I too would like a Pose Library for objects that aren't bones, but that doesn't mean you can't use bones and the Pose Library to do this.

First put a single bone armature in your object.
Press Shift + A, Add > Armature > Single Bone. Move the bone inside your object. Select the object and then Shift select the bone. Press Ctrl + C, and choose Armature Deform > With Automatic Weights.
(you might want to check the box "In Front", so you can see the bone even when it is inside the object. Located here: Properties > Object Data Properties > Viewport Display)

You can't add a pose in object mode, so select the bone and go to Pose Mode in the 3D Viewport. In the Properties window go to Object Data Properties > Pose Library. Then add a pose by clicking the little plus icon. (If you already have a pose, choose: "Replace existing..." and select your pose.)

Now rotate the bone and the child object rotates with it. To reset the rotation to the state when you added the pose, simply click on the little magnifier icon, while your pose is selected in the Pose Library.


How do I make objects transparent in edit mode in 2.8

You could Toggle X-Ray, located in the 3D Viewport Header. Or click the little downward pointing ">" icon to open the Viewport Shading panel and check the box next to X-ray. Or press Alt + Z.

As stated by moonboots, in the Viewport Shading panel you can also change the amount of transparency.
(moonboots comment was quite adequate but i though they made a mistake, while actualy i had my keybindings messed up: apologies)


Change start time of camera following a path?

When you add a Follow Path constraint to the camera and press the animate path button

the movement of the camera is controlled by the paths's evaluation time, which in turn is controlled by a generator modifier. If you select the path and open the Graph editor window you'll see a constant line that determines the movement of the path.

To alter the evalutaion time press N and look for the Modifers tab. You can change the in and out points of your path using the Restrict frame Range options. In this example the camera will start moving at frame 20 and stop at frame 100.
You might need to modify also the y= value and the In value to get a curve like this:

A different way to control the movement on a path is to add the follow path constraint but not actiavting the "animate path" option.

Then on the curve you can create key frames for the evaluation time. Go to the frame where  you want the movement to start type 0 as the value for evaluation time and I to create a key frame. Then move to the frame where you want the movement to end and type 100 and add a keyframe.
This time you'll see the keyframes on the curve and dopesheet windows.


How do I pass an argument to an operator that is called inside a panel?

General example based on your starting point including a property group setup.

import bpy
from bpy.types import PropertyGroup

class MyToolPropertyGroup(PropertyGroup):
    testint = bpy.props.IntProperty(  # bl 2.80 use testint: bpy.props
        name="testint",
        description="",
        default=1,
        min=1,
        )

def DO_SOMETHING(arg1, arg2):
    print("%i * %f = %f" % (arg1, arg2, (arg1*arg2)))

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

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.active_object is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        props = context.scene.MyPropertyGroup
        my_val = 2
        DO_SOMETHING(props.testint, my_val)
        return {'FINISHED'}

class MyPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
#    bl_category = "Tab Name"  # not used in blender 2.80
    bl_context = "objectmode"
    bl_label = "mypanel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_MyPanel"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        obj = context.object
        props = context.scene.MyPropertyGroup
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(props, "testint")
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator('object.simple_operator')

classes = [SimpleOperator, MyPanel, MyToolPropertyGroup, ]

def register():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(cls)
    bpy.types.Scene.MyPropertyGroup = bpy.props.PointerProperty(
            type=MyToolPropertyGroup)

def unregister():
    for cls in classes:
        bpy.utils.unregister_class(cls)
    del bpy.types.Scene.MyPropertyGroup

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


Blender 2.79 Adding Propeller to plane and moving whole object

Right click on the propeller, then Shift + Right-Click on the plane. Then Ctrl + P to set the plane as a parent.


Change your leaves origin to last of petiole, and set inittial rotation to Velocity/Hair. It might help


Is there a way to rotate after applying Separate XYZ?

You can put another mapping node before the separation, and that will allow you to perform rotations:


Can you bake a normal map with the empty space around the objects transparent?

One possibility is with Workbench render and the built in check_normal+y.exr MatCap. If speed is needed, this should be very fast.

Set the render engine to Workbench.

Set the lighting to MatCap and chose the "check normal" matcap.

Ensure Transparent is enabled under Film.

Make sure Color Management > View Transform is set to Standard. The default of Filmic emulates how a camera sensor shapes dynamic range, but that is definitely not what we want right now.

Use a camera with the Type set to Orthographic, aimed at your object as in your screenshot (it's a bit hard to tell if that one is orthographic already or not).

Render:

PNG images are encoded with a gamma correction with the expectation that they'll likely be displayed on an sRGB screen which will apply the inverse correction. Since that isn't the purpose of normal maps, you might want to be careful of this.
If you're decoding the PNGs yourself/with a library, take note of if it applies the inverse correction or not before exposing the values to your own code (and if it doesn't, either apply the inverse correction yourself or render the PNGs without correction from Blender by setting the View Transform to Raw).

Or if you can, use OpenEXR and ignore the last several paragraphs. Blender saves EXRs in linear space by default and most other software should assume they are in linear space. They also offer full float precision, so if you encounter any banding artifacts, switching to OpenEXR will likely fix those too. They are a bit big, however.


This is obviously an old post that perhaps no one answered. However for the sake of information I will attempt to answer.
Firstly have you atlased the normal map and diffuse map?
This consists of using something like Unwrapper Pro to open the model and move each component part into an individual location to produce one set of UV's for the entire model. Then print out the UV's as a template and cut and paste the relevant parts of the various diffuse and normal maps to all fit onto one image. That is one image for the Diffuse Map and one for the Normal map.
Obj files can have both mesh groups and material groups. So while your model retains all the mesh groups you can select the entire set of UVs and assign it to one material group. So instead of having 100 material groups you have one and this should allow you to only have to set the normal map once.
This is the reverse of what most modelers do where they usually set up only one model group but have many material groups. This is also helpful if you have an animated model as mesh groups are usually where bones are added or weighted.
cheers


Blender: When resizing the body of the model, the eyes are not affected

Your armature can have a  bone to the eyes so that when the armature is scaled so are the eyes.  Create one or two eyeball bones which are connected to the head bone or neck bone.  Thus when you scale armature master bone to scale the fish body, the eyeball bone will scale too.

These are typical settings for the eyeball bone.

Verify the inherit rotation and inherit scale settings.

You can have the eyes use a single bone of the armature as [Bone] (object) parent.  So that means no weight painting is necessary.  Thus the bone is behaving like an [empty] in the relationship of being a parent to the eyes.


I've tried your shape and I could get a rather satisfying result beginning with a boolean between a basic mesh and a torus, then join some vertices, etc... (everything mirrored fo course). Maybe it will help to show you my topology?


Color used for group is not transferred to particles

Your shader uses the Geometry > Position output to set the gradient. This output is just the World-Space (absolute) location of the point being shaded, so as your particles move up and down they will move "through" the gradient, or in your particular case, just sit above it.

Instead, use the Object output on the texture coordinate node. This will factor in the transformation of the object being shaded, so the gradient remains the same no matter where the object appears, or how it is scaled or rotated.

Note: The texture coordinate nodes' Object output has a field to specify a reference object. Leave this blank so the node will instead use the object currently being shaded.


Add a UV sphere (Add>Mesh>UV Sphere)
set selection mode to faces :

select the faces you want to keep
press Ctrl+I to invert the selection
press X, and select delete faces.


How can I edit F-curves of an action already put in the NLA editor

Position your cursor over the track in the NLA editor and hit TAB.  This will enable the editing mode for that NLA track (it should turn green).  If you have an F-curve editor open at the same time, the animation curve for the NLA track will appear in it a allow editing.  (Ensure that the 'Only include channels relating to selected objects and data' option is NOT selected in the F-curve toolbar).


Have a look into the python templates that come along with Blender. There is an Operator Mesh UV template you can modify to your needs. Based on that, all you would have to figure out is how to set the select state of each UV vertex you're iterating on, by searching in the docs.
import bpy
import bmesh

def main(context):
    obj = context.active_object
    me = obj.data
    bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

    uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.verify()

    # adjust uv coordinates
    for face in bm.faces:
        for loop in face.loops:
            loop_uv = loop[uv_layer]
            # Select UV vertex if in certain range
            if 0 <= loop_uv.uv.x <= 1 and 0 <= loop_uv.uv.y <= 1:
                loop_uv.select = True

    bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

class UvOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """UV Operator description"""
    bl_idname = "uv.simple_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple UV Operator"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        obj = context.active_object
        return obj and obj.type == 'MESH' and obj.mode == 'EDIT'

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

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    bpy.ops.uv.simple_operator()

Performance: Using the bmesh method above takes 0.433614 seconds for a vertex count of 175,979 on my machine while iterating through the object data takes 1.514 seconds.

If you want to (de-)select the vertices of the actual mesh as well (keeping both in sync), you can set the selection state per vertex of the loop you are iterating on using BMVert.select_set() call:

Mesh vertices in Edit Mode (left), UV Vertices in the UV Editor (right)
class CUSTOM_OT_uvSelectBmesh(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Select UV and Mesh Vertices if in given range"""
    bl_idname = "uv.select_verts_bmesh"
    bl_label = "Select UV vertices (Bmesh)"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        obj = context.active_object
        return obj and obj.type == 'MESH' and obj.mode == 'EDIT'

    def execute(self, context):
        min, max = (0.0, 1.0)

        obj = context.active_object
        me = obj.data
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

        uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.verify()
        for face in bm.faces:
            for loop in face.loops:
                loop_uv = loop[uv_layer]
                # Select UV vertex if in certain range
                if min <= loop_uv.uv.x <= max and min <= loop_uv.uv.y <= max:
                    loop_uv.select = True
                    loop.vert.select_set(True)
                else:
                    loop.vert.select_set(False)

        bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)
        return {'FINISHED'}

Performance: Selecting the UV vertices and the actual mesh vertices using the operator above takes 0.517211 seconds for a vertex count of 175,979 on my machine.


Uncheck the Sequencer box in the Post Processing panel.


Make an array without separation/line showing between

You can try enabling "merge" in the modifiers panel.

You can also try "first last", which will merge vertices from the first object and the last object in the array. (A circle for example.)

Make sure you set the merge distance.

Hope this helps you out.


Python context error NameError: name 'context' is not defined

What you're looking for is bpy.context, so the first line should be:

obj = bpy.context.active_object

It refers to the bpy module being imported in the first line.

You can also use this at the beginning of your scripts:

import bpy
from bpy import context

The entire script should look like this:

import bpy
import bmesh

ob = bpy.context.object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.verify()
bm.faces.layers.tex.verify()

for f in bm.faces:
    for l in f.loops:
        luv = l[uv_layer]
        if luv.select:
            luv.uv = l.vert.co.xy

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)


How to design a part to fit exactly onto an existing 3D model?

This is what I would do:

Start by importing the file and aligning it with the grid. Aligning with the x-y-z axes will make tranformations easier.

Next, go into Edit mode and select the good half of the model by pressing b and clicking/dragging your cursor . Preferably, you should do this after smoothing out the scanning imperfections so that you don't have to clean each side of the model independently.

Use Shift+d to duplicate the selected vertices and p to separate them from the original mesh. The new mesh is no longer closed, and you will need to close off the opened edge of the mesh before performing any boolean operations. Select the outer ring of vertices, and use Shift+F to fill the empty space.

Using a combination of mirror transformations, rotating, and moving, place the closed mesh in the desired position on the other side of the model. You might have to move the new mesh down slightly or decrease its scale by a tiny amount, so that none of the new mesh's faces hide faces along the top of the original mesh.

The new mesh is now overlapping the broken edge of the original mesh and needs to be trimmed to fit.

In Object mode, select the new mesh (blue) first, hold Shift, and then select the original mesh (red). Press w, and click Difference. Blender will subtract the original mesh from the new mesh and introduce a third mesh containing the difference. The third mesh (colored green here) should closely fit the original mesh's broken edges.

I can add a .blend file later today if it will help. Cleaning and accurately scaling the mesh will probably be the most challenging part of this project.


Video render is splitting the final video into chunks

Go to Render > Encoding and see if Autosplit Output is unchecked.


Continuously renders a previous rendered version, not what is currently in the scene (Cycles Render)

In your case the difference between the viewport and final render is caused by some emission objects which are hidden only in the final render.

In the Outliner there are eye and camera icons that control the visibility of a given object in the viewport and final render, respectively:

Objects with the camera icon disabled will not affect the final render.


Make light paths only pass through non-emitted areas?

As far as I know this is fundamentally impossible to achieve in Cycles.

Cycles being a physically based renderer has to find a solution to the rendering equation, this includes calculating all lighting interactions influenced by surface properties. Materials can't possibly depend on the render results; so surfaces properties can't be influenced by the render solution.

As such transparency, emission strength or any other material properties can never be the result of light intensity hitting that material, because it would cause a dependency loop in rendering process. You can't determine surface lighting before you know its transparency, and you can't set its transparency without knowing the light intensity.

So either fake it in the compositor, bake the light into a texture, render in separate layers and separate steps, use a Shadow Catcher material (only available in 2.79+ versions), or change render engines and use something non physically based, or non photo-realistic.

EEVEE being non physically based biased render can use a Shader to RGB converter node that can use light incidence as output to influence material properties.

If you have a single light source in your scene, or if lighting comes mainly from a
single direction, you can use other tricks like using a lamp object position as directional material input.


Grease pencil workflow for composition or storyboarding

To draw with the grease pencil at a specific depth and angle it's often easiest to simply place an mesh in the scene and orient it so the surface is positioned where you require the GP lines and use the Surface stroke placement to effectively draw on that surface. You can then either hide the mesh (to use it later to re-draw something in the same place) or move it to another location to draw the next stroke.

For animation of grease pencil strokes there are a couple of options.

The first is to convert the grease pencil strokes into 'real' geometry using the Convert... tool in the tool shelf.

This will create a curve from your grease pencil strokes and this can be manipulated as for any geometry.

The other (pure grease pencil) option is to use the grease pencil Enable Editing mode and the Grease Pencil tools in the properties side panel of the 3D view.

Firstly, use the Grease Pencil layers to keep your different elements separate. This allows easy manipulation of the different layers. For example, to select all of one particular layer (when in Edit mode) you can simply hide all other (by clicking the eye icon in the Grease Pencil layers list) and the press A in the 3D View to select 'All'. The layers can be assigned individual colours in the Grease Pencil properties panel if desired.

To manipulate particular GP strokes, enable editing by clicking the Enable Editing button in the Tool Shelf (T). You can now use the usual selection tools (A for 'all', Box Select (B), Circle Select (C), etc.). Once you have selected the relevant points on the strokes you can use the usual Grab G, Rotate R, Scale S tools as well as Proportional Editing, etc. to manipulate the strokes.

To keyframe the changes simply swap to a different keyframe before manipulating the GP strokes. This will automatically create a new keyframe for the new strokes' position.

Additionally, enable Onion Skinning to allow you to see how the grease pencil strokes vary between adjacent frames.


I prefer the term Camera "Sensor noise" in this case. ISO (or gain) is just one of the many factors that might contribute to noise in images generated on a camera, and will be very different on different cameras.

Now on to your question.

Use a texture node with a noise texture in the compositor and mix that with your rendered image using a multiply node. That would give you control over the type of noise and its size, brightness and contrast. To animate the noise pattern you can animate the distortion values and/or the offset coordinates.

Sadly, Blender's compositor does not have a way to do buffered playback in real time, and you would need such a thing to be able to see the noise patterns moving from frame to frame and get a seamless integration. To do this in a more sophisticated and precise way you should also consider using other compositing apps like Fusion or Natron, those have built in tools to create different kinds of noise and to create random seeds for it.


Scale problem when using bevel along path

I believe I solved the underlying problem (s). It wasn't a scaling issue but probably an origin issue of the path of the 3/4 arc- circle. Fixed by making sure my profile (bevel) path was at inside edge I wanted to be inside edge and then had the 3/4 circle path be at 3D curser (or center of circle) and reversed segment path


Why did my just-rendered animation not save right?

It seems that your file got corrupted, somehow. I don't think there's anyway to fix this, unfortunately. In the future, you should render to image sequences, instead.

The nice advantage of doing it this way is that even if, for whatever reason, Blender fails to render, not all will be lost; you can just continue rendering.

To do this, just set the output format to either:

JPEG (small, lossy file format with low color depth),
PNG (small, lossless file format with low color-depth) or
EXR (huge, lossless file format with high color-depth)

Make sure to select an appropriate output folder, for if you save to a temporary folder, your OS may decide to delete them at any point.

Then, once you're done rendering, you can switch to the Video Sequence Editor, by selecting Video Editing from the dropdown at the top:

Afterwards, add your image sequence by clicking Add> Image, found in the toolbar bellow, and selecting them from the folder.

After this, you can switch back and select a video format and press Render. This time, it will not render the scene, but only assemble the image sequence into a video format.


Need advice on how to make chain link shape

You can start with a simple shape 3x mirrored:

Once done, apply the mirror so that you can rotate the shape and add an array modifier (I was not able to find a way without applying the mirror):


I guess your problem is a mix of wrong names and bad orientations.

You say that you tried to rename your bones, but in your file they are not properly renamed. The left foot must be named something like foot_L, and right foot something like foot_R, otherwise when you'll flip the pose, Blender won't be able to understand to what bone it is supposed to paste.

So when you have finished a side of your armature you should properly name all your bones, then, in Edit mode, select them all and Armature > Symmetrize so that it copy paste on the other side.

Also, you'll probably need to correct the rotation of the lower leg due to the IK: Once in Pose mode, select the lower leg, go into the Properties panel > Bone Constraints, play with Pole Angle value to correct the orientation.


How Can I modify drivers properties via python in blender?

It's best if you create the driver itself in Python using the driver_add() methods, as they return the driver object back to you. This way it's convenient to access and modify them. Below is a short documented example which should get you started. I'm creating two drivers, one for the location and one single channel one for the rotation, just to show the syntax difference. In the example, I then only setup a variable for the location one, so the rotation one has no function.

in the second part, I iterate over all created Driver FCurves and then create a variable for each of them. Setting the variable name is optional, I only did it for demonstration. Further down in the code I access it by calling the name property of the variable object, which is much more robust in terms of programming. There is quite a few options to set up, too many to document them all here in this example. However, the dir() function of Python can help you out, as well as Blenders ToolTips and the console of course. A list of all drivers in the active object can by the way be retrieved using bpy.context.object.animation_data.drivers.

For the code here to run, you need to have an object called 'Sphere' in the scene, as well as another one which is the active object and will receive the driver. So now, here's the eample:

import bpy

# work on the active object
ao = bpy.context.active_object

# create a driver for all three transform channels
# the return value is a list of FCurves, each one containing a driver
drvList = ao.driver_add('location')

# if you want to create a driver for only one channel, you need to
# pass on the index of the channel, starting with 0.
# So: rotate.x = 0, rotate.y = 1, rotate.z = 2
# note that for rotations, there is Euler and Quarternions!
drvList2 = ao.driver_add('rotation_euler', 1)

# create and manipulate variables
for drv in drvList:

    # create a variable
    var = drv.driver.variables.new()

    var.name = 'HelloVar'

    # set the type first (default is 'SINGLE_PROP')
    var.type = 'TRANSFORMS' # you can use 'SINGLE_PROP', 'LOC_DIFF' or 'ROTATION_DIFF'

    # the targets are the fields which you can fill in in Blender Driver UI
    # in essence, you set the Object here from which the variable receives its values
    # sometimes there are more than one target fields (like in case of LOC_DIFF
    # that's why the targets object is a list
    target = var.targets[0]

    # the id property takes an Object for TRANSFORMS drivers
    target.id = bpy.data.objects.get('Sphere') # assuming you have an object named 'Sphere' in your File

    # take the X location of the Sphere as the driving channel
    target.transform_type = 'LOC_X' # others are ROT_X, SCALE_X

    # use local space transforms for this example
    target.transform_space = 'LOCAL_SPACE' # others are TRANSFORM_SPACE and WORLD_SPACE

    # now set the expression on the driver
    # as an example, set it to 2 * var
    drv.driver.expression = '2 * %s' % var.name


How can I delete or shift certain sections of the Timeline?

In the Dope Sheet editor, you can select a specific keyframe, or several of them (use B to border select), and move them with G. You can delete the keys with Suppr or X.

To go further, maybe you could create an Action for each slide, that's a great way to manipulate them using the NLA editor (basically, each slide will act like a movie clip in a video editor). NLA Editor Action Editor


Why can I not edit the Mesh name in field created with row.prop(obj, "data")

Think of Objects as containers, which can contain Curve data or Mesh data (and a few other kinds).

obj.data will refer to the Mesh or the Curve of the object. You would need to do the following to display the mesh's name

row.prop(obj.data, "name")

Or replicating what the standard panels do (with or without the icon).

    obj = context.object

    col = layout.column()
    if obj.data:
        col.prop(obj.data, "name")
        col.prop(obj.data, "name", icon="OUTLINER_DATA_" + obj.type)
    else:
        col.label('An empty selected')


Animate an object array along a path with curve modifier

You can parent the belt to another object (an empty for instance).

Then simply move the empty in the appropriate axis (along x in the blend file attached below).

You can also move the object itself along the same axis.


2.83: Snapping to edge not working correctly

Is the setting properlly?

It will snap to edge, all length of edge. It shouldn't align it for you since not all edge are in same length
So Snap it to the corner

And if you give additional axis constraints, (eg. lock to x-y plane), it might be more buggy to align on. Not sure it's intentionally designed or just a bug.


How to achieve white "fog" effect within an ice cube?

Here's a try using point density for the fog effect.

There are two cubes in the image, I just beveled them slightly, the outer cube's material is basically a glass setup, except that I used an image texture to affect the roughness, and add some variation to the surface structure.

Some explanation on the light path and math>maximum nodes, in the ice material setup:

The light path node determines what type of ray is currently being traced, and by using the Math>Maximum node, outputs 0 if it is not the specified ray connected to the math node, and 1 if it is for the corresponding socket of the mix shader. (0= top socket, 1= bottom socket of the mix shader). If either shadow, or reflection rays are traced in this case, then the maximum node outputs 1, and the material uses the transparent shader. For all other rays, it returns 0, and uses the glass shader. Using this setup provides more transparent shadows, which is desirable here as we have a second object inside the first.

Here is the node setup for the 'outer cube':

The second cube, which is the inside the first has a particle system attached to it. The particles are set up basically at the default settings. I only increased the count to 2200, and set the end to 15. Experiment here, and have fun with it. Here is the final distribution of the particles on the rendered frame from my example below:

The point density material, is added to the 'inner cube' object. The setup is as follows:

The additional Math>Add nodes after the Multiply are optional, but give more control over the material. I used them to adjust the brightness and density of the particles individually, rather than using the Multiply node alone, as that affects both together.

Also, if you really want to avoid using an emission shader, just use the volume scatter, but I personally found the emission shader to have a nicer look.

Here is the result, it's not perfection but perhaps it will give you some ideas to experiment with.


Wow. This is a curious one. I think this is what's going on..

You're extruding edges, along their median (actually mean) Normal, which is to say the mean normal of their vertices. In the first extrusion, all the vertex normals have a -Z component, the X's and Y's cancel, so the mean normal is -Z. In the second extrusion, none of the vertex normals have a Z component, the other components cancel, and so the Normal is 0. Blender seems to gives an arbitrary vector for this?
TL;DR
Fill the hole and  extrude a face, which has a normal, of use the XYZ setting for the tool.


What is the recommended angle to set the Pole angle to when setting up an IK rig?

In the ideal case, you should have the pole value set to zero, reaching the desired behaviour by tweaking the bones roll in edit mode, and it's a habit to choose positive X axis as main bone rotation. The more your rotations happen on a single axis, the easier is to edit the animation with the graph editor, and this is the reason why - 90 and 90 degrees are considered "good values" (they "swap" the main rotation from X to Z axis). In a Pro rig the pole set to zero lets the animator to tweak it for special purposes and reset the default value easily. Aside from theese considerations, if the rig is used by its creator, you can set that value as you want, without any other bad repercussion (as far as I know).


So I found out that I had to set the constraints on one of my bones to a number greater than 0.


Live Audio-reaction to external input in Animation nodes?

There is no native support for live audio input. However, you may use a python module like python-sounddevice to get the input sound from a device and use the data inside of Animation Nodes. Consult the documentation to know how to use a python module like this in Animation Nodes.


How to simulate a real camera with blender

Looking at the specs form the manufacturer you can see the dimensions of the sensor:

Using simple math you can determine the sensor's active area to be 8.78mm wide and 6.61mm tall.

Input those on the vertical and horizontal size values for the sensor and create a preset for future use.

Set the lens and field of view. to 1.8mm and 185 degrees.

Now set the render size on your scene to the dimensions of your camera:


Rollercoaster Problem: Bones following Curve

I managed to find a solution, but it's a bit of a hack. Most notably, the process involves baking the animation, so it needs to be redone every time you want to change the layout of the curve.

select every bone in the chain and make sure "Inherit Rotation" is turned OFF
keyframe your "helper" IK curve to whatever you want the train to do (I wanted mine to go full circle around the curve)
Add a cube or empty somewhere high up in the scene (doesn't matter what it is)
make a copy of the armature/mesh in case we want to go back
bake action (visual keying and clear constraints)
select every bone and add a locked track constraint to each one, targeting the cube or empty or whatever you added in step 3. Fiddle with the settings until it makes your train stay upright.
bake again and export for use in Unity or other game engine.

Simple, right? Repeat steps 5-7 every time you change the curve or otherwise modify the setup. I'd much prefer adding the locked track constraints without baking in step 5 to avoid this, but I simply cannot get that to work, the Spline IK constraint overrides my Y axis rotation. So this will have to do. If anyone has a better way to do this I'd be very much interested.


How to create a material which lets light pass through unaffected?

If you want to set this up per material, you can use the Light Path node to make a material transparent to shadow rays: (Note the Geometry node is not relevant to this first example)

with this result...

...but as you can see from the shadow on the floor plane, this is transparent in both directions. If you want to fix that, you can wire in the Geometry node, so the the surface is transparent only to shadow rays to which it is backfacing .. (not forgetting the rays are fired from the shadowed surface towards the light)...

.. the multiply is being used to 'AND' the two booleans.. with this result.

You can go further, to make the material transparent only to specified lights.. see here.. or here.. but as you can see, that gets more involved.


A easy way would be:

Select three vertices (right, left and middle) on the head;
Create a empty based on that virtual plane using Precise Align.
Select the empty, the AltR. You may want to rotate manually along Z axis if it's not expected after that.
Select your object, AltP > Clear and Keep Transformation. Then delete the empty.

Similar usage like this.

One thing that is worthy mentioning is: it's a scanned head in your case. Since real human body can be just roughly symmetrical, but not exactly as it appears, so the result may not be perfectlly symmetrical as expected. Of course, you can still give it a try.


What are your numbers on the volume sampling step size? You could try reducing it, you won't lose any significant quality, check out this other thread, it might help

Smoke drastically increases render time


Animation Nodes - Multiple Particle Hair systems distribution, and mimic child particles

You can access multiple particle system of an object from Particle systems socket of Particle system from object node. Which will give you a list of particle system available on particular object. You can simply access those using Get List Element node by providing index value. You are currently using Active particle system only.

Here is an example:


Can I open Blender internal files with python?

If you run the game by pressing P in Blender, you can simply use the bpy module and access Blender's data while the game is running.

If you don't want to depend on Blender, you're limited to the LibLoad function. However, this doesn't support text datablocks. Writing to blend files is also not possible in that case. IMO it'll be much easier to read and write directly to files on the filesystem, rather than packing them inside blend files.


How to fix Imported SVG from inkscape with wrong fill

Clean up your drawing, the SVG file is not properly sanitized, there are overlapping segments and residual segments in your spline

There is a small circle overlapping the inner part of your R letter, it is causing letter fill rendering to fail.

See my answer here for more details


You need to make sure you are not in edit mode. I had this problem, but then I switched to object mode and it was fine.


Automatic save of render image after finishing

Daily build includes addon Auto Save Render under Testing tab

I wanted to paste .py file (add-on) here for user of official build, but I don't know how to :)


Object won't retain position or animation when exported

I found a work around. First I open up the file that does NOT contain the object that I want to import. Then I go to File > Append. In the dialog that comes up, I navigate to the .blend file that contains the object that I want to import. I open this .blend file in the dialog box and it actually opens like a folder. Inside it are many directories including a folder called "Object." I open the Object folder and all the objects in the blender file exist in this directory as stand alone files so I just click the one I want to import.
The object now appears in my current blender file. The thing that's amazing is that the object seems to retain all of its properties like position and animations.


My objects "exploaded" instead of playing the animation

As it says in the comments under your video:
You have ALL of your cubes in one place. The must not intersect. So you "forgot" to move your cubes like he did in the video.
To move your cube, select it, then tap G then you can move it with your mouse.
Or better, press G X -> then it only moves in x direction.
same with G Y or G Z.


BGE: Refer to keyboard event boolean problem

This appears to because the module will only be executed once. Variables assigned directly inside the module will retain their initial value and won't be re-evaluated when accessed later.

To re-evaluate a variable, define it inside a function and call the function from wherever you want to access the current value of the variable.

For example, in the module you might create a function to return True if the W key is pressed:

import bge

def is_w_active():
    return(bge.logic.KX_INPUT_ACTIVE == bge.logic.keyboard.events[bge.events.WKEY])

Then when this is called from a script (or anywhere else) like so:

import bge, keyboardmodule

print(keyboardmodule.is_w_active())

it will return True or False accordingly.


How to layer images and create alpha transparency?

Good news!  I managed to figure it out.  I found this thread here, recreated the node map in the last picture on that thread, and lowered the emission strength so the villager wasn't blindingly bright.

Edit: Turns out replacing the Emission node with a Diffuse BSDF node works as well.  Good to know.


Multiple extrusion on selected curve objects using the Option (alt) key

Ok I found the answer at the developer site. I had the Emulate 3 Button Mouse option checked. That changed the behavior of the Option (alt) key in combination with the left click button.


KEY MAPPING (v2.8) ~ Is there any way to remap the Y axis hotkey to `C` for a more practical use?

Ok, it seems I just needed to say it out loud to actually guess the solution.
Here it is:

.- [menu] Edit -> [entry] Preferences...
-. [section] Keymap
.- [search filter] filter by Key-Binding (rather than by Name)
-. [search field] enter: Y
.- look for Y axis and Y plane

Then just click on the key binding button (first to last in the row) and press the key you need (C and Shift+C in my case).


How can I add a bumpy glowing surface to my model?

This is very basic but should get you going in the correct direction. I also added a subdivision surface of 2, the "multiply" node is just a "math" node set to mulitply. The actual glowing part would be done in post. Or you can switch out the glossy node with an emission shader and see if that looks ok when you add more of the bumpy balls.


Cell Fracture Crack it Addon Blender 2.9

do you mean this?

Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Add-ons -> type cell in search field and check the white box.


Why is the mesh deformed when sculpted with Subsurf modifier?

You don't want to use a subsurf modifier. If you apply it, it will be incredibly slow or far too low poly. For sculpting, use the multi-res modifier like this:

Otherwise, dyntopo is very easy to use (although the resulting topology is less than desirable). Here is a sculpting example with dyntopo:


Damped Track on object in armature moves in unexpected and irregular way

A bit weird answering my own question but I found a solution. : )
I now believe the problem was due to the piston and cylinder being each-others Damped Track target. I suspect micro translations of their origins when moving caused it, but that is a guess.
I added an object, child of the platform, at the location of the cylinder origin. And also an object, child of the arm, at the location of the piston origin. I used those objects as targets for the Damped Track constrains, instead of the piston and cylinder objects themselves. It seems this has negated the glitching or jittering effect entirely.

Even though i found a satisfactory fix myself, still, thanks to anyone who gave this problem some thought.  : )


Snap two nearly identical objects exactly together

If you haven't applied any of the transforms on your duplicate, pressing Alt+G should put it back where the original object was. Repeat that shortcut replacing G by R then S to cancel object rotation and scaling.
On the other hand, if you have applied transforms (with Ctrl+A), or selected all vertices then moved everything in edit mode, or moved the duplicate's origin in any way, then you will have to play around with the set origin and the cursor snap option. I would do it like this:

In Edit mode select one vertex from your duplicate (one that hasn't changed position), then press Shift+S and click on "Cursor to Selected"
In Object mode go to Object > Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor
Select the original object and in Edit mode select the same vertex, then like in the first step set the cursor to that vertex.
Back in Object mode select the duplicate and do Shift+S and click on "Selection to Cursor"

But...
... exactly overlapping faces don't get along. They usually fight over which one should be displayed and when Blender doesn't find a clear winner it ends up showing a bit of both which looks glitchy and wrong. One way around that is to scale up a tiny bit the part you want to show. Or even better, delete that part of the original mesh, then you can even merge back the two objects into one.


Interior scenes to start with are very tough on Cycles, because there is so much mesh for Light Paths to bounce off of. For example, when I first tried to render Andrew Price's Subway in Cycles with no materials, I got this at 5,000 samples:

The fact is, interiors are tough on Cycles, but you can consider these things:

Only have mesh for what's in the frame. The more background behind the camera, the higher quality your renders will be.
256 samples is way too low to get any half decent results (except special cases). I render most everything at 500 samples minimum, 2,000 max.
Want a cheap and dirty way to reduce noise? Reduce your max bounces to 0, 1, possibly 2 and your min bounces to 0.
I know you want white, so make sure to have a Diffuse BSDF shader on everything, not just nothing. Materials will render better, though, if you want to lose them. This was my result of the same subway with materials:

Hope this helps and happy Blending!


I think that there is a better method to use compositor instead and load your image sequence there, then pass your render layer with transparent BG and mix them with an Alpha Over. You will have much more control over your final output and this method is proven for both BI and Cycles.


Inverse kinematics bone doesn't stick to its source

I think that

your IK could be too short. The video you are following use another bone above that with the IK constraint.
this does not allow you to replicate what he's doing in the video: he grabs the IK target but he doesn't moves it too far from the chain.

To find out, try to

remove the IK constraint from the bone "bone"
select the bone "bone", and subdivide it (press "w" > subdvide)
now you have 2 bones above the IK target bone
select the new bone, that is now directly attached to the IK target (it should be named "bone.001"
reapply the same IK constraint to the IK target as it was before
now grab the IK target and move it around: it stays with the constrained bone.
however, if you move the IK target too far, the constrained bone can't "stay" with it and they separate until the IK target is too far...


How to create triangle/jagged edges on a cylinder (e.g. for a lamp shade)

This is pretty straight forward. The advantage of this technique is it keeps the crease depth equal from top to bottom, just like a real world lamp shade.

Create a cylinder. Choose No Caps, and set the subdivision to 64.
Scale the cylinder on the Z axis (S+Z) to get the correct height.
Tab into Edit mode, switch selection mode to Edges
Select one vertical edge, then in the Select menu choose Select Similar>Length to select all the vertical edges
Select Checker Deselect in the Select menu to deselect every other edge
Click S+SHIFT+Z to scale the selected edges in towards the centre of the cylinder
Tab into Object Mode and add the Simple Deform modifier
Adjust the Deform Factor to a negative value to get a narrow top and wide bottom for the lampshade.


Can a single F-curve be bound to several properties?

I would do this with drivers. I don't know if there's a way to make an infinite driver value range, but in this case, I just set it up to be 1000, which is far too big for blender to display the default cube.

Select the object in question (in this case, the default cube) and go to the object panel. Towards the bottom, you will see a section called "custom properties." Expand that and create a new property. I named mine "scales" to separate it from pre-made properties. You can set the upper and lower limit to however much you want. I used 0.0 and 1000.0 in mine. Make sure you make it a float, or else you will only be able to use whole numbers (a float is a decimal point, ie 1.0, 1.5, 1.0004, etc).

Create a driver on one of the scale axes (you only need one, which you can copy/paste to the rest). Right click on the channel value slider and create single driver.

Split off the viewport into a graph editor, then switch from F-curve display to Drivers display (the red box on the lower left). This will allow you to edit the driver and its data. Open the properties region, just as you would in the viewport. There, you'll see the drivers in their data form.

Now that the UI is set up, go back to the custom properties of your cube, right click on the value slider bar of the property you set up and copy data path (roughly half-way down the list).

In the driver setup in the graph, change the "type" to one of the options with "value" in it (ie minimum value, maximum value, sum values, average value). In the variable (the lower half of that driver setup area), change the default "transform channel" to "single property." Change the property type to the object (in my case, the default cube is an object, so i selected object), then find your object in the menu beside it (mine is "cube").

Remember that data you copied from your custom properties? Paste that into the "Path" field below. What it should change to is a small DNA-like symbol, which indicates your link is active. To be safe, click "update dependencies" at the top of the driver data area. Copy that driver to the rest of the channels and you'll be ready to go.

Slide the custom property around to test it. To animate the property, just key and edit the custom property just as you would a transform channel on a bone. It appears in the graph editor and since the driver interpolation is linear, eases are intuitive and very simple.


You can do like schustudrai says, or for more accuracy and options, make your inset and confirm it: parameters can then be edited on the bottom left in the "Operator" panel, or in a floating menu accessed using the F6 key.


Physic simulation hitting non existing face

This is probably the number one mistake made with rigid bodies.
I made this quick scene below:

And that is what it looks like on the first frame. But on the last frame it will look like this:

And the sphere will be on top of it. The reason is that the rigid body for the bottom shape is set to convex hull:

You need to change the shape to mesh:

And then also change the ice cube in your scene to mesh too.
For a quick definition, a convex hull is basically the outside of a shape. So if you wanted to make a sphere roll on a plane, you would use convex hull as the rigid body shape because the ball is just rolling on a simple 1 face shape. But if you have a scene like this:

You would need to choose mesh as the rigid body shape.


Geometry Nodes: Point Instance Collection use count (object weighting)

The easiest way I found was to add separate "point distribute" and "point instance" nodes for the spheres and then you can independently control the density of the spheres and sprinkles. You then join the geometries.
The two nodes controlling the spheres are circled in red.


How can I translate vertex coordinates relative to the 3d cursor's coordinates?

You can position the 3D cursor and then with the object selected, use Object > Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor. When you use Local in the Transform panel it will now move relative to the position you've set with your 3D cursor. Local is always relative to the object's origin, which is indicated by an orange dot when the object is selected in object mode.


How to evenly distribute same size holes across a stretched surface

You could model this:

Establish Basic geometry, (mine is an extruded half round-cube) and reserve a highly-subdivided copy, you're going to shrinkwrap to it later
X Delete > Only Faces
Edge Menu > Subdivide

F refill the faces, and Face Menu > Poke them
Select one of the new vertices, and  Shift G Select Similar > Number of Connecting Edges. Deselect the ones you don't want to be holes.
CtrlShiftB Bevel the remaining
selected vertices, with an offset. Note the offset setting.

You can use the shipped add-on Loop Tools > Circle if necessary, to round the holes to a dimension slightly smaller than the bevel offset you noted. Delete the hole faces. Now you use the Srinkwrap modifier targeted on your reserved intact copy to ensure the surface has not been distorted by the edge subdivision, poking, etc, and apply it.
The rest is modifiers: Solidify, Bevel (by angle), Subdivision Surface...


When you right-click a property, one of the options is "Copy as New Driver" and another is "Paste Driver."

This will create a new driver in the target with "Type" set to "Average Value." Change the type to "Scripted Expression" to get standard expression dialog.


Making a star tetrahedron in python script

Scripting probably isn't a good option. That particular script just creates a bunch of cylinder objects and aligns them to approximate a tetrahedron. This isn't good topology and is most definitely not 3d-printable. To create a script that would actually do that, you would probably need to use the bmesh api.

This here isn't scripting, but is an easy way to model a star tetrahedron than programming it.

Step 1: Add a cone. Set the vertices to 3 and the the depth to sqrt(2) (Blender will automatically parse it).

Step 2: Go into Edit Mode, select everything, and hit W > Subdivide. Select all of the center faces and click Extrude Individual in the sidebar, then hit Enter without moving the mouse.

Step 3: Set the Pivot Center to Individual Origins.

Step 4: Press S, then 0, then Enter to collapse the faces down to vertices.

Step 5: In the sidebar, press Remove Doubles.

Step 6: Change the Pivot Center back to Median Point.

Step 7: With just the center vertices selected, press S, then 3, then Enter to move out the points.

If you want to make it a wireframe like your reference image, you can use a wireframe modifier:

And you can smooth it out with some tweaking of settings and some SubSurf modifiers.


Can't find registered Python addon inside Blender 2.91.2 (tutorial example)

Actually in the tutorial you have mentioned above, it's 'Operator Search' not 'Menu Search' which you opened but may not noticed. So to have a correct result, you need to enable 'Developer Extras' first.

Then you will get 'Operator Search' in Edit Menu.

With 'Operator Search', you can find your first addon.


I think what you are saying is that while you edit the "green" lower density mesh, you want to see the vertices or more detail of the higher detail (horse) mesh?   So you want to control how individual objects are displayed, instead of everything the the viewport (selected and unselected)
You can select the higher detail mesh, an use the Viewport display options to show different details of that mesh before selecting the lower detail mesh and Edit Mode.  "Display As" select: "Wire" may be what you want.  Or you can change Vewport Display options on your lower detail mesh to see through it at times.
Here I have selected that higher detail (sphere) and added "WireFrame":


Block like surface when painting bump map

When you generate a new bump texture image, be sure to tick the option 'Float Buffer' so that you use 32 bit instead of 8 bit or 16 bit image depth.


How do I optimize this planar object's vertices?

I think I have something of a solution here.

Basically use Vertex → Merge Vertices → By Distance, and then play with the distance parameter till you get what you need. Careful though, it can destroy sharp edges if you're not careful.

What this solution has over the checkerboard idea is evening out the distribution of vertices. Which is what I wanted.


How can I Z-combine multiple render layers

I think that I found out the solution. I thought that the order you plug render layers didn't matter, but I was wrong.

Here are two screenshots : one in the right order (foreground render to background render-layers)

Another in the wrong order (butterfly still plugged first, but followed by background render-layers and and at last foreground render layers).


How to change the pattern of a texture for each tile in a shader?

In order to make each 'tile' different you need to change the 'noise' used to generate the pattern to be different for each tile. For your texture you are using a Brick texture to generate the 'tiles' - the Brick texture produces two outputs - the Factor and the Color of each 'brick'. Since the Color is consistent over each whole 'brick' - and is random for each brick (a random mix between the two supplied colors) - we can use this to generate a unique 'brick id' for each 'brick'.
The 'brick id' can be used to offset the Noise texture used for your texture by a different amount per 'tile' so as to generate a different pattern.
For example, I have tried to mimic your setup from your image (I think it's fairly close) and have added the highlighted nodes to adjust the texture per 'tile' :

Note the Brick Texture node set to the same values as the one used to generate the tiles. Color1 and Color2 are set to wildly different values to generate a large range of randomness.
The Color is passed to a Multiply node to increase the 'distance' of each random identifier (to increase the amount of difference in the noise) which is then used as the Z-coordinate of the Vector used to generate the noise.
This can produce the following results :

Blend file included


Random face color in Cycles NOT based on normal direction

Would a vertex color layer do?

If you select all the objects you want to treat this way, and run this script:

import bpy
import random

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:

    mesh = obj.data
    if not 'Rnd_face' in mesh.vertex_colors:
        mesh.vertex_colors.new(name='Rnd_face')

    color_layer = mesh.vertex_colors['Rnd_face']

    for poly in mesh.polygons:
        rgba = [random.random() for _ in range(3)] + [1.0]
        for idx in poly.loop_indices:
            color_layer.data[idx].color = rgba

..and assign a material which accesses the vertex color layer through an Attribute node..

here, on a bunch of subdivided planes ...

(you could use the per-face values in all sorts of other ways, in the node tree)


Switching from Cycles to Eevee : material turns black

The entire model, as imported, consists of 2 layers of faces. (Presumably the importer's interpretation of double-sided faces.) The 'outer' layer is backfacing. It can be hidden by switching on 'Backface Culling' in EEVEE.

It would be safe, (having made a copy) to select any face on the model, then CtrlL select linked, and X delete the lot, leaving behind the correctly oriented faces. If you somehow managed to select the wrong shell, ShiftN > Flip, turn the remainder inside-out.

Steps to finding the problem in this case:

Switch on 'Face orientation' and 'Face Normal' overlays
Note the normals show outward-facing, but the orientation doesn't.. Eh?
H hide a face .. there's another one underneath


Why I can't paste a mirrored version on certain axis?

To use the Mirror Copy, your model needs to be symetric along the X-axis. To achieve that you have to rotate your model and your armature in Edit Mode and possibly change your Mirror Modifier on your model to mirror along the X axis.


How to toggle to camera view via python?

The operator for switching the 3D view which is associated with numpad keys is view3d.viewnumpad().  You have to be in the right context (3d_view) to use it and select which view you want to set:

import bpy

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        override = bpy.context.copy()
        override['area'] = area
        bpy.ops.view3d.viewnumpad(override, type = 'CAMERA')
        break

Another way, without the operator would be:

import bpy

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        area.spaces[0].region_3d.view_perspective = 'CAMERA'
        break

Which is equivalent to:

import bpy

area = next(area for area in bpy.context.screen.areas if area.type == 'VIEW_3D')
area.spaces[0].region_3d.view_perspective = 'CAMERA'

Other options are  [‘PERSP’, ‘ORTHO’, ‘CAMERA’]


Problem with creating a box on a cylinder

It good that you try to keep the geometry as simple as possible. But in this case you need more geometry to avoid pinching.

In the inner (curved) edge loop I used the "Loop Cut and Slide" tool and selected Even (E) offset. You can Flip (F) from where it's even.

You can keep the other sections of the light sabre low in geometry. There are usually no reason to merge different parts seamlessly merged to each other.

You will find more tools and how you use them is up to you. I think that discover your way of solving problems is one of the more rewarding things with modelling. It's also quite tidies to do step-by-step instructions ;-) and at then end not that helpful.


Please explain how to extrude a 2D curve from SVG

You can use Solidify modifier.

Select imported object, go to Modifiers tab, select Solidify and change Thickness to desired value.


Curving a bevel? How to creature a unique radius on a T-junction?

You could begin by a boolean, then work a bit with the knife to make sure that you only have quads, then bevel the welding, then the rest of the object, and bring some corrections to keep quads again:


You can do pretty much whatever you want with the channels of an image with the compositing nodes. Look through the nodes in the Add menu(Shift+a in the Compositor). In the Converter section there are a lot of interesting nodes and amongst them Separate RGBA and Combine RGBA nodes that split and combine channels, so you can simply connect the channels in any order you want. You can also use all kinds of maths and other manipulations:


What is difference between poke face and triangulate face in 3d modeling

Poke face is on the left, Triangulate is on the right. Appears that Poke ends up with a vertex in center of the face and Triangulate ends up with just an edge.


How can I disperse objects with a particle system?

It's possible that your particles are simply not big enough to see. If you can see them in the viewport, it should render fine.

Also, you don't need hair to instance object(s) on particles, you can do it with normal Emitted particles (to make them static, set the Normal velocity to 0 and also the Gravity weight to 0.

If you still have no luck, try it in an older version of blender (with Emitted particles, not hair) and see if that works. If it does, it's likely a bug that you should report.


Animation by adding points to a curve, with Python?

I had this exact same problem a couple of months ago.  The solution irc provided to me was to create a full curve and animate the End Bevel Factor.

The beginning of your curve is bevel_factor=0.  The end of your curve is 1.0.  I am pretty sure it maps from the bevel factor to the index of a control point. So if your curve has 11 points (0..10), then bevel 0.3 will include control points (0..3) .

Consider carefully if you want to animate it with a linear animation curve or the default bezier curve.


How to put thorns on the surface of a plant?

I had the same problem, when flower pedals were floating around the scene in random directions. I played around with particle settings and found the setting somewhere in the settings panel.

But solution to the floating particles I figured out much later. You have to make sure that your particle object is sitting right on top of its origin point. (orange dot) The particle system doesn't take the mesh and put it nicely o your object. Instead it takes the origin point and slaps it on top of the object. And when your particle object is far away from the origin, at just floats around somewhere else.

So yeah. Make sure your particle object is sitting on top of its origin (orange dot) and particle rotation settings you find somewher in the particle settings.  Hope this helped. Happy blending!


The Character has in the Blender view no colour!!

Please change the Viewport Shading as high lighted below:

To: Texture or Material


I've downloaded your file and the problem appears to be twofold.

Firstly, there is a very large difference in mesh detail between the 'matress' and the 'quilt' meshes - due to the 'subdivision surface' modifier on the matress before the 'collision' modifier. This seems to be causing a lot of 'noise' in the interaction between the surfaces. The Cloth simulation is quite dependent on the scale of the subdivisions of both the cloth and the collision surface. The matress contains a large number of vertices around the edges and the subdivision surface modifier (set to 3) is exacerbating the problem.

The other issue (and possibly the most significant one) appears to be that the meshes are starting off intersecting. This means that the cloth solver is struggling to determine how to properly repel the cloth - and it therefore moves erratically until it can find a stable situation (which it never can since due to the intersection).

To resolve this I firstly moved the Collision on the matress object to be able the Subdivision Surface modifier in the modifier stack and moved the 'quilt' mesh above the surface so that it could fall down onto the matress at the start of the animation (you can suppress that part from your final animation) and found its own point of rest.

There is a further issue with the geometry of the folded over top edge of the duvet - some of the faces intersect with other faces in the mesh. This results in a similar problem with the self-collision - where faces are intersecting with faces and the cloth simulation is unable to determine how to move them apart so they continue to self-intersect and repel each other. You need to review the geometry and move apart the intersecting parts so it is a consistent cloth at the start.

Once the collision and intersection is resolved the cloth simulation should have more of a chance of settling down to a stable simulation.


Why render time in blender is increasing 10 times after rotating 3d model?

I've posted at Blender's bug tracker and it seemed for first look as a bug, but
Brecht Van Lommel (Rendering Software Engineer) explained:

  This is a typical issue with raytracers, many long thin faces along one direction are difficult to fit well in a BVH unless the faces are aligned to the X/Y/Z axis.
  Also, the workaround is to subdivide the object more so the faces are not so long.

After subdivision mesh along faces render time decreased much.

LINK to this discussion on Blender's tracker.


Laptop won't follow an editing step in a tutorial I am doing

You do not have to hold down any mouse click to scroll or change the size of the proportional editing circle. Emulating middle mouse emulates a middle mouse CLICK (ie pressing the mouse wheel down like a button).

In proportional editing, begin the editing command (whatever it is, move, scale, rotate, etc.) then you are free to scroll to make the proportional editing circle larger or smaller by simply scrolling, usually 2 fingers up or down on the trackpad.

you can also use Page Up & Down, but some laptops won't have that.


Blender's particle system is complex with the excuse that its powerful, there are a lot of settings and want it or not you have to configure everything correctly otherwise it will act unexpected. If you post a picture of all the particle settings I may be able to help you. If not then its probably a setting that you have missed or misconfigured it should be pinned to its origin be default though, except if the wind is affecting a rigidbody and not a particle system.


Jagged Edges and Antialiasing In Viewport With Background Images

Change the Depth of the reference images under Object Data Properties to Back


Without any screenshot is difficult to tell what's going on. Here some tips:

You don't have the shader panel visible:

You can split any area and choose what kind of editor show.
You can create a new Workspace based on templates (click on the + next to the top tabs and choose GENERAL > SHADER).

You don't have any nodes

Select you mesh and click on "New" from the shader view.
It's also possible that there are some nodes but are not in the actual view. So move the mouse on the shader editor, select all with A, and press . to center the view on nodes (otherwise you can zoom out till you see something)

Here a video showing how to split an area:
https://i.imgur.com/I9lYQYM.mp4


I would use a curve to show the lines. Setting the bevel_depth of a line gives a simple tube like result. By default this uses only four sides but you can increase the bevel_resolution to get a rounder result.

import bpy

def createLine(lineName, pointList, thickness):
    # setup basic line data
    theLineData = bpy.data.curves.new(name=lineName,type='CURVE')
    theLineData.dimensions = '3D'
    theLineData.fill_mode = 'FULL'
    theLineData.bevel_depth = thickness
    # define points that make the line
    polyline = theLineData.splines.new('POLY')
    polyline.points.add(len(pointList)-1)
    for idx in range(len(pointList)):
        polyline.points[idx].co = (pointList[idx])+(1.0,)

    # create an object that uses the linedata
    theLine = bpy.data.objects.new('LineOne',theLineData)
    bpy.context.scene.objects.link(theLine)
    theLine.location = (0.0,0.0,0.0)

    # setup a material
    lmat = bpy.data.materials.new('Linematerial')
    lmat.diffuse_color = (0.0,0.0,1.0)
    lmat.use_shadeless = True
    theLine.data.materials.append(lmat)

inboundline = [(-0.98, 0.29, 0.44), (-0.18, 0.05, -0.20), (0.28, 0.57, -0.24)]
createLine('LineOne', inboundline, 0.05)


I would also like to know how to solve this correctly.

As far as I know it is a limitation of the current system and there is no way around it at the moment like shown here and here

From my experiments moving the original to another layer or hiding it also hides their duplicates.

One workaround is making duplicates real, but that slows things down as you already mentioned.
Another workaround as mentioned in the Blender manual is moving the duplicator object's center away to some place it doesn't bother you, and move the duplicate original along with it to the same position. It wont really hide it but you can move it out of view.
The way I generally do this is by using a particle system instead, make it emit from faces with the Unborn and Died option enabled in the Render panel, and manually match the particle count to the object's number of faces. This way you can hide the original particle, move to another layer or even put in anther scene without ill effects.

Maybe someone here has a better workaround than this, and I sure would love to hear it.


It looks like you're viewing this in "Look Dev" (also called "Material Preview") mode:

That uses the realtime Eevee shader, even if you've selected Cycles as your main rendering engine.  Click on the little sphere to the right of the selected one for "Rendered" view, and that will probably fix the problem.

You can use transparency in Eevee, too, but it requires an extra setting.  You'll need the following steps:

Temporarily switch your rendering engine to Eevee.
With the transparent object selected, click on its material tab and scroll down to "Settings".  You should see a "Blend mode" setting.  (This will only appear if you've switched your rendering engine to Eevee first.)
Change the "Blend mode" to "Alpha blend" (or "Alpha hash" or "Alpha clip" -- see the manual for details).
Now you can change your rendering engine back to Cycles.

The transparency should now work both in Look Dev ("Eevee") and Rendered ("Cycles").


How to optimize render settings to speed up renders of black and white moire patterns in 4k?

I turned off Freestyle rendering, raytracing, textures, FSAA (full sample AA), set all materials to shadeless. And finally I set rendering Tile Size to 1024px.


When going to render mode i can't see other objects only my modeled object

Render mode renders your final result in which wireframe objects will not show (that is by design as that is not desirable).

That render mode is interactive, so you can have 2 3d viewports open, one in shaded/wireframe/material mode so you can see all the objects and the other in render preview to see the lighting. What you do in 1st will update in 2nd. For Cycles and Blender Internal render engines the response will not be realtime though.

As you are using Blender Internal and there is no Global Illumination, you can get a phong shading preview also by switching from Multitexture to GLSL shaded viewport. Note that only spot lamps will produce shadows. You will get the same shading as in Blender Game engine.

You can also download an EEVEE Blender testbuild and play with this new realtime engine. You will be able to see all the wireframe in viewport an the shading at the same time.


When I saved the file (Ctrl + S) the texture disappeared

I advise is that you go on UV / Image Editor and choose the Image menu and click save the image, choose the output file format the image and click save the image, so you do not lose your work.


Select the smoke flow object and in the physics tab, click the option that says "Smoke Colour" a colour wheel will appear. Using the colour wheel and the lighten darken option to its right, pick your desired colour. Things I did:

added a white plane behind the simulation; it's easier to see.
moved the camera to a better angle
changed the smoke colour in the smoke flow object, not the domain.


Just for fun, you can make a fully procedural tribune in just 3 steps.
Use the Screw modifier and the Mapping node.

No UV unwrapping. All modifiers still editable.

Create a profile and use the Screw modifier to make it round.
Create your image texture
Use the Mapping node to position it on your tribune.

Create a tribune profile and add the Screw Modifier.

Adjust your texture position using the Mapping Node.

You're done.


From the manual, at https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/modifiers/deform/surface_deform.html , the target

Must not contain faces with collinear edges.

You have at least two faces with three collinear points (what I've heard called a degenerate quad).  That's what you can't have.  I've selected one in the image below.

To add to this, the quickest way to fix this problem (and non-destructively to boot!) is to use a triangulate modifier.  On your model, if you put a triangulate modifier on your plane, after the cloth modifier, your fish will bind properly.
That's not always going to be the case; surface deform gives that warning inappropriately sometimes, when the problem is something other than concave polys.  (It's interesting to me that binding a Suzanne to a Suzanne is basically impossible...)  But in general, whenever you want to use a surface deform and can't bind, the first thing to do is triangulate the target.


Can't texture paint in 3D or Image Editor with existing material nodes

I think that after looking at this, you can simplify your approach to a Color Mix node in front of the Principled Shader node to combine the texture paint and noise texture in ways you can't here with your set up. In the Color Mix node, you can actually choose from a drop down of multiple mix modes similar to a Photoshop layer blending mode like Add, Subtract, Mix(Normal), Multiply, etc.

If you have to use the two shader method because they are different materials, I woudl expect you would be mixing them with a stencil to make them show up in different parts - adding them together only cause them to wash out and is a waste of processing in the node tree using two Principled BSDF nodes like that.


Run 2 "instances" of blender at the same time?

You can run as many instances as you want off the same install. Just run the .exe again. Note that this may get more complicated if you are launching through a command prompt. I often run multiple instances, especially when doing physics simulations.

Note that when GPU rendering, it tends to cause slowdown/lag on your main screen. This is because the GPU resources are going to rendering. If you have multiple graphics cards it isn't as bad, but you can still get screens slowing down even if they are on a card that isn't rendering.


Is there a way to play all actions that are part of one armature one after another?

You need to push down each action that you want to show from the Dope Sheet into the NLA (Nonlinear Animation window):

Then open the NLA and move each strip (you can also put them all on the same track). Press G to move a strip, right click on a track to move it up or down:

If you press N in the NLA you'll have access to the NLA properties, for example you can decide the effect of the selected strip, Extrapolation > Hold means that the strip below the one selected won't be able to act. If you want them to act, choose Nothing, or put the strips above this one:

If you want the NLA to play you need to close the action playing in the Dope Sheet, action playing in the Dope Sheet will play primarily.
To quickly edit an action, select its strip in the NLA and press Tab, the strip will turn green, the action will automatically appear in the Dope Sheet.


how to keep Smooth mode from making ripples?

You need to add an edge split modifier to make the mesh look right.
Method 1 - modifier

Select Mesh

Add Edge Split modifier

Method 2 - specify shading
Another method you can use it a bit more manual and not a one click solution but it will work just as well in this case.

Select the mesh and go into edit mode.

Select the top polygons that make up the flat surface

Set their shading to flat in the tool panel on the left (t)


Is it possible to make the f-curve noise modifier's scale into a variable?

Envelope modifier

EDIT: On re-readig the question this is more in regard to strength than scale.

Can add an envelope modifier after the noise modifier.

Set control points to expand or contract accordingly.

Example gif, add a control point limiting noise to [-1, 1] and then at frame 140 expand to [-10, 10]

For scale one method would be to add modifiers for a series of scales and frame ranges..

For being able to animate the influence, consider using the NLA editor and keyframe the animated influence

How to apply fcurve modifiers on top of each other, like object modifiers?


Does re-baking of physics give exactly the same result?

No, it shouldn't.

If you do want a different random look you need to change the random seed.  The exact location to set the seed varies a little depending on which simulation you are talking about, but just look for a setting called Seed.


Add custom shortcut to toggle "Maximum Draw Type"

You can define shortcut for list of properties as there are 4 of them in the dropdown list you want shortcut for.

To do that you need to create new shortcut, in this case in 3D View (Global) section so it's accessible in the viewport in all available modes.

Then, instead of "none" in the operator field write there wm.context_menu_enum. This will mean that you are transferring enumeration to the operator. You can steal this setup from any default Blender command, e.g. Snap Element menu which is called via Ctrl+Shift+Tab. You will see there how and where is written command shown above.

Once you confirmed, there will appear 2 fields - RNA and Context Attributes. The last one is what is needed, put there command for the dropdown list, you can get it hovering your mouse over it in Blender interface > Properties editor > Object tab > Display rollout > Maximum Draw Type. The Python command is object.draw_type.
Final settings are shown in the screenshot below.

After setting up desired shortcut (Alt+E used in the gif below) you will get dropdown list appearing below your mouse in the viewport. To make it work on several objects do the same as in other cases of changing one property for multiple objects - press Alt before pressing element in the list.

It will change the property for only one object if Alt isn't pressed.


How to load a movie file into blender, and re-export it as a sequence of images, headlessly (via .bpy/python script)

This script accepts the movie file and output directory as command line arguments, then loads the video file as a video sequence editor (VSE) clip and renders it out as frames (by default as PNG, change if needed).

It automatically sets the render resolution and frame duration according to the video file.

import bpy, sys

# Take movie clip filepath and output directory as command line arguments
movieFilePath, OutputPath = sys.argv[-2:]

S  = bpy.context.scene
mc = bpy.data.movieclips.load( movieFilePath )

# Set render resolution to match movie clip
S.render.resolution_x          = mc.size[0]
S.render.resolution_y          = mc.size[1]
S.render.resolution_percentage = 100

# Set number of frames to match movie clip length
S.frame_start = 0
S.frame_end   = mc.frame_duration

# Set render format and output folder
S.render.image_settings.file_format = 'PNG'
S.render.filepath                   = OutputPath

# Load clip to sequencer
se = bpy.context.scene.sequence_editor_create()
se.sequences.new_clip( "MyClip", mc, 0, 0 )

# Render animation to create image sequence
bpy.ops.render.render( animation = True, write_still = True )

To use it, save the script file, then run blender from the command line and provide the filepath and output directory as arguments:

blender -b -P movie_to_images.py -- C:/MyMovie.avi C:/OutputFolder/


you've got to enable this display method in the mirror modifier by hitting this small icon:


Rigid body physicis is resetting my object location

I am new too, but I think the answer is that you enable the "animated" not to just being keyframed, but entirely throughout the animation. I hope this helps!


Scene Referred and Display Referred RGB values of the image

The left values are scene referred values.

The right values, after the CM are post display referred transform.


rendering frame with image save every .... ( 100?) samples

You can render an animation with 100 (same) frames after clicking the variable seed button (clock icon), and setting samples to 100.

Averaging image1 with image2 would be equivalent to the image with 200 samples, averaging images 1, 2 and 3 would be equivalent to the image with 300 samples and so on.

Photoshop or gimp could help you with that but you could do it more quickly with imagemagick

convert 1.jpg 2.jpg 3.jpg ... N.jpg -average result.jpg

Here is the code in bash that echoes the commands to run

for i in `seq 1 10`; do
    echo -n "convert "
    for j in `seq -f "%03g" 1 $i`;
        do
                echo -n "$j.png "
        done
    echo "-average result.jpg"
done

and here are the commands for 10 images in case you are on windows

convert 001.png 002.png -average result.jpg
convert 001.png 002.png 003.png -average result.jpg
convert 001.png 002.png 003.png 004.png -average result.jpg
convert 001.png 002.png 003.png 004.png 005.png -average result.jpg
convert 001.png 002.png 003.png 004.png 005.png 006.png -average result.jpg
convert 001.png 002.png 003.png 004.png 005.png 006.png 007.png -average result.jpg
convert 001.png 002.png 003.png 004.png 005.png 006.png 007.png 008.png -average result.jpg
convert 001.png 002.png 003.png 004.png 005.png 006.png 007.png 008.png 009.png -average result.jpg
convert 001.png 002.png 003.png 004.png 005.png 006.png 007.png 008.png 009.png 010.png -average result.jpg


Check the relative path and absolut path of the bake path.

check the scale of the baking domain is 1.0 in all the directions.


why is the faces on my model darker than the others?

That's a very unclean topology, you might have to redo some of the parts. Until then go into edit mode, select all vertices and press SHIFT N.
That evens the normals, so none of them point in the wrong direction. If that doesn't work, you'll have to even out those regions yourself either in Edit Mode, or by using the sculpt smooth brush.


What is the low level alternative for bpy.ops.object.material_slot_add()?

Example code

Adds two material slots, m1  (if there is already an active material slot it will replace it with m1) and  m2

import bpy

mat1 = bpy.data.materials.new("m1")
mat2 = bpy.data.materials.new("m2")

ob = bpy.context.object

ob.active_material = mat1
ob.data.materials.append(mat2)

An empty slot can be added with

ob.data.materials.append(None)

Hence can add either data or object materials this way by setting the slot link.

import bpy

materials = (
    (bpy.data.materials.new("RED"), 'DATA'),
    (bpy.data.materials.new("BLUE"), 'OBJECT'),
    )

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

for m, link in materials:

    # add a material adds a slot
    print(m.name)
    me.materials.append(None)

    slot = ob.material_slots[-1]
    slot.link = link
    slot.material = m

Thankyou to @Lambdadelta for pointing out

  Note if "Link Materials to" set to "Object" instead of default "Object
  Data" in the blender preferences, then ob.data.materials.append(None)
  adds a slot to all linked objects, whereas
  bpy.ops.object.material_slot_add() adds only to the active object


Shape keys work by storing two states for your mesh and allowing you to blend between the two. First off though I would caution just adding shape keys with no armature. They can have uses without armatures, but they are most commonly used to either correct bad/weird deformation or to add additional details to the deformation that are hard to make with an armature.

Here's a quick rundown of how shape keys work. This isn't extensive by any means, but should get you up and running with shape keys.

First step is to start in object mode, then add a shape key with the little '+' icon. This will create a shape key called Basis. This is the first state that blender stores, and as the name suggests, it is the default, original shape of your mesh, as if it had no shape keys.

Next, add another shape key. You can name this one whatever you want by clicking on the name. This will be the second state that is saved for your model. By default, the slider will be set to 0, which is fine.

Now, with the second key selected, go into edit mode. You can edit different keys by selecting whichever key you want to edit. Note that you do have to be in object mode to select a different key, which is why they are greyed out in your case. Now you can edit your mesh to be whatever state you want to blend between. You could, for example, close an eye, or create some wrinkles that would appear when the mouth of your model would open, or whatever you like. Once you are happy with your model, go back to object mode. You will notice that it will go back to your original model.

The slider under your shape key will now do something, and if you adjust to anything other than 0, you will see your model blend between the two states. You can continue to edit and add as many shape keys as you like as many times as you like.

One thing to note, in addition to what I cautioned at the start, is how shape keys deform your mesh. Unlike an armature, which connects the vertices to a bone and makes them follow the bone, shape key deformation is linear. Basically what that means is each vertex will go in a straight line between its position in the Basis key and the additional key. To give an example, if you made a shape key to bend a characters elbow, and you went into edit mode and rotated the mesh about the elbow, so that in edit mode the motion is proper, the shape key would not pay any attention to how you moved the vertices, just the start and end positions.

Here is a link to the Blender Manual page for shape keys (link) which you can go through to find out more about each setting and the workflows behind it, but I would suggest trying things by yourself a bit first to see what you can figure out.


How to render a water simulation with camera tracking keyframes?

Sounds like the common beginners error of forgetting to activate the object you want to key frame first before actually key framing.


How can I combine these overlapping render layers?

Render your layers with Z pass:

Combine them using Z Combine node from Color tab:

On Z Combine node check "Use Alpha" checkbox if needed.


My personal experience has been that exporting objects between programs is a huge pain, especially exporting obj's and expecting the texture to remain intact. I would suggest rebuilding the texture in the program you are exporting it to, as exporting the mesh is fine but exporting a uv map texture can be sort of a bother.


Look at the Outliner if the visibility of this plane isn't hide If you find one simply delete it and hit render to see if it's oki.


From the Blender wiki.

If the vertex pertains to one or more faces, its normal is the
interpolated value of all the normals of these faces.
If the vertex does not pertain to any face, its normal is aligned
with the line from the object’s Origin passing through this vertex.

On a unconnected vertex the normal will always point away from the object's origin. On a vertex connected with one or more faces (like stacker said) Vertex normals are interpolated from face normals.


When clipping is enabled, any geometry exactly along the mirror axis will not be allowed to move. If you disable it, then you can extrude and move center vertices.


How can I align a model to three custom points with a Python script?

Create the matrix world

The rotation part of an objects world matrix is an orthogonal matrix where the columns represent the local axes.

To demonstrate, in test code below,  I have added a plane and removed one vertex to visualize the  three points A, B and C ensuring the angle between  BA and CA is 90 degrees.

Cube (orange wireframe) aligned to 3 vertex, 2 edge "plane" Vertex 0 for B, 1 for A and 2 for C

The vectors BA and CA, normalized,,  are used for the x and y axis directions.

The cross product of x and y is the z axis.  (The negated value would be the "flipped" option)

Finally build the matrix world from the 3 axis vectors, make it 4x4 and the translation A.

Test script. Move and rotate the "plane" then run script to align "Cube" such that its origin is at A, and the x and y axis align.

import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix
context = bpy.context

scene = context.scene
tri = scene.objects.get("Plane")
# global coords of 3 verts in plane.
b, a, c = [tri.matrix_world @ v.co for v in tri.data.vertices]

x = (b - a).normalized()
y = (c - a).normalized()
z = x.cross(y)

M = Matrix([x, y, z]).transposed().to_4x4()
M.translation = a

# Cube is the test object

ob = scene.objects.get("Cube")
ob.matrix_world = M

Note I have used blender 2.8. Replace matrix - vector multiplication @ with * for prior versions.


How can I get my texture correctly onto plane?

Try UV Unwrapping your plane mesh then using the UV coordinate from the Texture Coordinate node instead of the Generated output.

Before Mapping

After Mapping

Looks like this: http://imgur.com/a/mOb18


"No suitable context info for active keying set"

It seems to be related to to Keying Set ... see Blender Manual.

Try to delete under Scene Properties > Keying Sets > Keying Set (if accidentally created)

or clean under Timeline editor > Keying menu > Active Keying Set slot

... if not your case provide more info as Chris suggested.
Some useful links ...
What is a keying set and how does it fit into the animation workflow?
Why can I not keyframe this armature?


One of the reasons that you can not use Alt+S is that the generated image does not have a link to a file on the hard drive. Instead use F3 in the UV/Image Editor window to save as a new file. When the image is linked to a file on the hard drive you can use Alt+S shortcut to override the existing file.

Another reason can be, that the image file is open in another program, that is preventing from the file to be overwritten.


How to rotate tank treads animation using Bezier circle

If you parent the object to the curve, or if you parent both the object and the curve to an empty, it will work fine, as the axis will remain relative to the parent. If you don't, the object will go wild as you'll change the deform axis. Note that I also had to animate the tank treads on the right axis so that it moves along the curve, but it is the empty that makes it rotate.


You can combine a 3D Scene with a video using different tools:

Node Editor (Compositing)

PRO: Here you can apply filters, color correction, and other cool effects.

CONS: Non-linear editing is a little complicate

Some tips:

Set alpha mode Transparent in the Render Panel
Toggle Compositing in the Render Panel
Scale the Movie Clip to fit the render dimensions

VSE (Video Sequence Editor)

PRO: Easy control over the timeline

CONS: Little effects

Some tips:

Select the Scene Strip and set Blend to Alpha Over
Toggle Sequencer in the Render Panel

This is only an overview: you'll find a lot of tutorial on the web about Node Compositing and VSE (Video Sequence Editor)


How to start rendering (and save result) in terminal on Ubuntu?

Try this:

blender --background /path/to/FileName.blend -f 1

More information on Command Line rendering here.


How to run Blender on the discontinued Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family?

That is a very old Intel chipset. If you are asking about the integrated GPU (which is my assumption), the answer is, unfortunately, no.
According to https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/ you'll need a 4th gen Core i3/i5/i7 series (Haswell) CPU with integrated GPU or newer for Intel graphics.
Edit: The Intel 4 Series Express (Mobile) Chipset has the Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics hardware onboard. This is the same as the desktop GMA X4500 hardware, which is an OpenGL 2.0 card: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gma-x4500.c3140
If you really want to try blender, try a version before 2.76, as per the requirements page--it only needs up to OpenGL 1.4. Your performance will likely be terrible (slow clock speed, no dedicated VRAM, so it siphons some from your system) and you definitely will not get any CUDA support or any other fun things. Sorry!


Is it possible to render a file with combined CPUs of 4 systems?

If it's a long render like an interior visualization with lots of indirect light and it takes hours to render it pays off to just split the samples in 4 parts, so if you need 20 000 samples you can just render 5000 on each machine with different render seeds saving them in EXR 32bit full float format. Then you need to combine everything mixing them proportionally - so you would blend each 2 of them with weight of 0.5 and then blend the results together with 0.5 weight as well in Blender's compositing so each of them contribute 1/4th to the result. Obviously if you are rendering animations that will be too much work so you would need to look into automating this with Python, but with animations you can just render different frames on different machines as well. There might be addons for automating this already that I am not aware of, so it is probably a good idea to search for them as well if manually doing this is too much trouble for you.


When in solid view in viewport, open up the right toolbox by pressing N. Down there, under shading, activate Matcap and Ambient Occlusion. This improves the view remarkably. If there is another way to improve the viewport, especially with large grayscale models, I'd like to hear.


You need to disable the Texture Coordinate From Instancer option, it is made for particles to inherit the material of the emitter.


Blender 2.9 Crashing upon Render using Animation Nodes. Image and Animation

Always use the last AN version, at this time it is animation_nodes_v2_2_windows_py37.zip
I also have crashes in 2.91, sometimes after 5 frames rendering, sometimes after 25 frames, so weird, I will check an older Blender version.....okay checking 2.83LTS...rendering for 40 frames now without crashing.
Looking good so far! Please try!
Freddy


What he did was Shift+A>Input>UV Map and place this node into the Image Texture node as shown below:

Note that the version used in the linked video is 2.71, I don't know if this was a node added after 2.69, so it may not hurt to grab a more current release (2.77a) from Blender.org

As an alternative to this node however, adding an Input>texture coordinate node, and using the UV Output should work just as well if this node is indeed unavailable in your  version.


You have to connect your UV Data to the Vector Input of your Texture Node:

Use Shifft+A > Input > UV Map to specify your UV Map or use Generated of the Texture Coordinate Node if you don't want to unwrap your Object.


How set the type of node editor window to "compositing"?

If you mouse over the property you will see it is the SpaceNodeEditor.tree_type property you want to set.  The screen is split into areas, these areas have regions, toolbar header etc, and spaces.  I've put a print statement in to show the spaces for the area.  To get the space associated with an area use area.spaces.active or context.space_data (after changing the context.area.type)

import bpy
from bpy import context

area = context.area

area.type = 'NODE_EDITOR'
# the context area is now a node editor
# the space has the tree_type enum

for sp in area.spaces:
    print(sp, sp.type, "has tree_treetype", hasattr(sp, "tree_type"))

space = context.space_data
# or better still
space = area.spaces.active
# set to compositing
space.tree_type = 'CompositorNodeTree'

To find space.tree_type = 'CompositorNodeTree' run code above with space.tree_type = 'Blah' which gives the options in the error message.

TypeError: bpy_struct: item.attr = val:
enum "Blah" not found in
('ShaderNodeTree', 'CompositorNodeTree', 'TextureNodeTree')


Turns out the Text Counter Plugin can be used to solve this problem; this plugin was made to animate text counting up/down, but using drivers it can also display distance to another object (or any property which can be used in drivers really).

After installing the plugin, add text, go to the text tap and find and activate text counter

If desired change »padding« »decimal«, and use suffix and prefix to write what will be before and after the distance displayment.
Then add a driver to counter value

finally go into the graph editor and change type from graph editor to drivers, select the current driver; find »drivers« tap in the disebar to the right, if driver type is not scripted expresion, make it scripted expresion; under variables add new variable (if one does not already exist) change type to distance and as object 1 and 2 select camera and the text.

then change expresion to

var*scale

where var is the name of the distance variable, and the scale is the scale between blender units and the desired units; in this scene i have 100 meters for each blender unit, and i want distance to be displayed as kilometers, therefor my scale is 0.1:

The text now automaticly calculates the distance as the camera and the text moves around the scene.

Unfortunately the suffix and prefix of the text can not be multilined (not even by typing in \n) and only one changing number per text object is supported


What does the "make screencast" button do?

The Make Screencast button allows you to save all actions you make in the Blender window to a video file.

From the doc:

  Screencasts will record your actions over time either as a video or sequence of image files. The type and location of the output is determined by the settings in the Output panel of the Render context window.

So the screencast video is saved to wherever you set under the Render tab > Output rollout.  It will also use whatever settings you set there for video output format as well.


Lock a background image from being easily deleted?

There is a way if you are willing to edit Python files in the Blender installation... Go to to the directory Blender/2.78/scripts/startup/bl_ui and edit the file space_view3d.py in a text editor (after you made a backup)

Search for the line

row.operator("view3d.background_image_remove", text="", emboss=False, icon='X').index = i

This is the code that adds the delete button. Add the following line in the front of it:

row.label(text="  ")

This line adds an (invisible) text consisting of two spaces between the eye icon and the delete button. You can change the number of spaces as you like. Result:

And in the future when you upgrade your Blender version, repeat the procedure. Not very convenient, I know :)