Blender Texture Brush Paint Doesn't have Variety/ Falloff

In the video there is Size Pressure for the radius activated. You can see it in the screenshot. It's the little icon behind the radius editbox on the top of the screen. Size Pressure only works with drawing tablets where you can control the pressure with the pen.
Shift+S activates Stabilize Stroke under Stroke settings. It adds a delay between the cursor and the stroke shown by a line. Painting with it feels like dragging a plow and you can draw smoother lines.


How to animate a folding carton using only the vertices in edit mode?

Check this tutorial that uses AnimAll addon? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvRA6z3z5bI


okay so here is the information I can give you:

bmesh.utils.face_join(faces, remove=True) only works (in my tests) if the faces you provide are actually connected by an edge. If there is any other face involved that is not connected, the function will fail. This is the problem you are experiencing

therefore you need to programmatically select linked faces. (see 3.)

The indexes for the vertices are not guaranteed to be the same indexes. So range(4, 7) in your code in bmesh does not necessarily give you the same vertices you added earlier to the mesh.

I suggest, you add the face the same way you add the vertices, to the mesh datablock. Or, better, you should add the vertices to the bmesh like this:

v1 = bm.verts.new((2.0, 2.0, 2.0))
v2 = bm.verts.new((-2.0, 2.0, 2.0))
v3 = bm.verts.new((-2.0, -2.0, 2.0))

new_face = bm.faces.new((v1, v2, v3))

Edit: your new face might actually not share an edge with the existing faces. you should check that probably

Now that you have your face properly set up, you can try to feed linked faces into the bmesh.utils.face_join(linked_faces)

this is a function i wrote to get linked faces:

def get_linked_faces(f):

    if f.tag:
        return []

    f_linked = [f]
    f.tag = True
    # Select edges that link two faces
    edges = [e for e in f.edges if len(e.link_faces) == 2]
    for e in edges:
        faces = [elem for elem in e.link_faces if not elem.tag]

        if not len(faces) == 0:
            for elem in faces:
                f_linked.extend(get_linked_faces(elem))

    return f_linked

you will get an array of linked face groups:

f_link_map = []
for face in bm.faces:
    if not face.tag:
        linked_faces = get_linked_faces(face)
        f_link_map.append(linked_faces)

in the end of your operations it's also good practise to add

bm.free()

i hope that helps you. it took me quite a while to find out what the problem is in your case. also sorry, python formatting is quite an annoyance.


Can some one help me identify these edge lines

Never mind, it's a crease i think, though i don't know if it should be there.


I find sun lamps to never be very realistic in many cases. Try swapping the sun lamp for a large (proportionally) area light. You might have to make it relatively powerful given the distance, but I think it gives a better look:


Simple Triangle Face Messed Up - Attaching to Weird Places?

I had somehow accidentally applied a "Catmull-Clark" modifier to the object. Removing this modifier immediately resolved my issue.


Please take a look as marked with the red arrow;

Edges is seems to be pushed back, Try Alt + Click and bring it forward

Alternatively try, wireframe mode to view the all edges, by hitting Z key in edit mode or selecting Wireframe under viewport shading.


Water simulation does not flow into the bucket

The collision shape of the bucket is probably not set correctly. It needs to be set to "Mesh" and not "Cube", "Convex Hull", or any of the other options.

Seem my answer to What causes this weird collission? for a more elaborate explanation.


How to make an item transparent but keep the shadow of it

Sure. You have two options:
You can disable camera visibility in the properties of the object:

Or you could make a material for it that is mixed with transparent shader with Light Paths node's Is Camera Ray output:

In this case you just need the condition Is Camera Ray to 'show' transparent shader and for the rest you don't even need a shader since it just needs to cast a shadow.
Light paths node tends to slow down render time, so chances are the first method with object properties is going to be faster to render, but you can do more complex stuff with Light Paths node so it's worth knowing about.


How to cut a circular hole into a curvy shape and have a perfectly smooth surface without using the Shrinkwrap technique?

The answer is just to have enough geometry to support the holes. The shrinkwrap modifier has spoiled Blender user for being able to make a smooth surface without thinking much about topology/geometry usually required.


How to find duplicate named vertex groups quickly

When you join two armatures whoose bones share some names, the last selected ("active") armature bones mantain their names while the first selected (which will be merged into the other) will have all duplicated names with an added suffix ".001".

So, you can type ".001" in the outliner filter and you will have a list of all duplicate names.


You don't show the extensions for the file, that would help explain.
Depending on the settings you are using to save, blender renames the previously saved file as .blend1 and the new saved file as .blend.
So the other file is kind of a backup, it is the last saved version of your project.


Set viewport perspective using walkthrough?

To keep the current position when using fly or walk viewport navigation, simply left-click when you are happy with the position. This will keep the current view.
As seen in this image


Take current rotation or coordinates as zero?

You can use the 'Apply' function to apply the current location, rotation or scale to make that the new 'zero' by pressing Ctrl+A and selecting the element you want to apply.


Is it possible to pause and later resume a fluid sim bake?

Two weeks for Fluid bake seems a bit extreme. While there is no way to pause and resume in Blender, have you considered renting a render farm to do it? Render.st now supports baking on their servers.


Sides and volume of object not rendered through glass

This partially looks like a Z-Fighting problem.

Try scaling up your Milk Mesh to where its perimeter edges are in the middle of the glass' inner and outer walls and try again.

To do this:

Select your Milk Mesh.
S.
Shift + Z
Move your mouse until it is lined up >> LMB.

Also, if this is still not working altogether after that:

Select your Milk Mesh.
Go into edit mode (TAB to toggle).
A to select all.
Ctrl + N to recalculate the normals.

Go back into Object mode (TAB to toggle).

Now try rendering again. If it is still not working then hopefully we can get you to post your .blend file

After taking a look at your blend file, here is what I did to get the following results:

1. I applied your Boolean Modifier.

2. I did the scaling step listed above.

3. I modified your glass material to that shown in the result image.

4. I added a Sun Lamp with a Strength of 5.0 (Using Nodes).


Convert Particle System to Mesh (Collection NOT Object)?

Go to Modifiers tab and hit Convert.

After that you can select all created objects CTRL+J to join them as one object and use for Boolean.

EDIT:

To keep objects "above" faces you need to set object origin to bottom face as for example here:


Cutting rectangular hole in a cylinder with subsurf modifier?

You could try to select the edges of you rectangle and increase the Crease Weight in the Properties Panel  N.

If this doesn't work well you could subdivide the cylinder before cutting, this way the influence of the Subsurf Modifier would be more local.


How can I simulate the atmosphere for an animation of sunrise?

If you are talking about Cycles, try using the Sky Texture parameter node in the World settings tab. With it you can create a semi-realistic sky with a sun. The sky and sun reacts in color to the position it is in. You control the position with the shadowed sphere gimbal.

If you need more control, I would probably start trying to connect nodes with color ramps and curves.


Solution:

Put your shadow element over white background and then multiply the colored layer with it. You get dark edge because you have punched a hole into shadow element with your character and thus the pixel values on transparent edges are darker than they should be. But if you merge over white first, edge color gradient is towards white which in multiply op does not change the brightness.

But overall I think your node setup is a bit confusing, you are using alpha as mix factor while to get shadows balanced you should simply multiply shadow element with color and drive the mix with single value. And if you want more control, use gamma etc color correction operation on shadow element, not blending factor.


Creating looping cloth animation for sprite

You can use a similar solution to that described in Create Seamlessly Looping Animated Displacements to fake a fluttering cape that loops seamlessly by using the True Displacement feature along with generated Sine waves to produce the effect of rippling cloth. To add variation we can add in multiple waves of differing strengths, frequencies and direction to produce a more effective motion.

Here's the material :

Note that apart from the nodes at the top right (for the shader) the material essentially consists of three repeated structures - one for each Sine wave - each one consisting of a Mapping node to allow the wave direction to be adjusted, some maths to set the Frequency (the first multiply node), the Sine function to generate the wave, and a Multiply to set the amplitude. The results of the three waves are combined using Add and passed into the Displacement node (set to True Displacement 'experimental' feature set).

Note the nodes to add in an Offset generated from the Value node - this should be varied from 0 to 1.0 over the course of the animation. Ensure the F-Curve is set to Linear interpolation and set its range to one frame longer than the desired animation (so, say, Value varies from 0.0 at frame 1 to 1.0 at frame 51 - and we'll use frames 1 to 50 for the looped animation (since frame 51 should be the same as frame 1)).

To ensure the Sine functions all return to the start point at the end of the animation ensure all of the frequency Multiply nodes are set to a multiple of 2*pi (since there are 2*pi radians in a full cycle).

Note also that the top line of nodes includes a Subtract node based on the Z coordinate for the amplitude multiplier so that the displacement increases from top to bottom of the "cloth".

Here's the final result :


Ok, I've solved the problem myself. The surface mesh has particle system on it (the trees) and I've unchecked the "Show Emitter" function before. Checked it again and now it works like a charm! :)


Noise in thin gaps between meshes in cycles

Try this checkbox, I'm just wondering if it's the smoothing.

Edited to add:  This was not the answer in this case, but shade smooth can produce effects somewhat like this as seen in this example:

The auto-smooth option defines a cutoff where, below this angle, normals will be smoothed between the two faces.  For angles above this threshold the hard edge is retained.


Is there a way to offset the default grid?

N key to open the Properties Display. Change scale to half Blender units. If you want add sub-division of 10 for example for the sub-units. Subdivisions are visible in orthographic mode.


How to set direction of spin tool blender

Simply invert the rotation to -90d in the Transform pane ('T' by default)


How to make ends of a beveled curve sharp?

Note: This wont work when you change the bevel begin and end as required. I will let it be posted as an answer if someone else finds it useful.

Depends on your need... this is one way.

Set the Radius to zero on your tip curve vertex.


The problem was smooth shading, as pointed out by Igor Tatarnikov and Hexbob6.  I needed to apply an edge-split modifier to the problematic geometry to fix the issue.

See Why does the Minecraft-texture have black/dark borders in Cycles?


How to make a skybox move with the player but not jump with them

I found out how to.  I just added a Copy Location object constraint


Can I limit what IK bends? Need bones to only move certain way

Select a bone in an IK armature in Pose Mode. Then click the Bone Properties tab in the Properties window and scroll down to Inverse Kinematics. There you can lock rotation around certain axes or check a box per axis to limit the rotation around this axis, and enter the desired degree values. There are also fields related to Stretch and Stiffness which can help control the movement of the IK armature.

Another thing than might cause similar issues: Normally one bone in the armature has the IK Constraint on it. This constraint targets the Armature and a Bone to follow (hand.L in the picture). Make sure this target bone is not parented to the armature. Select it in Edit Mode, press Alt + P and choose Clear Parent.


Display and set internal operator properties from custom Panel UI

The properties of an operator only exist for the duration of the operator being run. When placing a button in a panel you can include a single property value like this:

row.operator("my.operator").property = 271

When the operator is run by clicking the button it's property will be set to 271.

If you want to pass more than one argument assign the returned instance of OperatorProperties to a variable and modify its attributes:

operator_props = row.operator("my.operator")
operator_props.prop_name1 = 42
operator_props.prop_name2 = "foo"

Another way to have more than one value available that can be set in a panel and used by an operator is to move them to a location that can be accessed by both the panel and the operator.

These could be global module variables that are defined in your script but outside both the panel and operator classes.

You could create a property for the Window Manager. Items stored in the ID dictionary of the Window Manager are not saved to the blend file. You might use a PropertyGroup to easily pack your properties.

bpy.types.WindowManager.my_operator_props = \
    bpy.props.PropertyGroup(MyPropertyGroup)

bpy.context.window_manager.my_operator_props.prop = 42

The operator could retrieve these in its invoke method to initialize its own properties.

If you make your script an addon you could also create a bpy.types.AddonPreferences subclass to hold your settings that can be adjusted in the preferences and also displayed in a panel for easier access.


Add animation to armature which is already animated

Most animation data recorded in blender gets saved as an action, an action can easily be applied to another object, it will work fine as long as the animated data path names match in both objects. For an armature that means an action created with one armature can be applied to another armature and it will move bones that have the same name as the first armature.

For non-matching armatures not all is lost, but could be more work than it's worth. You can add constraints to have a bone follow the motion of another bone. If your animation is simple it may be easier to just animate the new armature, you can use the original as a reference to make it easier.


How to map/project bone coordinates to camera coordinates sytem/view?

So, here it is, was very close to the solution after the last update to the question

for f in frame_numbers:
            scene.frame_set( f )
            for wco in Bones16_WCO:
                print("world Coords:", wco)
                cco = bpy_extras.object_utils.world_to_camera_view(scene, cam, wco)
                x=(round(cco.x * render_size[0]))
                y=(render_size[1]-round(cco.y * render_size[1]))


UV, Modify UV island when modifying mesh

Maybe you're talking about the Correct Face Attributes option which will change the UV as soon as you change the topology:

Also, when you slide an edge, make sure you have the Correct UVs option enabled in the Operator box:


Blender 2.8+, How to execute an operator in another window?

The method from brockman. It shows one of the operator buttons. For the other direction simply use bpy.ops.object.simple_operator(val=math.pi/-2)
import bpy
import math

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.simple_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Object Operator"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    val: bpy.props.FloatProperty()

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

    @classmethod
    def description(cls, context, properties):
        return properties.arg

    def execute(self, context):
        for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
            if area.type == 'IMAGE_EDITOR':
                override = bpy.context.copy()
                override['area'] = area
                bpy.ops.transform.rotate(override, value = self.val)
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    bpy.ops.object.simple_operator(val=math.pi/2)

Buttons:
    #buttons with separated tooltips. Put it in a menu or a panel
    myvar = layout.operator(SimpleOperator.bl_idname, text="Rotate Counter Clockwise").arg = 'Tooltip for Rotate Counter Clockwise'
    myvar.val=math.pi/2

    myvar = layout.operator(SimpleOperator.bl_idname, text="Rotate Clockwise").arg = 'Tooltip for Rotate Clockwise'
    myvar.val=math.pi/-2


How do I use 'Dynamic mesh preview' in Blender 2.81?

It's a bit counter intuitive because there's nothing saying, dynamic mesh preview, instead this feature seems to only work with the grab brush, when you tick the grab active vertex checkbox in the brush settings:


Look up weight painting, its much more intuitive than creating vertex groups. I would recommend DanPro's videos at Youtube. They are based on Rigify, but the weight paint section applies.

Also, there is an issue with importing, since the character's default position is lying in his back. Most 3d programs use the y axis as up/down, but Blender uses Z axis. See if your importer has a setting to make up for that.


why i cant see tracking markers in 3d viewport

On the Display Overlays drop down menu located to the left of the buttons you change Render modes(wireframe, previz and render) you'll find an option to turn on Motion Tracking overlays. Enable that and more options will be available underneath that to suit your preference.


Objects not visible in other frames/window but all the objects are in the library

See if your objects are in different layers, and what layers are visible in those new windows.


Joining multiple objects removing internal geometry

Place the objects together where they will connect

Duplicate the outside object and place it on a different layer for later.

[

Join both meshes

Go into edit mode, select the outer mesh as shown above, and hit ctrl-F.  From the drop-down, choose "Intersect (Boolean)." Now the mesh which would be inside the joined mesh is deleted.

Now bring the other object which you moved to a different layer back, and join it to the other object using the Boolean Modifier, as shown above.

Hope that is the answer you needed!


How to increase/decrease the size of the buttons inside the panels?

Go to the panel you want to change then CTRL and push the MMB . If you move your mouse up, the keys get bigger if you move down the keys get smaller.


Collections are ID objects
In blender any ID object is stored in bpy.data  Objects in bpy.data.objects meshes in bpy.data.meshes collections in bpy.data.collections etc etc
To rename a collection named "Bob" to "Frank"
import bpy

col = bpy.data.collections.get("Bob")
if col:
    col.name = "Frank"

Note if there is already a collection named "Frank" then numbers are appended "Frank.001"... as per unique naming convention.
Related
How to rename objects with python?


Overlapping walls: edited mesh doesn't recalculate array modifier results

The mirror modifier works by taking into account where the geometry is in relation to the object origin (the orange dot at the centre of the model). The array modifier that controls where the walls are depends on the chosen Empty, which is at the same place as the object origin.

All you have to do is select all the geometry in edit mode and move it on the 'Y' axis (green), away from the object origin (by pressing G, Y) and both the Mirror modifier and the Array modifier will update.


Smoke wont update when moving the source or resizing the domain?

There's a known bug with current Blender versions when using a Replay Cache (in the Domain settings, the Cache -> Type -> Replay setting).  See issues 77170 and 76095.
As a quick fix, you can go into the domain settings, and change just about anything (e.g., temporarily change the resolution divisions).  That'll invalidate and regenerate the cache, and your smoke should start generating from the new cube position.
You could also consider switching the cache from Replay to Modular, which gives you Bake and Free buttons to allow more direct control over the cache.


Change the end clip view parameter (N Panel) to something smaller.
before :
after :


Fluid simulation only renders surface leaving cavities against domain

After giving this a bounty because I had the same problem, I found the solution. When you simulate the fluid, the default settings only simulate the surface layer of the liquid. This is called a narrow band, which reduces memory and computational power needed. For some reason, the fluid mesher only meshes the narrow band.
Scroll to the Liquid settings, and set narrow band to 0 to disable it.


Rigged figure in one Blender file - when append to another Blender file, it shows Armature but cannot animate

In the end, it was simply that the Bones box wasn't checked in the Viewport Overlay.
At least it wasn't something truly disastrous... just a simple oversight.


How to render an animation in EEVEE with Anti Aliasing off?

You can disable sample from nearby pixel to turn off anti-aliasing effect in EEVEE. The detail can be found in here.

Properties Panel: Scene → Film → Filter Size: 0.00 px

Once you disable the anti-aliasing, you can now scale up the final render to emphasis on that jagged part.

Compositing method:

Or using a value to change it for ease:


Should an Operator remember its last-used settings when invoked?

1) The dialog is supposed to start with the default settings. A new operator instance is created as you open it, and the default values are taken from the property definitions. The redo panel works differently, it revokes what the last operator did, but keeps the values in the UI and re-executes with new settings.

One could say, the redo panel relates to the last operator, whereas your dialog is part of a new operator.

2) Operators remember their settings to allow for redo / repeat functionality, see Operator Design.

The operator log is available to python:

bpy.context.window_manager.operators

You could read the value used for a translation like Operator.properties.value. But I wouldn't recommend to iterate the log in reverse direction until you find an instance of your operator, just to read the last used settings.

How about this generic solution instead, which stores the settings at python class level:

Use a static variable (dictionary) to store the operator settings on execute(), and load them on invoke() into self.properties. These two methods can be defined together with the static dict as separate class, and be mixed-in into the operator class:

import bpy

class OperatorSettings:

    # Static member
    _settings = {}

    def save_settings(self):
        for d in dir(self.properties):
            if d in {'bl_rna', 'rna_type'}:
                continue
            try:
                self.__class__._settings[d] = self.properties[d]
            except KeyError:
                # catches __doc__ etc.
                continue

    def load_settings(self):
        # what exception could occur here??
        for d in self.__class__._settings:
            self.properties[d] = self.__class__._settings[d]

class DATA_PT_test(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Test Panel"
    bl_space_type = "PROPERTIES"
    bl_region_type = "WINDOW"
    bl_context = "data"

    def draw(self, context):
        self.layout.operator("object.test_invoke")

class OBJECT_OT_test_invoke(bpy.types.Operator, OperatorSettings):
    bl_idname = "object.test_invoke"
    bl_label = "Test"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER'}

    width = bpy.props.IntProperty(name="Width",
            default=10, min=0, max=100)
    height = bpy.props.IntProperty(name="Height",
            default=20, min=0, max=100)

    def execute(self, context):
        self.report({'INFO'}, "w:{}, h:{}".format(self.width, self.height))
        self.save_settings()
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        self.load_settings()
        wm = context.window_manager
        return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Should work for base types (int, float, str), but will probably fail for CollectionProperty as it is. But should be possible if you implement (de-)serialization functions for such propert types.

If you add non-property class variables to the operator, make sure to exclude them in save_settings(), or add a type check for all members - see the bl_rna property for that:

self.properties.bl_rna.properties['...'].type # e.g. 'INT'

BTW: I removed 'UNDO' from bl_options 'cause every change in the redo panel causes a re-execution of the operator. This is not the case for the dialog, the operator is run once on confirmation. Such dialogs should be used if an operator takes a long time to finish, to avoid irresponsive UI. So it's probably not supposed to have the redo functionality enabled.

3) There's another approach:

Register global properties (e.g. on bpy.types.Object or bpy.types.WindowManager) and add them to a panel. Let the user set them before (s)he clicks an Execute button. Pass the global properties to the operator. Global properties are remembered, so it works similar to the redo panel.

Example:

import bpy

class PrintSomeString(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_label = "Print Some String"
    bl_idname = "object.print_some_string"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    print_this = bpy.props.StringProperty(name="Print this")

    def execute(self, context):
        self.report({'INFO'}, self.print_this)
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.prop(context.window_manager, "some_string")

        props = layout.operator(PrintSomeString.bl_idname)
        props.print_this = context.window_manager.some_string

        props = layout.operator(PrintSomeString.bl_idname, text="Print welcome message")
        props.print_this = "Welcome to Blender!"

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.WindowManager.some_string = bpy.props.StringProperty(name="Some String")

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    del bpy.types.WindowManager.some_string

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Paste into Text Editor and Run Script. See Object tab in Properties Editor.


Use the data transfer modifier.

1- Select the cloth

2- Shift select the rig

3- Ctrl-P to ''Set parent with empty groups''

4- Select the cloth Alone

5- Add the ''Data transfer'' modifier (anywhere in the stack) then within the modifier:

6- Source object - Select your Rigged mesh (body)

7- ''Check'' Vertex Data (first in the list below Source object)

8- Select (highlight) Vertex Group(s)

9- Click Apply

10- Forget about most of your nightmares and forget about destructive solutions.

You may have to do some additional  Weight paintings  or Shape keys with drivers for the clothes to react the way you want with some flexion but at least, the clothes won't get through your base character as you move your rig with this method.


How to get the current step number in volume render

In short, no. This isn't currently exposed to the user.

The Transparent Depth value is a count of each transparent object, not distance traveled within it.

There is a Ray Depth output, but it's unclear what that does.

There is a Ray Length output, but it doesn't increase inside a volume. It's measured after the sample is taken.


Blender 2.83 - Hair particles with big diameter showing cuts in strands

See if this works for you, it seems to have fixed the issue in my machine.

Change the Primitive to curve segments in Render Properties > Hair.


Blender only showing a small sliver of objects in 3D View

I fixed this by pressing View>Toggle Quad View, and then Toggling off quad view with the same menu


Blender Cycles is decent at rendering some optical effects.

This is an example of Total-Internal-Refraction simulation. This is done by placing a light source close to one end of some tubes set to a +IOR.

Source File for Fiber Optics

This is an example of (heart) shaped bokeh by placing a cutout in front of the Blender camera. (There is no lens simulation)

Source File for Shaped Bokeh


DoF works only sometimes in blender render

I'm not able to answer your question properly, but I would post some thought about it anyway...maybe they can help.

Z-depth is a pass that stores the height information about what the camera sees.

This pass can be used to fake a lens blur effect. What has the empty's same z-value is in focus, while the other object are blurred. I might be wrong, but I think that the defocus node does not consider wich face is in front of another, but set only the amount of blur by the face z-depth

In the image above, the grey grid is the background. It has no geometry, so it has no-z informations. When the red square is blurred onto, it has no issue, there is nothing behind.

When the red square is upon the white rectangle, which is a face, and has z-info, there is a conflict in the contended area. The border pixel of the square must be blurred, so they should go upon the white square, but at the same time, that pixel should be white and in-focus, so the blur is not visible anymore.

One way to avoid this difference on the border blur is to remove the background from the view by adding a plane behind the white rectangles. You could also achieva a similar result by tweaking z-depth channel with nodes... But while we have obtain a consistent behaviour, I think that is not probably the desired one.

What you probably want is a blurred image upon a not blurred one. One way could be to separate objects in different scene, apply the node only to the geometry you know above and than mix them with alpha over node. But this is not a good solution for an animation.

A second option could be to switch to Cycles render. With his path tracing abilities, you don't need to fake the lens effect, but you can obtain a physically belivable behaviour, at the cost of longer render times.


Why is the boolean modifier creating a glitchy mesh instead of cutting into the object?

If you want to cut something into an object using boolean, the modifier has to be set on the mesh that you want to edit. Not on the stencil object. You also may change the visibility of the scencil object from textured to bounds.

It then should just look like this

Also i recommend using the BoolTool Addon. It is far more user friendly.


okay i found the problem.
in the bottom toolbox "Scaling" was selected for the keyframe insert...


Is it possible to edit 2 nodes at the same time ? In 2 windows


How do I get per-vertex tangents (and bitangents) in my export script?

How do I translate this per-corner/per-face data into per-vertex?

You get the appropriate vertex of the face loop this way:

import bpy

me = bpy.context.active_object.data

for face in me.polygons:
    # face loops and face vertices are in the same order
    for vert_id, loop_id in zip(face.vertices, face.loop_indices):
        # this is the loop:
        me.loops[loop_id]
        # this is the vertex in the corner of the loop:
        me.vertices[vert_id]

  Should I be storing bitangents in my vertex buffer from this stage, or calculate them in the fragment shader?

This depends on what you want to do with your engine. You can trade some memory for faster fragment shader, but you loose a lot of functionality in the future.

If you need any mesh deformations (armature, soft-body,..) you will have to calculate normals, tangents and bitangents on the fly anyway.


In base colour frame change Blackbody node to RGB Input or just disconnect Blackbody and set the colour in MixRGB socket, or set Blackbody to high value.


How do I hide an object from the camera but keep the shadow in Blender Internal?

Well, there seems to be this 'Cast Only' in the object's material settings, which seems to do the trick:

But why use internal, I just wonder...


Rigging: moving the leg moves other parts as well

Ah, this a common issue with automatic weights. It is easily fixable though. Select the armor piece that is moving when it shouldn't be, and enter edit mode. In the properties panel, you should see the Object Data button, which appears as a triangle. In this tab you will see the Vertex Groups menu.

In this menu, select the leg bone in the list that affects the arm to move. Select all the armor mesh in the 3D viewport, then drag the Weight slider all the way down to 0.000. Then click assign. This takes the selected mesh, and sets how much it should move when the leg bone moves (which is now no movement).

Now when the leg bone is moved, the armor piece should not. Repeat this for all occurrences. This should also note that when moved to 1.000 it will move the mesh entirely (and anything in between will move accordingly with the weight value).


Combine mixamo animations with own rig / animation possible?

You have to keyframe the influence of IK (or other controls from your rig- for example, I have my hand and foot bones copy transforms from my respective hand and foot controllers) down to 0 for the Mixamo actions. Just go to every single Mixamo animation at the frame 0 and keyframe every custom influence/bone constraint to 0. You also have to do the reverse for your custom animations.
This approach works perfectly for exporting animations to Unity. I don't know how you're going to be using NLA editor so I can't say if it's going to work for you.


Never mind. I'm using an add-on called "Bake All" and somehow missed the "Auto Save images" tick box.


I see in the file that you have more than one smoke emitting objects, there's a separate cylinder under the wheel

Try to

enable for the domain both "adaptive domain" and "high resolution" (with "show high resolution" to see it in the viewport)

set lower density for all the smoke objects, since they are pretty dense (unapplied screw modifier helps in this respect) in the example below I also changed smoke color to see better...

Since smoke simulation is a difficult topic in itself, I suggest to experiment with a simpler geometry before, and since your scene has complex geometry, you could also "fake" the result emitting smoke from a simpler (but invisible) object, in the end.

Remember, CG you see in the movies is very much about cheating...


Where have my objects camara and lights gone?

You have set a view clipping border. This allows you to only see a portion of the scene for clarity, as this cuts through objects it is also good for seeing inside an object.

The small dark area you have is the visible area in the viewport, as none of your objects are in there, you don't see anything.

You set the clipping border with ⎇ AltB and drag a rectangle over the area you want to see. Pressing ⎇ AltB again will clear it.

Also if you turn off the Load UI option when opening the blend file, the existing border will not be loaded.


Using a computer on another side of the planet

TL;DR Don't connect your friend's computer directly to the internet. Please use the service provided by a render farm instead.

It is possible to establish a connection between two computer that are in separate private networks through the internet. However, creating a render farm like this is technically difficult and not advisable for lay-person.

In order to understand why this not easy to achieve, consider the following problems:

Network address translation

Your computer at home is in a private network. In order to communicate with other computers on the internet you need a public IP address. Your internet service provider likely only provides a single public IP address for you and your family. Since you want to connect more than one device at a time to the internet, your router supports Network Address Translation (NAT). Essentially the NAT remembers when you start a connection from a computer from inside your local network to another computer on the internet, e.g. a webserver. When the webserver sends a reply, the NAT knows which computer should get the response. In your example both your computers are behind a NAT, which make establishing a connection difficult. This issue is known as the NAT traversal problem. While not impossible to solve, this may require a proxy/relay server besides your two computers.

Dynamic IP address

Internet service providers (ISP) may assign the public IP addresses to their customers dynamically. This means that the public IP address of your router and that of your friends changes after some some time. Once in a while you need to re-establish the connection. This may affect long running render jobs.

Network Security

Depending on how you intend to establish the connection between the two computers, there may be severe security implications for your friend's computer and network. Please do not persuade your friend to let you configure their firewall, install a remote desktop solution or VPN software on their router. While there may be tempting solutions for your idea, improper configuration could leave your friend's network open to attacks from the internet. Bots regularly scan IP address ranges for vulnerable or badly configured services that respond to their probing requests. Your friend also shouldn't simply hand you the access to their network, since they should be able to decide who gets access and who doesn't. If for some reason they no longer agree with your remote rendering arrangement, they should be able to block your access. Authentication and authorization is required, since only people that have the permission by your friend should be able to render on their computer.

Free Software

A software that solves all the listed problems would have to exist. Based on your comments it would also have to be easy to install and configure. Reading between the lines, it should ideally be free of charge.

Unfortunately trade-offs are necessary, since there is no free software/service that would simply allow to use your friend's computer for rendering. The following solutions exist:

Blender Cloud and Flamenco

Flamenco is an open source software for creating your own render farm. The problem is that setting this up yourself requires a significant know-how and since your two computers are in separate private networks you would also need to rent and host your own server. Luckily this service is already provided by the Blender Cloud and they have a Blender add-on that is easy to install. The downside is that Blender Cloud requires a paid subscription. The upside is that you also get access to tutorials, 3D assets from the open movies, HDRI, textures, characters and more.

Render Farm

Instead of using your friend's computer at all, you can also use the service provided by a render farm. The following render farms support Blender.

RenderStreet
blendergrid
Sheep IT (free, but everybody contributes their resources for rendering)

Note that I haven't used any of these render farms, therefore I can't say anything about the quality/value of the provided service.


Texture look lighter in material view than in render view

The material view does not use the lighting in the scene, instead it is lit by the three Solid OpenGL lights that can be set up in the User Preferences: File / User Preferences / System Preferences / Solid OpenGL lights. You can adjust those lights and save the settings, but do not forget, those settings are global, they apply for all blends.

The render view is of cource better than the material view: The former is doing a real render, while the latter approximates it with fast real-time OpenGL rendering.

About tips and tricks for rendering: Those are too broad for Blender Stack Exchange, but you can easily google for Belnder texturing tutorial, and watch some. Blender Guru and Blender Cookie are good sources for tutorials. You can also search for tutorials on BlenderNation.


If the albedo are reasonable, the problem is your light transport in your AR API. Specifically, it is literally too dark in the estimated scene. Unsurprisingly, given how janky AR is.


What's the best way to do clothing in character modelling?

All the ways are valid, but there are advantages/disadvantages to all of them and so it depends which is the best one:

Simulating the cloth on a rigged character:

Blender cloth physics are slow (single-threaded) and do not offer the best settings, so it's best to do the simulations in some other software (Qualoth, Marvelous Designer, etc.) and bring them back into Blender as .mdd files. In Blender there is also a way to transfer a low-resolution simulation to a higher-resolution mesh to save some time: Ways to have one mesh control another?
Such simulation results in accurate wrinkles, accurate cloth fit and deformations. The fabric slides over the character etc. When the animation is fast, there can be artifacts - so the animation has to be sometimes composed with multiple of simulations and some cleanup work. It is time demanding.
The animator has usually poor preview of how the clothing behaves, and he must wait for it ()

Modeling the cloth separately and rigging it:

The cloth can be relatively fast sculpted, and rigged with extra set of bones so the cloth can slide over the character. The animator has full control over the cloth bones (some can be rigged with constrains), which is both advantage and disadvantage, as he has more work with it. The more bones the cloth has, the better deformations can be achieved, but small wrinkles and a look of a simulation is very hard to do even with blend-shapes.

Separately rigged cloth with parts simulated (both upper methods combined).

Probably the best option to leave some artistic control and have the fidelity of simulation. Also most game engines are only simulating parts of clothing.

Rigging the cloth with the character armature:

The worst deformations, as the cloth cannot slide much over the character. There can be some basic wrinkling with corrective shape-keys (and sliding), so the animation doesn't look like a character completely made out of play dough.
This is fastest to setup, but usually usable only on background characters. Also good for fast iterative approach to setup the final animation and then refine the cloth and deformations with shape-keys exactly for that animation and camera angle.


Locked / unmovable vertices in part of a Combined Mesh

Thanks to moonboots I found out that it can be solved by entering edit mode and then unhiding everything.


[4-lattice layer; for making a gradient lattice, for instance, I like to add another 4-layer with smaller porosities or windows. The first 4-layer 88 or 99 then the second 4-layer 5*5. The shared image would be the second 4-layer]


parrent armature bone to 3 vertecies of a different mesh

To strictly answer the question: Easiest thing is to parent an empty to the mesh vertices, then copy transforms from that empty.  (And probably limit scale, because vertex triangle parenting leaves you with some pretty gigantic skew problems that you probably don't want...)
Alternative, without any empty, is to copy location from a vertex group marked vertex, damped track another vertex group marked vertex, and then locked track a third vertex group marked vertex.  (Copy transform or rotation from vertices is never a good idea.)
However, most of the time people ask this question or one like it, they're trying to do something impossible.  They're trying to acquire this position and then use it to further deform the same mesh that they're "parented" to.  You can't do that-- it's a dependency loop.  The mesh depends on the bone which depends on the mesh which depends on....  The end goal of people asking this may be achievable, but this particular technique is not a means of achieving it (and the technique that works is likely to be complicated, possibly involving dummy copies of the mesh.)


How to create a "Rounded Grids" effect like in MagicaVoxel

UPDATED ANSWER 1

Yeah, it might be a bug, you could report it into the bug tracker.

Here's the best workaround I could find:

set the influence to diffuse
create a second uv map (a quick Lightmap Pack should be fine)
bake into a uv-mapped texture (Bake mode: Textures)
now you can use this texture (in Cycles as well!) for the bumps

Cycles renders look better anyway, so you could consider this an improvement instead of a sad workaround :)

ANOTHER, EVEN BETTER, WAY TO DO IT

An hour later an even faster method occurred to me, where you don't need Blender Internal at all:

export-import as ply (the smaller faces in ply correspond to the original "grid")
add a second uv map.
when you actually unwrap it, just select "Reset" - this assigns the full UV space to each face
use your original bump texture, which will be assigned to each grid face

ORIGINAL ANSWER

The simplest way to do this is to add the Bevel Modifier to all of your cubes - you have a lot of control without messing with materials and textures. Increase the segments of the beveling until you are happy with the result.

The following question can help you to do this efficiently: Add the Same Modifier to Multiple Objects at Once?

If the OBJ format export-import creates triangles from the quads, then the bevel modifier could have problems. See this for converting back to quads: How do I convert a triangle mesh to a quads one?


How to make good camera tracking markers

For proper tracking you need to find features that are distinct and recognizable form frame to frame. Usually points with contrast or a color that is different than the background.

A white wall with no such features will not give you much information for proper reconstruction so you will need to add something that the trackers can follow.

When you shoot the scene you can add pieces of color tape or things you can stick to the wall that will provide a good reference (like putty, or color plastiline dots). Depending on the size of the frame usually pieces of tape cut in triangles work well. Sometimes a piece of tape in the form of an X will work.
Others use color stickers or pieces of paper with black and white patterns.

When you make a shot meant for motion tracking try to avoid sudden moves that might distort the image or create motion blur. Or that will make the trackers less readable.

Keep in mind that for a proper reconstruction you need at least 8 tracking points. But don't limit yourself to only that number, have more just in case the tracking process fails.


How to flood fill a color in texture paint?

You can use the recently added Fill brush:


From what I understand, yes it would make sense to make the gizmo appear when you press G, R or S, but it doesn't seem to be the case, you need to click on the Move, Rotate and Scale button on the Tools panel, which is a bit tedious.

One thing that is useful to know though is that you can choose to have the gizmo always displayed when you click on the gizmo's options on the bottom. In my opinion it's much more natural to keep it anytime like it was the case in 2.7.


How do I prevent hair flickering in Cycles?

It could be your UV coordinates, which are "generated". Since they are probably calculated in world coordinates, moving the object also moves the UV coordinates. It could cause shimmering "noise".

I don't think your node set up is what you want really. You should use the hair BSDF shader. Put 2 nodes using hair BSDF, one for reflection (hair color), and one for transmission (hair translucency). Mix between them and you are done. Consider creating manual UV coordinates and not using generated ones.

Good luck!


That fail line at the top looks like an audio interface issue. Your audio interface is set to 48000Hz and Blender is trying to startup with 44100Hz. Try setting your audio interface to 44100Hz. Don't know if it will stop the crash, but at least that issue will be solved.

By what you are describing and the access violation error tho it sounds like you got a faulty RAM chip.

Remove RAM chips one at a time until the crash stops then you will know which RAM stick is bad.

AND if you haven't, download and update your graphic card drivers from the manufacturers website. You said you reinstalled drivers, but maybe you are installing old drivers from a CD or letting windows handle it. Get the most up to date drivers straight from the source.

If none of that works you could try creating a new windows user account, log in as the new user and install blender. Incase of your user profile being jacked up.


If you want to avoid smoothing caused by interpolation, set the Texture Interpolation to closest instead of linear. Then both results in Eevee and Cycles look very similar.

Eevee

Cycles

Eevee

Cycles


If you don't want to substitute both bones with just one:

Select the Yellow bone and under Inverse Kinematics enable all the locks:

Now it's a rigid piece:


Vertex snapping does not work in the same object

You have proportional editing enabled. Snapping to self does not work with it.


How to make a somewhat stiff pneumatic tube?

You can use a cloth simulation for this.

Scene Setup
To begin with, I added a simple bezier curve, then edited and beveled it. I then converted it to a mesh object, and built the other simple cuboid mesh object you can see in the pictures.
Next, go into edit mode on the curve (now a mesh), and select the ending vertices to setup a vertex group to pin them. Add a new vertex group and assign these verts to it.

Parent the curve to the cuboid mesh (that means the curve mesh becomes the child of the other), and add a cloth simulation in the physics tab of the properties panel.
Note: All of the above should be trivial, but if you need more information, let me know.
Cloth Simulation Setup

I disabled everything in the cloth settings except for pinned vertex group.

I started with the "leather" preset, as I felt that was closest to the desired physics settings.

The quality steps is not super important to keep high, but will be noticeable if set low (e.g., below 5).

If the speed multiplier is set lower, things look more like string (they move faster); if set high, it looks more like the desired tubing (I used a value of 3 in the demo).

Make sure to setup the vertex group for pinned verts by enabling "pinning" and then setup a vertex group (assign the vertices that are on the edges of the tube) for it.

I decreased the "bending" relative to the leather preset. As the tooltip says, it basically sets the size of the waves: higher is bigger, lower is smaller.

I increased the "structural" stiffness factor because the tubing has a more stiff overall stiffness than leather would.

I decreased the "spring" damping from 25 to 15, because I wanted a bit more jiggling when I did the shake animation.

I increased the "air" damping to slow it down further. This seems to behave similarly to the "multiplier" setting, although the values are entirely different.


How to make a lamp light only one object in the scene

You will have to create separate layers for each render,
elements that you want to be effected separately put them in different collection.

Basically you can create the whole scene and then duplicate the render layer, in one of them disable the view layer (right-click on the collection --> View Layer --> Disable from View Layer.)
Do the opposite on the other render layer.

Use the compositor to stitch the images together using Alpha Over node.

attaching a .blend file for you to review.


How to complete a circular shape using an array modifier?

With the help of circular array addon download here

New link for addon

Go to edit mode and with the shift select remove the top and bottom circles. Press P and select Selection

Now in the object mode select the mesh and Press Ctrl+A
and select rotation & Scale press F6 and click location tick mark.

Now in the modifiers tab add 8 count and press search bar and type Circle Array and your done.


Camera "Jitter" When circling around object

Sounds like there is a conflict, two constraints fighting for control of the camera - the path and the empty.  To avoid this, have an empty follow the path, and parent the cam to the empty.  This will allow independent use of the cam, i.e. 'look at', rotation, etc.

I've used an invisible cube here to illustrate.


Smooth bevel edges using non destructing Boolean

To bevel all sharp edges, you can use the Bevel modifier.

Put Bevel Modifier after the Boolean Modifier and set Limit Method > Angle
To avoid 'tight geometry' that would limit the Bevel, you can create a large N-Gon using the Decimate Modifier (try different delimit methods).
Make sure no tight geometry on your mesh limits the Bevel (in your case there is some)


To solve this problem you can copy the blender shortcut and go hit the WindowsKey+R or search for Run. Next type %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs and hit enter. Then a folder will open, just paste the shortcut into the folder and it should show up in your search bar.
Next time please ask questions as such on https://superuser.com/


This can be solved with some (for my level) clever use of the math node:

A quick rundown of what the nodes do in this case:

Subtract: calculates the difference between your desired minimum and maximum value. In other words, the maximum amount of variation that could happen, in this case 2500.

Multiply: Multiplies the previous calculated value with the output from the Random value of the Object Info node, which lies between 0 and 1. This creates a random value between, in this case, 0 and 2500.

Add: Adds the randomly generated value of the Multiply node to the mininum value you have specified, resulting in a random number which cannot go below your desired minimum or above your desired maximum.

In this case what happens is:
3000 + value between 0 and 2500 = value between 3000 and 5500

(No i do not know the proper math symbols, but I think you get the point.)

Result:


Snapping Bones to Bones (In Other Armature)

I was looking for the same. I saw the UE folks do this and was trying to do it without their plugin. They show it happening here... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9cTXzO8wq0&list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaxZDBH0-8A_C3OyhyLsJcE&index=4&ab_channel=UnrealEngine)
It's a bit tricky since your cursor has to be in the correct place...

In object mode, select both armatures.
Go into 'Edit mode'
Enable 'Vertex Snapping' (refer to image below to see where to find the button to open the menu. (enable rotation/scale here if you'd like to)
Select the bone head/tail that you would like to move to the other.
** Tricky Part here: Ensure your cursor is inside (or near) the source head/tail before you start transforming.
Press G to transform the position of the tail/head.
Moving close to the other armature tail/head should snap to it.

** Also note that, if you move the tail of one bone, you will likely have to move the head of it's connected bone too.


Editable objects shown as on every layer - how did that happen?

Any object can be on any amount of layers at the same time by pressing Shift when selecting the layers in the popup that appears after pressing M in Object Mode.

Just press M again to move the object to the desired layer.


Huge gap between curve and mesh when using array modifier

Found the answer!
So I'm not entirely sure what this is, but if I switched back to edit more, there is a sort of "base mesh" which wasn't really the mesh but some object, and if I moved it along the correct axis, the "array modified" mesh moved accordingly until it fit properly around the curve.


Select an object by LMB over it and then press numpad period to focus on it.

But if you want to focus on an emtpy space and pivot around it, LMB to move the 3D cursor to that spot then  Alt home


eGPU Vega 56 (Blackmagic) Mac + cycles problem

You won't be able to use GPU rendering with Cycles. Apple has deprecated OpenCL for macOS 10.14 and future releases. Since macOS won't have any updates for the OpenCL compiler and therefore no bug fixes, Blender 2.80 will no longer use OpenCL on macOS. This was originally announced on the bf-committers mailing list by Sergey Sharybin. It is also documented in the manual and the release notes of Blender 2.80.

AMD OpenCL
OpenCL is supported for GPU rendering with AMD graphics cards. Blender Supports graphics cards with GCN generation 2 and above. To make sure your GPU is supported, see the list of GCN generations with the GCN generation and supported graphics cards.
AMD OpenCL GPU rendering is supported on Windows and Linux, but not on macOS.

A third-party render engine that supports the Metal API may work, for instance AMD Radeon™ ProRender.


There is a plugin called Cube-Surfer that can do that. It voxels your particles and creates a mesh-skin around them.

Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz2VivdcfQs

Download:
http://pyroevil.com/cubesurfer-addon-download/


Use a MAPPING vector node to manipulate the values that are fed to it with an INPUT UV MAP node, and in the SCALE fields change the scale of the texture: the values act as multipliers.
Below is the actual node setup.


How do I make the f curve 'non-existent', and have simple on/off motions?

What you're looking for is the 'Constant' interpolation type for F-curves.

In the Graph Editor, select the F-curve that you don't want to have 'linear' interpolation by selecting the curve points and then choose Key> Interpolation Mode> Constant:


In video editing, how to fade scenes out, with next starting immediately after?

How-to

To acheive this effect, use the Gamma Cross Effect Strip.

To begin overlap your videos, so it looks like this(it does not matter which channel the videos are on).
Next, select which video you want to fade out with the RMB(usually the first video). Then, using SHIFT RMB select the next video.
Finally press SHIFT A and navigate to Effect Strips... and click on Gamma Cross. The cross duration should be the length of the overlapping videos. You cannot change the length of the gamma cross directly, you must increase or decrease how much the videos overlap.

Reasoning

If the videos are directly next to each other, but not overlapping, you can't have the second video start right away because how can the second video start if the first video is still going and they are not overlapping?

Reference : https://www.blender.org/manual/editors/sequencer/strips/types/effects/cross.html

Reference Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_PRXTZoHtI&list=PLjyuVPBuorqIhlqZtoIvnAVQ3x18sNev4&index=14

Audio Reference Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beWj_mw0M-I

AudioAs for the audio do as RobinsSea suggested in his answer, insert keyframes along the timeline concerning the audio level of the videos. To do this select the audio track and navigate to the properties panel "N". Make sure your timeline is where you want the audio to begin fading out! Over in the properties panel go to the volume area and hover your mouse over the volume. Then press "i" to insert keyframe. Do the same to complete the fade out, just set the volume to 0 and the timeline where you wish to end.

Happy Blendering!


Will a book for blender 2.62 work for blender 2.78?

Most of the features and commands in 2.62 remain the same in 2.78.  None of the most important features have changed drastically.  Even for the features that have changed, the concepts and terminology used in the book should still be the same, and you should be able to find the new way to do it by a quick internet search.

Blender is remarkable in how backwards compatible it is, and how it doesn't change artists' workflow drastically from release to release.  The last major change was between 2.4 and 2.5, and even so almost all of the features remained close to the same from the artist's perspective.

I remember learning Blender 2.6 with a book intended for 2.49.  99% of the book still worked in the new version, and for the remaining 1% I could Google the new way to do it.


I worked it out! Just had to divide the overall length by 2
Example: 24.200 m divide that by 2 = 12.100 m is where I needed to place a plane


VSE: No Audio In Rendered File, Mixdown causes crash

After a few comments on the above post and some experimentation, it seems not all distro packages are created equal. If you're experiencing some weird bugs like this, try downloading a tarball right from Blender.org.


How can i make something Invisible if the Light is on?

First click the camera icon in the outliner to be active or inactive then you insert a keyframe .You insert a keyframe by pressing the letter I while the mouse is over the camera icon.  Or context click to see the menu appear with a choice insert keyframe.

I suggest inserting at least 3 keyframes and traveling through the frames to see how the setting is maintained until the next keyframe.  Look at the camera icon and see if it become bright and then less bright or muted while moving the frame position.

The render visibility camera icon and the 3D View visibility eye icon near the arrow. Yellow indicates a keyframe. Image above.

Please know that for options and convenience the camera render icon does [not] affect the 3D View.  You must press render to see the difference.  You can animate 3D View visibility of the [Person] with the 3D View eye icon in the outliner near the camera icon... and that is your choice. It may be useful to know where the [Person] is, even if [ Person] is not rendered on some frame. Blender can suit your needs. You may also keyframe the 3D View drawing of  the [Person] as wire or bounds. The hint of the [Person] may be valuable.

You might even consider changing layer visibility to avoid clutter.
If you have a simple still shot ... you can move objects off the viewable area. This idea is for simple circumstances only.


I've found the problem, it had to do with the Mirror modifier. When I created the object I deleted 1 face of the object that was on the inside. Which is why it was empty instead of filling.


What does "Couldn't initialize streams, probably unsupported codec combination" mean?

The error means that Blender can't read or write to a specific codec. Speculation based on the screen shot:

your on windows, and probably don't have Ogg/Vorbis codecs installed on your system. You can download the OpenCodecs package, which will allow you to play ogg/ogv (vorbis/theora) on windows.

It's generally included in Linux/osx, so your probably getting examples from someone who works in one of those systems.

Or you could try setting the output of your render to a codec you probably already have like Mpeg, h.264, or Windows Media?


Shading artifacts caused by boolean modifier

Try selecting your entire mesh in edit mode and hit [ctrl + n] to recalculate normals. This should fix the shading..


I'm aware I'm necroin' a 8 month post, but I'd like to aid any others who happen to come across this post in desperation for a solution.

It took a whole day of investigating and cross-referencing, but another Blender user back in 2010 managed this effect rather well.

https://youtu.be/cEnZe0TIkLM

Now, the barely readable 480p is not very helpful for those unfamiliar with Blender Render style or Nodes period, such as myself, but I managed to crack the code.

And for those who are working in Cycles (as Eevee is a blast to edit this with). I apologize for the slightly clumped Cycle composition, I hope the colors help.

Tips:

You can't use this method to "pre-program" how shadows fall, so this won't be great for 3D/live rotation video games. This is a clean up method for specific scenes, if not specific frames in general. You will need to reset the Vertex color base every time you want your shadows to start fresh for changes.

Materials and Render do not match up, do not trust 'em for switchin back n forth.

You can change the black Vertex Paint base to a lighter shade, you just need to adjust the ColorRamps to match.

It's ok if your first strokes are jagged, Blur/Blend in the Vertex Paint will smooth it out, although it'll take some back and forth to get the contour you want.

Depending on your mesh, there will inevitably be spots that don't catch the shader right and cannot be vertex painted. Change your lighting or change your positioning. All tools have limits :(

Oh yeah, and this shader HATES subtle lights. I thought the shader was broken until I shoved a spot at full power in my meshs's skull. Just be aware, if your model in Materials or Render looks like a silhouette colored by your shadow, you either need to shove a light in it's noggin or you didn't connect the Vertex information right.

VERTEX COLOR TO IMAGE

ATTRIBUTE COLOR TO IMAGE

why am I screaming? Because it took me 15 minutes to figure that out just because someone thought it'd be a good idea to have the node threads use gradients in the video's version of BL. (Also I'm dumb)

Hope this helps any others


How do I prevent cloth from exploding and growing continuously? (Blender 2.91)

In order to make it work I switched the order of the modifiers in the modifiers tab, and put the empty modifier, which I used to attack the mesh to my object, on top and the cloth modifier on the bottom. I also used subdivisions rather than using loop cuts on my mesh.


Why does this boolean intersection create holes?

I have similar issues with blender 2.8 boolean modifier, but "fast carve" free add_on works fine so far. It could be a glitch in controls / settings for me, not sure anyone will have another answer unless your file is wrong some how.


instead of using the "video editor", you can use the "compositor". Add the image sequence, still image or video, then add a node "transform" and there, you set the X and Y values and scale. You can keyframe those values, so they can be animated, so the part of the image will gradually be cropped and zoomed (as you change the scale values) to fill the area you want.


How to connect a circle to a grid with even topology?

You are merging 2 meshes with very different densities. The circle is about double the subdivision compared to the rest. Your topology should look similar to this:

the 5 green polys (the E pole vertex in the middle) are responsible for the change in edge flow
both marked edgeloops should be nice and even to produce edges with consistent curvature alongside them

The goal is to use control mesh with the least amount of 3 or 5 edged vertices. Topology like that minimizes any surface artifacts (shows mostly on reflections)

I got this piece by using Shrinkwrap Modifier and projecting the geometry onto a subdivided cylinder.

To project 2 circles with Shrinkwrap onto a sphere is bit trickier, because we get this overlap, that has to be cleaned:

It's more elegant to prepare both pieces beforehand, so they line up together nicely when projected (the math of projecting onto sphere is not that complicated here). We cut each piece with an ellipse that has same width as the sphere, but has the minor axis of √2/2 (about 0.707):

I used the ellipse just as a guide to move and align vertices, but you can use Booleans to be exact.

Now it's easy to join the meshes perfectly:

If this is a mesh not to be sub-surfed, but a high-density game model, you can proceed the same way with a lower-poly control mesh and then apply the subsurface modifier at a level you like.

High-poly meshes are easy to sculpt or generate procedurally, but pain to model with precision.

If you keep a mesh with same size polygons, the smooth shading on it will also produce nice results, long triangles or long polygons do not behave nice. Your mesh from your question is very close to that state, with some cleanup I would call it fine. If you decide to use a normal map baked from the subsurfed high-poly, then even this stops being a problem, because the normals are now defined in a texture and you can have a mesh that looks however you like. The only concern becomes to have enough geometry so the silhouette looks clean.


How to separate hollow cylinder into rectangular cubes

You can achieve a more flexible result by using array modeifier. You can easily change all the pieces by editing one piece and changing the gap between pieces as you like.

First apply the solidify modifier and the create a piece of cube by deleting the rest as

After doing this add faces on two sides of the mesh by selecting edges around and pressing F

Now you have one piece of rectangle. Now add an empty -> Plain axes in the origin of the mesh. This empty will be used to rotate the array around the centre to create a perfect circle. So add it in the origin of the mesh that we have now.

Now add an array modifier in the mesh and uncheck object offset and check on relative offset and select the empty we created in object offset field. this will let us use empty we just created to control the mesh.

Now we can rotate the empty on Z axis to create as much gapping as we want between the pieces. You can play with the array count to create a cylinder like mesh with the rectangles.enter image description here

You can apply the array modifier and change individual pieces if that is what you want. I hope this helps.


I think I found the problem.
Look at the diagonal in the picture, I just output the z pass, and get the high frequencies with substracting a blurry pass. Then the power node just reveals the error for the eye.

The effect is only with Blender internal, and not with cycles. There is an error along the edge which is the diagonal of the plane.
Now I'm not sure why it does this, but I think it's probably something like as said above:
"Just an hypothesis, if the errors match the diagonal of the plane: maybe with floating point errors, the rays pass through the plane (on the edge), and then with sampling (I don't know if the z pass has several samples, for anti-aliasing, need to check somewhere) it mixes the good value with the 'inf' value, producing the errors."
Maybe the devs are aware of the problem, I don't know.
[EDIT]
In addition here is the same pass with cycles:

The z error is not here, AND the z seems to be correctly computed. I mean by this that with blender internal z is the distance between the geometry and the plane which crosses the camera, but in cycles z seems to be the distance between the geometry and the point from which the ray is casted (so on the sensor).
So here with cycles Z depends on Y and X, not only Y.
Also the white borders you see on both images are due to the blur combine with the power node, it's a normal effect.


The wall is not following the terrain because the curve has an unapplied modifier on it. You need to apply the shrinkwrap modifier to it. After you apply it the wall will follow the path like you expect.


I imported a Genesis2 model from DAZ studio to Blender (2.7) using .dae format, and encountered this too.
Some parts of the eye need to be textured (e.g. iris, pupils and sclera) as you would expect, but the cornea (The outer jelly-like part) must obviously be transparent just like a real eye. The material it has by default makes it white which is what you encountered.

So - select the eye objects (LEye and REye) in the Object tree (usually top right of the screen)
In the materials properties for that object you should see a list of pre-assigned materials.
For both 'Cornea' and 'Eye Reflection' assign a new Glass material since they must be transparent so you can see the rest of the eye.
For that glass material I would change the IOR to about 1.1 so that it's really transparent.
Not sure if this is the right approach but it worked for me :)


After I updated to Blender 2.81.1, It fixed the problem. Earlier I was using 2.80.


Tracking and Monitoring Shortcuts, Commands and Actions

In 2.7x the Object mode Tools include a History panel and clicking Undo History or History gives you the list of all your actions, with the most recent one on top. It doesn't include shortcuts. If you want a separate History editor you must wait for the next versions.


How to prevent particles (hair) from being affected from wind

In your Particle Settings under  Field Weights you can control influences of forces.

Set Wind to 0.


There are several things you could do to make finding flipped normals easier.

Turn on Backface Culling. In edit mode press N then scroll down to the Shading section. Check the box for Backface Culling. That will make all the backs of the faces clear, so if one is backwards it will be completely transparent.
Turn on the display of normals. In edit mode press N then scroll down to the Mesh Display section. Check the box for Display face normals. That will show little lines pointing out from each face, if a face is backwards then the line will point in.

You can make a simple cycles material to show the backwards faces. The two Diffuse shaders are used to get the red and white colors. The Geometry node has a backfacing socket, that plugged in to the mix shader makes the difference between the correct faces and the backwards faces.

This will display flipped faces as red while in material view, but if your graphics card does not support GLSL you will have to be in Rendered view.


graph editor - moving key up and down on particular frame

If you grab the keyframe and click X or Y, it will only move horizontally or vertically, like an object in the 3D view.


How was that render created with Tissue add-on?

As the developer of the add-on (zompa84) briefely explains in this post on Blender Artist, he generated the mesh...

  ... with displace and decimate (with vertex group for get density variation)...

So, starting from a heavily subdivided Icosphere basemesh, you could enter weight paint mode and start tracing some cliffs upon the surface. Notice how the decimate and the displace modifier are both using the weight/vertex group we are paintinting on.

Then he continue by using...

  .... Dual Mesh for create polygonal texture based on tris/quad faces

At this point we should apply the modifiers in order to run the Dual mesh coommand you can find in the lower section of the add-on panel. An explanation of what a dual mesh exactly is, from the same author, can be found here.

Last step is to use...

  ...other modifiers, like wireframe

To achieve a variance between the thickness of the hole, I suggest to feed the Wireframe modifier with the vrtex group as we already did in the previous part. I also disjoined all the faces by selecting all the edges and runnning the "edges split" command you can find in the edge menu (Ctrl+e) to achieve a multiple-ring look.


How to toggle visibilty of Subsurf modifier using shortcut?

Toggle Simplify on/off

One easy approach is creating a shortcut for Simplify, which also affects subdivision display settings in the 3D View. The following Add-on  creates the shortcut to toggle Simplify on/off automatically. Once the Add-on is enabled, you can press ShiftQ:

Click to enlarge

Download the latest version
Extract the archive
Install blender-toggle-simplify.py via File > User Preferences > Add-ons
Change the key configuration according your personal preference

Toggle Subsurf Visibility on/off

Another approach would be to toggle the visibility  of the objects subsurf modifier(s) on and off. Depending on the current state, the following Add-on allows to press ShiftQ to enable/disable the Eye property of all subsurf modifiers. If no subsurf modifier is present, a new one will be created:

Click to enlarge

Download the latest version
Extract the archive
Install blender-subsurf-visibility-toggle.py via File > User Preferences > Add-ons
Change the key configuration according your personal preference


Group Nodes

Those "custom nodes" are really called Group Nodes.  You can create a group node by selecting a group of nodes and hitting Ctrl+G.  You can see and edit the contents of a group node by selecting it and pressing Tab.  Once created, you can add a group node with the Shift+A add menu under Group.

When editing a group node there are two special nodes. The Group Input node allows you to pass information into the group node by plugging its sockets into nodes in the group.  Likewise, the Group Output node allows information to pass out of the group node by plugging nodes in the group into its sockets.

You can quickly add inputs and outputs by plugging other nodes into the the empty circle node sockets at the bottom of the input/output nodes.

Click to enlarge.  This is a simple fake light group node I have created.

You can also add inputs and outputs (as well as remove them, change their names, default values, adjust minimum and maximum values, and change their order) in the N toolbar under the Interface rollout.

Group nodes are very useful for grouping specific node trees you use a lot.  I have created a few node groups I use frequently and included them in the startup file (with fake users) so I have them whenever I need to use them in any project.


No vertex groups on vertices on evaluated object

Preserve all layers

By default it preserve all layers is turned off when using to_mesh on the evaluated object, set it to True

Test in console, Default cube, default subsurf modifier, 3 vertex groups. (All verts in vgroup 0, a single in groups 1 and 2)

>>> dg = C.evaluated_depsgraph_get()
>>> me = C.object.data
>>> len(me.vertices)
8

>>> for v in me.vertices:
...     [g.group for g in v.groups]
...
[0]
[0]
[0]
[1, 0]
[0]
[0]
[0]
[2, 0]

Using Object.evaluated_get

>>> o = C.object.evaluated_get(dg)
>>> eme = o.to_mesh(preserve_all_data_layers=True, depsgraph=dg)
>>> for v in eme.vertices:
...     [g.group for g in v.groups]
...
[0]
[0]
[0]
[1, 0]
[0]
[0]
[0]
[2, 0]
[0]
[0]
[1, 0]
[0, 1]
[0]
[2, 0, 1]
[0, 2]
[0]
[0, 2]
[0]
[0]
[0]
[1, 0]
[2, 1, 0]
[2, 0]
[0]
[0]
[1, 0, 2]

Bmesh from object

The method outlined here also preserves the vertex groups.

get the evaluated bmesh, write to a mesh, count the verts and check for vert group assignments.. (prob should have put vert index and  weight test in too, but you get the gist)

>>> bm = bmesh.new()
>>> bm.from_object(C.object, dg)
>>> bm.to_mesh(D.meshes.new("Test"))
>>> len(D.meshes["Test"].vertices)
26

>>> for v in D.meshes["Test"].vertices:
...     [g.group for g in v.groups]
...
[0]
[0]
[0]
[1, 0]
[0]
[0]
[0]
[2, 0]
[0]
[0]
[1, 0]
[0, 1]
[0]
[2, 0, 1]
[0, 2]
[0]
[0, 2]
[0]
[0]
[0]
[1, 0]
[2, 1, 0]
[2, 0]
[0]
[0]
[1, 0, 2]


how do you reduce the space between cuts when you use 'loop cut and slide'?

Hover over the mesh, wait for the loop cut appear on the mesh, click once and now you may move the mouse to move the loop cut to left, right, up or down as you like.

If you want to looking for multiple loop cuts at once, you may scroll the mouse wheel to have mulitple loops like this


Visible seams after using Subdivision Surface

I downloaded the file and found the issue. You had extruded faces but not moved them after that, and then having tiny redundant geometry and holes that messed with the subdivision surface modifier.

What I did to fix the problem was to select everything, press W and select "Remove Doubles", which should fix your issue.


Blend mode to achieve "Glow" effect with texture painting from Image Editor (No Compositor)

That result you show is not from a simple blend mode in photoshop, that is from a specific set of steps to render that effect.
To replicate, it is the same process first that you have in photoshop when painting into an image or layer of 0 alpha - you have to first paint pixels into the image/layer to be able to have affect them with subsequent blend mode actions. Paint your shape first with your brush set to Mix mode, and if need be use a low strength brush. Set your blend mode to Add and turn on pressure sensitivity, then paint carefully at center with your brush radius encompassing all of your available pixels. Reduce radius and repeat in center of the shape. Soft Light blend mode can also help a little, depending on what color you use to react to the original pixels. Don't forget to also see if using the Blur or Smear tools can help here as well depending on your desired output.
Main take away you need to understand is that you can't make pixels 'glow' if they aren't pixels of solid color yet. Photoshop and all other image editors like Blender also work this way with painting tools.


The BVH itself doesn't contain any animation for the root joint __0. The root name doesn't match the naming of the other joints (I would have expected Ryan_Hips). This is a problem with your exporter, not with Blender.


Is render time, openGL, or memory affected whether a modifier is applied or not?

Viewport speed: The final displayed mesh is the same regardless of if you apply the modifier or not. Applying it will cost you the ability to have different settings for viewport and render for modifiers that do that, such as on the subsurf modifier.

Scene update (opening file, changing frames, etc): Applying bakes in the modifier, so it doesn't need to be calculated on updates anymore. So that's faster.

Render: modifiers "apply" on the fly when exporting meshes for render, so no  difference. Same output mesh is rendered either way. The modifiers have to all be updated during this process though, so applying will speed render startup a bit.

So generally, not much performance reason to apply a modifier. The two main situations where you'd apply it are when you need to do something on the modifier output directly (like applying mirror modifier before rigging), or when a modifier is taking a long time to calculate and losing non-destructive editing of the modifier is preferable to waiting that out.


Blender 2.8 rig not fully working on 2.79

Blender files created with newer versions of Blender should not be opened in older versions of Blender, especially with Blender 2.8 as a lot has changed. What I recommend is having more than one version of Blender installed and/or exporting models and using them in your scenes with newer or older versions of Blender (use DAE format, etc.).


"Better" is not the question... it is the wrong word to use, as it depends.

4 GPUs will render 4 tiles simultaneously so rendering an image will be faster than with 2.

Memory: GPUs cannot share vRAM, once you hit the limit the GPU will fail.

So it all depends on the complexity of the scene you are trying to render, or how long can you wait for the render to be done.


It should have something to do with face normal.Add a solidify modifier, it will solve the problem.


Texture files zig-zag across object, never looks like it should

Convert your curves into a mesh in object mode ALT+C, but I would make a copy of curved mesh just in case. Then I would go to the topview in edit mode and U --> project from view. Then you can add your texture to the mesh


Is the Blender GUI package available for other programs?

Short answer: no

...at least nobody has split off Blender's user interface from the application so that it can be used separately, and doing this isn't trivial.

Even if such a task were undertaken, keeping the code-bases in sync would be a challenge, so I think there is not much interest to do this. Besides, there are many UI toolkits out there.

There is GHOST (General Handy Operating System Toolkit), which can be used outside of Blender, but it's very low level, only providing window access, mouse, keyboard, ndof and tablet events from X11/MS-Windows/OS X.
It doesn't actually draw anything; buttons or text, for example, are handled by Blender's own code. So likely GHOST isn't what you want.

Rather then using GHOST you're better off using a general purpose library such as SDL, Allegro, GLFW, or SFML. Some of these libraries have Python wrappers; for example, PyGame is a popular SDL wrapper.

And, as for UI toolkits, there are too many to mention here; there are enough resources online.
See: Q What are the best cross platform widget toolkits?

On the other hand, nothing is stopping your from making a fork of Blenders UI for your own purposes, its just likely you'll end up having to spend time refactoring code out for your own use where you might better spend time working on the application its self.


Problem with a simple physic simulation using python scripting

Make the collision shape of your bowl mesh

The default collision shape for rigid bodies is convex hull.  This is why there is an "invisible wall" at the concavity of the bowl

In your script you need to set it to mesh.
Here is py console code that changes this property for the context object

 C.object.rigid_body.collision_shape = 'MESH'

do same for bowl in your script.

rigid bodies: sphere not falling into the "box"

Rigid body physics problem even a torus acts like it had no hole in it


I found it!

AltC Mesh from Curve/Meta/Surf/Text


How can I add mass to part of a cloth simulation?

Ive spoken briefly with some devs who suggested this feature could be added to the cloth sim again in future. In the meantime, I did manage to create a cheat that works well enough in this case:

Added additional geometry at or near the bottom of the hem. In this case more or less a dense bunch of 10 loops within a couple of centimetres;
Assign these additional verts to a vertex group, and excluded them from self-collision, and;
assigned them a new transparent shader so they don't show in renders.

This made a distinct difference and got basically the result I wanted. Still hoping for a more elegant solution via the devs though, as there are multiple cases where vertex weighting mass would have application.
Hard to post animated visual results yet, but feel free to keep an eye on @LMODanimation or thelovemeordie.com if you want to see more soon.
Thanks for looking!


uncheck "custom profile" (just below "grid fill / cutoff")
(or create a round custom profile ;))


How can I soften my Volumetric Light borders?

Here I used a Gradient Texture node set to Quadratic sphere to generate the tapering of the volume. The ColorRamp node is used to control the strength, note the the right edge of the color ramp has a value of 1 (the center of the volume) and the left edge is 0 (no strength on the outer edges of the volume).
click for full size


Object attribute error when assigning material

In the example given, you're expecting an active object, (bpy.context.object) when there are none.

Its possible to have selected objects, but nothing active.

In this case you don't even need to have an active object. You can assign the material directly to the object, there is no need to selecting it before:

# create the material
mat = bpy.data.materials.new('MaterialName')
mat.diffuse_color = (1.0,0.0,1.0)
mat.diffuse_shader = 'LAMBERT'
mat.diffuse_intensity = 1.0

# get the object
obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

# get the material
mat = bpy.data.materials['MaterialName']

# assign material to object
obj.data.materials.append(mat)

# or overwrite an existing material slot via index operator
obj.data.materials[0] = mat


The texture is only half of the sphere. If you UV-unwrap the half UV sphere by "project from view", e.g. in X direction, it could work, because the texture is itself projected from view - but I haven't tried myself.


(Game Engine) How to restrict character movement to linear paths

Have you tried incrementing motion? You might try using a setup like the one in the image below to increment the motion of the characters (Although you can set the frequency extremely low) and then adding a non-rendering collision mesh ahead of the character that rotates them when they're about to hit a wall.

Just set the motion value to the number of blender units per grid space on your map, an that should do it!

Hopefully this helps! Just a quick aside, if the motion winds up being too fast, try halfing the value for motion. That'll slow it down while still preserving the grid-based motion.


One way could be use a cloth simulation, very rough example:

which  works like:

here after adding a subsurf (as last modifier)


How would I be able to set one vertices the same y axis as another one?

I assume "setting a vertex to the same y axis as another vertex" means that they both should be on the same line perpendicular to Y axis.
Snapping
You can use snapping for that. You can constrain to the other two axis by pressing shift+x,y or z so that transform operations are constrained to a plane and then hold ctrl while in transform operation to temporarily enable snapping. Your snapping settings need to be set to Vertex mode:

Scaling
You can also use scaling to 0 while using active element as transform pivot and constraining to the XZ axis plane the same way as with snapping. The active vertex will be the one you select the last.


Where can I find a website that provides free textures

http://www.textures.com/
You just need to create an acount, and you will be able to download 15 free textures per day


Aligning shapes and quantizing distances between shapes on the plane grid?

Location and Rotation values for the selected object are editable in the Properties panel :

Clic on the + on the top right corner of your 3D view or press N.

You can specify the rotation and translation for x,y,z values.

Tip: you can edit x,y,z values at once. This can be done by clicking on one button and dragging vertically to include buttons above/below. After the vertical motion you can drag from side to side (for finer control use Alt or Ctrl while dragging the mouse), or release the LMB to type in a value and Return.

Number Buttons reference in Blender Manual


How to fix when faces points on a disc are out of sync?

It usually means that it’s number of vertices is different compared to the other faces.
If you add a vertex to one edge (i.e by subdividing the edge), the dot in the centre of the face moves towards the extra vertex.

I don’t know what you did because I can’t look at your file, but you should know that in no way does this affect your final render… these dots only show in Edit Mode.

First you need to have a look at it in ‘Vertex select’ mode by selecting the first (left) of the three buttons on the header, directly below the 3D Viewport.

If you see an extra vertex (like the one highlighted on the right of my original screen shot), then select it and delete (press X, and choose ‘Dissolve Vertices’).

Another way to check is to select the face while in ‘Face select’ mode…

and check the number of Verts indicated in the top header, above the 3D Viewport.

The one I made has one extra vertex so it tells me: Verts:4/24 (4 Verts selected out of a total of 24 on the object. It should, of course, have only 3, being a triangle.


Shearing only working on the 2 axis I don't want

By default the Shear tool axis will be the one of the view, for example if the view is this one, the X and Y axis will be these ones:

So if you keep the default Orientation and shear on the X axis, the view will be the axis and the vertices will move along the view's X axis, like this:

But you can also choose to shear on the Global, Local axis, etc... You need to choose the Orientation in the Operator box. In this box, the Axis will be the rotation pivot axis, the Axis Ortho will be the axis along which the vertices move, the Offset will be the amount of units they move.

In your case you can either put your view on top (7) and shear on the Y axis, or stay in user view, press ShiftCtrlAltS to shear, press Enter right away, and in the Operator box, switch the Orientation to Global, Axis > Z, Axis Ortho > Y.


My glass(diamond) is reflecting nature, not transparent

You are using a glossy shader, which acts like metal.  I suggest using a glossy shader added to a refraction shader, it provides pretty good results.


You have to specify which 3D view you want to access.

For example, this will iterate through all the areas in the current screen and set any 3D views to rendered shading:

import bpy

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas: # iterate through areas in current screen
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for space in area.spaces: # iterate through spaces in current VIEW_3D area
            if space.type == 'VIEW_3D': # check if space is a 3D view
                space.viewport_shade = 'RENDERED' # set the viewport shading to rendered

Update

Alternatively, you could also do the following:

import bpy

area = next(area for area in bpy.context.screen.areas if area.type == 'VIEW_3D')
space = next(space for space in area.spaces if space.type == 'VIEW_3D')
space.viewport_shade = 'RENDERED'  # set the viewport shading

Instead of looping through the whole bpy.context.screen.areas, etc, the next() method returns area as soon as it finds area.type == 'VIEW_3D'. This doesn't really affect performance for this example but it's a better way of achieving the same result. Plus, it looks neater!


Just place the unwanted faces outside the UV map before baking.


What are the benefits to using procedural textures VS image textures?

Theoretically, a procedural texture is better, in the same way a vector graphic is better then a raster image. It has infinite resolution, can cover any surface, doesn't require UV mapping, and can be created without getting of your chair or browsing on the web.

However, an image texture has advantages to. Sometimes a scene, using image textures, can be finished in under an hour, vs a procedural workflow might take days. Image textures also, if sourced from a photograph, can have natural and realistic qualities a procedural textures might not (unless the procedural texture is really really really good).

In list form:

Procedural Textures Pros:

Infinite resolution
Increased editability
Can be applied to nearly any model without repetition or resolution issues.

Image Textures Pros:

Fast to create download.
Good results easily


How can I apply the same change to multiple channels in Graph Editor?

Use the eye icon to show only the curves you want to edit, then select all keyframes you want to edit, then press G to move, G X to move along time, G Y to move along values, S X to scale along time, S Y to scale along values. Confirm with enter or Left click.

You can set the pivot point of scaling with the usual pivot icon (Bounding box, individual center or 2D cursor).


"Symmetrize armature" flips bones vertically

It turned out that I had an unapplied rotation to the mesh. For reference for anyone with a similar problem: go to object mode, select everything, ctrl+A, apply everything. Then make sure any of your mirror effects still work because now the axis may have changed. Symmetrize works now.


As mentioned in the previous post, ideally you fix the input file because for whatever reasons the object was imaged under poor lighting conditions or the software used might have a mode to adjust the brightness of the polygon/vertex colours and it was set to darken.

Regaining the fidelty / vibrance of the colours is tricky and the techniques used might produce unsatisfactory results.

One fast way for Blender Internal is to use Ambient Occlusion and Environment Lighting, from the World tab. You'll  notice the result is a little blown out (as if over exposed) if the guy is wearing a light pink shirt.

Blender Internal's materials also has a Nodes mode, and it supports Vertex Colors. It allows you to adjust the colours with an RGB Curve too, and you don't need to enable Ambient Occlusion or environment lighting

Or maybe a hue / saturation node:

Anything you do to make it render nicely won't be a true representation of what the output will look like if it's 3d printed (I think you are doing this to render product shots?) -- unless you somehow modify the Vertex Color map.

You can bake to Vertex Colors using the Bake feature set to 'Full Render'. I would create another Vertex Color layer and set that to active in the panel, before doing a bake. This will prevent bake from over-riding your original.

bake:


Workflow for adding audio to scenes and combining them in the VSE

This is a bit silly, but you can create additional scenes and put the scene's camera output in 0001.Video, and then combine that with 0001's sequencer output in 0001.Comp. The latter can then be inserted into your master as one clip that's easy to edit. The render start/ends are a bit difficult to manage between the three of them, but if you overshoot them all (I'm not sure if render times are affected here) and just plan to edit them down in the master's VSE, it's a pretty usable workflow.
e: the 0001.Comp scene can be avoided by using meta clips, but that requires renaming the clip for clarity.


You have two points to refine.
1. Use the emission shader.
2. add transparent input.

1. Use the Emission Shader

I should have noticed this earlier but when you bake with combine, the shader to use is usually an emission shader.

2. Add transparent input

As far as I know, combine baking does not support transparent shader. Your node system requires the transparent nodes that you already use.


Render layers

All your object are in the first and second render layer (you can see that by giving a look at the orange dots in the quick layer bar), while the only layer that will be rendered is the third (see the cursor location in the image below).

Is not immediately understandable, but the boxes under the Layer section in the Render Layer panel control the layers that should be rendered.

You just have to enable the layers with your objects. Shift+click the first and the second box.


I think those are fireflies.  They are a common problem with blender.  Here's a link to help you reduce them.

https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/7-ways-get-rid-fireflies?rq=fireflies