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Ribbed effect to solid shapes
I just started with blender and can't fix this problem.
Because I would like to create a ribbed effect on different shapes.
I have tried several things with the Displace Modifyer but without success. I have attached a picture to give an idea of what I would like to achieve. I would like to apply the effect to solide shapes.
I would prefer to leave the bottom of the shapes flat.

This is a duplicate... But I don't remember which post.

That one did really help me. Only the texture get weird at the top point where the ribbed part comes together. (If that makes sense.) For example I would like the bottom part just to be flat.


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How to retrace this topology?
I have got my hand on this mesh with a very clean topology recently  and I want to learn how the creator did it, to no avail. The hardest part is where the groin joint with the thigh. The thigh loop has 34 vertices but the one above it has 36, I dont know how did they join them together, bridge loop always messed this up. Can you gives me some advices and if possible, can you check out the model, please?

Here is the blend file: https://www.mediafire.com/file/9idvodi7r3ftpit/topology.blend/file

Can you upload the file which shows the situation in the screenshot? It would also be better to use https://blend-exchange.com/ than some external file hoster.

Could you please highlight the part that has 34 vertices and the part that has 36? Are you talking about the gap in your picture? The mesh you share has no gap...

@taiyo Sorry I dont know how to use blend-exchange file hoster but I have included a mediafire link above.

@moonboots I updated the post with the image!

The question how is a bit vague, we don't know how he modeled his mesh because there are many ways to do it, but I guess he began with a low-poly, as for the number of vertices, it goes from 35 to 36 because there's a pole

On https://blend-exchange.com/ there is a field which says "Enter the url of the question on blender.stackexchange". Drag'n'drop the model, enter the URL of your question and click Upload, done. And again, the model with the unconnected leg would be more useful.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


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Why cant I import a simple class?
Im writing an addon and with all my code in an init.py file. It works without any problem. My issue is that I want to separate a lengthy class I've made into its own separate .py file to better organize and expand my project as to not create a bloated single file.
When I try to use from foo_file import Foo_Class, python doesn't recognize the file name even though all my files are in the same directory. All my other files that has an Operator, Panel or PropertyGroup class are seen.
My foo_file.py is in no special format. Its job is just to do a series of operations within my Operator classes:
class Foo_Class:
     def __init__(self, bar1, bar2, bar3):
         self.bar1 = bar1
         self.bar2 = bar2
         self.bar3 = bar3

     def a_func(self):
         pass

     def b_func(self):
         pass

The error message I receive is
Error: Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "\__init__.py", line 17, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'foo_file'

from . foo_file import Foo_Class?

@XY even with the period, the file name isnt recognized

can you paste the error traceback?

@MartyFouts I updated with the error

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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How to set a material's color when shadowed
I am trying to create a material that is normally white but turns blue in the shade.
I know I can do this by changing my lamp's color, but I don't want all the other materials to also turn blue.
Is there a way to do this in the material's settings?
Edit:
While I haven't found a way to do that in Cycles, I did find that in Eevee you can hook up a white Diffuse shader to the Shader to RGB node, and feed that through an RBG to BW node, then use the result as the fac input of either a MixRGB or Mix Shader node.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/86775/make-light-paths-only-pass-through-non-emitted-areas/86787#86787

This might be just the right thing you are looking for.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/69711/60941

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Thanks for the link.

@BlackCloud Thanks, if I can't find a better way I'll try that rout.


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A problem with going to Sculpting mode
I'm trying to go to sculpting mode, but then my object becomes flat and solid-colored. How do I change it? It works okay when I try to access sculpting through  the list in the top-left corner, while it stays in Layout mode. Thanks in advance
PS When I change it to Flat, the object becomes all white.

How to upload an image to a post

If someone has a similar problem. Rolling back the drivers of my graphic card has helped.


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Set a white background color for rendering
I want my rendering to have a white background. Is there a simple way to achieve this?
Under world properties there is a Surface section where one can set the color for the surface "Background". Does this do what I want? And also is it a good way to do this?

Why you don't try it yourself, when you know? Yes if you want a white color on render do it as you wrote.

I tried it, but still I don't know whether it is properly "working". I searched on the internet for how to set a white background and the results showed way more complex solutions to just have a white background. So I was not sure, whether my solution is intended for that purpose or does not really work or has some disadvantages for example.

Well that depends what you expect, or what you want to achieve. I would use just transparent background so i can choose the background i Photoshop. But the environment can be reflected on object and can have a effect on its color, so if white helps you in this purpose use white. It just depends on what result you want.

Ah, ok. So normally the background is transparent, so it can be edited later. Did not know that, thought the background was grey by default. Since I want to setup a batch rendering script, it is probably more convenient to set the background right away, so it does not have to be changed later. Plus I have the benefit of it interacting with the object (did not know that, thanks for pointing it out).

It is grey by default, however @Fowl sets his/her surface to transparent for his/her own needs.

Yes and yes.

If you change your viewport shading to Render Preview:

Or change the Viewport Shading to show the Scene World, you will see the rendered result of your background selection.

This worked too when baking textures with cycles. The shadows were being baked with a pink color tint. In UVEditing and TexturePaint, I noticed the background was all pink. Then I thought the background could be being reflected in the object as pink reflection (or interfering in the shadows in some other way). When I set a black background, the baking worked perfectly, thx!

These are the steps to get a 100% white background in Blender 4.0 with either Cycles or Eevee (not light gray as the other answers posted before mine will give you):

Go to World Properties in the properties panel and make sure the Color is set to white. Use Nodes can either be off entirely or on with a Background shader selected as the surface material.

Go to Render Properties and under Color Management, select Standard as your View Transform.

For older version:

Switch Engine to Cycle Render. Go to World tab in Properties panel. Locate to Surface Section and click Use Nodes. Finally pick your color.


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Problem: modeling philips screw head using modifiers
I am trying to model a screw head using boolean modifiers. I cannot get both tracks subtracted using solidified beveled faces. The second boolean operation fails if both tracks overlap (left) and succeeds if they don't. What is going on ?

Boolean ops are very dependant on the meshes. I suggest you upload your model using https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ and past the result link with your question.

Bevel does not work very well in this case, even with only one boolean.
Though, for the second boolean a workaround is to use a mirror instead:

The empty set as mirror object is located at the sphere center and rotated 45 degrees around Z.

Neat solution, many thanks Lemon!

What you could do is join both of your boolean objects into one mesh. Then you can apply the modifier. This might also happen because you didn't apply one before using the other.

Thank you for your reply. I have tried that before but in that case the solidify modifier fails on intersecting faces: it looks empty on the inside. I will try to use a mesh which contains and edge where faces intersect.

Nope, solidified 'cross' does not work either....


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Strength of bump depends of object scale?
Look at the Blend file:

On frame 2 we have an cube with bump texture:

On Frame 1 we have same object, same material and same lightning (one sun). The only difference that this cube scaled 500 times:

As you noted the bump map on scaled object affects so small, that faсes looks flat.
Same result on different bump methods. First, Using displacement (not real geometry, experimental features turned off):

Second, with bump node:

Is it possible to get rid of this problem?

Can you add some screenshots? Also since it seems you have multiple object sizes I assume you may have scaled your objects. Try applying the scale with Ctrl-A to ensure that isn't an issue.

Nice question, i will try to edit this for more understandable

Perhaps add some detail to the setup of the bumps - is it displacement modifier, cycles true displacement, etc. - without having to rely on someone downloading and opening your blend file.

@RichSedman ok, done

There's something strange about your scene, you have 2 objects Cube and Cube.001 but their mesh appear combined/joined when going to edit mode. That probably messes up the UV maps.

@user2049010 yeah this is called "linking". As i pointed (I edited question), they are "same object" - both cubes have same mesh data. I did it on purpose to show that the objects are the same, and the only difference between them in scale

where are the blender gurus or developers? is it a bug?

I think, it's a limitation of bump method. You can noted, that strength of bump effect not depends of scale, it depends of how big current face in world space...
So, use normal map. Normal map uses angles instead of depth, that's why objects, textured with normal map will looks the same in all scales.

Related: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?359453-Cycles-displacement-corruption-when-scaling-an-object

it does not completely solve the problem ... it's a bug

have more suggestions ?

how to write to developers ?

@ZiCViZ, of course, you can write a bug report, but it will close as invalid. Maybe, you describe more about what you want to do, to think about walk-around.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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How to 'scrape away' at a low-poly plane?
I'm trying to figure out if there's some sort of 'boolean brush' that I can use in top-down mode to 'eat away' at the edges of a low-poly plane? I'm trying to achieve a rusted/decayed look. An example of what I mean...

You can't create geometry like that without increasing at least the vertex count resulting in a massive n-gon.  You can fake it by using transparency in a shader, though.

Hi Marty, I don't mind a vertex count increase. I've been using Bool/Difference to achieve the effect, but I wonder if there's an easier way. I was using a transparency shader before, but was running into tons of issues (I'm using Unity)


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Exported Blender Normal Maps Look Wrong in Unreal Engine
This mentions Unreal Engine but the problem is in Blender.
I'm creating a small hallway and exported it as fbx to use it in Unreal Engine 4.
I followed this tutorial for baking and exporting.
When I placed it in Unreal Engine I noticed something weird with the lighting:

In the image above, if you look closely, the left side of the point light (identified with the lamp icon) appears basically dark on the wall while at the right side has actual light. You can tell the lighting is incorrect by the light reflection on the floor.
I know this is a problem with the normal map in blender because if I delete the normal map in Unreal the issue dissapears and, sadly, I'm left with a relatively cheap version on the wall material.

Blender view of the hallway with a point light
I've searched everywhere for this and couldn't find anyone with this issue.
Any help is appreciated. I've been hitting my head for days.
I have a backup collection with the original mesh and unbaked textures and another with the mesh with the baked textures, I Also inverted the green channel in the baked normal map.

Could you attach your .blend file: https://blend-exchange.com

Of course. I flipped the green channel in the normal map of the baked texture. Also I have a backup collection with the unbaked textures.

Your normal map is referenced as sRGB in Blender, when it should almost certainly be non-color.  The images aren't packed into the file, and it's not clear whether this is an issue that will affect Unreal, but if you bake normals to sRGB, and unreal reads normals as non-color, which it almost certainly does, you'd see a shift like you're describing.  This isn't the only potential cause of issues, but it's not clear what normal map you're trying to use in Unreal, and it's not clear how you created it (high to low bake?)

I don't know what hight to low bake is so I figure I didn't use it. I'm not really an expert in blender. I'll try the non-color and post a screenshot of the bake settings.

@Nathan Thank you soooo much. You're literally my saviour. I almost started getting depressed because of this. I didn't set the "Non-Color" Setting. I don't want to get over emotional but really, you just made my day! :D

Okay after a few days of struggling I was able to solve this problem.
All of the credit goes to Nathan!
The issue was when I was creating the image to bake the Normal Map to, the Color Space setting was automatically set to sRGB. All I had to do is change it to Non-Color and voila! It started giving me a correct circle relfection on the wall.
But wait! This doesn't mean everything was fixed. I still had to invert the green channel so that the normals were dark and bright in the correct sides.
That was it. I hope this post helps people with with issue. Have a nice day!

Blender uses OpenGL normals, while Unreal - DirectX. To convert one format to another, invert Green channel:

Here is the list of applications that you can check if you have to convert normal maps:

Application
Normals

Blender
OpenGL

3DS Max
DirectX

AMD
OpenGL

Arnold
OpenGL

Cinema 4D
OpenGL

Corona Renderer
DirectX

CryEngine
DirectX

Godot Engine
DirectX

Houdini
OpenGL

IClone
OpenGL

KeyShot
DirectX

KeyShot 9+
OpenGL

Marmoset Toolbag
OpenGL

Maya
OpenGL

Modo
OpenGL

Nvidia
DirectX

Octane Render
OpenGL

Redshift
OpenGL

Shade3D
OpenGL

Source
DirectX

Substance Designer
DirectX

Substance Painter
DirectX

Unity
OpenGL

UnrealEngine
DirectX

VRay
OpenGL

Zbrush
OpenGL

BTW for me, texture looks right in Unreal and wrong in Blender. So maybe the texture is DirectX actualy

Thank you, I will try it in a few minutes. Does blender has this feature of I must do it in another program?

You can do it in 2D editor

BTW for me, texture looks right in Unreal and wrong in Blender. So maybe the texture is DirectX actualy

Well, I tried to flip the green channel but sadly it didn't change anything. I re-imported it to Unreal with the modified normal map and the result was the same.
What do you mean by looking right in Unreal and wrong in Blender? I don't understand.

Try clicking sRGB in texture settings then

It was already selected. I'll try to bake the textures again and see if that fixes it. I'll give an update later

It didn't work. I don't know what is the problem. I'll just find another way arround this.


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How to repair mesh without leaving holes in the mesh
Noob in SE and blender. Using Blender 3.2.1, win 10.
In the character shown below, I would like to remove the sword tip and arm pit webs without creating a hole in the mesh.  I have tried delete, crease, et.al. with no success.

full body image

sword tip

arm pit webs

Have you tried with the Lasso Trim in Sculpt mode (keep pressing on the Box Trim to have access to it)

Thanks for the response, moonboots.
The lasso does allow finer selections, but...
After making the selection with the lasso and tapping the delete key, I still get holes in the mesh.
I have tried every selection in the delete pop-up, and still get holes :-(

I'm not talking about the selection lasso, I'm talking about the Lasso Trim in Sculpt mode, have you tried (not sure it will work though) https://zupimages.net/up/22/29/jd1r.jpg

Voila!  That works!
It is relatively slow, but now I have something that I can work with.
Merci

Try to cut your object with the Lasso Trim in Sculpt mode (keep pressing on the Box Trim to have access to it:


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How do I make the stars blink?
I am having some trouble making my stars blink. I am new to blender... But not new to art and 3D.
I made this night sky scene in Blender 3.2.0. I have uploaded some pics on the scene and the node settings.

Keyframe along the timeline, the varying emission strength after adding an emission shader to the star mesh.

You can get something really simple and pretty naturalistic looking like this. Don't have to fiddle with keyframes or nothing.

With that you get a result like this: (hopefully it comes through the video compression, please excuse the pretty shitty 30 second "stars" i made to test it)

I like this, it's a good use of the 4d textures now provided.

I cant find the power node. I searched for it and nothing. The video did not play. It's just an image.

Power and Multiply are both a Math Node. It is definitely a video, but I replaced it with another one with the intensity and bloom increased to enhance the effect. Hopefully you can see it.

The general answer is to animate the value and then use an F-Curve Modifier.
Set one keyframe anywhere on the timeline for your emission strength, and then open a Graph Editor viewport.  You can open the N-panel in this view to get to the F-Curve modifiers tab.

Add a Noise Modifier to the keyframe and edit the settings to your liking.

Note: You can Grab G and move the initial keyframe to affect the "baseline" of the curve, and you can add a second keyframe somewhere else to interpolate between the two values while still being affected by the modifier(s).


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How to make this chess piece's necklace?

Hi, I'm trying to model this chess piece following this concept art to practice modeling. I have modeled the body of the King. This is what I have done so far:

I tried to make this "necklace" as a separate mesh but it looked ugly. Any ideas or hints on how to approach this? Thanks

Hello, do you want it to be part of the same mesh or do you want it to be a separate mesh?

Either is fine for me. From what I can see from the concept, it seems like they are from the same mesh

if this is the same mesh, maybe use the Knife Project tool to project the shape onto the cylinder, then extrude the faces?

You could crate a mesh that draws the pattern, remove the faces with X (Delete) > Only Faces, put it in front of your cylinder, select the cylinder, switch to Edit mode, CtrlRMB on the pattern object and Mesh > Knife Project:

It leaves these new edges on the surface of the cylinder:

Extrude and model the pattern:

I don't know there is a "Knife Project" tool. Definitely will try out this method. Thanks.


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How can calculate the geometry's file size
I want to display geometry's effect on file size. How can calculate geometry and animation data file size ?

I don't think this sort of functionality exists in Blender, because even when you append models from another file and that's done using Blender's file browser that has "size" tab in detailed view that has no info about size of Blender's datablocks. https://i.postimg.cc/kMcywxj6/image.png

Should I take geometry file size from .bin file after animation deleted if it is existing? I need some tips for 'animation data size' and 'geometry data size'

Blender's status bar shows what seems to be file size in RAM, but that does not correspond with saved file sizes at all and also fluctuates unpredictably(at least to me) so I don't really know... Maybe try asking about this on devtalk forums.  Have a look at Memory Statistics operator as well.

Thank you very much I created new topic in devtalk : https://devtalk.blender.org/t/how-do-i-calculate-the-geometrys-file-size/25589


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Around Bevel not work for curve converted from Knife Project
Around Bevel not work for curve converted from Knife Project
Blender V 3.2.0
Thanks.

right click the curve mesh and select convert to curve. then under curve properties u can add bevel thats nice rounded

that's what i did but it didn't work

It looks as if that object, and therefore the circle derived from it, are scaled in object-mode, Ctrl-A Apply scale  and try the whole operation again.

@RobinBetts yeah, well spotted! it definitely is scaled into the Y and needs Ctrl+A > Apply Scale.

thank you @RobinBetts , it works

thank you @Harry McKenzie , it works


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How to prevent bones from transforming between frame 1 and frame 2
I was following this tutorial for creating a ragdoll in blender. It basically says to delete parents from all bones in a rig, then create cubes (colliders for the ragdoll) with rigid body physics enabled, use the child of bone constraint to parent bones to their colliders and then put rigid body constraints in places where joints should be.
The ragdoll works great but I ran into a small issue. Between frame 1 and 2 of the animation, the bones in the rig transform in weird ways, some move, some flip, some rotate. I tried to look for any similar issue on the web but couldn't find anything.
I would be really grateful if anyone told me what I did wrong and how to solve it even if it meant redoing the ragdoll from scratch.

Hello, maybe share your file? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

@moonboots Oh sorry, I'm new to this forum and didn't know you had to do this. I just uploaded the file.

it looks like there's a problem of transform (scale), but if you apply the scale it looks like it will mess up the whole thing, there may be a way to correct that, or do it again but this time apply the scale of your objects? I hope someone will answer in detail...


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Object turns permanently invisible when adding visibility keyframes
I'm trying to keyframe the viewport and render visibility of a simple plane with an image sequence for the texture. The sequence starts at a certain frame so I want to keep it hidden before that so it doesn't show the purple color.
The file was first in 15fps and is now in 60fps so it uses time stretching, if that changes anything.
However, when I add keyframes to the visibility of this plane all keyframes change to invisible.
Here's a gif to demonstrate what's happening:

Here is the .blend file, although it's part of a larger project over the 30 MB limit so I had to delete most parts of it. If there is a problem with that I can host the whole file on Google Drive later, but even in this stripped-down version the issue still persists.

Using Blender 3.3.1 with Cycles, Windows 10 x64 for anyone concerned

unfortunately you didn't include the timeline marker in the gif so we cannot really see what's going on...and maybe adding a blend file might also help...

@Chris (et al.) Hmm.. the trouble is, when you key an object invisible this way, it also makes  its keyframes invisible in the timeline... is there a switch to flick which gets around this? The keys are there, alright, you can key back visible, you just can't see them if you're in a period of invisibility.

@RobinBetts: you are right, didn't think about that....but a blend file would help...so at least my second part is true :D

@Chris .. Not a criticism of your comment :) Just poking around for an answer ...

@RobinBetts: i see your comment as a positive and constructive criticism, which is needed and you are right - so i have absolutely no problem with that and i hope you keep doing this in the future! i just can learn from you!

@Chris Sorry for the inconvenience, I just added both the timeline to the gif and the .blend file with the issue

Yes the strange thing is that the keyframes become invisible as soon as the object is invisible, even though you still have it selected in the Outliner, it's not logical to me

@EverythingerTruten I'm quite sure it has something to do with the Time Stretching, if I disable it, it seems to work normal to me. But I'm not sure how to counter that.


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Outline a model Tron style
I'm trying to make a Tank model for a Tron fan game but I'm new to Blender and I'm having a really hard time outlining the model. I've tried adding a texture to it where I exported the UV map and then sorta outlined that, but it looked really terrible. It was either pixelly and blurry or the angles were all wrong or the size of the outline was wonky depending on where on the mesh it was. I feel like this should be really easy, and I must be just doing something wrong. I've attached an image of the current model (I'm starting with just the gun so I can get a workflow down) and the general desired outcome.
Edit: To clarify, I need the model to be exportable with the outlines to be used in Godot. I'm using the gltf/glb renderer.

For game assets, you'll want to look into the inverted hole method and square uvs like Arc System Works games use.

Does this answer your question? How do you add a thin outline?

There are many options within blender to get an outline, such as through the material editor, freestyle, or Grease Pencil (as mentioned in other answers). However, these options typically will not be exportable to be used within game engines.
When creating outlines, the best option is usually to use the material editor or post-processing in whatever game engine your are using. This would be far more reusable as well, as it can be applied globally to the game/models rather than you having to manually setup glowing in Blender for each model you make.
If for some reason the glow effect has to be done 100% in Blender (which I don't recommend), you could possibly try baking out a black & white texture that highlights where the sharp corners of the model are (with the sharp corners becoming the outline). You can get this texture by baking a pointiness/curvature map (there's lots of tutorials online regarding this, so I won't recap the process here for brevity). Then in your game engine of choice, you could plug this map into the emission input of a material.

The glow itself I can handle in Godot. I tried getting the engine to make an outline automatically, but it doesn't really get the effect that I want/need. I'll look into the curvature map, as baking the outline on to the mesh seems to garner the best result (and be the least resource intensive). Thank you!


text:
Need some help making background glow fog
I need some help with making the background glow that appears in the painting.

I tried doing it with photoshop and a bit of image magic (https://i.sstatic.net/RpDWw.jpg) but I didn't get to the wanted solution. I want it to look as close as possible to the painting (this also means in shape and form).

Thanks in advance!
phantom

if you are in Eevee, activate the Bloom option, increase the Emission strength

Please don't use external links to images. You can insert an image directly into your question either from the link or by dragging and dropping it directly into the question field.

@JohnEason I tried doing it but it said it was too heavy for some reason

@phantomderp The image you've linked to is almost 4 Meg in size so I'm not surprised!

In the first step, I would improve the lighting. There are 3 suns in the painting that emit light. If the light source is behind an object, a so-called rim light is created. This is the glow around the silhouette of the planets.
I've made a quick "overpaint" of your render which is used as a background image. Just forgot to reset the camera rotation so it looks a bit messy:

The two main suns are simple spheres that have an emissive material (strength 3, yellow emission color). Because the emission material alone is too weak to illuminate the whole scene there are area lights behind each sun to illuminate the back of the planets.
There are also a few spotlights to illuminate the front of the planets because if you have only a light source in the background then the planets will appear black to the camera.
The nebulae can be created with transparent alpha planes, which also have an emission material (strength 1, and light blue emission color). Search for "free fog overlay" or "cloud overlay" to find some. These are the smaller planes in the screenshot above.

In the compositor, the glow for the suns and the rim light is created with the help of two Glare nodes. Also, the color is adjusted a bit.
For the planets, play with the Roughness and Specular values and thus influence the glow. For example, with a Fresnel node you can make only the outermost edge of the planet smooth and reflective, while the inner is rougher and reflects less light. In the example, it's done for the main planet.


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Beveling tight corners results in shading errors
I'm trying to apply a bevel to a tight corner area of a model:

Unfortunately, no matter how I try to do this, I end up with shading errors in the corners.

I'm using smooth shading, with auto-smooth (46º). I've tried applying the weighted normal modifier (doesn't help) and I've tried adding addition loops (didn't help). Is there a way to fix this issue? It's quite visible, even from a distance.
Update:
I'm attaching the source file here.

can you share your blend file https://blend-exchange.com

Hi :). The angle is probably over 46°, adding more bevel segments should help, right?

You have bad topology there. N-gons and non planar quads. Get rid of that and it should start behaving.

I added the source .blend file for anyone interested in taking a look. @radoo -- there are a couple non-planar quads in the bridge of the handle, but even if I planar-ize them, the bevel problem persists. Adding more bevel segments does help, but I have to add at least 4-5 additional ones, which seems excessive.

True, The topology needs to be better and good enough to give space for the bevel effect to connect the shape smoothly, This is common you should implement a good topology instead of directly using Ctrl+B for beveling them automatically if you want good results.

Also dont forget to invert normals. =)

The model also has inverted faces, loose geometry and overlapping vertices.

The loose faces are part of the inner glass bulb, and shouldn't be an issue. The overlapping verts were not in the region, but I've fixed those (and the inverted faces). It still doesn't resolve the issue with shading around the area being beveled. Any other things I can look at?

You have inverted face normals as seen in red. Select all faces with A and go to object menu Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Outside.

Also your geometry is non-manifold, you have internal faces which is invalid. Check this thread: What is non-manifold geometry?

oh I just realized they aren't connected when i pressed L on the oblong body so i guess that's ok.

thanks. I fixed the flipped normals, but it doesn't change the shading problem when bridging the handles to the main body. What I'm finding is that "bridge edge loops" doesn't really do a good job creating a topologically sound transition (in this case). Is there a different modeling technique I could use to bridge the handles/body mesh parts?

Here is a quick sketch with a better topology ( sorry, I don't have much time).

Rules of thumb:

check you mesh regularly for errors (overlaps, inverted faces, detached parts)
use reflective materials for curvature checks
if non-planar, n-gons are poison (as are quads, if too stretched)
even geometry is good topology
replace your loops (aka retopo on the fly)
There are more but I gotta go

Thanks. Let me take a look at what you did there.


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How do I create low poly cliffs?
I'm attempting to recreate the cliffs on this image and I want to know how to create something procedural with the style of the image showcasing the example cliffs

I've attempted geo nodes but it was not where I wanted it to be.

Can you please tell us more about it? What part of this scenery do you want to procedurally design and in what form? Just the front of the cliffs? Please try to make your question as precise as possible, because this topic seems to be very extensive.

@quellenform Hey yea so those cliffs you see towards the front but essentially I want to create procedural cliffs like the ones in the second photo

OK, thank you, please tell us a little more about it. The task leaves too much room for maneuver. Are you concerned with a straight line front, or does it follow a specific shape. Can you show us what you have done so far or where exactly you are hanging? Maybe it would be good if you share a concrete example as a blend file.

@quellenform Yea so I was able to achieve this https://streamable.com/zqg8g6
And im not sure how to upload a blender filer on here

@quellenform i got it up and edited it on the post


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Missing faces on a exported model when using transparency
I've come upon a problem I can't resolve. It happened to me once before, but I can't remember how I handled it.
I've created a wine glass model in Blender - low and highpoly meshes, unwrapped it, then used Substance Painter to bake maps and texture paint.
So far everything was working fine, till I imported my lowpoly model to engine where it will be showcased. When using transparency polygons start to disappear.

In Blender I checked everything I could think of - I recalculated normals, made sure they face correct direction, erased custom split normals, added weighted normals modifier, exported in different formats. Nothing helped. Just before this wine glass I made a common glass and everything was working ok.
The engine Im importing to is threeJS, but Im still asking for a help here, not threeJS forum. I don't have any access to the engine options, can just import models and textures, but somehow resolved this issue in past, so the mistake is somewhere on Blender's side.
I attach blend file - https://we.tl/t-Nfk9H8XV7z
Thanks
Update 1
Just noticed that this bug also occurs in Substance Painter, weird I didn't spot it ealier. Just fyi - I export fbx to work in Painter and obj to threeJS.

Update 2
I managed to visualize the problem in Blender. To see it - open blend file I attached, change to Eevee, add material and change Blend Mode to Alpha Blend.

So there is not actually geometry missing, just transparency issue, right? FBX has quite a lot of issues, but if you tried other formats it doesn't seems to be the case. In the whole process you'r using just lowly version, right? SubsPainter - you just open exported fbx and you see transparent as in your screen, right? Because I cant confirm that with blender3.3 > SP1.7 https://imgur.com/hmuqut2

Thanks for the answer. I could form the question clearer, you are right.
Yes, I use highpoly only for baking, everywhere else I use lowpoly. In Subs the issue doesn't show till I add a layer with opacity different than 100%.
I managed to visualize the problem in Blender (up in the post), but can't find the reason why model is acting like that.
Imo, it is not a transparency problem, because it occurs on multiple formats and in more than 1 rendering engine.

Those are "Backfaces" ... but what cause them? Hmm ... try to disable "Show Backface" option, if does it make any difference. I mean it make a difference in Eevee https://cgcookie.com/lessons/show-backface-in-eevee ... but I'm not sure about exported model since this affects probably just visibility in blender. I know how "Backface Culling" works, but not this "Show" thing. But maybe it is parametr that goes with export so there is a chance it will have influence. Better than nothing now.

It indeed works in Eevee, but doesn't help when importing to threeJS. But when following your suggestion I noticed something. For me it appears that model normals are somehow "corrupted", despite all of fixes they still have bad direction and it shows when using transparency. But why there are no shading issues on surface?

I don't think I can help more sorry ... even default Cube with that settings showing it in a weird way for me. More clearly visible when subdivisions few times ...  https://imgur.com/l8uvErd ... Since we know it comes from blender would be helpful to rewrote your Q to make it shorter and clear for newcomers just things that really matters now. And I suggest to delete also comments so it is clear here is not solution.

So it appears that blend file might be corrupted.
Anyway, I will wait for other answers till end of weekend, I would like to know how to fix it when it occurs with more complex model.
If I won't find a way to fix it, I will do as you say and rewrite the Q.


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How to copy previous settings after the first try?
So I just downloaded 2.71 (YAY!) and tried the super-handy "copy previous settings" option on the splashscreen...
...but Blender froze (prolly cuz I had another instance open at the time). No worries, I'll kill it and try again...
...except it's not on the splashscreen anymore. Well (says I) it's gotta be somewhere: space "copy prev..." yup! There it is!
...But it throws the error: "[such-and-such-directory]/Blender/2.71 exists!"
...Well, I guess I can delete the existing directory (and whatever record it had) and just re-extract...
...But it still remembers!
So the question is, how do I get Blender to copy the previous settings, if it thinks it already has?

I'll give that a shot. I thought things had changed since then. (Would "it's the same as 2.6 versions" be an acceptable answer?)

The reason it remembers is because it created a directory in the user path (~/.config/blender, or %APPDATA% if you are on windows). AFAIK This stuff hasn't changed significantly in a long time (no real reason for it to :). If things do change, then we can update the old post.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Can't change shapekey values on a linked mesh?
So, I need to show the same human body in a few different states (like "smile" and "frown"). Yay shapekeys!
Unfortunately, when I link this object from the asset file to the rendering file, I have to make the mesh a local copy in order to change the "weights" of each shape key for each instance of the body that I want. I.e. one body using "frown" and another using "smile" would have to use different settings, and each have to be local (can't remain linked to the original mesh).
Furthermore, each body in my scene that needs to use one of the shapekeys has to be its own copy, it can't be an instance of the other bodies in the scene without them all sharing the same shapekey settings. I.e. "frown" and "smile" can't even share a mesh in the same file, without also sharing the amount of "frown" and "smile" that they use.
This is a problem, because anytime I update the original mesh, none of the changes propagate to the other models (because they aren't linked anymore, they're local). So, I have to go relink, make them local, and set the shapekey values for each one.
What I'd like to happen is to link the same object multiple times, and set each one to use different shapkeys, that way I only have to update the single, original mesh, and all the rest get the updates. For example, if I want to change the shape of the arm, I want that change to be the same regardless of the shapekey, so I'd like to just make that change once. Right now, my options are to use separate objects instead of shapekeys (and hope that I can perfectly copy any changes between the separate objects), or to continue like I have been and reset all of the bodies anytime they need to get a change that I made to the original.
Anyone know a way to make this simpler? Is this what proxies are for? Or is this just not doable in Blender?
It makes sense that shapekeys belong to the mesh, but it doesn't make sense (to me) that multiple instances of a mesh can't be using different shapekeys at the same time.

an extra little tip in addition. You can add custom bone shapes to your rig(any mesh object). To help you identify the blend shapes the bones are associated with. In my own work am doing the exact case that you described.
With custom shapes

Just the bones

Select your desired mesh object in the custom Shape box to change your bones appearance.

You could use a combination of an armature and drivers. After you link in your object you make a proxy of the armature which allows you to pose the armature in the new file and still get updates from the source file.
Once you have the shapekeys setup, create an armature and add a bone to be used as the controller. Go back to the object and in the shapekey list right click on the shapekey value you want to drive (or select the key and right click on the value underneath) and select Add Driver.

To define the driver you switch the graph editor to display drivers and show the properties sidebar by pressing N. You may need to click the value name in the list for the driver details to show.

Then you can choose the armature and the bone and have one of it's transform values used as the value for the shapekey value. In this example I am using the x location of a bone called DriveKey1 to control Key 1. Now as I move the bone along the x axis the shapekey is turned on/off.
I also chose Sum Values for the driver type. Scripted expression can give you more control but also can be disabled through blender's auto execution setting. Using Sum Values gets around this.
With the option to set custom bone shapes and use constraints to limit movement, it is rather easy to create a clear visual controller that you may have seen with some rigged characters.
Tutorials on rigging a face often show this technique when setting up mouth and eye controls.

Interesting.... Not exactly simpler, but it might be the only way to do it ;-) I'll have to try that out...

This doesn't solve the linked duplicated problem, though...


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Can I run "Mesh ‣ Clean up ‣ ..." tools without tabbing into edit mode?
I have an ENORMOUS mesh (23 million faces) that I'm interested in cleaning up. I've already gotten everything I can out of the modifier stack, and now I see some "Mesh -> Clean up" tools that I'd like to try out... but I can only access them in edit mode.
Switching to edit mode with a model this big is prohibitively demanding on my system, so it would be great if I could exercise these tools on my mesh some other way.
Any suggestions?

maybe a mask modifier would be useful? Would at least remove all or selected parts from calculation for time being and can be used in edit mode with vertex groups.

That will be a helpful solution, if there are certain parts of my model that I want to process, without having to process the whole thing. At this point, I'm more interested in a way (perhaps a Python script?) to exercise the Mesh Tools on the whole mesh... but without having to enter Edit Mode.

Some of the cleanup operations can be done through modifiers:

Decimate Geometry > Decimate Modifier (Collapse)
Limited Dissolve > Decimate modifier (Planar)
Merge By Distance > Weld Modifier

(Didn't feel right without a silly gif)

The modifiers are great, but I've already exhausted their usefulness. I'm interested in experimenting with the Mesh Clean Up tools that don't have a modifier counterpart. Incidentally, I also want to see if the clean up tools behave the same way as their modifier counterparts.


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How do cycles' emission strength values relate to real-world units?
If I wanted to accurately reproduce the brightness of a real-world object in Cycles to see how Cycles rendered it, how would I convert the real-world units (like lux) into strength values?

From the documentation: "Strength input: Strength of the emitted light. For point and area lamps, the unit is Watts. For materials, a value of 1.0 will ensure that the object in the image has the exact same color as the Color input, i.e. make it ‘shadeless’."

...but I'd still like to know if there's a good way to measure this for materials.

Watts is a real world unit of measurement. Maybe you want something like a lux to watts conversion?

Yes, watt is a real-world unit, but this value for watts doesn't apply to materials, only to lamps.

Cool! Do you have a source for that?


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Texture problems with geometry nodes

FILE (less than 2 mb): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WA3w3Ge7d9dcQu06PUIzS4RqcgHRcGqf/view?usp=sharing
I've created this road generator with geometry nodes that takes mesh lines and vertexes as input, then outputs this road. The number of lanes can be changed.
One thing I can't figure out is how to make the texture "even" everywhere. No matter what I do, it is reliant on each "leg" of the road structure. So as you can see in the first image, the short road segment has very short white dotted lines, while the longer road sections have sparse ones.
Any ideas how to do this? I tried to use Curve Resample node but couldn't get it to work. Tried multiple approaches, couldn't get any of them to work.

it might help if you "resample curve" after "mesh to curve"

I tried resampling the curve, but at least personally, I couldn't get it to work.

try this:

result:

GN modifier:

material:

Important is: multiply the factor with the length so that the texture is looking the same independent of the curve length. Capture attribute to save the uv coordinate in the group output, fill the variable in the modifier to use this in the shader nodes as uv coordinate. The two multiplayer nodes are just in there to finetune the uv coordinates that it looks good.

Note: you didn't pack resource before uploading your blend file so your road texture wasn't in your blend file. So i had to use another texture (i used checker so you can see it works)

UPDATE:
it is exactly the same principle:

result:

that looks great! I should have specified that I'm looking to do this with the object "Roads 2 (Boolean Roads)", but I think this technique will apply there as well.
However, I can't get it to work: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WA3w3Ge7d9dcQu06PUIzS4RqcgHRcGqf/view?usp=sharing
This should be the same as your updated node tree, but I am doing something wrong. It's all just a single color, and I don't know why. I've now packed the texture in the blend file as well. I couldn't get the checker texture working either.

it is the same principle....i updated my answer.

hey this is really great and I am thankful. Can you please take a look at the second file and see why my checkerboard texture is not working? I honestly cannot figure out what I did wrong with the node tree and/or shader. (I am now talking about the highway)
EDIT: I got the regular road working just fine with your geometry nodes image, but I can't figure out what's wrong with the highway.

you forgot to name the attribute in your modifier. And check your node setup. They are not as i showed you in the solution. Try first exactly rebuild my solution. And check whether it works. Then try to modify it. Don't modify in the beginning because that's only frustrating if you don't understood it completely.

that link is wrong, just delete it and name the attribute in your GN modifier   [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/420zU.png

I spotted one mistake in the geometry nodes (one of the multiply nodes was wrong, should be correct now). But sorry, I do not understand "name the attribute" in this context. I thought I did that with "Highway Road" (the one you named "uv")? Do you mean something else?

in the modifier: [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/soN0O.png

sorry for being this dense, but I don't understand. Name it how? My modifier stack looks exactly the same as yours in that screenshot. I tried using all of the options it gives for me but none of them work for the texture.

Enter the name of your attribute there

Read my solution: it says „uv“ in the output attributes of the modifier- your field is empty

AAAHHHH RIGHT, yeah it works perfectly now. Thank you so much. This is most definitely 100% answered now.

sure, what's the easiest way to do that?


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SOLVED - Rotating objects along curve direction with geometry nodes

For the life of me I can't figure out how to work out the rotation for the supports for this highway. (No rotation attempt in the tree right now, I cleaned it up)
The base object is just vertexes that are converted into a curve. All that works just fine.
I'm also happy with how many supports are there. What I'm not happy with is the fact that I can't figure out how the rotation is supposed to be done. I tried normals, tangents, what have you, and I know the solution is out there somewhere, but I can't figure it out to save my life.

looks like it just might, but I was already provided an answer, thanks !

Yes, I see that, I'm just trying to avoid duplicates of repetitive questions ;-)

try this node setup:

result:

Align euler to vector is the "magic" node here.

Yeah this is the answer. Thank you a lot ! So thankful.

please click on the checkmark left of my answer if it helped you. thanks

absolutely, done now. I would have upvoted but I created this account for this question and so I can't yet...

No problem. Don’t need to be upvotes


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How can I preserve crisp lines on my mesh with a low res texture, but still overlay details?
I'm going for a PS1/Sega Saturn look, with a ~500 tri mesh and a 256x256 texture. I want to use the texture to paint details onto the mesh, while retaining crisp lines between faces.
However, placing seams normally results in UV islands with diagonal edges not strictly aligned to the pixel grid of the texture, meaning the edge between two faces in the same island has a "sawtooth" pattern caused by coloring a diagonal line at a low resolution:

As you can see, the top face should be black, the bottom face should be yellow, and there should be a clean edge between them. Instead, the yellow "bleeds" across the border because that edge in the UV island is not parallel to the pixel grid of the texture.
I think somehow adjusting the UV islands so that any edge demarcating the boundary between two differently-colored faces would be pixel-perfect horizontal or vertical would fix the problem, but that will warp the other faces on the UV island.
If I put seams wherever there should be a crisp color divide, my texel density plummets and it becomes difficult to paint details that should cross between faces because faces that should be contiguous are scattered all around the texture.
I can get around the sawtooth effect by assigning different materials to the different faces:

But then how would I insert the painted texture image data? If I try to use a Mix Shader node to overlay a painted texture onto something else (vertex shader, per-face single color material, etc), the texture isn't really painted on top; the colors are distorted as it is mixed with the color of the other shader:

I am open to using vertex colors for the "base layer", but as far as I know, any face that borders a face of another color must be a gradient between those two colors because they share vertex data along their edge; thus instead of one face being black and one yellow, one will be a gradient of black to yellow:

What is the best workflow here?

That's lots of words to read and understand what the problem is without any example pictures... I suppose your main problem is the texture isn't displayed with sharp switches between colors. Have you set the Texture Interpolation to Closest instead of the default Linear in the Image Texture node that's providing the texture?

@GordonBrinkmann You're right. All these techniques were attempted with interpolation already set to Closest, and you would have known that if I had included images. Really, it's more about UV mapping than texture interpolation. I'm going to remake this thread with a clearer text and pictures to demonstrate what I mean.


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How to do photogrammetry within Blender?
Photogrammetry is really frustrating. The good tools are really expensive, and the free tools are either really old, or really difficult to get working because they're pet-projects... or they're Autodesk.
Current workflows use one tool to reconstruct the structure. Often either a Structure From Motion approach, or a multi-view stereo approach. Then another tool is used to turn those results into a mesh, almost always MeshLab. And another tool to texture using the photographs, often MeshLab and/or Blender.
Blender has all the functionality to identify features in an image and match those features across multiple images. We do it with motion tracking all the time. Blender also has the functionality to project those features into 3D, as with the empties that get produced when doing any kind of motion tracking. Blender also has the functionality to turn a point-cloud into a mesh.
Are there any tools/addons for doing photogrammetry or digital reconstruction from within Blender, without external applications?

Are you actually asking a question on how to do photogrammetry in Blender or just looking for people who might be?

My current understanding is that Blender does not currently have any features that will construct a mesh from a set of photographs or video. If that's not the case, then yeah I'd like to know how to do that. I'm not talking about how to use photographs to manually model, that's prety well understood. I'm interested in precise photogrammetry within Blender.

ppt + meshlab + blender could work, it seems http://arc-team-open-research.blogspot.it/2012/09/converting-pictures-into-3d-mesh-with.html just don't ask me how... :)

That process uses Blender only for rendering and extra texturing. The analysis is done by PPT, and the mesh generation is done with MeshLab.

...which is to say, they're using PPT to do it, but Blender can do feature detection and matching (video tracking), and it can do camera pose-matching (motion tracking). Is anyone working on an addon to apply Blender's feature detection, matching, and triangulation to make meshes?

...I've edited my question to be a bit more clear.

(My experience) The "beginning of something" can bee seen at the end of this video. He was able to get the point cloud of a series of images (video frames). Next step is meshing the pointcloud. There are some interesting projects around the web, but I haven't tried them yet. Smart Unwrap and Projection paint must be automated but they are almost ready

Yes! That's very close to what I'm talking about!

This isn't a valid question, should be re-worded.

If I already understood that it was invalid, I wouldn't have written it this way. I.e. I'm going to need more information about what makes it invalid, before I understand how to rewrite it.

Original question asked "Is anyone doing How to do photogrammetry within Blender?", instead you should ask a more direct question about whats supported.

Note, that this may be a duplicate of: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/14164

Yeah, possible duplicate, but I think this question's specificity about avoiding external applications makes it slightly different.

This might be no direct answer to your question, but may help to solve your problem.
You stated:

Photogrammetry is really frustrating. The good tools are really expensive, and the free tools are either really old, or really difficult to get working because they're pet-projects... or they're Autodesk.

I do not think that this statement is actually true. I have worked with several open-source Structure from Motion (SfM) tools over the past few years. And they achieve impressive results. Have you used one of the following state-of-the-art open source SfM tools:

Colmap (https://github.com/colmap/colmap)
OpenMVG (https://github.com/openMVG/openMVG)
Meshroom (https://github.com/alicevision/meshroom)

I have wrote a Blender Addon that allows you to import photogrammetry results from different libraries including Colmap, Meshroom, MVE, OpenMVG, OpenSfM and VisualSfM:
https://github.com/SBCV/Blender-Addon-Photogrammetry-Importer
Here are a few images showing some imported reconstruction results.

I've not used any of these tools. The only ones I could find back in the day were a pair of abandoned projects. I've been using Agisoft Photoscan (now called Metascan) lately, and I'm still disappointed with how difficult it is to get good results. I'll certainly check out your suggestions.

Can recommend Meshroom and COLMAP as well. Just be aware that COLMAP uses a LOT of hard disk space saving project data / intermediate results.

Just to add. The easiest way to get more dots on an object is to lower the size of the trackers to 5 and then the recognition are to 20. Hit automatic detection then hen change the distance from 120 to 10 and maybe lower the threshold. Unfortunately Blender on 2.78 was a bit unstable so with about 700 markers it would crash. Try to only do 30 frames.
An interesting hack is to project markers onto the object and move around it with the camera instead of rotating it. I managed to capture parts of a white walled room using an AV projector with a dot field image.
It would be really nice if someone would extend the system to allow markers of a different type so that all of the object could be tracked.


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To what degree does Blender support PTex?
I remember hearing about PTex a while back, and it was really exciting. IIRC, it was briefly, or maybe experimentally added to Blender, but the latest I can see of it is an experimental build of 2.73
Are there any plans to fully implement PTex?
Were significant technical problems discovered that made it unworthy of Blender?
What else is about it?

It is still supposed to be integrated, but later than 2.78.
Nicholas Bishop is working on it.


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How to edit material of grease pencil stroke across all keyframes?
I'm very new to Blender and have a simple question.
I have an animated Grease Pencil stroke and would like to edit its color. I don't want it to be changing colors in the animation, I just want to edit the material across all keyframes. Even when I select all relevant keyframes for that stroke, the color change only applies to the current keyframe. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks!

that's weird, I get the opposite behaviour, when I change the stroke colour in the material tab it changes all frames

I've been struggling with the same issue and found how to solve it.

Select all the points of your Grease pencil object in Edit Mode
Select not only all the keyframes but the animation layer in the Dope Sheet Editor
At the top panel turn on multiframe
Now you can apply a new material to all the keyframes in your animation.


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I can't find UVdata from shadernodes
I made a UV position of a square mesh, which is located at 0〜3 lines in the spread sheet, in geometry nodes.But I can't find it from an input UVdata node in shader nodes.
How can I find it?

Hello, could you post your shader node tree too ? For the purpose of helping, it would be better if you could switch to english translation before taking your screenshot :) Also note that I don't think GN attributes are supported in Eevee node trees yet so you might have to switch to Cycles

I changed pictures : )

I can find a same issue in more simple situtation.I use mesh primitives.It can't show the simple material.

Try using a "Uv Map" node and choose your custom UV map there, I think the "Texture Coordinate" node takes the default UV Map, named "UV Map" so it may not take your custom one

I tried it. But it doesn't make any difference.


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Animation nodes to shader nodes
Can I use Numbers List to cycles materialoutput node in animation nodes?
I want to use numbers list to many objects which I made in Object Instancer node.

Hi, could you had a few screenshots of your setup or more information ?

Hi,I added two pictures.

As stated in https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/168589/86891, you have to access a specific object's property in order to change each individual object if they share the same material. Each object has a few specific properties : Render pass index, viewport color, etc.
But you don't have to use the Animation Nodes for this since the shader nodes contains a "Random" -per object info which will act exactly as what you want to achieve.

However if you really want to use AN, use this setup in your shader :

And in your AN tree :

WOW!That's great idea ! Thank you.


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How to rig complex mechanical setup with two IK Chains
I'm am trying to create a mechanical rig that has a foot at the end that constantly orients to the ground. Because I want to mimix an articulated robotic arm each section needs to behave mechanially - only rotating around 1 or 2 axis.
I've managed to hack together a rig that uses 2 IK chains - one for the foot portion and another for the arm. I moved the IK controller for the foot below the ground and parented it to the CTRL of the leg portion as a hacky way to keep the foot horizontal. It sort of works but there's an abrupt change in direction of the foot hinge (see gif)
I've tried locking the IK axis and using constraints to limit rotation but struggling to solve the issue that doesn't break the mechanical movement of the rig. Any experts that can help?

Can you provide a file?  That'd make it easier to help you out.

Sure thing. I've updated the post with a blend file

Before anything else: one of your bones has the wrong axes locked.  Bone.008 is unlocked in Y only; it should be unlocked in X only.
Now, the reason why your Y rotation freaks out is because the IK target is enormously distant from the IK constrained bone (and, because there are multiple solutions to the IK chain.)  Your workaround isn't unreasonable, but your IK target should be able to reach your IK target in most situations.
You could fix that by flooring your IK target.  But instead of doing that, I'm going to recommend something instead of your workaround-- use position + rotation IK:

Ik target is on the floor, even like this.  Its rest pose is in the same axes as the IK constrained bone.  And I've now enabled Rotation on the IK constraint, so the IK chain tries to solve the IK in a way that (first) makes the final bone match the rotation of the IK target and (second, if it can) makes the final bone's tail reach the IK target.
Note: your IK will still freak out if it rotates through 180 degrees.  The ultimate solution to that is to make an IK system that has one and only one solution to the problem, and your IK has a lot of solutions.  But the better solution is to make your model and rig such that you don't have to rotate through 180 degrees-- know what you need it to do beforehand, and build it in the middle of likely deformations.

Thanks so much. Such a thorough and helpful answer. Much appreciated.


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Why is the calculated volume wrong for extruded objects?
I have just noticed that when calculating a volume using the 3D-Print add-on I get completely different results when I extrude away material.
In the picture you will find two cuboids of identical dimensions. The left one has been scaled to those dimensions. The right one has had material extruded away. The calculated volume of the latter is off by quite a bit.
Same problem with calc_volume().
To provide a little detail: I added a plane, extruded it into the cube and selected 'DIFFERENCE'.
What is causing the calculation error?

Solved:
After extruding away material, your face normals are pointing in the other direction. This causes the miscalculation of calc_volume() as it uses face normals in its algorithm.
In order to fix this go into edit mode-->Mesh-->Normals-->Recalculate Inside


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How can I use nodes to automatically resize render output independently of render resolution?
I'm making render similar to PS1 games from the 90s. An important part of that look is the low render resolution. Right now, I render a PNG near the PS1's maximum native output of 640x270 then scale it to 2560x1080 in GIMP by clicking Image -> Scale Image and changing the image size from 640x270 to 2560x1080 and the interpolation to None. I am working in Eevee, but I would appreciate a solution for Cycles, too.
There must be a way to do this automatically using compositor nodes to scale the image output after the actual render, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.
For reference, here is the default cube rendered at default settings, 2560x1080:

Here is the same cube rendered at 640x270, with dither at 0 and filter size at .01 px:

Here's that last render scaled up to 2560x1080 in GIMP, which I'd like to do automatically in Blender:

This image is rendered at 640x270, and the image size is also 640x270, but I would like to scale the image to 2560x1080, without interpolation, using compositor nodes.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/compositing/types/filter/pixelate.html

What render engine (Cycles/Eevee)? You are looking probably how to render without "anti-aliasing" ... in Eevee you can do that just by setting render Sampling to 1.

I found a video explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RgV4RwWZ-w Basically Gordan's solution, but scaled by 4.096 instead of just 4.

//EDIT: As mentioned in the comments, my version isn't flawless: it leaves a transparent gap in the top row and right column of the result. Of course you can always scale a little larger than the exact factor, but this might result in losing image information. Scroll to the end to find a solution for this.
Simple solution (with gaps): Because the link to the manual already explains what you have to do, so this will be my first option of explanation:

You can place a Pixelate node between two Scale nodes. If you set them to Relative, you can use the first one to scale the image down by a factor x, for example 0.1, then pixelate the image and scale it back up by 1/x i.e. in this example 10. If you want to automate this a bit you can put a Value node in there to hold the factor x and a Divide node to get the upscaling factor.

Now the reason I give an answer instead of just leaving it at that link to the manual is the following: if you want to scale the image down to absolute pixel values instead of scaling relative, you can set the Scale node to absolute and enter perhaps 192 x 108 pixels.
The problem is, if you want to scale it back to normal Scene Size or Render Size, these options will not work. It seems as if scaling down the image means Blender scaled the render/scene size down as well.
So the only way would be to use Absolute for upscaling and set it manually to the render size, let's say that's 1920 x 1080. But that doesn't work either. To get back the original image size, the absolute pixels have to be scaled by the reciprocal of the downscaling factor as well. So if you scaled it down to original/10 =  192 x 108, you have to set the upscaling to original*10 = 19200 x 10800.

If you don't want to do all manually, you could use Value nodes for the X and Y size you want to scale down to absolutely, then place Divide nodes afterwards where you divide the original dimensions by the new small dimensions and plug the results in the upscaling node, set to Relative.

You can try different combinations of relative and absolute scaling to get the desired result, just know that using Scene Size or Render Size in the Scale node doesn't seem to work to get back to the original size. For the Absolute workflow it's a bit annoying that there are no nodes to read the render dimensions from the settings and put them in the nodetree somehow, but maybe I'm just missing something and someone else could help.
Updated solution (without gaps): The gaps are not a result of the image not being scaled up large enough, but rather a misplacement of the image's origin point. If you for example scale down to 1/4 of the original size and afterwards scale up by 4 to bring back the original size, there is a gap of 2 pixels at the top and 2 pixels to the right. If you use 1/10 down and 10 up, the gap is 5 pixels top and right.
So the upscaled image seems shifted to the left and down by 1/2 of the upscaling factor. To compensate for this, you can simply divide the upscaling factor by 2 and plug this value into the X and Y inputs of a Transform node, placed after the upscaling node.
This is a simplified version if you want to scale uniformly with a relative factor on X and Y:

But it also doesn't matter if you want to scale X and Y different from each other, in this case you have to shift individually on X and Y in the Transform node as well:

Of course this all works with downscaling the image to absolute pixel values as well (although this method still has the disadvantage that the render size isn't set automatically). Like in the simple solution before, by dividing the original render dimensions with the new values, you get the upscaling factors. And from those you again need the half for the Transform node:

This is pretty close to what I'm looking for but it leaves the topmost row and rightmost column as transparent for some reason. I am scaling from 2560x1080 -> 640x270, so a relative value of .25 should work.

Hmmm... you're right, I have the same issue. I guess that's some interpolation problem. Maybe you could use an Alpha Over node to put the pixelated above the original to fill the gap. Of course in my example that wouldn't be a problem, in other renders it might be if there is one row and column not pixelated. I cannot try it anyway at the moment, suddenly my Blender always crashes when I try to save the result and I have to go offline now.

I found a video explaining it, so I submitted a new answer. You were definitely on the right track! Turns out "1000 pixels" is actually 1024 pixels. Who knew?

@HotDogWaterChugger Well, that's only half the truth. The method described there gets rid of the empty row and column, but you could achieve this with any kind of upscaling larger than the reciprocal value. Fact is, if I render something and there would be for example a thin border around the image, this gets lost if you downscale with 1/4 and upscale with 4.096 instead of 4. Of course a border of 1 pixel vanishes more or less anyway when scaled to 0.25, but even a 4 pixel border (which scales down to 1 pixel) is gone after upscaling again with 4.096 although it should be there.

@HotDogWaterChugger I've updated my answer to compensate for the gaps and not overscale to lose image data.

I had no time to check your answer closer (will take a time later) ... just a note how scaling behave https://imgur.com/mErLctx ... for the gap I saw used InPaint node (sure it doesn't solve the interpolation appearance) :)

@vklidu The scaling in the GIF seems to be from the center and with each full row and column of pixels that it loses or gains on down- or upscaling, it's alternating beween bottom left and top right. But the results I experience in the output seem to be always shifted to the bottom left strangely enough.

@GordonBrinkmann Thanks Gordon I've chosen your answer.

Compositor can output whatever image size it needs to so if you wanted to save a higher resolution image than what is rendered you just need a higher resolution image in the compositor. So for example, if you had an image node that loads a higher resolution image from disk, compositor can output that image in it's resolution no matter your renders resolution. If you mix something on top of that higher resolution image, the resolution of it remains the same. But we don't need an image, one can also use an empty Mask node that has it's own resolution and mix something on top of it to get a higher resolution image:

This will render 100x75px image, but output a 2000x1500px size image.

+1 Haha, this is so much simpler than my solution :D

I remember how much torture it was to find out this works. I render interior visualisation and often need to output different orientation and size stills that I set up as animation, but you cannot render frames with different sizes... :D

The only downside is, if you maybe want to simulate old computer graphics and there exist some that didn't have quadratic pixels, your solution doesn't work well for individual scaling factors on X and Y. Sure, you can use a Scale node instead of a Transform node and set different factors for X and Y, but the Scale node doesn't have the "Nearest" option so it will be blurred through upscaling.

Okay, now I got the perfect solution ;) If you also want the option to scale individually, you simply take a Pixelate node, then plug a Scale node afterwards and there you can now set individual factors for X and Y and they will not be interpolated anymore.

Yep. Or just scale it up with Transform node and then if you scale it down with Scale node in different aspect ratio it doesn't matter, because it interpolates scaling down.

I modified my comment... for individual scaling on X and Y, no Transform node is necessary. Only the Pixelate. The only thing that would bother me with this whole setup is that you always see the result only through the viewer node and directly saved as a file. It's not working with the Composite output.

Do you mean scaling in the Compositor?

If so, the node in question is under Add > Distort > Scale.
EDIT -Try this - you might have to figure out the math to get the right resolution, but this seems to work for the example at least - maybe its something to start with/explore:

I think you're on the right track, but the Scale node only scales the output without scaling the actual image size (as if the camera were zoomed in) and uses some form of interpolation. I was able to get around the interpolation using the Transform node set to Nearest, but not sure how to scale the image output size. What I ultimately want is to essentially recreate what happens if you zoom into the render result using the mouse wheel, if that makes sense.

Ok. So, let me try to rephrase just to make sure I'm clear - lets say you have your image output settings set to 1920x1080 - when you  render, you want the output image to be scaled down to 256x256 (for example) and you want the image to be scaled to fit as well (distorting/stretching as necessary)., or would you like it cropped to fit instead?

I've edited the OP to clarify. I don't want to change the render, I want to change the dimensions of the image output.

Ok, I think I get it - A 128x128 image is tiny (in size) compared a 2048x2048 image (for example) - you want to render the image "tiny" (low-rez) and then scale it back up to 2048x2048 (output size) while keeping the same low-rez appearance?

I edited my answer - try this out


text:
Rotate object while rendering animation
I'm trying to produce animation frames for a rotated animation with everything else on scene left intact.
My rendering code looks as follows:
import bpy
import os
import math

# Set the output directory for the rendered images
output_directory = "/tmp/test-blender-render"

# Set the number of frames and the output image format
start_frame = 1
end_frame = 20
output_format = 'PNG'

# Rotate animation parent
pad_object_name = 'animation-platform'
# Set the rotation angle in degrees
rotation_angle_degrees = 45.0
# Convert the rotation angle to radians
rotation_angle_radians = math.radians(rotation_angle_degrees)
# Get the reference to the object
obj = bpy.data.objects.get(pad_object_name)
if obj is None:
    raise Exception("There is no platform object for this animation")
# Set the rotation mode to Euler
obj.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'
# Set the Z-axis rotation
obj.rotation_euler[2] += rotation_angle_radians

# Set the render settings
bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.file_format = output_format

# Create the output directory if it doesn't exist
os.makedirs(output_directory, exist_ok=True)

# Set the output path template
output_path_template = os.path.join(output_directory, "frame_####.{}".format(output_format.lower()))

# Set the output file format and output path
bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.file_format = output_format
bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = output_path_template

# Set the frame range
bpy.context.scene.frame_start = start_frame
bpy.context.scene.frame_end = end_frame

# Render the animation
bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True)

however rendered frame look exactly the same, nothing changes in viewport either.
When I execute first part of the script (by deleting everything past Set the render settings comment) the object rotates correctly. In contrast, when I run the script above nothing changes at all.
I suspect that bpy.ops.render.render needs some key to apply rotation properly?
To add to the above - I'm fine to revert revert rotation once rendering finishes - in fact this is what I initially planned to write but got stuck with rendering somehow ignoring rotation completely.
Edit 1: This question applies to Blender 3.6.0. Blender 2.x might have a bit different way of accomplishing the same.

i just would guess that you have keyframes on the rotation value of that object? these would overwrite your python change. if not, pls provide blend file so we can check it out. thx

Here is a reduced example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VfmlhxPM6mkVwAyLJry3xAHOyM_yXnig/view - it has a script that has rotation_angle_degrees which doesn't seem to be applied properly.

ok, sorry, didn't look close enough. You render the animation in one line (bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True) -> this renders the whole animation. No code is executed in between this command. So nothing changes there. So either you insert keyframes for your rotation in your python code, or your make a loop and render single images.

Thank you for taking a look! Would you mind elaborating how to render single images with the above code? My knowledge of blender python is a bit limited. I tried adding other parameters to the render call to no avail. If you have a spare minute - please, write an answer so I could accept it.

to add to the above: the part in my question that reads "however rendered frame look exactly the same, nothing changes in viewport either" should better be reformulated as "however rendered animation looks as if an object wasn't rotated at all, also rotation doesn't apply to the object after running the script".

try this:
import bpy
import math

for i in range(0,4):

    rotation_angle_degrees = 15.0
    # Convert the rotation angle to radians
    rotation_angle_radians = math.radians(rotation_angle_degrees)
    # Get the reference to the object
    obj = bpy.context.active_object
    if obj is None:
        raise Exception("There is no platform object for this animation")
    # Set the rotation mode to Euler
    obj.rotation_mode = 'XYZ'
    # Set the Z-axis rotation
    obj.rotation_euler[2] += rotation_angle_radians

    name = "\\tmp\\" + str(i)

    bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.filepath = name

    # Render the animation
    bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)

Note: the name, which is path + name might be different on your system. I am working on a Macbook and this works for me. So please change that so that it works for you.
result on my computer:

it wouldn't render the whole animation, would it? My sample code posted in my original post would render all animation frames.

To add to the above: the purpose of my script is to render exact same animation sequence, but taken at a different angle with only one object rotated on the viewport - with lighting, environment, etc staying intact. Sorry if it wasn't clear in my original post. This is why I try to rotate that animation-platform object but not the camera.


text:
Common values for Principled BSDF parameters for low-poly modeling
I'm doing some low-poly/moderate-poly modeling, almost exclusively using simple procedural materials with diffuse color being either a plain color or a result of a simple application of noise/musgrave/voronoi/brick texture nodes.
Almost all scenes I'm trying to render use very simple light setup - essentially a top-down view with Sun and maybe a few supporting light points.
I'm using standard Cycles renderer for semi-realistic renders (think pre-rendered graphics that was wide-spread in computer games circa late 90s / early 2000s).
Is there a good online reference that I can use to increase quality of rendered materials for parameters like subsurface / metallic / specular / roughness / anisotropic / sheen etc? I guess this question is not specific to Blender as the same probably could apply to any other 3d editor. I'm looking for common materials like common flavors of stone, metal - both painted and "raw", wood, dirt, foliage.
Trying to answer this question myself I found that this is normally referred as PBR cheatsheets (links below) but I wonder if a guide or a cheatsheet tailored to Principled BSDF (that have a richer set of settings compared to compared to what you normally see for PBR cheatsheet) could be found somewhere?

Links:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-newbies-pbr-cheat-sheet--321163017168365901/ (probably the best reference that I found so far)
https://blenderartists.org/t/is-there-a-material-reference-for-the-principled-bsdf-somewhere/1298127/3
https://80.lv/articles/the-newbies-pbr-cheat-sheet/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/536632111832260178/
https://floatharr.gumroad.com/l/IwFcz

Edit: here is a link showing search results related to what I'd like to be able to recreate: https://tinyurl.com/y43942bm

Hi J., asking help finding third-party resources is unfortunately not allowed on the SE platform.

I'm sorry, I didn't know that. Maybe the question could be reworded as seeking general guidance on how to find these values? I think knowing that would be a very useful knowledge for all new 3d artists.

I think rewording would make this question very useful. Is there a specific game with the look you're going for? What do you feel like is wrong with your materials currently? The principled shader is designed so that the user doesn't have to think too hard about the settings in order to get a physically accurate material, but a reference for some common materials could be cool to make

If you're looking for a 'semi-realistic' appearance, then the physical calibration (which you seem to have covered) is correspondingly less important if at all, and the visual style more important? I don't think this question is answerable given  the  description: 'Late 90's / Early 2000's'. That's an awful lot of stuff. No single reference/recipe-book would help you. Where BSE might be of help, is if you identify a particular look you seek to emulate, or even a specific element of it.I recommend editing to that effect, with illustration. (unless I've misunderstood)

Harmony is the most prominent effect of PBR materials. PBR values are, logically, based on physical properties, so they are extremely helpful when it comes to bringing a lot of different materials together in a coherent whole, where they all react to each other the way they could be assumed to do based on the way we (ideally) perceive the world around us. In 'late 90s/early 2000s' graphics, artists obviously used their best judgement and photo references—if the goal was photo-realism—so that's no help when finding PBR references. I guess what you have so far are materials that convey [..]

[..] that style of graphics, and you want to deviate from that? Can you post screenshots of what you have so far, and/or your desired outcome? (Is this a good example of what you're looking for? If so, I think answers should include the values directly, so we don't have the problem of link-through answers, and can neatly collect it here.)

I really loved pre-rendered views in game CG circa early 2000s - for example: https://tinyurl.com/y43942bm

You brought a great point on coherency. I think "stylized environment" may obviously deviate from real physical properties of the objects it tries to convey. I did notice that oftentimes e.g. metallic/roughness parameters are exaggerated to better convey a small/medium sized objects. To. tailor it more to my question - I think "semi-realism" in my example was naturally achieved by materials that 3DS Max circa late 1990s was able to provide.

Old rendering methods had no PBR, so I would stay away from Principled BSDF.
Shader-wise, I would just use a Diffuse BSDF shader mixed with Glossy BSDF like the old days, maybe use some normal maps or even displacements.

Old games often have either smooth or sharp reflections but no real in-between, they are also often very colored, hence using the color map passed through a custom color ramp in the glossy shader's color is useful to mimic that.
Definitely use low resolution textures (like 128 or 256px² tops), even purposefully save them as ugly-compressed jpegs if you really want to get oldschool looking textures.
In the image texture nodes, disable the pixel interpolation by setting it to Closest:

If you use procedural texture, bake them into low resolution poorly compressed jpegs to get that low quality texture look.

Render-wise, I wouldn't use Cycles to begin with, I would use Eevee instead, as it's way closer to how older render engines worked.
Turn on Screen Space reflections, but not refraction. Use Ambient Occlusion. Lower samples everywhere, lower shadows resolutions.
One big difference between modern methods and now is global illumination. Cycles would bounce light and light up everything everywhere from one light source, Eevee have baked global illumination with light probes. Use none of that. Back in the day, the only way to see anything with shaders was to add another light. If you light up a cube in the void, the only way to also see the part in the shadow is to add another, softer light.
When using Eevee, don't hesitate to write crazy numbers in the Diffuse and Specular settings of lights and tweak shadows per light, just to really fine tune what you want.

Thank you very much! Example you shared with node setup is great, thanks so much for sharing!

Forgot to mention, but these are just examples. If you want to really know how these things are made, the key thing for you is to find reference, and study it. Divide any surface into questions, like "does that surface have reflections? Do they move or are they baked in the texture?" So on...


text:
What can cause Shadow Catcher mask to be disregarded by Blender?
I tried to add shadow catcher to the scene I was working on. I reduced a blend file that I was working on to a simplest scene with a cube and a plane and still couldn't make shadow appear on the plane. Creating a separate file, adding a cube, a plane, the same camera and light setup plus shadow catcher plane allows seeing a shadow and I couldn't figure out what is the key difference that can make shadow disappear.
In both cases I use Cycles with Transparency turned on. Camera and lighting setup is identical in both cases. Shadow catcher plane is just a mesh plane added in a center of coordinate axis with Shadow Catcher Mask enabled.
I'm using Blender 3.6.
Here is the problematic file: https://blend-exchange.com/b/j5Og5er8
Here is the file created anew, same scene setup, same Camera, Shadow Catcher and Light setup, shadow catcher works as expected: https://blend-exchange.com/b/mAzkJK5X
This question is similar to Shadow catcher not catching shadows however:

The version of Blender is more recent.
I can achieve catching shadows, but only for a file that I create anew in Blender 3.6.

Comparing properties one by one I found one that was to blame in my case and it was due to bpy.context.view_layer.cycles.use_pass_shadow_catcher set to True! It can stay initialized with the default value which is False and that'd suffice in my case.
Hopefully it'd help someone.


text:
Is it possible to add randomness to object instances added via Array modifier?
I am using array modifier on an object with, say, Brick texture that uses UV map.
I try to get a different layout of bricks for object instances but no matter what I use (e.g. Object Info's Location or even Random) the texture shows up on all objects in the same way as on the first one.
Here is an example material I'm trying to use, note attempted use of Object Info's randomness to have a different bricks layout:

I can achieve the desired effect by dropping array modifier and duplicating the object (and applying location if I use Object's Info Location to randomize brick texture) but that's not very convenient when there is a lot of objects I need to duplicate.
I think the above could be done using geometry nodes albeit I don't have 100% working solution right now.
I wonder if what I'm trying to achieve is possible while still using array modifier.
Here is an example blend file: column of objects on the left hand side was created using duplication, a column of objects in the center was created using array modifier - note that each object in the center has exact same bricks layout:

You might also want to look at the possible uses of the Array modifier's UV > 'Offset UV' settings:  https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/168747/35559

Thank you, Robin!

A solution that also works in Eevee is to store the total face count before the array modifier using Geometry Nodes:

And then, with another Geometry Nodes after the array modifier, calculate the instance index of each face and store it as a named attribute:

In the materials, use an Attribute node to get the named attribute:

$$$$
You can use a Random value node to get a random value for each id, or maybe do some more complex operation, before sending the value to the shader.

Here's a method, not using GN, that works even when arraying objects with multiple mesh islands, in Eevee or in Cycles:

I've added an additional UV map where I've scaled all the UV to a single point.  I use a UV offset on the array modifier.  This won't affect a tiling texture image, since it offsets by the exact tile amount, but when used as the input to a noise texture, it provides a unique seed for every instance of the array.
Here, I'm using that to assign a unique hue to each circle, but you're free to use that value however you'd like.
There is a situation where this is not appropriate, which is when you want to use textures on clip or extend border modes.  That's usually fixable with a bit of vector math on your coordinates (but it can affect mipmapping if borders are small.)  I guess it wouldn't be appropriate if you don't have a UV map to spare either-- Blender only permits so many of them.
Something similar is doable in GN, but it's not any simpler.  When I can, I avoid GN to preserve vertex groups.

Do you really need a separate UV Map? You could just floor the coordinate that is offset in the Array Modifier. And Geometry Nodes already do preserve vertex groups in 3.6 (maybe earlier, not sure when exactly this was fixed) https://i.imgur.com/CPdX7ja.gif (well with constructive geometry it doesn't https://i.imgur.com/lQ5iN8Z.png though you can use my trick https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/275405/60486)

@MarkusvonBroady Floor would work in most situations, not all (UV can be bigger than 0,1.)  Can still use math, with a big enough offset, but precision is at risk, and it's more complicated, more work, than add UV.  I expect that somebody doing an array in GN is going to do it by constructing geo.  Hadn't seen that workaround, thanks for link!


text:
How to link all actions for an object from the other file?
I have two blend files: one with the animated model - let's say model.blend and all actions (e.g. idle, walk...) and the in the other file, say scene.blend I have scene setup with camera, lights, shadow catcher and a script to render all frames in some specific way - the logic is really simple - think render walk animation when rotating an object and also skipping some frames.
All animations in model.blend are defined as separate actions in the action editor and all have fake user assigned. I.e. I have one for a T-pose, the other for idle animation, another one for walk animation, etc.
The problem is that linked object that I import via File > Link doesn't carry all the actions that I defined for that object, only the one that was selected in the model.blend action editor view. So in order to render all separate animations for the object I have to switch to model.blend, select another animation in the action editor, save and close model.blend, switch to scene.blend and render animation again. Is there a better way to achieve that?
To add: when I switch to Animation > Actions Editor I don't see all actions via actions drop down, only some of them plus the latest selected animation:
In model.blend here is how list of actions are showing up in the action editor's dropdown:

Here is what I see in the scene collection tree, also in model.blend:

In the above tree I don't understand why I have some actions under NLA Tracks but not all of them.
Here is how the object shows up in the scene.blend's scene collection view:

And finally these are the actions I can see in scene.blend's action editor:

Choosing any actions except for the active one - in the example above it is Walk animation - makes no effect - the active animation (again, the one that was selected in model.blend action editor) is the only one I can preview in the action editor.
It feels that I'm not doing something that Blender is designed for - I guess I have to import the object via some sort of an asset and linking an object from the other file won't bring up all animations defined for that object?

Maybe I misunderstood something, but have you tried to link the actions as well?

I tried via the same File > Link - indeed you can import this from the Actions section of the model file but then opening any linked action in the recipient file doesn't change object in any way.

Try linking the object instead of the collection and then linking the rest of the actions.

That works but only if you imported separate objects instead of a collection. Which by itself carries another limitation: with that type of linking it is not possible to rotate objects

Trying to answer this question myself, I think the best workaround would be to have all actions defined in one sequence and have predefined numbers for when a certain animation starts and when it finishes. I.e. frame 0: t-pose, 1-11: idle animation, frame 12-38 - walk animation, etc.
I now recall seeing an example of blend file someone shared on one forum (unrelated to my question) where it was done exactly in this manner, and while looking weird I now understand that this allows easy linking.
Probably a better solution would be to somehow mark things as assets but I know nothing on to what extent it helps. If someone has a link to documentation or illustration on how to achieve this, I'd be happy to edit this answer / accept yours as a solution to this question.

Open the mother project, click File/External Data > Pack Linked Libraries.
Then open the file where you want to import your model and the actions, click Append, select the model file with the actions, import the collection file, click the Action Editor and you will see all the actions linked, unlink one by one to edit your keyframes, and finally enjoy

Original question was about linking - wouldn't your solution copy original model to the destination?


text:
Is it possible to assign a parent to a control point of a curve using animall?
I have a robot neck connected to its head. The neck is just a cylinder with array and curve modifiers. I'm using AnimAll (which is awesome) to animate the neck, but it's a pain to keep the spot where the neck and head connect seamless. At a glance, I would like to parent the control point that meets the head to the head itself, but I don't see a way to do that. Can that work, or is there another way to achieve the same goal?

I am not sure how this works with the AnimaAll addon but the way I would approach this is to:

Select the control point of the curve in edit mode that you would like to attach to the head.
Press Ctrl+H to 'Hook' the control point, choose 'Hook to New Object'.
A new empty will have appeared that the control point will be parented to via the hook modifier that was just added. Parent this empty to the head in object mode by Shift selecting the empty and then the head and press Ctrl+P and choose 'Object' as the parenting type.

The control point is parented (via the hook modifier) to the empty and the empty is parented to the head.
The hook modifier can also be added by manually choosing to add a new hook modifier to the curve like you would add any other modifier.

I'd never heard of Hook before. That's exactly what I need, thanks!


text:
Blender Cycles Render shows old image
I have a file that I have made a significant amount of changes to. When I try to render it now, it shows an old image from a few weeks ago that I rendered and no file is saved. Does this sound familiar at all? I'm kind of going crazy.
I'm not sure if there are any settings I need to show, but if there are, I would be glad to post them. I'm using Version 2.70.

Do you have any strips in the VSE? If not, then the easiest way to find out what's going on is to poke around the file.. Is it possible you could upload it?

I do have a strip in the VSE, but I've never even touched the VSE before. I will try uploading the file real quick.

See this question. If that doesn't fix it, pasteall is a convenient blender-specific hosting service :)

That was crazy easy, thanks. I just deleted the strip from the VSE and it worked!