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How to get shadows information in cycles
I have a WIP looking like this

Now I want to do something about a background and I want to do it in a similar halftone style. But when I'm applying it the same way as I did on the models, the dots are covering the shadow.
I need a shadow information, to influence them somehow, but I have no idea how to extract it. I'm using Cycles.

Please read your question and try to imagine you are trying to understand it without knowing your situation. What do you want to do about the background? What are you applying where, how? What dots are covering what shadows and how? What does it mean? How does it differ from what you expect? Please be specific. Telling about your shader setup would be good, showing node screenshots - even better. Sharing a .blend file as an example could be a good idea.

As I understand it, you would like to put the shading of a surface through a half-tone screen during the render? Possibly in Object or UV space?

Ok, so  I achieved the result I wanted. Unfortunately, it's not fully procedural. What I needed to do was to bake shadow map of the plane and than I could use this information to make a final artwork.

With EEVEE, you might be able to do it in one pass using the Shader to RGB node, allowing you to feed the response of a surface to light back into the tree, ( for example to multiply with a halftone screen ). I've not done it with EEVEE yet, but did it quite a lot with Blender Internal. That is not possible with a path-tracer, working the way Cycles does.


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how to fix vector mapping drivers
i have been trying to fix this shader for a while but I don't seem to be getting anywhere and decided to see if anyone could help. the problem is the shader looks fine but as soon as I start rotating the sun lamp the shader doesn't mach up.

I think It has something to do with the sun rotation drivers I set up in the node editor here is my node setup.

For some reason the values don't match up with the real world rotation of the sun lamp.

Here is the blender project if anyone wants to take a crack at it. if you have any suggestions on how to fix it. or you have found the solution please post an answer down below.

To create a gradient from these two vectors you should use a Dot product.
Here I use a constant Z direction that are rotated with your map node. This is then used as one of the inputs for the Dot.
I disconnected the displace because I couldn't understand what you want to do there.

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What is the problem with my bump mapping?
I am trying to map a high resolution bump map on a UV sphere, I am using a UV map, and I get this result:

What causes the renderer to make these huge blobs? This should be a moon, far away and big (distance is about 500, size is 300 blender units), my bump map is 3840 x 2160  Pixels TIF file (I got the same result with a half resolution bump map, too), UV-mapped to the sphere. Mesh is set to smooth, Subsurf is set to 4 subdivisions, and the node setup is as follows:

Mapping (if I map the bump map to the color of the diffuse shader, it does not get pixelated):

What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for the help.

Could you show the unwrapping you did? one thing I can think of could be that it's mapping only a very small part of the sphere

the strength of 500 kills the detail on the map. Try looking into the the experimental features to displace your mesh

Setting the Image texture to non-color should help to.. But what Sidar says, search for micro displacement and adaptive subsurf.

@LukeS I have added the UV wrapping as an image.

I have figured it out.
The subsurf for rendering was accidentally switched off when baking the bump map.
Thanks for all your inputs!

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How to animate musgrave texture?
I was looking for a way to animate a procedural texture when a stumbled upon this.  I was wondering if there was a way to do something similar with a Musgrave texture.  As in the other post, I would not like the texture to seen as moving.  I assume that there is no way to do this in Blender without using a script.  The example also did not have a vector input, which I would need.

To seamlessly animate a moving texture you can use the same technique as described in Seamless animation loop of procedural textures but using a Musgrave texture in place of the two Voronoi. Here's the result of the Blend file from the linked answer with the Voronoi swapped out to Musgrave textures :

However, for a static but animating musgrave you would need to have an additional 'dimension' of the texture that can be varied without affecting the mapping (as in the OSL solution linked to your question). OSL does not seem to provide an equivalent texture to the Musgrave node so you would either need to reconstruct it mathematically (if you know the algorithm for generating the Musgrave texture) or you need to be able to use the 3-dimensional Vector input of the existing Musgrave node to simultaneously map to your mesh while still providing a dimension to vary for the animation.
To achieve this you could simply unwrap your mesh, providing UV coordinates that can be used for the X and Y coordinates to the Musgrave texture and vary the Z coordinate. This can be achieved using the following nodes :

In my case I unwrapped Suzanne using a Sphere projection. Varying the Value node effectively animates the Musgrave texture by selecting a 'slice' of the XYZ texture space to map to the 2-dimensional UV space.
This can produce the following result :

Another alternative is to produce a musgrave-like texture by combining Noise textures to produce an output that varies similar to Musgrave fBM. By tweaking the settings we can get something very similar to Musgrave. For example, in the following image the right-hand-side is the default Musgrave texture while on the left is produced by combining two Noise textures :

To produce this we can use the following nodes :

This will produce a true 3D texture (rather than mapping via UV as in the previous solution) and so does not suffer from 'seams'. By animating the input vector (which effectively acts as a 'seed') we can smoothly vary the effect.
This works by taking the Object coordinates and generating two vectors - one moved in the direction of the 'seed' and the other moved in the opposite direction. By using two offsets we can remove any visible 'direction of motion' while changing the 'seed' since the two vectors effectively cancel each other out. The two vectors pass to two Noise textures - these should typically be set to the same values (in particular the Scale) but you may get some interesting results by using different settings. In order to produce the Musgrave-like range of output, we then subtract one noise from the other, one channel is extracted (so it becomes monochrome - you can optionally use the other channels which will produce a similar output (but different pattern) and this is scaled with a Math node to produce output approximately in the range -1.0 to 1.0 similar to the actual Musgrave output.
You can animate the result by varying the 'seed' vector to produce a result similar to the following :

Blend file included

I clarified my post, as in the post that I provided I do not want the texture to appear as if it is moving.  In your example, it appears as if the texture is moving upwards.

@Ben I see now. I've edited my answer - hopefully this helps.

Once again, great answer but I have it unwrapped on a sphere and it has a seam and looks distorted if I use a UV map

@Ben Can you perhaps update your question with a link to your Blend file?

Hi @Ben. I've added an alternative method - hopefully this will fit your needs.

For anyone else having a problem figuring out how to create the "seed" node, open the blender file, and reset that node.

@MarkusvonBroady The ‘Seed’ node is actually a re-labelled Combine XYZ node - apologies, I should have explained.


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How to distort effects with equirectangular projection
I have a 360-degree panorama(rendered in Blender) and want to composite a glare effect onto it.  The problem is that once it is viewed in a 360 photo view the effect seems distorted due to projection distortion.  Is there any way to compensate for this?
Example:
This is a 360° equirectangular panorama of a simple scene of a sphere with a glare effect

If you then map it onto a sphere, then render that sphere, it looks like this

Because the sphere is the same color as the background is it impossible to see, but if I map bright to red and dark to green to make it easier to see against the background and increase the contrast, I get something like this

You can see that the effect pinches the glare effect towards the poles.
That blend file can be downloaded here

Interesting issue! Never thought of that. I'll give it some hard thought

If you look up a tutorial for after effect on editing 360 footage you can see what I mean.  They use an effect the distort whatever they are compositing so it looks right when you project it.

I just applied glare to an Equirect export then applied that to a sphere object and the glare streaks looked correct. Where would I see pinching or distortion? I did notice that the glare doesn't wrap around past the UV seam of the object I'm mapping back to. That would be a serious issue. Its overcome in the compositor with the Blur node having Extend Bounds.

Oops I guess the poles are pinching worst. Because I'm applying a flat alteration to a Equirect distorted image. Perhaps you could UV distort the glare based on a sphere unwrap? But then you'll be moving the location off the glare origin... hmmm. I think that the problem is Blender's compositor expects to work in flat space, so procedural blurs like Glare cannot disort to follow Equirect space

Lens flare depends on the orientation of the lens you are looking through in relation to the light source so it cannot be rendered into a panoramic image that is then viewed as if the orientation of the camera would be changing.
It would have to be an effect generated while viewing the image. So the answer seems to be:
No. There is no way to compensate for this at the stage where you are making the panoramic image.
It should be done at the stage where the image is viewed.

I am not talking about a lens effect I am talking about a glare effect.  I could understand your confusion if you thought I was talking about a lens flare.  Information on this node can be found in the blender manual here https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/compositing/types/filter/glare.html

It would be a lot easier to understand if you shared an image of how it looks.

@Ben "I am not talking about a lens [flare], I am talking about a glare effect", but the linked manual entry says: The Glare node is used to add lens flares [...]. Isn't this contradictory?

I understand the confusion now, it is on what I was using the glare node for.  I was using under the fog glow setting which has an effect similar to a bloom effect.

I'd add in the scene some dedicated render layer with all needed mask shapes (ObjID, MatID). They will be distorted on rendered image correctly. And on compositing I could isolate the masks with "ID Mask" node, and use them e.g. for glare.
Sadly, AFAIK, the compositor nodes are not distortion-aware yet.

In this case from my previous experience with dome projection in general (same principles), I found out that there is mainly one way to do it depending the effect you want to add.
So the best way to achieve this is to have one more render pass as a final rendering, Blender wise to render twice your scene and add all the effects on the final rendering.
What I mean by that, DoF, Fog and other depth/camera position related effects will be done in the same stage where you rendering your pano (equirectangular map) and the rest pixel effects (such as bloom/glare, noise or any other seamless - texture like - effect is better to be done in the final stage or even better in real time (maybe BGE can help you on that). By rendering the sphere from a fixed point pin-hole camera (common camera) and adding your extra effects (pixel shader effects) you will avoid completely mangling with borders and margins.
An other way to do so is to use fish eye camera and render your whole scene as a disc and then projected again it on an hemisphere (>360 degrees), it is not perfect  but it will also do the job if you dont really care about 100% accuracy and having a perfect sphere and you wont have to split the rendering procedure in two stages to achieve this.

So are you saying that if you apply the effect to a fisheye projection that there is no distortion when viewed?

it will be projected on a sphere with the proper mapping, right ? if it doeas then it will be not distorted as well.


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3D View Glitches and Jumps around
I'm hoping someone has come across this before. I was working on my project and things were fine, then all of a sudden they weren't. In the 3D view my mesh seems all screwed up and my camera movement is very jerky. When I switch to camera view or do a render everything looks fine though. I'd appreciate any suggestions. Below is the broken 3D view, then a render from roughly the same point of view with the same layers visible.
Edit:

Please attach the .blend https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Btw you have the material view selected, try render view

Uploaded the blend, render view looks just fine, I'd like to avoid having to make my changes using that though.

The reason why is because the start clipping length of the 3d view is set to 1 micro-meter.

Blender doesn't like dealing with small numbers, so if you set that to something bigger such as 1 meter it should fix it.


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Wrapping geometry object animation
I'm trying to animate wrapping a dodecahedron. I tried to use one object with shapekeys (rotate Y+Y with normal mode), but I can't parent the animations, any ideas?
Now I made separate objects but now I don't know how animate on a specific axis in object mode.

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/28829/set-edge-as-axis-for-surface-rotation/28831

No, it's not related. I was asking about PARENTING all the rotations, not how to rotate each pentagon.

I suggest using an armature to animate the wrapping.
Animating a rotation with shape keys will lead to deformed faces during the animation as the shape key only considers the location of the vertices. Between two keyframes the location is interpolated on a straight line.
Displayed below are two planes which get rotated by 45 degrees. The red plane is rotated by entering the angle in the transformation field while the blue plane uses a shape key with rotated vertices.

By using an armature you can avoid this deformation.
The bones' heads should be placed at the dodecahedron's edges and the tails at the center of the faces. I assume the best way to achieve this is to alternate using Shift+S > Cursor to Selection and Selection to Cursor.

The default rotation mode for bones is Quaternion. You can switch to one of the Euler angle modes to get the correct rotation axis. Gimbal lock should be no problem in this case as you're rotating on only one axis.

Got it:
It should be made with separate, shapekeyed, pentagons, and parented by "vertex parent".

ok, but how can I rotate the bones along the axe I need?

@LDCO By changing the rotation mode of the bones from the default quaternion to one of the Euler angle modes (e.g. XYZ).

I actually achieved to make it, (you are right about the deformation in case of shape keys - I even opened another question about it - before I saw your answer to this one ) the problem is I don't understand how I made it - I mean the bones orientation mode. Now I understand - euler angle modes...

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Reverse armature deformation on vertex in python
I have a mesh with armature modifier (active+posed) and wish to do some modifications with vert coords (after armature deformations) saved in shape key on that mesh. But currently it seems not possible - shape key contain coords before modifiers and armature can change each vertex in unpredictable manner. So to save final coord back into original mesh coord (on each vertex) - i have to revert armature deformations some how… and this seems to be generally impossible //
In other words - for every given vertex coord, after all deformations (armature) and after applying some custom movements i need (i can calculate them only on final mesh) that i need - i need to calculate ORIGINAL coords (that can be saved in shape key) so they will give me my final position after applying armature.
Interestingly enough, Sculpt mode manages to do this somehow - you can sculpt posed mesh with active shapekey and it will put into shapekey proper position related to undeformed mesh. Not the coords that can be seen on screen.
Is it possible to do the same in Python? May be there is a way to do “sculpted translate” for vertex, that will do all the revert magic? any suggestions welcome

This old addon has some techniques for reversing the transforms: https://archive.blender.org/wiki/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Animation/Corrective_Shape_Key/

thanks, i see this script "bruteforce" verts positions by checking different initial positions to get right final position... So its kind of guided guess-work.
While this should work - its an overkill imho. although if there is no other options...
But sculpt tool definitely has this revers-transformations, without guess-work stuff? can it be accessed from python?

Ok, I haven't actually read the script. I though it said there was a general version and an armature specific version included. The algorithm used for standard armature deformation is called linear blend skinning and I think should be able to be reversed by inverting bone transform matrices and applying them along with the weights in appropriate order. Preserve Volume option uses a different algorithm and is trickier.

I had another look and the unposeMesh method should have the relevant details. Note that this addon is bundled with blender as animation_add_corrective_shape_key.py

Answering own question: Ended up by applying deformations as displacement with custom texture AFTER armature… shapekey is essentially just a displacement for verts, after all, and making this displacement after armature make more sense. and easier to implement (just baking verts shift into packed image)


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Is Backface culling possible in render mode?
Let's say I have an 3D object (semitransparent) which contains another object in it. To make it more visible I used backface culling which really works fine in the solid display.
When I try to switch my view of the object from solid into rendered it seems like the backface-culling doesn't work in render mode.
Is it possible to keep backface-culling in rendered view?
Thanks for the answers!

Blender Internal, or Cycles render?

@ScottMilner just in Blender Render

Select the material that you want to be with Backface Culling and enable Use Shader Nodes.

Open Node Editor and select the material you are using in the Material Node.
Add Geometry Node and connect Front/Back socket to Alpha socket in the Output Node.

Thank you Denis! But my object should also be semitransparent / connected to the Alpha. For example there is another smaller spherical in this spherical. The bigger spherical should be semitransparent so I would be able to see the smaller one. How can I combine the two Alpha with the one at the Output?

@KhangCao I think it should work with math node using Add.

In Cycles: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/2083/62466

I saw that this was partially answered, but if you want to keep your existing alpha channel there's an extra step. Create a Math node and connect the Alpha socket from the Material node to one of the two sockets, and the Front/Back socket from the Geometry node to the other. Be sure to set it to Multiply, not Add like the existing comment said.

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How do I get a mesh to look like the clothing is griping onto it?
I tried using shapekeys and scaling but because they use vertexes I can't get it to work correctly. does anyone have any tips?
The stockings lay on top of the mesh but doesn't look like it its actually griping the mesh. Do I need to edit the topology or is there another way

This is the result I'm trying to get

I guess what you need to recreate is what's happening to the thigh skin when it's a little bit squeezed by the stockings : There's a kind of bulge just over the stockings line, then you could make the stockings radius slightly smaller than the thigh one, as if they were compressing the leg.

@moonbots thank you, I think it works. after that do I then subdivide it for smoother results?

you need to test, as long as adding edge loops doesn't seem to improve the result, don't add any. It looks like your mesh uses already enough edge loops, if not too much. Subdivision Surface modifier is another thing though, as it only adds virtual edge loops, but generally you don't need to go further than 2 subdivisions.

I see, thank you for your help.

and also, to smooth, don't forget to press the Smooth Shading button in the T panel (on the left of your 3D View)  ;)


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How to toggle the transparency view on edge selected mode in Blender 2.80?
The edge selection lines/outlines are partially obscuring part of the mesh I'm working on, so I would like to be able to make these lines more transparent as to more easily see what I'm working on without zooming in excessively.
(I'm using 2.8 beta)

You may use toggle x-ray option:

Available both in wire-frame and solid view with option:


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Rig Door of Bus
I want rig door of Bus and i am beginner in blender  i found this Rig and it meet what i want but ididnot understand it. can one please explaing it for me. Thanks alot
and the rig too like in this youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBPdgouJiJk

Maybe share the rig you've downloaded if you want us to explain it. Also, is the system shown of this video the same as the one you've downloaded?

unfortunately this file not available i found just image for it in this webpage https://www.artstation.com/artwork/W2a1O3

I think it is made this way:

Create a 3 bone armature, with bone1_R, bone2_R and bone3_R (the vertical one), bend a bit between bone 2 and bone 3 so that it will bend in the right direction, unparent bone3_R.

Switch to Pose mode, Give an IK constraint to bone2_R, with bone3_R as target, choose a Chain Length of 2.

Give bone3_R a Limit Location constraint so that it will only move on the X axis, set the Minimum X and Maximum X values. This constraint is not absolutely necessary though, it's just to ease the manipulations.

Create your right door object, keep your armature in Pose mode, select your door, then bone2_R, and ctrlP > parent it to bone2_R.

Move bone3_R on the X axis to test the door movement.

In Edit mode, select all the bones and go in the Armature menu > Symmetrize. Now you have all your bones symmetrized and called bone1_L etc...

Change the Limit Location values of bone3_L so that it fits to its position on the left.

Create your left door object and parent it to bone2_L.

In Edit mode, you can create a root bone and parent the right and left bones 1 and 3 to this root bone.

To make the animation easier you can even give bone3_L a Copy Location with the bone3_R as target. This way you control both the doors with only one bone (bone3_R). If you choose to do so, it makes the bone3_L Copy Location useless as bone3_L will only move on the X axis.

Is seems to work fine, both the doors open.

oh yes sorry, sure, done  ;)

Thanks moonboots.

Thanks alot, it works very good. In first Image you mean "bend a bit between 2 and 1" right?

exactly, bend a bit between bone 2 and bone 3 so that it will bend in the right direction

another question please, maybe you have experience in ue4. How can i get these constraint in ue4

sorry no I don't know anything about ue4   ;)

@moonboots thanks very much.


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Does Blender has anything like Adobe After Effects' aerender command-line interface application?
Does Blender has anything like Adobe After Effects' aerender command-line interface application?
In long run, I want to automate creating video based on template using images and text.
More details
I am new to this but I will try my best to explain, I saw someone using aerender and some template with extension "aep" to create a video using images and text.
Now I am not sure if Blender supports such templates (I am not entirely sure what templates do but I think they add effects)
I did some research and I found out blender has cli which could be used for rendering as well, but I still don't know how to create a template and how it all collerate
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/workflows/command_line.html

Hello and welcome to the site! Could you expand upon your question a little bit? What exactly does the aerender application do? How would this look in Blender?

Update question with more info


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How can I fix animated text to stay inside the 'LCD screen'?
I'm creating a typewriter effect with animation nodes and I've trouble with figure out how to make text stay inside the 'LCD screen' as I hoped text will stay inside the box but it kept typing over the box. I'm not really sure how can I fix this problem. I hope anyone can help out with this?

You can use the Boolean modifier to only show the text that intersects a another mesh i.e. a Cube the size of the screen.

I’ve tried with Boolean modifier but it didn’t work. I think it’s could be something to do with animation nodes?

How do you want the overflow to be handled? Do you want the text to scale down to fit? Do you want it to be cut?

Let us say that your writer screen can display at most 20 characters, then we could trim the start of the text by subtracting 20 from the end as follows:

Yes! That’s what I’m looked for. Thank you so much! You’re legend.

Omar, this is gold. Later, I will have new question about flexing text or making text jump. I will post a question in an hour or so.

@Odizm Please accept the answer if its answers your question.


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Solidify thickness doesn't correspond to specified scale when I animate the scale of the solid
When I try to animate the scale of the solid, solidify thickness doesn't correspond to specified scale:

Please insert images directly into the question with the button provided rather than just adding links to them. How to upload an image to a post. - In any case your image doesn't tell us anything without any context or details.

maybe you need to apply the scale in Object mode (Ctrl A)

If you scale the object non-uniformly, the thickness will scale non-uniformly. Do you want a somehow-defined even thickness, when the object is scaled by different amount in different directions?

@moonboots -- if this user wants to animate the scale, is there a way to apply the new scale at every frame as you suggest?

@james_t  I missed that   :/    he should apply the Solidify modifier

or instead of scaling in Object mode, use a shapekey to scale the object in Edit mode?

or armature deform!  (convenient, bones can scale in 3 dimensions just like an object, but it's still deformation not transformation)

Scaling in Object mode will vary the Solidify thickness. Instead of scaling in Object mode, you could use a shapekey to scale the object in Edit mode, the thickness will remain unchanged:


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Why does shirt keeps moving in simulation? It should be stable
I wanted the shirt I downloaded as an obj. file to be hanging but this keeps happening to me no matter what I do. Why?
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LbaEZ9nB0A

Hi Josef, can you illustrate and/or describe what's wrong? We don't want questions (or answers) to rely on outside information. You can also upload your .blend file.

how do I upload blend file?

it keeps moving like crazy around vertices i set for the shape. it is never actually hanging

You can share your Blend file via https://blend-exchange.com/ following the instructions there to copy the link on that page. Then edit your question here and paste the link into it.

The problem is probably that your object has thickness, so the faces are colliding right away. Maybe first apply the scale, and also lower down the self collisions distance. Also the topology is pretty bad so I don't think it helps the cloth simulation.


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Toon shader only applied to part of the mesh

I had wanted to add some toon shading or so to my model, but I've come to a problem where it's only rendering on parts of the body. They're all different segments, but they're all joined. Is it something I can fix, or did I mess up somewhere?
The blend was asked for, so if I'm doing this right, here ya' go

This could be a multitude of things, are all these pieces one object, does the material depend on normals, are they consistent.. etc. etc.. I think you're going to have to share your file on https://blend-exchange.com/ , editing the link into your post, to give us a chance.

In your file, half the faces are assigned the material 'Body' and half, 'Material'. What happens, if you select all faces, and in the material tab, select 'Body', and click Assign?

Well, yeah that fixed it. Not entirely sure how that happened to those and not the rest, but thank you.

When you join objects, they keep the material slots already assigned.


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Smooth figure (.STL) in blender
The first picture is my project in Blender, the second is the same object exported as STL, and reopened in Blender. Do you know why the smoothing is so different? How can I solve the problem?
The file is too heavy for Subdivision Surface.

This site is for problems in Blender, not Chitubox so your question will most likely be closed. But the simple answer is: You have set the object to be "shaded" smooth in Blender. It's not the geometry that is absolutely smooth. Different softwares have different ways of handling this. The shading in Blender doesn't matter at all for Chitubox. So it shows the model shaded flat instead of smooth and probably this software does not even have an own option for shading the object smooth - but if so, you have to activate it there.

@GordonBrinkmann Chitubox doesn't have this option, so I would like to know if it is possible to improve smooth in blender

Use a Subdivision Surface modifier and apply it. But this changes the look of the mesh and though the faces will then be smaller in Chitubox, they will still be shaded flat.


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How do I change the air to a solid and the solid to air? essentially I want to have the effect of filling it up with water and solidifying the water?

I need to fill up the space inside of this object, and I need to replace the current object that has solidified areas with air. Thanks

I think I understand what you mean.. by 'change to air'.. do you mean 'make completely transparent' ?

sort of. I would like to change the light grey(solid) parts of the object to air and fill the inside to make the inside solid. Essentially I need to fill up the inside because I want to cut that shape out of a different object. It's important that the solution is not just for show, because I am going to 3D print it.

.. so you don't need a fluid simulation, or anything, just to get the negative space inside..


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Rigging a Watt's Linkage Assembly
I am trying to rig a Watt's linkage suspension assembly. Here is a screenshot:

Bones A and B have a Track To constraint that makes them follow bones E and F, respectively, which are parented to bone G. Bones C and D should follow along as bones A and B rotate, attached to A and B and setting limits to the rotation. I haven't been able to make that happen.

Could this be made to work using inverse kinematics? Or would it be better to assign physics behavior to meshes that represent the parts of the mechanical assembly?

Can you add a bit of info on how you intend to animate this rig (Is bone g effectively the control)?

You would move bone G, and it would pull along bones E and F. Bones A and B would rotate to follow E and F, and C and D would be forced to follow along as A and B rotate. The tips of A and C must remain attached to each other, and the same for B and D. C and D must also remain attached to one another. C and D are free to rotate to allow movement. G, E and F may move freely in relation to the other bones- they only generate movement, and it is the attachments of the other bones to one another that control the movement. I can't get C and D to follow along.


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I want to make a Final year engineering project in Blender. What is the scope of Blender?
I have been using Blender for a few months for animation and game development and am well versed with python scripting used in blender too.
I am a 3rd year engineering student and was thinking to make my final year project using Blender.
What all are the things exactly that Blender is capable of doing?
Can I make something useful(not recreational projects like games or animations) with Blender?
Thanks in advance! :)

You could do something practical. Like, write a plug in. I could realy use a comic book plug in. Something that help comic people create comics. So, things like building a character, posing tools and finally a panel maker for pages so poses can be done in each panel. After that, an a page exporter so that can be used as a reference for inking the page! Love to see that plug in. The reality is Blender does all this it's just a matter of making a work flow quicker by integrating into a plug in.

Take a look at Blender's features page.

This appears pretty broad. It might be useful to at least specify what kind of engineering you are doing and ask how blender can be used in that field.

Blender can be used for geometry creation and visualization. The geometry can be manually entered or imported and manipulated using Python. Using Python, blender can interact with data in the real world. The cycles rendering engine implements ray tracing and can replicate optical behavior. There are several built in simulators, however they are intended for animation, not engineering. There are two different fluid simulators (Lattice-Boltzmann and SPH). There is a solid body simulator that includes mechanical constraints. The scripting capabilities make it straight forward to couple other simulations to Blender. Since Blender is open source you can access the source code and extend the built in simulators. From these basic capabilities many different engineering things can be done. The list below shows some places to look for ideas. Good luck!

Visualization

Scientific Visualization in Blender
Post process CFD data
Create and visualize "computational cell biology"
Astronomical data
Plotting data
Plotting functions

Image processing
Augmented reality
Particle Tracking  Velocimetry
Real-time sensor visualization
Psychology testing
Engineering
Robotics,more
Real-time audio spectrum visualization
3D Printing
Automotive design at Tata
Dental appliance design
Design a fixture for spinal surgery
Aerodynamic geometry case preparation for CFD
CFD visualization
Industrial fire simulation
Simulation sensor imaging
Thermal radiation shielding design
Structure solar radiation simulation
Simulate soil optical properties, more
Synthetic aperture radar simulation
... and lots more


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Color Change Render
Hello i am making a Blender Typography Lyric Animation and my text keeps coming out as black. I have successfully changed my background color but the text is still black.
Here is what colors I hope for after rendering

But Here Is What I Get After Rendering

Please Help Me
I Am Using Blender 2.79

Please show your material settings and specify what render engine you are using.

Posting your .blend file using http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ may help.

i added the stuff u requested

"but now the colors are to bright they look like this". Your light is too bright and/or your materials are too glossy. Moving the light to the side may help also.

I have rolled back your last edit. If you want ask a new question, ask a new one using this sites functionality, do not edit your original question the be the new one, as part of the purpose of this site is to preserve useful questions in case someone else has the same problem.

Also, please accept the answer that solved the problem for you.

You either need to ad a light source to your scene, or you need to make your text object materials 'shadeless' in the shading panel of the properties editor.

omg thank you i added a sun light and put the strength to 250 and the colors showed up

Are there any lights in the scene?
Also, viewport colors are NOT materials see if you have assigned materials to each text object. If you haven't that could also be one of the reasons why your render is appearing black.
Finally, if you have converted the texts to Objects (by pressing Alt+C > Mesh from curve, meta, surf, text), then select the objects then go into edit mode, select all surfaces by tapping 'A' and recalculate the normals using Ctrl+N.
Edit : Just check your scene, there are no light sources, after adding one, it renders fine.

omg thank you i added a sun light and put the strength to 250 and the colors showed up


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How to make cloth 'catch' a falling object, slowing its fall?
I simply want to make a pinned cloth catch a falling rigid body so as to slow its fall until it comes to a halt.
At the moment, the ball falls and the cloth interacts with it, but the ball will pass straight through the cloth without slowing it (even though the cloth reacts to the ball).
What setting do I need to apply to make this work, please?

I just added another (last) edit, to update the result of my efforts on this matter, even if I failed...

Here is an example, based on what you said, if I got it right:

subdivide a bit a cube, rise it on Z, set rigid body "active", a bit of bounciness, "mesh" collision shape
set a ground plane, set a group with the 4 corner vertices, set plane to cloth, with pin to the above 4 vertices group, set also rigid body "passive", with a bit of bounciness, set collision shape to "mesh"

it should behave like this:

here is the example file

Hth.
edit
As for comments, I noticed you asked something slightly more natural. Rigid bodies made the cloth stop the falling cube, but it seemed as their interaction was poor.
Although you didn't post any image, animation or example file, I hope now to understand what you wish, and have done another setup, but it does not use rigid bodies, it uses soft bodies:
Here is the result:

I've done it like this:
Plane has

cloth enabled, pinned to the 4 corner vertices group
collision enabled (default settings)
soft body enabled with "default goal strength" .98

Falling cube has also soft body enabled, with

soft body goal > disabled
soft body edges > stiff quads, shear 1
soft body edges > springs pull 0.99

And, here is another example file

edit 2:
since in comments you (finally!) unveiled your ultimate desire:
"I specifically wanted to achieve the effect of a (soccer) football being caught by a goal net."
I tried similar setups and... found that's is really hard, imho. I had some partial (weird) results using mostly softbodies instead of cloth, and you see them below, but although I'm not satisfied (all of them are really acting weirdly) I show them here below for completeness's sake. To partially justify my failures, I found this on this manual page: Deflection for softbody objects is difficult, they often penetrate the colliding objects.
Below you see I used a "force" simulation (with a abrief strong impulse behind the ball) to "kick" the ball into the net, this also could help or inspire you. Last, I would create a new question more specific, like "how can I realistically simulate a soccer ball caught in a goal net?"...
So, here are some results I got until now: I can post also .blend files if you need to experiment: it was fun, in the end, but I wish I found a very good end compelte solution...

late edit
here is the .blend file relative to the last example

Quoting OP: "so as to slow its fall until it comes to a halt" With the technique you are showing here, the cube's impact on the "cloth" is not affecting the cloth at all. It's as if the cloth has turned to stone an instant before the impact. The cube bounces, but does not slow as if caught by a net or cloth, which is what OP seems to be seeking.

@Mentalist thanks, true. I just added another way (although it needs soft bodies, not rigid bodies), I hope this fits better.

Updated answer looking good!

Thank you for taking the time to post an answer. I specifically wanted to achieve the effect of a (soccer) football being caught by a goal net. The net would be cloth and the ball would be a rigid body travelling at speed. Your edit to the original post almost answers the question, but I can't see a way of achieving a fully simulated result without having to manually animate the ball.

ah ok, but a soccer ball doesn't really "fall" into a net... it "travels" more or less horizontally and then collides with the net which slows the ball until it falls down on the ground... I'll think of something, and if it works, I'll update the answer. But if you have some setup, even not working, an image of it could help to replicate it as closely as possible... but if you don't wish to animate the ball, how is the ball going to score a goal in that net?

This is brilliant - thank you very much for exploring this! I believe a lot of people will benefit from this answer.

@m.ardito Thank you for the great answer! Do you have a .blend file for the last scenario?

@ComputerScientist Hi, thanks. You're lucky, I found the file in an old backup disk, so I just edited the answer, look at the end of it. After a first bake run, it plays quite smooth also in 2.82a, Cheers :)

Wow thank you @m.ardito ! :)

Here is one option that does not require the soft body modifier.

Make a cloth the "usual" way by making a plane, sub-dividing, and adding the cloth modifier. Critically, also add the collision modifier. Then, pin the four corners of the cloth.
Make a bunch of cubes above. Add the cloth modifier with default arguments. Update: also add the collision modifier.

Then, surprisingly, that's all that seems necessary to get interesting results (though there are some issues as I'll point out later).
In the below gif, I show some experiments where the the three blocks to the left have only the cloth modifier, the three blocks to the middle do not have the cloth modifier (instead they are either rigid body only or rigid body with collisions) and the three blocks to the right have cloth and collisions.
The results show that the six blocks with cloth seem to be behaving appropriately.

I am attaching the blend file I used to make the animation above. I used 2.82a.

Now, a few caveats that I found:

You may run into problems if you let the blocks be closer to each other, in that the blocks will not properly collide (though they do collide with the underlying cloth).
Strangely, reducing the size of the cloth will sometimes result in weird behavior on the blocks where they collapse. They are not penetrating the cloth, they literally collapse. Perhaps it's a surface normal issue arising after the point of collisions, since the blocks that are collapsing are closer to the corners. See the gif below. The only difference is scaling the size of the cloth to be smaller. Since this is 2.82a, maybe adjusting the pressure of the cloth (a new feature in this version) may help.

Update #1: to avoid the blocks colliding with each other, you can use the collision modifier, so that should probably be selected in addition to the cloth modifier. See this gif, where I put the blocks closer together to see the effect better:

Update #2: ah, unfortunately that doesn't seem to work reliably. See this GIF where I put the blocks together near the corner. The blocks that don't collapse will intersect each other despite how the blocks all have collisions on them (in addition to the cloth modifier). The quality steps has been increased from 2 to 5 for each of the 9 blocks.

I'm attaching the blend file for the above video in case anyone wants to take a further look.

Update 3: inspired by this answer, you can join the 9 blocks together into one object. Then, turn on self-collisions, and increase the cloth quality steps to 10. I get this gif now:

It's still pretty bad, but better than earlier, and the self-collisions at least seem to be working for the blocks.

What about catching a torus on a string (cloth, softbody) - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/212181/ring-on-a-necklace-model

Maybe that would work. I'm curious to see what you find.

Nah I meant like how would that work... how can this be achieved also


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How to reset Bounding Box without effecting the object?
I got a problem with an upright object which with tilt bounding box.
Because its bounding box is tilt , I can't symmetric sculpt properly.
Although I can use mirror modify to get symmetric effect, still wondering is there a way to reset the bounding box without effecting the object inside?

This is the object I made.

Its bounding box is tilt.

File uploading has been completed. Thank you.


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Approaching vertex groups with Python
I want to approach two vertex groups belonging to two different objects, making sure that these objects are close together.
How can I do that scripting?
Thank you so much!

Given an object ob, you can access its mesh at ob.data, and its vertices at ob.data.vertices. The vertex groups are defined on the object as well, at ob.vertex_groups. Each vertex group has a weight() function you can call to get the weight of a vertex.
vg0 = ob.vertex_groups[0]
for index, vertex in enumerate(ob.data.vertices):
    try:
        weight = vg0.weight(index)
    except RuntimeError:
        # Raised when the vertex is not part of the group
        weight = 0.0

    print('Vertex #%d at %s has weight %f' % (index, vertex.co, weight))

For efficient distance queries (from a point in space to a mesh) you can use the BVHTree module. This may work faster than trying to compute the distance between every point of one mesh to every other point on the other.

Good catch, I updated the code.

Lightspeed updating!

uhmmm, sorry, i want to put very close my objects basing on their 2 vertex groups... why do we consider the weight?

The code can be used to detect whether a vertex is in the vertex group (use the exception) or you can use the weight itself somehow. The exact use is up to you.


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Long error message when try to extrude and input box is empty? (I can now no longer use blender)
I was making a house in blender using a tutorial. I have not messed with the settings I have only ever added some addons. Today when I went on blender and tried to extrude a circle it did not work and gave me a really long error message. I reset my factory settings and reinstalled blender it still didn't work, so I looked in input just in case it was something to do with that but the whole input box is black. I also checked to see if the same thing as happening on the steam version of blender nothing had changed.I installed a beta version of flip fluids from GitHub but it had lots of python files so I installed all of them, it doesn't show up as an addon though.
first part of error message

second part of error message

input box
my addons.
Thank you for your help!
(edit: everything is fine on blender 2.80)

I expect that the copy of flip fluids wasn't installed right and is causing this issue. The flip fluids addon found on github is not a simple python addon that can be copied into place, it needs to be compiled for the target system before installing.
As you have reinstalled blender, the issue would likely be in your user settings. Find the USER path for your system and move or rename the folder with the version number (2.79) to say 2.79-bad. This will prevent blender from loading anything in there.
Once blender starts without any user config files, you can try replacing some files to try and restore to where you were before the issue. In the config folder, try replacing the startup.blend, userpref.blend and bookmarks.txt. Inside the scripts, you could try replacing some other addons you may have installed if you know they belong to an addon that you can't find the original files for. If you do this a couple of files at a time you can identify any that cause the issue.

THANK YOU! It worked! I just renamed the file and it started working again. Thank you!


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How to completely reset blender or find missing files
Something is wrong with blender and it's preventing me from extruding so I reinstalled blender twice but it still won't fix. I'd their any other way you can reset blender?

Well you can load factory settings. That being said it'd be a super weird bug if just extruding didn't work

@WhatAMesh yeah I've reloaded the factory settings but still nothing changed. So far I've only tried extruding so there may be other problems. The error message is on my other question if you want to see it though.

@Arthur.M which version of Blender are you using?

@Hexbob6 I was using 2.79 when it stopped working then I installed 2.79b but it was still broken. I checked on blender 2.8 and it was all fine.

@Arthur.M Hmm strange, is it all extrusion behaviours that aren't working? For example, pressing the E key, using the mesh tools options in the properties panel (whilst inside of edit mode) or selecting the vertices due for extruding and pressing CTRL+LMB? Did it work previously but then suddenly stop working?

@Hexbob6 Somebody told me how to fix it! I had to go to one of the user data files and rename a file called 2.79 to 2.79-bad and that reset everything! Thanks for your help anyway though!

No problem, @Arthur.M , glad you got it sorted! If you think it is something obscure that would benefit others, you could write a quick answer explaining how you fixed it? :)


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How can I reuse a class between a few addons
I have the following situation. I have a class (let's call it GeometryCalculator) with many functions which I would like to reuse between a few addons. How can I do it in a way that the GeometryCalculator is a part of each addon. If a user has 5 addons installed and then he uninstalls any of them the rest of addons can still use this common class. Should all addons have a copy of the GeometryCalculator class in their folder? Any ideas how to do it are welcome. Are there any guidelines how this should be tackled? Thanks in advance.

Inside your scripts folder you have addons and maybe addons_contrib and a modules folder.

The modules folder can added if it's not there and used to store files that you want to access from various add-ons. In this case I have a file which stores functions, but it could store classes (anything a .py file is used for).
Imagine the modules folder has a folder inside called 'some_name',

and some_name contains a python file called functions,

so the path is scripts/modules/some_name/functions.py . To import that module in an addon you write
from some_name import functions

Potentially this makes installing your add-on a little bit more involved for the average novice user, unless you write code that places the files in the modules folder automatically

Ok Thanks for the answer Zeffii. I need to look into it and test it a bit. Just a small follow up question: In case there are a few addons using the functions.py module from module folder - which one of them should actually delete the functions.py during addon removal?

A fair question! A python file can tell you its current location on disk using __file__, meaning you can search relative to that for the modules folder, but the tricky issue is that Blender may use several places to store addons.  This is probably worthy of a new stand-alone question, it may be more involved than I want to answer in a comment, hope you understand (that way it can be found by other people asking the same question too)

Ok thanks Zeffii. I just want to add a small comment. I use windows and the addons are usually installed in place like: C:/Users//AppData/Roaming/Blender Foundation/Blender/2.74/scripts/addons/. So it seems that if an addon is using an import like "from some_name import functions" you can basically create a folder "some_name" inside the above path for addons and add the modules there as well. the addon should be able to load that.   However with this approach the folder "some_name" is left on the disk when uninstalling the addon...

well, it really depends how the user installs the addon, personally I stick everything into a separate scripts folder (can be set in user preferences - File - Scripts ), not in AppData or the linux/osx equivalent. So I think your best bet is to do cleanup relative to __file__

but you can also list all the possible places that blender will be looking for addons/addons_contrib/module and see if any of those contain your module. bpy.utils.script_paths()


text:
Border lines around background images
How do i get rid off those black border lines/outlines on my backround/reference image? They are obscuring my viewport. In 2.79 i haven't seen that issue.


text:
Object not parallel
I want to modify the surface (the sole of the shoe). It is possible to parallelize the sole on the cube?

I share my file to understand what I mean.

Hello, could you please tell a bit more about what you mean by "parallelize the sole on the cube"? Do you mean that the sole must be flat? or on of its face must be parallel to the cube?

I would like to have the sole flat and parallel to the cube

(You can include images in posts .. done that for you.)  Do you want to deform the sole so it's entirely flat? (Real trainers aren't like that) ... rotate the shoe? Both?

in that case you can simply select the faces and SZ0?

@RobinBetts I know but I need flat because I need to create a printed 3D model!

@moonboots yes, I can try to do in this way

there are other ways but it's probably the easiest


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Is there a way to create an array within an array if still working on the model?

I am still working on this section of the mesh/object(?), but I want to duplicate this section of the flower and continue to working on rest of the Milkweed plant. Is that possible? Sorry, just stared learning Blender a couple months back. Thanks!
Edit: Resolved..
Still not exactly sure how to make variations, with minimal memory usage, but the Collection Instance seems to have done the trick!

Hello, maybe but could you please explain a bit more what you'd like to do with the Array?

I need more flowers for the rest of the plant, but I want to be able to fix things later. The flower object, in screenshot, is made from five separate meshes, each of which I repeated 5 times radially with an array modifier. I parented the “MilkweedBody” to the other sections of the flower. I do not want to permanently join the sections into single mesh-I don’t think(?). I tried to duplicate the meshes (linked and unlinked so that I can create variations) but it just splits the sections apart when transforming. The flower(s) is(are) an important asset for character interaction in an animation.

*I mean.. Milkweed plant(s) is(are) an important asset for character interaction in an animation ..I am making. So I’m sure I’ll need to better understand constraints and whatnot later on.

Re: edit .. if you need to make variations on the instances procedurally, (beyond object-level transforms)  they will  not be entirely instances, sharing mesh-data, any more, so there will be some hit on memory .. there are probably some cool tricks, (maybe Geometry Nodes, or other procedural deformation) but those would depend on your exact case, I think.

Sounds good! I tend to do too much detail in the early stages of art and so I am trying to get out of that bad habit, but didn't want to create more work than needed before creating stages/nonuniformity for pose-to-pose and whatnot in the making of the animation. I will learn more about the use of Geometry nodes and procedural deformation. Working in Blender is somewhat overwhelming, but  enjoyable! I am glad the community is so helpful-I will pay it forward as I improve. Thanks again!

This may be the right place for Collection Instances
If you include your Array-modified petal, and any object that has been used to give it an Object Offset, in a new collection, then you can make a instance from the collection. You can edit or transform the original objects inside their collection.
Modifiers remain 'live', and adjustments will affect all instances.
Collection Instances can be nested.
Here, a Plane, and a rotated Empty used to give it a radial object-offset array,  have been added to a new collection. Then a collection Instance has been Shift A added to the scene, aimed at the collection.
To illustrate, a cube has had its 'Instancing' setting in its Object tab set to 'Vertices'. The Collection Instance  has been parented to the cube:

Everything remains live, and adjustable.

Thank you for this suggestion/info/example! I actually saw a quick video last night about Collection Instances and was going to give it a try today! Not sure if I am allowed to reference/accredit a Youtuber, but they also had another video on 6 methods of creating arrays and mentioned a method about parenting with a circular array to an instance using vertices, but had the same result as when I tried to transform from duplicating. Nesting the collection does seem to make sense! Thanks again!

@ScottLaMere No problem! BTW 'Array' in the Blender UI refers to specific kind of instancing, in which  the transform between element n and element n+1 is always the same. I think you mean more general instancing, in your original post ....


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Is there a way to adjust the interface to Blender's File Explorer?
case is: In Blender 3.4 when trying to import a file, the right scroll bar is animated to become wider when hovered, but still this scroll bar is very thin..., so scrolling there is like walking a thin flexible ridge... all the time activating files which are not desired, it is impossible to scroll a list, let alone select the desired file. i can do it only with keyboard navigation.
When the pointer is halfway on the scrollbar, it is already selecting files...
Anybody else experiencing this problem in Blender 3.4 file explorer?

It seem that you're unhappy with how the scroll bar functions in the file viewer on Windows, but I'm not sure what you're asking for beyond that. Could you please clearify what your question is? Please keep in mind that this is a community-driven Q&A website and not Blender's bug tracker.

Hello and welcome. This is Q&A site run by volunteers, we are not programmers nor in any way associated with the Blender Foundation, decision making nor development process of the software. For suggestions and feature requests use https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect or https://blenderartists.org. For bug reports please see Where to Report a Bug. If you have a question we can answer, please rephrase your post to make it clearer what you are asking


text:
Move instances with an object proximity
I am trying basic proximity to move instances relative to the sphere.. But the instances move back towards the target, and I want them to stay where they were.

just check whether the direction points to or from the sphere. if it points to sphere, just multiply it with scale -1.

Do you mean you want them to stay where they were, after the sphere has moved away?

@RobinBetts the instances repel away from sphere initialy, but if push further in same direction, it comes back towards its original position. As seen in image, some instances are inside the sphere.

You've told us what they do, but (forgive me) I still don't get what you want.

@RobinBetts excuse me for that... I exactly want what you said.. i want them to stay at offset position after the sphere is moved.

If an element needs to know its history, we're into simulation? This problem  is very similar to the Demo File illustrating the  Index of Nearest  node


text:
Limit rotation axes of a bone driven by an IK
I'm trying to add bones to the standard human metarig to control an exosuit that moves with the leg. The chain of new bones is fixed at the models back, then runs down to the knee. I've tried linking it to the knee so when I pose the leg the exosuit moves with it. Each join in the new chain is a hinge so all bones have 2 axes of rotation locked so they can only move around the hinge line.
However if I attach the IK bone to the knee or even leave it loose as a control the bones in the chain don't respect the rotation locks and spin in all three axes.
Am I missing something, or is there a better way to do this?
I've built the parts in a parametric CAD model so I know the join combo should work.


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How do I make a stylized cartoon shader for my bark and leaf models in cycles engine?
I added my own texture, and it looks horrible trying to create a realistic branch is "WAY" too much memory, so I'm going for a low budget look inspired by legend of Zelda breath of the wild. However, I don't know how to make those bold highlighted colors that blend in with each other in a cartoon way. I'm doing all this in Blender 3.6 on the cycles engine, and I can't seem to find any tutorials related to it if there's a simple solution that doesn't involve alpha transparency that be great, I've learned my lesson and it cost me a lot for my computer. I just need to know how to make an anime cartoon shader for low poly meshes while giving off the illusion of detail?

Can we ask why alpha masking is not acceptable?

I was told according to Blender Guru in one of his videos that it adds a lot to render time that and also alpha masking has too much memory unless I'm wrong. I was just trying to be efficient without putting stress on my computer.

OK, he might be right.. I guess? though, it's shovelling work from your CPU to your GPU, so it depends on your setup?

What do you mean by setup?

GPU/CPU . Still guessing, but if you're rendering on your GPU, and it's reasonably pokey, then maybe it will handle the alpha.

Oh well in that case yes, on "Device" it says GPU Compute is there anything else I need to do if not can you tell me how to make an artistic anime shader from Breath of the wild?

Would it be fair for you to edit a grab like this into your post?  Folks might know better what to aim for.

the images are not included in the file. You need to pack them (File > External Data > Pack Resources...) or post here a small demo version of it for the leaf. -- and is there a reason why you want to use Cycles? Both render engines will work but most toon shaders use Eevee.

Actually, that's another thing I notice everyone seems to use Eevee I only chose Cycles because it looked cool, I have no problem using Eevee is there a reason it's being used a lot for toon shading?


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How do I get rid of Image texture seam cuts?
I'm using the sapling tree gen add on for the tree model, as for the seamless texture I painted in krita. The texture itself has this vertical cut along the mesh, I made sure to activate shade smooth and play around with the shader, but it doesn't seem to be working how do I remove it?

In order for your tiles to meet edge-to-edge around the 0-1 V of the curve's native round bevels, there must be a whole number of tiles in V. (Mapping > Scale > Y must be a whole number) .. there are various blending workarounds.. but then your texture's tileability would be redundant.

You could convert your curve to mesh and paint the joint with the Clone brush. Another solution would be to change your material, use the Object output of the Texture Coordinate, switch the Image Texture from Flat to Box so that the texture is projected on the 3 axis (XYZ) of the object, and set the Blend to 1 to blur the joints:


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How do I make tree rings over another shader in shader editor on tree stump model?
I'm trying to create rings on top inside my tree stump model using an art style from Puss in boots and the last wish, but I don't know how to give it that hand painted look or how to accurately place it within the center of my tree stump. The only reason I was able to make this shader was by following some YouTube videos. How do I get it right there without ruining the other shader?

What should "that hand-painted look" look like? Something like this https://i.sstatic.net/nCOtt.jpg?

That looks very good but is there a way to "optionally" add cracks to make it look dry, old, or rotten?


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Why are the "dark" colors in texture paint image invisible on mesh?
I made this image in Krita so I could texture paint it onto my tree stump model UV map, but the black and dark colors don't appear onto the mesh. In the Tools tab of Texture paint, I've placed my image under texture, and below that Mapping is set to Stencil, the Mode at the top of the tab is set to Material. How can I utilize "all" the colors of my image without using alphas? The reason is I'm looking for more options and I've been researching about alpha costing render time, and I need to know how to avoid this in the future if I use another image that has vary dark colors.
Here's what the image is supposed to look like. The dark cracks and ring colors are missing in the above image.

This is the shader setup for my stump the image texture is located above highlighted.

You're asking why the cracks aren't black? It's because your mix node does a 50-50 mix of the texture with the A input, which is a light brown.

I tried increasing the factor of the mix node to 1.000 and while it does give off those black and dark colors for the image texture the rest of the stump also turns black.

Have you tried using the image as a Brush Texture set to Stencil and painting into your main image texture? As you are using it now, you are mapping the whole krita image to the object instead of using it to paint the texture map. For example, I would use a single image texture for my object and then paint that using images I already worked up prior using the Stencil setting.

If you meant set image under Texture and Mapping to Stencil in Tool tap, then yes. As for the rest how do I access those settings and use them?


text:
Resources for Blender
Since asking for tutorials, videos, resources, links to other content or downloads is considered off topic here, this is a specifically created Community Wiki which gathers resources for Blender and it has been approved by the Community.
Just write in the appropriate answer/section. If you have concerns, questions, post a meta question, so we don't clutter the comments, but you can link your meta question from the comments.
Questions regarding such resources are not allowed anymore, except for very specific and on topic requests (ask on Meta if you're unsure about your question). Follow the instructions made in the question about how to post, what can be posted, etc.
Learning

Official Documentation
Blender Communities and forums
Blogs
Online courses
Books

Assets

Materials (also see: Any good free materials libraries online?)
Textures, HDR environment maps, and photos
Models
Reference Images/Blueprints (also see: Where are some places to get reference images for modeling?)
Sounds

Tools

Addons (also see: Resource for Blender addons?)
External Tools
Render engines
Rendering services

Other

Special Interest (Blender resources for architects?)
Themes
Mathematics

Also see the beginner's reference.

Use sites like: http://www.slant.co to collect interested resources relating to a topic. asked here: http://www.slant.co/topics/1761/~what-are-the-best-online-resources-for-making-art-with-blender3d

@ideasman42 See http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/410/should-we-have-a-few-questions-on-resources-for-use-with-blender and http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/17380369#17380369

@ideasman42 We discussed this on meta. Since every few weeks or so a question pops up about resources, we thought it best to just have one community compiled resource and be done with it. Other sites on se  have something like this. It's strictly blender and a wiki so anyone can contribute. We have one on meta but new users aren't familiar with se and might not be aware of it so we are porting it to the main site and adding new sources.

How about commercially published books? I suspect that there are a number of (new) users who do not live close to a bookstore which stocks many books on 3D software, and may not be sufficiently sophisticated to search the web.

How about blogs, like Ben Simonds' (http://bensimonds.com/)?

Really think these questions should be disallowed, asking for lists of links which will change fairly often is totally outside SE format.

@ideasman42 Discussion should happen on the relevant meta.

While adding a couple of things to the list, and the answers, it occurred to me that the list in the question could be better organized. So I did it.

Good job on completeing the reorganization.

I think BlenderGuru does a great job in his tutrials don't you think his page http://www.blenderguru.com/ or his youtube channel  https://www.youtube.com/user/AndrewPPrice are good for learning?

sometimes users may get into a small bug or a missing feature (maybe even some simple usability setting/tool): can we add also resources to help users to report bugs and submit feature requests (ie: contact developers) here? Then we can point such users here. Even on the blender.org site is not that easy to find how (that's a shame on its own, imho)

Every section listed alphabetically
Textures

ambientCG (formerly CC0Textures) CC0/Public domain license
Good Textures Similar to CG textures, but with a more lenient license. *Registration required*
Lovetextures
Mayang's Textures
nordicfx non-commercial
OpenGameArt CC-BY
Pixar 128 Library 128 textures with normal and height maps originally made by Pixar Studio in 1993 and updated in 2015, CC BY 4.0
PixPlant's Seed Images Various licenses
Plain Textures *Registration required*
Poliigon Paid registration required for high resolution versions; several high resolution free textures available
Poly Haven - Textures CC0
Share Textures Collection of CC0 textures
Subtle Patterns
Textures.com (formerly CG Textures) License covers commercial use, but not open source software. *Registration required, free at low resolutions*
Textures.TheFree3DModels Attribution required Noncommercial
Texturebits
Texture lib free for commercial and none commercial use, license is very lenient
Texture Mate
Texture Ninja A collection of CC0 textures
texture pilot *Registration required*
Texture X Free high resolution textures.
Yethiel's Collection of Textures Various textures collected by an individual with CC0 license
3dmd.net  Small library and no high resolution
3DTextures

HDR/JPEG Skydome Images

Adaptive Samples CC-BY-SA.
Chocofur HDRs High quality paid HDRs; one free available here
GiantCowFilms.com CC0/Public Domain
HDRMAPS 20K paid hdris and 10K Free CC0-BY hdris. Free add-on to download all hdris as assets.
HDRI Hub Free Samples
MrBluesummers HDR lights.
NoEmotion HDRs High resolution HDRs; CC-BY-ND
nordicfx non-commercial
Open Footage CC-BY
Philo's Sky Collection
Poly Haven - HDRIs CC0
sIBL hdrlabs CC-BY-SA
 0ptikz's skies

Stock Photos

BucketListly CC-BY-NC
Foter Various CC Licenses
FreeImages
Image After
Immediate Entourage many masked images
Library of Congress Public Domain
MorgueFile
openclipart
OpenImages
Openverse creative commons/ public domain images and audio assets.
Pexels CC0
Pixabay free, but with some restrictions
Pond5 *Registration required*
PhotoPin Various CC Licenses
PublicDomainPictures reduced resolution free, Public Domain
Pxhere Free stock photos
Stockvault non-commercial
Rawpixel free for commercial
Unsplash CC0
USDA Public Domain
US Navy Public Domain
Visible earth NASA Public Domain
3dtotal some textures too

External Tools

AwesomeBump  is a free and open source program written using Qt library designed to generate normal, height, specular or ambient occlusion, metallic, roughness textures from a single image.

CharMorph is an innovative character creation tool based on MB-Lab, offering a seamless and flexible workflow for character artists and animators.

GIMP is a free and open source program designed for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

Hugin - Panorama Photo Stitcher

Inkscape is a free and open source vector graphics editor.

JMC2OBJ - Minecraft to .obj converter for makers of MC scenes.

Krita is a free digital painting and illustration application.

LICEcap is a free and open source program that can capture an area of your desktop and save it directly to .GIF, or its own native lossless .LCF file format. It is available for Windows and Mac only, but the Windows version works remarkably well on Linux, through Wine.

MB-Lab is a free and open source Blender add-on up to Blender 4.0 that creates humanoid characters. For Blender 4.1 and newer, take a look at CharMorph. It is based off the popular ManuelBastioniLAB and offers standard skeletons for animation, anthropological phenotypes library, clothing and hair, morphing parameters, Anime Characters, and facial expressions as shape keys.

MakeHuman is a free and open source software for creating realistic 3D human models and rigs. The add-on MPFB2 can be thought of as a reimplementation of MakeHuman as a Blender add-on.

Materialize Free and Open source tool for creating material layers from flat images. Diffuse -> Height, Diffuse -> Metallic, Diffuse -> Smoothness, Height -> Normal, Height + Diffuse -> Normal, Normal -> Edge, Normal -> Occlusion, Normal + Height -> Occlusion, Normal -> Height, Seamlessly tile your textures, Save and load in a variety of formats, Automate many processes with clipboard commands in xml format.

Meshroom is a free, open-source
3D Reconstruction Software based on the AliceVision framework.

Peek is also a free and open source program that can capture and area of your desktop and save it directly to .GIF, which it is optimized for, or to .APNG, .WebM, or .MP4. It is made for Linux operating systems.

PureRef is a simple and lightweight freeware tool for artists to organize and view their reference images. It is available for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Daz 3D The standalone free software can export human models to Blender file format. It also has a paid store of assets for figures like clothing.

External Render engines:

LuxCoreRender  (formerly LuxRender) is a physically based and unbiased rendering engine. Supports Blender integration.
Yafaray is a free open-source raytracing engine which supports both biased an unbiased rendering methods. Supports Blender integration.
TheBounty is a free montecarlo raytracing engine. (fork of Yafaray)
Mitsuba is a research-oriented rendering system in the style of PBRT.
Appleseed is a modern, open source, physically-based renderer designed for production rendering.
Jot is a program that lets designers, artists and animators directly annotate 3D computer graphics models (and animation) for stylized (NPR) rendering [in real time].
A blender exporter and more up to date info can be found here.
Nox is a free stand-alone, physically-accurate state-of-an-art renderer. Windows only(open-source since 2014 but seems original authors abandoned).
Aqsis is a cross-platform 3D rendering solution adhering to the RenderMan standard.
POV-ray is a high-quality, Free Software tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics. Supports Blender integration.
PRMan Another cross platform integration of Pixar's RendermanProServer 20.0+ (Free for non-commercial use).
V-Ray for Blender An add-on that packages a .blend file and converts it into a format that V-Ray standalone knows how to render.
B-Maxwell
The B-Maxwell add-on is a basic exporter from Blender to Maxwell Render (Windows and Linux). "B-Maxwell add-on offers seamless integration with Maxwell Render and Blender"
Octane-Render Commercial plugin for blender available. GPU accelerated Unbiased rendering engine.

Rendering services:

rentaflop fast and affordable crowdsourced rendering.

Sheep-it is a free distributed render farm for Blender.

Ray Pump Closed down in 2016 is a software that provides free, easy and efficient access to GPU/CPU Render Farm. Current version is designed for Blender and its Cycles engine.

Blender Grid

RenderStreet (highly recommended among blender users)

Renderfarm.fi (seems to be defunct, doesn't load)

Fox Renderfarm offers free 25 credits for new one

Garage Farm

Rendicity

Keyframez

VFXFarm Fast Cloud Rendering Service Supports Major Plugins Maya, Octane, Blender, Houdini.

Models

Blendswap

Blender models

BlenderKit add-on (for 2.8, commercial but with some free stuff)

Blender for Architecture

Chocofur Wide variety of high quality blend files made for Cycles and Blender; freebies at this location

Noob to Pro (list of resources)

Sketchfab Downloadables Large collection; large variety; various licenses; blend files are far and few in between but formats that Blender can't import are rare too

TurboSquid Registration required; large collection of free stuff; blend files rare

PolyHaven Expanding library of high quality models as blend and fbx files

Is it okay if I bring all the websites list from Noob to Pro book? The interface there is kinda hard on the eye.

@groundjet hm.. If you want, but maybe put them in a separate "noob to pro" answer and note the date, in case the list changes in the future.

Materials

Blendermada

Blender-materials.org (currently in development. In the meantime the old repo can be found here It appears the old site is currently broken as well)

BlenderKit since blender 2.8 directly in Blender. more than 2600 materials

Cycles Material Vault Paid; free sample download available from here

I cant find the license in absolutely any place for the materials downloadable from blender-materials.com, any idea?

@AquariusPower No idea. You could try contacting them (perhaps via their twitter? I don't see an email address..). I don't see much recent activity either.

A pity, their site is working really well (search/download), but I cant be sure when using those files :(. I found their google+ account and an email there at info icon. thx!

oh, but anyway, as my goal is model for games, and blender-materials.com had some compatible (not cycles), I was interested, but I just found out that we can bake cycles materials into textures, so may be I just give up on it :)

@ gandalf3 blender-material.org website not working?

@gandalf3 like material are there any lights material (warm light, volumetric light, soft light) we can import and directly apply like materials. i want to apply light on the surface. im making lantern and i want to have warm light, light glowing or light getting imitating from the mesh. any website for glowing light like material u have mention  above

Addons

Blender Extensions - Official Addons Catalog
Blender Addon List
blender-addons.org - free and paid add-ons
Community addons featured on Blendernation
BlenderArtists
Blender Market (mostly non-free)
Gumroad - search for Blender (mostly non-free)

Free Online Courses

High school level course by James Chronister of Central Dauphin High School, Harrisburg, PA USA (Archive) about Blender 2.78

Video Tutorials

Blender Institute Channel on YouTube

Blender Video Editing (2.7X series [Current Series]) by Mikeycal Meyers

Track, Match, Blend! by Sebastian König

Blender Character Creation Series by Darrin Lile

Blender 2.8 Beginner Tutorial Series by CG Geek

Blender 4.0 Beginner Donut Tutorial Series by Blender Guru (Andrew Price)

Blogs

Ben Simonds
Greg Zaal
Andrew Price
Gleb Alexandrov
Samuel Sullins
Topology Guide (Good modelling practices)

Communities and Forums

Official Blender site user community page

Blender artists

Blender Cloud

Blender Facebook page(s)

Blender Stack Exchange

CG Cookie Community

Blender Nation

Blender Discord OpenVFX

Blender Artists Group On LinkedIn

I understand there are Facebook blender groups, but I deliberately don't facebook, so perhaps others will edit in links.

just have done so ;-)

Also added Google+ communities for us non-facebookers

What about Discord?

Themes

Contrib themes

Blendswap

BlenderArtists

Sounds
Ambient and Songs

Soundcloud has many free downloadable audio tracks, the terms of use mention optional Creative Commons, but these files seem to be rare.
YouTube Audio Library contains Creative Commons and royalty-free music
INCOMPTECH Creative Commons music
CCMixter Creative Commons music
PremiumBeat has fantastic high-quality music for a moderately low prices.

Sound Effects

Freesound Has a large collection of sound effects.
FreeSFX has a medium(ish) collection of free sounds. (Registration required)
YouTube Audio Library contains royalty-free sound effects

Game Sounds

sfxr Is a simple sound effect generator
Bfxr Is is an elaboration of sfxr and has a web interface which allows download of created effect.
OpenGameArt.org: sound effects, music, and more. Various licenses.

Don't think we should have screenshots for anything, unless we have screenshots for everything.

I agree, at least in this case.. I don't really see the point of this specific screenshot.

Blueprints

Car blueprints
The blueprints
Blueprints Database

Books
NOTE: Check the Blender Store on the books listed below to see if they can be purchased through that facility; doing so helps support the Blender foundation.
Beginner

Beginners guide to cycles nodes, the procedural way Free online book in google docs.
Blender 3D: Noob to Pro Free online Wikibook, also available as a pdf or a 7zipped html page.
Blender Foundations, The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 by Roland Hess. ISBN 978-0-240-81430-8. Version 2.6
CRC Press, The Complete Guide to Blender Graphics: Computer Modeling & Animation, Third Edition by John M. Blain. ISBN 978-1-498-74645-8.

Intermediate

Mastering Blender by Tony Mullen ISBN 978-1118275405
Introducing Character Animation with Blender, 2nd Edition by Tony Mullen. 978-0470427378
Blender Master Class: A Hands-On Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering by Ben Simonds ISBN 978-1593274771
The Cycles Encyclopedia by Frederick Steinmetz and Gottfried Hofmann

Advanced

Bounce, Tumble and Splash by Tony Mullen ISBN 978-0-470-19280-1 (Physics Simulation) 2008

I miss a book which concentrates entirely on animation, especially animating characters, not for beginners but for advanced topics, like building a good posing library.

It's hard enough to find a book that focuses on animation for begginners.

i do agree that intermediate books are far to rare.

Background Mathematics
Linear Algebra

Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/linear-algebra

Animation

Skinning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdIjYevYuKk
Curves / Interpolation: https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/animate#parametric-curves

Raytracing

Collection of resources: http://www.realtimerendering.com/raytracing.html

Physical Simulation

3 different versions of a physics based animation course. Each course has a couple of different bits so they are all useful: https://www.youtube.com/user/kavanl1/playlists

This is currently just a quick list that I put together off the top of my head as a response to https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/135287/are-there-any-resources-for-learning-cg-related-math-especially-the-math-used-b, hopefully people can make this a bit better.

There needs to be a scripting category.

Fonts

FontSpace
DaFont
Fonts.com (Paying)
Google Fonts
1001 Fonts
Fontsquirrel

Gometry Nodes and Simulation Nodes

Erindale's geometry nodes tutorials on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@Erindale
Entagma's Blender Geometry Nodes Playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPc8tXZv20w&list=PLdFfFRXT0K_hMTsT00-Oxe95V9-u3mwiv
Default Cube Geometry nodes beginner tutorial for an abstract cube landscape https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmlpmHAa3vs
Blender Guru's beginner Donut tutorial including geometry nodes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw

AI
Artificial Intelligence generators

meshy.ai (paid; 20 free uses per month)


text:
Using the node editor in a private project
Developer question: Is it possible to grab the Node editor (i.e. the one used for compositing) and define my own elements for a totally different project?
I'm just looking for the nifty graphics and interface, and wish to program the functionality myself.
I tried googling to no avail.

Blender Stack Exchange is more for questions and answers about using Blender, than developing it. Python scripting is still on topic, however pretty much any programming that requires compiling is considered off topic here. Try developer forums devtalk.blender.org. I think you will have a lot better chance of getting an answer there.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about using Blender, but about it's code.

Its not completely off topic (https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2216/30849). @gil There are source code maps of the blender repo onlins.

Blender's UI is pretty blender specific, so it is unlikely to be easy

While it isn't documented much, blender does support custom node trees. You can start with the custom nodetree template in blenders text editor. You may also find some help searching here for pynode.
Two example projects using custom node trees are animation nodes and sverchok.
As you are defining each nodes functionality, you don't have to access or modify blenders data, so you could use blenders node editor while making each node read/write data to files.


text:
Strange black shading. Cannot fully light mesh. (Cycles)

Here is the viewport in material view.  The node setup is just a PNG texture into a diffuse shader.

And this is in rendered view.  I've tried using environmental lighting as well as a directional light, and while the lit parts become brighter/washed out, the darker parts stay dark.
Normals are correct and there is no z-fighting.  Ambient Occlusion is not enabled.  Changing to Flat shading makes it worse.
Here's the .blend
Update:  Any modifier that alters the mesh (bevel, subdivide, etc) make the problem go away instantly.

You have Custom Split Normals Data added to the geometry, to fix this, while selecting the object, go to Data Tab in Properties Panel, scroll to find Geometry Data, and click Clear Custom Split Normals Data.

More information about this issue Here

Nice one! I get this a lot when i import obj's from certain pieces of software. And while i have already figured this out, it took me a few months of having to bear with broken normals until i did. Here, have an upvote!

Glad my answer helped! According to documentation, this happens only when importing .fbx, but the documentation could be outdated.

it is never this bad but custom normals from an obj can warp your normals


text:
Blender API (2.6), UI list of loaded images
I'm trying to make something like map editor for my project. I'm rather new in Blender Python scripting and I have some troubles.
I made "Material" panel and I want to set "textureName" property for my object. What I need is to make some list of loaded in blender images (like in UV Editor you can load image and it appears on list).
In my panel I want just to choose one image and assign name of that image to my property. I can list loaded images by bpy.data.images but I can't dynamically add new images to property (for now I'm using EnumProperty assigned to bpy.types.Object.textureName). I was trying to make same UI widget like blender have (https://i.sstatic.net/MKVWQ.png) but I have no idea how it works.
Can somebody help me with this?

That built-in widget is added to the UI via template_ID() and uses an ID Property to store the reference to an ID datablock (based on what you picked). The problem is, that we can't create new ID Properties with Python, so you can't reference a datablock. You can, however, store the name of an object in a StringProperty(). Use the prop_search() on e.g. bpy.data, "images"

@CoDEmanX Shouldn't this be posted as an answer and not a comment? Comments are generally for clarification or constructive criticism, not answers.

@Ray Mairlot you can also post a incomplete answer as comment as far you think it is not clear enough for a strict expalining answer and want to give others a note what they should remind for a correct answer. so at all answering partial is ok in comments.

Adding a "real" datablock widget won't quite work and it's not possible (or at least not easy) to have a dynamically populated EnumProperty object. Fortunately, there is the prop_search() UILayout function. You can use that to assign the name of a datablock to a StringProperty variable. So, you should have something along the lines of this for that StringProperty:
bpy.types.Object.textureName = bpy.props.StringProperty(name="Texture")

With that done, all objects now have a new string property called textureName that defaults to an empty string. Now, in your panel, add something akin to the following in the draw() function:
def draw(self, context):
    ob = context.active_object

    layout = self.layout
    layout.prop_search(ob, "textureName", bpy.data, "images")

Of course, this only assigns the name of the texture to that StringProperty variable. You still need to write code that does something with this property.


text:
Mountain texture (rock) looks very unrealistic?
I made a mountain in blender I used a rock texture I found and when I first rendered it looked very realistic, I lost the file so I recreated it, but it now looks fake.
The first original.
The recreation of the first one
Thank you for your help!

Try to add some displacement in your material

The first has a lot more light and shadows

your images are very dark. Anyway I think you don't give enough details about the topology of your mesh and your nodes organization.

Same rock texture? If so the biggest difference is the scale of the texture.


text:
Cycles Render Engine gives result look weird, missing light and reflection
I have problem with cycles rendering, the left image is my rendering, I have checked render settings and image settings that everything is fine, but still get this problem though I created a new blender file and imported them into new blender file.
Hope everyone can help me fix this problem, this project from my work at company for product modeling

It's unclear what you are asking.

It looks like there is a light in the viewport render preview that doesn't seem to be in the actual render on the left when comparing the arc in the background and the ground plane. But the Outliner doesn't show any light visible in viewport but disabled in render... so it's hard to tell from the screenshot what is going on there.

You say the left image is your render, and your complaint is ( maybe? ) that it isn't the same as the right image. But you haven't told us what the right image  is.  (For one thing, there's a light visible in the right image, that isn't in the left image..) Please explain what the right image is, and why you expect the left image to be the same.


text:
Blender ignores edge flow
For some reason after I cut some faces with the knife tool, Blender doesn't recognize the new edge flow, see pictures. There are no duplicates vertices or edges, I checked. Although if I delete the vertex in the middle and reconnect everything, suddenly Blender understands the flow... Is there a way to recalculate the edge flow or something like that? Thank you

As you can see, after simply deleting the vertex marked in red, and then closing the hole, Blender recognizes the faces as being part of a loop, which wasn't the case before. So the question is, is there a way to make Blender understand the flow without having to delete a vertex and joining the geometry again?

What do you mean by "edge flow"? You've only shown one image, but I'm guessing that you're trying to loop cut across a face which has more than four vertices which isn't permitted in Blender.

You may have some inner faces or overlapping vertices, it would explain why the edge loop can't cut the quad. Could you please share the part where you meet the problem and trace the edge loop you would like with the annotation tool?

It seems you might be misunderstanding the edge flow. Edge ring consists of these edges:

You can insert an edge loop to those edges:

The edge loop does not turn up like your sketch shows, it would have to make a triangle or insert a vertex other way and edge loops are not that. If I misunderstood and what you show is the cut made with the knife tool, then there is no edge ring that you could insert an edge loop to. This thing here breaks any edge flow:

See the documentation about edge rings and loops for more in-depth explanation.

I think it's rather a loopcut that is seen by transparency, cutting off some quads that are behind the object

Yes Martynas its the loopcut seen in transparency


text:
How to exactly measure the angle between two spheres, seen from the world origin?
this seems to be a simple question, still I'm surprised that I couldn't find any really satisfying answer...
Supposed, I'm looking from Blender's world origin on two spheres sitting in somewhere the x-y-plane, and I want to know the precise angle between the sphere origins.
I read lots of posts on the simple "Measure Tool" as well as on the "Measurelt" add-on, and I tried both. However, the measure tool shows angle values >10° only in integer degrees, but I need much higher precision. In an 8-year-old post I read that the value shows more digits, if copied to the clipbord, but I didn't succeed.

Moreover, I had to manually move the end points and the angle point of the measure lines to the object origins and the world origin respectively. That's somewhat cumbersome, inaccurate, and time-consuming, but there seems not to be any way to snap (except to vertices).
With the Measurelt add-on I had the problem that for angle measurement I could just select vertices of the same mesh, and only in the Edit Mode. Maybe I missed something, but I could neither select vertices from different objects, nor any other points, e.g. object origins, world origin, any grid points, or else.
Isn't there any simple and obvious method, like clicking three freely selectable points and choose "measure angle" from some menu, as it is implemented in many CAD programs?
My final goal is to animate the mechanisms of simple chemical reactions. But they have to be precise concerning the distances, angles, and atom sizes. For the creation of realistic 3D representations of molecules I use energy minimizing software to produce the geometry in the local or global energy minimum of a molecule. I usually get a PDB file containing all necessary geometric information, which I can import using the Atomic Blender add-on.
That means the spheres (atoms) and cylinders (bonds) are already there and are not created later on. It also does't really help to select vertices of these spheres, and for some reason the origins (usually in the sphere centers) appear to be non-selectable with MeasureIt.
During the animation, some atoms change their places by rotation around specified points within the molecule (not necessarily vertices or sphere origins), and they have to rotate within defined planes which depend on the shape of the molecule (and have nothing to do with the given planes xy, xz, yz in Blender). Also, the animated rotation angles depend on the angles in the initial situation.
The molecules sometimes contain dozens of atom spheres connected by bond cylindres, and must not be changed or reconstructed. Besides, this would take much too long...
Therefore I have to measure lots of angles in a given molecule geometry, and would need a preferably simple and quick method to get the angles with an accuracy of about 3 decimals.
For general info, I'm using Blender version 3.4.1 on Windows 10, and I'm a very beginner with blender...
Grateful for any help,
Dirk

The measure it tool allows you to add 5 decimals of precision when calculating the angle of 3 vertices.
Choose 3 vertices of an object.  Open the measure-it sidebar, and  press angle, then show.
Scroll down past cube and adjust precision to 5.

Then with a vertice selected press shift+s to snap the 3d cursor to the vertice location.  Create your sphere there.  Repeat the process for the second sphere. The angle and the spheres will all be separate objects.
With a vertice of your angle selected switch to object mode.  Select the sphere and press ctrl+p to parent the spheres to the vertices.

Then, you can calculate that angle from the origin.

You could also use Python. Let's steal some bits from https://stackoverflow.com/a/13849249/10259287:
import bpy
import numpy as np

def unit_vector(vector):
    return vector / np.linalg.norm(vector)

def angle_between(v1, v2):
    v1_u = unit_vector(v1)
    v2_u = unit_vector(v2)
    return np.degrees(np.arccos(np.clip(np.dot(v1_u, v2_u), -1.0, 1.0)))

if len(bpy.context.selected_objects) != 2:
    print("Select 2 objects.")
else:
    vector_1 = bpy.context.selected_objects[0].location
    vector_2 = bpy.context.selected_objects[1].location
    print(angle_between(vector_1, vector_2))

You would have to open Blender's System Console to see what's printed once you run it in the Text Editor:


text:
Object deforming when I try to transform it
I'm new to Blender and I was making a helmet piece. I wanted to scale it down, but it gets deformed when I try to scale it. I found if I try to rotate, or transform the object in any way it gets deformed.
Does anyone know how to fix this?
I tried setting origin to the center of mass, doesn't work. Even odder, it behaves like a piece of putty in a box, it only deforms to the outer edges of itself. Here's half the helmet:

What happens when I move it:

If I try to move it far enough, it just squishes to one side:

Edit here's the file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ECEj_1Yb9A0vfmynuykhGMt-DrFTmxRU/view?usp=sharing
Edit 2: Got it!! Thanks to Nascent Space! I forgot to apply the modifiers

Do you have any modifiers on your object? Try applying them first before rotating or scaling. You can also try applying the scale or rotation of the object by pressing Shift+A.

please provide blend file