Convert them in DXF

DWG is a cad standard format, but it's propetary so it's unlikely that you'll find a direct importer soon. I would save those file from the cad application in the DXF format and then import those.

Blender has a built in DXF importer that works quite well. You just have to enable it from the user preferences.


This is the super-quick-and-dirty way to do it:

Simply double click the value of the distortion and type #frame into  instead of a number.

Then press Enter.

This automagically creates a frame based driver.

The box will turn purple, indicating that it is being driven.

If you want to modify it, just double-click the value box and edit as desired.    Note that the hash disappears, in the driver editor as it is no longer required.

Yes, you can use simple mathematical expressions too e.g. frame/10

You can also right-click the purple box and select Edit Driver from the context menu.

Just remember if you want to make it a driver add the # symbol to the front.


Rendering both cycles and internal in one

Open the .BLEND Twice.

Render each separately (Make sure transparency is enabled for the top layer)

Go to the Movie Sequence editor in one of the files (You can close the other)

Add in both rendered outputs and layer accordingly.


How to export Blender file so it can be opened with the textures on another machine?

You can pack all textures into blend file from menu: File > External Data > Pack All Into .blend
Then save file and it should work.


Selecting only the bottle's INSIDE bottom face, to form upward creating a 'hill' of glass in the bottom

Blender allows you to hide vertices for convenience in Edit Mode

Apply the Solidify modifier.

In edit mode select the vertices you do not want to edit.
Hide those vertices.  Edit the visible vertices.

Alternative.
Change to wireframe mode.  Edit mode. Select the top of the hill vertex which you can see with difficulty.  Press Control [Numeric Keypad + ] to grow your selection.  Then hide the unselected.

[Control I] can invert your selection.


Does blender support what I could best describe as "Occlusion Planes"?

For this I would use a render layer with a mask layer set up.

In the scene I have a plane that will act as a mask on layer 2 and the switch object to be masked on layer 1. When both layers are enabled it looks like this:

Solid View:

Wire view, shows some of the switch object is below the mask object:

In the 'Render Layers' tab of the 'Properties' area I have chosen the first layer to be the layer to render and the second layer to be the mask layer:

Which results in:

This works fine for the internal renderer but for Cycles one additional option is necessary in the 'Render' tab in the 'Properties' area:


in your ocean modifier the render resolution is 3. To get a similar result to your viewport you should at least raise it to 32 too.
Then you get:


How to UV unwrap with repeating texture?

You can use two different UV Maps for the floor: the first for the wood texture and the second for baking shadows and lights.

Moreover, since the wood texture is seamless, you can scale the islands of the wood UV Map in the UV editor to get the size you prefer (i.e. the islands can be bigger than the 0-1 UV space). Contrariwise, all the islands of the shadows UV Map must be placed in the 0-1 UV space. Make sure you have selected the correct UV Map before baking (use the camera icon), and save externally the baked map.

When you deal with two (or even more) UV Maps, your shader is a bit more complicated. Just create a group of nodes to control the repetition of the main wood texture, and another to control the baked map. To do this, use the Input > UV Map node in the shader editor, and type the right UV Map's name.

This image shows a simple idea to create a shader which manage the two UV Maps:

Of course, your shader can be more complex, but the idea here is how to separate the nodes that control the shadows and the nodes that control the wood texture.

P.S.: I suggest to save the baked map in PNG format with transparency, so you can use it as a mask to blend the two main node groups.


Why is this background render/script for the command line not working?

You haven't given the command to render the animation, which is -a. The command line isn't just for rendering, so unless you explicitly tell blender you want to render, it won't.

Your first command should look like this:

blender -b C:\pathtofile\ANIMATION.blend -o C:\pathtofile\renders\ -x -a


I took the Mentalists advice and contacted the developers and they updated the system and it works fine now. Thanks for your replies.


Here is a way to do it:

step 1: get a plane parallel to what you want to wrap.

step 2: extrude the plane around the object

step 3: Add a solidify modifier

step 4: Add a loop that runs across all the faces and pull it inwards using Alt+s

step 5: Add extra support loops

step 6: Set every face to smooth shading and add a subdivision surface modifier


Can't select an object while in bone pose mode. (Lock object modes is off)

https://developer.blender.org/T65471
Short solution:
Press Alt+Z in Pose Mode, or uncheck "Fade Geometry" in overlays (both do the same).


How to manipulate individual median points in edit mode?

From what I can tell from your rather unclear question, what you are looking for is the pivot point menu.
Select individual origins after selecting your faces, then you will be able to scale the faces around their center pivot point.

Like this:

Select Individual Origins

Using the default Median Point method
(scales around the net center of all selected faces)

Using the Individual Origins method
(scales around the individual faces origins)

If this is not what you were looking for, please let me know.


To help troubleshooting, add an emission node and set it as alpha channel viewer, because it looks like there is an uncorrect alpha channel.

An useful shortcut for this procedure is to enable the Node Wrangler Add-on and Shift Ctrl click on a node a couple of times to temporarily view its output values.

Also checking the image in a 2D app (Gimp, Photoshop) could help, because the Blender setup looks correct.


How to import an object across scenes (sort-of)

To do that you just link the object to the new scene, and then make it a single user object.

Select object in Scene 1
In the Object menu, choose Make Links CTRL+L > Objects to Scene > Scene 2 (or whatever scene you want to link it to.
At this point the object is not a separate copy from the Scene 1 object. To make it separate, with the object selected, open the Object Menu, choose Make Single User >  Object (or one of the other options if appropriate)


To scale the radius for the skin modifier you press CtrlA, not simply S.

There are also two fields in the properties panel, one for the X and one for the Y radius, "scaling" the radius with CtrlA does the same as changing these values.


Exporting render image into Photoshop and still get material distortions

No need to take the 3D to photoshop. Bring the image to blender instead.

Go to user preferences (Ctrl ALt U)
Enable the import images as planes addon.

On the 3D viewport you can add images as plane (ShiftA).
Then select the *psd (PNG, Tiff, JPEG, etc) image you want to import.


Light bounces differently in the viewport cycles render compared to the final render

I forgot to click on "Show Emitter" under the Particle panel. That's what was causing the problem.


lack of geometry on the render, but not in the viewport

Seems that this is happening because I use 'Simple' subsurf, not 'Catmull-Clark' !

Anyway, seems there is a bug since it doesn't look the same in the viewport... ?


How to make visible only a portion of an object during playback?

The Mask constraint on the mesh will work to improve the frame rate during playback. You have to create a vertex group for each part you want to view at a time, but once you do, you simply set that as the target vertex group in the mask constraint, or also press arrow button if it looks the reverse of your vertex group is showing up.


Animation Nodes - How to create transition with stripes

We start by transforming a grid based on the transformation matrices resulted from a Linear Distribute Matrix node to get the bars. Then we evaluate the height of the bars at a sine interpolation to get the variable height pattern.

To create multiple families of bars that move at different times and have different widths. We loop over a float list, this float list is added to the height of bars and then the maximum with zero is taken so that negative results will become zero. The width of the bars is computed such that it increases linearly for each family of bars to reach the maximum width. The maximum width is the length of the distribution divided by the number of bars minus one. The input float list should be a decreasing float range that its starting point is a function of time.

This gives this result:

You can of course evaluate the time offset list at an interpolation to get some snappy movement. You can also bevel the output mesh to get the round edges you have in the reference.


The problem is that the layer it is on is disabled for the active blender layer:

Enable the box the arrow is pointing at.


I do not know of any books on this specific to blender.

Developers rarely write books on the details of particular implementations, and for blender, any implementation documentation outside the code base will most likely be found on the wiki. Details of techniques and algorithms are generally best studied from the original paper(s).

As mentioned, blender is open source, so you can read the source code in git yourself.

Skimming it, it looks like the wiki is actually fairly detailed here. It also mentions the original paper which may be helpful, if you have access.

Since iTAsC was originally designed for robot control systems, you may want to look at literature in that area.


Control multi-material object transparency

there has been a recent change in blender, that lets you use a custom object property inside a material node tree. Here you have a tutorial to set it up.
https://youtu.be/WWwS-0AHotY
I faced the same problem several years ago, and the solution at that time was using node groups, but it was quite time consuming.


Can a displacement texture be unwrapped independent from the image texture?

You need to make two UV maps, use one for displacement and one for the image texture. To do this, go into the mesh properties add hit plus under UV maps:

Now you can edit and update this UV map separatel, be sure to set it for the displace modifier:

Note: when you edit a UV map, you will always be working on the selected one, which is the one highlighted in blue in the UV maps panel. If you need to switch, simply select another one. Also make sure the camera icon is highlighted, as it is by default.


Blender 2.71 parenting objects transforms objects

Typically the scaling does not change when entering the game engine. This is different, when you are playing an animation or change something via Python.

My advice to you is to void scaling (especially the in-homogeneousscaling) at the parents.

If you need scaled meshes, you can create the object tree by using empties as parent. You can parent the previous parent objects to the empties. This way they are no parents anymore and you can scale them without side effects. Just make sure the empties are not scaled.

Example:

Frame (scaled)
- Button A (scaled)
- Button B (scaled)

changed to:

Root (Unscaled Empty)
- Frame (scaled)
- Button A (scaled)
- Button B (scaled)

or

Root (Unscaled Empty)
- Frame (scaled)
- Button Base (Unscaled Empty)
  - Button A (scaled)
  - Button B (scaled)


It actually is possible to subtract a value of one property from another.
by using this logic setup on your gun, it will subtract from total ammo the amount of ammo needed to fill the current clip. In this case the clip can hold 30

You can see the result here if you enable the debug properties. Press space to use ammo in clip, press R to reload the ammo in clip.


Why doesn't updating a particle settings object `frame_start` field work? (in Blender 2.8)

The problem was that I was setting frame_start first, to a value greater than the current (at the time) frame_end. frame_start needs to be less or equal than frame_end. The following version does work.

ps = modifier.particle_system.settings
ps.frame_end = explosion_frame + 2
ps.frame_start = explosion_frame


Saving a mesh from a frame in a cloth simulation?

Yes you can. You have to apply the cloth simulation.

Go to the frame where your object is looking the way you want it to (frame 60).
In the Properties panel under the Modifiers tab click the large Apply button on the cloth modifier. That will get rid of all the cloth simulation settings, and make the mesh "real", (just like applying any other modifier.)


I think the object which the keyframes are on was not selected in the viewport.


How do you wrap a plane around an object?

Create a plane, subdivide it, put it between your sphere and the arm.
Give your plane a Shrinkwrap modifier with the sphere as the Target. Disable the modifier visibility for the moment.
Give your arm a Surface Deform modifier with the plane as the Target. Click on the Bind button.
Enable the plane's Shrinkwrap visibility.


To the best of my knowledge, such functionality is not available out of the box. However, one other way would be to use an Empty with the Display type set to Image. Advantages are that you can move it just as you would any other object and adjust the opacity etc. Another advantage is that it displays in both Orthographic and Perspective view.

If you find it hindering you.. you can always just disable Viewport selection from the Outliner by clicking the arrow.


How to snap plane center to a static vertex?

It looks as if you've already done most of this, but for the sake of completeness, trying to keep the steps minimal from the worst case:

To place the tetrahedron's origin at its centroid

In Object Mode, tetrahedron selected, ShiftAltO > 'Origin to Center of Mass'

To place the cone's origin at its point

In Edit mode, select the point vertex
ShiftS > 'Cursor to Selected'
In Object Mode, ShiftAltO > 'Origin to 3D Cursor'

To place the cone's point at the centroid of the terahedron

In Object Mode, tetrahedron selected, ShiftS > 'Cursor to Selected'
Cone selected, ShiftS > 'Selection to Cursor'

TL;DR, cut to the chase....

To align the cone to one of the vertices of the tetrahedron

(given you have created a vertex at the center of the cone's base, and having centered the cone to the tetrahedron, as above)

Set Pivot to '3D Cursor', Snap to 'Active' and 'Vertex'.
Object Mode, ShiftS 'Cursor to Selected' ( either cone or tetrahedron, to put the cursor at the cone's point)
Edit Mode, select all vertices of the cone, make the base-center vertex active.
In each axis in turn, RX,RY,RZ, snap the active vertex in rotation to the desired corner of the tetrahedron.

To move the base of the cone to one of the vertices of the tetrahedron

With preceding step taken, S scale the base to the corner, snapping to the active base-center vertex.

(You don't actually have to create a vertex at the center of the base of the cone .. instead of setting the snap to 'Active' you can set it to 'Center' and snap the cone's base as a whole, to the corner of the tetrahedron.)


Assign Materials to specific faces in a mesh via Python

Based on your description of desired effects I've put together a couple small examples of how you may want to approach this.
You didn't really show what your materials should be or how you have them setup in your data structure so I provided a simple function to make basic materials around a hue wheel.
The other 2 functions will either evenly distribute materials to the faces of an object or as you described given a face start and run length of faces apply a specific material index to those faces.
You need to have all the materials you want to apply to an object's faces assigned to the object, then you can assign the material_index.
import bpy
import colorsys

num_colors = 3
repeat_color = 2
face_idx = 2
runlength = 4
mat_idx = 2
obj = bpy.context.object

def make_mats(obj, num_colors):
    hsv=[]
    for i in range(num_colors):
        hue = i/num_colors
        sat = 1
        val = 1
        hsv.append((hue, sat, val))
    # clear current materials
    while len(obj.material_slots) > 0:
        bpy.ops.object.material_slot_remove()
    for col in hsv:
        if f'{obj.name}_{col[0]}' not in bpy.data.materials:
            mat = bpy.data.materials.new(f'{obj.name}_{str(col[0])}')
            r,g,b = colorsys.hsv_to_rgb(col[0], col[1], col[2])
            mat.diffuse_color = (r,g,b,1)
        else:
            mat = bpy.data.materials[f'{obj.name}_{str(col[0])}']
        bpy.context.object.data.materials.append(mat)

def assign_mats_even_dist(obj, repeat_color):
    for i, face in enumerate(obj.data.polygons):
        face.material_index = i // (repeat_color))%(len(obj.material_slots)

def assign_mats_idx_runlength(obj, face_idx, runlength, mat_idx):
    if mat_idx > len(obj.material_slots)-1:
        return {'CANCELLED'}
    faces = [f for f in obj.data.polygons if f.index >= face_idx and f.index < face_idx + runlength]
    for face in faces:
        face.material_index = mat_idx

make_mats(obj, num_colors)

#assign_mats_even_dist(obj, repeat_color)

assign_mats_idx_runlength(obj, face_idx, runlength, mat_idx)


Object selection in 3D view not working correctly

I believe the cause of this was due setting the clipping field too low. I don't remember experiencing this issue before but if I keep my clipping settings high (above an inch) object selection works fine.


Actually the problem is that you're deforming the object in 3D. The material setup, that works fine for a 2D object, will deform in 3D. You could fix that with the Mapping node, but as you want to animate the pupil, you need to find another solution, because animating with the Mapping node would be a bit tedious.
A quick way to do it is to create an empty, parent it to the head and give your Texture Coordinate the empty as Object:

Now when you move the empty the pupil follows. You can give it a Limit Location constraint (Local Space mode) so that it sticks around the eye area when you manipulate it:

A more accurate solution would be to give your eye an Image Texture and move the texture with the UV Warp modifier, see video here or Blender Stack Exchange answer here.


2.8 UI missing all menus, cannot interact with Blender at all

Ok so apparently something got messed up with the PYTHONPATH environment variable and Blender wasn't able to properly locate the python modules it needs to run. After fixing the environment variables, Blender is running fine again. Crazy stuff


Why does the guard of my sword glow when it shouldn't

Very difficult to say from the description. To track down the cause you can do something like the following :
Remove all the lights and world illumination, does the glow disappear? If not then there must be emission somewhere - hide everything then switch them on one by one in the outliner to narrow down which mesh is causing the problem.
If disabling the lights also disables the glow then the problem is with one of your lights or you have a material that’s effectively amplifying the incident light - disable each material until you find the one causing it and then post details and we can try and point out the cause.


This is a commercial addon you can find at BlenderSensei.com - you need to buy it and install separately.
https://blendersensei.com/zero-brush/


You probably just have your viewport shading set to something else. It varies by each individual 3D View window as well.

Click on the little icon as indicated. You will find the red material you're looking for in the matcaps section.


Press T in 3d view for T-panel. Selection tool is first.


Image texture not showing up on glossy material

I think there is some issue with unwrapping.
Check this method:

Select that object and enter into EDIT MODE.
Now select the whole object By pressing A key ( u need to press it twice to deselect and select whole object in edit mode)
Then press U key and select "UNWRAP"
No go to UV editor and check whether u have unwrapped the image correctly onto the image texture.

This should work else, ping me back!


How to Join parts of an imported .3ds model

You can join this with Ctl+P> Object. Just parent your clothes to body with this so whenever you move your character body your clothes, hair etc move with body.


Example for creating and rotating of a mathematical function in a script

Your Animation Nodes Node Setup would look like this:

Basically it takes a generated grid mesh and deforms it with your functions to your 3D object which also gets constructed at the end. I used Math Nodes everywhere, but if you find out how you could use expressions or phython scripts to do that. The problem which I faced with expressions was the type being a list. Math Nodes handle that automatically so you dont have to worry about that. The generated Object would look like this:


One way is via a UILayout.prop_search

In example below the string property scene.target_object is set to the name of one of the objects in the scene.  Also note the "X" remove button once set.

import bpy
from bpy.props import StringProperty

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Hello World Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "scene"

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

        scene = context.scene

        row = layout.row()
        row.prop_search(scene, "target_object", scene, "objects")
        print(scene.target_object)

def register():
    bpy.types.Scene.target_object = StringProperty()
    bpy.utils.register_class(HelloWorldPanel)

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

On the selecting objects by a criteria, you can also use a user defined collection property as the search data.  For instance in my sound_drivers addon scene.driver_objects is defined as a PointerProperty, scene.driver_objects.armatures is a CollectionProperty.  The collection is populated by all the armatures (by name) with drivers in the scene.

    row.prop_search(scene, "target_object",
                    scene.driver_objects, "armatures")


You have the focus of the camera set a value that is not the distance from the camera to your object,  and are using a very wide lens aperture. Your scene is "out of focus".

Change the value for distance to the actual distance form the camera to your object, and maybe try a higher number for the f-stop.

To find where your camera is focusing you can enable display->Limits. If you move the focus you'll see a cross mark that indicates where the focus point is:

in 2.8 enable Limits in the Viewport Dislpay section of the camera, enable Depth of Field and set the distance to your object.

A trick you can do is use an empty. Move the empty to the place you want the camera to focus on and select the empty (or any other object as the focus target).

For more info read the blender manual's page for Depth of Field


How do I convert this FK leg to IK without getting rid of animation

You can't use an IK rig on Mixamo, you have to convert it at this stage.
This is the procedure:

In edit mode duplicate the foot bones (shift D), and put them in a different bone layer, for easier manipulation.

Clear their parenting (Alt P)

In pose mode set a copy transform constraint, in world space, targeting the respective Mixamo foot bone.

go to menu - Pose - Animation - Bake action, and check all preferences buttons

change the parenting of the toe bones from Mixamo feet to new ik feet

select the mesh and change the name of feet vertex groups from Mixamo names to new bones names

Delete the Mixamo feet bones

set an IK constraint on the calf bones, pointing at the Ik feet, setting the chain lenght to 2.

Now you have  working IK legs, without toe roll controls. To control the toe is a bit more complicated, but the basic concept is the same.


Blender rendering only one frame, not whole animation

The thing that jumps out at me is your Frame Step is 236.  That means it will try to render frame 1, then it will increment to 1+236, and since 237 is after the end, there is no more work to do.  It is unusual to use a Frame Step other than 1.


How do I remove imperfections caused by the subdivision surfaces modifier?

The imperfections in your model are mostly caused by faces with more than 4 sides (n-gons).
For an optimal subdivision surface calulation, you should try to use only 4-sided faces (quads). Triangles may look strange in some situations, but n-gons are smoothed pretty unpredictable.

You can find all n-gons in your mesh by selecting a quad, pressing Shift+G, choosing Polygon Sides and changing the Compare setting to Greater. Keep in mind that the first quad is still selected.

You can see that these are exactly in the most problematic areas.

In order to create quads from n-gons, split them using the knife tool (K). You can combine triangles by pressing X and coosing Dissolve Edges.

I also added a few edge loops to get this result:


How to set the key animation down from 250

Change the number in the "End" box under the timeline.


The dopesheet window is what you are looking for, it has a button with which you can manipulate only selected objects.


Cycles Render CPU Usage Low with Dual Xeon

Your threads exceed the tiles number (cool!).

You can't render a tile with more then one hyper core thread. Change the tiles size

See this, I got 512x512 tile size with Full HD size rendering, there are 8 tiles been rendering, with 100% CPU in i7-4770k(4C8T).

But with 1024x1024 tiles, there are only 4 tiles to render. So 4 Thread are used with 70% CPU load(Hpyer thread)


Masking body parts underneath clothes and armor?

A way to do this is with a "Mask Modifier", simply create a vertex group and add weight to the vertices you want to keep visible. then on your object's modifiers, add the one named "Mask" and set the vertex group box to whatever name you called the one you just added the weight to, and voila! its now masked
:D!!!

Step 1:
Add vertex group and weight paint the parts you want to be visible

Step 2: Add "Mask" modifier and select the vertex group you just created, I named mine "Mask"

Step 3: Confirm that it was done properly (I changed the armor piece visibility from textured to wireframe to demonstrate this)

Hope that helps n.n!


Anyone can explain why light passes through the object?

Select your light, and under Properties, check the box that says "Contact Shadows".

As you can see, however, a small amount of light still bleeds through. If this happens, it can usually be eliminated by giving your object more thickness. In the example below, I used a solidify modifier to make it thicker.

It seems like the only problem areas in your object are concerning the "bands". Make sure they have both inside and outside faces, and that they are correctly aligned with the rest of the mesh.
Lastly, though I cannot tell from your photo, it looks like your object may be mirrored on the Z axis. If this is the case, make sure the two halves merged correctly, and if you're using a modifier to achieve this make sure "Clipping" and "Merge" are enabled.


With *buntu 20.04, modify the blender.desktop launcher to:

CYCLES_CUDA_EXTRA_CFLAGS="-ccbin clang-8" blender

As per the Blender web page as of 07-April-2020, Blender is not compatible with gcc 4.7 or higher.

The above command will launch Blender with compiler settings compatible with 20.04. The 1st GPU render requires a few minutes to compile the CUDA renderer, but afterwards renders will run immediately. Nvidia 1080 CUDA rendering was 6× faster than my old 4771 CPU alone.


Where is “stretch” (UV) in the last version of Blender 2.8?

In Blender 2.9 it is on the overlays menu:


Select the Flow object and make sure that the Flow Type: is set to Fire + Smoke. It is likely just set to Fire. If this doesn't help, consider uploading a .blend so someone can locate the problem more easily.

Edit:

Got it! The issue was in your nodes. I'm not quite sure what the issue was, but I replaced the current smoke nodes with this, which I plugged into the mix node that the other thing was previously plugged into:

The value in the multiply node affects how dense the smoke is. Here is the fixed .blend file:


Animation Nodes Loop Input performance issue with large 3d vectors numpy arrays

I think it is executing the script node every iteration so I added a float list parameter to the loop and put your script node outside of the loop. On my machine instead of about 350ms execution time I got about 50ms execution time with it outside. about 7 times improvement.


How to have the texture of a circle separated in bands each with a different factor (or color) in a shader?

Since most earlier answers to this question, Blender has provided a discontinuous White Noise texture node. Even the smallest change in its 'coordinate' will produce a completely new output in the 0-1 range...

.. so your seed can simply be an addition to the 'W' input of the 1D version.

Here, keyed, but could be driven by #frame, location, or whatever is appropriate to your case.


You can create a custom orientation.

Select the tilted face
Click the + button to add a custom orientation
Extrude the top face, choose your custom orientation and use the Y axis


I think it is because your using a group. If you make each different grass blade an individual object and gave each of them a different particle system, you may avoid grass that floats in the air.


How to bake a cavity map from hi-poly to low-poly?

This is a "symptom" of a need for 'ray distance' :

The bake casts rays around the meshes.
If parts of the mesh you want to bake to are too far from the highpoly mesh, the bake will miss them.

Hypothesis : as you use here an emission material that can involve problems for parts of the lowpoly that are inside (not lighted).


I'm in 279, but this works for me?

Mesh, faces only removed, converted to 2D Curve
In Curve > Geometry panel 'Extrude' set to desired amount (no Bevel)
Solidify modifier assigned, 0 Offset, Even Thickness, Fill Rim.

.. seems to render OK, but yes, if you convert back to mesh, the topology is horrible.


Array modifier - why is the source object tripled?

The modifier works as intended in the file. The pieces overlap on top of each other because of the amount of rotation in the Z axis of the Offset Object. If you wanted 20 copies around it you need to rotate the offset object 360°/20=18°:


BMesh: How to map vertex-based UV-coordinates to loops?

It took me some time to realize I could just ask the vert property of a BMLoop when iterating through them, and then ask the index property of the retrieved BMVert to find my index.

It required to call bm.verts.index_update() before, or all the retrieved indices would've been -1.

This is my working code:

vertices = model.get_vertices()
# Add the vertices to the model.
for vertex in vertices:
    bm_vert = bm.verts.new(vertex.p0)
    #bm_vert.normal = vertex.n0 # TODO: Blender does not really support custom normals yet, and they look weird.
bm.verts.ensure_lookup_table() # Required after adding / removing vertices and before accessing them by index.
bm.verts.index_update()  # Required to actually retrieve the indices later on (or they stay -1).
# Connect the faces, they are organized as a triangle list.
for i in range(0, len(indices), 3):
    bm.faces.new(bm.verts[j] for j in indices[i:i + 3])
# Set the UV coordinates by iterating through the face loops.
uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.new()
for face in bm.faces:
    for loop in face.loops:
        # Get the index of the vertex the loop contains.
        loop[uv_layer].uv = vertices[loop.vert.index].u0


How to combine proportional editing with vertex slide?

Proportional editing will alter the connected edges which isn't really compatible with using it as a reference to limit the transformation.

If you change the 3D manipulator to Normal you can restrict movement to an axis relative to the starting position of your geometry which might give the result you are looking for.

If the normal of the selected edges doesn't match what you are after you can make a custom orientation from the edge you want to follow before starting to move the vertices.


BLENDER RENDER
You may achieve it giving the Spot Light a texture.

Add a Spot Light (Shift+A-->Lamp-->Spot), go to Lamp Data header and set up the settings depending on your needs.

Prepare your texture (you may find similar one in the net).

With a lamp still selected go to the Texture header, click a little bulb icon, add your texture and set the mapping coordinates to View.

CYCLES RENDER
You may achieve it adding two Spot Lights with different settings.

Play with the Strenght, Size and Blend settings for different lamps. When finished you may parent one lamp to another with Ctrl+P to make them move together.

EDIT: This method works well in Blender Render also.


Limited Dissolve and face loop selection

Okay, so @Denis definitely put me down the correct path. So, when using Limited Dissolve, it does create N-Polygons.

So, eventually I managed to stumble across https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?254109-convert-n-gon-to-quads-tris . I'd highly recommend adding the plugin to blender, which when activated, under the 'Object Data' tab, it will count the number of Ngons, Quads, and Tris for you.

Anyways, so when I clicked 'Select ngons' they popped right up nice and highlighted. I then converted the ngons to triangles, then back to quads, and that seemed to clean things up.

Just wanted to update this post, should anyone come across this.


In game engine with python, add appendage to object

These are two different tasks. Lets deal with them separately.

Grow

I suggest you let the objects grow via an animation (e.g. shape-key, armature). With that you have full control how it grows.

When you use scaling ensure the object origin is at the button of the plant as scaling is always relative to the origin.

Positioning

A simple solution is to check the ground "under" the object. Typically "under" is along -Z.

Perform a ray check along -Z starting from current position. Check for ground (property filter). Then you can place the object at the found hitPosition.

Check the BGE API for rayCast()

Example:

lookAtPosition = kelp.worldPosition.copy()
lookAtPosition .z -= 1 # position below current position
distanceToCheck = 100.0

hitObject, hitPosition, hitNormal = rayCast(
    lookAtPosition,
    kelp.worldPosition,
    distanceToCheck,
    "ground")

kelp.worldPosition = hitPosition

I hope it helps


How are texture maps imported into Blender?

Cycles is node based, meaning the material is comprised of nodes. Unlike the blender internal where you go to a different tab and add textures, in cycles everything can be done from with in the node editor.

First make sure you are using cycles. To use Cycles, it must be set as the active render engine in the top header.
Open the node editor, change the node type to Shader Nodes You should now see something like this.

You can drag your textures from any file browser in to the node editor. That will create a new Image Texture node for each image.
Here is the whole node tree.

The color or diffuse map would go straight in to the Color socket of the Diffuse BSDF node, but because we are adding a AO map, cavity, or any black and white map to effect the color, that gets multiplied with the diffuse map then plugged in to the Diffuse BSDF.
The normal map gets plugged in to a Normal Map node, witch goes it to the Normal socket on the Diffuse BSDF.
The bump map is plugged in to a Bump node, which is connected between the normal map and the Diffuse BSDF.


Why can I no longer easily navigate inside of this mesh?

You're likely in Orthographic view, rather than Perspective View. Press 5 on your numeric keypad to toggle between the two.

If for some reason you want to stay in orthographic view and still see the inside of the mesh.

Some options:

Hide faces that obscure the interior.
Use mask modifier on meshes to mask out some geometry.
Use view-clipping feature (⎇ AltB)
Invert the normals of your mesh (⎈ Ctrl⇧ ShiftN) and enable backface culling in 3D view > Properties


Where is build version info in 2.90, if not on the Splash Screen?

It is in the App (icon) menu > About Blender.


After experimenting around I found a solution for this problem. Cycles Hair settings is not in the last blender update but the texture of the hair from linear to curve can be improved just by changing steps from 2 (settings default in the hair properties) to 6.


Is it possible to render only keyframes from Dope-sheet?

Render all frames of the selected object(s) that have a keyframe:

import os
import bpy

original_frame = bpy.context.scene.frame_current
output_path = bpy.context.scene.render.filepath
start = bpy.context.scene.frame_start
end = bpy.context.scene.frame_end
frames = []

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    for fcurve in obj.animation_data.action.fcurves:
        for keyframe_point in fcurve.keyframe_points:
            x, y = keyframe_point.co
            if x >= start and x <= end and x not in frames:
                frames.append(x)

for frame in frames:
    bpy.context.scene.frame_current = frame
    bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = os.path.join(output_path, "%05d" % frame)
    bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)

bpy.context.scene.frame_current = original_frame
bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = output_path


Even a single displacement could work, perhaps, with a specially crafted displacement image, like this:

I just created this in Gimp, quickly but you get the idea.

Note: it has a black border, to displace the squares, and a white/grey pattern to displace the cloth texture.

When using two separate displacements (two images) you could set their influence separately in Blender, though, with my single image relative displacement weights are set by the image shades (black maximum, grey intermediate, white none).

a quick test:


OK, worked it out.  In case this helps someone else, shift click Right Mouse to select both rigs shows the targeting fields:


How to get the total number of vertice, edge and face in camera view with Python?

Following your question in the comments below your question, I give here a partial answer and some guidelines (but the complete code is too long to do for me).

So just some code snippets:

CameraSetting class: allow to calculate the projection of a vertex in the camera/view given a mesh object. This code does the same as bpy_extras.object_utils.world_to_camera_view(scene, cam, co) but it calculates many things once instead of doing it for each 'co'. See here.

CountForObject function: provide a simple calculation of the vertices included in the view of a camera.

Note also that you can optimize the calculation by checking the bounding box of the objects before calculating all their vertices projections.

Hope it can help (the code contains additional comments):

import bpy
import time
from mathutils import Vector
from operator import itemgetter

#Used to store information related to a camera setting for a given object
class CameraSetting:
    def __init__( self, scene, camera, obj ):
        self.camera = camera
        #Z axis of the camera translate in world (Z axis is opposite to view)
        self.zInWorld = Vector( (0, 0, 1) )
        self.zInWorld.rotate( self.camera.matrix_world.to_euler() )
        #Camera parameters
        #Matrix to convert from object coordinate to camera coordinates
        self.toCameraMatrix = camera.matrix_world.inverted() * obj.matrix_world
        #The frame is composed of the coordinates in the camera view
        frame = [v / v.z for v in camera.data.view_frame(scene=scene)]
        #Get the X, Y corners
        self.minX = min( v.x for v in frame )
        self.maxX = max( v.x for v in frame )
        self.minY = min( v.y for v in frame )
        self.maxY = max( v.y for v in frame )
        #Precalculations to avoid to repeat them when applied to the model
        self.deltaX = self.maxX - self.minX
        self.deltaY = self.maxY - self.minY
        self.offsetX = self.minX / self.deltaX
        self.offsetY = self.minY / self.deltaY

    #Calculate projected coordinateds from the object coordinates
    def CalcProjected( self, objCo ):
        #Object coordinate in camera view
        camCo = self.toCameraMatrix * objCo
        #Z is "inverted" as camera view is pointing to -Z of the camera
        z = -camCo.z
        try:
            #Translates x and y to projected coordinates
            x = (camCo.x / (self.deltaX * z)) - self.offsetX
            y = (camCo.y / (self.deltaY * z)) - self.offsetY
            return x, y, z
        except:
            #In case Z is zero
            return 0.5, 0.5, 0

def CountForObject( scene, obj, cam ):
    matrix_world = obj.matrix_world
    rotation_world = matrix_world.to_euler()

    vertices = obj.data.vertices
    camSetting = CameraSetting( scene, cam, obj )

    vertexCount = 0
    #Go through all polygons
    for v in obj.data.vertices:
        x, y, z = camSetting.CalcProjected( v.co )

        if 0 <= x <= 1 and 0 <= y <= 1 and z >= 0:
            vertexCount += 1

        #z can be tested to see if its correspond to the camera clipping (cam.data.clip_start/cam.data.clip_end)
        #This calculation allows to check x and y
        #x and y are between 0 and 1 if in the camera field (because CalcProjected do so)
        #From that you can consider that all edges and faces which have a good vertex are in field too
        #But for the remaining edges you'll need to check if the corresponding vertices projection intersects the (0,0) to (1,1) square
        #Then consider the polygons that correspond to these edges to count them two

    print( vertexCount )

scene = bpy.context.scene
obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']
cam = bpy.data.objects['Camera']

CountForObject( scene, obj, cam )


In Blender 2.8, Shade Smooth is in Object Mode(Layout Active Workspace), Object > Shade Smooth.(See picture below)


Try the standard ANT Landscape addon that comes with Blender.


Cycles. Image sequence used as texture renders pink

Usually when blender renders something in bright pink / fuschia , its the indication that the link to the image is broken. Meaning the image texture file or sequence file may have been moved from their original folder or moved to another drive of your computer. Renaming of texture files also causes links to be broken.

If you did not move those files, it can be an indication that your harddisk or operating system are having trouble locating those files. Check to see if it's also an underlying hardware issue.


How to remotely run a Python script in an existing Blender instance?

This can be done with sockets,
using the following examples you can run from the command line:

  From the first terminal:

blender --python blender_server.py

  From a second terminal:

python blender_client.py /path/to/myscript.py

This will execute /path/to/myscript.py in the first Blender instance.

You can send multiple scripts or run the client multiple times.

Note that this is a simple example, to get return codes in the client or make the port configurable... etc, this would have to be extended.

It could even be made to sent the entire script, or compressed Python byte-code over a network, none of this is especially hard. It just depends what you're after.

blender_server.py

# Script to run from blender:
#   blender --python blender_server.py

PORT = 8081
HOST = "localhost"
PATH_MAX = 4096

def execfile(filepath):
    import os
    global_namespace = {
        "__file__": filepath,
        "__name__": "__main__",
    }
    with open(filepath, 'rb') as file:
        exec(compile(file.read(), filepath, 'exec'), global_namespace)

def main():
    import socket

    serversocket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    serversocket.bind((HOST, PORT))
    serversocket.listen(1)

    print("Listening on %s:%s" % (HOST, PORT))
    while True:
        connection, address = serversocket.accept()
        buf = connection.recv(PATH_MAX)

        for filepath in buf.split(b'\x00'):
            if filepath:
                print("Executing:", filepath)
                try:
                    execfile(filepath)
                except:
                    import traceback
                    traceback.print_exc()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

blender_client.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Script to send paths to run in blender:
#   blender_client.py script1.py script2.py

PORT = 8081
HOST = "localhost"

def main():
    import sys
    import socket

    clientsocket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    clientsocket.connect((HOST, PORT))

    for arg in sys.argv[1:]:
        clientsocket.sendall(arg.encode("utf-8") + b'\x00')

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()


Just uncheck Lock Camera to View and then zoom in.
Then you can enable the lock again.
No need to change your camera resolution.

The camera lock works like this:


How can I make these drivers "Blend" these shapekeys properly and with acuracy?

Have you tried the "Average Value" Type, instead of the "Scripted Expressions". For me, the "Average Value" and the correct adjustment of the curves always have resulted in what I expected it to do.


Why does my mesh have no faces on the inside?

No worries, your mesh is fine. Just disable the visibility in the modifier tab and you can see it without the effect.


Make sure that when you create the parent child relationship the bones are within the mesh and the bones are selected last.

Make sure that all bones have their deform check box ... checked active.

In the modifiers pane inspect the armature modifier.  The enable eye icon should be active.  It can be turned off and on.  If is turned off it will have no effect.

You can also delete the armature modifier and parent it again.  Make sure to view the armature and the mesh from 3 angles top, front and side to make sure the alignment is correct.  If you have not done much weight painting do not hesitate to delete the armature modifier and parent again.


Grease Pencil: render is darker than what is displayed in the viewport

Try switching the color management to standard.
As far as I know the grease pencil is hopelessly coded in sRGB, so it will look dark if the color transform is set to filmic.


Operator bpy.ops.object.modifier_add.poll() failed, context is incorrect. How to apply modifiers to an .obj file?

Ditch the operators.
Operators return a set indicating the success {FINISHED} or failure {CANCELLED} of an operation.
There a chance that import has imported nothing (and after delete all active object is None) or that the current active object is not a mesh (a "subsurfable" type)
In which case there is no context object and poll will fail.
However test script below ditches all but the import obj operator.
Most importers (check first)  select newly created objects ie they are members of context.selected_objects after the operator has run. . Have added note about not adding code for deleting all objects to question code, really not that important either way but could be a bit sticky for  a new user tryings it out before realizing.  Thank goodness for undo... anyway I digress
How to add modifiers using python script and set parameters?
Using python to set object shading to 'smooth'
Here is test code, adds a subsurf modifier and smooth shading to all newly imported mesh objects.
import bpy

# FWIW Dislike this in question scripts
#
'''
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action = "SELECT")
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global = False)
'''
# will deselect instead.

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action="DESELECT")
#Model loading
full_path_to_file = "foo.obj"

def surface_refinement(obs, render_levels, view_levels):
    for ob in obs:
        if not ob.type == 'MESH':
            continue
        ssm = ob.modifiers.new("SubbyO", type='SUBSURF')
        ssm.render_levels = render_levels
        ssm.levels = view_levels
        me = ob.data
        me.polygons.foreach_set("use_smooth", (True,) * len(me.polygons))

# test call
render = 2
view = 1
bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=full_path_to_file)

surface_refinement(bpy.context.selected_objects, render, view)


You have to enable 'Advanced' particle settings. Then a tab for the particle rotation will show up. Enable it and set 'Phase' and 'Random to 1:

Now the particles will be rotated randomly:

By default the objects will be pointing up with their y-axis and also rotate around that axis. You can play around with the 'Initail Orientation' setting and its random value to get different rotation behavior.


The problem here is the texture coordinates/projection of the image, you are currently projecting the image in a single direction onto your mesh. You can think of projection working very much like a film projector here. By selecting 'Box' rather than 'Flat' as David suggested, blender will instead project from 6 different directions (as if a cube was surrounding the object, with the texture on each face). This works reasonably well for simple objects, but can still have problems around the where the corners of box that the image is being projected from are.

To improve on the box projection, you need to do what is called UV unwrapping, which essentially creates a flattened version of the surface of your object which can then be used to map 2d details to the surface of your object. You can find a basic overview here


Okay I found an alternative situation. I wanted to make a dropdown menu that added all armature objects in the loaded file. My idea was for it to update every time an object is imported. I was able to achieve this based on dynamic list examples of this website:

https://elfnor.com/drop-down-and-button-select-menus-for-blender-operator-add-ons.html#dynamic-lists


Don't press G

The E shortcut is for the "Extrude Region and Move".

The move (or grab) command you are trying to recall with G is alredy active. So by pressing G, you are activating the Vertex Slide option of the grab command.

Just press E and then Z to restrict the movement because you are already grabbing the object around.

Or yuo can press E and then Esc to Extrude the region only. After that you can activate the grabbing with G and restrict the movement with Z.


Try the snake hook brush with dynotopo enabled.
The snake hook brush is designed to pull geometry into thin strands depending on brush size. Dynotopo is recommended because as you pull vertices out, it loses more and more detail until the tip of the line has only 1 or 2 vertices. Dynotopo will automatically create new geometry do you don't need to worry about that.


Model Object appears to be gradually offset from path constraint

The issue is caused by the fact that your origin is not correctly positioned. The animation you applied to your character causes it to move away from its origin, which is why its not working:

To fix this, make your characters walking animation stationary. I would also recommend using the Follow Path Constraint, instead of parenting since it offers more control.

To fix your issue I deleted the movement track in the NLA, and added a key for the correct position to the circle bone.


Can the grease pencil draw on a plane axis in the perspective view?

You Answered your question yourself.

What you need to do is to add a plane and align it to view  (From the adding option),Using local transform orientation,move the plane in he local z axis to the level you want to draw in.

Now all you have to do is to put your 3D cursor into the surface of the plane just by clicking anywhere in the plane with the LMB .

So suppose I have this object and I want to draw on he shades face:

Now add the plane and pt the 3d cursor on it :

And you are ready to paint,Assuming your stroke placement is set to Cursor,you are good.And you can just delete h plane it is no needed.


override = bpy.context.copy()
override["area.type"] = ['OUTLINER']
override["display_mode"] = ['ORPHAN_DATA']
bpy.ops.outliner.orphans_purge(override)

you can call every operator with a dictionary in its call in first place (if there are more than one attributes to pass). this dictionary holds the information you want to override from the normal context. you dont have to name the override like this, any other name will do, too.

the thing is, i cannot help you a hundred percent, because I dont really know which parts of the context you have to overwrite. at least in 2.8, "area.type" and "display_mode" are not part of the original context, so you are trying to override something which isnt there, so the context still stays the same like without overriding at all.

i also dont know what you do have to overwrite, because right now i really dont have time to figure that out, sry, I am myself only learning all of this. you can however see whats part of the original context if you type following into the python console:

override = bpy.context.copy()
override

it will list you everything that is in the original context, maybe you find out what you want to overwrite.


This looks a lot like z-fighting caused by too large clipping range.

Either adjust the values in Clip Start/End
or switch to Orthographic view through View > Orthographic (Numpad 5)

Change clipping distance...

...or switch to Orthographic view


Is it possible to make edge loops on a flat surface with a modifier?

Mirror along X and Y + Bisect. Add a bevel modifier.


Do you have the De-noising filter on?  If so you might consider increasing the radius.  See this answer also: How to reduce noise in really dark scene


I figured it out, I used the BGE and a python script that interacts as a client. It communicates via socket with the server as it updates it current position in the enviroment.


Fastest way to divide plane into set of boards

You could simply split the plane along the loopcuts.

Add some new loopcuts
Select > All
Mesh > Split > Faces by Edges


As Lukasz-40sth said, you could use the Array modifier:

Create a plane, subdivide it.
Extrude your window.
Use 2 Array modifiers to repeat your object horizontally and vertically.
Work your window as much as you want until you're satisfied.
You can either keep or apply your modifiers.
If you want to apply, enable the Merge option of the modifier so that the adjacent vertices of your new object merge. If you didn't enable it, go in Edit mode, select all and Remove Doubles with W.


Moving a vertex doesn't move the vertex, it just makes another

An additional ring of vertices might have already been created by mistake while you were modelling .This usually happens if you had selected the ring of vertices and tried to extrude by pressing 'E' but didn't move those newly created vertices.If a vertex is placed at the same location as another, then they are called 'doubles', as in double vertices.

Inorder to remove them select all the vertices in edit mode, press space bar to get the search bar and type 'remove doubles'. Alternatively, you can press 'w' in edit mode and find the 'remove doubles' option.

Once you click that, on the top menu bar, you will see info about the doubles that have been removed.


After extrude E (and before applying it) press S

It will swich from transition to scale.

Also you can in extrude press Esc for cancel transition, then press  S


I had a similar problem a while back with cycles. I used a script for rendering on remote ubuntu systems with titans xps. Try running the following script IF you too have Titan xps, otherwise try to find the right blender-name for your GPU  first. This may or may not work, I thought you may want to give it a shot.

import os, bpy

os.environ['CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES'] = '0,1'

bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'
bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].cycles.device = 'GPU'
bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].cycles.feature_set = 'SUPPORTED'
bpy.context.preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences.compute_device_type = 'CUDA'

cprefs = bpy.context.preferences.addons['cycles'].preferences

# Enable all CPU and GPU devices
for device in cprefs.devices:
    if device.name == 'TITAN Xp':
        device.use = True
    else:
        device.use = False

# Tests
print('Compute_device_type: ', cprefs.compute_device_type)
for device in cprefs.devices:
    if device.use == True:
        print('USED: ', device.name)
    else:
        print('NOT_USED: ', device.name)
print('Will be used: ' + bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].cycles.device)
print('Feature set: ' + bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].cycles.feature_set)
print('Render engine: ' + bpy.context.scene.render.engine)


Do you need muscle jiggle? Thats the real question.

If yes you have to use softbody simulation. The Muscle Tools plugin is imho not very helpful, because it treats the muscles one by one and not like a whole muscular system. Here is how I would setup that:

How do you assign multiple shrinkwrap modifiers to rig muscles?.

If you don't need muscle jiggle than the simulation and shrinkwrap is just overcomplication and you can use bones and shapekeys to do everything. In that regard you can also use stretch maps and lattices for skin sliding.


Indeed there is no mesh-data if your object is a curve.
If you just want to move them together parenting the filament to the bulb would be a great non destructive option. Otherwise if you don't need to modify your filament anymore you can convert the curve to a mesh Object > Convert to > Mesh from curve and after that join the two meshes with Ctrl + J


New to blender. Trying to position textures correctly on a mesh

A bit hard to know without a screenshot, but here are my 2 cents:

Assuming you have already correctly unwraped the eye UV map, you need to add an Image Texture node to your shader with the Texture Coordinate and Mapping nodes, like so:

On the Image Texture node, add your texture by clicking on the Open button.


I am trying to create 2 cubes, with one mirroring the other. Instead it appears to create one cube that is always connected to the center!

Shift A amd create a cube. move it to right along x axis beyond the center line. Make sure 3d cursor is at world origin by pressing shift + s and select cursor to world origin. With your cube still selected in object mode press F3 and search for set origin and select origin to 3d cursor. Select mirror modifier and make sure your axis is x going by your picture


You can indeed use the boolean modifier to achieve this effect. What you basically need are two cylinders (same shape, scale and location) and two cuboids to replicate the shown behaviour. The intersection between a cuboid and a cylinder will build the shape of the upper or lower eyelid. Add a boolean modifier to each cylinder with one cuboid as target object respectively and set the operation to intersect.

That is basically all you need for the eyelids.

For the eye-shape and pupil just add two new cylinders. To animate the pupil add an empty. Add a Copy Location constraint to the pupil targeting the empty and disable the up-axis of the constraint. Add a Limit Distance constraint and set the target to the cylinder which emulates the eye-shape. Adjust the distance to keep the pupil within the eye. Add a Copy Scale constraint to the pupil targeting the empty so scaling the empty will scale the pupil.

A blend file can be found here.


Fast way to move one vertex point to another in the UV/Image Editor?

You can toggle the Snap tool in the UV Editor's header by clicking the magnet icon or using the keyboard shortcut ShiftTab. Then click the popover dropdown beside it and enable the element snapping type of Vertex.

Instead of frequently toggling the Snap tool on and off by clicking the magnet icon, simply hold down Ctrl while manipulating the UVs to temporarily activate snapping. (You still have to make sure you are in Vertex snapping mode.)


Should I use Reflection Cubemaps in Eevee (to achieve realistic lighting)?

To answer my own question: use both! Eevee will mainly use Screen Space Reflections, but will also use Reflection Cubemaps as a secondary source (backup) for reflections where Screen Space Reflections fails. Using both gives the most accurate results.


Why is my uvmap created using uvproject modifier scaled up?

I'm guessing the reason you have this problem is that:

The original object named Plane in the outliner has been scaled up by 5 from its original size.
The UV's of this Plane needs to be rotated by 90°.

The quickest way to fix this is to work with the Empty

Select the Empty.
Scale it up by a factor of 5. ( S  5 Enter )
Rotate along Z axis 90°. ( R Z 90° Enter )

The result of doing this should be as in the screen shot below:


First of all apply the Mirror modifier, otherwise every change you make on a side will be mirrored on the other side.
Try to correct the weight painting: Let your armature in Pose mode, in the Properties panel > Data > Skeleton > put it in Rest pose.
Switch your coat mesh to Weight Paint mode, select a bone and try to correct its influence with a brush, move and rotate the bone to test the influence. Do the same thing for the body.
To give some more precise corrections use the Vertex Groups assignments in the Properties panel > Data > Vertex Groups.
If you still see skin through the coat you can either: Use a Mask modifier to mask this part of the skin / delete this part of the skin mesh / use a Mesh Deform modifier as explained in these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhTnlKrTOY or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6s9H8xX7YA


Make blender particles a specific shape?

In the render panel in the particle system options check "object" and select your object.


Cover the Curve Bezier with a Plane. It's impossible to duplicate it and R it

To Duplicate it you should have both objects selected the Plane and the  Curve, but in order to make it successfully the active object when you dublicate should be the Curve.

Your problem is that you selected only the plane when duplicating


opening unity model with animation into blender

Normally, FBX animation data is embedded into the model.

You might try reimporting the FBX and checking the preferences in the import window to include animation.

It looks like the armature is parented to the model, so what you can do is download BVH retargeter and use that to retarget copy the animation data from the animation to the armature in your model.

If that doesn't work, you can export the animation armature as a BVH, and then use BVH retargeter. Usually though, if step 2 doesn't work this won't either. Be sure to make sure there are no transforms on the model, and don't use "apply all transforms" either. Do it manually. So make sure that its location and rotation are set to 0 before retargeting.

The really long way is to use bone constraints. Go into pose mode and select a bone on the armature parented to the model. In bone constraints (blue bone thing second from the bottom) choose "copy all transforms" and select the armature and then the bone. What will happen is the bone will "snap" to the bone on the animation.

You may encounter problems with bone rolls. You shouldn't, given this the animation for that model, but Blender and Unity have different standards for directional information. If you do you will need to go into edit mode and get the bone rolls of the target armature to match the source...so the bone rolls armature parented to the model.

Final thing to try is to delete the armature in the model, put the animation into pose mode, then align the model over the armature and parent using armature deform using automatic weights.

You might find that there are some add-ons to help with the conversion, but usually its from Blender to Unity rather than the other way around. I have imported plenty of Unity models into Blender without problem though.


Indeed, presently, there is no ndof_motion field in the python Event struct.

I checked in with Blender's Python API module owner @ideasman42 on the #blendercoders IRC channel, and he gave the thumbs up to expose this data with an added field. So I will try my hand at adding that. Assuming that all works out, it should then be possible to make your proposed addon.


Why can I only texture paint some parts of my model?

There are several issues with your file, all contributing to not being able to paint on all your model:

Materials

The material that is displayed in the viewport is only applied to a few of the faces in your model (the ones you can paint on). Go into Edit Mode, select all faces in your model by pressing A once or twice, select 'Material' in the list of materials and click Assign in the material panel:

Based on your specific file, the object should now be black.

Normals

Still in Edit Mode we can address the second problem.

Some of the faces in your mesh are inside out. This is due to having internal faces inside your model, which confuses Blender into not knowing whether a face is inside your model or out. A quick fix for this is to open the Properties panel in the 3D View (press N to open it), navigate to the Mesh Display panel, turn on Face Normals (the cube icon) and increase the size a bit:

This displays the face direction in the viewport in the form of a line coming out of the centre of a face. The 'direction' a face is pointing is called its 'Normal'. Any faces that don't have a line coming out of their centre are inside out.

The faces I have selected here are inside out:

Select them, press Space and search for 'Flip Normals' and press Enter. Their 'normal' direction has been flipped and they should now have lines coming out of them showing the direction they are facing (outwards). The lines were there previously, but they were pointing inside the model.

Face Selection Masking

The third problem is that you have 'Face Selection Masking' enabled in the 3D View header, meaning only faces that are selected in Edit Mode can be painted:

Either deselect the 'Face Selection Masking' option or select all faces before starting to paint.


As previously said by Carlo: "Concave polygons can cause artifacts" because Blender is not sure how he is supposed to fill the surface between the vertices.

So here is a better way to make a hole in a 4x4 surface. I think you should avoid Booleans as much as possible, especially for such a simple operation. To make a hole you can simply select the central point and delete it. Then to round the shape, select the edge loop and use the LoopTools addon > Circle. Then you can extrude once, then scale down the extrusion, give it the shape you want, etc...


How to get my file back in 2.79 after saving with 2.80 series?

Restore your file from a backup. Check whether there is still a .blend1 or .blend2 next to your .blend, or pick a backup from another source.

If you didn't make backups before using a Blender 2.80 beta, you'll probably have to manually restore by trying to copy-paste bits and pieces between 2.80 and 2.79.

Note that the download page said Do not use in production nor save important files with it for a good reason.


What's the Benefit of Using Layer Weight?

There are many big differences, among which are that:

Fresnel depends on the face normals of your mesh - it will not work with inconsistent or incorrect normals;
The Layer Weight node allows for a smooth blend between the two;

Depending on what you wish to achieve, it may be better to use a specific one, but generally, you'll want to use the Fresnel node, as it's more physically accurate.


You have Skeleton Sketching enabled.
Disable this option and use E button to extrude the bone or Ctrl+LMB while the torso bone is selected.

To make the bone symmetrical on the mirrored side, after you extrude the bone enable Forked in Extrude Operator panel while you have X-Axis Mirror enabled


Bone shrinks mysteriously under the influence of an IK Constraint

In the bone IK constraint, try to disable weight influence for position, leave it only for rotation. You can restore influence to 1.0 as is probably needed for rotation.


Lost UI properties bar and can't get rid of other bars

I guess its something like this

Please save your file, close blender and re open it, open your blender file and un check the Load UI check box as shown below:

We are all set:

Best of luck!


The previous answer is wrong.
The reason sometimes you see a bone or sometimes multiple bones in the middle of a limb section such as in between the shoulder and elbow bone, or in between the elbow and wrist bones is for volume preservation during twisting.
Do this:
Stick your arm forward palm down.
Now just turn your palm up but watch your forearm.
You will notice that your entire forearm twists smoothly across its length!
but if you turn your hand to the side or up and down, just the hand turns.
The idea of placing a bone in the middle of the forearm is to separate the twist from the other bone rotations for better skin weight deformations.
the same applies to the upper arm. if you stick your arm out to the side and twist your arm, you will see that your bicep muscle kind of sort of smoothly follows the twist of the arm WHILE the deltoid DOES NOT! so the idea of placing a joint in the middle of the bicep is, again, to separate the twisting from the other two rotations for better skin weight distribution.
If you can get away with more twist bones, the better as they will help preserve volume better than a single bone.
the same applies to the leg.
If you twist your leg, the big leg muscles near your hips will do little twisting and your gluts will do very little.
And same with your calf if you twist your foot HOWEVER the effect is much much smaller there.
If you want more help understanding this, look into the "Cane Toad" rig for Maya. Variations of it are kind of the standard across platforms.
I'm actually trying to find out if it's easy to setup something like this in blender before I decide to switch to it.


Bevel Glitch with Subdivision Surface (Modifiers)

The bevels are helping the boundary loops stay sharp while being subdivided but the flat areas still get displaced according to the subdivision algorithm.

This becomes apparent if you set your sub-d to level 1
Go to object properties - display - wire - draw all edges

this should help you see how, when the first sub-d is created, the unfortunate topology folds over the supporting edges.

I've got no sure way of fixing this other than reworking the problem topology.
Though, you might have better luck with not using bevel at all and only using sub-d with creased edges. (Albeit I doubt it will be enough for this kind of case)

Anyhow GL maybe someone else will come back with one operator solution for this.


How to make quick 2d animation with blender? Npr

I am not really sure if this will answer your question, but I have done 2D animation before using blender 2.79 and now its much easier now with blender 2.8, because Eevee can render out your project in seconds.

What I do is that I import the cartoon 2D images as textures on a 2D plane with the same shape of the object or character, and then setup the camera as orthographic to see the plane in 2D, then make a rig for that plane and animate it, after that render it out with eevee, 1 frame renders in less than a second.

I am explaining all that in a step by step 2 video tutorial you can check it out and see if this method will help you out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD-RM2SMek0&t=314s


can I get number of edges connected to a vertex

Boundary edges

  I essentially want to put a fence up around the edge of my object

IMO Simplest here to select edges that are boundaries, ie are connected to only one face.

import bpy
import bmesh

ob = bpy.context.edit_object

me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

for e in bm.edges:
    e.select = e.is_boundary

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

The vertex selection is implied by the edges.  .. which is why I could have used

e.select_set(e.is_boundary)

  BMEdge.select_set(select):

  Set the selection. This is different from the select attribute
  because it updates the selection state of associated geometry.

Although in this case I'm of the belief that the verts of an edge are selected with the edge. So

verts = set(v for e in boundary_edges for v in e.verts)

will be same as selected verts.

v for v in bm.verts if v.select

Using the bmesh to extrude those edges.

Rather than selecting the edges, can instead feed them directly into bmesh operators. For the example below the vertices created as a result of extruding boundary edges are fed into transform operator, and moved up one in Z.

Result on 10 x 10 default grid

Notice newly created geometry added with bmesh is unselected by default.  Run both these scripts below in edit mode.

import bpy
import bmesh
from bmesh.types import BMVert
from mathutils import Matrix

ob = bpy.context.edit_object

me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
bmesh.ops.transform(
    bm,
    verts = [
            e for e in
                bmesh.ops.extrude_edge_only(
                    bm,
                    edges=[e for e in bm.edges if e.is_boundary],
            )["geom"]
            if isinstance(e, BMVert)
            ],
    matrix=Matrix.Translation((0, 0, 1)),
    )

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)


How to reduce graviation on single object?

OK! Again, I recieved answer and I can tell it myself:
Using constraint actuator with Damping bigger than 1(about 0.25), distance 1000 and -Z axis I achieved this result!:)


solution is T menu > Tools > Set Spline Type > Bezier. Also, in the N menu make sure that Handle is enabled in the Curve Display


Programmatically selecting every nth edge loop in a mesh?

By assuming your grid will be parallel to the x-y axis and not rotated, I came up with this idea. It works fine for me and hope this helps.

import bpy, bmesh

# These are the parts that you can change, inputs
step_size =            5
first_selected_loop =   0
x_or_y_parallel =      "x"

# Switching to EDIT mode to read mesh data
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')

# Program will get the zeroth index or first index of vertices
# (that is x or y coordintes) according to your choice
if x_or_y_parallel   == "x":
    x_y_index = 0
elif x_or_y_parallel == "y":
    x_y_index = 1

# Getting the mesh data
obj = bpy.context.scene.objects.active
bm  = bmesh.new()
bm  = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)

# Getting all line coordinates that is parallel to selected axis

# I am assuming we don't know how many lines we got in x or y axis
line_x_or_y_cords = []
for vert in bm.verts:
    if vert.co[1-x_y_index] not in line_x_or_y_cords:
        line_x_or_y_cords += [vert.co[1-x_y_index]]

# I am sorting the line coordinates and
# eliminating unwanted coordinates (we need only the lines that are on
# step size by starting first_selected_loop)
line_x_or_y_cords.sort()
line_x_or_y_cords = line_x_or_y_cords[first_selected_loop::step_size]

# if the edge is not selected yet , if 2 vertex of that edge is
#parallel to our expected axis and if one of its vertex is in our list
# (that is arranged above) select that edge and do select loop
#operation
for edge in bm.edges:
    if edge.select == False and (edge.verts[0].co[1-x_y_index] - edge.verts[1].co[1-x_y_index] == 0) and  edge.verts[0].co[1-x_y_index] in line_x_or_y_cords:
        edge.select = True
        bpy.ops.mesh.loop_multi_select(ring=False)
bm.free()


How can I programmatically insert a new grease pencil object (svg) at coordinates/rotation

Import method
It sounds like the easiest option for you would be to load a series of SVG images using the SVG Import Add-On (so you don't need any coding). Currently the SVG Import creates Curve objects - which can be used as-is, or optionally they can be converted to Grease Pencil strokes (via [right-click] > [Convert to Grease Pencil]).
Scripting method
Alternatively - if you wish to do things via a script continuing from the GreasePencil object and Material creation you have illustrated above, then you will need to add Layer, Frame and Stroke/s. (note: my gpencil == gp_ob):
#Get/Set Layer
if gpencil.layers:
    layer = gpencil.layers.active
else:
    layer = gpencil.layers.new('mylayer', set_active = True)

#Get/Set Frame
if layer.frames:
    frame = layer.active_frame
else:
    frame = layer.frames.new(1)

#Draw some Strokes (and optionally add a closing stroke) to form a triangle
stroke = frame.strokes.new()
stroke.line_width = 6
stroke.draw_cyclic = 1 #close - automatically draw a final last stroke back to start point
stroke.points.add(count=3)
stroke.points[0].co = (-1.0, 0.0, 0.0)  #point coordinates - i.e. x, y, z
stroke.points[1].co = (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)
stroke.points[2].co = (0.0, 0.0, 1.0)

p.s. As good practice, you should also reference where you get your code snippet/s from.
ref: Blender Version 2.83


Ver 2.8 Texture paint works only on a few faces

Your problem probably comes from flipped normals, so select all in Edit mode and press ShiftN, now it seems to work:


Objects and Meshes not showing up on collections tab

i think you have added your mesh to the mesh "Cube.001" via SHIFT+A in Edit Mode. If you want to make a separate object instead of adding this into an other mesh, go in Object Mode and hit SHIFT+A.
But you can also separate parts of meshes or merge them anytime.
F.e - if you want to separate the door from the rest of the house, select a part of your door mesh, hit CTRL+L to select linked vertices and then hit P and select "Separate Selection".
But if you want to merge your door with the house again, select both of your objects and press CTRL+J. Let me know if it was helpful.


Blender Will Not Select Faces, Vertices, or Edges in edit mode individually

I was having this problem on a Mac, trying to use a keyboard shortcut for right clicking individual faces, and the problem was solved for me by simply enabling a secondary mouse click in my general settings.


Is there a way to "rescue" mesh that has very bad topology?

To deal with bad topology, but not having to start from scratch, It makes sense creating a new mesh and retopologizing. That is: using some form of vertex/edge/face snapping and/or a shrinkwrap modifier, you trace and receate your old mesh using proper topology. This technique is also useful when sculpting at a high poly count and then re-creating the mesh with less polygons.

It sounds daunting but in reality it is not a big deal at all.

Here are a few links that might help:

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/retopologize-nine-times-faster-shrink-wrap-modifier-blender/
https://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/meshes/editing/retopo.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaqYqkjimD8


Change your view to top orthographic (numpad 7 for top, numpad 5 to toggle perspective/ortho).
Add a plane (shift+A, select Mesh/plane in the menu).
Enter Edit Mode with Tab.
Select the 2 vertices on the right (R click to select, Shift+R Click to add to selection) and delete them with X and select "vertices" in the delete menu.
Now you can move your vertices where you need.

Select one and Ctrl+L Click to create one more where you click.

continue until you have your profile done.


I believe those are the "lookdev preview spheres" as I like to call them. They appear in the same spot as your screenshot when in the shading tab in a default file. In a shellnut they show some basic lighting on a default sphere, and a HDRI if set up with one. I believe they are rendering as black circles because you don't have lighting in your scene or something funky is happening with some lighting settings, leaving them as spheres of solid shadow.

These spheres will not render in your final output, so if you're fine with them being there, you can stop here.

However, if you want to get rid of them, you can change your rendering mode from lookdev to anything else. I haven't found a checkbox to get rid of them completely yet, but there is a setting to make them smaller. You can change the lookdev spheres size in the panel accessed by clicking the settings cog that appears under a dropdown menu in the top right corner of your viewport.

TL;DR: The circles won't render, so you can ignore them, but if you want them smaller you can turn down the sphere size.


How can I make the background color change when my character steps on a plane?

You can change the background color via Python controller by calling bge.render.setBackgroundColor()


How should you go around with geometry for Unity?

Better for what?  The only thing that matters is the outcome.  If either model does everything you want, then either model is the correct one.

You don't need to ask anybody which of two models you have made is better.  Just hit F12.

I will say that there are probably a few issues with these models.  But the issues depend on how you're going to use them.  Are they supposed to be smooth shaded?  Auto-smooth?  Are you going to have UV mapped textures, vertex color?  Are they going to deform?  Are you going to share the models for others to edit, or are they just for animation?  Are they for use in Blender or in a different engine?

If you are using Blender to render, and you are using sharp edges /autosmooth / flat shading, and you are using split vertices for all potentially interpolated values like vertex color and UV, and you are done with the mesh and do not plan to deform it or use it to deform any other mesh, or to use it for any physics, and you're not going to use Catmull-Clark subdivision, (whew I'm out of breath), then there is nothing wrong with either model.  But the second shouldn't be seen as superior to the first model, just adequate.

Because both models have ngons, the biggest difference between the two is that the second has a concave face, which will give you problems with use with some modifiers.

If any of that long list of things I mentioned doesn't apply, then you've got issues with both models.  Use more control loops or practice your topology, avoid ngons.


Blender armature imported as FBX to UE4 doesn't keep bone offset

You can create a new root bone, which will be parent af all others rig's bones, and set it on the floor, so that UE will not have to move anything. Similarly you can replace every "keep offset" option with a new bone, so that all the bones chains will not be "interrupted". UE requires a general root bone that will be placed at loc (0,0,0). Every bone is requested to be weighted to one mesh vertex at least. If some vertices are not weighted to any bone, they will be automatically fully assigned to the root bone.


Blender lag everywhere when interacting with UI (Win10/GTX 1070)

Okay, after some more efforts experimenting all sorts of setup, I finally get rid of the problem. I couldn't say which is the exact right action to take to have the problem resolved, but the followings altogether are supposed to be the keys to solve my problem:

Like many on the web said, I changed some User Preference -> System settings, mine looks like below now:

I configured my Nvidia control program to turn on everything for blender.exe:

Sorry for the Chinese version, but the Nvidia control panel can be called from the right-click menu on the desktop.

Rebooted my windows. I thought I could have tried reboot earlier...anyway, something needs the reboot to take effect.

Hope this can help whoever has the same problem as mine.

Thanks.


This question has already been answered somewhere but I don't know where, so what you should do is:

Create an icosphere and a small sphere. Give your icosphere a Particle System > Hair. Enable the Advanced option. In Render, enable Object and choose the little sphere as Dupli Object. In Emission give it the number of vertices your icosphere has and choose Emit From > Verts, deactivate Random, set the Hair Length value.

Give your icosphere a Wireframe modifier. Choose the Thickness you want. You'll have to choose an Emission shader as material.


How can I achieve this specific lighting/shading in Cycles?

If you are referring to the shade  effect on the ball, this can be achieve by baking a new texture based on cycles rendering.

prepare your scene with all the expected lighting from the game. This is important because if your blender lighting is too different from the game, the shadows etc will look off. Obviously to match the NDS look, try to keep the lighting very simple light a single sun.
select the target object and unwrap the normals or select a specific normal projection
create a new target texture image in nodes and select it
Use the bake feature to render the object onto the target texture

Note: you can also bake only the shadow map (or emission, or glossy...) instead of the combined which you can tweak and merge as desired with your original texture in external editing software

Same concept for Blender internal.


How can I create a wall with random bumps?

If you're ok with using a shader, something like this can be accomplished by a single Noise Texture, run through a ColorRamp to give a harsh cutoff to the tops which forms the flat sections.
This is just a simple example - if you want more variation in size, you can combine different noise textures of different scales until it's more to your liking.
Remember to turn on ambient occlusion in the render properties panel.


Pixelated light cone near source with Eevee

OK, I've discovered the answer.

In render setting for Eevee, go to 'Volumetrics' settings and change the 'tile size' to a smaller pixel size. You can also adjust the 'sample rate' settings underneath the 'tile size' settings.

This does seem to increase render time considerably however.

Another simpler option is to widen the angle of you light cone. I don't know why, but this too seems to eliminate the problem. Perhaps someone else can expand on why.


I have found many interesting things
objects supposedly not being invisible in RenderLayer were not visible in any view, moreover, in the outliner. I tried searching for them by trying to append anything, from another .blend blank file. I suprisingly found that a lot of mesh data was in the scene, but it wasn't connected to any object, thus confusing the add on py's. After cleaning not used, hidden mesh data, add on started working properly.


how can I move a vertex towards the origin?

Snap your cursor to the desired location with Shift+S.

Set your Pivot Point to be the 3D Cursor

After that, select your first vertex and press S to scale it toward the 3D Cursor.

Scaling to zero will put the vertex directly on your 3d Cursor.


Actually, the normal crop and offset only work with the same strip that shown in the same panel.

However, you can add an Transform effect strip, it will work despite of resolution difference between proxy and original strip. Just be sure to have Transform strip selected. (Select the original strip, then ShiftA > Effect Strip... > Transform)


Inverted normals are barely visible in 2.8 version

You could enable Face Orientation in the overlay pop-over.

After this you can edit the colors in the Preferences > Themes > 3d viewport > face orientation front / back

I use an invisible front color by setting alpha to 0 and the back color to red, slightly visible with alpha 0.2.


How do i display the Collapse Menus checkbox in a Python menu?

Not sure how to expose the property that indicates whether the header region menu is collapsed or not. You can however add the bpy.ops.screen.header_toolbox() operator to the view menu.  This is the header menu that pops up when right clicking in Header.

Notice I've appended / prepended to the view menu class, rather than, (.. the slippery  slope of), editing the UI py.

import bpy

def header_toolbox(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    #layout.operator("screen.header_flip")
    layout.operator("screen.header_toolbox")

# prepend to 3d view view menu
bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_view.prepend(header_toolbox)
# append text editor view menu
bpy.types.TEXT_MT_view.append(header_toolbox)


When learning Blender, it is very easy to press one wrong key and have things change in strange and confusing ways. My guess is you accidentally pressed V, which ripped those vertices, causing the issue you now have when you later scaled or moved those vertices.
To solve this, you need to merge them again. First go to the menus at the bottom of the 3d viewer, and select Active Element from the pop-up menu that appears when you click the third field from the left. Now transforms are calculated according to the position of the active selected item, in this case the last vertex you select.

Now select the 3 vertices that have split open, by pressing RMB over one, then Shift + RMB over the other two. Select the one where you want the other two to merge to last.
Now press Alt + M, and from the pop-up, select At Last. The three vertices are now merged into one vertex, at the position of that last vertex.
A good habit when modelling is to try to reduce problems like this by occasionally selecting everything by pressing A, then pressing W > Remove Doubles, pressing Ctrl + N to recalculate normals. Also whenever you switch between Edit and Object modes, press A until you are sure nothing is selected, otherwise the next time you edit that object, you may be changing things you don't realize you have selected.


Rendered image doesn't show what Rendered Viewport shows... (pictures below)

You appear to have a plane in front of your objects and the camera:

Which is not visible in the file because it was hidden:

You could either delete the Plane object or hide it from the camera render (Check the camera icon).


You can make as many copies of your character than you need by selecting it and using Shift+D repeatedly. The copies will not be linked, thus you can modify each one in any way you want without affecting the others.


In eevee, the soft shadows of the sun have circular pattern artifacts

I think you're just seeing the difference in shadow rendering quality between preview and final render.  If I load your scene, the preview looks similar to the above:

but a true F12-initiated render looks far better:


How to remove fluid source mid animation

Select your inflow object.

In physics properties hit I while hovering with the mouse over the "Use Flow" checkbox.

Move one frame forward in your timeline.

Uncheck the "Use Flow" checkbox

Repeat step 2

Done.


How to to get rid of outlines of light in my render?

You may have to disable the line in render, for that click the funnel icon in the top right of your screen,


Merge 2 armatures and 2 meshes then parent the armature to the mesh, without losing their weight paints?

this is probably a naming issue :

the armature will create vertex groups with the bones names
when you join the meshes groups with the same name get merged
when you join armatures bones will get new names if other with the same name exist
so you end up with one armature controlling both meshes

to avoid this ensure that your armature bones have different names before parenting each mesh to the armature


How to get if the image texture node material lost image path with python?

This could be useful, I should have found the method that checks the state of the images.

To check if the image in the node are "Purple":

import bpy

    ob = bpy.context.object
    mat=ob.active_material

        for n in mat.node_tree.nodes:
            if n.type=='TEX_IMAGE':
                img=n.image
        for i in bpy.data.images:
            if i == img:
                print(i.has_data)

    ###if your material are lost/purple return true

This will go directly to material the node, but you can check it directly in bpy.data.images

for i in bpy.data.images:
    if not i.has_data:
        print('Purple/lost image find: ' + i.name)
##print a list with lost image file

So I suppose this is my answer


Why are the mesh faces different colors?

While I can't tell you why they're in this state currently, as there are many possible reasons, these colors indicated the direction in which the face normals point. To fix this, you need to recalculate your faces' normals, by pressing Ctrl + N. Alternatively, this can be done from the toolbar (whose visibility is toggled by pressing T),by pressing Recalculate found in the Shading/UVs tab of said toolbar.


Well, I ended up just applying the SubSurf modifier and creating the gear doors from that. Thanks for the input, tho.


How do I use polygons as hair in blender

I am not much into animation, but by the look of it in the linked video I would say it has more in common with the behavior of fabric than with hair.

You could probably achieve that with a cloth simulation instead of a hair particle system, that way you can model your hair mesh the way you want and have it behave physically as if it were soft.


Why there is this wired "black" in my transparent material as distance is far

The amount of cumulated tranqparency is limited by this parameter here for Cycles:

For your scene, give it a value of 50 or so.


The entire object, was in triangles which also were separated. A cloth simulation with this would never work to start with, neither would a soft-body simulation. Both are based on a interconnected structure/mesh.

Learning something new along the way, this is what i got, i hope it's somewhat close to your goal.

Now regarding what is needed to get there, or at least to a cape that simulates like cloth:

Since the entire object came triangulated and with all faces separate, we need to select the object, go in edit mode with Tab and select all vertices with A first.
Now we can make the object a whole mesh by pressing Alt+N (Merge) -> By Distance

Now the object can be separated into the two main parts, body and cape. For that we hover over a part of the cape and press L which will Select Linked vertices, thus the cape and the shoulder-part of it will be selected.

To really separate the mesh into two objects we need to press P(Separate) and choose Selection. It will create a new object with the selected part.

conveniently renamed the objects "body" and "cape"
The separated objects allow for a much cleaner simulation, as the bigger the mesh simulated, the more calculations needed, but we are not yet done.
The cape can further be split in two parts, namely the shoulder-part and the cape itself. I'd recommend to hide(if not mentioned, hiding per outliner eye symbol) the body first.
Below a visual demonstration of the steps.

Sideview makes it easier to select only the upper(shoulder) part. Important is to activate "X-Ray" Alt+Z to ensure the entire upper part is selected and not only the us facing part. Pressing P then allows for a separation based on "Selection"
The new object will be the final cape(which we hide for now), the old cape becomes shoulders. And we are left with a hole at the bottom of the shoulders backside.

Face Orientation overlay active here to make the hole easier to see (red is inside)
I would clean up the shoulder parts geometry for a cleaner look, quads and such, but it's not needed for the simulation asked. Closing the hole we end up with this.

The quads along the previous hole, will be used later as location for the pin-group of the cape.
Since the shoulder part is done, we can switch to the cape geometry, as it needs some work before we can work with it. It's gonna be a bit more complicated, so i try to make small steps.
First hide the shoulder part, then make the cape visible, select it and go in the vertex edit mode.
We get rid of one side to reduce a lot of work. For that we go in the top view with Numpad 7 and activate x-ray with Alt+Z.

Then select all vertices on one side of the y-axis and press X Vertices.

Add a mirror modifier and select the Z-axis (situational, here it's Z).

At this point the cape is not usable for simulation, as it has very odd density. So we need to clean this up. Starting with making the cape single-layered. Going along the outer border of the cape, this edge selection needs to be made.

We can see the cape as a 2 layered blanket, the outer is connected to the inner by a border, if we cut away at the border, the layers get structurally separated.
With the border-loop selected we press X Vertices, to delete and at the same time separate the layers. With L (Select Linked) while hovering over a vertex of the left-over faces of the outer layer we select the now separate part(rest of the outer layer), which we then remove with X Vertices. A visual step by step demonstration below.

We are now left with only one layer of faces for the cape, which needs some cleanup, manually with more control, but more time spend here a visual demonstration of some (not all, as repetitive) steps.

The cleaned up and remeshed cape could look something like this.

Again, the settings for the Quad-remesher can be daunting, but results can be great
The mesh having a better topology/density for cloth simulation makes the big difference. We now need to add the pin-group of the cape that will be responsible for fixing the cape to the shoulder-part.

it's possible to add some weight to the sides of the cape going down to stiffen them a bit

visible in weight paint mode, the selected vertices can be assigned a lower value which will be added to the active vertex-group

Back in object mode, we add the cloth simulation to the cape.
Select the preset for silk and add the pin-group to the shape section.

the values are the ones that worked for me.
Finally make the body a collision object. And for later usage it's a good idea to make the body the parent of the shoulders and the shoulders parent of the cape.(Ctrl+P object with the child and parent selected but the parent active)

Lastly as already visible in later pictures, add a floor below the princess and make it an collision object as well. Also, wind, nearly forgot ..
The wind object was already in the scene, BUT it was too weak, and also not interesting enough, just like a hairdryer, on full throttle (still too weak).
So we are setting up the wind like this:

steps should be easy to follow values can vary, but again these worked for me (may be a good starting point)

The final result can be dissected here Princess_with_cape
(I didn't use Blend-exchange as original owner did not use it either, should i get the ok, i'll change to Blend-Exchange)

The cleanup steps i'm gonna add some more info later, hope in the meantime you can work with this.

Happy Blending


Make Less Water Come From an Inflow Blender

Lower the velocity you have set in the sources fluid settings. The velocity changes how fast water flows out of it. Also, scaling down the object can change the size f the stream that comes out.