and read that using the Attribute Node. Whatever you decide, the next step is to generate a node tree similar to this:

The framed part is the IF X == Y expression. It works like this: Say we want to check if the Object Index is 3. Set the value of the top input to 3. Now, the top half of the IF expression will deduct a threshold (0.1), giving you 2.9, and then feed that into a Less Than node. So, for all Cubes with Object Index 0, 1 and 2, this will be 0 (=False =Black), as their Object Index is not less than the ID we're checking against. The bottom half works reversed, now the cubes with Index 0, 1, 2 and 3 will output white. You can preview the node outputs of less than and greater than nodes to see what I mean. The multiply nodes will multiply the results together. Since only the Cube with ID 3 received white in both cases, and only 1 * 1 = 1, it will be the only white one in the end.
The rest is 'normal' shader switching as you've done plenty of times. Now, the only value which you need to animate is the ID value in the Node Tree. You could even create an expression on it (enter #frame into the field for instance to setup a driver which links to the scene frame).


Need game piece to auto-deselect after moving

To line 46 add the lines (indented to match line):

deselect_piece(cont.owner['activeTile'])
cont.owner['activeTile'] = None


How to increase the strength of a baked fcurve?

This Problem i solved yesterday. The easiest way without addons or math,  - is to use f curve modifier ,in this case "envelope". You set the reference area ( dottet blacklines) and than you click "add control point. These are manipulated with min and max value buttons. You must play with that. The result should be distorted translated or cutoff curves.


Smooth vertices option not working in blender 2.82

I am not sure if this is what you have done, but I recently was trying to add weight to all objects and nothing worked and that was due to a selection mask being selected yet no objects selected. In Sculpt Mode the following picture shows how I can smooth any object

In the following picture only the selected stroke is edited. If, like me, you don't have any strokes selected, then you will not be able to edit.


How to place objects on the center of the ground plane via python?

The position of the object is defined by it's origin point. If you import a model from another 3d package by using an exchange format like .obj or .fbx, the origin is typically at (0,0,0):

In order to align an object directly to the ground plane:

Move the object to the origin (to make sure the object is perfectly centered)
Iterate through the geometry to find the minimum z location value of all verticies
Place the 3d Cursor to the minimum z location value
Set the Origin to 3d Cursor
Move the object to (0,0,0)

Suzanne aligned to the center of the ground plane

import bpy

# get the current object
current_obj = bpy.context.active_object

# get the scene
scene = bpy.context.scene

# set geometry to origin
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type="GEOMETRY_ORIGIN")

zverts = []

# get all z coordinates of the vertices
for face in current_obj.data.polygons:
    verts_in_face = face.vertices[:]
    for vert in verts_in_face:
        local_point = current_obj.data.vertices[vert].co
        world_point = current_obj.matrix_world * local_point
        zverts.append(world_point[2])

# set the minimum z coordinate as z for cursor location
scene.cursor_location = (0, 0, min(zverts))

# set the origin to the cursor
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type="ORIGIN_CURSOR")

# set the object to (0,0,0)
current_obj.location = (0,0,0)

# reset the cursor
scene.cursor_location = (0,0,0)


Can i create depth or bump maps from this image without sculpting or modeling?

There is a website called CrazyBump which converts 2d images to 3d displacement maps its called CrazyBump! here's the website link to go check it out https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/


Shadow catcher. Why am i getting different shadow density

This may be a color management issue. For physically correct results, compositing should be done in a linear color space, like Cycles and the Blender compositor. If you save the image as e.g. a PNG file and then do compositing in Photoshop the result is likely to be wrong.

For external applications you can save images as linear OpenEXR, and/or try to tweak Photoshop settings to work in linear color space.


How to apply texture the same size on all meshes? ignore mesh\normal size

So that's a solution for Cycles Render, not Blender Render: Try some parameters in the Image Texture node, like Box instead of Flat:


Rendering two layers simultaneously glitch

You can simply use object index

This way, you can put all the objects on one layer, and still separate them for compositing.

It's easy

Switch your objects pass index.
Enable object index pass in the render passes
Use an ID mask node to create a mask of those objects.

Keep in mind

You can then try something like a mix node in the way shown to separate those objects on a black background. Keep in mind, that the output of the ID Mask node is like an alpha mask. Wherever that object is in the render, the output will be 1, wherever it is not, the output will be 0.

See the illustration below.

Here is an example of using this method to apply an effect. (the image shown under the composite nodes is the original.)


Is Baking necessary every time?

No.

To explain, there are some times, when it is just more of a hassle then it is worth.  For instance, when using the Blender Internal engine, which can be pretty fast, you can be using basic enough materials that by the time you finished baking, you could have finished rendering.

Regarding animation rendering and video games, that depends as well.  Non-moving lights and objects will benefit from baking, as they do not move, but the camera moves.  In videos games, the player is typically moving around the scene, which prevents lighting from being baked onto the model, as it needs to be dynamic.

About the 14 different baking modes, each one will obviously do something different, otherwise it would be one big button that says "Bake".  The other modes are important for each specific task.  For instance, baking colors, or textures, while they seem similar, using them incorrectly will most likely take a lot of time, and not produce the result you are looking for.

I am pretty sure that there are other locations you can bake from, I think at one point (stretching back here) I had a scene where I just wanted to bake a shadow for one object, so I did.  I believe you select the image you are baking, and select the object, and then you click bake, and it will bake for that one object.  I think I followed Blender Guru's tutorial here.


Can I prevent a specific bone from moving during Auto-IK posing?

In Bone settings (Pose mode) find IK controls. Don't mind that they are greyed out, they are still working. Lock these axis (click on "lock icon") to fully exclude desired bones from the IK chain.

How to quickly lock many bones?

Select desired bones and lock axis as described earlier, then click on "lock icon" with right mouse button and select Copy to selected, repeat for every axis (X,Y,Z)


VSE rerendering whole video for just a simple effect

You are rendering out the timeline, so everything in the timeline is rewritten, therefore you cannot just do the new bits.

However you could render the portions with effects as seperate clips then use an external app to join them to the original. A program like ffmpeg will do this appending function, but I don't recall if you can alter the start and end time of the un-effected clip in the middle. Anyway ffmpeg is a faster tool but at this point you may as well use Blender too render it all as a single piece.


How do I set a separate user preferences for Blender Portable?

I guess you could try to alter the BLENDER_USER_CONFIG (Directory for user configuration files) environment variable when using portable or installed version,

as specified in manual

like starting blender with a little script that sets/resets the env vars to what you need...

Both the manual (link above) and also "blender --help" output state that you can use those env vars.

The only other method I know of is what was suggested by @DuarteFarrajotaRamos with the linked other question, much simpler, no scripting required, and allows also multiple different blender instance to run toghether each with different config/preferences, if needed: this is also explained in manual here.

If this is not working it could be due to some different behavior of those "portable apps" you're using, maybe. You coul try to use an official archive, extract and run it. I tried and by just copying the "config" folder into the 2.79 folder gave me a separate configuration/preference set.


Error during Texture Atlas Manual UV Unwrap

I worked around this by starting a brand new blend file and appending all my objects from the old file.


There are reasons for avoiding non-manifold geometry when modeling. This is one of them. I would not recommend proceeding with this workflow further. It would be best to model the walls with thickness in mind from the beginning.
However, apparently there is an add-on that can help here:
Manifold Solidify

Because of the nature of the operation the directions the walls would get thicker in cannot be chosen. This may introduce some extra calculations needed to plan walls where the space between then is important for example if one is modelling a kitchen one might want to consider standard dimenions of kitchen furniture when planning wall lenghts. However, this might still make work a lot easier in some cases.


Why is the object on the right being selected when I select the object on the left?

At the very beginning of your movie, while you're still in Edit Mode you can see that both feathers are actually one object with two unconnected mesh parts.

When you select one of the feathers, the other one is highlited as well because it is the same object.


Is it possible to adjust the frame rate of viewport playback?

The Frame Rate in the render settings should also control viewport playback. If you choose the "custom" option and set it to 8, it should make the viewport also play at 8 fps.


Activate the 3D Cursor in the Toolbar T.
Open up the Sidebar (N) and, on the Tool tab, change the Orientation to Geometry.
Click on the surface of the object to update the orientation of the 3D Cursor.

If the 3D Cursor is not "sticking" to the surface, enable Cursor Surface Project in Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U) > Editing > 3D Cursor.


How to create a colorful gradient shader?

I'd suggest to try using Layer Weight or Fresnel node in this case and add color to it using Color Ramp node. Also you may add more colors using Texture Coordinates separate outputs as masks and rotating, scaling and moving them using Mapping node. Also I'd suggest to use Emission shader instead or together with Diffuse and other shaders. This will give you more individual controls over your objects and make them more independent from the overall scene lighting. If you want the texture to be static, not dinamically changed depending on the camera view angle, you may UV-unwrap the model and bake emission from the Bake tab in Cycles render properties to use the result as the texture for emission color later on.


MMB Breaks in from orthographic view to 3d view

I am assuming you are using Blender 2.8. In 2.8, pressing 1, 3, and 7, locks you view to X, Y, and Z axis, as well as setting your view to orthographic. Breaking this view disables orthographic mode. If you wish to enable it manually, and view other angles, press 5 on the numpad.


Using project painting, texture obtained is much darker then the images projected

Is the strenght in the tool tab  set to 1?


What is and how can I use the bpy.types.UIPopupMenu?

You don't need that class, just call bpy.context.window_manager.popup_menu():

import bpy

# only executed if run in operator context EXEC_*
def main(context):
    for ob in context.scene.objects:
        print(ob)

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

    @staticmethod
    def draw_func(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        col = layout.column()
        split = col.split(percentage=0.15)
        split.label(text="Some")
        split.label(text="layout")

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        wm = context.window_manager
        wm.popup_menu(self.draw_func, title="THE TITLE", icon="INFO")
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

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

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    bpy.ops.object.simple_operator('INVOKE_DEFAULT')


Why is my camera irregular and how do I fix it

In the Object Properties, under Transform, make sure Location X is set to 0.


Blender currently comes with two render engines: Blender Render and Cycles. You can switch between them in the top toolbar, in the field farthest to the right. If you haven't touched it, it says 'Blender Render'.

In Blender Render, you can't choose between the CPU and GPU for rendering, it will detect what's available and chooses itself. If you install a new graphics card, it will switch to it.

In Cycles, you can set it to use the GPU, or use the CPU, under Render section, at the top of the Render tab in the Properties panel, in the field that says Device


When you select a model and tell it to place the cursor at its center, the cursor does not take into account any modifiers (such as your mirror modifier), and therefore it goes to the center of the vertices you have selected, as seen here:

Then, if you place your origin at the cursor, your mirror modifier will use the origin as your axis point:

So, if your mirror modifier uses the origin as its mirror axis, then all you need to do is place the origin at the point you want to mirror from. This can be done several ways, but the most precise would be to select a single vertex where you want your mirror to occur, and set the cursor to that point (Set cursor to selected):

Then set this point as your origin, the same way as per usual, and your mirror modifier will then use it as the mirror axis:

It is a simple mistake to make, and thankfully an easy one to fix.
Hopefully that helps explain the issue you faced.


Will importing user preferences from version 2.79b to 2.80 work and is it a good idea?

Whether or not you should import settings is an open ended question and pretty much opinion based and open to debate, which is not a good fit for this site's style of Q&A, so I'll try to answer from a more technical point of view.
Technical Point of View
From purely from a technical point of view, and the answer is: NO, you should not import your settings from 2.79 to 2.8# series.
Blender 2.8 changed considerably from 2.79, not only at UI level but also deep under-the-hood changes to the way it works internally.
Settings files made for 2.79 will not work well in 2.8, and will cause trouble that can go from mild inconveniences to severe issues.
At best you will get a non functional 2.8 build, or experience unavailable tools and missing functionality, and at worse you may encounter file corruption, crashes, permanent data loss and leave the application in unrecoverable states.
For example keymaps changed considerably, not only the keybindings themselves, but also internally the way they are stored and read, so they support the new Per-Keymap Preferences, left-click selection, collections, new Industry Compatible Keymap and all the new tools. Importing an old keymap will likely result in an error, but even if you were successful you would probably be met with all sorts of inconsistencies and missing shortcuts.
The UI also changed considerably with the introduction of the new Workspaces, toolbars, removal of screen layouts and new window management. If you import an old startup.blend file you will likely miss the new tailor made Workspaces and at worse get stuck in a corrupted screen layout.
New workflows ere also introduced and will be incomplete or missed entirely if you don't start with a clean slate.
Personal Preference
This is obviously highly debatable and open to opinion, but on a more personal side my answer would still probably be NO, you should not import your settings from 2.79 to 2.8# series.
Change is needed, and should be embraced so one can evolve and improve, otherwise will be stuck in the past and never fix our shortcomings. Blender has often been criticized for having a steep leaning curve, being hard to adopt, unfriendly for newcomers, and awkward to use along other industry tools or open source environments.
All changes made, even controversial ones, whether you personally like them or not, are trying to improve Blender, make it more friendly, faster, and easier to use.
If you don't keep up with times you will soon find yourself hopelessly outdated, behind the curve and stuck in the dark past we are trying to leave behind. On a more practical side you won't be able to easily follow online tutorials or guides, nor take advantage of all the new tools and improvements made.
Blender is also a constantly evolving tool, and an unapologetic one at that. If changes are needed they will be made, unlike some comercial "industry-standard" competitors who have to cling to the past for fear of ostracizing current customer base. Future versions will change further as needs arise and you will stray further from the present, so you are advised to get used to it and keep up with times.
On a more positive note changes can be hard, but I'm sure you and everyone else will overcome them easily, and with time get fluent at it.
If you dislike change that much, wait it out until 2.8 matures, and once the official release is out start learning it then. Things will be more stable and finalized by then and less likely to change further in the future so less energy is wasted.
You can also customize keymaps and preferences like you always did before, so if something important for your workflow is missing or changes, do add it back or modify as you see fit. Blender 2.8# even includes a new Quick Favorites menu that allows you to "pin" your favorite or frequently used actions for quick access.


How to easily organise your Blender scene?

For a better scene organization I'd suggest use the layer management addon, which is shipped with blender by default:

In addition, the Outliner provides some functionality to display the desired data types like Groups, Same Objects, Selected Objects etc.:


My Blender sculpt brush subtract mode color is set to blue but shows white instead. Why is that?

This is a really old question but the answer is that there are actually three colors for the brushes. One for add, one for subtract, and white for smooth. If you choose the 'Smooth' brush you'll see it is white. Holding 'Shift' with another brush is basically changing whatever you're using to a 'Smooth' brush.


My markers in the movie clip editor keep "moving" around - what gives?

The issue might be caused by inconsistent decoding of your particular video codec by Blender, resulting in variation in the frame sequence you move through on the timeline. My suggestion would be that you convert the video to a discrete image format, like a PNG or JPEG sequence. A typical way to convert video to an image sequence:

ffmpeg -i "MyVideo.mov" -an -f image2 "MyVideo%06d.png"


I find running scripts in blenders python console can be very helpful, this addon adds a menu to the console that lets you run a text block from the python console where you can see any print output as well as leaving variables set as they are at the end of the script so you can have a look at what the script was working with when it failed.

By looking at your code I expect the error is the filepath in path_to_directory. On *nix systems ~ is used to represent a users home folder, when used in a shell this gets expanded automatically but in python you need to use os.path.expanduser() to get the absolute path which you will find gets expanded to /Users/jackburker which you are already adding to your path.

So you want to either use

path_to_directory = os.path.join(
    '/', 'Users', 'jackburker', 'Documents',
    'Code', 'Blender', 'base_models')

or

path_to_directory = os.path.join(
    os.path.expanduser('~'), 'Documents',
    'Code', 'Blender', 'base_models')


I suggest to abstract the requested features into different aspects of your game

Storage
Persistence

Storage

Convert game states into store-able data and back.

Store

extract the states from your game (positions, properties, animation frame ...)
convert it into a storable format (e.g. strings, lists, ...)
store it into a storage

Example:

import bge

storage = bge.logic.globalDict # globalDict is a predefined storage provided by the BGE

def store():
    playerStorage = {}
    storage["player"] = playerStorage # create a storage in storage

    player = bge.logic.getCurrentScene().objects["Player"]
    playerStorage["position"] = list(player.worldPosition)
    playerStorage["health"] = player["health"]

This is just a very simple example demonstrating a basic storage system. When you have more data, you will need a much more complex data structure to keep all the states of all the different objects.

You do not need to use bge.logic.globalDict. You can create your own storage (similar to playerStorage).

Do not store any references to data that can't be persisted such as KX_GameObjects, KX_Scene, Vector. You need to extract the data that can be applied to a different object later.

Beside game states you need to store enough data to uniquely identify target objects for later restore. In the example it is the key "player" assuming this data is from an object called "Player". [Object names are not unique, so you need to store additional data].

Restore

Is the reverse of Store.

read the data from storage
convert it to game states
identify the game objects it belongs to
apply it to that objects

Be aware the objects you stored the data from are not necessarily the same objects you will restore it to. If that sounds confusing: Imagine you restarted the scene. This means the original scene is gone and all of it's objects are dead. But you created and loaded a new scene with new objects that look the same. But they are different object.

The objects do not even need to be equal. E.g. you stored the data of a walking character (e.g. health). Then you restore the data to a vehicle as the character is sitting inside the vehicle.

Identifying objects can be tricky. In most cases the object name is sufficient enough.

Example:

import bge

storage = bge.logic.globalDict

def restore():
    playerStorage = storage["player"] # will result in error if nothing was stored before
    player = bge.logic.getCurrentScene().objects["Player"]
    player.worldPosition = playerStorage["position"]
    player["health"] = playerStorage["health"]

In this example we assume that data from storage "player" should be applied to an object called "Player". The above operations assume these data exist. Otherwise the processing will return an error. You need to apply a proper error handling.

Usage

Store and Restore are useful within several situations:

pre-step of persistence
scene switch by keeping game states of related objects (such as player stats)
object occlusion (objects out-of-sight are removed - and re-added when coming into sight again)
network communication

Persistence

Often referred as Save/Load. It means you ensure the game states persist without a running game session. A typical situation is to persist the game states to a file.

There are several different ways to implement such a system. A very simple one is to use the build-in Persistence via GameActuator:

Save

The GameActuator in Save mode marshals the data from bge.logic.globalDict into a file called <your-blend-file's-name>.bgeconf.

Example:

You simply activate the actuator and the BGE persists the previously stored globalDict to file.

Be aware this overwrites any previously saved data!

Load

The GameActuator in Load mode replaces the content of globalDict with the content from file <your-blend-file's-name>.bgeconf.

Be aware: the complete globalDict will be overwritten!
A missing .bgeconf file will show a warning in the console.

All together

Now you have all the aspects together. You always need to consider the timing. This means you better store before save, restore after load. You always have the option to skip the persistence (e.g. on scene switch).

Advanced

The above examples are very simple. You will need to establish you very own storage. You might even want several different storage objects.

Always be sure what you store where.

Do not mix storage with other purposes (e.g. managing an inventory via globalDict). This will sooner or later result in heavy design issues.

The python part can become quite a lot of code. I suggest you do some training first to be able to manage that.

There are other ways to persist data. E.g. you can pickle the data via Python and save the pickled data to file. This supports more data formats than marshalling. E.g. you can store custom classes.

I hope it helps


Weight paint not showing on some objects

Under the Subsurf modifier I had "Use OpenSubdiv" ticked & unclicking the box was enough to return the functionality. It sounds simple now but was by no means obvious!

Hope this saves someone else from going crazy...


How can I make these eyelashes 'folllow' or 'pull' the verticies of the head object?

You should be able to do this by hooking the vertices of the eyelid to the eyelashes, so that the eyelash pulls them down, (which is what I think you are trying to do).

1) Select the portion of the eyelid you want to pull down, and create a vertex group for it in the vertex panel.

2) Select the eyelashes that will affect the eyelid, then select the main mesh (in this case, the body, if that is the mesh that the eyelid is part of).

3) With those two objects selected, press Ctrl+H, making sure you only have the part of the eyelid you want affected selected, and no other vertices.

4) Now you will notice that the eyelashes actually pull the vertices of the eyelid down with it when it moves, but it is probably going to look bad at first.

5) Select the main mesh, and go to the modifiers tab. Here you will see a modifier automatically added for the hooking object. You can adjust both the falloff type, radius, and the strength of the hook. This is for automatically adjusting the hook's influence proportionally. You also should select the vertex group you created earlier. This is for easy adjustment of the hook's influence. Using the settings in the modifier tab for the hook, adjust the strength and falloff until you get a value that nicely moves the eyelid.

Note: This method works best with an object that has not had any subdivision modifiers applied yet, because the adjustments will be much smoother.

Hope this helps!


Share Object Data Without Copying Transformation

Afaik, linked duplicates do not inherit "object mode" transformations, only "edit mode" (ie: "editing data") ones.  So, if you wish to use the same "editing data" for another object, just select thew same "mesh data", and transform your duplicates only in object mode....

or maybe I didn't get what you mean...


Combining speed control and transform effect strips

It's hard to tell what you're asking without some pictures, but I think you're adding all the effects strips to the original footage. This doesn't work when you're trying to combine more than one effect on the same section of footage. See the following example:

In this (contrived) example, I have a Gamma Cross, a Transform, and a Glow effect that I want to all be applied to that transition between the two strips. If you select one of the purple strips and add each effect to it, then the only effect that will actually be applied is whatever effect is on top.

In order to have all the effects combined the way you expect, you would add the Gamma Cross like normal, then select the Gamma Cross and add the Transform to the Gamma Cross strip, then select the Transform and add the Glow to the Transform strip. This will make each effect combine with the others the way you'd expect them to.


Can I render the render border with full quality

Hi rendering in Blender depends by camera view. Pablo Vazquez did Amaranth patch for what you're looking for:
https://pablovazquez.art/amaranth/


How do I copy tracking data from one project to another?

You can't copy tracking data between points as the tracking data is unique to each point in the scene. You know as you drive along and everything moves at a different speed, the trees next to the road fly by while the mountains hardly move - camera tracking actually relies on that to calculate the location of the camera from the video.

There is nothing stopping you from adding another point and tracking that point. You also don't need to add another point just because you want to add an object next to something. The points that are reconstructed in the scene are for reference, if you have tracked post three and post five you can place an object in between and it will be next to post four whether there is a tracked point there or not.


Why Doesn't my Ambient Occlusion Texture Show Up Properly"

This is the node setup I would suggest:

And the 'Fac' slider will adjust the strength of the AO effect.

Things that may stop your AO/node shaders from working:

You're in multitexture mode (you must be in GLSL mode for node shaders to work)
You have node textures disabled (render settings, GLSL, the checkbox labled 'nodes')
You have unticked the 'use node shader' button for the material. I consider this most likely.


In your screenshot the weight and radius of your brush are set to 0, and you are using the subtract brush.

If you set them to higher values and pick a brush like mix, then it should work:


That sounds like a job for a driver. Remove the constraint on Cube.002, right click on it's Y location value and select Add Single Driver. The Y value will then be filled with purple.

You edit the driver value in the graph editor with it's mode set to Drivers. More info on editing drivers is available in the blender wiki.

You want to use the Z rotation of Cube.001, displaying the debug value shows that it varies from -180 to 180. You want to ignore the negative part of the value so abs(var) will remove that, then divide that by 180 and multiply it to get a larger range of movement. That leaves you with a calculation of (abs(var)/180)*100. Changing the 100 used will change the distance Cube.002 moves. You can add a value at the end to move the range of movement away from 0.0.


Unknown Edge in Ipad after applying Subsurf Modifier

There are a few interiror faces in the frame of the device (marked on the first picture) which cause this problem. You used the same face for the backplate of the ipad and for the screen what is never recommended, create two independent face for them.

After you fixed the geometry you have to add mean crease to the sharp edges (marked on the second picture).

After you apply the modifier the best if you dissolve the middle edges to avoid the unnecessary bending (third picture).

https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/odmEMaaY


Child Of Constraint Set Inverse with Python

You need to specify the context and also make sure the bone is active:

import bpy

pbone = bpy.context.active_object.pose.bones["Bone_name"]

context_copy = bpy.context.copy()
context_copy["constraint"] = pbone.constraints["Child Of"]
bpy.context.active_object.data.bones.active = pbone.bone
bpy.ops.constraint.childof_set_inverse(context_copy, constraint="Child Of", owner='BONE')

If the constraint is targeting object + vertex_group instead of armature + bone, make sure the data of the object is updated before setting the inverse. This is for example needed if the target vertex group was also generated by code:

mesh_ob.update_tag({'DATA'})

If not updated entering edit-mode of the mesh or armature will reset the set-inverse.


How do I have a procedural texture follow the surface of a mesh?

It seems to work fine if you unwrap your object with the Follow Active Quads option (select all your faces in Edit mode, then one last face then U), now your unwrap is completely square and your texture will follow along. Then create this nodes chain: Texture Coordinate (UV output) > Mapping (play with the Rotation angle) > Texture > etc.


Make sure your render settings for your subsurf modifier are at least the same or higher than your view settings. In the following image you can see view subdiv is lower than render.

Set your render subdivs higher or equal to your subdivs.


How to install 'Cycle Cameras' addon for 2.8x?

If the name of the directory of the addon contains "."s and "-"s remove them. Rename the directories name in a way, that it only contains characters a-z and A-Z. Close Blender, reopen blender and check for the addon.


This is Due to your smooth shading.

  Smooth shading fake smoothness by bluring the normals of faces,In some cases there isn't enough geometry to produce good approximation and this cause unexpected shading.

Here is a cube which is smoothed,It has very few faces which doesn't help in producing a good smooth results.

Read my article here for full demonstration.


(Not a full answer but comments have limited characters and i though what i had to say might still be useful)
I (also) don't understand the problem exactly, but it seems to me part of it is that you see collections as the equivalent of sub assemblies in engineering software like for instance Solidworks or NX.
I have no experience with Rhino but i often import stuff from .step files or big projects (thousands of parts) made in programs like Solidworks. But i build assembly hierarchy without collections. I do use collections, for they are handy in various ways, but I use an Empty (or often a faceless circle mesh) as the root of my sub assemblies and parent the parts or objects to that. I'm not sure you can use collections in that way.
I don't like linking objects, because then you can't edit them in the main scene. But I understand linking would be beneficial because then you could have various team-members work on different parts, objects, or sub assemblies in separate files on a network. Instead of needing team-members to open the same main file that holds the entire project on a network, which usually is impossible.
I advice to figure out a workflow where (if you use them at all) collections are only in the main file/scene, and use normal hierarchy for everything else. But of course it depends on how you want to work exactly and your personal preferences.
If I'm in the right ballpark and you want to elaborate on what you want to achieve (or perhaps provide a link to the "reasonably good resource on how to effectively use links") I'd be happy to comment on it.
Alternatively you could look into how the BlenderKit Asset Library add-on works (ships with Blender). I believe it also uses collections to link geometry to a main scene. though I'm not sure how it works exactly or if something like that would fit your needs.
Edit:
The BlenderKit Asset Library works with Instancing of collections with Empties. But ofcourese you can do that yourself also. Maybe that might be helpful.
Press Shift + A, and choose Empty > Plain Axis. Then in the Properties window click the Object Properties tab and under Instancing click Collection. Here you can assign a collection to the empty. If you parent an empty with a collection you can have a hierarchy with collections, and since the root objects are empties, you can also animate them.


You can simply program the projectile to stop tracking once it collides with the tracker. An easy way to do that is to have a collision sensor on the projectile trigger a state actuator on collision, which will transition into a state where the track-to actuator is not included.

.blend: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/32088


The Age output of the Particle Info node is measured in frames (like the particle setting itself). So the simplest way of normalizing the value (get it into 0..1 range) is to divide by the Life setting of the particle system:

You can also divide by the Lifetime output of Particle Info, giving the relative age for each particle:

Note however that the Lifetime value can vary for each particle depending on the Random factor in particle settings:

Divide by constant:

Divide by Lifetime (with Random = 0.75)


How to use simple deform to bend geometry in a circle?

Your object is currently aligned with the Y axis, it needs to be aligned with X axis, so rotate it 90°, apply the rotation with CtrlA and it should work.


You need to enable rendering in the outliner


Game Engine: Cube is rolling instead of moving forward

Make the cube dynamic.I think it rolls cause it has rigid attributes.


IK lagging behind to point at target bone

You've got many dependency cycle into your Rig, as you can see on console :

This is because you add a limit distance between your IK target and bone that have the IK constraint.
Delete your limit distance constraint, and everything will be find.

(Why exactly you added this constraint ?)


Automatic weights are not being computed as intended (Topology issue?)

It turns out the normals were not correctly oriented. When showing the normals in the editor, I saw this:

After recalculating normals (Ctrl+Shift+N, and unticking the "Inside" checkbox), automatic weights worked much better.


In the screen shots you sent it shows you in "Object Mode", you can't paint or sculpt in this mode.

To paint textures you have to go to "Texture Paint", and have the proper setup to paint.
To sculpt you have to go into "Sculpt mode", and a object you can sculpt with


(Beginner) Large metal ceiling optimization

Yes, it's calling "bake textures" in cycles. How do I bake a texture using Cycles bake

You may do repeating sample square texture, use it on square mesh and array it thru modifiers. If you use evee render - just make baking texture in cycles.


Can I import multiple .wrl files into Blender at once?

Script is probably going to be your best bet? This should be safe to tinker with in the scripting screen. Paste, edit dir and run script to check output in the terminal, then uncomment (remove the #) to run and import the files.

import bpy
import os

dir = 'C:\Temp'

for file in os.listdir(os.path.normpath(dir)):
    if file.endswith('.wrl'):
        path = os.path.normpath(os.path.join(dir,file))
        print(path)
        #bpy.ops.import_scene.x3d(filepath=path, axis_forward='Z', axis_up='Y')


Normally, Cycles Texture will not be defaultly linked by another material. The problem you met is because you put the texture in the node group, which can be shared as sort of "public datablock", while there is currently none for that in the Duplicate Data setting yet. Probably we should suggest some genius developer to improve this? lol

To solve this, just simply make a single user for the node group.

Finally back to your question: the "Material" and "Texture" checkbox there perfectly work for BI. As for Cycles, Material does work, but for the Cycles Texture, I don't think it's gonna work that way, since it needn't. As I said, Cycles texture is kind of "material-independent", unless being part of a node group, in other words, an independent datablock shared by materials.


Softbody animation goes haywire later in my animation

"Welcome to the desert of the real..." (Morpheus in "The Matrix")... :)
Enable self-collision for the simulation and increase the value of "Distance".
And: Clear the cache...
This can be done by setting the upper frame value below the lower frame value temporarily.
Don't forget to set it back to the correct range of frames you later want to animate.
It does not hurt to enter something like 1....


How can i procedurally change ring sizes in wave texture?

You can mix some noise into the texture coordinate space.

This has the unfortunate side effect of offsetting the center of the circle, so you would have to use the Mapping node to translate it back.


Append to the top bar.

The top bar in blender 2.8x is on the top, and the status bar is on the bottom.  The status bar can be toggled on and off with python.

bpy.context.screen.show_statusbar = False # off

AFAIK there is no way to move statusbar to top using python.  Would need to alter blender's source code.

As a workaround, the statistics previously in 2.79 displayed on info header (often at top of screen) are now in the status bar at bottom of screen.

Run the script below to append scene statistics to the top bar.

import bpy

def draw(self, context):
    scene = context.scene
    vl = context.view_layer
    self.layout.label(text=scene.statistics(vl))

def register():
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_HT_upper_bar.append(draw)

def unregister():
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_HT_upper_bar.remove(draw)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Alternatively could prepend the whole statusbar to the top bar, but this doesn't work as expected.

import bpy

bpy.types.TOPBAR_HT_upper_bar.prepend(bpy.types.STATUSBAR_HT_header.draw)

Change the theme colors of the topbar header text

To run automatically for all blend files, save the script, with a .py extension, eg topbar_stats.py in your 2.80/scripts/startup folder, or for on a blend by blend basis: save in blend file, making sure once again the name has a .py extension,  and check the register checkbox.


Parenting Armature to Mesh with Automatic Weights deforms Mesh

The problem is that the rest pose is different from the pose pose which makes the the mesh deform badly as you showed. To fix this you'll need to go into Pose Mode, select all bones then press the space bar and type "Apply Pose as Rest Pose" then run the Apply Pose as Rest Pose operator as shown below:

This will fix your issue and parenting will be done without bad deformation as shown:

Looking at the weight painting done through the automatic weight painting, I found that the vertex groups are not properly made through the auto weight painting, as shown below the upperleg vertex group has lots of vertices assigned to this group although they shouldn't, so the better thing to do is to do the parenting with empty groups and then setting each vertex group manually through edit mode to prevent these automatic weighting issues.


Highly compressed files can exhibit decompression errors, that is frame arrangement errors. And this can lead to Blender having a confused time stamp. In other words the h264 files can confuse Blender entirely.

Timecode:

Try creating a proxy/timecode for each video clip. You can just select timecode free run, and dont worry about a proxy.
This should help Blender allocate the correct frame to the clip's image sequence.

Re-compress:

Try changing or transcoding the source media to a frame sequence, this pretty much guarantees a correct time stamp for Blender.


how to rotate an object (a line) diagonally x,y

Euler rotations in multiple axes do not commute (their order matters) , and while you can set the start and end key points of a rotation with a combination of Euler rotations in various axes, in no way does that imply that interpolating those separate rotations will yield overall interpolation along a Great Circle when they are recombined.

Typically, for animation, you would parent the line-object to an Empty previously rotated in Z by 45 degrees, so you can rotate the Empty in only one of its axes, X or Y, to achieve the diagonal rotation of the line-object.

The rotation in a single Euler axis will interpolate along a Great circle, and behave as expected.

However, Blender also provides other modes of rotation, which can be switched in the Item > Transform  panel of the Properties region in the 3D view. Quaternions will interpolate along Great Circle between keyed points, but are perhaps trickier to set in the viewport.

Analogous to parenting to an Empty, without actually parenting, might be Axis-Angle rotation. You define an axis, and key the rotation about it.

The rotations will only appear when their mode is active. You can key the switch between rotation modes, so as to have one take over from another in the course of an animation.

But it most circumstances, that might make things a bit complicated on your dope-sheet.


You can think of the poll function as the bouncer that determines if the operator should be allowed to go on and process something. The return value of the poll function determines if the execute function is called.

The poll in this case checks if the scene has an active_object, if it does then context.active_object will evaluate to True, and therefore be not None or (different syntax same meaning) != None.

The LocX function here doesn't even use the context parameter that was passed. The same could have been written this way:

def LocX():
    for i in bpy.context.selected_objects:
        i.location.x = bpy.context.active_object.location.x

....

@classmethod
def poll(cls, context):
    return context.active_object != None

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

or this way

def LocX(context):
    for i in context.selected_objects:
        i.location.x = context.active_object.location.x

....

@classmethod
def poll(cls, context):
    return context.active_object != None

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

The for-loop in LocX loops over the collection of selected_objects and for each object therein sets its location.x to be the same as active_object.location.x.

An aside

As a convention we tend to use o or ob or obj for temporary references to objects. i is usually (again this is a convention) used for numbers, integers, indices.


Why does this material crash Blender 2.81a Eevee on OS X El Capitan

OS X El Capitan (10.11) doesn't meet the minimum requirements for Blender 2.8x. You need macOS 10.12 or later and a supported GPU.

  Blender is cross-platform, it runs on every major operating system:

  Windows 10, 8 and 7
  macOS 10.12+
  Linux