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Transfer animation from bones to empty
I have a script to load animations from one game, the animations in it are represented as points and their coordinates. I also have a script to export these points.
To make it easier for me to animate I connected some points to bones, but when animating bones animation animation is not transferred to empty. I tried manually inserting frames, I tried using bake action, but the animation still remains on the skeleton and bones, and when I remove keyframes from the skeleton the points stop moving.

It's not clear what you mean when you say "animation is not transferred to empty". Do you mean it's not moving at all in the viewport, or its not exporting correctly or what? It might be easier for us to get if you could post some gifs/video or if you could share your Blender project file. Instructions for sharing.

It's not clear how did you "Connect" points to bones, and which are points and empties, but generally speaking if you want to keyframe a child object in its world loc rot and scale, you should use "Insert VISUAL Loc Rot Scale Keyframe" operator (use K instead of I to insert a keyframe).
To automate the process, your final empties should have a Copy Transform Constraint targeting some mechanism (a bone or another empty), so that when baking the animation you can select all desired constrained empties and tick the "Visual transform" and "Clear constraints" options, in order to have the animation baked to empties in world space.


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How do I save (bake) a particle simulation?
I followed this tutorial ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KNO_laPA9s ) to create an audio visualizer, and it's worked great with the audio baking to the curves to affect the particles.
But during the render process Blender has crashed a couple of times. On resume I have to play the animation again to repopulate the particles and create a new animation.
The audio-to-fcurve bake remains intact in the .blend file, but the particle generation and turbulence isn't baked into the blend the way a physics simulation would be. I have BVH caching enabled, but I guess that's not persistent since the randomness of the turbulence results in variables between sessions that prevent me from continuing smoothly at the last frame rendered before the crash.
How can I ensure that the data is consistent between renders of the animation?

BVH caching is for rendering. BVH stands for "Bounding Volume hierarchy". This is basically a "map" of the scene which cycles uses to navigate photons around. It is kind of odd that the particles are behaving differently though.. AFAIK they should be the same unless you changed something.

You have to have "Hair Dynamics" ticked apparently. Then the cache section appears.

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How to efficiently instantiate object with memory-hungry modifiers?
Using Alt + D to duplicate light meshes with heavy modifiers (like a leaf with a particle instance modifier or a trunk with a subdivision modifier) can lead to huge memory usage. Because only the base mesh is instantiated. The output mesh of the modifier, won't be instantiated. If you have 1000 trunks with a subdivision of 6, they will take 1000 times the required place in memory.
How can I instantiate efficiently such objects ?
Applying modifier works but doesn't allow efficient editing and produce big blend files.
Using Particle systems doesn't allow precise positioning. Hair systems allow particle painting, but hair are not visible in top view and if the emitter's mesh is modified, the "hairs" move as well, destroying everything.
This question comes following that question Convert large particle system(s) to one object efficiently, where I had big memory problems.

Using particle systems does allow precise positioning. See this.

Make a group of your object(s) with Ctrl + G and name it (in the tool panel)
In the add menu, go to "Group Instance" and pick the group you want to instantiate.

If you append/link such an object, select "instance groups" on the links before appending/linking.
This allows you to render billions of polygons on a 4Gb computer with precise positioning and also saves space on your hard drive as well.

I thought giving such answer I found myself to my problems could help other people spare time. If it's weird, I can stop because it doesn't saves me time :D

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Convert large particle system(s) to one object efficiently
I place leaves on my trees with emitter particle systems. Then, to make a forest, I place those trees with another emitter (or hair) particle system.
Problem is particles of particles don't work, I only get the trunks without leaves in my forest.
Following this question : How can I convert a hair-particle system into 3D, editable objects?, which solution takes ages (I use about 500 000 leaves per tree), I tried to write a python script, but comes to the same problem. Searching on google, I found Brecht saying it comes from the naming of object (leave.001, leave.002 .... leave.500000) which after 1000 iterations becomes pretty slow and after 10000 extremely slow (so naming 2000 object is much slower than twice the time of naming 1000 of them). Anyway, that step is useless, blender needs one big mesh with all leaves to allow instancing it, not 500000 objects with one linked mesh.
So question is how can I convert all the particles to one unique object in one step (or at least avoid it to take 28 hours every time) ?

Trying to get around the naming problem, i managed to get a dummy script create and name 50000 objects (so 10x times less as what I need) but then Blender was unusable (every click takes ages). So the 2 steps way is really not viable. Only the solution where the converted particles stays in one object (the emitter) could work. I tried ctrl+J but it seems it doesn't work on particles.

Have you tried using the 'Sapling' addon?

@Gwenn Yes, I used it and Arbaro as well. But I don't like the default leaves (they don't fit the PNG's transparency, are too flat, etc... so I do the foliage manually like MarcoGIta explained on the BA Forum. It's in the sapling thread.)

Particle Instance modifier

When a ParticleInstance modifier is added to an object, that object will be used as a particle shape on an object which has a particle system associated with it.

Instead of setting the leaf object in the render settings of your tree's particle system.
Use the "Particle Instance" modifier on the leaf itself.

This has the advantage that it can be used multiple times for multiple particles systems.

Wow, thanks a lot Aldrik :) To be honest, I thought nobody could answer that and I will get a "it's a blender limitation, for feature request please etc..." because I asked 2 devs and they told me nested instances will never be supported... :D Nice, really nice. You get a kiss as well if you want ;)

Yes I tried it, it works perfectly. A bit strange to add the modifier on the leave and no on the trunk, but despite that unintuitive way, it works :)

For people trying it, one side-note : rotation should be done in edit mode, not object mode. Only downside I found until now, is that the material randomisation per leaf (with particle info node) doesn't work anymore. I can only get randomisation per tree (all leaves of one tree have the same hue value).

Another thing (in my case not a problem, but iKIsR asked for details and feedback) is that memory usage goes a bit up for low-poly leaves (my case) but goes quickly toward using my 8Gb if I subdivide the leaf a bit. So be careful to not use too much high-poly leaves.

@matali ok, thanks, it is always a good idea to let people know exactly how helpful the answer was. :)

sorry Aldrik if you didn't like my edit, wasn't meant to criticize your answer, but I thought most people won't read the comments. Having the side effects in the answer could help people decide to use it or not ? Thanks again.

@Aldrik I did only test placing the trees with particles first, works perfectly with thousands of particle trees. But if I try to manually create duplicates (Alt+D), the memory consumption goes up crazy, I filled the 8GB trying to render only 3 trees. I also tried to apply modifier before duplicating, didn't help. Any idea why and how to solve that, I sometime need to place and rotate trees carefully (the foreground ones)?

@Aldrik Everything ok, looks like a bug. When appending such trees without applying modifier first in the library blend file the memory usage explode. But applying in the library file and saving, then appending works great...

My issue with the edit was that it was written in the first person (rather than just listing the issues) and was duplicated in the comments. While undesirable, I believe the issues your having are standard behaviour for a modifier. Do file a bug report if you disagree. For lower memory usage you can use make duplicates real on your forest and use a single particle system for the leaves.

Tried the unique particle system for leaves. But with 1000+ trees with each of them more than 50 000 thousands leaves, we reach the Blender limit. (10 000 000 I had as max value, which doesn't work with only 8Gb either). Using dupligroups option in the append option panel solves the memory problem.

Extraordinarily powerful approach, thanks Aldrik for sharing. But I've been trying to implement this answer for a couple days, and only end up with unusable chaos (scaling and rotation). Could you add screenshots of the particle settings you used for both Plane and Cylinder?

@PlenusFranckly I have recreated the scene for you to inspect. I don't think adding particle setting improve the answer. If you think something is missing fill free the make edits. ;)

@Aldrik, that was extremely helpful. I can immediately see I had a number of things confused. I am going to be studying this for a while. Thank you so much.

@Aldrik OMG I love Stackexchange... I am a "trackbuilder" and I spent all the day trying to figure out how to achieve decent viewport performance when using particles to plant the vegetation, I ended up with limiting view distance... Now when I discovered this MAGIC modifier, it opens whole new world of possibilites for me! I can finally focus on the actual creating! Thank you! :)


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Can I use previously rendered frames as texture in Cycles?
A good example would be a giant screen in a football stadium. The last rendered frame would be used as texture on the screen for the current frame.
This texture would be emitting light (as it is a screen), so I really need it as a texture input for an emission shader in cycles.
It differs a bit from that question: Is it possible to use the output of a Renderlayer in the material nodes of another RenderLayer? as the given solution gives me a pink screen on the ~20 first frames.
Is it possible in Blender and if yes, how?

I get a pink texture on the first render by using the answer you pointed me to. Then this pink texture will also be rendered in the second as it is in the first one, but smaller, and so on until it is less than a pixel wide. I tried to start at frame 2, but it doesn't change anything. My problem is in some way similar, but not exactly the same as I need the render layer to be really used as a texture during rendering (the screen is emitting light so I can't do it only with compositing)

The other post uses it in material nodes too (you could easily connect it to an emission shader).

This is waht I've done, but I get that pink texture problem on first frame which is reproduce every time (a bit smaller) on the following frames. (because the first frame is not rendered.)

The only solution I can think of is just rendering the first frame until the pink is no longer visible (though using an initial color that stands out less helps).

The answer to this is basically the same as Is it possible to use the output of a Renderlayer in the material nodes of another RenderLayer?, except you must render the first frame repeatedly until the replicated images of the render are smaller than can be seen (this of course depends on the resolution)
I've thought about this, and as far as I can tell, there is really no true way around it using compositing.
The reason for this is that this is a feedback loop;
The rendered result depends on the lighting, which is affected by the texture of the rendered result, which is affected by the lighting, which is affected by the rendered result, etc.
The only thing you can do is try and make the initial render a reasonably close approximation of how it will look after enough iterations have been done to make it appear infinite (i.e. emitting bright pink doesn't help). This way it will look "good enough" in fewer iterations.
Using the setup in my other answer, rendering a single frame will write a file via file output node which will then be read by an image sequence node in material nodes the next time the scene is rendered. So all you have to do is press F12 repeatedly..

To automate pressing F12, you could render an "animation" where nothing changes for as many frames as you want iterations.

Could you please reupload that example blend file? It no longer works.
I tried to replicate your method and have not been able to get it to work without seeing the blend file.

@MarkFoxworthy Fixed, thanks for letting me know :)


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The best way to do twist-like bridge?
I just wonder if there are any ideal solutions to do this without using lattice deform, etc. Thanks!

Update:
I found I've been using a more regular and simple thing for illustration. Now what I really mean can be seen in the following image.

(This is quite puzzling me when using any current way I suppose, I mean, keep original loops un-twisted. but to twist the bridge.)

Sorry guys! I found I've been using a more regular and simple thing for illustrate. Now what I really mean can be seen in the updated image. P.S: I think the way you all suggested can well solve the old one. but... for the new one? Thanks and sorry again!

Added twist offset option to the bridge tool r58609 (will be available in 2.69 or any recent build).

Ah, this is even better, xie xie!

This is possible to do without any addons or modifiers,

Add a shape key
Go into editmode
Rotate one of the loops, say ~30deg
Execute the Bridge Tool
Remove the shape key.

now the bridge will be twisted.
note that this won't work for twisting over 180deg.

Thanks for an impressive "Shapekey" answer that I haven't even thought about! However, as I updated and commented to other guys, what I really mean is Not try changing any original loops. Just like what's seen in the outdated looptools addon, unforunately it doesn't support multi-bridge. I know you can do it if you think it's useful and worthy to, do you?  :)

@LeonCheung See Best Place to put Feature Requests?

@Aldrik, I know. Believe me, the question really aims no feature request initially. Just want to know nice solutions for such case. Actually, I was asked by my friend, surprisingly it baffled me.

Allow me to propose my own solution, which just came to my mind:

Create one connected strip with desired edges by W > Bridge Edge Loops;
CtrlI to invert selection;
Bridge again, set the number of cuts in the option panel, or hit F6.

IMHO, It could be a better and currently-existing way to do so. Advantage of this method would be:

Fast, direct, accurate and flexible;
Perfectly keep original loops the way as they were;
Effective for any simple or complicated loops to make twisted bridge.

I would recommend the simple deform modifier. It has a few options for deformation, one of which is twisting.
If you simply add this modifier to an object that's pointing up, it'll twist it based upon the Deform angle:

It should look something like this:

It's true for that certain scene. Sorry but what I really mean is to keep all original loops un-twisted. Please see the updated image. Thanks!

You want to twist it in a non-destructive way (i.e. it doesn't change in edit mode)?

Exactly. The most inefficient but universal way that I know is to manually join vertex pairs, then using loop cuts. Appreciated for any smarter way!

If you go into user preferences (addons) and type loop tools into the search menu the loop tool menu will appear drop the the menu down and check the box to enable.
Go back to your 3D view and on the left hand menu (press T) you will now see a loop tools option. Drop the menu down and you will see an option called bridge click this open and you will see an option for twisting your mesh. Hope this helps.

Right. Lindsey, I knew this nice tool, and in fact, the 3rd column was made by it to illustrate. :P  It's surely good. However, comparing to the new bridge tool after 2.67, the addon doesn't support "multi-bridge", the great feature that Campbell has implemented.


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Use simulated rain in a busy scene without slowing down the system
I want to use an add-on called dynamic rain that simulates rain with particles. But these particles make the scene very heavy. Until the cpu was used up to 95% and the system was very slow and even stopped. I'm looking for a way to use this rain in a large, crowded scene full of objects, but without slowing down the system. please guide me. Thanks.

Firstly, it's a third party add-on which usually makes this question off-topic on this site. And since we do not know how this add-on exactly works it would be best to ask the developers for performance optimizations. However, since it uses the regular particle system, I guess there are only a few possible options to make the scene lighter. Surely you already baked the simulation so at least Blender does not have to calculate it new every time. The other things are reducing the number of vertices/faces on the rain drop object used for rendering and/or reducing the particle number in general.

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


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Stars are not displayed in orthographic mode
Well, in general, the stars in the sky made through the nodes in the world tab are not displayed in orthographic mode. Everything is fine in the other modes. Please help me fix this.

There is nothing to fix - the world background is not a flat 2D image (the texture is, but not the world), so it cannot be shown as background in orthographic view.  See the answer to this question: Orthographic Cam with HDRI in background.


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Dark Shadows when using AO with Transparent Materials?
When rendering this scene in Blender Internal, the wine glass in the scene has a dark shadow collect at the very bottom.
I have shadow transparency on, the shadow from the light turned off with environment lighting on and ambient occlusion on.
The shadow is only there when ambient occlusion is on and it is against the table. Is there a way to make this go away while keeping ambient occlusion on?

This is an image that has all of the details for the environment and for the glass material

Post the link.. someone will add the image for you. You can also post the blend file if you think it might help.

For your information, I have added to my original answer.

You say it goes dark when the glass is against the table - is it right against it or leaving a small gap? Is the centre of the glass base raised slightly leaving a gap? Another thing to check is the simplify option in the scene settings, if turned on they can reduce the samples used and AO quality.

don't include Subsurface Scattering in a glass material, but do add more lights! Light needs to bounce around in the glass to come out again, that's why you need a higher 'depth' setting, go as high as you need. (use border render while testing)

There are several thing that could cause this, including

Shadows
Make sure that the table material has Receive Transparent enabled:

With Receive Transparent and Without Receive Transparent:

As you can see form this render with the glass raised, the reason for this is that even if the glass casts a transparent shadow, unless Receive Transparent is enabled for the table, solid black shadow is rendered which the glass then refracts:

Ambient Occlusion:
Ambient Occlusion would cause this too, as it works by darkening surfaces that are close to other objects. (The closer the darker)
Then you have the same problem as Receive Transparent, with the glass refracting the dark areas.
Add blend mode:

Multiply blend mode, with the glass on the table and with it in the air:

To make this disappear, you can enable Indirect Lighting in Properties > World

However, this can get your rendertimes rather insane, (Just for this low resolution render it took 2:27.26)

And as already mentioned by SteveW:

Depth
The Depth setting from one to four:

And at a value of 20 :

Cycles
Probably the best way to do this is use Cycles, as you need caustics to get light to properly illuminate after being refracted through the glass.
(quick example:)

Thank you, adding the indirect lighting worked, injunction with the settings that SteveW suggested, the shadow was reduced with 1-2 sampling passes. With the settings that I originally had, it took five passes to achieve the same result

Cycles might be good - but it's a shame about the graininess!

@SteveW Quite.. (though this was only 100 samples, with less light then really ought be :P)
And there is always Lux and YafaRay as well.

If you are using Raytrace Transparency then this problem could be due to the Depth setting:

The default Depth of 2 is often not enough to give you all of the possible light inter-refractions, resulting in empty 'holes'.
Failing that, try this: In the Transparency panel set 'Alpha' to 0.1, 'Fresnel' to 2.0 and 'Blend' to 1.5 (You might need to juggle with these a bit).
With Alpha set to 0.0 (as in your settings) the shadow areas are very dark and dense, and Fresnel has no value to work on.
Also, for this 'glass' material I don't think you need Mirror, Subsurface Scattering or Receive Transparent to be on.

I have the depth up to 8 on both transparency and reflection, does it need to be higher than that?

@Josh OK, so this answer probably doesn't apply. Maybe you could add those details to your question.

I added all of the details of the material to the question. Apologies for any inconvenience I may have caused.

@Josh No problem, I've added your pictures to your question.

@SteveW I think Mirror is necessary if you want any reflections like most glass does in real life, though it will probably look glassy enough without them.

@gandalf3, you're right :) When I was experimenting, I had the Mirror 'Reflectivity' set to 0.1 (as in Josh's settings) and saw no difference with, or without Mirror. Now I realise that 'Reflectivity' must be cranked up, a lot, to show the reflections.


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Texture painting on an existing material
Is it possible to texture paint on a material that has been already assigned to an object?

Welcome to BSE.  Cycles Render or Blender Render? Static image or animated image?  A Blender screen capture of your situation would help to clarify.  Image such as PNG ....... or Blender/Cycles Material?

There are numerous ways to paint, combine images, and composite.  Please see ......... http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/43176/how-can-i-get-the-clone-tool-in-texture-painting/43267#43267 .  Please know that there are many ways to paint.  GIMP is something seen often here.  Please note that texture paint has a destination image. Image type PNG for example. Rather then the Cycles Render or Blender Render concept of [material].  I am trying to distinguish between a complex dynamic material and a saved image/texture/.png statically saved on disk.

The answer is YES! And these are the steps you begin with:

Make sure to UV unwrap your model.
Apply a material, create and add an image texture.
Go to Texture Paint mode, and start painting directly on the model.

IMPORTANT
Remember to save the painted texture to a file or pack the image directly inside
your blend file, before you lose it!

Thanks for your quick response as well as your answer. My problem was that I knew that to texture paint you need to add an image in the UV editor that will be the canvass you paint on and with a color material already added to my object the canvass color became the new background color to paint on, well, just before I read your answer I discovered that when the box pops up when you are adding the New Image in the UV editor you can slide the alpha to zero and have a transparent canvass to paint on, so now I know of two ways to do it, thanks again for your help!

So your problem been solved? If yes then please mark the answered button ... or was your problem not solved by my answer?


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Ambient color of material
When selecting the color of a material, I have the option to change diffuse and specular color. Where do I change the ambient color?
When I export to .obj/.mtl, I get Ka 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000, which I then need to adjust manually.
How can I set this value in Blender?
According to phong model, every object has ambient, diffuse, and specular color. That's why exporting to .obj/.mtl has Ka Kd Ks elements. However, in blender I can only set specular and diffuse color. How can I set ambient color resulting non-zero values of Ka after exporting to .obj/.mtl?

Ambient color? Under the world settings you can change that, but I don't know that it exports . . .

@NoviceInDisguise it does.


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Include Other Objects in Sun Lens Flare Compositing Project
I created a Sun Lens Flare project by nodes compositing.
If I add some objects to the scene, the problem is when rendered, those other objects are not showed.
Rendering with Cycles. How to include and view other objects in this scene?
Here's the attached blend file:
Sun Lens Flare.blend

I mean when I add a e.g. cube on the 3D view scene, it cannot be viewed when rendered. The 3D view scene contains a circle, suppose it could view other objects that I place on the 3D view mode.

Thanks for a really quick reply. Here's a video recording about the problem that I am having right now. It should take a bit of time to download the file. Sorry because the file size is 26mb. http://ubuntuone.com/4E0T6ThTUtGztGl00CsE1O

In the node editor, you just have to plug the input of Composite node into the Add node output :

Thanks a lot! It worked! But can I get rid of the ugly white background? Because I want to add this lens flare to my future project. Thanks for the help!

@JimmyJommy Try enabling Transparent in Render settings > Film

I am really sorry but can you tell me where is the render settings? Do you mean Render Layers or something like that? I am really sorry because I am quite new to blender.

The render settings can be found in the properties panel, it's the tab with the little camera. See here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Interface/Panels

@gandalf3 I checked transparent but it could not show up the lens flare. I want to use the lens flare as a filter so I can add to other projects.

@JimmyJommy Please ask for it in another question (after searching if the topic is not already covered)


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Batman cape material
How do I create a material for Batman's cape? I have already tried a black diffuse shader, but it is not good. I need some lights highlights so I tired glossy, too much highlights. So I made roughness higher, still bad.

Welcome to Blender.SE. You're asking for a tutorial, which is outside the scope of this site. Please narrow your question...

Use Mix Shaders. To the First slot add a Velvet Shader with an almost black color. To the second slot add another Mix Shader. To the second mix shaders First slot add simply an almost black Diffuse shader. To the second mix shaders second slot add a brighter colored Glossy Shader with a high roughness. The second mix shaders Fac value should be low. Experiment with the two Fac values.


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Edit Mode Symmetry Behavior Change?
I had an asymmetrical mesh, which I wanted to be symmetrical in one of it's shape keys. I did this successfully by going into edit mode, enabling x-axis symmetry, and moving one vertex, which caused to mesh to instantly become symmetrical.
I want to do this with a second mesh, but when I enable symmetry and move a vertex this time, only that one vertex moves and the mesh doesn't become symmetrical.
How do I get the symmetry to work they way it did with the first mesh?

I found a work-around:
Enable topology mirror, select all vertices in edit mode, move the mesh a little ways along an axis, and then reset the movement along that axis back to zero in the 'move' box that appears in the bottom left corner. This makes the mesh instantly symmetrical.

Your object is probably not symmetrical anymore, you could symmetrize again (top bar > Mesh > Symmetrize then select the axis in the Operator Box) but you may not want to do it for some reason (and in that case I don't see any easy solution):

Thank you. Unfortunately I don't think symmetrize is an option because it wouldn't work for a shape key. My first mesh was also asymmetrical, yet by moving a vertex with symmetry enabled it immediately made it symmetrical. I don't know why it is behaving differently with my other asymmetrical mesh.


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Merging layers? objects? in the Outliners
I drew an outline of a head in Grease Pencil. I mistakenly used two different Grease Pencil layers? objects? in the Outliner under Collection. How do I merge them into one layer under the Head Outline group? I have tried copy and pasting, clicking and dragging, and nothing works. I eventually want to join it all together as one object.


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Help Needed: Baking Hair Dynamics Crashes Blender - Seeking Solutions for Animation Workflow
I'm working on an animation project using CLO3D, Blender, and Unreal Engine, but I've encountered an issue with Blender freezing when I try to bake hair dynamics for fur.
Workflow:
1.CLO3D: Animate the fabric.
2.Blender: Import the animated fabric as FBX, apply fur using hair particles.
3.Unreal Engine: Export the fur animation from Blender as Alembic and import it into Unreal Engine.
Current Issue:
Blender freezes when I try to bake hair dynamics. The Hair Dynamics Cache option causes Blender to freeze during the baking process.
Previous Issue:
This process worked before, without the need to bake the fur, but when importing the alembic as groom in Unreal Engine (If I don't import as groom, there is no fur in my asset), I loose all my UVs with transparencies and patterns because Unreal doesn't read them, and instead reads it as if it was hair of a person, when its actually a mask with fur, transparencies and colours.
So, I need a way to bake the fur with the UVs before exporting to Unreal Engine. But Blender keeps crushing
Steps I've Tried:
-Reducing the number of particles.
-Simplifying dynamics settings.
-Baking in smaller segments.
How can I bake hair dynamics without Blender freezing?
Are there alternative workflows to efficiently handle and bake fur animation?
How can I maintain UVs with transparencies and patterns when importing the fur into Unreal Engine?
System Specifications:
Operating System: Windows 11
Blender Version: 3.5.1
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 6800H with Radeon Graphics, 3201 MHz, 8 cores, 16 threads
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
RAM: 32 GB

I've no experience with hair dynamics but you could try updating to a supported version of Blender and see if that helps. The latest LTS version of Blender 3 which should use the same settings as your version is 3.6.14. It looks as if there was a fix for Blender freezing when baking in version 3.6.13 but I don't know whether that was for the same reason as you're seeing.

Hi Jhon, thanks for your answer. I'll try updating and see how it works!


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Hair compression techniques
I recently purchased hair with a very high resolution, and I need to use it in Clo3D. Unfortunately, the software struggles with such heavy assets. As a fashion designer, working in Clo3D is essential because I rely on fast, straightforward rendering while maintaining a realistic avatar, which is crucial for my projects.
The problem I’m facing is that the hair I bought is made of dense geometry, resulting in an extremely large file. Additionally, it doesn't integrate well with Clo3D, showing glitches—especially at the hair tips:

I've noticed that simpler hair models that use texture maps work better with Clo3D:

Since the software handles lighter geometry more efficiently while still achieving realistic results, I’m wondering if it’s possible to simplify the hair's geometry and bake it into texture maps to use in Clo3D?
If anyone has experience with this process or can recommend useful tutorials, I would greatly appreciate the guidance. I haven’t been able to find the specific information I need.
Thank you in advance!
Ps; I tryied using decimate modifier but my pc crushes.

Try putting the hair mesh into EDIT mode and then menu::mesh::cleanup::decimate and choose a lower value than the 1.0 offered, which is 100% (no reduction).  So 0.3 would be 1.0 - 0.3 or 70% reduction in mesh.   I often find that hair can be greatly decimated with no visible problems.

Compared to using cards for hairs it will still be magnitudes higher polycount. If the hairs were made out of curves, i would try something like this. But if they are full meshes, I can't think of an easy way to quickly turn them into cards.


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Can Blender export to the COLLADA format?
Can Blender export to the COLLADA format?
I tried going to File → Export, but COLLADA was not an option.
I'm using Blender 2.66.1 on Ubuntu 13.04.

Interesting. Should be there. It's the first option for me. Blender 2.67a

Can you try this on the latest version and update your answer? Where did you install Blender from? The Irie PPA?

Yes, it can. Make sure you're using blender official from http://blender.org

Are you sure that you went to the 'export' menu and not 'save as'? I also saw "Collada (Default) (.dae)" as my first option. Blender 2.66a

As @aditia mentions, official builds (http://www.blender.org) have COLLADA option enabled by default. If you get builds from other locations (apt sources, graphicall.org, other linux distros) you might get one that doesn't have it turned on.

collada is a build-option, unofficial builds may disable it.

FYI: I also have blender 2.66 from the ubuntu repositories and it does not have the collada exporter. I will try irie's PPA

Debian's blender is built without COLLADA support, there's an old bug/whish but guess didn't gone far, in 2.71 still miss, that's annoying because seem the standard to export to three.js #694879

I use Blender builds from the irie PPA, and I have it by default:

Installing from the PPA:

Add the PPA: ppa:irie/blender (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:irie/blender)
Update your sources (Ubuntu Software Center does this automatically, but you will need to do it manually if adding from the command line). (sudo apt-get update)
Install blender (this package is 2.6x from git) (sudo apt-get install blender)

More info: https://askubuntu.com/questions/169542/how-do-i-install-the-latest-blender-3d-builds-from-a-ppa

Collada support is enabled and available in these builds.

Thank you! I was using the default provided in the Ubuntu Software Center. With the version from the irie PPA, everything works.

I wasn't sure you wanted commandline stuff, but I see you added it ;)

Your build probably wasn't compiled with COLLADA support, otherwise it should be there. Make sure you download an official release from the official site.

Collada file export should come with Blender 2.66a. However, if it isn't installed, there are a number of external plug-ins you can use to get full-featured Collada compatibility.
The best one of these you can download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/colladablender/.
If that doesn't work for you, you can always try exporting to one of the other file type options, and then using an external program to import/convert into a Collada file.
====
Please note: the above link points to a blender 2.49 script. it will not work with recent Blender versions!


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What does the Cycles Fresnel Node do?
What does the Fresnel node (in cycles) do? I know that it kind of does rim selection(similar to rim lighting), but I'm not exactly sure what it's doing. I've seen it used in many tutorials, but I can't find any clear explanations.
What's the explanation, and which situations make sense to use it?

2 minutes of googling would give you some quite nice answers

@zeffii I can't find any good explanations on Google.

an image search for fresnel shader can probably say more than trying to read about it.

@zeffii that's a really good idea, thanks!

The Fresnel node outputs which percentage of light would be reflected off a glossy layer, with the rest being refracted through the layer. The most common use is to mix between two BSDFs using it as a blending factor in a mix shader node.
For a simple glass material you would mix between a glossy refraction and glossy reflection. At grazing angles more light will be reflected than refracted as happens in reality.
For a two layered material with a diffuse base and a glossy coating, you can use the same setup, mixing between a diffuse and glossy BSDF. By using the fresnel as blending factor you're specifying that any light which is refracted through the glossy coating layer would hit the diffuse base and be reflected off that.
For the Cycles node it is assumed that this glossy layer is a simple dielectric material with an index of refraction. Different and more advanced Fresnel equations exist but are not currently implemented. More advanced layering models exist but fresnel mixing is a commonly used approximation.

note that there are many different implementations of Fresnel equations. you should use it carefully.

But what is the logic behind using it as a blend factor, what if the glossy input is in the first shader and the diffuse in the second shader. Would it go other way around(as opposed stated above and go like:" any light which is refracted through the diffuse coating layer would hit the glossy base and be reflected off that."?

What it does is that it distinguishes between those areas that would be totally reflective with the given index of refraction and those that wouldn't, letting you tweak your shader accordingly. I assume you know what index of refraction is, if not you should read up on it on wikipedia.
In most general cases you'd rather want to use the glass BSDF directly, but there are non-standard uses in which the fresnel value can be used for other purposes than to simulate translucent materials of differing density.
I seem to recall someone using it to tweak a car paint shader once, but having read about that months ago I'm afraid I don't have the link at hand. Also months ago, also without a link to it, I recall someone creating an ice shader utilizing fresnel input. Both SHOULD be in some thread over at Blender Artists if you're curious enough to go looking.
Short version: for advanced materials it's sometimes desirable to access the fresnel value outside of the default glass shader.


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Integration of Mapbox key in blender for the 3D building
Can we import 3D buildings from Mapbox direct into blender or there is any other way to import buildings. I am not talking about OSM. I want to import mapbox buidlings

Hello, you seem to assume we know what mapbox is, could you elaborate a little bit on that ?


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How to Increase Bevel Segments in Blender Using a Touchpad?
Hello Blender Community,
I am currently learning Blender using Blender Guru's donut tutorial, and I've encountered an issue while trying to increase the bevel segments of a cylinder without a mouse. In the tutorial, the instructor uses the scroll wheel to add more segments, but I am using a laptop touchpad. For more information, I'm using Blender 4.1.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far:
Manual Workarounds:
Attempted to use keyboard shortcuts, but couldn’t find a suitable alternative for scrolling.
Tried to use AutoHotkey to simulate mouse scrolls, but it didn’t work as expected.
Changing Input Settings:
I looked into changing the keymap settings in Blender but couldn't figure out how to map the scrolling function to keyboard shortcuts effectively.
I’m looking for:

Any built-in Blender shortcuts or settings that can help increase bevel segments without a mouse.
Recommendations for add-ons that could provide this functionality.
Advice from users who have faced and solved similar issues with touchpad use in Blender.
Thank you for your assistance!

The shortcuts for the number of segments of the bevel operation are Numpad+ and Numpad-. You can change them in the settings 3D View > Bevel Modal Map > Increase Segments and ... > Decrease Segments. The shortcuts to change the size of the "circle" of Proportional Editing are Page Up and Page Down. For scrolling and zooming, try to use 2 fingers on the touchpad and do a zoom-in/zoom-out gesture. (doesn't work on every touchpad)

Look into Emulate Numpad/3ButtonMouse functionality which comes with Blender.


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Multiple animations for one character
My character is made of multiple objects. I have tried using the action editor, but that doesnt allow for multiple objects to be animated. I just need an idle, walk and jump animation. Is there a way to do this without multiple blend files?

Hello, for this kind of task it would be better to use an armature, if you want each limb to be a separate object, parent each of them to each bone of the armature

Yes, as @moonboots is saying NLA and the action editor are best used when you animate an armature.

Before using NLA -- which I use to implement/integrate multiple basic animations -- I would 1) create a new scene with a linked target object, 2) create multiple Scenes (full copy) of that linked object scene (saves filespace), 3) animate each scene's object into a new action (e.g. walk cycle), use AE to rename the action with something more descriptive, 4) then use another Full Copy Scene (of a linked object scene) with the NLA editor to combine/sequence your named actions.

I've added a rigid armature now, thank you!

Firstly I recommend moonboots suggestion of using armatures for characters.  Nonetheless this answer will apply to armatures or mesh objects animatable.
You're question is more about integrating separate actions such as walk or jump cycles.
Before using NLA -- which I use to integrate multiple basic animations -- I would....

create a base scene with the object mesh defined:

create a full copy, delete the objects that will be animated, and then go back to the obj-definition scene and link them:

From this scene create a full copy for each type of animation (e.g., walk cycle), and in these scenes, animtate the objects and edit the name in the AE to something more referential:

Finally in the scene you want to combine (NLA), selected each object in turn and in AE drop-down locate the action in the drop-down, Push Down (to NLA), and drag/drop and slide for your timing of each and possibly create transitions:

my rudimentary example:
If this look daunting, well, so are many techniques in the arcane world of 3d modeling n animation!


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why is my texture bake leaving dark spots
im not sure why after baking a high poly texture to my low poly it is leaving dark spots

Could be a number of things. Can you share your .blend file? You can upload it using the editor (by [edit]ing your question).

Im not sure if this is the answer to every problem but instead of doing the texture bake with tangent i did it with object space.
so for the space type you can do object space or tangent i switched it to object space. then in the node editor i switched the normal map type to object space as well and this resulted in my model not having dark spots.

Hi, thanks for the post. This site is not a regular forum, answers should be substantial, stand on their own, and thoroughly explain the solution and required steps. One liners and short tips rarely make for a good answer. If you can, [edit] your post and provide some more details about the procedure and how it works, perhaps add a few images illustrating some steps and final result. See How to write a good answer?, otherwise it may be converted to a comment.


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My texture has uncolored edges in my mesh
Could be a problem of my model, Im new at this. When exporting (This case onto Roblox) that uncolored edges are there. I started with a plane mesh and I made a Smart UV Project to color It. In Blender I can only see It from a far distance. In Roblox Its just like an uncolored edge in the texture

Can you take a look at the image texture in the Image Editor and zoom in to see what is going on? That almost looks like cavity masking was turned on when the image was being painted. Also, in the 3d view go to Edit Mode and select a face close to the issue and press the period key on the numpad and it should zoom to the face.


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How to create multiple actions (animations) from modifiers and export them with the model?
I'm trying to make a Slime monster with a wave modifier animation for idle and one for wobbling motion when moving forward.
So I have two questions:

How to bake a modifier animation into a fbx file?
How to have two modifier animations as actions into a single fbx?

Is that possible?
Thanks


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How to remove interior faces while keeping exterior faces untouched?
I built something Minecraft style model by cubes. Now I met a problem: when I'm trying to remove all interior faces, it appears that some exterior faces are influenced inevitably. I wonder if there is some better way to do it better.

P.S.: There are three things I've tried:

Non-manifold checking (Ctrl Shift Alt M)
Select Interior Faces (Select -> Interior Faces)
3D Print Toolbox (Addon)

I didn't work it out so far, which leaves me no choice but manually deselect those faces I didn't want to remove, which takes quite a bit time for other cases.

There are answers like this Merge touching faces on model. But I don't think it works exactly in my case.

EDIT: Is there any faster way than enabling Limited Selection to Visible then manually deselect them from different views? (it will not work effectively in complex cases that require similar need)

Select Interior Faces (Select -> Interior Faces) - does exactly this, if it doesn't work. something very strange is happening. Listed steps in my answer.

For this special case you might use a script. I.e. something like this to select double faces if you just move cubes around.

See also the answer I came up with to another question http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57540/automated-way-to-make-select-interior-faces-ignore-select-faces-that-are-visib/57617#57617

@AndyRay Yes, I also thought about that. That's a workaround for complex things. I'll try your script thx.

Update, this is working in Blender 2.81 (see: T68401)

Use the following steps:

Enter Editmode
Set the Selection type to Faces
Select all
Vertices -> Merge -> By Distance
Deselect all
Select -> Select All by Trait -> Interior Faces
Delete

You say Select -> Select All by Trait -> Interior Faces didn't work; I expect it's because you didn't remove doubles first.
Tip
After this, try Limited Dissolve, it gets rid of redundant geometry which can be useful in examples like this (if you don't have UV's or per-face materials set differently on each face).

There aren't any doubles in the mesh, the steps result in the last image shown in the question.

I think I know why. In Blender, if we select all edges that form any face (in this case, four edges form a quad face), then the face has to be selected too (when Face Select mode is enabled). This is a law of Blender I bet. :( Maybe a solution would be some operator like "Remove Interior Faces", so that we can skip the selection step, and that can well solve this problem, because interior faces are always unwanted in 99.99% cases. Correct me if I'm wrong.

That makes sense, but I'm not sure that's the problem either. Doing it in face mode ought to avoid that, but it doesn't.. According to the tool tip for the remove interior ("Select faces where all edges have more than two face users" I assume "face users" == connected faces? if so, could it be changed to something like "Select faces where all edges have more than two connected faces"?), those exterior faces should not be selected. Yet they are.. Is this a bug in the operator? (selecting faces whos edges only have two "face users"?)

Yes. What is also strange is in the 3D Printing Toolbox addon, this screenshot was taken when checking non-manifolds. We can see the faces with all four edges selected still keep unselected, which means it is still possible to break the law?

@Campbell, I've never expected this question drawing over 10,000 views until I just got a golden "Famous Question" badge... It indicates that ppl are very eager to find a better way to build minecraft style things in BL, while building by cubes is the most preferable one. After reviewing it again, I still think the Select Interior Face option is not ideal here unless it allows to select interior faces ONLY. However, It seems the current algorithm is based on non-manifold detection, which is not ideal for handling faces (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

Select Interior Faces has moved to: Select > Select All By Similar Trait > Interior Faces

Update, this is working in Blender 2.81

This doesn't work in versions 2.93+ and up to 4.1. There is actually still no consistent way to remove interior faces.

Here are the steps that worked for me, at least in the simple case.
WARNING This does not technically remove "interior faces," it removes duplicate faces that exist in the same place, on meshes with poor initial topology.
Here's my mesh in solid view, to show the overall topology:

Inside we can see all the cube faces are made up of triangles that point in different directions, but still there's lots of interior faces I don't want:

1. Merge duplicate vertices
You may not have to do this, but the way my mesh is constructed of cubes, I have to.

Go into edit mode  > Vertices
Press Ctrl+v d to delete duplicate vertices. Or Use this menu:

If this worked, you will see something like  at the top of the screen.
2. Clean up faces with "Limited Dissolve"

Go into Face mode
Select all faces by pressing a
Run limited disolve (there is no keyboard shortcut for this). It's found under Mesh > Clean Up > Limited Dissolve

The new topology uses quads now instead of triangles:

3. Remove interior faces
Only after completing the above steps did "select interior faces" work for me.

Deselect all faces by pressing a
Select interior faces (there is no keyboard shortcut for this) with Select > Select All by Trait > Interior Faces

Now your overlapping faces are selected, and you can delete them!

See also this answer to my other question about how to do this automatically in a script, which improves on this answer using raytracing.

This is actually quite simple, switch to Face select, select everything and then using MMB and making sure Limit Selection to Visible is ticked (this prevents any face not being from being selected), orbit around the model and deselect all outer faces, then use X to delete the inner faces.

Thanks iKIsR. Surely I know that. Just... it requires more steps through, I mean, we have to change view(s) for times and deselect faces again and again. Luckily this is a very simple case. What if there are somewhere that can be hard to see from view? What I'm looking for is a quicker way. Something like clicking Merge Selected Objects button while holding Ctrl in Asset Sketcher.

It may not be the super fast method, but in case of huge objects it could be useful.

Delete interior faces (Select--> Interior Faces).
Select the whole object and choose (Mesh--> Clean up--> Fill Holes)

Select the whole mesh, unwrap it using 'Smart UV Project' and click the 'sync button'. Now select the parts which are the ngons.

Press Shift+H to see only selected parts in 3d view. Fill the gaps extruding edges with snap tool enabled. Use Shift+ R to fasten the process.

I think things have improved now or there is a better way.
Select > Select Non Manifold (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+m), then Select > Select Inverse

It was mentioned in the initial question that he already tried using Select Non-Manifold.

This won't work because cubes are overlapping but don't have any shared geometry. It will work once the cubes are cut at the intersections; the tricky part is how to cut them precisely.

This solution worked fine for my problem to remove interior faces

Switch to Vertex select.
Select all.
Vertex> Merge Vertices> By Distance (Remove doubles).
Select> Select all by Trait> Non Manifold (only check Vertices).
Switch to Face select.
Delete faces.

If your mesh has duplicate inner faces. You can fix this issue easily just follow these steps:

Go to edit mode
Press L and select all faces
Press the right button on the mouse and go to SEPARATE -> SELECTION = SOLVED!
Move the selection to the side and erase the inner faces that were separated

All the Best - Wolves Studio

this is the simplest solution I could find:
you could go into edit mode, select all exterior faces by going around and box selecting, which makes it impossible to choose faces you cannot see. then you would go into "select" in the top row, and clicking "invert", which would invert your selection, so that you only have the non-visible faces selected. then you just press x to delete them, and you're done.

A faster way to create minecraft models is to use the Remesh modifier with 'blocks' type.

It would be useful for some cases, but definitely not here.


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How to switch different sequences of characters with Animation Nodes?
What I want to achieve with Animation Nodes is below:
For example, Using four text objects to represent 1,9,9 and 8 individually, then I want to switch it to 2016, which means
1 to 2 (the switch sequence should be [1,2])
9 to 0 (the switch sequence should be [9,0])
9 to 1 (the switch sequence should be [9,0,1])
8 to 6 (the switch sequence should be [8,9,0,1,2,3,4,5,6])
Then, I want to do both animation styles like below:
A:
when 1 to 2 is finished, the 9 to 0 animation will continue, then 9 to 1, then 8 to 6.
And B:
all four digits switching animation can start together and end together, in other words, with the same duration.
Here is the file to start:

Oh that's an interesting problem. Here is my solution:
I started by making a group that 'interpolates' between two characters (numbers in this case, but I wanted it to be more generic).
The group takes the Start and End character as well as a list of the ordered characters. Additionally it has a Step input. The output is the current interpolated character after the given amount of steps.

With that given the first effect you described is fairly easy to archieve:

The second one is a little more complicated because we have to calculate the amount of required steps to get the timing right. The group that does that is very similiar to the other group.

The two most important nodes I used to archieve the effects are the Search List Element and Shift List node. This screenshot hopefully shows how they work:

[EDIT:]
To have a text list as input you can reuse most of the existing nodes. The final setup looks like so (I don't show the nodes that did not change here):

This is a nice one. Actually instead of two years, there is a "year list" among which I want to switch in order. So how can I do that? (take the style A for example)

I modified my answer :)

Brilliant! And I managed to add Character Gap and Word Gap options based on your solution. Now we can see that AN can be a real B-LEGO. :D I'll start a bounty in 12 hours. You certainly deserve it, enjoy!

Animation Nodes

4 Text Objects have their text data set from a final string. Image above.  Click images to see more detail.  Node Frame GUI visual indicates this final step. The [Loop Text] subprogram is invoked with 4 Blender Text objects contained in the Object List.

A final string is composed of two starting strings which are in the String list. Change the starting strings to suit you. The offset and interval determine how many characters each string contributes.  Frame indicates this first step.  Please excuse junk nodes. Image above.

Blender timeline indicates where in the progression the text object changes should be.  Please evaluate and improve.

If you are willing to have the text completely change on a frame change, I would recommend you create multiple text objects and animate the hide_render property (which is a camera icon in the outliner).
There are a number of existing answers on stackexchange related to animated text like

How to make an animated survey graph?
Can I create a timer overlay for a video file to use in the VSE? How?
How can I make dynamic text in an animation?


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How can I check the chosen preset in Python?
How can I check which preset a user has chosen via Python?
For example, I would like to check whether a user is utilizing the default Interaction preset or the Maya preset.
Is this possible in Python? Or can I only check against specific values (such as select_mouse)?

Related bug report: https://developer.blender.org/T34454

That's not possible in Blender's current preset system implementation.
Plain preset execution operator, script.execute_preset, merely executes the script file corresponding to selected preset and changes the menu title temporarily. It doesn't store nor provide access to preset selection info. I needed this feature once, and had to subclass the operator myself to get it.
Yes, you can only check specific values modified by the preset's script file.


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How to simulate magnetism In Blender?
Is there a way to create magnetism in Blender? Using the physics engine or the game engine, I want to create BuckyBalls (the magnetic toys) within Blender.

Yes, magnetic forces are certainly possible with Blender, but I'm wondering what this has to do with Bucky balls?

@Gwenn A quick google search reveals this..
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+bucky+balls

The 2.66 release-logs included a nice video showing rigid body simulation's support for force fields.

@gandalf3 Oh, apparently there's also a kind of magnetic toy called BuckyBalls, not the carbon nanomaterial. The OP's probably referring to the toy.

Some more or less related fun: http://www.blendernation.com/2016/04/23/bge-katapult-simulation/, http://www.blendernation.com/2016/05/01/sisyphus-engine-%e2%84%96-1-steampunk-inspired-marble-machine-animation-using-blender-physics-engine/

Assuming that you are indeed referring to the magnetic toys and not the carbon nanomaterial, then you have a couple of different options.

Technically, you could model the magnetic attraction between all of the individual balls by using Blender's Force Field physics. You can enable this physics simulation in the Properties> Physics menu. However, this would be very inefficient. Since the magnetic attraction between these balls is so strong, they're almost always touching each other directly and you would hardly see any effects of the simulation.

Instead, you can just model the balls themselves, and keep most of them touching each other.
If you only have a few of them, it's probably fastest just to control their movements by hand. However, if you need to animate them more efficiently, you can use a combination of Array modifiers (parented to empty objects for convenience) and Transform/Relationship constraints as appropriate to keep the right balls locked to each others surfaces.

BuckyBalls:

Lol yes. I meant the magnetic toys. I meant to link, but couldn't figure out how exactly stack exchange handled linking.

I appreciate your answer. This has helped me research further into what I am wanting to do. Thank you.

Could you expand your answer on how the force field should be set up? I tried adding a force field to two active spheres, but they do not move, so the setup seems non-obvious to me. Thank you!

Suzanne, exactly my thoughts. Non-obvious.  I posed a fresh question, maybe you can answer it if you found a satisfying answer.

The only possible way as of 2.77a is to write your own engine for magnetism in python. The hint how to do that as an addon is here:
Create custom physics for an object with python
Explanation why it is not possible:
A Force field cannot be a Rigid body actor, so they are only passive in the scene and cannot move by themselves. Force fields do not act on each other. Parenting force fields on rigid body actors creates a dependency cycle.
A Magnetic force field is not what you think it is, it only acts on moving particles. Every force field effects all particles or rigid bodies the same except Charge force field. That is why only this one comes in mind, because we want to attract one kind of magnetic pole and repel the other kind. But Charge force fields work only on charged particles and you cannot constrain 2 particles to behave like fixed pair and be a magnetic dipole.

If you actually want to simulate the magnetic forces, you could use a Force or Magnetic force field with rigid body simulation.
you would need to use force field empties parented to the rigid bodies, as it seems force field objects are not effected by other force fields..
also particles with a self effecting force could work, or also with a magnetic force field.

Can you add some more detail to your answer?


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How to see the process of a render
so i see some YouTuber rendering an image but when they render it I can see some little dots so I wonder show can I do that, I try to search it at google but I don't found any result.
This is the Example

All I can see is a certain amount of background noise so presumably the render is in the denoising phase. You can usually see the render progress in the top-left of the render window.

This is the raytracing noise, and visible only at low samples (and worsened by scene complexity, low light and complex shaders calculations like volumetrics). It is not a feature, most people work hard to get rid of this noise as much as possible. It is a byproduct of how raytracing functions. And though the longer a render computes the less noise you have, the amount of noise isn't really representative of render progress, especially these days when things like denoising exist. If you want something to guesstimate progress in raytraced rendering, looking at your render stats is way more informative:

Samples progress, elapsed time, last frame time if you render an animation, ...

If you don't see any noise in your render, it can be multiple things. Some of which:
Your render is too simple for noise to be significant. This is what the default cube looks like with just 10 samples:

Your hardware calculates samples too fast for you to notice the early noisy samples. Though it's a good "issue" to have, since it means less waiting. And also easy to identify by rotating your viewport around: it's fluid and capped at 1 sample, until you stop moving:

You are not using any ray tracing in your render. I.E. you are rendering with Eevee, the only ray tracing available in that render engine is optional and disabled by default. The workbench engine doesn't have any raytracing at all.
You have denoising enabled. By default, it is only enabled for final rendering and applied at the end of all samples. For viewport rendering, it is disabled by default, but otherwise it has the particularity of being applied as soon as the first sample, giving a mushy bur noise-free look at the first sample.


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Is it possible to limit the "Cycles Shadow from Transparency" per Object?
There is an option in the properties panel, Render > Light Paths > Shadows that toggles "using transparency of surfaces for rendering shadows" for the whole scene.
I like to render architectural stills or short films. When I uncheck this option the rendering speed greatly increases, but some parts such as fences and curtains don't work very well, although the quality of shadows of trees, grass and so on is sufficient.
How is it possible to change this option per-object?

There will be a "Transparent Shadows" option per material in version 2.68 and the latest Blender builds.
Using a Light Path node to disable transparency helps and achieves the same visual result, but it still needs to execute the shader to find out, which costs some performance.
Update:
This is now accessible in materials > settings:

I thought that when a mix shaders factor is exactly eqal to 1 or 0, then the other shader is not calculated. Cycles could do such optimizations. Anyway, is the mentioned option already in trunk?

That's not the case unfortunately, if there is another node plugged it doesn't always skip things (unless you use Open Shading Language which has smarter optimizations). This Transparent Shadows option is in trunk now.

I think you could edit the node tree on the materials that are transparent, but shadow should not use transparency, the following way: Before the output node, add a mix shader that mixes the original main shader with a simple solid black shader, and plug the IsShadowRay input to the mix factor. This should theoretically do it. Currently I am at work, so no Blender here, later I might try it and add images.


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Append Texture Coordinates
I have a chessboard object that I've appended to the file. However, no matter what I do I can't edit the behavior of the texture coordinates. 3d Texture view and UV window clearly show the appropriate coordinates, but the render clearly has old coordinates.
I tried deleting the textures and making new ones by selecting the same images in the file browser pop-up(switch-up). No change. I also duplicated the object and deleted the original; 'no change (not sure if all this is silly).
I'll add a link to the file tonight, as soon as I can connect to the internet with the other machine/have access to thumb drive.

are you using cycles, BI, or something else?
For cycles, you might have to add a texture coordinates node.
For BI, you might have to switch the coordinates to be UV in the image mapping section.

ctdabomb has a point.  Just because you see a texture in the 3D view doesn't mean your materials are set up correctly.  You might want to create a second scene where you have a bunch of square meshes with UV coordinates to test each of your materials.  Once you get the materials working on the squares, the original scene will probably render properly.

Ha! yes! So funny that that didn't occur to me. there's been so much integration with the last several releases, I forgot there was a time when working on game textures was a completely different deal.
Thanks guys!


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Is netrender only useful for multiple frames?
Trying to speed-up render times on a large single-frame Cycles image by using netrender and a spare machine. The spare is running (in separate terminals) a master and a slave, and the main computer is running a client and another slave.
Pressing F12 from the client works to render the image, however only the slave on the client machine is used. Killing that slave will then cause the slave on the spare to be used. It does not appear possible to have them work in concert. Is it correct to conclude that netrender only divvies frames to slaves, not tiles?

AFAIK, it does not (yet):
From the wiki:

Todo:
   Dispatch single frame as tiles

however, another fairly simple way to do this is to render relativity low samples on each machine with different seeds, then combine the images afterwards.
(see this post for more info)

I tried the seed idea last night, doing one render on my very underpowered home laptop and anther with a different seed on the remote work server, and just by mixing two layers in GIMP with the top one at 50% transparency, i saw dramatic results. Thank you gandalf3 for the idea.

+1 for mentioning the seed technique; that's how Renderfarm.fi does it, AFAIK.

type '#frame' in the Seed value to give it a driver to match the current frame - then render the animation to get a set of different seeds. For each computer, render a different frame range with no overlapping.

This is depreciated now: Netrender is no more as of Blender 2.8x onwards.

You cannot use Network Render to render a single frame out-of-the-box. However, it is possible with some tweaking and post-processing.
First, extend your timeline to however many slaves you are going to use. If different slaves have different hardware configurations, you may want to multiply this by two to render slightly faster.
Then, in the Properties → Render Settings → Sampling, select the Seed field and enter the text #frame. Press Enter. (If you see a message indicating that the driver will not be automatically run, either enable autorun for drivers or reload the file as trusted; don't forget to save.) This will tie the interpolator seed to the current frame.
Then, take the Render Samples value and divide it by the number of frames in your timeline.
You can now perform a network render of your file. When your "video" is finished, you can blend the files together to obtain the final image.


text:
Path for camera from motion equation
Is there any option in blender to define path as equation?
I need to move camera by specific equation of motion. This equation is described as follows:
x = cos(t) + 0.5 * cos(4*t)
y = sin(t) + 0.5 * sin(4*t)
z = sin(4*t)

You might be able to use a driver, but I'm not sure.

You may have to use Python scripting for that.  There is another page here on StackExchange that has some solutions for this.  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8865672/how-to-move-a-camera-in-blender-2-61-with-python

Add a single key frame to the camera the go to the f-curve editor. Selcet the curve for the desired coordinate. Go to the proverties panel of the f-curve editor (if you don't have it press N to get it)
Add a Built-In Function modifier

You're looking for a "sin" type for each of your coeficients.
For example I'll do the X location formula you provided:

Remember to check the "additive" option if your have more then one term in your equation
To enter "cos" you need to use the fact that cos(x)=sin(x+pi/2) Wikipedia: Trigonometric identities
Final graph for X location:

Extension:
In your case you only needed sines and cosines, but it it would be nice if we could do it for any function. It would be nice if we had a any function modifier, but for now heres a work around:
This method is inspired by @gandalf3 comment
Add a driver to the property you want to control using a equation

Then head over to the graph editor, and change from the f-curve editor to the driver-editor. Select the property you want to add an equation to on the left hand side. Now head over the the properties panel.
There change the variable type to "single property" and select the current scene object (You must first select a scene object type). Then type in "frame_current" into the path box. If you want you can name your variable (I called mine "t")

Now all you need to do is enter your equation into the box "Expr:" Remember that this is a python expresion so a quadratic function is x**2 not x^2

If you get an error saying somthing about "Python Auto-execution disabled: reference this question.

According to the wiki, 2.70 will have support for "Basic operations from python/BKE_unit (+, , *, etc.), and math constants and functions (pi, sin, etc.)." This combined with something I read (and can't find again, atm) which indicated that many more scene variables (like #frame) will be exposed to the input boxes, should mean that you can just type the function in ;-) ...eventually
Not sure if you want to run a pre-release build, or wait that long, though ;-)


text:
Cycles procedural material displacement is different (up/down) on different faces
I've been creating a procedural material (white a bit glossy paint with rusty dents). I've created most of it without problems, but when I connect output of noise node (after few modifications) to displacement socket of material output, some of the dents are correct (downwards) and some of them are upwards. Is there a way to force it to be directed always in the opposite side of normal? (Make it always go downwards into the face)

Do you mean invert it? Or make it always go upwards?

Make it always go downwards into the face

It should be indenting in the same direction consistently, is it possible your normals are inconsistent?

@gandalf3 it isn't really possible, though it does indent always in same directiono, but not taking face normal into account

@madziorek15 Could you upload an image of what it looks like? I'm not sure I get what you mean. Also, are you using cycles experimental true displacement or just the default bump mapping?

You could use a color ramp and set the black value to a grey to add a plateau:

Node setup:

If I can read your title with this much detail, if the displacement is different on different faces, then it sounds like your normals are not all facing the same direction. You can fix this by looking in the Mesh menu (in edit mode). Select all the faces, go to Mesh->Normals-> Recalculate Outside
This will attempt to flip any normals that are facing INTO the mesh, so that they face OUT of the mesh. FYI, this doesn't work very well on non-manifold meshes.


text:
Cycles shader colour: values above 1
A quick question about shader surface colour values in Cycles.
If you set the surface colour of a shader to values greater than 1, for example the diffuse shader in the image below:

Can it be said that this material is reflecting more energy than it is receiving? e.g. will the albedo of a diffuse shader ever be pushed beyond 1 by increasing the colour values above 1?

If you push your color values above 1 your render will become physically inaccurate. You should try to keep your color values at most 1.
Glossy Shader with a color value of 1 1 1 vs 50 50 50

Diffuse Shader with a color value of 1 1 1 vs 5 5 5

As you can see once you set the color value above one the shader are emitting more light than they are receiving. If you have no light though the scene will not be illuminated by the shaders because the shaders are not actually emitting light they are acting like a multiplier.
You will also notice that in the render output certain pixels have a color value above 1

that is correct. here is an official doc, the final entry talks about this
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Materials
the gist is that values over 1 and using the "add shader" can cause the material to create light and act as an emission shader. there are times when this might be useful so its not prohibited, but if you don't need it, its not recommended...


text:
Boolean and Texts
I have used Hexagon for years but find that it sometimes crashes when trying to do Boolean operations with texts.  I have been trying to make the two tables of the Ten Commandments and have been trying to use Blender.
I did it about two years ago in Blender and lost everything on my computer so I am trying again with the latest version of Blender and am having difficulty.
I start with a cube and then get it close to the dimensions I would think the Ten Commandments might look like. I then bevel the top using the bevel modifier. But in doing it this way I don't have any cross sub divisions on the face of the object. I have tried sub dividing first but then I find that I can't bevel the top arches as far as I would like. I still don't know how to add divisions after I bevel the top. Yes I am still a novice at this program.
In any case I did figure out how to make text and turn them into an object. When I make the texts I do all four of the commandments for one side and then the other six for the other side. So this makes allot of texts to cut out.  When doing the Boolean operation in Difference sometimes nothing happens. I am thinking I need to have some sub - divisions on the face of the sized cube after it is beveled but am not really sure if this is the problem.
This whole thing about normal's is still Greek to me. I have watched some videos on how to cut letters into a cube but for some reason it does not work this easy after I bevel the top of the cube. Or it could be that Blender does not like a bunch of texts all at once.
Could someone show me a video or give me some simple steps to make my project work?

It's rather hard to tell now what's your problem exactly; please add some images of what do you have already and what type of effect are you trying to achieve.

also check to not have a negative scale, or the normals will seem fine, being not.

I think boolean operations for this type of work might be quite hard to achieve if you want good topology. I recommend you to try using Sculpt mode and make an engraving by hand...

I'm pretty sure this is covered by some of the suggested links. But here's a recap.

both objects need to be of type Mesh. (not Curve, or Text)
apply all transforms to both objects before adding the boolean modifier
The text to carve should be manifold:

no doubles (extruded text has loose parts, desirable in some scenarios, annoying in others)
all normals pointing outwards (uniform)
no self intersections due to large bevel or offset
no self intersections due to tightly kerned letters.
do use limited dissolve to simplify the geometry for the bevel.

Here for instance using the text Deoxyribonucleic Acid. When bevelled, The r self intersects, and the xy start to intersect eachother. If you take a close look at your letters you'll find more examples of non manifold geometry.
The above results in this pile of pain:

Some suggest using Remesh to fix the overlaps, but it won't create ideal geometry such as can be obtained by simply going through all the letters and taking the time to correct the self intersections.
Possible workflow
forget about the bevel until after the boolean operation, then select the deepest edges, and give them a bevel radius. That way when you notice some parts don't allow for the desired largest radius, you can tweak them individually.
Extrude Text first to desired Depth into the Receiver object.
Converted Text to Mesh

Add the boolean to the Receiver Object (in your case a slab of stone.. in my case an elongated cube). Set the boolean to difference, and pick the Object, (mine is still called Text after the conversion). Then to see that the Text is indeed extracted from the Cube, you can hide the Text from view and Render. If that fails, go through the list at the top of this post to make sure you didn't miss anything subtle.

At this point you can apply the modifier.
Selecting Edges for Bevel Weighting
Select one of the edges marking the boundary of the letter, and use the Select Similar -> Face angles to select all other border edges. Yes this selects a lot more than we need, but un-selecting from this state is easier than trying to select borders individually.

Unselecting goes like this,

keep the current selections (stay in edge selection mode)
select large regions of edges that are currently selected but don't need to be,
then press B to enable border select, then shift to switch to unselect-mode then set a border  rectangle by left clicking, dragging and then letting go when enough area is selected.  The end result is:

Notice still a few stray edges selected. that's OK we deal with those later. For convenience mark this selection as Seams. Now select any vertical edge, press Select Similar -> Direction notice all vertical edges are now selected. Press Clear Seam, this will remove any seams that we don't want. At this point the only edges marked with a seam are on the deepest edges.

Then select one seam edge, and Select Similar -> Seam (this may appear convoluted, but this is how you select all edges that have a seam). Then you can give the Edges a Bevel weight. With all the correct edges selected, drag the Edge Data -> Bevel Weight up to 1.0 (we can nitpick later). Add a Bevel modifier.

At this point I tend to select all faces and choose X -> Limited Dissolve. this turns the heavily triangulated faces into as few faces as possible. Yes this created quite a few Ngons (polygons defined by a large number of edges).
The exact settings you'll use for your Bevel modifier depend on the size of your model, think about that before going crazy :).  A note about the Bevel Modifier:

by default the Clamp Overlap is on, usually it's exactly what you want -- but in this case it's OK to have overlaps and adjust those edges involved manually.
If you don't untick Clamp Overlap it will likely look as if nothing is happening because the smallest allowed bevel radius is defined by a relationship to the shorted spanned gap.
For this example I set the Limit Method to Weight (to allow for individual adjustments) and the Width Method to Depth.

Here i'm selecting an individual edge and adjusting it's bevel weight. There may only be a couple of edges that need this treatment, they don't need to affect the overall perception of bevel.

If it's any use to you here the .blend file

Really excellent writeup zefffii, I wish I had seen that when I was working on my text stenciling addon.  https://youtu.be/kEs4qrJ73kU

Here are my assumptions as to your problems, so you know what I'm trying to address.

End Goal: You want 3D text letters chiseled out of a fairly
low-poly/low res (low number of faces and relatively simple geometry)
model.
-You have tried to use the boolean modifier and applied it with unsatisfying results.

I have run into this exact situation before when putting engravings on a beveled tile. I did the following:
Make sure your engraving object is as complex or simple as you want it to be. (For example, if you want to to bevel your text a little, or give it a rough texture.) PLEASE NOTE THAT I'M ONLY REFERRING TO THE GENERAL SILHOUETTE HERE; there is a method for even more complex shapes, like if you want a bas relief or engraving of a face, but it's not simple and involves baking maps and lighting setups. I felt it was an unnecessary complexity to this answer, given your project's requirements.
Copy this object to another layer (in case you want to tweak it later). You can do this by selecting your object in Object mode, hitting SHIFT and D at the same time, then the Esc key (this makes a duplicate of your object without affecting the original model and automatically puts you in 'grab'; the esc key keeps you from moving it around on accident), then hitting M (this moves an object between layers); a popup of a bunch of small squares should appear; pick one that doesn't have anything else on it and click it. Your object will move there.
This is what the popup looks like:

The grayed out layer are the layers you have active right now; make sure you choose one that isn't gray.
Go to the layer you moved your object to. You can do this by clicking on the layer with the orange dot in the layer selection section. This is located at the bottom of your 3D viewport, next to your Transformation Orientation dropdown menu:

Make sure only your layer with the engraving object is selected. It should be the only gray one. All layers that have objects on them have little gray spheres, and the active object is the orange sphere. This should help you find the right one. If you accidentally unselected the object, you can still find it by clicking the layers until you find the one that only has your engraving object on it. Alternately, if your scene is complex--maybe you wanted to throw this into a complicated scene with Moses or something--going over to the Outliner window, default upper right of the screen
(it looks like this:
)
and clicking on your object mode will select it and make the dot orange again, so you know where to look.
Change your engraving object's material. Now it's time to make a pure white shadeless material for your engraving object. Don't worry, it won't make your text white when we're done; what we're making right now is an alpha map of your text object to plug into your tablets as a displacement material.
Go to your materials tab. You'll find it at the top of your properties window, underneath the outliner by default. It looks like this:

You want the tab that looks like a sphere with a checkerboard in it. If you can't see it and you know your engraving object is selected, hover over the buttons you do see with your mouse, then scroll up or down with your middle mouse button. It should come into view.
Let's head on over to the Node Editor, now. This isn't one of the default windows you get when you open up Blender, so you'll have to switch the view in one of the ones you have. I usually change the timeline, because I practically never use it, but then I have to resize the window. If you like how your windows are set up, just use your biggest window for this. That window is normally the 3D View window, so we'll use that.
Look in the lower left of the window for the icon of it. It's the symbol next to the two triangles pointing in opposite directions. In this case, that symbol is a cube, but if you chose a different window, it would be another picture.

Click on the picture and switch the window to the Node Editor. It should be the the picture of two squares connected by a curved line. Your window will change into a grid, and your window toolbar will now look like this:

Since we want a new material, we'll go head and hit that button, the one with the plus sign that says 'new'. It should turn into a menu like this, now:

This should be what you see in the window, now:

This is the default placeholder material. It's fully functional, and fine as far as it goes, but it's not what we're after.
You've probably noticed that the the boxes have little orange outlines on them. This means they're selected, just like when you select objects in the 3D view or from the outliner window. We aren't going to be using the diffuse shader at all in this material, so we're going to delete it. Click on the box that says 'Diffuse BSDF'--this is the diffuse shader--until it's the only one selected, then delete it. Either 'X' or 'Delete' works here. Careful; you don't get a prompt menu about whether you want to delete something in the Node Editor window! Fortunately, undo works just fine if you make a mistake.
We're going to mix two shaders together for this material and control the interaction with a light path node. I promise it's not as complicated as it sounds. You're only going to need a total of four boxes (not counting the material output), and you don't have to mess with any settings.
Go to the 'Add' menu, then to 'Shaders'. Three of the boxes we want can be found here. You'll want to select 'Mix', 'Transparent BSDF', and 'Emission'. You can put them wherever you want and it'll still all work the same as long as you connect them to the correct sockets, but the following configuration will make it a little easier to keep track of them.

Now we connect what we have. WHERE YOU CONNECT THEM IS IMPORTANT (but not the order). To connect one box to another, you click on an output socket--the circles on the right side of the box--and drag over to an input socket--the circles on the left side of the box. Connect the Transparent BSDF shader to the middle socket on the Mix shader in this manner, then Emission shader to the bottom one. IT IS VITAL YOU HAVE THE TRANSPARENT SHADER IN THE SOCKET OVER THE EMISSION SHADER OR YOU WILL GET AN INVISIBLE LIGHT IN THE NEXT STEP. Which is cool--but it's not what we want. Next, connect the Mix output socket to the first socket in Material Output (it should say 'Surface' beside it). By now, you should have something similar to this:

Note that the Material Output doesn't have any output sockets. That's because it's the end of the line, and it's how Blender knows when the node calculations are finished, like punctuation at the end of a sentence. In the same manner, there are also nodes that don't have input sockets; input nodes. however, unlike with the Material Output node, aren't necessary to have to make a material show up on the mesh. We do need one for this, though, so go to 'Add', then 'Input', then select 'Light Path'. It should look like this:

Yeah, it's a doozy. But that's because light is pretty complicated. This helps narrow down some of the most common effects into more manageable chunks. Some of them are harder to wrap your head around than others, but the only thing you need to know for this is the 'Is Camera Ray' affects what the camera sees. Hook that output socket to the Fac input in your Mix shader. It should be the only empty one left in that box.

Okay, so, what did we just do? Well, 'Fac' means 'factor'; it controls how the two shaders plugged into the box interact. Left to default settings, it uses exactly half the strength of one mixed with exactly half the strength of the other. You could play with the value to mix in more of one than the other, but that's not where its true shine lays. If you plug in something like we just did, it will interact according to the rules of the node we hooked into it.
Basically, we made the light itself invisible. Now, you might want to know why that gets you a shadeless texture. That's because the Emission shader starts out as a shadeless object--an object that reacts to neither light nor shadow, then shoots out light rays. Get rid of those rays, and you're still left with the object.
Before we continue, we want to make sure our Transparent and Emission shaders are the correct color: white. To do this, click on the color swatch in the box next to 'Color', and make sure the saturation bar on the right--it goes from black on the bottom all the way into white on the top--is cranked all the way up in both nodes. They should already be, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Set up a new camera for saving the alpha map and add a black plane. Switch your Node Editor window back to the 3D View. We're going to add two new objects to the scene, a camera and a plane. But first, you're going to need to make sure your text object is oriented along the proper axis. You want it to face up, that is, the 'Z' axis. If you haven't applied any rotations to the object, you can do this instantly by hitting 'ALT' and 'R' at the same time, otherwise you'll have to do it manually. ('ALT and R' cancels any unapplied rotations.)
Add a camera and hit 'ALT' and 'R' at the same time, to cancel it's rotation. It should be facing straight down. Now we need to tell Blender to use this camera to render. (We're going to change it back to the original one after, don't fret.) We do that by selecting the camera, then hitting 'CTRL' and the '0' on your numpad (that's the group of keys all the way to the right; also make sure you have numlock enabled). It must be the numpad 0. THE 0 AT THE TOP OF YOUR KEYBOARD WILL NOT WORK.
Hit 'Numpad 0' to make sure it worked. Leave it in this view, and add a plane. Scale it however you want, as long as you can't see the edges inside the camera borders (the dotted lines). Also make sure it's not over or intersecting with your engraving object. It's okay if it's not exactly touching the bottom of it; this is just for the black background.
Switch your window back to the Node Editor. Make sure your plane is still selected, and add a material like you did for the engraving object. This time, all we're doing is changing the color. Click the color swatch and crank that saturation down as far as you can to black, then switch back to your 3D View window.
Render and save your alpha mask. Now we're ready to render. Hit 'F12' and wait; it shouldn't take long. This is what I got after following those steps with my feather:

Yours should look like this, only with text. Now save your image by either hitting 'F3' or clicking the 'Image' menu and selecting 'Save As Image'. You can use any image format Blender supports, but I've found I've gotten the best results with .png.
Unwrap affected area and apply alpha map as displacement. Yes, I'm afraid we're going back to the Node Editor window in this step once more. On the bright side, you can now hide all your engraving objects, or move them to another layer. We don't need them anymore. We only need the base object we're engraving onto. Select the layer that has that object on it, then select the object (or, if you don't remember where it is, select the object from the Outliner window, then go to the layer with the orange dot). Go into edit mode, either by using the dropdown menu, or the 'Tab' key. Select the face or faces where you want the engraving to appear. It doesn't have to be perfect, as long as you don't leave any face out. More is fine. You can even select the whole mesh, but that might make the UV portion a little harder to do. Make your life a little easier and try to select only what you need.
Go to the materials tab in the properties window with those faces still selected. (It's in the Properties window, right under the Outliner; the sphere with the checkers in it.) You probably already have a material applied to your base object; if you don't, add one now. Now add a second material (you need two for this method to work). You can do this by hitting the plus key on the right (the one over the minus), then the button on the bottom that says '+ New'.

Make sure your second material--the one you just added--is selected. Make sure all the faces on the base object you want engraved are still selected. Now look at the bottom of the Properties window and hit the button that says 'Assign'.

Hit the select and deselect buttons to make sure you got the faces you wanted. (They will select and deselect in the 3D View window.) Now we're going to copy the shaders from the first material and add them to the second. This is so your material will be the same as the rest of the tablet; we only want to engrave it, not change it completely. Click on first material, then switch your 3D View window to the Node Editor. Select everything. Every box should have an outline around it. Look at the bottom right. You should see a little button that looks like a clipboard with an arrow pointing diagonally up.

Clicking on this will copy all your boxes. Do this. Now go to your second material, and delete all the boxes. There should not be a single box left on the gridded window. Next to the previous button you clicked, there's another with an arrow pointing diagonally downward. Click this, and a copied set of those first boxes should appear.
The next few steps is where the magic happens. Go to the 'Add' menu (where you got your shaders earlier), the pick 'Texture' and 'Image Texture'. It looks like this:

Click on the Open button and browse your computer for the alpha map you made earlier.
Now, you would think you'd use the alpha output, but I've never gotten it to work. The color one works just as well for this, since it's black-and-white, so we'll use that. Hook the color output socket to the displacement socket on your Material Output box.
Unwrap and Render Switch windows back over to your 3D View. If you aren't in edit mode and your faces aren't still selected, take care of that, now. Hit 'U' to unwrap the faces, and select the first option. (It should just say 'Unwrap'.) Nothing seems to happen right away; that's alright. You can't see what it did, yet. There's a chance you don't need to tweak your parameters at all. Hit 'F12' to see if you like it. If you don't, click on the picture icon next to 'Render Result' (it's on the bottom menu) and select the alpha map you uploaded. You should see a bunch of orange lines and dots; these are the faces you unwrapped.

Chances are, it's not quite correct. Just move and scale these faces around until you get what you want. SCALE AND MOVE ALL THE FACES AT THE SAME TIME WHEN YOU TWEAK OR YOU WILL GET A DISTORTED IMAGE. Select and unselect all with 'A', just like in the 3D View. Once you're satisfied, render again.
And that's all there is to it! Happy blending! ^ ^

Just wanted to get back and thank everyone for the help. I have had a busy week but plan on trying these suggestions this week. Thanks for all the time an effort into putting in these pictures.

After reading through these answers I was thinking about the best way to do cut text of the reshaped cube. I tried to follow IncessantLee ideas first then got lost at the node window. I might have been doing something wrong but it appears my interface in the new blender is different than the one being used in the illustration. Then I went back and read Zeffii's comments and understood the main points that were being made.
I did get the Boolean to work with the texts. I first created the cube and sized it to shape and then beveled a rounded top. Then I added sub-divisions  modifier twice to the tablet. But looking at the new shape in wire frame mode it had plenty divisions. Then I turned the tablet into a mesh. I then made some simple texts and extruded them and set them in position on the tablet. I then converted the text  to mesh. Then I selected the tablet first as this was also part of where I was making my mistake as I was always selecting the text's first. Then I used the Boolean modifier and set it to Difference and it worked. I did not follow the steps of "Selecting Edges for Bevel Weighting" as show by Zeffii. I was just glad I go this far. I will try this the second time around.
What I am wondering can I paint the text before I use the Boolean so that the color of the texts is inside the tablet. The letters are hard to see without having a different color?

I want to thank both of you for inserting the pictures as it helps me to get an idea of how things work. I wished I could have followed the steps by IncessantLee because of the nodes being different on the newer Blender or it could be that I am very  much a novice.


text:
Why wont my 'background' render?
I'm having this problem in Blender that it is only loading the text, I am very new to this and don't know why it is cutting out what is even in the camera view and making it black. If you could help me, I would really appreciate it.
It's only rendering 'Kenny Miller" and not the green/black back:
[

Empties have no geometry
You are using an Empty object to display the image (you can that from the icon in the outliner), but as stated by the manual:

The “Empty” is a null object. It contains no real Geometry, [...]

This means that the object has no faces, no materials, so the engine has nothing to render. What you see in the viewport is just a "gizmo", useful to work with but has no influence on the rendered image.
The Image-Empties can be useful to quickly put some movable references in the scene. If you want to render the image, I would suggest to use the Images as plane add-on, that starting from an image create a true object in the scene.