Why am I getting these folding glitches when rigging my model?

After looking at your file, it turns out that the vertex weights have some irregularities. This was quick and easy to fix by simply starting the skinning process over again.
Start by going into in Object Mode, select the armature, then click on the Object Data tab in the Properties Panel, go to the Skeleton section, and press the Rest Position button to get your armature into its default pose. We do this to prepare it for proper skinning.
Next, while still in Object Mode, click on the Modifiers tab, find the armature modifier and press the Apply button, thereby essentially getting rid of it. Now click on the Object Data tab in the Properties Panel, and go to the Vertex Weights section. There is a little dark button with a white "down" arrow on it, to the far right of this section. Click on it, and from the popup menu, choose to Delete All Groups.
Next, while still in Object Mode, select the character mesh, then Shift + select the armature, then press Ctrl + p, and from the Parent menu, choose Armature Deform With Automatic Weights. Finally, go back to the Skeleton section and press the Pose Position button to re-enable your rig for posing and animation. If you forget this step, you won't be able to move your rig, and your animation won't even play.
I find that this works. More tweaks may be needed, though. One thought I had was that as clean as your mesh is, the topology might be able to be improved somewhat. But overall, the mesh isn't bad. With a bit of weight painting, it may be good enough like it is.


Render with alpha channel for transparency for After Effects?

Never render to video, always render to image sequence (PNG or EXR) and enable alpha output.

Rendering to video will mean you'll lose your entire render should your system crash or you have a power outage.

Sequences allow you to carry on rendering from where you were when the power went out or your system crashed.

Sequences in PNG allow for greater compatibility between programs, but the alpha channel will be unassociated alpha, so you won't be able to create objects that are luminous and transparent. EXR can do associated alpha correctly and you can keep your data linear. The EXR multilayer format will allow for the inclusion of compositing layers information, light, depth channels, diffuse, specular, transmission, etc.


To import OBJ (object) use this

To Export 3DS use this

Follow the image guide as far as I understand is what you are looking for, if you think you need more information be more specific in your question


Save animation clips and play them for a time

Go to the NLA Editor, with your object or armature selected.  You will find your object listed along with its animation on the left.  Click the double arrow button, and the animation is converted into a strip on the timeline shown in the NLA editor.  Now you can duplicate the strip to continue the animation in any part of the timeline!


How can i get the change in value of an objects rotation between the current and previous frame, and use it in a driver

import bpy, copy

#get current frame
thisFrame = bpy.context.scene.frame_current

#go back one frame
bpy.context.scene.frame_set(thisFrame -1)

#get z rotation of current object
print ("rotation on frame")
print (bpy.context.scene.frame_current)
print (bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[2])

#set custom property ZrotLast to be the same as z rotation
last =copy.copy( bpy.context.object.rotation_euler)
bpy.context.object["ZrotLast"] = last[2]

#go back to current frame
bpy.context.scene.frame_set(thisFrame)

#set custom property ZrotCurrent to be the same as z rotation
bpy.context.object["ZrotCurrent"] = bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[2]

#get z rotation of current object
print ("rotation on frame")
print (bpy.context.scene.frame_current)
print (bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[2])

#work out difference between current and last frame
bpy.context.object["ZrotDelta"] = bpy.context.object["ZrotCurrent"] - bpy.context.object["ZrotLast"]

Please note DO NOT try changing bpy.context.scene.frame_current to change the frame! it will appear to work but it seems like nothing in the frame updates so you will get the same rotation information as the original frame, use bpy.context.scene.frame_set and it works correctly.


Python Script: Set Value for Modifier manually

Invoke a popup dialog.

Test script to invoke a properties dialog to "manually" type in a thickness value, then add and apply a thickness modifier to a mesh object.  I've called the operator "Add Thickness", hit F3 to bring up search.

Notice I've used the API method ob.modifiers.new(name, type) rather than the add modifier operator.

import bpy

class WM_OT_myop(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "wm.myop"
    bl_label = "Add thickness"
    # annotations in 2.8
    thickness : bpy.props.FloatProperty(name="Thickness", default=0.4)

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.active_object is not None and context.object.type == 'MESH')

    def execute(self, context):
        ob = context.object
        m = ob.modifiers.new("Solidify", type='SOLIDIFY')
        m.thickness = self.thickness
        m.use_even_offset = True
        m.use_quality_normals = True
        m.use_rim = True
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA', modifier=m.name)
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # test call
    bpy.ops.wm.myop('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

Note this example is for 2.8.  To make it for prior, change

thickness : bpy.props.FloatProperty(name="Thickness", default=0.4)

to

thickness = bpy.props.FloatProperty(name="Thickness", default=0.4)

and use the spacebar to bring up the operator search.

Note: I could have simply pasted your code into the execute method of the operator. This is why (on my soapbox) I strongly recommend using a context variable, eg a line context = bpy.context at the top of test code (not to paste if context is defined elsewhere). For example if the context is overridden in an operator the context passed to execute may not be bpy.context


Height Blend Mask and Vertex color based Material Blending Shader

To add the height map on your blending gradient (I use vertex colour, but you can also take a UV channel or just use a image texture), you just need to run it through a Smoothstep node like so:

The vertex colour is the gradient, I run it through a smooth step node. Edge 0 is the height map, edge 1 controls how harsh/soft the blending is. Use the result as the factor to blend your shaders or textures!

This is loosely based of of the documentation for Unity Shaderforge an old unity plugin: http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=Advanced_Texture_Splatting


When bone moves across the y-axis, move bone2 across the x-axis

You'd have to use constraints but i haven't actually used those yet. It gives the same effect as paint weights on a model but for bones.


How do I remove an exact rectangle from the rounded face of a hollow cylinder object?

You can use the boolean / difference no problem.

It is such a simple shape that it will still be good topology after you apply the modifier. The reason that you get the hollow cube thingey, is that the two shape have exactly the same height. Weird stuff comes from 3D programs that will have to calculate difference between 2 items witch are the same location. If you scale the box on positive Z just a bit, it will work perfectly.

Usually I don't like boolean because it trashes the topology, but in this case it fits the part!


Can't make BGE to accept the string "\n" string in exptression to activate an actuator

CR is no printable character. The keyboard logger does not do anything with it (tested in 2.76).

Better use the  (measured by a separate keyboard sensor) as event to evaluate whatever the keyboard logging already measured.

Typically on such an event, you:

evaluate whatever was entered
clear the log buffer
process whatever the evaluation resulted on

This also means you do not need to evaluate while entering the string (but you still can).

Here is a demo:

logging: logs printable keyboard input to property "Text"

evaluate: input confirmed on CR

help: evaluate if "help" was entered

toggle help: send a message "toggle help" when help was requested

reset input: clears the input field, allowing to enter a new phrase

I hope it helps


How to set collision bounds for Armature object

Don't apply the physic to your character's Armature directly as Armatures aren't recognized as an Actual model object but only an unrendered object that makes your character's body part move (rig), If you want to make your character collide with other thing, try this:

Make sure that your char's armature and it's model have No Collision physic assigned.
Then, make a Cube and resize it to match with your Armature/Character's size and Place it around your character, You can rename the Cube as "charbound" if you want.
Set the Cube's physic to Dynamic and then Set the Cube as parent of your Armature (not the entire character).
Move the basic movement control in Logic Bricks from your char's Armature to the Cube, but don't move the Action or other Actuator more than Motion Actuator.
And at last, make the Cube Invisible (physic tab > enable Invisible button) and Box Collision Bound.

If you want to make him "jump", try using Servo Control Motion Actuator in Game Logic. by adding Z-axis Linear Velocity, Enabled Z-axis Movement and Adjust Z-axis Max/Min speed value then it would jump, make sure you activate the Collision Bounds on Physic Tab. Alternatively, you can use Character Motion Actuator and Enable "Jump" toggle there (Actually, I've never tried it. But I'm sure it can).


Why I don't have Toon Shader in blender2.91

The Toon shader is not available on Eevee.
Switch to the cycles render engine.


How can I create a realistic stack of pages?

You can uv unwrap your volume/pad from the top with project from view, so that you will have the yellow colors bleeding along the sides as in your reference, as long as you keep the UV inside the texture. Then you can use a normal input combined to a dot node to separate the vertical sides and the top face and use this output to create a variation of the texture (adding some vertically compressed noise for page division, multiplied to the image texture and a bit desaturated). This texture is then plugged into a basic diff+glossy mixed shader. Big advantages here, you are sure the colors on the side are in good position regards to the top, and you can change the whole thing by tuning the uv or changing the texture !

Blend is here


How can I replace all selected object's mesh?

You can change the mesh assigned to an object in the data tab:

In order to change more objects you could use python:
import bpy

# the name of the mesh to copy to all selected objects
mesh = bpy.data.meshes["Cube"]

for o in bpy.data.objects:
    if o.select:
        o.data = mesh

For 2.8+
Python: Selecting object by name in 2.8
if o.select_get():
    o.data = mesh


Retaining a mesh while deleting vertexes

There is a dissolve tool that you may find helpful. When you hit X while selecting an edge loop it will give you the option to dissolve edges, which will remove the vertices but keep the faces as close to intact as possible.


The problem is that there are 2 UV maps ("UV_Channel_1" and "...2") but they are empty (or broken).

To fix them delete the UV maps and create new UV maps for all parts of the couch.
With the mouse in the 3D viewport and in Edit Mode, press U for unwrap menu, then select "Smart UV Project" from the menu, and you will have a working UV map.

(The bottom part of the couch needs some manual adjustments in the UV editor or scaling.)
Last but not least:
In the render settings, under Color Management, set View Transform to "Filmic" to get a natural look of the light/exposure. You can set the Look to "High contrast" if you want to have richer colors.
(And of course, add some more lights to your scene ;-)


Why does my video editing playback slow down after a short amount of time?

Seems likely you just run out of the buffer. Because the video frame is actually quite HUGE to computer system, the buffer of the video will be constraint at certain amount for sure to ensure available RAM.

The default setting amount can be find in Setting > System > Memory & Limit: Sequencer Cache Limit

You should tune this amount depend on your RAM size. Yeah, 1024 MB is quite small for general 3D modeling available computer which usually got 16 GB or higher RAM.


Blender alpha/transparent texture only works when selected

select your object then Go to the object panel in the properties and check Transparency in Display tab for all object you want to see transparent. make sure that you have the correct object selected.


Blender 2.8 Moving Vertices With G + X, Y, or Z Generates Odd Angles

it is because you've set your transform orientations to Normals. Try settings it back to global. That should fix it


Your update function is not defined before you try to use it. You need to put it before the property group class.

Here is a simple add-on that is very similar to your original:

bl_info = {
    "name": "Addon",
    "author": "Your Name Here",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 75, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Tools > Test Text",
    "description": "Description",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Temp",
    }

import bpy
from bpy.props import StringProperty, BoolProperty
from bpy.types import PropertyGroup, Panel, Scene
from bpy.utils import register_class, unregister_class

def UpdatedFunction(self, context):
    print("In update func...")
    return

class MyPropertyGroup(PropertyGroup):
    custom_String = StringProperty(name ="My String")
    custom_Boolean = BoolProperty(update = UpdatedFunction)

class LayoutPanel(Panel):
    bl_label = "Test Text"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "TOOLS"
    bl_category = "Tools"  # puts it in the tools tab of 3D view tools
    #bl_context = "mesh_edit"

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

        row = layout.row(align=True)
        col = row.column()
        col.prop(scene.my_prop_grp, 'custom_String', text="")
        col.prop(scene.my_prop_grp, 'custom_Boolean', text="")

classes = (MyPropertyGroup, LayoutPanel)

def register():
    for i in classes:
        register_class(i)

    # storing property in scene for this example
    Scene.my_prop_grp = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=MyPropertyGroup)

def unregister():
    for i in classes:
        unregister_class(i)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

I think you should be able to find your way from there, but let me know if you need further clarification.

Edit:

bl_info = {
    "name": "Addon",
    "author": "Your Name Here",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 75, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Tools > Test Text",
    "description": "Description",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Temp",
    }

import bpy
from bpy.props import StringProperty, BoolProperty, PointerProperty
from bpy.types import PropertyGroup, Panel, Scene
from bpy.utils import register_class, unregister_class

def UpdatedFunction(self, context):
    print("In update func...")
    print(self.custom_String)

class MyPropertyGroup(PropertyGroup):
    custom_String = StringProperty(name ="String Property")
    custom_Boolean = BoolProperty(name="Bool Property", update=UpdatedFunction)

class LayoutPanel(Panel):
    bl_label = "Test Text"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "TOOLS"
    bl_category = "Tools"  # puts it in the tools tab of 3D view tools
    #bl_context = "mesh_edit"

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

        row = layout.row(align=True)
        col = row.column()
        col.prop(scene.my_prop, 'custom_String', text="")
        col.prop(scene.my_prop, 'custom_Boolean', text="")

        col.prop(scene.my_other_prop, 'custom_String', text="")
        col.prop(scene.my_other_prop, 'custom_Boolean', text="")

classes = (MyPropertyGroup, LayoutPanel)

def register():
    for i in classes:
        register_class(i)

    # storing property in scene for this example
    Scene.my_prop = PointerProperty(type=MyPropertyGroup)
    Scene.my_other_prop = PointerProperty(type=MyPropertyGroup)

def unregister():
    for i in classes:
        unregister_class(i)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


How can i reduce the size of my shadows?

you could make it so that the background is not the light source with this node setup
Then add a sunlamp, with it you can either increase your lamp's strength or decrease its size

A smaller lamp size will give a sharper shadow

then change it so it matches your background's color and thats it.

here is a more detailed answer to your questionn
How to minimize/soften the shadows?


Setting enum properties across multiple interdependent enum properties in a script

The problem is data_types_edges as well as the other data transfer attributes are python set objects and you are overwriting the entire set losing the previous values.

To add an element to a set, us the |= operator.

import bpy

data_transfer = bpy.context.object.modifiers["DataTransfer"]

data_transfer.data_types_edges |= {'SHARP_EDGE'}

It seems that the add() and update() function do not affect the modifier; so just use |= instead.


Cycles fireflies with police lights setup

In the glass shader you need to use the light path node. Setup your material so the main section gets mixed with a full transparent shader by way of the camera output of the light path node.

This will make your glass look like glass when the camera sees it, but not even exist when other objects see it. Doing the same with the bulb and then adding a point light would also be an improvement to sample count.

Note: This is not physically correct. To get better render times from cycles, you need to pull tricks like this to improve sample count.

Edit:

After playing with your file I got this (25 samples):

Here's what I did - switched device to CPU and disabled reflective caustics. (I also did a little trick with smooth shading to improve the look of the siren, but that's another topic.)

Here's the new blend:


I suspect that the problem is that you are trying to make a loop cut through a face which does not have four edges [a "quad", short for "quadrilateral"]. When a face has fewer than, or more than four sides, the intelligence in the loop cut does not know where you want the loop cut routed.

Sometimes, the loop cut will form partway around the faces. When this occurs, at the point where the loop cut fails to complete, you can manually continue the loop cut by selecting the edge, or vertex through which you want the loop cut to continue, and manually delete the fact, and add new faces using the conventional methods.


What is the difference between 'Unlink' and 'Delete' in the Outliner?

Unlink removes objects from collections, Delete erases them permanently.

Removing Data

Unlinking doesn't remove the object or its geometry from the opened file, it just removes them from the collection clicked on. If an object is in more than one collection simultaneously it will still remain in others, otherwise it may become Orphaned Data.

Orphan data is "garbage collected" and may be removed on saving file.

Put Outliner in Orphan Data Mode to check before saving to avoid losing any important data.

Deleting fully erases the object and its geometry immediately, while also removing it from all the collections it was in, from the scene and from the file, reducing file size and memory consumption.


The geometry of the mesh gets distorted when rigged and posed

So to fix your problem:

Disable the Multiresolution modifier, because it makes your computer lag (before parenting you need to bake the multires normals so that you can use a low-poly object instead).
Apply the object scale with CtrlA > Scale (explanation about object scale here).
In Edit mode select all and press ShiftN to recalculate the normals.

To avoid parenting bugs it's always better to apply scale and rotation and to make sure that the normals are correctly flipped.
The file is here.


finally i've found the solution...

  for w in bpy.context.window_manager.windows:
    if w.screen.name  == "Layout":
      for area in w.screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
          for region in area.regions:
             if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                override = bpy.context.copy()
                override[ 'area'] = area
                override['region'] = region
                bpy.ops.object.make_override_library(override)
                break


How to properly combine Z passes using multiple .EXR files?

The general problem with EXR images, is that they don't really behave as a normal image (like PNG). A PNG has, for each color, a min value 00 and a max value FF. An EXR is just a mathematical value from 0 up to infinity for each pixel.

So rather than using multiply (as you are doing, and which works for PNG images), you should use minimum (or maximum,depending on the base layer you are using). And repeat the process for each subframe/tile.

The end result will be a complete image with values ranging from 0 till...

You can then use normalise to change these values to something that represents an image (from 00 till FF).

Tip: make sure you don't use normalise on your subframe EXR or all of them will go from white (clearest point) to black (furthest point) for each subframe rather than 1 time for the complete image.


Inverse Kinematics Not Working. Leg freaks out

To sum it up, here is how it should be organized:

In Edit mode, switch Lowerleg and Thigh directions (header menu > Armature > Switch Direction) so that it looks like in my picture.
Parent Thigh to Hip, parent Lowerleg to Thigh, parent Foot to Controller, deparent Controller, deparent Poletarget, deactivate the Deform option of Controller and Poletarget.
Bend the knee a bit forward.
In Pose mode give an IK constraint to Lowerleg with the Controller as Target and Poletarget bone as Pole Target. Correct the Pole Angle if it needs to.


How do I stop my white background from becoming grey due to lighting?

"it's greyish, depending on the lighting".
Indeed the solution is exactly in that statement. Use brighter sources and the "gray" can look like white.

Just increase the "power" of the lamps, or use a higher number than 1 on the strength (if you are using nodes)


How to copy material settings from one object to another

Here's a little script for you. Just select all the planes and run the script. (It assumes that each plane has only 1 material)
import bpy

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    m = obj.data.materials[0]
    m.blend_method = 'BLEND'
    m.shadow_method = 'HASHED'


Ambient occlusion results in reverse / Inverted colours?

this is because of the inverted normals.
you can recalculate the normals by going to edit mode and and then press Ctrl+N or by pressing recalculate normals from the tool shading panel


UV map for hemisphere and other primitives

Weird that you have this result because with a simple UV Unwrap> Unwrap, it's automatically good, I just redesigned your texture so that I have a higher resolution but that's all. Maybe you have forgotten to give your object a Subdivision modifier, it will make your sphere smoother.

here is what it gives without the Subdivision modifier:


How can I increase the size of the handles/keys in the Graph Editor?

You can find this option in the user preferences. Go to File > User Preferences > Themes > Graph Editor and modify Vertex Size and Vertex Handle Size to your needs.

You can see the changes immediately, so make sure you have a graph editor with active keys visible, when you tweak the values. And don't forget to save the user settings.


Where can I change the color of the vertical tab labels in Blender?

These vertical Tabs are adjusted per editor.
For 3D Viewport, it's in Properties > Themes > 3D Viewport > Theme Space


Using drastically different scale sizes for different objects

You can use outliner to select object and then numpad period "." key for centering it on the viewport.


You can select the banana part in Edit mode and in the Properties panel > Object Data > Vertex Groups, in the dropdown menu on the right, click on Remove from All Groups, so that this part of the mesh is not part of any group:


Will new versions of Blender support my models from 2013 version?

It may be just a stretch to assume that "everything" will be okay, but Blender has long had backwards compatibility as part of its overall design philosophy, so that in almost all cases, you can load old blender content in newer versions, even retaining the UI of the older version.


Need help trying to project shape onto cylinder...

I somewhat remade your scene, and was successful so I will contribute what I did. I think what may be causing you the biggest problem is the lack of geometry in your pyramid object. Try adding several loop cuts to support the boolean operation.

Here is what I did:

Default cube, enter edit mode select top face and scale to 0 and scale as needed to create the pyramid object. (I also scaled the bottom face slightly).

Add several loop cuts in each direction with
Ctrl+R

In object mode, add a uv sphere, then go back into edit mode and
enable proportional editing by pressing O and select only
the top vertex.
Move the vertex on the z axis until you have the desired shape, and then scale to size.

Go into object mode and align the sphere object with the pryamid
object, and add a Boolean> Difference to the pryamid object, setting it's target to the sphere and delete the sphere from the scene or move to another layer.

After following these steps, also an edge split and subsurf modifier added- this is the result:


Curve not smooth after deleting more than n-3 vertices, where n is amount of every vertex in path

when you delete a vertex the path order gets lower ( can't have order greater than number of vertices and the max is 6 )
so just change the spline order back to 3 or higher and it will be smooth again :


How can I save both FK and IK animations in one .blend file?

An old question, but based on this link, you need to set up IK through a script so it works correctly.


It's an addon, it's called Pie Menus. You can activate it from user preferences -> addons


Better practices with subdivisions surface modifier

It looks like your neck is not actually connected to the body. Try deleting the shoulder face, then select all the base neck vertices plus the 4 shoulder ones and hit "f" to create a face. Then try the subdivision again.


Are the color swatches in Blender linearized?

You shouldn't need to, no. The RGB values (that is, the actual numbers) in the RGB tab of the picker are linear, but the displayed swatch is a display-space version of that input. The HSV and hex-code tabs of the color picker are also converted to display space, so you can use those if you need to input a specific display-space color.

So if you're expecting stuff like in older versions of Maya where you have to fix the swatch, that's not necessary. What you see in the swatch is what you get in the end. Do keep in mind the RGB value tab is already linear though, that can throw off some people used to other software where you type in display-space values and they are converted at render time.


The Shader Editor Show Up Blank When reopen it

I think that you set up your nodes for the brick material, yet because you are in object mode, you have the default material showing up to be edited, not the brick. Change which material is to be edited at the top of the shader editor window.


Unfortunatelly I never figured out such a function..

this is my solution to the problem:

group all your imported videos into a metastrip on layer 1 with CTRL + G and access them selecting the strip and tapping TAB

have your cuts into the metastrip

copy your desired clips from the metastrip CTRL + C exit the metalevel unselecting everything and tapping TAB so paste wherever you want with CTRL + V. I suggest you to keep the 1st layer hidden, so the "metatemp" (i will call It this way) will stay metatemp and not visible on the preview area.

repeat these operations from step 2 any time you need.


Object material that is completely transparent, but occludes other objects

I think what you want is a holdout shader.  A holdout shader is like a transparent emission shader: wherever it is, it writes transparency (alpha 0).  It still gets occluded itself.

With the use of a holdout shader, you can then alpha layer your footage that describes both background and foreground objects.
Holdout shaders work both in Eevee and Cycles.


Baking Sound to F-Curve with Python on Pre-Existing Objects

What I'm struggling with is getting an object that exists already...

You get the objects from bpy.data.objects:

obj = bpy.data.objects[obj_name] #where obj_name is the key / object's name

#in this case
for i in range(count):
    obj = bpy.data.objects['Fence.%04d' % i] #formatted string

    #set the keyframe
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path="scale", frame=1)

Some links:

Add keyframe to a scene property
Python tutorial and documentation
String Format Syntax
Blender Python API documenation


How to place a bone on top of a face with same direction?

Enable "Copy Attributes menu" addon it comes with blender.

Offset the bone as needed.
Select the bone and then the plane, then Ctrl+C and copy location and rotation

Also you can do the snapping on a face with rotation enabled:


Is is possible to create an animatable morph between two lines?

You could use the Animation Nodes Addon.

Create the a shapekey, morphing from A (Basis) to B (Key 1).

The (in animation nodes) instance them with the Object instancer and vary the shapekey value in a loop. Remember to check Deep Copy, otherwise all mesh are going to have the same shapekey value.


If you look down at your time line you will see that the active keying set is "Button Keying..."

That is a custom keying set, you can see what is included in it in the scene tab of the properties window.

You can do one of two things.

Add the location and rotation to your custom keying set.
Click on the X next to the keying set's name to clear the active keying set. (it will still be there, just not used) Then the familiar keyframe menu will pop up when you press I.


how to list multiple boxes dimensions in one table? (for wood workers)

I'm switching from 3Ds Max to Blender so I can design kitchens and make cutlist. So, this is what i have so far and I'm trying to figure out more about Blender and Python so I can have a complete solution for kitchen making.

Try this code, this code export selected objects (kitchen cabinet parts) and store it's name and dimensions into csv file so you can open in excel or send it to cutlist programs like MaxCut.

import bpy
#here you need to write where you want to store the file on your system
file = open("/home/monis/Blender/MyFile_02.csv", 'w')
selectedObjects = bpy.context.selected_objects
file.write('Panel name\t hight\t width\t thickness\n')

for obj in selectedObjects:
    dim = obj.dimensions
    file.write(obj.name+'\t'+'{:.3f}\t{:.3f}\t{:.3f}\n'.format(dim.x*100,dim.y*100,dim.z*100))

file.close()
print(obj)


Any way to avoid fcurves in scripting animations?

fcurves are how blender stores animation data. That is what it is for and you should just use it. If you are defining the animated values every frame then the interpolation will be of no concern. If your values only change on some frames then set the interpolation to be constant.

For creating the animation by script that would be

obj.location.x = 12.23
obj.keyframe_insert('location', index=0, frame=1)

If you really want to manually animate something without animation data, you should be able to use handlers to run a function every frame.

def myframe_change(scene):
    if scene.frame_current == 1:
        scene.objects['Cube'].location.x = 12.23

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(myframe_change)

If you are concerned about overhead, I think you will find running a python script every frame will add more overhead than using native animation data.


Is it possible to make the remesh modifier block size constant?

Remesh modifer use the object's bounding box to determine the size of the block (combined with the scale and the octree depth)

If you want to use just the built-in tools and no python, a possible, dirty, workaround could consist in altering each object bounding box to a fixed the one of a "remeshing box".

Create a box of the wanted size, delete faces (deleting edges is optional) and assign to the object a Remesh modifer with the target resolution.

Create/pick one object, move it inside the box. Apply scale.

Join the object with a duplicate of your cage. This way the mesh will inherit the modifiers with all the settings.

You can edit the object freely until it stays inside the box defined by the vertices.

Cons:

The box can't be changed interactively.
You have to duplicate and join the remeshing box for each object.


How to select the faces that have reversed normals?

If you wanna select only reversed faces, use Ctrl+Shift+Alt+M but in Edge select mode. It doesn't work in Face select mode, and if you use it in Vertex select mode, it will select too much.


How can I split the screen when the screen splitting widget is not visible?

Try this:

Open new window by pulling the right top corner
Once you do that you should find the bottom left one in the new window
Pull the left bottom corner to close the old one which didn't have the bottom left pull option


How do I make a realistic shiny gloss lips texture?

You can paint a bump map to affect the normal of the material here, drawing/painting the wrinkles in varying values of white on a black map. Once you have the map, you can use it to determine the bump as I mention but also use it as a factor to the amount of gloss, so that the glossy only shows on the highest parts.


I couldn't find any really easy way to do this, but I found one which is far easier than modelling each individual step / bump.

First I modeled two full cycles of the sequence -- middle, low, middle, high, middle, low, middle, high. This sequence mimicks a bobbing motion of the camera, as if it is walking in 1st person. Then, I deleted the last 3 vertices of the curve, leaving only middle, low, middle, high, middle.

I turned on snapping to vertices, tabbed into edit mode, selected the whole curve, and duplicated it. I then used vertex locking to lock the very first vertex of the duplicated curve to the very last vertex of the original curve, essentially moving the entire curve where I wanted it. Then, I deleted the very first vertex of the duplicated curve (leaving only low, middle, high, middle), selected what is now the new 1st vertex of the duplicated curve, as well as the last vertex of the original curve, and pressed F to join them.

If anyone knows of an easier way, please post.


Add a subsurf modifier to both curve and the mesh.
Select the Curve in edit mode -> Tooshelf -> curve tools -> Switch Direction

If there is a gap seen in the mesh go to edit mode and scale in Z axis.


Render Halo material with tranparent background

There are a couple of things to consider here:

First, Blender's viewer is currently broken for associated alpha, which is the default format the renderer produces.
That means that the viewer won't show the pixels that are both luminous and fully transparent (alpha zero, RGB not zero) from an image with associated alpha.

If you're going to composite that effect using Blender's compositor, just try an alpha over on a colour to judge whether your image transparency is correct instead of relying on the RGBA view of Blender's image viewer.

Also, you have to understand the kind of effect you're tying to achieve: This is a lighting effect that you want to be added to a background.

As easy as it sounds, adding that luminous element can be done via a simple add. You don't even need an alpha channel (because there is no occlussion), you can just add the RGB plate to the background and it look ok.

If you want to produce an RGBA image that can be composited with an alpha over anyway, keep in mind the following:

ONLY associated alpha (often called pre multiplied) allows the
compositing of pixels that are luminous and transparent, so choose a
file format that supports associated alpha (the most common for
visual effects is EXR)
It's impossible to produce that kind of alpha blending with
unassociated alpha, so formats like PNG are completely ruled out.
Image editing programs like Photoshop and GIMP work internally with
unassociated alpha, so they are not suitable for compositing that
kind of effects with alpha blending. You need to cheat and use an RGB
only image with an addition instead (those programs are also likely
to destroy the RGB information of every pixel with alpha=0, so be careful).


Create cube in bmesh at given position in a efficient manner

A person going by the nick @Random helped me with this on blender.chat. The solution was to pass translation matrix to create_cube op.
bmesh.ops.create_cube(bm, size=0.5, matrix=mathutils.Matrix.Translation(current_point))


How do you activate the Curve Tool in the latest version of Blender?

I think that you have to be in Object Mode to be able to use this. Then, in the add menu the option to add curves will appear.


How to create two objects that screw into one another

Perhaps a more robust approach is to 'model the gap'.

i.e. keep the inside and outside profiles as one object, (possibly reserving an
 AltD instance of the combined  profile for convenient editing, ) then assign the screw modifier, then separate the surfaces.

(Which you can do by CtrlL select linked, and P > separate selection ). You can flip the normals of the female component, and embed it wherever it is needed, later on.


Reference: https://forum.unity.com/threads/can-blender-2-8-eevee-shaders-still-be-used-with-unity.645271/

Asking a Unity3D game developer about your question brought me to the conclusion that you can't actually export "animated materials" from Blender to Unity unless you recreate the shader IN Unity/ More info in the link i gave you.


If I understand your question correctly:
By default, in your particle system the particles emit from frame 1 to frame 200.
Try to increase the "End" value.


IK Solver Won't Bend Knees Except Backwards -- Rolling Bones Not Helping, Constraints Not Helping

Thank you to everyone who responded.  A synopsis of the workaround.  (I say workaround because this isn't really a fix, but it's more than functional enough to unblock progress and move forward.  A true fix would be figuring out why the IK solver isn't deducing a solution to chains of length three.)

The original IK configuration had the constraint placed on the FOOT bone with an IK chain of length three.  The solution involved moving the IK constraint to the SHIN bone [one up] and decrementing the IK chain by one.  Now the knee bends properly.

I speculate (again SPECULATE, I don't know if there is any basis here) that perhaps having the foot as the target of the IK chain meant that there were two bends [the knee and the angle] which were being used for determining the direction of the bend -- that is to say, instead of pointing the knee bend at the knee pole, it was trying to point the ankle at the pole and ignoring the knee, keeping that segment strait.

I'm very grateful to everyone who provided insight.  Special kudos to Jerryno and Naioai for setting me on the right track.


Using a simplified version of the node setup from my answer here, you can do this with cycles (click on the image to get a bigger version):


How to simulate a sheet of paper in Blender Game Engine?

The biggest problem I see here is that the softbody algorithms in the game engine are not physically correct, they are only made to look plausible and be fast. Especially the stiffness of softbodies depends on the mesh resolution: higher subdivision results in less stiffness.

A setup that looks fine for paper is a plane with just a few subdivisions

and the following Softbody settings

Make sure you disable Shape Match since this seems not to work with flat objects. Also make sure Bending Constraints are enabled. Otherwise the paper can just fold along the edges with no resistance. Also increase the Margin so that collisions will be detected correctly. Be aware however that this will make your paper float slightly above the ground.

This is what the resulting paper looks like when falling onto the ground:

One thing that is still missing however is air drag. Maybe you can simulate that using a Force field constraint actuator but I have not found out how they work yet.


black areas in ao map, but normal map looks ok?

Ambient occlusion focuses darkness on the crevices of the model that's why you have those dark areas. If you didn't already know, the ambient occlusion map is usually used to isolate the edges of a model for wear/tear and (if i remember correctly) it is a linear type of map (black and white image)


Morph between different facial expressions?

There are at least two ways to create and animate facial expressions, not even involving python (although it's possibly to automate this):

Shape Keys - allows you to deform mesh vertices and blend multiple "states" together and also animate
Armature - a skeleton to control the mesh, with strong control over deformation using vertex weights, but also more complicated

I recommend to try out Shape Keys:

Start Blender and remove (X) the default cube
Add a Monkey (aka Suzanne)
Go to Object data tab in Properties Editor
Click the plus button + in the Shape Keys panel twice (will create Basis and Key 1)
Switch Suzanne into Edit Mode (Tab)
Deselect all (A) and pick some vertices, e.g. the right eyebrow
Enable Proportional Editing if you wish to deform nearby, non-selected vertices as well
Move the vertices up a bit (G)
Go back to Object Mode (Tab)
With Key 1 in the Shape Keys panel selected, move the Value slider to see the transition between the base shape and the keyed shape.
Use I over the slider or right-click and pick Insert Keyframe to animate the value and thus the facial expression transition!

You can create a Shape Key with Python like:

shapekey = bpy.context.object.shape_key_add(name="Key", from_mix=True)

See the API docs - Object.shape_key_add for details.

The value slider can be animated by inserting a keyframe, here's the most simple way:

# we stored the shape key reference above in the variable "shapekey",
# which should be equal to bpy.context.object.data.shape_keys.key_blocks['Key']
shapekey.value = 0.3 # set value
shapekey.keyframe_insert(data_path="value", frame=15) # now keyframe 0.3 at frame 15

See the API docs - keyframe_insert()

More on Shape Keys:http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Animation/Techs/Shape/Shape_Keys

If you look into Armature pose animations, make sure to have a look at the Pose Library panel!

It's also worth to have a look at the NLA editor (non-linear animation). It allows you to blend multiple Actions together:http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Animation/Editors/NLA


Change all bones of an already existing animation

You can do all basic manipulations in graph editor same as with objects in 3D-View, like scale, translate and rotate, border select, select linked and more.
Just select the keyframes that you wish to change and move them all by one by pressing g. Press y to lock moving only the values and not along the time axis.


I guess it is the specular map. Specular maps are the maps you use to define a surface's shininess. Here's the example of a specular map I've found on net:

Here's how it works: First example (the one pictured below) doesn't use specular map. As you can see the gloss is evenly distributed on the model.

Second example shows the same model, but with the glossiness distribution based on the specular map.

To control on what parts you want the glossiness to appear you have to create a black and white texture and map it on your mesh (in my case pure black color is a 100% glossiness and white color is no gloss at all).

After setting the texture as a factor between Diffuse and Glossy shaders, you have your gloss appear on the desired parts of the model.

Here's the interesting tutorial about how to create the specular maps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gqp4bNJ52M


How to make logical rigged, weight painted mesh transformation?

To better uderstand the vertex behaviour try this little experiment: scale down the default cube to something like 0.1 BU, then create an armature with two bones, one on the left (X = -1) and one on the right (X = 1) of the cube.

Assign a weight of 1 to all the vertices relatively to both L and R bones.

Then in pose mode move the R bone by 1 on the X axis: the cube will move on the right by 0.5 BU: this happens because all vertices are influenced by all two bones: one is telling them to move 1 on the right, one is telling them to stay still; the average of the two instances will result in half the movement (1 + 0)/2 = 0.5.

Your wheel has the same problem, because is weighted to 6 different bones: the correct approach is to have it weighted only to a single bone that will have to perform all the movements (i.e. its Y rotation will be the rolling, its z rotation will be the direction, its location will be influenced by the complex mechanism of the shock absorber, etc ....)


You do not draw the circle and then cut, you just draw the arc.

This can be easily achieved by starting with 1 point (vertex).

Then select that vertex in edit mode and place the (before thought of as useless) 3D cursor in the center of the rotation and click spin inside the mesh tools. in the popup choose the angle and be happy you got an arc ;)

Spin always extrudes the selection, so if you want to add another arc (perhaps with different angle and rotation point) at the end of you new arc, just select the start vertex.

Note: Make sure you are in orthogonal view, or else you might not end up at the same depth you started with ;) You switch between orthogonal and perspective view by pressing NUM5.


Mirroring this object gives unwanted results

Make the origin of your object to be any of the edges of an open wall

Press SHIFT+S - Snap

To move the 3d cursor to the selected edge.

CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+C - Origin

To move the origin of the object to the location of the 3D cursor.


need help to model turbo compressor housing

Enable the add extra curves addon.

Then add a curve->Spirals->Archemedian

Give the spiral some height

In the geometry section. give it some bevel depth

Then you can edit the radius of one of the end segments to make is smaller

For further editing convert from curve to mesh


Camera position and rotation while following path

You can bake the animation and clear parent to get the transform data of the camera.

Select the camera, and in Object menu select Animation>Bake Action

Then in Bake Action menu enable Visual Keying and Clear Parents.

That will bake the location and rotation of the camera for every frame into an action.


Apparently the pathway for me was /usr/bin/!

But also the "no module 'numpy'" warning was part of the problem. While I had "python-numpy" installed I didn't have "python3-numpy" installed. Once I installed it, I could finally render!


Your normals are flipped, which essentially means your mesh is inside out! In edit mode, go to Mesh > Normals and flip normals. Recalculate outside sometimes works better if you have some right and some wrong.


Some meshes that have textures import just fine but others come in all solid pink

Pink textures are because there is no file at the path where the texture is loaded.
Switch to the Image Editor and view the image that doesn't work. Press N (or select View > Sidebar in the menu) to open the sidebar and pick the "Image" tab. You should be able to see the path plus a "Can't Load Image" message.

Either click the folder icon to browse for the image you want, or put the image file you want at the location shown in the path and hit the reload icon.


I've re-created a similar situation and this appears to be working fine.

Here's the image I have used to rotate :

It is essentially just a screen grab from the Gimp colour picker. I chose this in preference to your example due to it having more features (such as the triangular pointer in the middle) to make the effect more noticeable.

Keyframing rotation for 3600 degrees over 100 frames (a similar rate to your example) and setting Motion Blur shutter length to 2.00 frames produces the following result :

Turning the speed up even higher (36000 over 100 frames) results in almost complete merging of the colors as you would expect in the 'real' world :

Looking at your example file, I think your blur just isn't extreme enough to be noticeable. I increased the motion blur frames to 2.0 (from 0.5 in your example) and increased the rotation speed by a factor of 10 and got the following result :


Why does glass material not show in Blenders game engine when it is running?

First be warned the BGE is currently extremely buggy. Some settings lead to unreproducible effects. Sometimes GLSL renders everything white in the internal player but the external still works (Reloading the .blend or restarting Blender fixes this). Everytime I try to reproduce it with a saved file it doesn't happen (so I can't file a bug-report).

Setup of transparent material:

For other materials of faces that become visible through the transparency of the windows disable Backface Culling otherwise the faces wouldn't be rendered because Blender would assume that the faces aren't visible.

A simple scene with left window without faces and right window with z-tranparency material.

Shading Mode set to Multitexture:

Shading Mode set to GLSL

You find the Shading  Mode in the 3D Viewport's properties panel:

Demo .blend


What you're trying to accomplish is achieved in Edit Mode. You can enter the dropdown menu in the menus section of your header, or press Tab. Enter Edit Mode, select all the vertices of the cube, then use Shift-D to duplicate.

Ian Hubert's tutorials are for intermediate users. He operates under the assumption that you are already familiar with the basics of Blender. I recommend following a beginner-friendly tutorial series, then continuing where you left off.


How do i add material/textures to only one face of an object?

In Edit Mode select a face (using a face selection [Ctrl+Tab-->Face]) you want a texture to be projected on. Then press U-->Unwrap. In Uv Editor open your image texture.

Add a new material to your face (using a + button) and press the Assign button.

Then go to the Texture header. Add a new texture and change its type to Image or Movie. Open an image and change its coordinates (in a Mapping panel) to UV.

Result:


How can I make this cinnamon stick material more rough and dusty looking?

You had a solid foundation already with how you set up the procedural textures.  You were mostly there, the main issue with your material is  the cracks are a lighter color and the main surface is the darker color; that's backwards. ;)

All of that color multiplying for the material's foundation is trouble.
Multiplying black and white is very predictable:  lighter colors become lighter and the darker color become darker.
When multiplying color gradients against color gradients, it's difficult to predict what will happen across the entire range of colors.

When the main 'crevices' node group that you made is converted to grayscale, and the tones are inverted, it looks more like the desired result.

Here is a tip on getting the color tones closer to the reference image.  When hovering over color fields in Blender, you can press e to access the eye dropper tool.  Now you should be able to click just about anywhere else to sample that color.

In several places, a small Noise texture node group was added and is being used to exaggerate and washout the the various procedural textures.

In one instance, the cracks are darkened and deepened where the noise is darkest.  Towards the end of the material, a similar group is being used to color the surface with darker blobs that show in the reference image.

Separating the bump mapping(Material Output Displacement socket) into distinct operations allows you to control the cracks separately from the overall small scale bumpiness.

One thing that you should always add is a proper sky material, even if it's just a flat color.  The .blend you posted has a sky output node with nothing connected to it.  Even though Cycles is designed to use default settings in conditions like this, it's still a potential error state and it's best to avoid since the environment lighting is a big part of how Cycles colors a scene.
The attached .blend uses a pure white sky(1.0, 1.0, 1.0).

Here's how things are looking now.

Here's the .blend.
If you have the Node Wrangler Addon enabled(included with Blender) then you can ctrl-shift-click on the various nodes to isolate them and see what they look like flat shaded using the Viewport renderer.


Possible to displace whole polygons only, not points

Displace is always calculated on a per vertex basis, regardless of what you do, you can separate individual faces, and displace them, but the displacement is still gonna happen on each vertex individually, deforming each face.

Also since most displace textures are "continuous" functions, the faces will still look as a continuous uniform surface as if they were still attached, since the displacement wont introduce any gaps or discontinuities.

You can try and mark all edges of your mesh as sharp, add an Edge Split modifier to separate all faces, then apply the displacement to your mesh.

To make the effect more visible you may also add a smooth modifier


Detach Individual Settings/Properties Tabs as Small Windows?

There is non, as far as I know properties windows tabs are not detachable.

But nothing stops you from having multiple of them open. As a workaround just duplicate the window and change active tabs on each instance.

Just press Shift while dragging from one of the corners to create a new secondary window and change tabs for each


How to make transparent material in cycles?

An image texture with alpha(transparency) data can be used to make transparent materials. Do note that in order for alpha textures to work the image file format requires an alpha channel or be a grayscale mask.

  UPDATE

  Though my original answer is still applicable and functions. There have been many updates and enhancements since then. One of them being the inclusion of a PBR shaders, Principled BSDF hese specifically. Which, as of v2.8, now also has an Alpha input. Simplifying transparency in many ways.

The following examples utilize a 2px by 2px checker pattern with full black and full alpha transparency.
Blender 2.8
Node setup using 'Alpha Channel' with Principled shader:

Master opacity scale is from -1 to +1
Positive values decreases opacity
Negative values increases opacity of masked (transparent) area.

Blender 2.7
In this example; the Transparent Shader is set to white #FFFFFF which produces full transparency. This is then connected to the top input of 2 Mix Shaders.

Alpha from Image Texture is connected to the factor input of first Mix Shader. This takes the alpha data from the image and essentially applies it as a mask.

The color data from the image is not used in this case. Though, when applicable, can be connected to the color input of a shader. Such as mesh based hair and eyelashes for example.

The first Mix Shader connects to the bottom of the second. This allows control of the overall opacity.
Alpha node setup/example:

A black and white and/or grayscale image can be substituted.
Black being fully transparent and white being fully opaque.
Use color output instead of alpha.

Grayscale node setup/example:>Note:

  Some raster formats that support alpha are:

  OpenEXROpen Source format released by ILM.Designed with CGI workflow in mind.Your image editor may lack support out-of-box.
  JPEG 2000 - Not original JPEGLossy formatSupport may potentially be limited.
  GIFLimited to 256 colorsCan be animated
  PNGIndexed color has faulty alpha handling. Be sure to use RGB/A mode.

  I would suggest use of OpenEXR when working with raster images containing an alpha channel. For Photoshop users I recommend the exr-io plugin.
  For those using vector images. To my knowledge SVG is the prime candidate.

  Note 2:
  The shader used for color can be changed as desired and/or needed. This will also work with volumetric shaders as well. However do understand that volumetrics work a little differently than surface shaders. Any further detail on that would be getting a little too far off topic.

Special thanks to Mr Zak and troy_S for their insights in the comments.
Happy Blending!


click a object but yellow outline is not appear

On the right side (blender shortcut - n key ) is a Display - Outline Selected


This is a very general question and the answer varies over time.  You can always check the open data benchmarks to see what the current status is:  https://opendata.blender.org/
Historically, Blender has worked better with NVIDIA GPUs, but a lot of effort is being currently spent on improving AMD performance.
Yes, more RAM is better, but even that statement has exceptions.


Rotating, Moving or Placing Procedural Texture on an Object

Here I have Sphere with two textures, one red and one blue.

The Blue texture coordinates are defined by the the Sphere default generated vector input. The Red coordinates are defined by Object. The object is an Empty.

Now when I rotate the Empty you can see the Red texture following the rotation exactly.

I hope that helps.


Using GPU outside of rendering in background mode

The Python you are writing is - even within Blender's interpreter - just Python: an interpreted language running on the CPU. There are ways to leverage the GPU in Python (eg. PyCUDA), but I would be very surprised that using the GPU would help here. As long as you are not part of Blender's own codebase (which entails recompiling the beast and diving into C++ or something that can be linked to it), you have to go through the Python API and whatever advantage there is to generating the planes on the GPU will be eclipsed by handing them over to Blender one by one though the interpreter.


How can I fade in and out between cameras during animation?

What Todd says does work, but it is not the best way of doing things.
Go to the Video Editing Screen Layout. Add a Scene strip, and then add the same Scene strip again so you have the two scenes on top of each other. In the properties panel (key N with the cursor inside the VSE portion of your screen), go to the Scene part and to the Camera Override. Select one camera in the first Scene strip, and the second camera in the second Scene strip. The `Scene strips will now have the added text of the names of the cameras along their length.
Next, add a Cam Multicam Effect Strip. Make sure it is directly on top of the two Scene strips. Click the 1 button to select the camera notated by the bottom Scene strip, or 2 to select the camera notated by the top Scene strip. Then move your cursor to where you want the fade to begin  and select 1 or 2, whichever you didn't select the first time. It will cut the strip into two parts.
Now move the first half of the Cam Multicam strip up to channel 4. Drag the right arrow of the top Cam Multicam strip to the frame where you want the fade to end.
Select the first strip, and then the second strip, and then key Shift +A and add a Gamma Cross Effect Strip. Your finished setup should look like this and provide the same result as Todd's.

Further research: Multicam selector documentation.


The question you'd need to ask yourself is:

  "How does Blender know where a loop is running along anyways?"

Basically, a loop can only be found if there is four edges connecting to a point. See this GIF for illustration:

I'm selecting the two edges first which are the loop that I intend to select, then the two perpendicular edges that branch off from them. Loop selection takes a single edge as an input (the one you click on), and follows the path along this direction UNTIL there is a case where a different amount than four edges are forming a vertex point. Along this path, the edge that is "in the middle" will be the one considered to form the loop. As your beveled edge gives you a corner case where only three edges meet, loop selection stops there. How would Blender know if you want to go left or right?

To do the selection you want, try either Shortest Path select by Ctrl + RMB clicking, like this:

or select the faces which are inside the desired loop, and use the boundary select tool from the menu like this:


The easiest way would be to use Solidify modifier.


How can I randomize rotation on z-axis with hair particles?

For random rotation: Enable the Advanced option, activate Rotation, play with the Random value.


Eevee outputs large sections of video completely black

Okay I fiddled some more and fixed the problem. Turns out I had broken image files in the video sequencer that were overwriting it. In case anyone else has this issue, try rendering it with the sequencer bypassed. Hope this helps someone!


How do I add an HDRI texture environment node?

In the world section of the properties panel choose Surface > Use Nodes.

Select Surface: Background.

As color choose  Environment texture.

And choose the HDR image you want to use.

Or you can use the Node editor. Enable Use Nodes and in the shader editor and set it to world to add an environment texture node and connect it to a background node and then to the surface of the world output.


Why isn't smoke flowing with the shape of the domain?

The smoke domain can only be a cube or a Cuboid.

Form the blender manual

  You can use other shapes of mesh objects as domain objects, but the smoke simulator will use the shape’s bounding box as the domain bounds. In other words, the actual shape of the domain will still be rectangular.

To have the smoke flow around, you would need to add another object and set it as smoke collision.

  Smoke Collision objects are used to deflect smoke and influence airflow.

See this answer:What Are the Differences between Smoke Collision Types?

To have the smoke be contained by Collision objects, place the smoke emitters inside them.

In this example a text object has been converted to mesh, set as smoke collision and placed within the smoke domain.


For this sort of thing you may use the Grid Fill operator, as long as all opposing loops have the exact same number of edges, and belong to the same mesh object.

If you want to use actual Bezier Curve objects as guids for lofting, you may look into using the BSurfaces Addon. See the Blender artists thread, or it's Wiki page.

This sort of thing is usually best modeled with either NURBS or Solid Modelling CAD based software, though.


How to create a model from drawings just like Smoothie-3D, Paint 3D or Monster Mash?

Okay, I finally figured out how to do it. I hope the explanation below can help other users. To understand the process in more detail, I recommend the tutorial "Blender Sculpting Tutorial: Full Advanced Creature Creation Workflow" by CG Boost on YouTube.

With any model selected, in Sculpt Mode with the Lasso Trim tool, I change Trim Mode = Join and Shape Orientation = View in the header. Enable Use Cursor for Depth if you want to control the length of the model in proportion to the radius of the brush. The smaller the radius, the thinner the object will be.

Then I draw the shapes to create the silhouettes.

To rearrange the mesh, I use the Remesh command (header) after defining a Voxel Size.

And finally, to smooth and inflate the model to disappear with the hard edges, I use the Mesh Filter tool with Filter Types = Smooth / Inflate. Keep X/Y/Z active in Deform Axis and Orientation = View.

From there, any adjustment of scale, rotation and proportion can be made in Object or Edit Mode.


Don't know how to change distance for mist creation

Here are two ways to produce a mist effect in the compositor.

Mist Pass

Simply enable the Mist pass in the Render Layers. You can then adjust the depth of the mist in the World settings as in the screenshot in your question. ie,

To use the Mist pass you simply use the Mist render layer output as the Factor of a Mix node to mix between your rendered image and the mist color :

To adjust the mist you need to adjust the Mist Pass settings in the World properties and re-render the scene. You could get limited adjustability by adjusting the Mist output using Maths nodes or similar before using it in the factor but it's limited to the range of mist in your original settings (eg, if the mist ends at 500m then there's no way of adjusting it further than that). You're generally best just adjusting the Mist Pass settings and re-rendering.

Depth Pass

An alternative is to use the raw Depth pass and manipulate it using Maths nodes or similar to get the desired mist. This can be achieved as follows :

Here the Divide maths node re-scales the Depth - we need to convert the raw depth so that the desired depth of mist corresponds to the mathematical range of 0.0 to 1.0 to use in a Mix node. Adjust the divisor to get the desired depth. The Subtract node allows you to adjust the distance to the start of the mist.

Note that the Divide node is set to not Clamp but the Subtract is set to Clamp. The Subtract set to Clamp is to ensure that the value passed to the Factor is always within the range 0.0 to 1.0 - otherwise strange effects can occur since the compositor nodes do not automatically clamp the factors (as Cycles material nodes do). However, Clamping the Divide node would skew the calculation and can cause undesired effects - such as the mist not increasing to maximum value at the far distance of its range.


These are called themes and they can alter the look and visual appearance of Blender UI.

You can change them from Blender User Preferences > Themes and choose from the pulldown menu on the top left.

You can also create your own, modify or customize existing ones or simply download third party created from the internet from places like BlendSwap or search in forums like Blender Artists


How do I apply an environment map in Blender Internal?

Enable Real Sky in Properties > World to make the sky render relative to the horizon rather than the camera:

Optionally enable Environment lighting to use the sky texture to illuminate the scene.
Switch to the texture panel and create a new world texture by clicking new with the World tab selected:

Set the type to Image or Movie and open an image:

In Textures > Mapping set the projection to Equirectangular and enable Horizon in Textures > Influence:

Result:


How do I make dark oak material in BLENDER

You can easily recolor any image texture using nodes.

Start with a suitable wood texture. Choose by pattern, you'll adjust the color.
There are many free ones on the Interwebs (god, i love that word).
I used this free one from Poliigon
Connect it into the Base color input
Adjust colors using RGB curves/Hue saturation node... whatever you like.
Blender offers many Color nodes just for this.
Just connect the node in front of your image texture like in my image.

Source image texture

Note:
If you're a beginner I reccomend BlenderGuru's Donut tutorial.
You'll learn everything you need there :).


How do I complete my animation so that I may add nodes in composting?

Hey I had the same problem, here's how it worked out:
I guess you're pressing f3 when he says 'search' for the denoiser, and then denoise animation pops up, right?

You need to hit shift+a, then click on 'search' in the menu that pops up.

You should find an option simply called 'denoise', not 'denoise animation'

Hope this helps!


While particles can give a varied result, it looks like you may prefer a more structured duplication system. I would suggest using dupliverts. Start by creating a mesh that has a vertex positioned where you want each cylinder, only vertices are needed but you can add edges and faces if it makes it easier for you to work with.

Then parent the cylinder to the vertex only mesh, and enable duplication for verts.

You can then repeat the first step with a larger spiral, here I duplicated the first mesh and scaled it up. Then parent the first mesh to this larger one and also enable dupliverts, you will get the first mesh and its cylinders duplicated at each vertex location. You will find it helpful to have the first vertex and the child object both located at the object origin to keep things aligned.


Is it possible to change the smoke colour without clearing the cache?

This does not appear to be possible.
Hopefully in future the smoke system will output a mix factor for the smoke instead of a color, as then the colors of the smoke would be fully editable. Currently the output is the actual RGB color so this is not possible.


How to cut grid into cylinder without distortion?

Blender has a modifier for that :)

Add a Simple deform Modifier to your honeycomb
Set it to Bend, around Z axis
Adjust the Angle

Note: Your honeycomb is a bit messy, I'd suggest to use the one from Extra Objects addon instead.


Rotation around the cursor with low-level python (no bpy.ops)

Rotate a vector

import bpy
from math import pi
from mathutils import Vector, Euler, Matrix, Quaternion

v = Vector((1.0, 1.0, 1.0))
#point which will be rotated around the cursor

cursor_loc = bpy.context.scene.cursor_location

rot_mat = Matrix.Rotation(pi / 2.0, 3, 'Z')
v_new = rot_mat * (v - cursor_loc) + cursor_loc

There are further options available (see api docs):

You can construct a matrix, this is most efficient if you want to apply the same transformation on many points.

mat = (Matrix.Translation(cursor_loc) *
       Matrix.Rotation(pi / 2.0, 4, 'Z') *
       Matrix.Translation(-cursor_loc))
v_new = mat * v

You can use quaternions:

# using (axis, angle) constructor
q = Quaternion((0.0, 0.0, 1.0), pi / 2.0)
v_new = q * (v - cursor_loc) + cursor_loc

or eulers:

eu = Euler((0.0, 0.0, pi / 2.0), 'XYZ')
v_new = v - cursor_loc
v_new.rotate(eu)  # works for quat's and matrix types too
v_new += cursor_loc

Rotate an object

mat = (Matrix.Translation(cursor_loc) *
       Matrix.Rotation(pi / 2.0, 4, 'Z') *
       Matrix.Translation(-cursor_loc))

obj.matrix_world = mat * obj.matrix_world

Euler and Quaternion both offer a method to convert them to a matrix:

q  = Quaternion()
eu = Euler()

mat =  q.to_matrix().to_4x4()
mat = eu.to_matrix().to_4x4()


I dont' know if this at least partly answers, but this is a "skin" I built around a "phone" mesh... obviously very simple, and rough, that fits it nicely, because I built it as said above, duplicating the "phone" mesh, cutting "holes" where necessary, and then scaling it up a bit in every direction...

then, the skin cover could be decorated as needed, rendered etc.


You can use the Object Info Random Output as an angle for rotation of the texture in one or more axis. I understand your problem is that the mapping nodes doesn't have input, you can however use rotation transformation matrices to compute the vector manually, in one axis (z), it looks like this:

In three dimensions you can use the 3D Rotation Transformation Matrices to get:

The node tree is big, so here is the file to study it:


What is the proper workflow when adding an image texture to a material

I don't believe that this matters, as long as you keep in mind that there is both an Image texture and a UV Map involved.

The UV/Image editor knows that there is a link to an image, and so does the node editor, as you can select them both from the image texture dropdown in either place. Blender knows the image is there.

On the flip side, I know that certain things like texture baking requires there to be a present reference to an image texture in node form on the material you are going to bake to (Although it does not need to be linked to anything for it to work).

For UV purposes however, you have to realize that the UV map is just texture coordinates of the verts that make up the faces of your geometry. So for Blender there is no real technical need to even display an image to get some sort of UV map via the Unwrap functions because they automatically get placed somewhere, however for the user this is visually crucial, so you can modify them to fit your needs.

In other words, It's the end result that truly matters.

For some, they like to attempt to get a good feel for the mapping upfront and let it influence their topology, while for others, they like to ignore it until they are done getting their geometry tuned and then making the map fit the geometry. For others they do both. This is just a matter of preference, as there is nothing in the software (from what I can tell) constraining the freedom to choose how you want to go about this. There are also times to not worry about it, because you just want to brush paint your texture directly onto your mesh (then this would require that you save your painted image and reference in the node editor, but UV is pretty much automatic in this case.

A texture is still a texture, and a UV Map is the channel/conduit by which the geometry displays (stretches/ignores/skews/etc...) that texture per face.

If at anytime, you decide to straiten out how your geometry is mapping to this image texture, you can start or redo your UV Unwrapping, tweak the verts in the UV editor etc...

Hope this was thorough enough.


What are the technical differences between F12 render and viewport preview?

The differences between render operator and viewport render are that the viewport render has:

Blender Internal

No motion blur (sampled)
No panorama camera mode
No anti-aliasing

Eevee

Uses the Viewport sampling setting
No Overscan (see Objects, shadows and reflections not rendering in EEVEE)
Unlike Cycles, motion blur is previewed (only in camera view)

Cycles

No motion blur
No tiled rendering.
Uses preview progressive samples setting.
Render layer settings will be ignored.
Pause and resume
Uses dynamic BVH by default.See Why is rendered viewport faster than rendering individual frames? and What does static/dynamic BVH do?

All

No compositing.
Modifiers and objects preview settings are used:

Object render/preview visibility options.
modifier render/preview visibility options.
subsurf preview/render resolution.
multires preview/render resolution.
curve/metaball preview/render resolution

Particle display percentage is used.
A preview can be made from any view-port, a render can only be made from a camera object.
No way to save output (except for a screenshot).

Note: I'm not sure if this list is complete, these may not be the only differences.


Collision is not working with multiple object

For soft body collision to work correctly the normals of the collision mesh need to be oriented in the right direction - ie, in the direction of the collision. For example, in the case of a simple chute created from a cube by removing some faces you would need to Flip Normals to ensure that they are pointing 'inwards' as shown :

Note how the normals (the light-blue lines) are pointing 'inwards'. To 'flip' the normals you can simply go into Edit mode (Tab), select all (A until all mesh is selected), press Space and type 'Flip Normals' and Enter. To display the normals, press N and scroll down to 'Display' and activate display of the normals (when in Edit mode).

This can produce the following result :

Note : It's usually good practice to have 'solid' (manifold) meshes - rather than having single faces with no width (eg, a cube with some faces removed). For a manifold mesh the normals would all point 'out' of the surface, meaning this problem would not occur as collisions would only occur from the 'outside'.

Blend file included


Select everything, click CTRL+N and then flip normals

Normals is the vector value that represents face's direction. By default normals are directed outside of the sphere, so everything will be displayed correctly only on this side. When you flip normals, you flip the direction of the faces to make them facing inwards.

Also, if you want to use this sky as background or lightning, make sure to check out what HDRI is and how to use it in blender.


I'm not sure but the fact that this is already triangulated might prevent you from getting good results out of some of the UV options.
Aligning the camera and using UV -> Project From View might give you something that takes only a little manual correction.


Bevel an inset face with resulting clean edges

Here's a somewhat shorter solution, but it still requires a bunch of work.
Create the bevel:

Use the knife tool to replace the missing edges:

Select and delete the edges you don't want, using dissolve edges:

and there you go:

This leaves you with all quads in the replaced area, but a concave quad can be just as bad as an n-gon.


How to join only two objects to create a new object using Python

This will work only if all your objects share the same origin and have their transforms applied. Otherwise you will have to convert them using their transform matrices.
Similar to this answer.
We will use itertoolsand itertools.combinations to generate the wanted combinations.
Reference

Then use the bmesh module to concatenate the meshes. (Very important that all transforms be applied and origin at 0,0,0 !)
import bpy
import bmesh
import itertools

objects = bpy.context.selected_objects # Replace with your objects
objects_combinations = itertools.combinations(objects, 2)

for perm in enumerate(objects_combinations):
    this_perm = perm[1]
    new_mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(this_perm[0].name + this_perm[1].name)

    new_bm = bmesh.new()
    new_bm.from_mesh(this_perm[0].data)
    new_bm.from_mesh(this_perm[1].data)
    new_bm.to_mesh(new_mesh)

    new_obj = bpy.data.objects.new(this_perm[0].name + this_perm[1].name, new_mesh)

    bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(new_obj)

    new_bm.free()

Result :


To fake relief on a surface you use a bump map, where the bright parts of the images will look as if they are sticking out of the surface.

For example in cycles. This plane with only 4 vertex shows fake relief.

Keep in mind that this is just a texture and if you look at it from the side it reveals the lack of height or real geometry.

For Blender internal the important setting is setting the normal as influence for the texture's image.


Saving compositor File Output without rerendering

Best solution I have so far is to add a dummy render layer with nothing in it.  Then, I can re-render just that layer, and the compositor will output all of the File Outputs.


What do the different options for subtype enumerator in StringProperty do?

bpy.props.StringProperty.subtype

  FILE_PATH

  Use for storing file paths. Adds a button to the UI property markup, that when used sets the string
  to the file path chosen. Option to make it a relative path.

  DIR_PATH

  Use for storing directory paths. Adds a button to the UI property markup, that when used sets the string
  to the directory path chosen.

  FILE_NAME

  AFAICT is for, as the name suggests storing a filename.  Filenames cannot
  contain certain characters. It doesn't appear to in anyway auto-parse.
  The Paint Palettes addon uses the subtype for preset file names. The
  following method is used to parse out illegal / invalid chars.

def as_filename(name):  # could reuse for other presets
    for char in " !@#$%^&*(){}:\";'[]<>,.\\/?":
        name = name.replace(char, '_')
    return name.lower().strip()

  BYTE_STRING

  Stores the string as a utf-8 encoded byte string.  Equivalent of
  "string".encode().

  PASSWORD

  Displays asterisks (*) when input is typed in the UI. Stores the string as entered.

  NONE

  Default. None of the above.

Run a script and see.

Like any code we can run and see, the worst thing that can happen is your computer explodes, starts a fire an burns down your city.

Here is a test script to set a string property of each subtype to the window manager, and display them in a panel (using the simple panel template code) as well as write their value to system console on change.

import bpy
from bpy.props import StringProperty

subtypes = ['FILE_PATH', 'DIR_PATH', 'FILE_NAME', 'BYTE_STRING', 'PASSWORD', 'NONE']

def print_value(subtype):
    def print_value(self, context):
        print(subtype, getattr(self, subtype))
    return print_value

for st in subtypes:
    setattr(bpy.types.WindowManager,
            st,
            StringProperty(subtype=st, update=print_value(st)))

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):
        wm = context.window_manager
        layout = self.layout
        for st in subtypes:
            layout.prop(wm, st)

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Here is the result.

and the result of setting all to "xxxxxx" in the panel written to system console.

FILE_PATH xxxxxx
DIR_PATH xxxxxx
FILE_NAME xxxxxx
BYTE_STRING b'xxxxxx'
PASSWORD xxxxxx
NONE xxxxxx


Rotating multiple objects to specific centre axis

You can Duplicate-Link the poles and rotate the original pole in edit mode:

Start with one pole. Press Alt+D to make the other poles (make sure it's Alt+D, and not Ctrl+D)
Go in top view and rotate each of the two other two poles in object mode by 120 degrees each
Select the original pole and go into edit mode and rotate it towards the red dot in your pic.

Note that whatever edits you do to one pole, it happens to the other poles, but not in object mode.


How to render specific frames of an animation?

The fastest way to do it is through command line. Go to the terminal, and execute:

<path_to_blender> -b <path_to_blendfile> -f <frame1> -f <frame2> -f <frame3> ...

Add as many -f switch as necessary. For your example, if Blender executable is already in the PATH variable, and the blend file's output format is already image sequence, the invocation would be:

blender -b filename.blend -f 4 -f 24 -f 35 -f 64 -f 143


Eevee rendering 2.82, Viewport is fine. Final render has white transparent gloss or film over entire image. Cycles works fine

These are the passes I had enabled, I turned them off and on in multiple combinations and also tried a render for single layer. No luck I am afraid.

I realize I posted this in answers rather than comments. I am new please excuse this mistake.

Update:

I have found something that has seemingly fixed the issue for a picture render. After the render has completed If I set the following dropdown menus from left the right as the following values,
1) slot one
2) view layer
3) combined
4) color and alpha

Then I can save my image as intended. I can only hope this temporary fix will also work for an animation. I cannot be certain until I render it.
I still am curious as to if this is a proper and permanent fix. I fear it is not.

Final update:

I have fixed my issue. Combined with what is above turning off both compositing and sequencer in post processing worked.

There may be some unnecessary changes, as in what is in my first update. Or perhaps compositing is the problem and sequencer is not and vice versa.
I will not know until I test more, but I am done with this thread.
Thank you to the poster who set me on the right track.
Thanks for reading.


I gave a detailed answer about a phone cable here. If you want to keep a curve instead of a mesh you can do it the way below. At the end you can convert your curve to mesh if you want. I'm not sure you can use 2 curves and array a mesh along the spiral though. So:

Create a spiral.

Create another curve, a straight one this time. Give your spiral a Curve modifier with the second curve as Object.

Select your spiral. In the Properties panel > Object Data > Shape > Choose Fill > Full, and in Geometry play with the Bevel Depth and Resolution values.

Move the straight curve, the spiral will bend.


Is there a way to align the view to a non-active camera?

One quick workaround which provides approximation is to use Align View to Active command to align viewport camera to currently selected but not active render camera.

Roughly the procedure would look like:
1. Selecting camera you want to align viewport to.
2. Running View Selected command (as one way to center viewport to selection).
3. Running Align View > Align View to Active > Top (in 2.79 layout it was Shift+Numpad 7).


Cintiq pen pressure not working in texture paint

I reinstalled the tablet program from the cintiq disk, restarted, and that was enough. I presume it was from windows updating as that's the only thing that changed.


second particle hair system made both disappear from render

You need to switch back into object mode before you render. If you stay in particle edit, it won't render. One of Blender's quirks.  Does that seem crazy? You tell me.


The Normal input socket of the displacement node is meant to be used for further normal maps that are applied on top of the displacement (daisy chaining multiple maps, just like you can do with bump maps). For connecting the displacement texture itself, the Height socket has to be used. Scale can then be used to multiply the result, i.e. modify the strength. As usual, these are Blender units.
The main input sockets are described in the manual. So to summarize, the node connection has to be like this:

The rest is just like you had it in your example. This is a brick texture displacing the default cube:

One thing to mention, as you did not explicitly state it: If you want to go for Adaptive Displacement (sometimes called Micro-Displacement), you need to use the Experimental feature set, and adjust the Dicing Rate to your needs:

The SubSurf modifier of the object also needs to be changed a little. Adaptive Subdivision has to be checked:

The example rendering above uses adaptive displacement.


You are looking for a higher image resolution. The default resolution is 1920x1080, which means the image is 1920 pixels (little color blocks) sideways, and 1080 pixels up and down. Doubling each to get 3840x2160 will mean that what used to be one pixel will now be four (from 1x1 to 2x2).
Samples is how much data goes into one pixel. In Cycles, a sample is one ray trace from a pixel out backwards into the world, which will bounce uniformly on a shiny object but arbitrarily on a rough object. Too few samples makes rough things like stone look fuzzy, but things like polished metal generally look alright. More samples means more realistic renders, more computation time, and more desire to use GPU compute possibly .


Check if blender was compiled with openmp

In the Info Editor go to Help and choose System Info. Open the internal text editor and select the created file: system-info.txt. Under build flags look for -fopenmp.

Note that the build flags depend on your system. For gcc -fopenmp is needed to compile with openmp support.


object x parented to Armature bone, object y parented to object x, Y doesn't move when i move the bone

OK, this is "normal".

Y feathers are parented at the object level. But the object level stays in place when the X mesh (think about it as 'edit level') is moved by the bone.
Because the bone does not moves the center point of the wing.

What you can do it parenting your feathers like you did for the X wing.

Or set all wings and feathers in one object and parent it to the bones. Like this :


Multiple smoke flows in one domain, with different colors

You can use an Attribute node with color as a keyword to read color information from smoke (use colored flow objects).
Available keywords are:

color
density
flame
heat *
velocity *

They are now all defined in /addons/cycles/kernel/kernel_types.h though dunno if the last 2 are yet usable (maybe in some test builds) - edit - these attributes are usable from version 2.78 up - from left to right: smoke render, heat map, velocity vectors:

Smoke sim from benu:


Modelling and texturing a hole/crack in a wooden floor

Think about the shape of the material you're using, and the shape of its internal structure. Wood is fibrous, it's made of many grains, all laid out roughly side by side, very long and thin. This means its internal detail, weak, and strong points are longer than they are wide. to model a broken board, I'll usually model a shape not unlike a brick with a jagged side, then stretch it out till its the length of the board I need.

you can also add some separate, thin meshes on one side or another, to look like splinters poking out. cracks along boards, meanwhile, almost always follow the grain.

as always, reference helps a lot. https://eduardlocota.com/product/brokken-lamp/ https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kqwWd

an easy shortcut is to make the model high poly, then using proportional editing set to random, pull out the center vertex from a side. then smooth it out a bit, and repeat. this'll give you two levels of complexity to the break - an uneven shape, and splintered ends.

as for texture, it'll be tough if you don't simply separate the broken side from the intact side. because the cracks usually happen alongside the grain, when texturing you might want to line up a few of the longer cracks with more visible grains.


How to model a vase with a hole through it?

Ignore the hole to begin with. The main shape appears to be a squashed cylinder, so create the main outline by scaling down one axis, then loop cutting/extruding and scaling to create the overall shape. For the neck the shape is circular so un-squash this section. For the large hole, boolean a cylinder then clean up the geometry afterwards.

Start with a 16 sided cylinder. I used a 100mm rad and 350mm height. Scale it down on one axis. Add loop cuts.

From bottom ring to top I scaled by about .7, .9, 1, .9, .6, .1, .1. Rounded the neck rings. Added supporting loops for the neck and base. Inset and extruded the neck downward. Delete end N-Gons then used Grid Fill to finish.

Add a 10 sided cylinder and shape accordingly. I am trying to end up with an easy way to create quads after the boolean so am looking to position the new cylinder vertices close to the vase vertices.

Snap and merge the resulting vertices together, creating quads. Tidy up the mesh. At this step I deleted half the model and mirrored the mesh to save time. Remember to flip normals on the mirror. Add supporting loops to the inner ring.

Subdivision result. This worked out better than my first attempt as there are now no triangles in the bottom corners of the hole.


How do I set a specific render engine while launching blender?

Yes, it is possible.

There are lots of command-line flags provided by Blender and the flags that are related to rendering engine type are -E engine or --engine engine

So, to launch Blender with the CYCLES rendering engine set, the following command can be used.

blender --engine CYCLES

You can get a list of available engines by using

blender --engine help

or

blender -E help

Example output

found bundled python: /home/satishg/bin/blender-2.65a-linux-glibc27-x86_64/2.65/python
Blender Engine Listing:
    BLENDER_RENDER
    BLENDER_GAME
    CYCLES

[1]    Done                          ~/bin/blender-2.65a-linux-glibc27-x86_64/blender --engine help


Mimic Sculpting Shader/Light setup for Render

If you want to render it in Cycles or Eevee, you can use this setting which allows to render a matcap:

The principle is to project the faces normal into the camera space so that we can hit the matcap texture by centering the projection using the mapping node, as a matcap texture looks like this:

You can choose the shader: here diffuse is used, but so the rendering is affected by other lights and shadows. If you want to avoid that, use the emission shader.

Matcap textures available in Blender can be found in your Blender installation path in '2.80\datafiles\studiolights\matcap'.

You can also use Workbench render engine. But in this case, all objects will have the same rendering:


So I went and updated my Blender Version, and it seems to have solved my problem (Heads up to anybody who sees this, 2.8 is close to being stabilized, so if you haven't already, update your version).


A keyframe does not have to be aligned to a rendered frame. While that may sound a bit un-intuitive, a frame is a point in time, for example 24 frames in a second. A keyframe can define a value at any point in time not just on a specific frame.

It is normally considered better to have keyframes aligned to frames to get cleaner animation results. To help with this the Dopesheet and Graph Editors can auto-snap when editing keyframes.

Having keyframes that aren't aligned to a frame means you moved the keyframes in the Dopesheet or Graph editor with snapping turned off. You can simply enable snapping and align them, if you enable snapping to nearest frame then select all the keyframes and start moving a little bit they will all snap to the nearest frame without destroying your animation.


You have Smooth Shading enabled. Select the object and switch to Flat Shading and it will look like before (Object > Shade Flat).

The other software split the connection between faces, similar to how Blender's Edge Split modifier works, to make the faces appear flat shaded. This is because the vertex normals are depending on the face normals of the neighboring faces. If the faces and edges are split from each other this doesn't happen, because there is only one face the vertex is part of. If you now interpolate the normals for the shading of the face, it will remain flat shaded even when you use Gouraud/Smooth shading.

A better approach that doesn't require the separation of faces and therefore duplication of vertices, is to simply not interpolate the face normals over the barycentric coordinates. That is what Blender's Shade Flat does.


How do you do an intrude instead of extrude?

The answer is to simply just grab all the faces on the bottom of the chair, press G to grab them, and press Z afterwards to pull the faces only vertically. This isn't intruding, but just moving faces. Simply put, drag the faces up without pressing E, in the case of the chair legs. I hope this answers your question!
On another note...
if you press I, then inset faces, and then extrude, moving up into the mesh, it will create a hollow space with depth, rather than just 4 faces with no cap. This second response probably doesn't answer your question, but this is probably what 'Intrude' means in Blender.


How do I remove the 'mesh' in the starter blend file?

go to the tab on the right, scroll down to "display" and uncheck "grid floor", "y" , and "x", to remove the entire grid.


Consult python docs for a better explanation

Since there is no main() function in Python, when the command to run a
python program is given to the interpreter, the code that is at level
0 indentation is to be executed. However, before doing that, it will
define a few special variables. __name__ is one such special variable.
If the source file is executed as the main program, the interpreter
sets the __name__ variable to have a value “__main__”.

If this file is
being imported from another module, __name__ will be set to the
module’s name.
__name__ is a built-in variable which evaluates to the name of the current module. Thus it can be used to check whether the current
script is being run on its own or being imported somewhere else by
combining it with if statement, as shown below.

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

which when run from text editor in above case registers the class OBJECT_OT_add_object  When run again it has "no idea" that it is the same class as registered before. ( Hence the error if you try to unregister)
If however the class is registered when enabled as an addon it will be in that addon modules namespace my_addon.OBJECT_OT_add_object (ie __name__ == "my_addon") and will be the same class when unregistered from the addon.
This is included to test scripts in the text editor.  Removing it will have no consequence if installed as an addon.
Have a feeling an issue here is:
When testing such scripts it has the tendency to append and append and append the item to the menu.
A solution to this is bpy.ops.script.reload() which in 2.7x has the shortcut F8 or can be run in the python console.  Recommend writing a little script to prepend it to the text editor and console headers for convenience
EDIT In 2.8 reload scripts is also  available via  the Blender > System > Reload Scripts menu.
Import the text script as a module
Further to this. To test a script in the python console.  For example the simple panel template.
This will give the script a "namespace"
>>> foo = D.texts['ui_panel_simple.py'].as_module()

Can call the register method
>>> foo.register()

and then later unregister with
>>> foo.unregister()

somewhat more closely emulating it being an addon.


Is Z-Render Pass accuracy dependent on sample count? Are others like object id? (Cycles)

No, Z pass, ObjectID and alike are not dependent on Cycles render samples. Their visual output will always be the same like rendered with 1 sample - so not nice.

It's better to obtain them in Cycles with a different method - Z pass with Mist pass or Ray-depth shaders, ID-masks with random-colored shadeless materials for example.

Or get them from Blender Internal (you want to use Full Sample there).

Here is a little table what is (green) and is not (red) dependent on render samples:


GPU Render slows when computer is inactive

I think that as you are using GPU rendering after a while as the image is still roughly the same on your screen, the GPU hibernates/ power saves as it is not being used. That is probably why when you browse the internet it goes back to normal.

I would recommend CPU rendering unless your GPU is O.P. compared to your CPU which i don't think it is.


Lag in Blender 2.83 Modeling (Edit Mode)

Which OS are you using ? Try Reinstalling Blender, i am also getting a lot of Problems in Blender 2.83.1, it must be optimised.
I recently switched to Linux, and when I start Blender, view port runs at 5 fps, while previous versions ran extremely smooth, i shutdown my PC (not restart) and retry after 10 minutes and start blender just when the PC boot, and it ran perfectly fine.