text:
Blender 4 Animation Rendering: Persistent FPS Drop Beyond Animated Segments - Optimization Queries
I am utilizing Blender 4 for a 2D animation rendering process. The timeline and key events in the animation are as follows:

t0=0s: Render a background.
t1=2s: MetaStrip.002 is rendered with a 1-second fade-in animation.
t2=4s: MetaStrip.003 is rendered with a 1-second fade-in animation.
t3=9s: Outro animation begins, lasting for 1s, hiding both MetaStrip.002 and MetaStrip.003.
Frame rate: 24 frames per second.
Total duration: 10s.

I am encountering issues related to rendering time, as observed in the preview:

From t0 to t1, the frames-per-second (fps) remains at 24.
From t1 to t2, the fps drops to approximately 16.
From t2 to t3, the fps further decreases to around 8.
From t3 to the end, the fps continues to decrease to about 6.

Both MetaStrip.002 and MetaStrip.003 contain identical content, featuring a 1-second fade-in animation. The outro animation serves to fade out both elements. That is, in the interval [t=5s, t=9s] the same frame is rendered.
While I comprehend that fps can decline during animations, I do not understand why this negative impact persists beyond the animated segments. How can I address this issue to optimize the rendering process?

My description here refers to the animation preview but I see this negative effects over the total rendition time using the bpy module in code:
def foo(filePath, targetPath):
    bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath=filePath)

    bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_x = 1280
    bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_y = 720
    bpy.context.scene.render.fps = 24
    bpy.context.scene.frame_start = 1
    bpy.context.scene.frame_step = 1

    duration = 10
    frames = int(math.ceil(duration * 24))
    bpy.context.scene.frame_end = frames

    bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.file_format = "FFMPEG"
    bpy.context.scene.render.ffmpeg.format = "MPEG4"
    bpy.context.scene.render.ffmpeg.codec = "H264"
    bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = targetPath

    t0 = time.time()
    bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True)
    print(f"Elapsed Time: {time.time() - t0} seconds")


text:
How to make complex reflections on gradient shape?

I love how these shapes have very subtle variations in the purple shade. Looks like more than just a simple HDRI. Any help?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How can I make this abstract wavy shape?

Anyone know how to make this shape? Don't answer with displace > clouds or something like that. I want the entire plane to become deformed like this.

What do you mean by "this shape"? Exactly the one we see or a somehow wavy shape like this: wavy plane? If not the exact shape but only something like the image, then I'm afraid I cannot answer your question because you don't want "displace > clouds" as an answer...

Create a plane, subdivide, lift up some of its edes with the Proportional Editing option on, duplicate, give it a Solidify modifier:

Give it a material rather glossy, with a bit of Subsurface and a Noise Texture to give it a bit of grain:

That worked really well thank you!

@JoshAppel -- don't forget to check the "Accept Answer" button as moonboots put some effort into this answer and he deserved to get to 1m points by tomorrow, LOL.

Why do "the kids" not "accept answer" anymore?!  Like your time is not valuable !

I'm not sure everyone understands how BSE works at the beginning   ;)

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


text:
How to make this complex gradient shape?

Hey guys looking to make this nice flowing abstract gradient. I love how it blurs out like butter. Seen a lot like this but haven't figured it out on blender yet

Your question inspired me to go on a quest,
to search for settings that seemed to work best.
Material:
Texture Coordinate (Reflection)>Color Ramp(color)>Sheen BSDF "Microfiber"
This is the most basic setup but you can get fanicer by trying other shader types besides Sheen of course. You might like to try multiplying the reflection vector (with a vector math node) by LightPath(Ray Length).
Render settings:

Noise threshold: 0.5
Max Samples: 4096
Denoise: OpenImage Denoise
Light Paths: Total: 1
Color Management: View Transform: AgX, Look: Very High Contrast

I left Exposure and Gamma on default, but you can
definitely tweak these as needed.

Camera needs to be zoomed in: I set mine to 100+ mm.
Mesh needs to be on auto smooth + subdiv level 5 or so.
Rotate your object to get that perfect angle.
Position your lights just right. I used 2 lights (a key light and a fill
light. No shadows).
For extra fancy shots, you can also try using Depth of Field enabled with your camera. My most colorful image below has this enbabled, and it blurs the foreground / background if they aren't in focal range. That particular colorful image is 3 separate objects with 3 different shader settings.

Here are some more examples with other tweaked settings:

These look amazing! What's the mesh shape though?

Thank you, Josh. The first two are the monkey, set smooth and subdiv surface mofifier set to 5. I zoomed way into the eye brow areas. I even added a couple of edge loops (Ctrl + R) and did a slight Proportional edit and on one of the brows to give it more shape. The colorful image has a couple of Torus meshes with set smooth and subsurf modifier on 5 as well.

Thank you! This is amazing!!!!!!!!!

You could plug an (Input) Layer Weight node into a (Converter) ColorRamp node, the color that will be displayed will depend on the angle between your view and the face normal, of course you can make it more complicated if you mix it with a Glossy, etc:


text:
how to use baked fire smoke fluid data in scripting
i am creating a fire and smoke simulation using the bpy scripting , to avoid the baking fluid again and again , i baked the fluid manually in another blend file with modular and openvdb , now i want to use this baked data here in scripting


text:
Blender UV not correct when used in Unreal Engine
I've been learning a lot about Blender and I was able to make my Golem model with an armature and some animations. At the time of trying to put the model in Unreal Engine, everything goes good but the material.
I unwrapped a procedural material and exported the UV texture afterwards but in the exterior faces of the object, the material is streched while in the interior, it looks perfect.
I was wondering if this is a problem when generating the UV or Unreal Engine.
I'm using Blender 3.6
This is part of the model in Blender

This is part of the model in Unreal Engine

This is the inner part of the model in Unreal Engine

The UV mapping done in Blender was perfectly done. The material at Unreal Engine was using another UV channel instead the correct one.


text:
How to fix overlapped mesh that created by the add-on Blender GIS
I did the 3d map extrusion with the Blender GIS add-on. However, there are meshes overlapped and appeared pure black in cycle render. I tried to fix the mesh but seems like the meshes that created by this add-on are not able to remesh.
Eevee doesn't have the overlap problem but only cycle does.
Appreciate it if someone knows the solution... I have been stuck for a while

You could try using a proportional editing set to random and a huge radius area and move an object slightly to not trigger z fighting

or use that kind of setup https://i.sstatic.net/pBZsERkf.png

Thanks for the reply!
I tried the first one and that works!
But when I tried the setup, its still the same.


text:
Problem in randomizing the geometry of 'Instances on Points' that is based on another meshes
I am trying to create a scene that is having a lot of random meshes run toward the centre.
I randomized the line of meshes sequence, but when i put it on the points of a UV sphere, it doesn't randomize and looks like a pattern. Picture below:
Here's my geometry node map.
I am not really familiar with the geometry node and have been stuck in this issues for a while...

If I read well (please prefer sharing your file instead of just a screen capture), you're generating a curve with objects in it. But this same curve is itself instanciated. So... same pattern.

As said in comments, as you're distributing object instances into a single curve, the same pattern appears because this same instance is repeated when itself instanciated.
So you can distribute the objects after the curve is instanciated and realized so that it is not the same instance anymore.
Something like this:

Note that you could do it another way:

Extrude sphere vertices.
Keep only the extruded edges by separating them.
Convert to curve and resample in order to have the wanted amount of vertices.
Then instanciate.

Thank you so much for the explanation!!!:D


text:
How would I remove texture from these areas

I am new to blender so I dont know how to remove specific parts of textures. I have the uv editor open but dont see a way to delete the selected faces.

you could either use a second material and select the faces, select the second material and hit "assign"
or in uv editor, you can select this:

to sync and then select the faces on your objects, and in UV editing hit S 0 and then G and move that point outside the uv grid.

third solution (thanks to moonboots):  use a mask in a Mix Shader or Mix Color in order to separate this part

third solution is to use a mask in a Mix Shader or Mix Color in order to separate this part

thx! added this to my answer


text:
Why does my normal map get all messed up when transferring it from blender to unreal engine?
I am pretty sure that the issue is that the normal map doesn't have non color data on but I am not 100% sure about it and I don't know where to go to do that in unreal engine

It looks like it's mapped incorrectly, did you set the right uv map?

I do not know what exactly your issue is. Apart from some dark smudges on the skin which I can see partially in the original as well, only less intense, it all seems correct. Maybe some face normals are flipped? The skin in general seems to be more saturated, contrasted and glossy in UE, but that's a matter of setting up the material I guess. I do not think you need to set the normal map to non-color in UE as far as I know... but if so, that's a question for a UE forum, not Blender. Or do you mean everything on the left being so dark? That's the shadow of the hat, isn't it? ;)


text:
Help with extruding evenly around a cylinder
I'm having some issues trying to extrude faces around a cylinder to create this collar for car suspension.  I was wondering if anybody had tips on getting this shape made.  I've tried a few iterations now but just circular shapes are just the bane of my existence.  Would appreciate any input/help!

If the first screenshot is from your work: I'm not sure I'm seeing a specific issue to solve.   Can you edit your question and also perhaps mark up the screenshot to explain your challenge?

Figured out my issue.  Instead of deleting the faces on the bottom of the extrude, I used LoopTools > Circle to after extruding to maintain the shape, then deleting the faces after I finished extruding the circles.  Boolean would have made things a lot easier, but this was good practice extruding without boolean.  Came out exactly how I wanted while maintaining pretty clean toplogy.


text:
Object index pass number is always 0
I've implemented a simple script to get pass index of objects in a scene:
def list_all_objects():
    for o in bpy.data.objects:
        print(f"Name: {o.name}, index: {o.pass_index}")
    return

But all indexes in the output are 0:
Name: Area.000, index: 0
Name: Area.001, index: 0
Name: Area.002, index: 0
Name: Area.003, index: 0
Name: Bottle, index: 0
Name: Camera, index: 0
Name: Floor, index: 0
Name: Sticker, index: 0
Name: Straw, index: 0

So that means pass indexes are initialized by 0. Is there any API to initialize these indexes so that they are distinguished?

nope, AFAIK you have to do that manually (or by script/add-on)

Of course they are all 0.  This is the Pass Index value which you find under Object Properties > Relations and it is a render pass, similar to the Pass Index in the Material Properties. This is no indexing to serially number the objects in the scene. This index is used (if enabled under View Layer > Passes) to separate objects in the Compositor by filtering/masking per index.

and since you already wrote that, script, just add a few lines:
def set_pass_indices():
    counter = 1
    for o in bpy.data.objects:
        print(f"Name: {o.name}, index: {o.pass_index}")
        o.pass_index = counter
        counter = counter + 1
        print(f"after: Name: {o.name}, index: {o.pass_index}")
    return

and you get what you want ;)


text:
Set two objects with the same rotation quaternion but their rotation euler are different
As far as I understand, Euler angles and quaternions are two approaches for rotation. So I suppose that if the directions of two objects are set by the same quaternion then their Euler angles are automatically the same:
def foo(a, b):
  a.rotation_quaternion = b.rotation_quaternion
  print(f"a: {a.rotation_euler}\nb: {b.rotation_euler}")

But I received:
a: <Euler (x=0.0000, y=0.0000, z=0.0000), order='XYZ'>
b: <Euler (x=1.1093, y=0.0000, z=0.8149), order='XYZ'>

Why are the Euler rotations of a and b different?

It is normal result, it is not update the Euler rotation value when you change the quaternion.

Thank you. But if it's the case then how Blender deals with incoherent information about the direction of the object?

When you want to use quaternion to change the rotation, you need make sure the object rotation mode is QUATERNION.
import bpy

# set quaternion

cube = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]
print(cube.matrix_world)
cube.rotation_mode = "QUATERNION"
cube.rotation_quaternion = 1, 1, 1, 2
print(cube.matrix_world)

And you will see the matrix of the object not update immediately. If you want to access the correct matrix, you need run bpy.context.view_layer.update()
The same applies to other modes
import bpy

cube = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]
print(cube.matrix_world)
cube.rotation_mode = "AXIS_ANGLE"
cube.rotation_axis_angle = 1, 1, 1, 2
bpy.context.view_layer.update()
print(cube.matrix_world)

The attribute rotation_euler only works when the rotation mode is a specific value.
For example, if there is a keyframe on rotation_euler[0], then the keyframe will not work after changing the rotation mode to QUATERNION.
There are several ways to obtain Euler rotations from quaternions, one way is
import bpy

# need rotation_mode == "QUATERNION"
q = bpy.context.object.rotation_quaternion
print(q.to_euler("XYZ"))

Get quaternion from matrix:
import bpy

loc, rot, sca = bpy.context.object.matrix_world.decompose()
print(rot)


text:
Using two GPUs for rendering a single animation
As far as I understand from this question (and its answers), if we have two GPUs then Blender can use them simultaneously for a single rendering job (so this would be two times faster).
I did configure Blender to use two GPU:  but when I render the animation (Ctrl+F12), only one works:
Did I do something wrong?

I have no 2 GPUs so I cannot test it, but if you read the linked answer, it says Blender renders as many tiles as there are GPUs. I see your tile size is at the default 2048, don't see your output settings, but at 1920×1080 this is just a single tile for one image. In the past, smaller tiles increased render speed (especially for CPU renders) and helped avoiding GPUs running out of memory. Nowadays GPUs can render larger tiles up to complete images sometimes. Try reducing the tile size to 1024 or 512 and see if both GPUs work then.


text:
How to make a driver/shape key cancel out another driver/shape key?
The idea I have is fairly simple in concept: I'd like to enable two shape keys independently (like a normal face rig slider), but have one of those shape keys take priority over the other.
My exact scenario is that I'd like to have a smile shape key and a lip pucker shape key, but I want the pucker to cancel out the smile. So If the smile is at 1 and the pucker is at 0, as I move the pucker slider to 1 the smile slider should also be moving to 0.
Is there a way to set this up using drivers? I have a super basic understanding of drivers, but this feels like it might be a little more involved than a delta shapekey driver.

I'm a big dope, literally just subtract the priority (B) shape key value from the other (A) with drivers set up (expression being A-B). Though be sure to use some sort of controller instead of changing the value of the shape key directly. I used an empty shape key as a controller in my example.

EDIT: Just became hyper intelligent, be sure to multiply B by A so that the value never goes below zero and stays smooth (Expression being A-B*A). This ensures that your animated "A" slider will ease down to 0 if it's only partially engaged when "B" goes from 0 to 1.

If not, then the "A" slider will hit 0 before "B" is fully engaged.


text:
Smooth Mesh obtained from sectioned image
I have meshes which were obtained by sectional imaging (i.e. CT scan), and due to that fact (or due to the way the stl is generated from the scan) it looks like the object is a number of stacked planes.

Is there an easy way to smooth out these artefacts? I have tried re-meshing and the different smooth modifiers but none of them had the desired effect.

It might be helpful to people trying to help you if you uploaded an example blend file to the site https://blend-exchange.com and add that link in the question.


text:
Blender script for turning on curve profile with crown molding preset
I am making a simple script that either turns off bevel geometry for a curve or turns it on with a Crown molding preset. My problem is that it seems to not be possible to set the preset, at least not in the way I would have thought. Can anyone help me fix the preset line? Here is my code:
import bpy
obj = bpy.context.active_object

# Check if the active object is a curve
if obj and obj.type == 'CURVE':
    # Check if the curve already has a bevel
    if obj.data.bevel_depth != 0.0:
        # Set bevel to 0.0 radius
        obj.data.bevel_depth = 0.0
    else:
        # Set bevel to profile preset crown with 0.25 radius
        obj.data.bevel_depth = 0.25
        obj.data.bevel_profile = 'CROWN'


text:
Select in edit mode not working when clicking fast
I just jumped to Blender 4.0 recently and one thing really bothers me. While in edit mode and with part of the geometry selected, I can't select any of that selected part if I'm clicking too fast. Doesn't matter if I'm trying to select verts, edges or faces. Clicking at geometry out of selection works properly with that same clicking speed. Before that I was using 3.5 and problem never occured. I'm using right click select with turned off all move and drag things. Can I adjust clicking speed anywhere in settings? I appreciate any help, it is very frustrating and impacts my workflow.

Maybe check the Preferences > Input > Mouse > Double Click Speed?

I tried to tweak it but it gives no change. As I said before - fast clicking on geometry that is not selected works fine.  It's just makes no sense to me that I have to click on selected and not selected geometry with different speed.
https://jumpshare.com/s/s0PPE7boo0RUReWpYUPe

I'm experiencing the same behavior while CTRL+click rapidly on one vertex. If other vertices are selected before, I can't rapidly click one specific vertex.


text:
Acquiring camera position in script in junction with "Lock Interface" during rendering animation
within a Python script resp. a frame change handler I need to get the current camera position and do some calculations with it. I do this as follows:
camera_object = bpy.context.scene.objects["Camera1"]
camera_position = camera_object.matrix_world.to_translation()
And then I can read out camera_position.x as well as ...y and ...z.
Works very well.
Now it turned out that I have to use the "Lock Interface" option during rendering the animation since I get crashes of Blender very often. However, when "Lock Interface" is active, I'm not getting the current camera position any more during rendering the animation. It seems that instead I'm receiving the camera position just prior to the start of rendering. I.e. the camera position appears to be frozen, although the camera is actually moving as intended.
What I'm doing wrong here?
Thanks,
Mario

What sort of calculations do you want to do with the camera and why? What are you trying to achieve in the first place?

I use this to calculate angles of texts in space so that they face the camera in desired angles. I know that it is also possible to face texts directly to a camera (or any other object) with a "track to" constraint. I did not test this out in detail, but I guess I'm not having the needed degrees of freedom there.

@MartynasŽiemys you know that I did yesterday ask regarding a replacement of the parameter-input via compositor nodes, since I had the very same value-freezing  there as well. Here I did also try to activate the interface locking at the beginning of the frame change handler and den deactivate it at the end. I.e. bpy.context.scene.render.use_lock_interface = True and bpy.context.scene.render.use_lock_interface = False. This is not resulting in frozen values, but seems to have no effect with regard to crash reduction.

I don't have enough Python knowledge here, but handlers seem to have trouble accessing bpy.context in some cases, so maybe don't use it inside the handler. You  have the scene passed to the handler(def some_handler(scene): ...) so maybe you should use camera_object = scene.objects["Camera1"]. But if you have no luck with handlers, I cannot imagine any problems with controlling orientation of objects based on the orientation of the camera with constraints and drivers or even with geometry nodes. It might be better to simply do this some other way.

@MartynasŽiemys I did try to get the camera object directly from the scene. Indeed, it's working essentially as well. But the position is also frozen with active Lock Interface. I also read about issues with frame-change handlers. However, when they are not there to evaluate and change objects, what purpose do they serve then??? I also thought about avoiding the handler by implementing the render animation loop directly within the script. I think I'll check whether this is possible and how it can be done.

Could yo share some sort of minimal example of the problem? The code or a .blend file maybe? You can use https://blend-exchange.com/ for sharing the file.

@MartynasŽiemys What "problem" you are referring to - the issue with the frozen camera position or the application as such in order to see how what I'm doing there can be implemented differently? The latter one is a bit difficult while the first one can be easily demonstrated by moving the camera (or I think any object) along a path, then grab and print the camera position in a frame change handler. The position will change normally during animation rendering but will be frozen as soon as Lock Interface is active.

Anyway, in the mean time I did slightly extend my script so that it can optionally also take up the render loop via bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True). Apparently there are also some pitfalls. But this seems manageable and first results are looking good.

Just to leave a note how I did deal with that issue in the end....
In fact, I'm not using the "Render Animation" function of Blender anymore but I'm doing the render loop within a script similar to what was been described here: A script to render each frame as image (not render animation) in 2.8
"Lock Interface" is not relevant here. A little downside is that there's no feedback in the Blender GUI anymore (looks like if Blender has crashed) and it seems that the rendering can only be aborted by killing the Blender application. That's not a big deal, however. What is left as feedback are regular reports about the rendered images in the console window as well as the output images.
So far this is working stable over days. There are no crashes of Blender any more - except for out-of-memory conditions or similar "normal" problems.


text:
How to apply different manipulations at different areas of an image in the compositor?
I have an image feed where I want so apply different color corrections at different areas of the images. Masks are helping here to apply individual manipulations just in masked areas. But how do I merge the differently manipulated images afterwards again?
Notice that the involved masks would not have sharp edges. So simply cutting out masked areas and stitching them together again would not be an option.
Thanks,
Mario

Hmm, sometimes answers are quite trivial....
Not sure whether there are also some cases where other mechanisms are required. But mostly the different manipulations should not be applied in parallel, but one after each other. This eliminates the need to merge multiple images.


text:
Dimension of a plane cannot be changed from script
I want to dynamically create planes from within a script. These planes have to have a certain dimension. I'm struggling to set the dimension from the script.
Here is an excerpt from the script:
            bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(size=1, enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(plane_x, 0, plane_z), scale=(1, 1, 1))
            bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=1.5708, orient_axis='X', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(True, False, False), mirror=False, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False, snap=False, snap_elements={'INCREMENT'}, use_snap_project=False, snap_target='CLOSEST', use_snap_self=True, use_snap_edit=True, use_snap_nonedit=True, use_snap_selectable=False)

            plane = bpy.data.objects['Plane']
            plane.name = image_name
            plane = bpy.data.objects[image_name]

            print("setting plane x dimension to ", dimension_x)
            plane.dimensions[0] = dimension_x
            print("plane x dimension is ", plane.dimensions[0])

            plane.dimensions[1] = dimension_y

The lines for creating the plane (as well as rotating it) have been taken from Blender's Info output that are shown when I add and rotate a plane through the GUI. Not sure whether this is best practice but it seems to work so far.
In the script I'm also renaming the plane to a generated name, which is also working fine.
What is failing is the change of the dimension. I can change it as shown in the script, but when I re-read it it still contains the old value.
Therby it is strange that I can change the dimension very well with more or less the same command for the newly created/rotated/renamed plane object in the Python console.
So what I'm missing here?
Thanks,
Mario

I think it's a quirk of the API. The dimensions are not an actual property of the object, it's derived from its mesh contents and the object scale. So my guess is that it is updated on the next frame after your script is executed. Try using bpy.app.timers.register(lambda: print(plane.dimensions[0]), first_interval=0.001) for example. ie add a timer function to execute your code with a slight delay for the value to be updated. You may be able to force update the property manually but I don't know how. There might be something in the docs about it.

@Gorgious the problem is not the print() command. I added this just for debugging purposes here. Btw., the problem is the same when I attempt to change the scaling of the plane. In the Python console it's working as expected, but in the script nothing is happening.

@Mario: i would prefer if you would provide a code which we could run - and don't have to manually change a lot of things just to try it out. We are helping you in our free time so i would - if i were you - make it as easy as possible for those who help me

this worked for me:
import bpy

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(size=1, enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0, 0), scale=(1, 1, 1))
bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=1.5708, orient_axis='X', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(True, False, False), mirror=False, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False, snap=False, snap_elements={'INCREMENT'}, use_snap_project=False, snap_target='CLOSEST', use_snap_self=True, use_snap_edit=True, use_snap_nonedit=True, use_snap_selectable=False)

image_name = "JOE"
dimension_x = 5
dimension_y = 15

plane = bpy.data.objects['Plane']
plane.name = image_name
plane = bpy.data.objects[image_name]

print("setting plane x dimension to ", dimension_x)
plane.dimensions[0] = dimension_x

bpy.context.view_layer.update()

print("plane x dimension is ", plane.dimensions[0])

This is working indeed, but apparently only "by accident" since there is only changed plane.dimensions[0]. The problem is really associated with the same issue as addressed here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/44307/problems-with-assigning-dimensions-through-python-script The trick is that all three dimension parameters have to be assigned as a single tuple. Not sure, but I guess this is a bug of blender.


text:
Copy pasting geometry nodes from one object to another
I have 2 objects each of them with geometry nodes and I want to join them into one. When I copy paste from one geometry nodes to another the group input gets replaced by the existing one and I loose the correct inputs for the new nodes I pasted. How can I solve this? Thanks!

This is "normal" behaviour, because there can only be one group input node in one geometry node tree.
That's why Blender has to decide, which group input it takes.
You have to manually add your other input values to your existing group input node.

@lara Just to avoid misunderstandings: you can have many Group Input nodes in a nodetree, as long as they are all duplicates of the original node. You just cannot have different Group Input nodes.


text:
Elements disappear after I move them

Vertices, edges and faces just  deleted after I move them with G (I know I’m noob)

They are deleted or hidden by other geometry where you have moved them behind? At least I can see connecting edges to the background, so there is not everything deleted...

i assume you have a subdivision modifier on that object?
So you can either disable that modifier in the viewport by clicking here (see below) or on cage (see below)


text:
Why circle signifying brush in sculp mode isn’t round?
I can’t do round circle-shape touch in sculpt mode, my stretch brush draws stripes.

Because you have scaled your object in Object Mode (in Z direction as it seems) and did not apply the scale with Ctrl+A > Apply > Scale.

Thanks a lot! :)


text:
Blender Shading Viewport Completely Grey
I was working on a project when i tried to change my clip start/end because the procedural clouds i was making didn't show anymore after scaling (quite large).
Suddenly my viewport (only in shading tab) turned completely grey.
I've tried different render engines, changing clip settings and other options suggested in similar questions but none work.
Viewports in all other tabs are fine. If i create a new viewport in the shading tab it's grey aswell.
I changed the sampling too, no changes. I am just getting into blender properly, try to figure out most stuff myself but i'm stuck on this one and also don't have a recovery file that fixes it.
Thanks in advance for all help; much appreciated :)
(I'm on Blender 3.4.1 Running on an older Mac PC - Yes,the metal box ones)


text:
How to change shading detail?
I want to do something about triangle vertex shading and give vertices of a triangle red, green and blue like this.
The color of the triangle face is decided automatically by smooth shading. Is there any way I can find the specific shading function or theory and change it? For example, I want some colors to have more or less impact on coloring the face. How can I achieve it? Is shading nodes can do such things?

I might try subdividing the size of the triangle after the vertex coloring was applied, and then sliding those middle vertices on the outer edges, so they’d basically function as half point stops for the gradients? IDK if that would work.

@TheLabCat It works, thanks for inspiration

The interpolation of an attribute such as smoothed normal across a shaded triangle from its face-corners is linearly weighted by the barycentric coordinates of the shading-point.
If you want some other function of barycentric UVW on faces of a triangulated surface, Geometry > Parametric would the way to your raw material:

For example:

It's useful, I will go deep about this and figure what can I get. Thank!


text:
Extrude bone from extruded bone
I'm making a model for a person, and I need to do the upper/lower arm. I already extruded a bone from the spine for the upper arm, but when I extrude a bone from the upper arm, It also extrudes a bone from the spine. Can someone help?


text:
Are there any other ways besides motion tracking?
I have an animated model with vertex parented empties (img 1)
I need to transfer these positions to another blend file so that they are on the same z coordinate. And so that there was a camera on top. (img 2)
This is for compositing.
How do I transfer dummy positions? I know 1 way - tracking. But it’s crazy to track your own video. There must be another way.

If you copy the object and paste it onto a new Blender file, it will be at the exact same position as the first file.  If I misunderstood the question, be sure and tell me.

You might have to copy the empties as well, if it's parented to the empties.

@RBlong2us In file 2, the emptis should move relative to the camera (
just like they move in file1, when the camera is on the side or can fly around.), but in file 2 they must be on the same z position and camera fixed

ok, I'm gonna explain what you want, and tell me if I'm right.  You have the camera moving in file one, and the empties are fixed.  In the new file, you have the camera fixed and you want the empties to move, while staying in the same z coordinate

@RBlong2us yes. but in file 1 emptys attached to mesh, which animated. so in file 1 camera moving + emptys moving. in file 2 camera fixed

wow, I'm not sure how to do that.  Why do you need this?

might be another angle

@RBlong2us I want to attach text to empties positions. i cant do it on file 1 because too much camera moving and too much objects.
the text should be parallel to the camera and at the same distance from the camera
so i need transfer emptis positions to file 2, attach text and then composite with video from file 1.

would copying the camera and empties onto a new blend file, while still using the same animation work?

or is there a difference?

oh, they won't stay parallel?

@RBlong2us i have no idea how to copy empties. because they attached to vertexes of animated model.

you could copy empties with the monkey, then just make it so the model doesn't render in the outliner.

If you'd like, you could upload the .blend file, and I could take a crack at it.


text:
2.8 Bone editing and pose problems, cant select single bones
I´ve built a rig in 2.8, however when I try to select a single bone in edit or pose mode, i can´t.
All i can do, is doubleclick the first bone i created to cycle through the other bones. I have tried in new files and rightclicking, but  the problem persists.
Help, i need to get an animation done soon and this is breaking my back.

Did you try adding bones in a new scene to see if there is a problem with your settings? Also try loading factory defaults and test. I can't seem to replicate your issue.

I used default factory settings and created a new scene, the problem persists
i download 2.8 again, maybe thatll help

Did you create a new simple scene with a few bones and the default cube to verify that selection works as it should? Or did you open your file with the selection issue?

I did that, the issue however persisted. In the end Im guessing my machine is to old. So i did my project on a friends PC.

I'm facing a similar problem. I just went into Animation mode and deleted my mesh to grab a bone in pose mode. That's not a full solution, but at least it gives some control to explore the problem further.


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Why does blender look like this?

I installed the latest version of Blender on my old mac and it looks like this???
Any ideas what went wrong?

it must not work with your system, maybe try a old version of Blender


text:
Animation in edit mode?
So I want to animate from the segment you can see in the first picture to it being slightly morphed like in the second picture. I can't keyframe in edit mode it seems. I've tried keyframing it in object mode in the first picture at frame 0, changing to edit mode, moving the vertex to match the second picture, then going back to object mode at frame 10 and inserting a new keyframe. Unfortunately this does not work :( any suggestions?

You have to add two shapekeys, one is the basis and the other is the morphed, then animate its value, so at 0th frame adjust Key1 to 0, move the mouse above the slider and hit "i". Go to 10th frame, set the slider to 1 then hit "i" again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zijo8ly6pyI


text:
Why is my resolution so low on my textures in the viewport and in renders? (Blender 2.8)
I have been having a beginner issue that I cannot seem to find the answer for. I am following a tutorial on YouTube and my image has a way lower resolution and is so much more jagged both in viewport and renders.

Looks fine to me, but you can raise the Viewport sampling value (see Render context menu, right side of each of your images) to improve the quality of the viewport render. Of course, this will cost you performance, so don't go crazy. If you just care about Renders, raise the sampling value for Render. 64 is very low for a lot of renders. Use 64 or fewer samples to make sure the composition is good then crank it up to around 500 for detailed scenes. For less detailed scenes, you can change the sampling to 100 and turn on Denoising in the View Layer context menu. Those are just my preferences--they work for me. But as a rule, render quality is proportional to the number of samples (up to a certain point, which is why I advise you shoot for 500 and not 1000)

Thanks for your response, I think it might be a texture issue because I messed around with the resolution and the samples that you referred to to no avail. I created this using JSPlacement and then imported it into Blender to be used as a texture.

What are the resolutions of those grayscale displacement textures? Are those in a library someplace or are they generated like in Substance Designer? You want to make sure that those are pretty hi-res, maybe even 4K to 8K. If you are generating them with the addon, make sure you are choosing a hi resolution output. That will solve your problem

They are 8192x8192, pretty high res. I just moved on to another project maybe I will learn what the problem is for that one in the future, Thanks.


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Creation parameters menu greyed out
When adding a UV Sphere mesh in Blender 2.8, the creation parameters menu on the bottom left of the attached image for this UV Sphere seems to be greyed out. Any idea why this might be? Thanks.

It should be an option in the preferences (menu 'edit' and 'preferences').
Check global undo:


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My render doesn't quite look right and I'm not sure what it is
I'm not sure if I can ask this kind of question here and if not then I will delete it, but I've been having trouble with rendering my scene. I use Cycles, 512 samples, plenty of light bounces, 5 film exposure, and default color management. Still, this render looks distinctly computer-generated. All the materials are, at least in my opinion, photorealistic, so it must be the lighting or maybe composition? I'm not exactly sure which is why I want some help. Any ideas?

maybe try to add volumetric? Also a bit of bloom so that your neon are not completely square?

I think it's just a lack of clutter. Strikes me as odd that you have a room with just one thing in it like that - and the one object you have is too perfect. Add some boxes or something in the background maybe? Or have some of the wall paint chipping off/aged.

No 'backstory'. Look really hard at references online and in your neighbourhood. Note features, OK. But go one step further. Work out how the features got there Why they are exactly as they are / where they are.

You are seeing the 'perlin noise'

Your brain is sensing the 'sameness' of all of the color variation you've introduced through the use of the Noise Texture node.

You simply need more layers and variation in size and frequency to break up the slightly regular pattern that perlin noise produces.
Here's a pretty simple example with some randomness built in for each individual object the shader is put on.  Some color ramps would go a long way to make the effect more noticeable.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/216331/110840

Your main problem is with the composition of the scene.
check this video:Blender Guru Understanding Composition


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Balls on an Elastic
I am trying recreate the following phenomenon on Blender and wasn't having much success.
The premise is that two balls are attached to one another with an elastic and they sort of pendulum back and forth. It is made more clear in the video (ignore the first 10s):
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ug411773M/
I am fairly new to blender and have been looking things up as I go, and one of my main questions is if this is even possible.
If it is, any ideas on how to model it would be much appreciated. Currently, I am attempting to use two spheres as rigid bodies and a thin box as the elastic by using cloth type simulation.
If not, I am not sure if I'm allowed to ask this, though I was wondering if there are any programs I could use that may be more effective in this case.
Thank you,

Right off the bat, soft body and other similar deformers must have vertices to work with: They cannot bend single edges into multiple ones.

After watching the video… I think you should fake it. The physics simulators available with blender are IMO not capable of reproducing this effect.

This type of cloth simulation is new and isn't implemented in blender.  https://youtu.be/jvBSDXxsgRA?t=333


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I checkmark the Auto Smooth option under Object Data > Normals > Auto Smooth, and the normals are all messed up. Can anyone help?
I import a mesh that I downloaded online, and it's got Auto Smooth enabled already.
However, the normals are all janky, and are undesireable.
Below is two captures of the Normals I'm talking about.

I've also taken a picture of the funky lines that come out of the Vertices of the mesh here:
How do I smooth my mesh without this crappy looking Normal?

Maybe try to clear the custom split normals data in the Object Data panel > Geometry Data

The object probably has corrupted custom split normals.
To clear those go Object data properties->geometry data->clear custom split normals data.

I've tried that method before, but it just screws up the Auto Smooth, reverting it to it's chunky polygonal shape.

Could you please send a picture with the auto smooth "chunky polygonal shape".


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Exported mesh is a different shape than my mesh in blender
My mesh inside of blender looks normal and has all straight edges,:
but when I export it, the edges are moved and multiple faces are intersecting:
My export settings don't seem to be wrong and im not editing the mesh afterwards at all and  reexporting didn't work:

try editing your mesh, selecting all the vertices and using 'merge by distance' (shortcut: type M and select 'merge by distance from the menu').  You may have duplicate verts.  You may also have interior faces.

as Marty says...we assume your model hasn't clean geometry. So if you wanna be sure...provide your blend file and we can check it - else we can just guess.


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Edge length measurement overlay selected but no lengths display
Hello Blender community,
I am using Blender 4.0.2.
I am attempting to view the lengths of some of the edges on my object.  I am in Edit mode using edge selection (Hot key 2).  I have checked the "edge length" box in the measurement overlays.  Of course, I would expect to see a numerical measurement display beside selected edges but I do not see any measurements when I select an edge.  Is there possibly another setting that I have misconfigured?

Thanks in advance for your help

to add to this, the issue is not limited to just edge lengths.  I am not able to view edge angle overlays between 2 edges nor am I able to view face area overlays of any faces on my object

What OS are you using? Maybe there is something there? Using the settings shown in your image works for me using Windows 10. Also, the things you mention in your comment display for me. I'm not aware of any other configuration setting that would affect displaying these items.

I am using a mac Monterey version 12.2.1.  what's odd is that this has never been an issue for me before today.  I have used the measurements overlay before and it worked with no issues but for some reason, today I am not seeing the numerical measurements next to selected edges.  That's why I thought there might some some misconfiguration

I doubt if any of these wild guesses will help, but there might be something you haven't already done. Does it work if you Load Factory Settings and then try? Sometimes the problem will "fix" itself just by closing and reopening Blender. Maybe your .blend file somehow got corrupted? Try rebooting your computer?

tick Text Info in Viewport Overlay menu to display overlay text?

Selecting "text info" worked!

If you have selected Edge Length in the measurements overlay and the numerical length is not showing,  open Viewport Overlays menu and select Text Info.  This should render all desired text overlays.


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Why does my mesh contort only when I move one side of my rig?
I’m relatively new to blender and I’ve created a character rig attached to my mesh. When I move the left side of the model, everything works normally, but when I move the right side, the mesh folds in on itself.
I used a mirror modifier for the mesh but I’ve removed
it; duplicating the left side of the mesh, and attaching it onto the right side. I have also tried weight painting and merging vertices but none of it works, any suggestions?

Hello and welcome. Rather than take photos of your monitor post actual screenshots instead, see How to take a screenshot. Photos are harder to read because we have to look past external interferences (like reflections, smudges or Moiré patterns) and guess if we are looking at hardware issues such as a malfunctioning display or connections, a software level issue like driver malfunction or glitch, or actual artifacts or issues with the model itself.

Hello maybe you need to recalculate the normals (Shift N in Edit mode)? Please share your file: https://blend-exchange.com/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FlpFPj8I7IjKiehg8g8ktbA1ak_V6BPN/view?usp=drive_link


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Convert or merge elements to workable objects
I have no prior experience with blender and objects.
I have a osm "object" with a bunch of elements I would like to convert in to a object or something I can modify and reshape. Im trying to merge it with the plane I have under it.
Is there a way to do this? Any help would be amazing!

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/77279/how-can-i-view-the-perspective-projection-of-an-arbitraryy-shape-onto-the-plane/


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how to make driven scene properties update in the UI?
I am writing an addon that has a property which needs the #frame driver, but when I play the timeline automatically (space key to play), the value doesn't update in the UI. However, when you drag the timeline, it is live updating. Also, when you click non blank space (e.g., select/deselect an object) in the scene, it updates too, no updating when you click blank space anyway.

I searched here and google, there are similar questions, but none of them directly related to my scenarios. Any help would be appreciated.
I have a minimum example code of the addon to test, you can test by inputing #frame to the Frame or Count input field.
'''
The driven properties don't update on UI mini example
'''

bl_info = {
    "name": "custom property",
    "description": "Test properties",
    "author": "Jack",
    "version": (1, 0, 0),
    "blender": (4, 1, 0),
    "location": "3D View > Sidebar > Audio Visualizer",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "3D View",
    }

import importlib
import sys
import bpy

class CustomPropertyGroup(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    frame: bpy.props.IntProperty(
        name = "Frame",
        default = 0,
        description = ("Frame")
    )

    count: bpy.props.IntProperty(
        name = "Count",
        default = 20,
        min = 1,
        description = ("The number of bins")
    )

class CustomPropertyPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_idname = "CUSTOMNODE_PT_Panel"
    bl_label = "Custom property"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = "Custom Property"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.use_property_split = True
        layout.use_property_decorate = True # True for value animatable.

        scene = context.scene
        propData = context.scene.custom_nodes

        # render setting
        layout.label(text="Custom Property")
        layout.prop(propData,"frame",text="Frame")
        layout.prop(propData,"count",text="Count")

def register():
    # properties
    bpy.utils.register_class(CustomPropertyGroup)
    bpy.types.Scene.custom_nodes = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=CustomPropertyGroup)

    # ui
    bpy.utils.register_class(CustomPropertyPanel)

def unregister():
    # properties
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(CustomPropertyGroup)

    # ui
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(CustomPropertyPanel)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    register()

Why should the displayed number update during playback? What do you want to do with it?

Because I need use the value as the playback going, I want to use the value to calculate other values. Another thing I found that when the mouse is in the UI region during the playback, the value is also live updating. For your questioning why the displayed number should update with its current status, I don't understand why it shouldn't reflect its value in real-time.


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Problem when creating and applying new texture to imported OBJ (Python API)
I'm new to Blender (and to Python), usually using Rhino+Grasshopper. I try to create a workflow so I can automatically import an obj file into Blender, apply a new texture (I could also do it with a material which is already in the file if it's easier) and then render the object.
Import and rendering works perfectly, however creating and applying the texture doesn't work as I want... When I run it once, it does the import, but doesn't create and apply the new texture. If I run it a second time, the new geometry is going to have no texture but the old one will get the new texture...
If you've any idea, I would be super grateful.
Best
import bpy
import math
import numpy as np

#importing the geometry
file_loc = '/myFilepath/test01.obj'
imported_object = bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=file_loc)
obj_object = bpy.context.object

#clear materials
for material in bpy.data.materials:
    material.user_clear()
    bpy.data.materials.remove(material)

#activeObject = bpy.context.active_object #Set active object to variable
#mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="MaterialName") #set new material to variable
#activeObject.data.materials.append(mat) #add the material to the object
#obj_object.active_material.diffuse_color = (0, 0, 0,0) #change color

#creating material
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name='Material')

mat.use_nodes = True

mat_nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes
mat_links = mat.node_tree.links

mat_nodes['Principled BSDF'].inputs['Base Color'].default_value=(1,1,1,1)
mat_nodes['Principled BSDF'].inputs['Roughness'].default_value = 0.65

newObject = bpy.context.active_object

#making imported geometry as current and apply texture
newObject.data.materials.append(mat)

One problem is that bpy.ops.import_scene.obj does not return the imported object nor does it make the imported object the active object.  If there is only one object in the obj file, then you can find it quickly as bpy.data.objects[-1].
A second problem is that while you clear the materials, you don't clear the material slots of the object.  Fixing those two problems, the following will do what you want:
import bpy
import math
import numpy as np

#importing the geometry
file_loc = PATH_TO_OBJ_FILE
bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=file_loc)
# obj_object = bpy.context.object
obj_object = bpy.data.objects[-1]

# Remove all the materials from the object
obj_object.active_material_index = 0 #select the top material
for slot in obj_object.material_slots: #For all of the materials in the selected object:
    bpy.ops.object.material_slot_remove({'object': obj_object})

#clear materials
for material in bpy.data.materials:
    material.user_clear()
    bpy.data.materials.remove(material)

#creating material
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name='Material')

mat.use_nodes = True

mat_nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes
mat_links = mat.node_tree.links

mat_nodes['Principled BSDF'].inputs['Base Color'].default_value=(1,1,1,1)
mat_nodes['Principled BSDF'].inputs['Roughness'].default_value = 0.65

#making imported geometry as current and apply texture
obj_object.data.materials.append(mat)

but only if there is only one object in the obj file.  Otherwise you have to use a different technique to find out what objects were imported and select the one you want to modify.

Thank you very much for taking your time! It works perfectly.

You're welcome.


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How could I model this small part of my model?
I've been working on an AK-47 model for almost a week now and have almost finished it. However I am for some reason having major difficulties modelling one specific part (Stock tang.)
How would I got about doing this?

The part that's mostly confusing me is the part where the tang bevels into a round shape and the side parts stop on the edges.

Here's a possible route:

In the flat, (under a Mirror modifier) sort the topology as much as possible. Insert an extra vertex in the outside diagonal, scale to make rectangular quads.

Extrude to thickness. When extruding under a Mirror, you have to delete internal faces on the axis. I H hide a face for access,select one of the faces to go, ShiftG select coplanar, and X delete.
I inset the top faces, with 'Boundary' unchecked, laying the foundation for the flange. Cut to correct the mitre on the left to crossed edges, and E extrude the flange, not all the way round.

ShiftH Hide all but the top faces of the flange, and use Linear proportional editing to lower the right-hand end.AltH unhide and adjust. Delete screw-hole top and bottom, Bridge Edge  Loops to connect, scale-adjust and maybe extrude bottom at this stage, to block out the countersink.

If we want an extra edge to round the tapered end of the flange, we can introduce 2 more edge-loops on either side of it. (I made a mistake here, it would have been easier to make 2 on the inside) In order not to disrupt the curvature in the screw-hole, we can introduce another loop around it to accommodate a 3 to 1 'kite' reduction of the loops, top and bottom, before they reach the hole.

All done bar Bevel and Subdivision, working under those, to GZ edges to curve the floor-level, E extrude out the back plates, and tighten things up with some holding loops.

While this isnt the exact technique I went with (since it has to be game ready) it really helped with getting a grasp on how all the shapes work and it did also help with how to do the side parts. Thank you for the great answer.

Ahh, OK.. that makes you a better man than me! Low-poly, much trickier :)


text:
how could I fit this object into this hole perfectly?
Was messing around with an object i was working on and had moved the object highlighted in the picture out of its space by accident, I then saved and quit by accident and now have no idea how to place it back in perfectly. I do not have any autosaves from before this big mistake.

Hi :). I suppose vertex snapping could get you there. Do you remember how it looked before?

Here is a technique that will work if you have moved the object but not rotated it:

Your object appears to be made of stacked cubes.  I've made one consisting of two cubes.  Let's assume you want one of the cubes, probably the larger one to fit in the hole so that the top face is flush:

Set an origin for the object that helps position it.

In Edit mode, select the four faces that make up the sides of the cube.
Move the cursor to the selection
Go to Object Mode and set the object's origin to the 3D cursor. (shortcut Right Click and select Set Origin → Origin to 3D Cursor)

Place the 3D cursor in the hole to help position the object

Select the four inside edges of the hole in the object that match the four outside edges.
Move the cursor to the selection

Move the object using the snapping menu

The key to these steps is moving the 3D cursor to the selection and vice versa.  This is done by typing Shift–S to bring up this pie menu and the 8 to select Cursor to Selected or 2 to select Selected to Cursor

If you can't get an exact match, and the object does not have rotation applied, you can also use the local coordinates when moving.  (Shortcut G followed by repeating the axis you want to move twice, ie GZZ to move on the local axis.)  You can accomplish similar by changing the Transformation Orientation:

And, of course, in the final analysis you can use Vertex snapping as suggested by Jachym Michal in a comment on your question.

Thank you for the answer, sorry i marked it so late though haha

@Jameson4279 you're welcome.  I'm glad it worked for you.  No worries about being late.


text:
How can I achieve this "rocky" wheel tread effect?
I am modelling a tire and am looking for a way to reproduce this rocky tread effect onto my tire without having to do it manually.

This could be done with a displacement texture or geometry nodes, but by the time you figured it all out you could have modeled it. It's simple repeating geometry, so you'd only have to model one of the slices and array it around the tire.

The other two methods with modifiers other than geometry nodes are 1)array or 2) displace.

The classic method, array, requires drawing the curve shapes of the tread, and then applying a modifier stack. You must also have a circle or an empty to rotate the tread around the surface.  Your shapes should be parented to this object.  Your stack could look like this:

Displacement modifier will produce a good effect but it will produce alot more faces.  Unfortunately, you will have to find a way to reduce your mesh faces. This can be done with decimate or limited dissove.
You need a tileable texture to start with.  I found that marking a single seam on the inside, and using the option follow active quads worked in the end for this.

As user psyonic said, array modifier is probably the most straightforward way.

Replicating that exact pattern would (probably) be quite time consuming and I would recommend making it manually. However, making tire like patterns is fairly straight forward using some node combinations.

The most important combo is Extrude Mesh > Scale Elements > Extrude Mesh, this lets you make raised sections. The Normal cross product with y-axis (or whatever axis the wheel rotates around) gives you a tangent of the wheel which lets you shift things along the wheel.
The base model was made using a Supertoroid with a subdivision surface applied. Supertoroids are from the built-in addon "Add Mesh: Extra Objects".


text:
Rendering shadows
When rendering scene the shadows render to a different layer. How do I combine them? Do I have to composite them together in an image editor?

How do you have your rendering passes set up? Are using the compositor? The default settings would normally give you the combined result...

The compositor doesn't seem to be combining the layers. I can find no setting to place the shadows on the combined layer.

Can you add some screen shots of your view layer settings, compositor nodes and what your results look like?

Thank you! For some reason the render started to combine...no idea why. But seems to be resolved. I truly appreciate your input!


text:
Background images not rendering
Trying to place a background image into the scene that renders with the scene. The camera view shows the image nut it's not there when rendered. Any clues?

Possible duplicate of Cycles not rendering image or movie clip used as background in the viewport   https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/84562/brand-new-to-blender-background-image-wont-render-with-model

Background and reference images are not intended to be rendered.
To render an image, you should place it on a surface (plane for instance).
A quick way to do it is to use an addon called 'image as plane' which is in the standard distribution.
Activate it:

Use it:

Thank you! That answers the question!


text:
Mirror the movement of one object to another
In an animation I move an object, e.g. a plane, on a manually created path. Now I want to mirror this movement onto another object, also a plane. The mirror modifier doesn't seem to be the right tool for me. How do I proceed?
Thanks
Leo

Hello and welcome. Maybe constraints could do it, but how are placed the several object and where is the mirror center?

I think you'd have to copy the bones and reasign them to the other mesh.

The Copy Location and Copy Rotation constraints have an invert option.

The top instance is on a path constraint, the bottom instance has the constraints shown, targeted on the top one. You may have to alter the axes to suit the orientations of your objects, and your choice of mirror plane.
The result is mirrored action (in this case in the XZ plane)..

Great explanation. It took me a while, but I was successful. Thanks.

Make a copy of the animated object
Parent the copy to an Empty
Set the scale of that Empty to X -1 (or other axis)
Play

When you make a copy of an object you will get a copy of the animation as well.
By parent the object you can control it's local coordinate system. When the empty is scaled across the X axis you make a mirror world for that object and it's animation.


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In Blender, simply mix two image layers like in Gimp
In Gimp I've got two layers with identically images with text in middle grey in the foreground on a black background. The lower layers's mode is set to 'normal' while the higher one's is set to 'addition'.
Moving one layer against the other leads to the effect, that those image parts alter to light grey where the middle greys overlap.

How can I achieve this behaviour in Blender?

are you looking for a material that uses your two images or do you want overlapping meshes to produce the same result? For the first one use an Add Shader

Whether I use textures or overlapping meshes, I don't care. It is important that I can animate the images separately to create "living" mixes.

Edit: Ok it looks like it's not what you're looking for, you want 2 different planes and I give a solution for one plane:
You could simply mix your 2 pictures in a Color > MixRGB node (set on Mix):

I'd like to put my images each on a plane to later move them separately. Where did you put your images on?

oh ok I thought you wanted both your pictures to be mixed on the same plane. In that case you need another material...


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Rendering Chief Architect files
Chief Architect Premier is my primary modeling software. It's very comprehensive and the rendering is quite good but not up to the level I've seen from Blender. Can anyone direct me to a tutorial on how to render Chief Architect files in Blender?

These are two completely different programs, you cannot render the file of CAF in blender just like that. You have to export the whole scene to eg. obj, fbx, dae files, then create new materials in blender with a compatible render engine, eg cycles/Eevee, octane, luxCore, renderman. And then render it out. You can find plenty of tutorials on that on YouTube

Much as I thought, I assume that I will need to import a completed 3d model (I should have been more clear in my original post). I'm looking for a clear tutorial on how to do this.

Export from CAP, then in blender file>import>fbx then select your file. So what you have to search for is how you export from CAP, just type it in youtube. And how to import in blender

Thanks, I'll try that.


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How to fix this Mesh please (two planes with merged vertices)
(two planes with merged vertices)

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/148479/mesh-sticking-to-edges-when-using-subdivision-surface/148499#148499

It's a normals orientation issue. First, check your normals by enabling the Normals Overlay:

blue normals are pointing outside
red normals are pointing inside

The shading error comes from Blender not knowing how to get from one orientation to the other any more. Fix the normals by re-calculating them (this will make the orientation consistent across the model) in Edit Mode:

Thank you this worked! Very helpful.
Thank you for the explanation, makes me understand blender more. :)

Select all of the mesh A in edit mode and press CtrlShiftN.
This will recalculate the normals.

What does that do and how does it help? And Select all the mesh means selecting the vertices or edges or faces or the objects transform?

@Leander it recalculates normals, select all the mesh in edit mode, doesn't matter if you're in edge select mode or face or vertex, just press "a" in edit mode to select all the mesh then press ctrl+shift+n.

@Leander also as aliasguru explained check the orientation of the normals, you can use shift+n instead of ctrl+shift+n based on which direction you need.


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Blender 2.8 Lighting not rendering properly

I have an issue with the lighting/rendering in blender 2.8 cycles, in both the viewport and the render modes.
It was working properly a couple of days ago but whilst trying to use it today I can't get lighting to work. I have tried using different lights (spot, point, area and shader emission), played around with the world lighting values but nothing seemed to work.
So I uninstalled blender, re-downloaded and installed a fresh version of blender and built the scene shown in the image and this lighting issue has persisted. It looks as if the direct lighting and shadows are rendered as this ''default/ambient grey'' and the only light that is shown is this weird ''bounce/diffuse'' light.
In the image shown all of Blender's settings have been left at default, the large cube in the back has an emission shader and the other cubes/floor have the default principle shader with only the colour hue changed.

You have put a very bright mesh light in the scene. How does it look like when you put just a sun lamp in instead? Do you see shadows now? Have you enabled ambient occlusion in the world tab (should be off)?

I have re-installed my graphic card driver and re-installed blender and re-loaded factory settings, somewhere in this process the problem seems to have been solved. I was leaning towards screwing up my settings somewhere, ambient occlusion might have been on in the world tab.


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What is causing this shading problem?
What is causing this artefact? Normals are fine, no doubles and no interior faces to be causing this

The third illustration shows an inverted face? ... but altogether, it would be better to have quad face-loops follow the flow of  surface features, rather than the triangulation.

hello, what artefact are you talking about, you've marked sharp, is it your problem here?

You have two options to get rid of the artefact I think you are talking about:
Case # 1
If you're talking about the smoothing, go to the Object Data Properties tab and enable Auto Smooth:
Case # 2
If you're mentioning the black hole in your mesh, it looks like you have a hole in your mesh there. Go to Vertex Select Mode in Edit Mode and select the vertices around the hole. Now press F on your keyboard to fill the face.
What I mentioned is the apparent problem, without more details or your .blend file I cannot guess more.


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How do I create an interior mesh for a vehicle
I am working on a plane for a mod and want to know: How can I create a separate interior mesh, basically making it a solid object. How can I do this without using the solidify modifier?

One possible solution would be to:

Go to Edit Mode
Duplicate the mesh you want an interior for with Shift+D and press Right Click to apply.
With the duplicated mesh selected, press Alt+S to evenly scale down the duplicated Mesh and right click to apply.
Now press Shift+N to flip the face normals. Check/Uncheck the inside option for the desired result.

Additionally you can enable 'Backface Culling' to visually see if the interior has the correct face orientation.

Also addtional you can enable face orientation for this. Red means backface, Blue means the correct front face.

Thank you for the suggestion, however there is the problem of the separate mesh being visible through the windows.

Yea, you'll have to cut make the same holes for the interior mesh as well.


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How can I remove these excess shrinkwrap faces?
I am trying to shrinkwrap a hex pattern onto a visor of a helmet im working on. While it has been successful, how can I remove the excess hexagons without having to manually delete and even better, without applying the modifier? I have used the HOPS shrinkwrap.

If we want, we can mark those excess vertices by assigning them to a vertex group.  Selecting which ones we want is very easy; we can do it in a wireframe view, with a box select:

Once assigned, we can use a mask modifier to delete them, non-destructively, before or after the shrinkwrap:

If we don't even want to have to mark these verts with a vertex group, we can let Blender figure out the vertex group assignments.  The good verts are the ones that have been shrinkwrapped on to the face-- their distance from the surface of the mesh is 0.  So we can assign all other verts to a group using a vertex proximity modifier:

First, I assigned all vertices to Group.001.  Then I set up my vertex weight proximity modifier-- between my shrinkwrap and mask modifiers in the stack-- to measure proximity from geometry/faces, and I told it to assign anything further than 0.002 a weight of 1.0, and anything closer than 0.001 a weight of 0.0.  This can be improved to any arbitrary level of precision, but I figure 0.001 precision is enough.


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How can I fix these ngons into quads?

Ive used the bevel tool to create an arch on my object but naturally an ngon was created on the edges. How can I fix this ngon while also keeping it in quads? Ive tried insetting the face and then using grid fill and i want to avoid triangulation as much as possible.

Personally I think, those are n-gons, but it's quite clean geometry and I wouldn't change it. It's a myth that everything needs to be quads, and creating insets, grid fill etc. will only result in unnecessary high poly count in a simple area... If you prefer quads okay, that's your choice. If you think you have to make quads, I recommend videos by Josh Gambrell on that topic e.g. this: Why ngons are BETTER than quads for hard surface or this one SUBD vs. NGON modeling - which is the right choice?

Typically im ok with ngons if its for a render but in this case its for a game engine (Unity) and game engines dont work well with ngons at all unfortunately

If it's not for Blender, but for a game engine - why avoid triangulation? The faces get triangulated anyway for rendering, and sometimes it's better to have control over the triangulation beforehand to make "nice" triangles instead of having quads and n-gons triangulated  randomly in the game engine.


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Why is this inset distorting so badly?
I am attempting to inset a group of faces however they are distorting very badly, they even inset individually fine. All transforms applied, no doubles, face orientation is fine.

Hello could you please share your file? https://blend-exchange.com/

Sure https://blend-exchange.com/b/qwQRGZqd

the topology is bad, it will make the faces overlap if you try to inset, plus there are some other problems, I'm not sure what's the huge extrusion you show though


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How to ensure that material on the surface of a mesh casts a subsurface shadow onto the surrounding material?
The object I'm trying to model is made mostly of a material which requires subsurface scattering. Parts of the object are coated by a thin metal foil. I'd like this foil to properly darken the material that surrounds it, but so far the only approach that has worked is by creating real geometry to cast this shadow. Is there a better way to set this up? Ultimately I was hoping to use a texture to specify which areas are metal foil and which ones aren't.
Here's an example:

The bottom left circle selects the metal foil via a texture which drives a Mix Shader node. The top left star is a face with the foil material assigned to it. The circle on the right is a separate object very close to the surface of the main plane, and is the only one that correctly darkens the subsurface scattered light.
I've also noticed that EEVEE darkens the scattered light correctly at least when a whole face has the metal film material applied:

I suppose it makes sense that the Mix Shader approach does not create a shadow. Is there another way to use a texture to select between these two materials?

Maybe it will work if you duplicate the surface geometry into two parallel surfaces. Have one for the translucent material below, one immediately above for the metal film, then use the texture to drive transparency for the film material


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How do I fix blue, hard lines appearing with subdivision modifier?
Before subdivision surface modifier:

After subdivision surface modifier:

Going back to modeling after subdivision surface modifier:

Also, when I add smooth shading, very dark lines appear:

Also, just in case this helps, I stacked mirror modifier before subdivision surface modifier.

you may have right clicked > Shade Smooth by Angle (instead of a simple Shade Smooth) which has created sharp edges over the defined angle (although I'm not sure how it happened here). To remove, switch to Edit mode select all and CtrlE > Clear Sharp.

Thanks, but it didn't work. I'll keep on trying.

please share your file: https://blend-exchange.com/


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Multiresolution Modifier Creating Unwanted Geometry
I sculpted this creature with dyntopo, used instant meshes, and now am sculpting with the multiresolution modifier.
In sculpting mode: (Note the top of the head)

In sculpting (wireframe) mode: (Note the mouth area)

I then went into edit mode to fix the issue and found the issue with the unwanted geometry.

I then deleted the unwanted vertex and replaced it by connecting the top and bottom vertices and filling the remaining edges.

I then go back into sculpt mode, and this happens.

I have no idea why this happens, please help.

The way the multires works is it basically builds a hierarchy of subdivided versions of your mesh that you can interpolate between and edits you make in lower subdivisions will propagate to finer subdiv levels. It cant "add" geometry, only subdivide it. You probably just had some janky geometry that got revealed whenever you subdivided it.
The only thing about the multires mod is that it works best when your mesh is in a somewhat "static" state. It builds that hierarchy of subdivisions based on the mesh whenever you subdivided it. If you go in and delete a few verts and add 5 faces then that entire hierarchy is thrown off. Which is whats causing that spiky issue.
You have to "reset" the mesh subdivision in the  Multires like this.

You might lose some work but that's why the Multires works best with a "static" mesh. If you're doing alot of big changes, snakehook, grab tool etc then you should be sticking to just using voxel remesh. Then once you get to a point when you're trying to "polish" and you cant get the crappy remesh geo to look good, that's when you QuadRemesh it, Multires, Shrinkwrap to the original, and then you add your details and clean your mesh up.


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Tried Everything Cant find Nodes in Node Editor

I've tried numpad . I've tried ctrl+f nothing seems to work and I cant for the life of my find the damn nodes in the node editor. I'm using a macbook btw, so maybe the problem is that my numpad . isnt beside the 0?

You have to check Use Nodes otherwise no nodes will be displayed.

Then if still not visible, position all nodes in your view by pressing Home (it may also be labeled pos1 on your keyboard).

Thanks so much this is a lifesaver the only thing though is I can't seem to find the Use Nodes button for the texture nodes?


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Can't bake texture from one uv map to another
What I want to do: I made a fabric texture for a table cloth and Im trying to bake it into another uv map so that I can add details to only the edges of the texture and upload it to sketchFab with pbr materials.
What my scene looks like: My entire material is plugged into a uv map node "pattern" and my target image for baking is plugged into a uv map node "bake map". I haven't changed the bake settings and in object data for my fabric I have the "bake map" selected for render.
The issue: When i press bake the result it rendered on the "pattern" uv map


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Geometry Nodes: is it possible to select instances by a distance?
I am wondering (and I'm pretty sure that is possible but I just don't knoe how) to select (or group) instances of one collection by a distance between them in geometry nodes.
I have an collection where I have a lot of elements which I then translated so I don't have to animate them by hand and right now they are separated one by one. I would like to group up closest ones by distance between them.
Hope this is possible...
Thanks

Please clarify this a bit.. Do you mean distance from selection? Distance from one another? If you mean from one another, an element could belong to more than one group.. how do you want to decide which? (Proportional Edit has a 'Constant' falloff option)


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Shading>ColorRamp>Reliefs distance between Vertices of the mesh and curve reference
I try, but I can't...
I explain:
I create a 256x256 point torus.
I apply a rank 2 subdivision to it.
I delete half to keep a C.
I remove the top half to keep an open C.
(It's the interior that will interest me.)
I apply a displace of a cloud texture with weight paint to apply the deformation a little randomly and more or less strong.
I return my normals
What I want now is to apply a texture with a rainbow color ramp to highlight the healthy areas and the heavily degraded areas.
I created a reference curve, having the shape of C and placed as necessary to be equidistant from the mesh without deformation.
I can't seem to get my reference curve to radiate and color the deformed mesh in relation to the distance (which changes with the strength of the deformation I applied)...
In the other direction, I also cannot calculate the shortest distance between the points of the mesh and the reference curve to apply the gradient corresponding to the distance...
Do you think it's possible to do something like that?
If yes, can you help me ?
For exemple, see my workbench of my torus with the reference curve

If it can possibly fit into your workflow, it would be a great deal easier to create the surface from a curve, than to fit a curve down the middle of an existing surface.
While you're at it, you may as well do the whole thing in Geometry Nodes..

Here, Geometry Proximity is used to find the distance from the surface to the curve which originally created it. That's arguably a bit expensive.. the distance could be calculated directly from the radius and texture.. but it's easier to think about.
The distances are normalized (Min, Max -> 0,1) to make them easier to work with in a shader. The 'disp' attribute is stored on vertices:

with this kind of result..

Thanks Robin! Very smart ! But I need my reference curve, because the mesh can be different like elbow, pipe or I don't know what else... And the mesh have some displacement but it's not artificial it's real degradation. ... It's hard


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Merge tris to quads with a specific condition
I have a mesh of tris that are differently sized (always sized in a power of 2).  I want to merge only the tris that align with eachother to a single quad.  It's hard to explain so I took a screenshot and manually painted red each edge I want to remove.
Notice that there are some tris that align and create a quad, but the quad is diagonal.  In this case I do not want to merge them (I've highlighted one example of this in green).  I also don't want to make any quads out of 4 tris, just if there are two tris that make a quad (i've highlighted an example of this in blue).  I don't want to merge them with any sort of "tolerance" - I only want them merged if the tris align exactly and will result in no change in the surface.
So far I've tried Tris to Quad feature and Limited Dissolve feature, but none had the right results.  Any way to do this quickly without having to go through each face would be awesome.
Thanks in advance!

It might be helpful to people trying to help you if you uploaded an example blend file to the site https://blend-exchange.com and add that link in the question.  (so they can test with)

good suggestion: https://blend-exchange.com/b/Pem0KDgp


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Adding a Keyframe to a Specific Geometry Node in Blender Using Python
I am new to both Python and Blender. I am trying to add or change a keyframe on a specific geometry node within Blender. I found a code snippet that demonstrates how to keyframe a general property within Geometry Nodes, but I am unsure how to apply this to a specific node, such as a Value node.
Here’s the code snippet I found:
bpy.data.objects["Cube"].modifiers["GeometryNodes"]["Input_2"] = 2
bpy.data.objects["Cube"].modifiers["GeometryNodes"].keyframe_insert(data_path='["Input_2"]', frame=1)

However, I need to keyframe a specific node like the Value node for "Sound to Sample" or what used to be referred to as "bake to f-curve". I'm struggling to understand how to target this specific geometry node and apply a keyframe to it.

this is the only way I know how to do this programmatically. from my understanding, keyframes for individual nodes are handled at the node tree level.
first, you have to find your node tree:
bpy.data.node_groups contains them all, find which element of this list is the node tree in question, for example:
node_tree = bpy.data.node_groups['GeometryNodes']
Then, there is something tricky about this step. You can access the keyframe data using:
node_tree.animation_data
BUT, it will be None unless there are existing keyframes. Easy way around this is to just quickly manually add a keyframe to your node (there has to be a way to do this step in Python). Then, when you call node_tree.animation_data it will not be None.
Then, you can view the keyframe fcurves like so:
node_tree.animation_data.action.fcurves
this is also a list, there must be a better way of doing this, but you can iterate through each one and look at it's data_path to determine if it belong to the node in question:
node_tree.animation_data.action.fcurves[0].data_path
you can then edit your dummy keyframe value like this:
node_tree.animation_data.action.fcurves[0].keyframe_points[0].co = (frame, value)
you can also add new keyframe_points and edit them using the same approach, but first calling
node_tree.animation_data.action.fcurves[0].keyframe_points.add(npoints) to add them first.
doing this approach, you can add and edit as many keyframes as you want and they will be reflected in the node.
Hope it helps.

I added a keyframe to the value and used 'sound to sample' on it, but the f-curves node_tree.animation_data.action.fcurves[0] are empty. Is there something else I need to do?

@DerekEden answer is very useful and correct for this discussion. I'd like to add that while testing the solution, I discovered that if you have only one keyframe, it works perfectly when using bpy.ops.graph.sound_to_samples(filepath=mp3Path) for single instances. However, this method isn't suitable for multiple instances.

@DenizBöttcher to be honest, I'm not familiar with sound to sample, but I can take a look later and see if I'm able to get it working - will report back if I make progress


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How to find correspondence between an image and its projection onto an object?
Complete newbie here. I have set up a projector (following these insructions) where a point light projects an image pattern onto another object (ie. cube or sphere or whatever). Now I need a script that can find correspondences between (u, v) coordinates of the 2D image that is being projected and the (x, y, z) coordinates of the object onto which the image is being projected. How can I accomplish this?


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How to get matching pixels of 2 cameras?
I have a set up a scene where 2 cameras are looking at the same object. The cameras are separated by some distance. I need a python script to find the correspondence of the pixels in the two images produced by the two cameras. More concretely, I want to find pixel coordinate (u, v) in the first camera's image and its corresponding pixel coordinate (u', v') in the second camera's image such that (u, v) and (u', v') both correspond to the same world point (x, y, z). Please help.

This is apparently not related to Blender but more a computer vision problem. Or is it 2 cameras in Blender?

2 cameras in blender.


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GPU won´t render properly
when i use my GPU to render an Animation it only uses about 5% of it. I enabled CUDA in the Preferences and selected my GPU but it is still not working.
I have a GTX 1080 Graphics card.
Any answers ?

Have you enabled GPU rendering in the render tab? For Cycles Device should be set to GPU Compute.

Can you provide any other information? What do you mean by 'only uses about 5% of it'? Is that just an offhand description, or are you measuring that somehow (and if so, how?). "it uses 5% of it" implies it is using the GPU at least a bit? Are you on Windows? Any details of the animation you can provide, eg is it a very heavy scene?

What CPU do you use, and how complex is your scene?

When i watch it up on the task manager it says that the GPU is used 5%.

Yes I am using Windows and the the animation has only one light and a house but the House has about 100 parts.I am using a ryzen 7 1700x.


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Overlap unwrapped texture with transparent image
I'm working on a briefcase and want to make it look like a thread has been woven into it. However the only result I can get is based on the already unwrapped texture. How do I simply overlay, and create essentially another uv unwrap? See pictures for details and result im trying to achieve.
Setup

Texture for the leather

Result I'm trying to get

The problem, this happens when I texture paint 1 line on one side.

if you want to paint something new on it, as it won't use the same UV map, you should create a new UV map. But I wodner why you want to paint rather than model your thread in 3D?

I don't want to paint it, sorry for the confusion. The image is their to demonstrate the problem with the texture i have right now.

it looks like you're talking about 2 different things, if you want to create a sewing, you could create it in 3D, especially if you want to make close-up shots, and in that case, UVmap has nothing to do with it.

If I understand your problem, you want to create a second UV map because by now a single stroke creates multiple strokes on your texture. This can be done in the vertex tab, clicking the plus icon in the UV panel and re-unwrapping with the new UV selected. Don't forget to add an UV input node for every material you have, to indicate which UV map to use in that material and avoid unexpected projections.

Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for


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Problem with depth of field in specular reflection
The reflection is not correct in the bottom. As you can see everything around it is blurred, except for the reflection of the railing. How do I fix this? I'm using 2.8 and cycles for rendering.

It's absolutely correct. In real life and CG, the focal distance is a measure of the total ray length, reflected or not. Try it, next time you look at yourself in a mirror.

As far as I know, this is coherent with reality. The reflected picture is practically at the same distance (or a bit more) of the real railing.

Thank you man, it looked so wrong but it makes sense now!


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How to Highlight Countries Selectively on an EU Continent?
I have created a 3D terrain of the entire "European continent". You can see the elevation details. This is done already.
Now I want to selectively be able to show individual countries. I want the European continent to light up where a particular country is. How could I do this most effectively? Suppose I have exported all the country shapes into a single SVG file but I can also use QGIS to give me a different format of data...

This image is only an example I took from elsewhere. It is something I would like to achieve, but in my case it should be even better because my map would be 3D :-)
What have I thought of already?
As I want to individually animate and the light up where countries, I thought of creating a separate PNG file as an alpha mask for each country. Then in the Geometry nodes or Shader nodes I would have a bunch of ImageTexture nodes and a switch/boolean hell to be able to turn an individual country on and off.
Would there be a more elegant solution to this? I would like to have something more compact and reusable.
P.S. - I am not against using Python if that can make it work more elegantly.

The way you outlined works. Here is the initial GN material switch node group:

We can use these nodes but we  want to use the material switch between objects in a collection.
We create a bunch of objects, (I used basic geometric shapes) and put them in a collection, so we can use the instance index to pick an object to make red:

Then we want to delete and replace only the object that is selected and keep the rest:

Now in the modifier stack you can select a number and it will change only the material of that object.
We also might want to add our materials to both sides of the boolean, and fields so we can change the true/false materials used in the switch.
This has some limitations.  But it is a good start, and we have something reusable as a group we can apply to new collections of objects.


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Dome with smokestack - how to clean mesh after boolean modifier?
I am trying to create a dome with smokestack (the best description I have - see pictures).
Creating the dome is straightforward. Then for the smokestack, I create a circle, position it and extrude it upwards along Z-axis so that it penetrates the dome roof. To combine the meshes together I use boolean UNION modifier and click Apply. Then I am having trouble creating a clean correct mesh.
When I apply smooth shading you can see the surface is funky. I tried to recalculate the normals and I played with the geometry. The pictures describe the best I could do.
Could someone, please, guide me what would be the cleanest approach of modeling a simple dome with one smokestack?

blender loop tools addon >>  circle > extrude > edge bevel

This works! Many thanks!


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Many shortcuts don't work in Blender 2.8. Are these bugs?
In blender 2.8 it looks like all the 0-9 keys were remapped to numpad only. Wondering why the viewpoint changes could not be done, I customized the keys back to my upper row or digit keys 0-9, because I have Apple keyboard without the numpad.
Even then the shortcuts don't work as expected. Changing the viewpoint using 0 thru 9 keys only works in Edit and Sculp Mode and only sometimes. What is the logic behind, I would like to know.
When in camera view, the shortcut Shift+F for free move does not work.
Also CRTL(or CMD) + ALT + 0  shortcut does not work.
These are these I discovered after an hour of messing around with Blender 2.8. Are these actually bugs or features? Anybody can chip in? I was used to 2.79 behavior.

Looks like the flying mode is enabled by Shift+~ now

CRTL(or CMD) + ALT + 0 shortcut does not work

Edit > Preferences window > Input tab : check Emulate Numpad

Many shortcuts don't work in Blender 2.8. Are these bugs?

Not bugs.You can find the new shortcuts in,
Edit > Preferences window > Keymap
Annoying at first but I get used to it quickly.
Blender 2.8 is a big change and more "industry" compliant, for example:

left click for selection (instead of right click)
Space bar for Play/pause
F3 for search, etc

hey, good answer.  However, I would like to know the answer for the free move.  You know the answer to that?

what do you call free move?

Thanks for the answer @shneo . The free move is my thinking is when you are in the view where you are looking through the camera and now you want to use arrow keys to reposition it and "fly" through the scene using arrow keys. This used to work using Shift+F shortcut, but not anymore.

I think I found the answer, it used to be Shift+F now it is Shift+~

Yes, you can find it with "fly" or "walk" in the keymap name search box.


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Looking to scale along normals using geometry nodes using a texture as a scaling factor
Not sure how feasable this would be but as the title suggests, I'm looking for a way to shrink a mesh along the vertex normals using a height map for the scaling factor.
Context: This is for an animal that was modelled initially without having fur taken into consideration... meaning that to add fur and still retain its overall shape / silhouette, the body underneath needs to shink based on a fur length map, where black is the original vertex position and white is the full length of the fur and shrunk.
In simpler terms; I need to de-fur a persian cat, and turn it into a sphynx cat! ¦D
I suppose it would need to apply the translation at the vertices, so as not to cause gaps in the mesh at different heights... but I'm struggling to figure out something that works.


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Smooth out vertical gaps in geo relief
New to Blender.
Created a geographical relief. At some points points the height difference is that big that I get this result when rendered:

Is there a way to smoth them somehow?


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Aligning two objects to create a fit score
I am currently in the process of devising an optimal strategy to employ a Python script that will facilitate the alignment of two distinct objects. The alignment is based on a point of origin located on the Z-axis, which will subsequently enable a scoring range from 0 to 100.
The strategy involves the utilization of 50 points derived from both surfaces to ascertain the fitting score. We are in the process of establishing specific regions within both objects that will be aligned and matched. Following this, we will employ a deviation calculation to determine the disparity between the x, y, and z coordinates.
However, it has been brought to my attention that the Euclidean distance may not be a feasible solution in this context, as its application is not typically extended to three-dimensional spaces. This raises the question of what alternative methods could be employed to achieve the desired outcome. I am open to suggestions and further discussion on this matter.

My current understanding is that Euclidean principles apply in 3D. For clarification, you have 50 indexed points in object A and you would like to grade their deviation from a near-matching set of indexed points in object B? Should you just subtract the positions from one another?

Does this have anything to do with Blender?

I am using blender to test this out.

Hello Tim .. welcome to BSE. It does look as if your central question is mathematical / algorithmic. The use of Blender to visualize results is secondary? (if the visualization was your primary problem, your post would be more on-topic, here.) Also, at first sight, it's a hard problem, mathematically, maybe less so, with closer definition.. How many degrees of freedom are you allowing in your alignment? Translation / Rotation / Scale ? By your reference to Z, do you mean translation only, on the Z axis? (That might sneak in.)

At the moment, this question verges on off-topic here and is vulnerable to closure. It might be better posed, say, on Mathematics SE, abstractly, with a very clear statement of constraints. If you want to ask it here, please edit to include a an illustration of your practical, visual, end-purpose,  acceptable error, and  possible routes via mechanisms in the application, to match your question more closely to what we can answer here on Blender SE.

You should look into CloudCompare which has alignment features (it's open source)


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Problem with import_sketchup.py on MAC
Like many others I am having difficulties using the import_sketchup.py on a Macintosh. I tried it for the first time a few months ago and I couldn´t even enable the add-o; exactly like it is described in this post: Can´t enable Ketchup add-on Today I decided to try it once again and for my surprise I was able to tick the little square and enable import_sketchup.py! But unfortunately the option of importing Sketchup is not showing when I go to File>import (See print-screen).  I followed the instructions for this page and downloaded the .py file here

Did I miss anything? Hans anyone managed to import Sketchup into blender?
Thanks a lot  ahead.
I am new in this forum, I was not allowed post this question as a comment with the other post I mentioned above.

The files that you link to in your question were all last updated 10 years ago and the header in that .py file says it's for Blender version 2.70 so it's very unlikely that they will work with modern versions of Blender, particularly version 4 onwards because the Blender APIs and Python versions have changed over the years. In any case we can't help with third-party addons as this Q&A site can only help with problems using Blender and its built-in addons.

Further checking shows a more recent YT video here that uses a different site to download an importer. Try that one!

Hi John. I checked the link and unfortunately it didn't work. For some reason after I try to install the .zip file it does not appear on the add-ons to enable it.  I will keep searching. Thanks for the help.

Might be worth asking on the Sketchup Community forum...