Does array modifier constant offset use blender units or the object's radius?

Scale is factored in

The constant offset is in Blender units, but in the Object Space of the modified object. If you scale the object, (as opposed to scaling its mesh, which you would do by scaling it in Edit Mode) then the object's space is scaled with it. (Thankyou @RobinBetts)

So if scale is 2 and constant offset is 1, scaled by 2 is 2 (explaining the result of your "What I got" column).

Image shows default cube with constant offset one array mod.  Notice at unit scale both expected and result are the same.  Note: non unit scale is one of the most common reasons for getting unexpected results in blender

It is then scaled by 2. (Result: "What I got")

Finally the scale is applied CtrlA Scale(sets on local mesh coordinates object scale returns to unity, equiv of edit mode scale or changing radius when creating cube) (Result: "What I expected")

To keep scale and maintain the 1 x offset could drive the constant offset by

1 / self.id_data.scale.x

making sure to check use self in driver properties.


How do I cange the cycle settings for Multiple objects - Blender?

A lot of options in blender could be copied from active to other selected with Copy to Selected operator from context menu, including cycles_visibility.glossy

You can extract the reflections from some surfaces in Compositor using Object, Material ID or awesome Cryptomate feature and so on:


Beveling from tutorial not working for me, can't find a work around

There seem to be some vertices in the middle of the faces of the floor of the chest, inside and out, which are not there in the tutorial. There are edges extending to them from your new edge-loops, and the corners. The floor of the chest should be a plain Ngon. I would go back to before introducing the new edge loops, and check for them.

While you're back there check for other vertices that shouldn't be there.. both ones you can see, and ones you can't. (Right-click to select a vertex, G to move it, right-click again to drop it back where it came from if it hasn't revealed a duplicate, or otherwise acted strangely.)

In edit mode, CtrlV -> Edge Menu > 'Remove Doubles' to get rid of coincident extra vertices.

You may have to delete the floor faces altogether and replace them by Alt - selecting the edges on the perimeters of the new holes, and hitting F to fill.


How to generate a mesh based on MakeHuman model

We can export the MakeHuman model as .STL file and after that , we can easily Import a 3D model from STL as a MeshRegion object in mathematica
How to import an 3D model from .STL file as meshregion on mathematica


Can I merge multiple materials into one?

If I got what you ask, you can make material links from all objects to one: all will get last object's material assigned.

It works like this: select all object but one, and then select that last one object too (it will be the "active" object in the selection).

Then use the menu "make links => materials" (or CTRLL and choose "materials". See this image below:


Physically speaking - that means if we are talking about a 100% reflective material - I'd say no.

In reality there is no material that has 100% reflectivity and of course it depends on the materials. If you have a highly polished chrome ball, the fresnel effect would be much lower than that of a normal glass mirror, that has only one side coated with aluminum, sliver or gold.

But in any case, the reflections on a highly reflective surface would surpass every possible Fresnel effect to a point where you wouldn't notice it anymore.


Set GPU as render device when using Net Render

Currently it's not possible. There was a 3rd party fork of the network renderer plugin that did it although it's been abandoned now.


Weird loop cut and slide glitch, just some random inward mesh deformation

You need to disable the X-Mirror option in the Tools panel > Options.


Vertex Paiting slightly hidden parts of the mesh

I think that is not possible to configure the vertex paint brush with the options provided by Blender at this time (2.75a) without scripting yourself the tool you need.

The vertex brush simply cannot "see" the face, probably because it's normal is not facing the brush projection enough...or something like that...
I'm not a coder as you might have guessed, but I can suggest to you two alternatives workflows:

1-Texture paint-->Vertex Color

UV unwrap your model
Create a texture
Paint your colors on the texture
Install and use the Bake Uv-Texture to Vertex colors add-on

By painting with the texture tools you'll be able to access the "Normal threshold" options that make you able to define a custom range for your brush

Than you can extract color info from the texture map through the add-on and bake them to vertex color

Result:

2 - Edit mode, expand and contract selection

Go to Edit mode
Select faces
Ctrl+"+" to expand till filling holes
Ctrl+"-" to reduce selection to the initial size
Go to Vertex paint, set "face selection masking" on to work only on
the selected faces
Shift+"k" to paint the brush color on the active faces

This works only if you are using solid colours, without blending ramps on the border or other features that the vertex paint is able to achieve.

And of course you have to iterate the process for every different colour (and without the possibility to see what you have done before).

Before expanding and contracting selection:

After:

Setting color to selected faces in edit mode:


problem in baking normal map in blender, connecting edges appear in normal map

Your baking doesn't seem to be using your UV map at all. Maybe you have 2 UV maps and have the wrong one selected?


How to duplicate an object with rig and animation?

You can use Blender's group linking system:

select both your mesh and its armature
hit CTRL + G to put them in a group (and eventually hit F6 to name that group)
If you need a clean scene, you can create a new empty scene (in the "info" toolbar (at the top of the default UI layout), the + button)
hit SHIFT + A and select "Group instance", then choose the group you just created
repeat the last step as many of time you need duplicates
play the animation, all the groups should be animated the same.

If you need one group instance to play the animation mirrored, you can scale it on X and Y axis with value -1 (S > SHIFT+Z > -1)


How to import a character into Unity with textures from BI?

Unity does not normally import textures along with meshes since this is in fact a poor design choice on your part, it's best to separate mesh from texture. Here is a document detailing what Unity can import from Blender with the .blend files.

Here is a post detailing the process of importing objects from Blender to Unity.

Brief step by step:

Generate a UV map for your mesh
Make the texture for the object
Save your texture file to a separate file. .jpg should do, or .png for textures with a lot of similar colors/few colors overall.
Save it as either a .blend or .fbx file to import to Unity
Import your object to Unity
Browse to find your object
Find your material options for your mesh, and drag your texture file from the file viewer into the texture/albedo slot

REMEMBER: Unity has limited import options from Blender, so don't use any nodes or anything that's not basic. You'll have to do all that work in Unity since it's the engine that will render it all.

Hope this helps


Having issues exporting FBX Character mesh and rigg into UT4

Update to the latest release candidate, as of now(2.7.2 RC), and it should work much more smoothly. There were some problems with the fbx exporter which have been fixed, such as bones, vertex groups and shape keys, I think.


Anyone knows how to round out objects like this?

Please try to Sphere. Edit Mode.

Cube with high vertex density.  After To Sphere operation it looks like ... well a sphere.

Shift Alt S

The move your mouse away and experiment.


I just downloaded your file and it animates smoothly.
Please try deleting your cache -> Deleting all bakes


Create different shapes of the same objects with its content

I would use a particle system. Here's one approach

Create a circle
Extrude it and scale the extrusion inward to the same radius as the base of the thing that is going up
add a lot of edge loops.
Then I would select all of the faces and delete "faces only"

This will create a circle with a lot of vertices.
Next I would create a collection of objects representing the cells.  (For my example I only created a cube)
Next I would create a particle system for the circle.

Set it to hair.
Emit from vertices.
Disable random order
Set the number to match the vertices
Render as collect (object in my example)
Use the collection of cells (cube) as the collection (object)

Finally you can use a vertex group to limit which vertices so you can draw the veins where the vertices won't have cells.
My result is too rigid but you can randomize the vertices a bit and so on.
You get about half the work done automatically this way but you have to do the rest to make it organic in any way.


Making a wave texture orientate properly

You need to control the texture coordinates (and you need to add a gradient texture as well).

Let's break it down.

You are not using any coordinates to map the texture. By default Blender will use Generated coordinates to map procedural texutes. Generated coordinates will put the center of the texture in the lower left corner of the bounding box for the object.

Use object coordinates, they start at the origin of the object.

]2

To learn more about texture coordinates watch Bartek Skorupa's video: Manipulate Texture Coordinates like a Boss


i am trying to make a globe but my simple deform modifier is not working

The page linked by lemon works, but you need to rotate the plane of the image 90 degrees on the x first and then ctrl+a to apply rotation. Or apply the 180 wrap first to the z and then the 360 to the x.


Is it possible to make bones not show "In Front" of everything when in Pose Mode?

Are you sure you unchecked BOTH "In Front" options?
Unless 2.9 has changed in that aspect relative to 2.82, you should have one in the Armature tab and one in the Object tab.

Either way, supposing it's a bug or something weird that you can't fix, you can always duplicate your viewport window and Uncheck Overlays - it removes the bones and leaves only the mesh so you can fiddle with the armature on the original window, and look at the other without any clutter, in real time.


How to use a custom tangent for anisotropic shading in BI/Blend4Web?

The only way (at that moment) to create anisotropic effect (with such texture like your) is to imitate it by adding fake specular over the normal map especialy baked for such material.

 Heres the example of such imitation that works in blend4web.


The Boolean mod will place whatever materials are on the mesh used to modify the object provided that they are also included in the modified object (i.e. the big cube).  Only colors that are in the big cube will be received from the modifying mesh (the little cube).  You can see a dark green on the underside of the little cube but it is not applied to the cavity because the big cube does not contain that material.

So you must make your modifier mesh cube exactly the way you want your colors to appear in the head cavities.


You can use the light path node to achieve this:

As you can see, it's showing up in reflections, but for the camera it just displays the other background shader. This also works for cycles.


How does changing 'Dimensions' fields at once exactly work?

It is not a bug, it is a well known limitation of the current system, as you can see in the bug repot.

  Object dimensions are broken and an abuse of RNA, IMHO - the same
  problem happens from Python and we had it reported too.

  Basically they rely on one axis being set, then updating - before the
  other values are set.


Why do I have a strange kink at the edges of the tiles?

Ah, i found the problem myself!

I set the camera to Panoramic instead of Perspective

Now I changed it to Perspektive and the edges are gone.


I Can't Figure Out How to Build This Chair

For both the chassis and the slats he is just arraying a mesh along a curve, so he's mainly using 2 modifiers: Array and Curve. You'll easily find tutorials on this matter. For the slats, it gives that (I won't use a Mirror modifier but it doesn't make a big difference):

Create a bezier curve, give it the profile of the chair back along the X axis (it will make the array along curve easier to keep this axis)
Create a plane, stretch it in Edit mode on the Y axis. Make sure its origin is at the same place as the curve's origin:

Give the plane an Array modifier, choose the amount of instances (Count), enable Relative Offset and choose a X value of 1.2 for example, so that you keep a gap between the instances.
Give it a Curve modifier, choose the bezier curve as Object, choose X as Deformation Axis:

To change the slat length, select the bezier curve, go in Edit mode, select a vertex, and press AltS to scale:

You can create additional vertices for the curve: go in Edit mode and right click > Subdivide. And you can give thickness to your plane with a Solidify modifier:


Location is not "wrong".
Those numbers still represent the global location of the origin of the object, but location "on the screen" depends also from inherited transformation.

Let's make an example:

Consider two cube objects as the ones in the picture.

The active cube has X_location = 3

The parented cube has X_location = 2

But the are obiuvsly in the X location...this means that the child cube inherit the transformation of the parent object (the armature, whom origins is X location = 1 )

So the Cube children object origins is in X = 2, but as the parent object is in X = 1, it appear in X = 2+1 because inherit parent transformation.

You can easly see by un-parenting the object.


How can i bake an animated and extruded curve to a mesh animation?

The blue mesh isn't a real mesh it is generated from a curve so it can't be used in the Boolean modifier ( and other mesh dependent modifiers ) , also the text object( red one ) is a curve so it can't be used in the Boolean modifier.

You can convert  the curve into a mesh :
 - select the curve and hit Alt+C and choose Mesh from Curve
Note: beware after converting to a mesh you loose the curve editing options ( including this animation )

The animation you have can be replicated using the build modifier  on the converted mesh :

now you can have both the animation and the Boolean modifier on this mesh


optimize blenderswap models for unity (mobile use)

As Duarte pointed out, there are no "easy" ways to optimize models for games - especially mobile games - efficiency is everything for mobile.  Most game models are built with a "budget" in mind, and every component of them - from the geometry to the textures to the rig and animations (if it has them) need to be carefully considered with that budget and  overall optimization in mind.  In my experience as a modeler (for games) high-resolution models can present a usable framework to build a low-poly version around and then maps and normals can be extracted - but it will be a very rare object that you will be able to use straight away.


Certain shadows don't appear while playing in BGE

you need adjust this settings to correct the shadows projection in the bge
and this apply in bge, blender render and cycles


Imported eye glasses twice one I can see through the other is opaque. Why?

The problem is actually just a viewport deficiency. If you switch to rendered view or render out a shot, all is well :)

Blender's viewport only attempts to make it look right...to see what's really happening, render it out.


Open a graph editor, then in the search option type in scale:

If you want to do this for all bones, unhide them and select all, if you want to do this for all objects in the scene, Click the show only selection icon. With your mouse over the list of scale keyframes press a untill they are all selected and x -> delete.


The answer depends on how is your UV map for the parts below the logo.

If it is regular (rectangular), you may want to use this kind of configuration :

Your base UV map (the regular UV map of the mesh)
A mapping which is tuned to position the logo (see location and scale in the image below)
Your logo texture
And on the right, a mix shader which combines your mesh material (here a glass) with the logo material, with a factor based on alpha transparency of the logo

In this approach, the logo must be surrounded by alpha transparency. As if not you may obtain this kind of drips :

Another possibility is to setup another UV map :

This other UV map keeps only the wanted faces stretched around the logo (see 1 below)
And the other parts of the UV map are scaled down into a alpha part of the logo (they are all in the little black dot in 2)

In this configuration, you can scale or move the UVs to tune the logo size and position (don't forget the set the 'extension' parameter of the texture node from the default value 'repeat' to 'clip' if you want to do that):

Edit/Note : this last configuration also allows to have several logos on one texture. You only have to set the wanted UV map parts in front of each logo.

As shown in both configurations, this can be chained with other layers, like 'dirt' here.

A third possibility is to report the decal on a previous texture :

This can be done using textures as stencil, like in this configuration.

A : the logo used to define a brush texture
B : the texture defined as stencil
C : notice that in this case, the UV map can be defined in any way (here 'smart UV project')


Triangles define better areas than quads (details). That's internal. There is a function on object mode, though. Click your object. Enter edit mode. Select all your faces. Press spacebar (I assume you´re on 2.79) and search: Triangles to quads.

You can also use REMESH from the modifiers.
You can also try decimate to reduce the "poly" count.

Maybe this will help you.


Copy Rotation Constraint.
Possibly a simple way to do this is via a copy rotation constraint, to ensure the object faces the camera plane normal.

The camera looks down its -Z axis. For example sake if I put the number or some pattern on top of the default cube and make it copy the camera rotation.
(Rotate your spheres in edit mode such that the number is aligned in top view.)

Note, to reiterate the cubes are not facing the camera, rather the opposite direction to the camera.  A track to constraint will target the camera directly
Related
Make an object Always face the camera, and always be upright?
How to put rotation- and scale invariant labels to three dimensional objects (motion-tracked insert effect)?


Turn on snapping to face. (In blender 2.79.6 the shortcut is shift+Tab).

In edit mode, grab your vertices on the corner of the wall sticking through the roof and press "G" and "Z" to move it along only the Z axis. When the vertices snap onto the the correct face, let it go and there you go!

Hope that helps!


Your UV-Map is stretched. Your last approche is pritty close. Maybe unwrapping it in Top View with Project vom View will work in this case.


Perform same action on all selected objects

As you noticed, bpy.context.object points to the active object, regardless of the variable in your for loop.
In your last line you are iterating over all selected objects, but you are not actually using the iteration variable afterwards, cube.
Replace the last line with print(cube.scale[0])


Blender Game engine Animation Not playing

I can't open your file from here.

You need at least the armature modifier. You can easily get them by

select the skin mesh object(s)
shift select the armature
ctrl+p Set Parent To \ Armature Deform

Usually you need Vertex Groups set that match the names of the armature's bones.

ctrl+p Set Parent To \ Armature Deform \ With ... allows you to create such Vertex Groups.

I hope it helps


Export to .STL Format In Correct Scale - Inches

By default Blender uses 1 unit = 1 meter even if you change the units in Blender to Imperial - Inches. That change only affects the GUI display, not the internal representation. According to Wikipedia, STL is unitless so use a scale of 39.37 to convert from meters to inches when you export, or tell the program you import into the file is in meters.
Basically, in Blender's Scene tab, set the Unit System to whatever you're comfortable with, choose whatever length you like, but leave "Unit Scale" set to 1.0. This leaves Blender internally using Meters, this is a good thing, because the unit system is a little strange sometimes.
When exporting your STL, set the Transform Scale to 39.37 (to convert meters to inches) and don't bother with "Scene Units" check box, it multiplies by the value in "Unit Scale" which we purposefully left at 1.0.


Seeing an object in axis aligned view,
but not in user-defined view usually means it's far away from the current POV (point of view) or
outside of the current frustum. Orthographic view provides no sense of depth. Objects appear the same
size no matter how far or how close they are.

New objects are placed at the postion of the 3D Cursor.

The 3D Cursor is placed with LMB. A click in empty space will position it in a plane,
that is parallel to the view plane at the distance of its old position.

A click on a visible object will project the 3D cursor on the object.

The current cursor position and the position of the selected object are shown (and can be changed)
in the Properties Panel of the 3D View.

You can also use the Snap menu by pressing
ShiftS.

E.g. with the object selected press ShiftS - Cursor to Center, ShiftS - Selection to Cursor to set the objects position back to the center.


Enable freestyle in the properties->Render window:
You can control the line thickness there.

The controls for the shading are in properties->scene->line_style->Freestyle Line set and Line style.


How do you re-unwrap an object and have it be the same scale?

Well, this is a fun one.

What is going on
It seems, unwrapping depends on your shader's image texture, not the texture in the UV editor.
Again.  It's not about the UV editor, it's about the shader editor.

I have three textures with different aspect ratios. 1:1, 2:1, 3:1.
But the UV map ratio is always based on the image selected in the shader editor.

So, in some cases, there's no way to match the correct aspect ratio.

Example:
2:1 in UV editor, 3:1 in shader editor.  And no way to match the correct ratio.
Correct aspect ✔ doesn't work either - it only switches to 1:1 ratio.

Solution
Check what image is selected in the shader editor. That's what drives the UV map aspect ratio.
And then match it to the image in your UV editor.

Note
The above is a reason why it sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't.
Still not sure if it's a bug or not, but either way it's pretty messed up :).


Blender Cycles Bake Not Looking Like Object in Rendered View

Did you use Blender to UV the model? It looks like it is UV'ed, but somehow the point order has changed and the UV's and Verts no longer match up.

I sometimes get this problem when I go back and forth between Zbrush and Blender and mess up point orders either during import or export. The UV's may look correct, still, but each polygon in UV space doesn't correspond to the 3D space polygon it was originally assigned to anymore.

Do a simple UV again in Blender and see if that solves the problem.


Why does blender erase transforms after inserting a keyframe?

The keyframe is updated with the current value at the moment you press I or insert the keyframe. After that, the value will not be (permanently) modified any more until you press I again on that exact keyframe.

So if you press I and rotate afterwards, that rotation has no (permanent) effect and is lost as soon as you leave the keyframe. You should rotate first and insert the keyframe afterwards, or at least press I again after rotating, basically to save the modification to the keyframe.

You can insert new keyframes by pressing I on the 3D View and selecting the properties in the popup menu, pressing I on any numeric field in Blender (whether transforms or modifiers/material/constraints properties) or by right-clicking on any field and pressing Insert Keyframes (or Insert Single Keyframe).

In addition, if you want to update any change on the fly you can enable the Automatic Keyframe insertion button on the bottom of the Timeline window. This is the common approach in character animation.

Note that you must insert a keyframe first in which properties you are going to animate. Insert that first keyframe with any of the methods above.


How to increase the Space between two Edge Loops?

This is a bit like 3DS 'slide' and 'pinch'.. the nearest match in Blender is to cut 1 central loop, then CtrlShiftR 'Offset edge slide' that loop, sending two parallel loops off in each direction. (Don't forget to check the tool's options in the 'last operator' panel).

You can then dissolve the original loop.


There is a delayed lag when texture painting in 3D

This lag is normal, the thing is to paint in the UV image editor, directly on the image texture, and not in the 3d model, that way it has no lag.


No operator presets: FBX 6.1 ASCII, FBX 7.4 Binary

The .fbx ASCII format has been removed in Blender 2.8, the remaining export format is the binary format. You should be able to export to the other application just as you did in Blender 2.79, except that in the older version you had to explicitly select the binary format which is now the default in 2.8. The materials need to be setup separately because .fbx can't store Cycles or Eevee materials.

In order to embed texture into the file you have to set the following two options:

Path Mode is Copy
Embed Textures is enabled

Although I haven't personally tested it, you may want to try glTF as export format because it should be able to translate textures and materials to the other software, if you use the principled shader for a PBR setup.


how can i change particle size by id of an already cached simulation?

If you want to change the size of a particle randomly you can go to the physics tab in a particle system and change the random value.

If you want to look at the operators in python you can go to this link

Python blender reference

If you want to delete a particle based on their age you can change the lifetime of the particle in the emission tab


Can I select by color when not the same material?

This simple script loops through the visible objects, and checks if the active object's diffuse color (blender internal) matches. If they do match, then that object gets selected.

Make sure the active object has a material with the color you want to merge. Then load the script below in blender's text editor and hit "Run Script".

After you run the script all you need to do is press CrtlL then M. Or from the 3D view header Object > Make Links... > Materials.

import bpy
active = bpy.context.scene.objects.active
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
for obj in bpy.context.visible_objects:
    if obj.type == "MESH":
        if obj.data.materials[0].diffuse_color == active.data.materials[0].diffuse_color:
            obj.select = True
active = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]


It looks like you have already unwrapped your model, so I am guessing that the problem is that Cycles isn't using the UV map you have created.

To tell Cycles explicitly to use a particular UV map add an Input > UV Map node and plug it into the Vector input on your image texture.  Make sure that the correct UV map is selected on the UV map node.

Alternatively, you can check which UV map is being used as the default UV map under Object Data properties panel > UV Maps rollout.  You can set the default UV map by clicking on the small camera icon next to it.

This will only have an effect if there are no mapping coordinates explicitly defined for a texture as above.


Extruding to particular thickness on an angle

You can get very close by:

Setting your transform orientation to 'Normal'
Setting your snap to 'Edge', Active'
In Edit/Vertex mode, (the pair of vertices selected) Extrude in Z Z by a numerically entered depth.
Translate the new edge in Y Y until the active vertex at one end 'snaps' to the wall.

But, it's not a true snap. The move is constrained, but the snap projection isn't. You can get very close by zooming in, and eyeballing the 'bullseye' of the snap range circle. Blender's snapping system is lacking, here.

You can install and use the built-in add-on  - 'Mesh:Tiny CAD' to make a true, accurate projection of the new, extruded edge to its intersection with the wall, but only if they're part of the same object, or you construct a new edge from the wall as a guide, which is part of the same object.


Unmerge Vertex with Mirror Modifier On (Make Two Vertices from One at the Center?)

If I understand correctly what it is you are trying to do then all you need to do is temporarily uncheck the Clipping option in the Mirror Modifier menu Then you will be able to select that vertice and drag it away from the center line.


Cannot get noise free realistic render in blender cycles

1. Read: 7 Ways to Get Rid of Fireflies Once and For All

List of the techniques explained in the article:

Use Bigger Light Sources
Use Bigger Shadow Sizes
Use "Multiple Importance Sampling" for HDRs
Use 'Filter Glossy'
Check "No Caustics"
Use "Clamping"
More Samples

2. Read: Using Portals to Accelerate your Render Times

For an interior scene such as yours, Portals can make a big difference. Portals tell Blender to only channel the environment lighting through a specific area (like a window), which makes for faster, cleaner renders.

3. Learn about the new Denoising feature.

Grab the latest version of Blender (currently 2.79 Release Candidate 2). This includes the new Denoising feature, which works wonders. So after you have done Step 1 and optimized your settings, this is how you can really polish it all up.

※ Note that if Progressive Refine is enabled, Denoising options will be grayed out. Learn more


Serial communication uses start and stop (1,1.5 or 2 bit length) and optionally a parity bit.
Assuming it would be 10 bits 9600 bits/s would transfer 960 bytes in a second.

You're reading the data byte by byte.

If you have messages with variable length it would be better to transfer a header containing the size of your message and read this first.

e.g.

<Header>     <message>
0x0000 0100  256 bytes of data

then you could read first the header (size=4) followed by reading the message at once.

To make the protocol more robust you could introduce a checksum (in the header) and an end-of-message marker which is not contained in the data (or escaped there), this would allow you to recover from transmission errors and re-synchronize.


How to add a custom menu item to the object menu?

Following code adds the open file operator and a label to three different places:

import bpy

def custom_draw(self, context):
    self.layout.operator("wm.open_mainfile")
    self.layout.label(text="Hello world!", icon='WORLD_DATA')

bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object.append(custom_draw) # Object menu
bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_snap.append(custom_draw)   # Snap menu
bpy.types.TOPBAR_MT_render.append(custom_draw) # Render menu

https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.Menu.html?highlight=prepend#extending-menus


How to change the axis of the Move Tool within Edit Mode? (2.8)

Nevermind. I discovered the solution. All manipulation tools have their own definition of Trasform Orientations that will only respect the TO of the viewport if it is as 'default'.

As my Move Tool was with Transform Orientations = Normal, it was no use changing the TO of the viewport. Just set to 'default' to resolve.

Thank you. I'll leave the topic to anyone who has this same problem in the future.


Colours disappear when exporting to Blend4Web

The problem is that your .blend is using .tga and .tif files, which are not supported in Blend4Web (since they are not web-friendly formats).

If you convert these to .png (or .jpg where lossy is acceptable) you should be fine. This will also cut your file sizes down drastically and probably even improve your Viewport performance within Blender. Remember that since your delivery platform is a web browser, smaller and lower-res images are better whenever possible.

Another issue I noticed (unrelated to images) is that you'll need to either scale down your model or increase the clipping distance.


What is the relationship between UV image and material texture?

The material and its texture are what's used when you render the image. Anything else, like being able to see an image you have loaded into the Image-Editor in the 3D view are for when you want to preview your texture, maybe to see if the UVs are ok.

It makes sense to be able to have a material set up with textures, but then also be able to view a single texture loaded from the Image-Editor to view the texture on its own. Otherwise, if you had a complex material with multiple textures, there would be no easy way to view a single texture on the model for inspection without removing some textures from the material.

What you show in your screenshots are 'Texture' shading mode:

Texture mode is for viewing textures, it loads in whatever image is in the Image-Editor.

If you change to 'Material' mode (shown in the list of viewport modes in that screenshot) you will see the material and any texture it may have (make sure you have a lamp to illuminate the object, otherwise it will appear black).

To summarise:

Texture mode is for seeing how an individual texture looks on your model, so you know if you have to make adjustments, if it doesn't look right.
The material and its textures will be used when you render your image (F12)
Materials are for the final look, 'Texture' viewport mode is for viewing a single texture.

As you can see from that screenshot, there are different viewport shading modes for different tasks. More information on these different modes and what they are suited to is in the Blender Manual, here.


Convert annotations to Grease Pencil object (old GP to new GP)

I finally found out and it's quite easy:

In object mode, show the right sidebar of the window by clicking n.
In the Annotations section, check which is the name of your (old) Grease Pencil datablock. For ease of reading, rename it OLD_GP.

Create an empty Grease Pencil object (SHIFT+A > Grease Pencil > Blank)
In the properties panel of that object, go to the Grease Pencil tab.
Load the datablock that we have previously renamed OLD_GP.

Now we need to assign a material to the Grease Pencil because it it currently "invisible" :

Go to the materials tab and click New.

Et voilà !

You can now remove the datablock from the annotations.


Why is Blender's IK pole target system so difficult? Am I missing something?

You are trying to do impossible. Check this out how Pole target angle is exactly computed and how the IK works with it.

You either setup the pole angle or the IK base bone roll.

Adjusting the pole angle is lesser evil, that's how it should be done. Adjusting bone roll ends up in re-binding skin.

Maybe the iTaSC IK solver would suit better your application than the blender's legacy one, try it out.


Just start from a single vertex (make a plane and delete 3 out of 4 vertices) and extrude it like so. You can make sure your vertices are aligned by turning snapping to grid ON, or selecting multiple vertices that need to be aligned and scaling them to 0 on the relevant axis.

Once you finish your shape, select all vertices and press F to create a face, then use the Solidify modifier or extrude the face.

Does that answer your question?


Making a falling object in "Physical properties"-rigid body soft

Keyword: Rigid. Because of the simulation methods, Rigid Body simulations do not allow physically calculated deformations. If you do want those, I suggest you use a soft body or cloth simulation with optimized settings.


So what is the question really? Can you add a phrase ending in a question mark to your post.

This all sounds like excellent progress and great news for the Blender community in general, unfortunately this seems like the wrong place to post this sort of work.

If you want user level feedback you should probably post this in the Blender Artists Forum where it will probably gather a lot more attention and feedback.

If you are looking for developer feedback or a way to get this merged or approved into official blender then you should probably contact the developers, possibly through the bf committers mailing list. Developers don't come here often if at all.

As far as I know there are currently developments efforts already being made for the cloth simulation area, and general physics simulation improvements targeted for the great upcoming Blender 2.8 revamp.

It would probably be beneficial if your work aligned well with the upcoming changes, and possibly take advantage of them.

Maybe you can even contribute your knowledge or skills to help in the improvement of the new features.

Maybe also contact Luca Rood, who appears to be in charge of this area so we can mutually benefit from it


Manuel Bastioni lab and soft body simulation

It's difficult to get convincing 'outward pressure' in a soft body but one trick is to simply use the 'bending' spring force to make the mesh attempt to retain its shape. In addition, try reducing the Mass of the soft body and significantly reduce the Gravity weight so as to make it 'float'.

Remove any modifiers that are no longer required (such as the default armature modifiers). Also, the default Manuel Bastioni Lab mesh includes a lot of unnecessary detail around the face and hands that will significantly slow down the simulation - and close-proximity vertices (especially around the fingers) can result in very strong repulsion forces if you enable 'self collision' - so best to either not use self collision or use 'Remove Doubles' on the mesh in Edit mode to cut down the detail a bit (this will potentially join adjacent fingers so use with care - possibly separate the fingers a bit first).

This can produce the following result :

The soft body settings for this were as follows :

Note that the only changes from the defaults are to reduce the mass to 0.5, disable the Goal, increase edge Pull to 0.9, increase Bending to 5.0, reduce Gravity to 0.05.

Increase the Bending spring force even further for a more rigid (effectively more inflated) effect.


Tangent handles in Graph editor no longer can be moved

Good point man

I hear the blender community is polite and helpful

I had accidentally switched on proportional editing

One of the tiny buttons along the top of the GE


Updating your graphics card driver would be great. I did and I can use blender with no problems.


How to increase/even polygon count on stretched areas

Enable Dyntopo (dynamic topology) in your brush options:

This will locally adapt the mesh detail when you touch the area with your brush.

Note: this will likely break some kind of object data (vertex groups, shape keys, UV maps) so it should be used only when doing the initial sculpting of your model. More from the manual.


I Can give you some tips, you can change all inputs you need in Blender, in the Blender User Preferences Panel:

As you can see, I highlight a input I mapped to  my own workflow, the Edge Loop Selection to the input Alt+Select Mouse. Each input have advanced properties you can set, as well a combination of inputs to execute it.

Here I show you a default shortcut for a great deal of tools for Blender 2.73, although mostly of the shortcuts stay the same.

So, while yes, you can change and map each input to your liking, it's not advised to do so, Blender it's a different software than Modo, Maya, 3DsMax, so I recommend you to use Blender the way it is, you will get used to it just like you are confortable working in your favorite softwares.

For your to change Y axis to Z, here's a relatable question: Is it possible to make Blender a Y-up world?


Exporting a UV Mesh from an Existing Model

UV coordinates will be exported with most 3D formats like FBX, or OBJ so you do not need to worry about this usually. You will only need to recreate the materials for the objects in the different rendering environment. You will need to copy the actual texture files together with the exported model and then point the new materials to the texture files while creating them in Unreal Engine.


Why is my fire simulation blocky even with 5000 resolution divisions?

I have found the solution, i looked at the size of the domain like you told me to and it was actually huge, so i scaled it down and now it works fine.


Is there a way to export the names (Vertex Group Names) and location of vertices in list format?

Open a text editor, click New Text, paste that into the editor :

import bpy
import bmesh

"""
exports all the vertices of the active object in a text file, formated like that :
["n##",x.xxx,y.yyy,z.zzz],
"""

filename="export.txt"

# api shortcuts
ops = bpy.ops
ctx = bpy.context
opo = bpy.ops.object

opo.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)
activeObj = bpy.context.scene.objects.active

opo.mode_set(mode='EDIT', toggle=False)
sel_mode = ctx.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode
ctx.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode = [True, True, True]
mesh = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(activeObj.data)

filepath = bpy.path.abspath("//"+filename)

f=open(filepath,"w+")

for v in mesh.verts:
    print(v.co.x)
    #rounded to 3 digits:
    f.write("[\"n%d\",%03.3f,%03.3f,%03.3f],\n" % (v.index,v.co.x, v.co.y,v.co.z))
    #not rounded:
    #f.write("[\"n%d\",%f,%f,%f],\n" % (v.index,v.co.x, v.co.y,v.co.z))

f.close()

Select your object then press "Run Script" in the text editor.

The script will create a file named "export.txt", in the .blend directory.

By default the scripts rounds the coordinates to 3 digits, like in your sample. If you want more precise values (not rounded), comment line 31 (add a # character) and uncomment line 33 (delete the # character).


In your render the hair particles are not subdivided enough, check if these 2 settings match - first is for render, 2nd is for viewport:

Also in your render it seems there are more hairs rendered, that may be due to children particles and that only a percentage of them is displayed in viewport:

Lastly if you set the same amount of samples for viewport and render, you should get the same outcome:


How to make a force field concentrate only on a specified area?

You can set the Effector Group to limit the force fields which can affect a given particle system:

Add an empty (or really anything that's not a force field)
With the empty selected, create a group (⎈ CtrlG)
Specify this group as the Effector group for the systems which you do not want to be affected by any force fields:

Optionally delete the empty.

Result:


Okay so I figured it out, moonboots you were right I did need to bend the top bones more in edit mode. At first I couldn't figure out how to position them so it worked but still fit the mesh. Then I found a drawing of a fox with an internal skeleton shown along with the body. This showed me I had the two top bones in the back leg positioned wrong, so I changed it to mimic the drawing and it worked. The bones finally bend when using IK. I guess this is just further evidence that nature knows exactly what it is doing with designing of living creatures. lol


Lossless mp4 is smaller than sum of frames

If what you would like to do is to lower the file size of your images, the best way to do it would be to turn up the PNG compression to 100%. Blender has it at 15% by default. Don't worry, the PNG compression in Blender is lossless, which means that there will be no reduction in image quality whatsoever. The only con is that it may take a few seconds or so longer in order to deal with compression, but I find that the reduced space on the computer is well worth it.
There shouldn't be anything to worry about in terms of compiling images into a video. I would speculate that videos are more optimized for rapid viewing which could be why the files size is smaller than an equal number of videos.


For volumetric lights you need to control a few things:

The emission values of the lamps need to be a bit higher than normal to compensate for loss due to the volume Scatter.

Rendering will be slower, a lot noisier, and with lots of Fireflies, so be ready to bring up the samples and clamp indirect samples. The best solution time/quality I've found is using branched Path Tracing and increasing the volume samples and a value for clamp indirect around 3.00

Work with the lowest volume scatter value that still yields the desired result. Higher values will be even noisier and the lights will need to be even brighter.

Keep in mind that volumetric light effects are better seen when the background is dark. How you combine your mist pass will make a huge difference as mist will tend to make things brighter and make volumetric lights less visible.

In my opinion a more realistic approach would be not to use mist, but to use volume scatter and volume absortion together.

sample file to play with:


Prevent area light from being reflected on glass?

Thanks to Matt this is now solved. In the Cycles Settings of the Area Light I turned off the setting for 'transmission' and therender shows what I want :)


Rendering shiny steel on a white background?

There are just three things you need to get such result:

A studio lighting HDRI (like this one shipped with Blender)
Shiny metallic material (Metalness=1, Roughness=0.2)
Transparent background (RenderTab > Film > Transparent)

Rotate the HDRI to your needs, and add white background through compositor :).


How do you texture with a photo taken from an angle without distorting it based on the polygons?

I am maybe misunderstanding what you are trying to do but will ask anyways.If all you are trying to do is map the 2D image to the 3D box shape why are you using any subdivisions at all ?
Surely the simplest approach is to select the 3 appropriate faces of the simple cuboid and U to open the UV Mapping menu and choose the Unwrap option, then reposition the 7 vertices in the UV space as accurately as you can over the image.


Import video for editing with multiple audio strips

This question has been asked before and there has been a Bug report which has been closed again, but it's been added to the ToDo list.

So for now I'd suggest you'd use another tool* to extract your multiple tracks into individual files and import them all manually into the VSE.

* like Audacity with the ffmpeg plugin or VLC via its file saving mode, but that's offtopic here...


3ds max user want to find Refine and Connect tool in blender

As far as I know there is no such tool in Blender, mainly because curves in Blender can't branch.
One workaround is to select an vertex you wish to connect beforehand, duplicate them with ⇧ Shift +  D, Right-Click to cancel and leave them in place.
Then just press  F a bunch of times to connect them.

Beware that Blender doesn't really memorize selection sequence, the connection order will depend on the spline index the vertex was derived from, so it may not always yield expected results if the original splines were not created in the same order you want them connected.
Another potential caveat is that splines must be all of the same type (bezier, poly or NURBs), and belong to the same object, otherwise you will not be able to connect them.


How do I variate the color along one axis?

Create a second color ramp node with the desired colors and plug it into the emission shader:


A couple of things you could do differently that will help...

Apply Rotation & Scale before going into Edit Mode. That will keep your use of the Looptools > Circle from creating ovals.
Add an extra vertical edge loop in the middle of each section where you plan to put the holes.
Add an extra horizontal edge loop that cuts across all three hole areas.
THEN start doing the extrude/scale operation(s), followed by use of Looptools > Circle to create the holes.

Doing it this way will give you eight-sided holes which work out better in the long run.


The existing answer from @Polosson is correct, however Im a bit biased against globals since I have had to debug other peoples code with many globals - it can become difficult, if the code becomes complex and there are more then 2-3 of them used across multiple functions. It's a pain to keep track of them, forgetting to add a global keyword, it can fail in a non-obvious way.

Store in a global dictionary

Heres an alternative, which I prefer in some cases.

# store all runtime variables here.
runtime = {}
runtime["hmd"] = None

def poll():
    # declare hmd as global so that the function has (write) access to the global var.
    if runtime["hmd"] is None:
        runtime["hmd"] = ctypes.WinDLL("C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.68\\scripts\\addons\\game_engine_rift\\openhmd.dll")

You can store the runtime state in a dictionary, and it has some advantages that you can easily print(runtime), runtime.clear()... etc. and pass it to other modules if you end up splitting your code across files.

Because the dictionary its self is never re-assigned, you don't have to define it as global.

Store in the function

Another trick, is you can store the variable in the function (and avoid using globals)

Note that this is not the functions local namespace, which is why it has to be accessed as an attribute of the function, even when inside the function body.

def poll():
    # declare hmd as global so that the function has (write) access to the global var.
    if poll.hmd is None:
        poll.hmd = ctypes.WinDLL("C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.68\\scripts\\addons\\game_engine_rift\\openhmd.dll")
poll.hmd = None

Sometimes I use this for global variables that only the function ever accesses.

For more info on function attributes see:
Q: Python function attributes - uses and abuses


Well, it's definitely terminator problem. It's one of "problems" of Cycles render. To avoid it, you should  make lights bigger or/and add some subdivisions on model.

No artifacts with subsurf at level 1:

But if you want to export it to Unity, this problem doesn't appear in it. It's a problem of ray-traced renderes.


Missing Open Shading Language in Cycle Renderer Check Box

OSL isn't available on GPU. If you are already set to CPU, it's possible your version of blender was compiled without it. Are you using an official build from blender.org? (btw, any particular reason for using 2.75? The latest version is currently 2.76) – gandalf3


You've done nothing wrong. The extra edges and faces you are seeing are caused by the rendering process. Graphics cards can only deal with triangles, thus everything is converted to triangles before rendering (not permanently though). There are some ways to make it less apparent though. First is to make sure your faces are as flat as possible. If the faces aren't flat along their normal there will always be some sort of edge visible due to the face being split int 2 triangles. The other option is to manually split any faces where it is very noticeable into triangles manually so that you have control over where the edge goes.

Depending on what you are trying to do, you may be able to render using the OpenGL render that blender has, which will render the viewport, and not triangulate the faces.. Doing so won't allow you to have the same amount of controls or options as using a render engine would, but for non realistic renders especially it can be quite useful.

One final thing to try is to use an edge split modifier or auto smooth the normals. Both of these will require your model shading to be set to smooth, and will render angles over a certain limit as sharp edges. Assuming your faces are all relatively flat you could probably find an angle that would render the faces flat and the edges sharp.


Blender Rigid Body Simulation freezing in the air

I figured it out, what was wrong was that the floor of the simulation was a bounding box mesh. Thanks for the help though


Why does applying smoothness to a mesh reduce the number of vertices?

The shading options (Smooth and Flat) refer to how the vertex normals are calculated, which then essentially tells the renderer how to bounce light off edges.

For smooth shading, the vertex normals are calculated by averaging each face normal that they belong to. The face normal is simply the direction perpendicular to face, on the outward side.

For flat shading, each vertex can be considered to have multiple normals, one for each face it is part of, in the direction of the face. Many programs represent this by splitting each vertex into multiple vertices, one for each adjacent face. This is most likely what you are seeing in Unity, as that is most likely what the renderer in Unity is doing.

There is another kind of 'smoothing' called subdivision, which as its name suggests, splits faces into smaller faces. This obviously adds vertices, and is probably where you got the idea that smoothing adds vertices.


Your render inside Blender is not pure white.

After rendering clic on the white part of your render in the UV/imge editor, watch the values in the bottom part, R 0.92, G 0.92, B 0.92.

You just need pure texture color and lighting, it's too hazardous to try setting the right orientation and strength of a sun to have perfect texture color. You lose some light during ray casting.

You want two things to compose in post processing:

the animation of the logo and the text with the correct RGB values (no need of light for that).
the shadows themselves (need light or tricks that I don't know).

Make a scene without light, and replace the diffuse shaders by emission ones. Now you have the real textures colors, same for the white background. Bonus: you can set the samples to 10 or 20 it's enough

Make a second scene with only the sun, the white background and the text for the shadows. Background and text must have diffuse shader this time. On the render layer panel, under passes activate shadow. Render the frames that matter for the Shadows.

Plug the shadow passe in the fac of a color mix node, put the animation of the logo and text in the second image slot of the mix node, the first one is the color of your shadows.


You can combine two landscape using the bridge tool.

Select one of the landscape in object mode and move it away from the other slightly.

Select both landscapes in object mode
Join the two object together, Ctrl J

In edit mode select both edge loops between the landscapes.

bridge them together using the bridge tool, W -> Bridge Edge Loops

Number of Cuts: adjust this so that the generated polygons look square
Interpolation: Blend Surface, has the best look for bridging terrain
Smoothness: adjust this to your liking

Final Result


Using Blender on a windows 10 tablet with no keyboard?

Thanks for your replies, folks. I decided to stay on TabletPro with the only ArtistPad feature activated. It seems to be a good option despite it's quite complicated customization.


Pressing Ctrl Alt 0 is not working for me

Press Ctrl+Alt+Numpad 0. It's important to use the Numpad 0 not the normal 0 on the upper key row.
If you don't have a number pad you can press F3 to open a search box (or Space - depends on preferences that you have set). There, search for the command 'align active camera to view'. Ctrl+Alt+Numpad 0 is the shortcut for it and listed there, too.


Animation Nodes - Control several objects of a group

Most nodes of Animation Nodes 2 were vectorized, which means that most nodes work on a list of values without using a loop. This applies to the Object ID Key node as well as the Matrix Output node.

Instead of feeding the From Group node into a loop to extract the initial transformations individually from each object, you can feed the From Group directly into the Object ID Key node and it will give you a list of all initial transformations automatically. Then you can feed the list – again without using a loop – into the Offset Matrix node to receive a list of all transformed matrices.

You only have to make sure that

the origin of each letter is close to the letter so that the object controller falloff can correctly calculate how far away the letters are from the controller. Merely separating the letters of a text object will keep the origins at the location of the original text object.
And each letter has the initial transforms stored. The Initial transforms for an object can be stored in the tool panel shown in the image below.


2 options i can think of to solve your problem.
1. after the color-ramp use an invert node
2. in the color-ramp move the white to where the black is by copying the values and drag the black all the way to the left


You can't change the bone local axis, for example the tail will always point to the local Y axis.

I think you are confusing the global axes and the local axes. Actually when you choose to display the bone axes (in the Properties panel > Data > Display) it will display the local axes of each selected bone. Same as if you switch the Transformation Ortientation dropdown menu from Global to Local and select a bone, as you can see in my screenshots.

It's useful to display all the bone axes as it allows to align the axes of several bones, for example.

You can change the bone (and not axis) orientation in Edit mode with ctrlR and align it with the global with ctrlN. When you'll create some bone poses in Pose mode, you'll use R to rotate and X for example to rotate on the global X axis, and double X to rotate on the local X axis.


Best way to add a face if I modeled the body first?

I would say that it depends on your level of detail. If your face is mostly a texture and you can get the geometry you need by just moving vertices around on the body, then I would take that route.

But if you need to add significant amounts of geometry, then you will need to change your body geometry to keep good topology. See this article from cg cookie.

Topology (basically having your edges flow cleanly) is important for animation and texturing. Too keep good topology you will probably need to modify your body's geometry. Whether you want to split edges as needed and keep the body mesh, or just start over with a new face mesh, is up to you.


BGE: Import Error No Module Named "Tkinter"

Tkinter will freeze your game and create a popup window, which is probably not what you want. You could install it, but I wouldn't suggest it.

I've found that making simple interfaces is harder in code (eg tkinter) than it is in BGE with objects. Of course, by the time you want combo boxes, you probably want a GUI library. And these libraries do exist.
There is a nice one called BGUI you should look into. This writes into openGL ontop of BGE, so it won't freeze your game or create external windows.


How can I prepare a point cloud for visualization in Blender using MeshLab?

Using your example I have found the reason for your troubles.

After importing your point cloud example pressing . on the numpad brings the point cloud into view. Entering edit mode Tab and deselecting all points A then selecting one point shows that it has co-ordinates of 10000,10000,132.189 - that is the one point is ten thousand units from the origin point which is located at the centre of the scene. A little trig tells us that rotating a couple of degrees while at a 10000 unit radius from the centre pivot point gives a large amount of movement, taking the object way off the visible screen from a tiny rotation.

Therefore the solution would be to first import the file, make sure the imported object is selected - selecting in the outliner may be the easiest way.

While in object mode set the objects Geometry to Origin -

This should place things close to where you want them and make things easy to work with.

If you have moved around before resetting the origin you can press ShiftC to set the cursor back to the centre if you have moved it, then ShiftS to snap the object back to the 3D Cursor at the centre of the scene, ShiftC again will bring everything back into view.


Some faces won't merge as if there was another vertice in the middle of the face

You can't do what you're trying to do with this kind of topology. Actually, in 3D, faces are always made of triangles, for example a quad is made of 2 triangles:

If I move up the top right vertex the line between the triangles will rise up, like you would like in your example:

But if I move the top left vertex it will stay flat:

So in your case, you need to add topology, like that:

To join 2 vertices through a face you need to press J rather than F, F will simply create an edge between 2 vertices over the existing face, it won't cut the face.


Most display related errors, or missing elements on the interface, are caused by the drivers for your GPU (graphics card).

Try a different version of the driver. Sometimes upgrading helps, sometimes you have to go to an older version.


How can I exclude a collection from rendering with Python?

Use the View Layer

From the context view layer

>>> C.view_layer.active_layer_collection
bpy.data.scenes['Scene']...LayerCollection

>>> C.view_layer.active_layer_collection.name
'My Leaf 0.0'

>>> C.view_layer.active_layer_collection.exclude
False

Alternatively from scene

>>> C.scene.view_layers['RenderLayer'].active_layer_collection
bpy.data.scenes['Scene']...LayerCollection

>>> C.scene.view_layers['RenderLayer'].active_layer_collection.name
'My Leaf 0.0'

Related

Change active collection


Best way to modify this particular model

I don't think your topology is good: too many edge loops, some weird ngons, a sphere to make the butt... you should probably try to make something simpler, it will help if you need to to make any modification,

As BatFinger said, start from a mirrored cube, add edge loops when needed, and extrude the different limbs

Here's a quick try:


Rigid body joints constraints intented use is for situations like:

Animation created from the blend file linked in the docs

Note the collision bounds are set to box and the joint itself doesn't have a collision bound.

Comparing your file you have collision bound set to capsule which should be mesh:

Setting it to triangle mesh would at least avoid that it is blown away when you switch on the physics.

In case you only want to parent both objects you wouldn't need the constraints:

First select the child object then the parent Ctrl-P will open this popup.

To have the influence of parenting animated you could consider to use a ChildOf constrained.


Material assign not lining up with vertices

Seems like you have subdivision modifier on your mesh.Which lowers the resulting vertices when it smooths the mesh.Try assigning after applying the subdivision modifier.


World shaders disapearing in Blender File

Blender By default purges most unused data blocks. (this happens when you save and reopen the file)
Just add a fake user and it should remain in the file until it has no user (be it fake or not) and you save it or manually delete it.


How to match blender with AZERTY keyboard?

I've looked through blender's settings and I don't think it is possible to use a non-QWERTY keyboard (in the typical way). That being said, there might be a few workarounds:

Change a few of the shortcut keys (go to edit/preferences/keymap and change the keys)

Use the widgets for navigation instead of the keyboard shortcuts

These are the navigation widgets

Press 'F3' and search for the function (e.g. move, extrude, inset, etc.) instead of using the keyboard, then press 'enter' to use the function


Intel Q45/Q43 Express Chipsets are Legacy Products. There is no Windows 10 Support above basic for them. Basic support means "it shows stuff on screen, but as no 3D acceleration in any form".

Check out Supported Operating Systems for Intel® Graphics Products and search for "Q45" and "Q43".

In short: You won't be able to run Blender or any other Software that depends on 3D accelerated Hardware (CAD, 3D Games) under Windows 10 on this machine.


Blender 2.82, two GPU but only one render in Cycle

This is what I get as an answer on Reddit....I think this info will be useful for others.

Windows Task manager does not report multiple GPU correctly. Use a free app called CPUID HWmonitor. Everything else looks good. Make sure you have the latest Nvidia gfx drivers for your GPUs installed.

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/156780/en-us


How do I make a new face from intersection of faces

Well, I'd bet there was an easier way, but here's how I ended up solving this.  I created a new object from the vertices on the inside edge of the tube.  Then used that with a Boolean operation to cut a hole in the walls of the frame (though I had to move the frame away from the tube to make this work, then moved it back into place after the cut).


Shape key animation applies to all animation actions, how do I only apply it to one?

I think you will need a different shape key animation for every action. To simplify this you can copy the shape key you already have.
It's sometimes hard to notice but you have to click the little downward pointing ">" icon. Make sure you have only the correct shape key activated by having its checkbox checked, and having the other shape keys unchecked (since the new shape key will be a combination of all the activated shape keys). Then have the Value set to the correct value (in this case 1), and then choose New Shape From Mix.


Freestyle rendering problem (REALLY big gaps/"fur")

Yes, Grimm was right, I had double vertices, I must have duplicated the model accidentally! This is solved now. Thanks a lot!


How do I rescale an object to be a specified cm in length and have the rest of the object scale to accommodate?

I don't think there's a way of doing it directly.

I do it by:

CtrlA > Applying the scale of the object
Adjusting the known dimension in the 'Dimensions' panel
Copy and pasting the scale from the known dimension to the others in the 'Scale' panel
(CtrlA > Applying the scale of the object, again)

EDIT: 2.8 makes one way a bit easier...

Select the known dimension in the 'Scale' panel
Right-click and select 'Copy as Driver'
Right-click in the other scale fields and 'Paste Driver'

Now the known dimension will drive the other 2, when you adjust the known Dimension.


Smoothness is the opposite of roughness. If you have a smoothness map you can use the "Invert" node to plug it into a roughness input. You can find it under (shift+ a) Add -> Color -> Invert.

For example:


A moving object responds very slowly to gravity

Gravity forces

You need to be aware that gravity is a force. This force will be applied to the current linear velocity.

The linear velocity gets increased over time as you add the force again and again, resulting in a larger linear velocity.

Therefore you get:

linear velocity = previous linear velocity + velocity from gravity

which is:

linear velocity = initial velocity + velocity from gravity + velocity from gravity + ...

Situation

I assume you explicitly set the linear velocity on key press.

In this case the final linear velocity will not add up as you already reset it as reaction on the key press.

The result is:

linear velocity = motion velocity + velocity from gravity

The gravity can't simply add up.

Possible Solutions

Motion as force

When you apply the motion as force your motion force will not override the previous linear velocity. It will be added the same way as the gravity force will be added.

This allows smooth but unlimited acceleration.

Servo Control

The motion mode "Servo Control" allows to setup a linear velocity without overriding certain axis. I suggest to enable the [Z] button and leave the limits at 0.0 as they initially are.

This allows the object to fall down without accelerating into the direction you want it to move.


Your issue is indeed caused by the model topology. One option is to use Subsurf modifier to smooth out the mesh. The problem with this approach is that you will loose lowpolyness of this object. Current 735 vs 70,370 verts after 3 level of subdivision (this level reduce artifacts completely).

As an alternative you can just smooth it with Sculpt Smooth brush.

Go to Sculpt Mode.
Select Smooth brush and set Strength to low value - I've used 0.1.
Smooth it!


How to copy pose onto different legs of spider?

In Pose mode select all the bones of the leg you've already animated. In the Dope Sheet enable the Only Show Selected option and copy the keyframes. Select all the bones of another leg, create one keyframe (I don't know why it's necessary though) and in the Dope Sheet paste the keyframes previously copied. As the 000 location of a bone depends on its location set in Edit mode and not on its location in the global space, the second bone won't jump to the first bone location, it will just copy the animation but stays at its current location.


In proportional mode how do I pull together 2 vertices that are facing each other?

Select both vertices and scale along the z axis. So press [S] and then [Z].


When and when not to use subdivsion surfaces?

Sub-d surfaces generate a parametric surface with "infinite" quality that are easy to adjust (shifting holding edges, changing creasing,..), but this is what you pay with:

polygons are subdivided everywhere, even where detail is not needed (this is not true for adaptive subdivision)
most of the times the surface is not perfect:

Adding detail will pull the surface closer to the control mesh altering the original shape. Either the control mesh has to be dense enough to start with, or has to be projected with Shrinkwrap modifier back to the original surface. The first requires too much geometry to comfortably work with, the second does not produce perfect result anyways, it only lessens the issue.

It's always about quality vs. time (both render and production). If you can get away with beveled mesh, that's the method to use. If the mesh is not too close to camera, you cannot tell if it has been beveled or was sub-d modeled. Also the Meshmachine addon makes adjusting bevel easy like changing creasing on sub-d mesh (sometimes you find out you would like to catch more/less light on that edge after-all).

Imho the best hard-surface technique is to use sub-d and Modo's MeshFusion to get single shape with all edges rounded from procedural booleans. This offers great flexibility and exactly accurate results. You can create complex shapes without the complex topology and without the inaccuracy. Drastic adjustments are very easy to make.

Houdini has this addon for soft booleans and Maya has the Hardmesh addon for the same workflow.

There is also a Blender addon in wip state called Bevel after boolean, it's workflow is destructive for now but looks very promising. Another approach in Blender could be to use shader utilizing the Bevel node, however this increases render time significantly.


How do the solid OpenGL lights found in the system preferences work?

All three are directional lights with the direction relative to the view angle (think sun lamps parented to the camera). The direction is controlled via the direction widget:

There are no differences between the three AFAIK, three was just the number chosen to be hardcoded in.

They will add to each other when their areas of illumination overlap.


How do volume shaders interact with light?

Some shaders determine what happens when light rays are reflected or emitted  by the surface of an object.

But what happens to the light when it goes through, or inside the object, is determined by the volume

In blender, volume can be used as part of the material on objects, or for the world.

There are many uses for volume shaders, like creating clouds, smoke or a hazy atmosphere and volumetric lighting or to simulate liquids or glass.
The main concepts to understand are Scattering, Density, Anisotropy and Absorption.
Scattering
The reason we see rays of lights on a dusty, or hazy environment is because there are suspended particles on the air that reflect the light.

Photons are scattered when they collide with particles. When light travels through a volume in a certain direction, photons are deflected in other directions when they collide with particles. This phenomenon is called scattering.  How frequently light is scattered by particles both depends of the particles properties (mainly their size) and their density in the volume (how many particles/molecules are in one unit of volume)

(https://www.scratchapixel.com/lessons/procedural-generation-virtual-worlds/simulating-sky/simulating-colors-of-the-sky)
Density
Determines how thick the volume appears to be. More particles (or a denser environment) will result in less light travelling through, and more light being scattered .
Anisotropy
Controls the look of the scatter effect depending on the direction of the light passing through it.

Positive values let the ray scatter in the direction it is traveling, while negative values cause the ray to scatter opposite of its travel direction.

For positive values, rays mostly get scattered along the direction of the ray that entered the volume. Negative values mostly scatter into the opposite direction. Anisotropy of 0.0 (center) will result in random scatter directions. Depending on the density, rays might not get scattered at all.

(from: https://www.blenderdiplom.com/en/tutorials/all-tutorials/582-cycles-volume-scatter.html)
Absorption
Light is absorbed as it passes through the volume, a black liquid like black ink will absorb all of the light passing through it, for example. A glass or liquid can act as a color filter by absorbing some colors and letting others go through unfiltered.

How to make glass clear at overlapping point

Practical examples:
Light passing through an object with Volume scatter (suspended particles, like smoke, haze, dust, smoke)
Atmospheric lighting in cycles

or light being emitted inside a volume

Fire and smoke:

How to create fire materials using the new Principled Volume node that visually look the same as the "old method" of fire materials?
Volume absorption makes the object transparent but absorbs light which passes through it. It can be used whenever you need a material which absorbs light, such as water or colored glass.
Here's an example, the liquid has no color, but the volume absorption node makes the light that goes through it be red:

fluid in a glass

Further reading:
https://www.scratchapixel.com/lessons/advanced-rendering/volume-rendering-for-artists


Bone position affects mesh but its scale does not

This sounds to me like it's the base/root bone for the position of your model in 3D space. Usually you just leave the bone as it is and the bone which comes after that will be the first bone with the purpose of actually manipulating the mesh. I suspect that on this second bone in the Relations the checkbox for Inherit Scale is ticked off.


Every node has it's own size/location properties that are accessible in the node itself.

import bpy
from mathutils import Vector

imgtx1 = nodes.new('ShaderNodeTexImage')
imgtx2 = nodes.new('ShaderNodeTexImage')

#location
imgtx1.location = Vector((200.0, 400.0))

#or
imgtx2.location.x = 100
imgtx2.location.y = 200

#size
# only width changes are allowed within the values of
# node.bl_width_min and node.bl_width_max
imgtx2.width = 200
imgtx2.width_hidden = 100


Particle rotation normal issue with particle orientation

Some Suggestions

I have experienced some latency and strange behavior with Particles.  Yet I do not want to produce a defect report.  Sometimes I have closed and reopened file.  Move the timeline to frame 0 and switched from Vertex to Face to Volume emission.  I have been very hesitant to inquire about this.  I have felt this latency has suddenly function as expected.  Misleading latency.  Could be interpreted as superstitious.
For the text to mesh.  Edit Mode, Use vertex remove doubles.
Object Mode,  Remesh Modifier and Apply.  So your faces are even size and no tedious hand modeling.
Edit Mode, With the faces from above in Faces Mode.  Select all Faces.  Sort Elements Randomize.
Note my Emission Panel Setting are a bit different than yours.
For the current settings and the simple scaled cube ... a rotation in EDIT mode can rotate the particle.

Image above shows the results of Remesh Modifier with Apply.

Other Edits May Follow.


Joining this way, especially facial work, probably won't serve you well in the long run.  The biggest issue you face, which you have already picked up on, is that it will disturb your topology.  Longer term, the layout of faces and vertices doing it this way won't serve facial animation if you ever want to do anything. Think about smiling, for example.  You would have to fight the direction of those edges to make it turn up.  And in some areas where you need more fine detail, like around the eyes, you won't have it.
For example, look at the meshes here....
https://cgcookie.com/course/mesh-modeling-bootcamp
You can see how the mesh serves the animation (see the face loop video).  Now in your case, it doesn't look like you have to do anything that complicated, but I would recommend following a tutorial like that one.  One, you will probably learn a lot of great new stuff and it will get you ready for what you may want in the future for this project.
Good luck!


Your edges are marked as Sharp. In the "T" menu, go to Shading/UV, select all edges (A), then click Smooth.


Python rendering animation saves frame twice

So if anyone stumbles over this: I did find out what caused it

A bit unintuitively, Blender automatically saves animation but not single frames. I assumed that after I removed the default composite node (after activation nodes) in the Composition View, Blender would not save anything out of my designated output nodes. But well, it still does (but again, only when you render animations).

Edit (27-03-2020): To make it a bit clearer, the problem is that while you can choose not to save the output when rendering frames, Blender WILL saved rendered animations regardless of your dedicated output nodes. The option not to save this animation output (in addition to your output nodes) seems to be missing.

There also doesn't seem an obvious way of preventing Blender from doing so which is quite annoying.


Mute renderer output when calling through script

That is normal output for rendering from the cli and blender doesn't offer an option to reduce it. The way to mute it is to redirect the output for the shell, the method varies depending on the shell used. While redirection is normally used to save output to a file you can use /dev/null as a file to effectively scrap it as it is output.

For sh or bash (I believe also works in windows terminal) -

blender --background --python myscript.py > /dev/null 2>&1

for csh

blender --background --python myscript.py >& /dev/null

The above examples redirect both STDOUT and STDERR to /dev/null, to get more control you can direct only STDOUT to /dev/null (by only adding > /dev/null) which will consume blenders render progress and then print your output to STDERR, which your script can do with print(myoutput, file=sys.stderr)

Another approach is to use a script instead of calling blender directly, this will allow you to catch all of blenders output and only send your info to the terminal. By adding a unique tag you can separate your output from blenders progress report.

from subprocess import check_output

render_progress = check_output(['blender','--background','--python','myscript.py'])

msg = render_progress.split('*#*#*#')[1]

print(msg)

A similar result could also be achieved with a shell script.


bpy.ops.sculpt.brush_stroke Incorrect context when called using the bpy module in headless mode

bpy.context holds some information about the current windows and open views which is needed by bpy.ops.sculpt.brush_stroke and not available in headless mode. Take a look at this example here to see how to use brush_stroke() without headless mode. If you use Blender on a machine which doesn't have a graphical user interface, you could use a virtual frame buffer (see here).


Right click on an object to select it. If you want to select more than one object Shift + Click the additional objects. Pressing G will allow you to then move the object(s). If you want to constrain the movement to an axis press the X, Y or Z key after pressing G.


Curve modifier only follows first Spline of a Curve Object

Yes, this appears to be a limitation of the current Curve Deform modifier. It will only notice the first Spline, The Curve can have multiple segments but as soon as there's a gap then infact the Curve object internally is made from two splines, etc.

If you think this is a bug you can file a bug report to see what the developers say.


Use "Material Utils" addon, bundled with Blender. It can reassign material to all selected objects at once

More details here: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Materials_Utils


Low resolution problem during rendering a particle

Your gas domain needs a higher resolution.


How to convert a mesh model to a curve/surface?

In Blender 2.79 you may consider 'shrink wrapping' a NURBs surface to your mesh.

Add a NURBS Surface into your scene above or beside a meshed object of interest (your ship hull) when in object mode. Select the NURB surface and go into Edit Mode, then subdivide as needed to get a suitable resolution for your needs, and perhaps scaling so that the NURBs surface would fully cover your mesh when shrink wrapped. Return to object mode and apply an object modifier in the deform category called Shrinkwrap. Choose the project option with a suitable direction until you get the NURBs surface to fully project on your mesh.

You could apply the result if needed so that the NURB surface retains the ship hull shape for export by pressing the Apply button in the object modifier interface. You could safely delete the ship mesh and the NURB would retain the hull shape.

- Ed -


Proportional edit mode can't be activated

3D cursor should be aligned with the object you edit.


how to make an object look wet in Eevee? (blender 2.8.3 at least)

For a very simple, fast and easy to do effect, I just had to:

In edit mesh mode I used "face/shade smooth", so no need to subdivide the mesh (wouldnt be enough anyway).
change Roughness to about 0.125, even w/o a texture.

It looks good.
Not sure tho if it could cause trouble later to try to apply other effects (not that I am trying to).
It is only visible in "Viewport shading" "render preview" mode.


Normally you should implement the Operation as a wrapper on existing code. This way you can call an internal method what can return more information. This is also faster as operations creates undo files.

def load_dtx_texture(filepath):
        dtx = DTX(filepath)
        image_name = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(filepath))[0]
        image = bpy.data.images.new(image_name, dtx.width, dtx.height, alpha=True)
        image.pixels[:] = dtx.pixels[:]
        return image

class MyTextureImporter(Operator):
    def execute(self, context):
        load_dtx_texture(self.filepath)
        return {'FINISHED'}

class MyMeshImporter(Operator):
    def execute(self, context):

        ....

        image = load_dtx_texture(self.filepath)

        ....

        return {'FINISHED'}


What FOSS way(s) are out there to convert cdr/dwg/dxf to Blender formats and back?

I'm not sure that you will get an open source tool for these, as all of these formats belong to Software producers (Corel / Autodesk).

I'm not certain about the "cdr" format (and I come from the CAD/CAM world of things).

"dwg" is fairly locked down, although there has been reasonable success at converting them from those other than Autodesk (The kicker here, is that "dwg" is not human readable as a file, and as Autodesk updates the features of this file format every year, and completely changes its version about every three years - it's a little hard to rely on outside of the Autodesk product suites).

"dxf" is still an Autodesk file format, however it is human readable, and it is fairly common for CNC controllers to use them. Blender even has some Add-Ons for it, however the one that comes with is Experimental.

I have personally tested it and it is lacking some enforcement features that would really allow this to be "trusted" for milling operations - I've also included links at the end of this page to reference that standard.

As for other common 3D model file formats in the milling industry:

STL (although you will get triangulated faces - and might not produce the desired resolution) - For Blender there is an import only utility that ships with Blender.
STP, STEP
IGES

Another alternative for you as an open source tool & workflow, would be to use Meshlab in cooperation with Blender, as they both have some DXF & STL output options.

As far as other Add-On resources, you may actually find some things on the web that support this process a little better, you may want to try searching for them, and/or ask about their possible existence on BlenderArtists.org. I hope this answer has pointed you in the right direction.

PDF Link

Web Page Link


Normal Map Works in Eevee But Not in Cycles?

Your scale is a bit crazy, apply it and it will work fine (not sure why it works fine in Eevee though):


Why there's no tool to move origin point in edit mode?

You may not be able to drag an object's origin around in Edit mode, but, at least, with the shipped  '3D Viewport Pie Menus' > 'Origins Pie' add-on activated,you have the options, in Edit mode, to snap the origin of a Mesh to the cursor, or to element selections.
It seems not fully implemented for Curves: it toggles me out of Edit mode if I call 'Origin to Selection', before doing the right thing,  and flat-out refuses, if I call 'Origin to Cursor'.


You can align this pretty well. The picture below is a rough result but it matches somewhat accurately.

From Haunt's trick bag:

Put the camera parallel to the ground. Switch on center guides in the camera settings.

Use your image as background image for the camera and shift it so that the floor rests with the center line.

Place a cube, also parallel to the ground, with its corner on the upper front corner of the roof. Distance doesn't matter too much. Put the cube's origin on this corner.

Rotate the cube around the z axis to roughly fit the angle. you can lock y and x to prevent errors. But the cube probably won't fit right away.

This result means, the focal length is too small since distortion is too strong.

Now adjust the focal length of the camera. I did this by animating it and switching frames with the arrow key. Re-align and re-rotate the cube around z until it matches perfectly.

When cube rotation and focal length match up, parent the camera to the cube and reset the cube's rotation.

Now you can freely move and extrude along the main axes and build your scene.

To match the pillars, finish the roof and place the top of the pillars at the exact height of the roof so it touches the underside in front view. Back in Camera View, move the pillar with the Z-axis excluded: G-SHIFTZ

At last, you need to tilt your camera up so you can make the image smaller and the floor rest at the bottom of your image.


How do I export a simple Blender 3D model, without armature, to Three js?

I'm using Blender 2.73 and three.js (r70)

The io_three folder has to be copied to blender's scripts/addon folder for the "Import-Export: Three.js Format" to appear. But this has probably been figured out by you.

During the export to three.js (.json) format you may want to include a few essential and additional attributes like vertices,faces,colors and materials for your model. By default, the following will be checked.

Depending on the complexity of the image, you may get texture files in addition to the .json files. Use them.

Now you have to basically re-create the model using a scene, camera, renderer and animation loop.

A tutorial with three.js basics --> http://www.kadrmasconcepts.com/blog/2011/06/08/three-js-blender-part-2/


As of now (v2.78) the various simulations engines inside Blender are not cross-connected enough to enable this.

Even if you manage to have rigid bodies be effected by the fluid mesh, the fluid mesh needs to react back to the motion of rigid bodies. So all the elements have to be simulated at the same time.

In volumetric fluid the cells don't move, it only appears the fluid does. The fluid motion is mesh animation with different mesh each animation frame. There is an option to generate flow particles inside the fluid volume, but the results are not accurate and they don't work very well.

If you need fluid physics I suggest look into SPH particles that you can mesh into fluid with CubeSurfer addon (video here).

You can have particles act like rigid bodies and have them effect other rigid bodies. Use this script from liero (source) to copy Particles to Rigid Bodies:

bl_info = {
    "name": "Copy Particles to Rigid Bodies",
    "version": (0, 0, 10),
    'location': 'Tool bar > Physics tab > Particles to Simulation',
    "description": "Transfers dupliobjects from a PS to a Rigid Bodies simulation",
    "category": "Animation",
}

import bpy, random

class Particles_to_Sim(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = 'object.particles_to_simulation'
    bl_label = 'Copy Particles'
    bl_description = 'Transfers dupliobjects from a PS to a Rigid Bodies simulation'
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        obj = bpy.context.object
        return(obj and obj.particle_systems)

    def execute(self, context):
        wm = bpy.context.window_manager
        scn = bpy.context.scene
        fps = scn.render.fps
        obj = bpy.context.object
        set = obj.particle_systems[0].settings
        par = obj.particle_systems[0].particles
        txt = 'Set Particle System dupliobject to a Rigid Body object / group'

        # disable simulation
        scn.rigidbody_world.enabled = False

        # to avoid PS cache troubles
        # obj.particle_systems[0].seed += 1

        # get dupliobject from particles system
        if set.render_type == 'OBJECT':
            duplist = [set.dupli_object]
        elif set.render_type == 'GROUP':
            duplist = set.dupli_group.objects[:]
        else:
            self.report({'ERROR'}, txt)
            return{'FINISHED'}

        # check if dupliobjects are valid
        for d in duplist:
            if not d.rigid_body:
                self.report({'ERROR'}, txt)
                return{'FINISHED'}

        # an Empty as parent allows to move / rotate later
        bpy.ops.object.add(type='EMPTY')
        bpy.context.object.name = 'Bullet Particles'
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        root = scn.objects.active
        delta = obj.location * wm.use_loc
        root.location = delta

        for p in par:
            dup = random.choice(duplist)
            btime = round(p.birth_time, 2)
            scn.frame_set(btime)
            phy = bpy.data.objects.new('particle.000', dup.data)
            scn.objects.link(phy)
            scn.objects.active = phy #..?
            phy.select = True
            phy.rotation_euler = p.rotation.to_euler()
            bpy.ops.rigidbody.objects_add(type='ACTIVE')
            scn.frame_set(scn.frame_current) #..?
            phy.parent = root
            phy.select = False
            sca = [p.size * s for s in dup.scale]

            # copy some rigid body settings
            phy.rigid_body.collision_shape = dup.rigid_body.collision_shape
            phy.rigid_body.restitution = dup.rigid_body.restitution
            phy.rigid_body.linear_damping = dup.rigid_body.linear_damping
            phy.rigid_body.angular_damping = dup.rigid_body.angular_damping
            phy.rigid_body.friction = dup.rigid_body.friction
            phy.rigid_body.mass = dup.rigid_body.mass

            # keyframe unborn particle
            phy.scale = sca
            phy.location = p.location - delta
            phy.rigid_body.kinematic = True
            phy.keyframe_insert('location', frame = btime)
            phy.rigid_body.keyframe_insert('kinematic', frame = btime)

            # keyframe particle pop up
            if not set.show_unborn:
                phy.scale = [0,0,0]
                phy.keyframe_insert('scale', frame = btime - wm.grow_frames)
                phy.scale = sca
                phy.keyframe_insert('scale', frame = btime)

            # keyframe alive particle
            phy.location += p.velocity / fps * wm.vel_mult
            phy.keyframe_insert('location', frame = btime + 1)
            phy.rigid_body.kinematic = False
            phy.rigid_body.keyframe_insert('kinematic', frame = btime + 2)

        # hide emmitter
        obj.hide = obj.hide_render = True
        scn.frame_set(scn.frame_start)
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        scn.objects.active = root
        root.select = True

        # enable simulation
        scn.rigidbody_world.enabled = True

        return{'FINISHED'}

class PanelP2RB(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = 'Particles to Simulation'
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Physics"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        obj = bpy.context.object
        return(obj and obj.particle_systems)

    def draw(self, context):
        wm = bpy.context.window_manager
        scn = bpy.context.scene
        obj = bpy.context.object
        set = obj.particle_systems[0].settings
        layout = self.layout
        layout.operator('object.particles_to_simulation')
        layout.prop(wm, 'use_loc')
        column = layout.column(align=True)
        column.prop(wm, 'vel_mult')
        if not set.show_unborn:
            column.prop(wm, 'grow_frames')
        column.separator()
        column.prop(scn.rigidbody_world, "use_split_impulse")

bpy.types.WindowManager.vel_mult=bpy.props.FloatProperty(name='Speed',
        min=0.01, max=50, default=1, description='Particle speed multiplier')
bpy.types.WindowManager.use_loc=bpy.props.BoolProperty(name='Origin at emiter',
        default=True, description='Place simulation root object at emiter start position '
        ', maybe disable for animated emitters')
bpy.types.WindowManager.grow_frames=bpy.props.IntProperty(name='Grow time',
        min=1, max=50, default=1, description='Frames to scale particles before simulating')

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(Particles_to_Sim)
    bpy.utils.register_class(PanelP2RB)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(Particles_to_Sim)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(PanelP2RB)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    register()

But the problem remains the same. You can have either particles with rigid-body properties, or particles with fluid properties, but not both at same time and not simulated at same time. Same with volumetric mesh fluids. There is no way to have mesh deformation effect rigid body and at the same time be influenced back.


Is it possible to execute copy/paste operations using Blender interface?

Blender can't copy and/or move files.

One way of doing it though is to open the files as a image sequence using the video sequence editor.

Press Add->Image

Select all the images of your Render and add them to the editor.

You can press "b" for box select to make it easier.

If you now use the same render output setting (except fo the output path)
You can animate this and get your images saved in another folder.

How this works:

Blender opens up the file from the path you saved your animation in. You should be able to read it.

By adding a image sequence in the video editor it overlaps the current scene and does not render it. Your images get saved to a different folder.


Export grease pencil lines with a transparent background

Theres an entry in the Context-Render panel named "Film". Open it and
set a hook at "Transparent".


Make a curve, attach empties as hooks to each end of the curve, parent then those hooks/empties to the objects.
That way when the objects move apart the curve will follow and grow.

For the curve to have some thickness, make it 3d and add some bevel.

CYCLES rendering

To create the dotted lines for the curve, use a checker texture to control the transparency on a material .


"Cursor to Selected" Puts 3D Cursor to the World Origin Instead of Center of the Object (STL File)

You need to recalculate your object origin.
select your object and go to object > set origin and pick one you prefer.

most imported assets, export with 0 for object origin to avoid unwanted problems.


How to animate random turbulence on a mesh surface?

You can achieve this effect in many different ways. It will involve:
1) Particles / points that is wiggling around
2) Some kind of edge creations when points are closer together (KDtree).
3) Shaders to make it nice
4) Instancing

But I think the easiest and more elegant is using something like Animation Nodes Add-On or Sverchok.

Search: Plexus effect, Blender, kd-tree.

You might even found plug in that does this already.

Actually Animation Nodes has a template that does this kind of noise "plexus" effect or random points and network connection already. All you need to do is just make it pretty by adjusting the shader, transparency, etc.

And Sverchok has one node that generate KDTree edges...

Enjoy!


You can put planes on a path, and have them emit the bulbs.

Create your wire-curve
Create a plane, assign it Array and Curve modifiers to duplicate it down the curve
Create a bulb, or Collection of bulbs.

Set up a particle system on the array of planes. It's easier to illustrate some example settings than to list them all:

The rendering here is of a Collection of bulb-objects, and 'Count' is used here to strictly alternate them (but you can select randomly, if you prefer). In the render, the emitter is hidden:

With this sort of result:

Note you can sway the bulbs by CtrlT adjusting the Tilt of the curve at various points along it, and/or you can randomize their rotation a little in the Particle system.


I assume you're needing to handle when the player goes off-mesh for something like... elevated platforms or other unreachable areas.

The key is notifying the AI when the player is no longer on the navigation mesh.  Here's one way to go about it:

Duplicate the nav mesh
Set the physics type to static, ghost, invisible, and give it a unique property
Put a downward ray sensor on the player that sends an onmesh/offmesh message to the AI
Have the AI switch states from path following to [insert desired behavior] depending on the message.

Here's an example where the AI runs straight at the player when you leave the navigation mesh.

The main problem with this method is that your AI could get stuck if the player goes offmesh without having line of sight.

For better results, I imagine you will need a very case-specific Python script that manipulates navmesh.findPath
http://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_72_1/bge.types.KX_NavMeshObject.html