text:
Is it possible to make a sequence of renders and give the user the option to cancel the process through the UI at any given time?
I'm trying to make a script where I have to render several images of the same scene at the same frame, and write to disk with appropriate names. The problem is that although this works fine with a non-responsive UI, it doesn't work well when the render progress appears in the Blender UI.
I mean,
bpy.ops.render.render()

uses "EXEC_DEFAULT" when called from a script. This leaves a blocked User Interface until the render finishes, meaning that you can't cancel the process, except by killing Blender. The problem is that the render may be too big in resolution, and the user could want to stop the process when realizing that the render could take hours, so the idea is to cancel this process without losing the currently opened project.
If I call,
bpy.ops.render.render("INVOKE_DEFAULT")

I get a nice preview bar in the Info Window with a clickable "X" button.
I want the user to be able to press that button to cancel the operation if needed, but for a series of renders (not animation).
The problem here seems to be when trying to loop this command with the INVOKE_DEFAULT context to write several renders. I made a lot of testing, and this way of calling the render operator seems to continue with whatever is next in the script, so it loops very fast and ends before the rendering actually finishes.
I think that I need some way to stop the script and make it wait until render finishes to continue looping with the next ones. I tried the "render_complete" and "render_cancel" handlers, but I can't use them to start a new render or even make the rest of the script wait until the loop of renders is complete. I tried threading and events without success either. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
import bpy

render = bpy.context.scene.render
path = render.filepath = "/tmp/"
shots = ["one", "two", "three"]

for x in shots:
    render.filepath = path + x
    bpy.ops.render.render("INVOKE_DEFAULT", write_still=True) # this doesn't work

    # but if I use:
    # bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)
    # without the INVOKE thing, images are written as expected,
    # but losing the possibility to see the progress and cancel rendering

Yes! This is possible.
I finally managed to get it to work in a loop.
The current solution allows to cancel the operation with the X button in the Info Window and the ESC key. The images are rendered in sequence on the same frame without the need to create additional scenes or keyframes.
Render handlers are used to know the moment when a new render can be started. Then, a modal timer is used in a loop to start the render when it becomes available. I think this timer should be similar to the wait method of the threading.Event() object, but I failed making it to work with the render operator that way.
The problem with builtin modal operators like render.render is that these need to be wrapped and executed inside a modal loop to work correctly. If this is not the case, the older job locks, and prevents subsequent renders to spawn and start, making basic loops pretty useless. This is why additional scenes don't make a difference, because a render job can be executed once at a time in a blender instance.
So, to make it work, a new operator needs to be created. The actual render process stays inside the modal method, and handlers take care of signaling.
import bpy

class Multi_Render(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Docstring"""
    bl_idname = "render.multi"
    bl_label = "Render multiple times"

    # Define some variables to register
    _timer = None
    shots = None
    stop = None
    rendering = None
    path = "/tmp/"

    # Define the handler functions. I use pre and
    # post to know if Blender "is rendering"
    def pre(self, scene, context=None):
        self.rendering = True

    def post(self, scene, context=None):
        self.shots.pop(0) # This is just to render the next
                          # image in another path
        self.rendering = False

    def cancelled(self, scene, context=None):
        self.stop = True

    def execute(self, context):
        # Define the variables during execution. This allows
        # to define when called from a button
        self.stop = False
        self.rendering = False
        self.shots = ["one.png",   # I'm just rendering 3 images but you
                      "two.png",   # can adapt to your needs
                      "three.png"]

        context.scene.render.filepath = self.path

        bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(self.pre)
        bpy.app.handlers.render_post.append(self.post)
        bpy.app.handlers.render_cancel.append(self.cancelled)

        # The timer gets created and the modal handler
        # is added to the window manager
        self._timer = context.window_manager.event_timer_add(0.5, window=context.window)
        context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)

        return {"RUNNING_MODAL"}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'TIMER': # This event is signaled every half a second
                                  # and will start the render if available

            # If cancelled or no more shots to render, finish.
            if True in (not self.shots, self.stop is True):

                # We remove the handlers and the modal timer to clean everything
                bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.remove(self.pre)
                bpy.app.handlers.render_post.remove(self.post)
                bpy.app.handlers.render_cancel.remove(self.cancelled)
                context.window_manager.event_timer_remove(self._timer)

                return {"FINISHED"} # I didn't separate the cancel and finish
                                    # events, because in my case I don't need to,
                                    # but you can create them as you need

            elif self.rendering is False: # Nothing is currently rendering.
                                          # Proceed to render.
                sc = context.scene

                # I'm using cameras named just as the output files,
                # but adapt to your needs
                sc.camera = bpy.data.objects[self.shots[0]]

                sc.render.filepath = self.path + self.shots[0]
                bpy.ops.render.render("INVOKE_DEFAULT", write_still=True)

        return {"PASS_THROUGH"}
        # This is very important! If we used "RUNNING_MODAL", this new modal function
        # would prevent the use of the X button to cancel rendering, because this
        # button is managed by the modal function of the render operator,
        # not this new operator!

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    bpy.ops.render.multi() # Test call

I hope this can help others if in the same situation.

Very cool, thanks! With minor changes it works under Blender 2.80 too. Instead of register_module(__name__) there is now (un)register_class(Multi_Render) and event_timer_add needs to change the second parameter to window=context.window.

Do you guys have a problem with running this modal in "Full Screen"? (Top menu -> Render -> Display Mode -> Full Screen).
It changes my layout to just Image Editor and destroys current layout completeley...

well, that seems like a bug actually. You could try it with the last build of Blender 2.8 to confirm and then report it.
BTW, you could go "Back to Previous" Layout using the button at the top, though this isn't a real solution to the bug. It should go back when pressing Esc. Report it mentioning that.

I used this code here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/224413/60486 , though I had to change the handlers, as Blender 2.92 passes one more argument there. So I took liberty not only to add another argument (with a default value so it still works with old versions), as well as to name those arguments, so it's easier to adapt the script for other purposes. I am not, however, sure that the added argument should be called context - it's just what I found on the Internet (I was getting None even before setting that as the default value, so I couldn't read its type).

It should be depsgraph as I understand

Worked great for me! The only problem I ran into was that I had to set the output file path before calling the modal and then in the post function, instead of only in the pre. Otherwise, the render would just access the last version of filepath, but not the one set in the pre...

@AnsonSavage Well, you should be able to set the filepath in the modal function, instead of the pre handler. It seems that setting the filepath in the pre handler is just too late in the execution, and the render.render operator reads the information from the scene before calling the pre handler. This is why in the example, the filepath is set in the modal, just before calling the render operator.
On the other hand, I don't see the point of setting the filepath in the post handler. You can just do it before calling the next operator and it should be fine.

@Chaos Okay, good to know. Thanks!

Anyone know why context=None is a default parameter?

@AnsonSavage Probably for backwards compatibility.

@MarkusvonBroady Okay, that would make sense. I was just surprised to find that whether or not I include =None as the default parameter, it seems like context is None in that function. I'm not sure why that would be.

@AnsonSavage Naming that parameter 'context' is not mandatory. The handlers system never passes that object during rendering. It seems that in the source, handlers are defined generically with a tuple of two positional arguments. Some handlers use two, one, or no arguments at all.
This could explain why the word 'dummy' was used in the past, instead of 'context', because it's a positional argument and it must be declared, otherwise captured by *args. It is also more realistic to think of this parameter as an optional object that could come in different types, not necessarily a context object.

@AnsonSavage If a name will be required instead of 'dummy', I think 'depsgraph' is more accurate, because I haven't seen any handler receiving a proper 'context' object before.
It's much more realistic and safe to assume that in this state the context to use in a handler is the global (bpy.context), because during execution of the handler functions, the context may have changed from the initial user interaction.

@Chaos Okay, thanks for the clarification!

If you have the luxury of arranging the sequence of renders to just be frames of a single animation (by clever use of keyframes) then you could let them use the regular blender render menu option.
I have done this for rendering a skybox: by keyframing the camera through 6 frames pointing in the 6 directions.
I do not doubt that many scenarios would be hard to fit into this technique.

Yes! I'm doing the same thing. It's a skybox. But it's important to keep the same frame, so, making an animation of 6 frames forward doesn't sound very good to me. But! The idea of moving the frame forward and then backwards to stay in the same frame and "trigger" some kind of update, sounds good to me. Will have to try that.

Could you try an alternative of 6 scenes, each with a different camera, and all with a single frame, so 6 scenes * 1 frames?

Maybe, but my current solution is based on 6 independent cameras, which iterate and render in sequence. I'm suspecting that the render operator will not care about if I have new scenes or cameras, but more on the execution context. But I'll try.

The idea of the frame change or the linked scenes didn't work. Just check the final answer for details.


text:
Rendering issue: Camera keeps rendering the exact same scene
I ran into a rendering problem: I set up a scene to render and it went well, then I moved the camera around, found a different angle but still in the same scene, when I tried to render it, Blender kept rendering the previous rendered scene (with the previous angles). How can fix this problem? I used Cycles. I also unchecked the sequencer option under post processing

Do you have a single camera in he scene?

if you press numpad 0, does it take you to the angle you are tring to render or to the angle it keeps rendering?

Does your camera have a keyframe set on it?  If so, it will "snap back" to the keyframed location.

If your camera has a keyframe, that will override any future changes to your camera, unless you either set a new keyframe, or delete them. To check this, mouse over the timeline and press shiftleft-arrow. Then select your camera and move it to where you want it. Go back to the timeline and press shiftright-arrow. If the camera moves back on its own, then you've put a keyframe on the camera.
If there's a keyframe, the select the camera and in the timeline you should see a yellow line. This is the frame where you keyframe was set. If you don't have any animation at all, then you can just delete all keyframes. To do that, open the Graph Editor, press home, select everything in that panel and delete it. If you do have animation that you want to keep, then you probably know how to find the keyframes for the camera and delete or modify them.
I hope that helps!

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text:
OpenCL vs CUDA Rendering
Nowdays I have the old Radeon HD 6870, and it's not compatible with OpenCL, so the rendering is made by the CPU, that is a quite slow comparing with GPU rendering.
I'm thinking on a upgrade to R9 380 or a GTX 960 for rendering (and gaming, of course).
Some people say tha OpenCL is not stable in most CG softwares, especially Autodesk's.
Shoud I get R9 380 (cheaper, more powerful) or GTX 960?

Although CUDA may be better now, may be on the long run Open CL would be better.
Considering what blender supported with AMD are doing right now, and what AMD itself is doing.
There is even a new Open CL based render engine coming for blender from AMD.
and btw, Vega (New GPU architecture) will come out this month, so I suggest you wait for sometime to see how things move and then make your decision.

Go with the Nvidia.  Performance aside, CUDA works better with Cycles.  Until recently, OpenCL was not even supported in Cycles so it is not as bug-free and stable as CUDA.  Another thing to consider is that usually new features are supported on just CPU first, then CUDA, then OpenCL.  So be prepared to wait a little while to use new features on your GPU if you go for the ATI card.
To be fair, OpenCL is by no means unusable, it just isn't as polished as CUDA.  I do have a friend with an R9-390 and it mostly works fine in Cycles.
In fact, here is a list of supported AMD devices as of May 2015.

With regards to your last statement about other software:
Most commercial 3D software (Autodesk included) won't really work with a gaming-class GPU at all, and definitely not an ATI card.  If you want to use that kind of software you really need a workstation-class GPU (i.e. Nvidia's Quadro cards, frankly ATI's workstation cards are a joke).
However, keep in mind here that Blender is not optimized for workstation cards.  That doesn't mean that they don't work at all in Blender, it's just that Cycles just won't be able to take advantage of the extra features you are paying for in a Quadro.
Workstation cards are also not ideal for gaming.  I do have a Quadro M4000 and it works fine for the few games I play (AoE III, Civ V, a couple old emulators, etc.), but if you are any kind of a serious gamer you definitely don't want a workstation card.

What Autodesk software do you mean? Maya etc is fine on gaming cards in my experience. Viewport 2.0 is basically a game engine renderer anyway. I've never seen much benefit to workstation cards for CG media/art work besides the extra VRAM and 10bit color support

@JtheNinja  I used max for a couple years before switching to Blender and it didn't work well with a gaming card at all.  If you look at the hardware specs on their website it clearly states that their software really wants a workstation class card.

Correction on this topic. OpenCL is feature complete for more then 2 years right now. So some statements in this answer needs to be updated. I would also expect to use more then only raw performance into the equation. What about price vs rendertime. I would say that this answer was a good answer at the time it was given, but will need to be updated.

General hardware recommendations are outside the scope of this site, but if you're asking "which card will be better for Blender," that I can help you with.
There is not an ATI card, Radeon or otherwise, that Blender can use with the Cycles engine (except with significant, advanced modification). A computer that has an ATI card can still run Blender, and still render with Cycles on the CPU (like you've experienced).
NVidia has implemented an API called CUDA that gives applications access to NVidia GPUs. Blender has implemented CUDA to render scenes on the GPU using Cycles.
ATI cards do not support CUDA. ATI is supporting an API called OpenCL. Blender has NOT implemented OpenCL at all.
Consequently, the NVidia card is the only one of the two that will GPU render in Blender. Until Blender implements OpenCL or ATI cards are somehow able to support CUDA, no ATI card will be able to do GPU rendering with Blender.
Now, if you're talking about manipulating things in the viewport, that's a whole 'nuther can of worms. Blender uses OpenGL to display things in the 3D viewport. Both Nvidia and ATI cards support OpenGL (OpenGL is used for LOTS of games). So, strictly speaking of the shaded and texture views of the 3D viewport, either card might be better than the other. It's hard to tell.
If you're wanting to render Cycles on the GPU, the NVidia card is your only option.

This is incorrect, OpenCL is supported in Cycles.

Now I got conffuse because there's videos on youtube comparing both APIs speed rendering on Blender.
Like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbEZ6OnpWHA
So the File -> User Preferences -> System -> Compute Device (CPU, CUDA and OpenCL) it's not for rendering?

@DouglasFerreira  As I stated above, this answer is incorrect.  As of 2.75 OpenCL is supported in Cycles.

Interesting! I was under the impression that OpenCL was still on hold. Cool!

authors: Руслан Мухаметгалиев

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

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text:
Using Texture Paint output looks like cartoon. Can I rectify this?
I'm using Blender 3.4.1 and am doing a texture paint for the first time. The 3D model looks great in texture paint, but when I move to "Layout" it looks and renders like a cartoon. I would like to have it render out as the texture paint version looks. What am I missing?
Texture Paint Image that is good

Same image that is in Layout Mode isn't good

I think you're going to have to re-do that question. For some reason only one image is visible.

It looks like the "bad" image is from Material Preview mode, while the good one is from Rendered Preview (you can tell by the "background", or lack thereof in the "gap" on the floor). Any chance you enabled "Scene lights" or "Scene world" in the viewport shading properties?

I'm sorry, I meant to include the file itself. It can be found here: https://inlbox.box.com/s/p2k3x0nk0my31ouyidq6xq38x9cc2laz

the file link is not public but requires a login

Here the the public link to the file. Thanks all for your help; https://inlbox.box.com/s/p2k3x0nk0my31ouyidq6xq38x9cc2laz

In your first picture you are in Solid Preview display mode, this mode has its own way to display the texture when you are in Texture Paint interaction mode. If you switch to Material Preview or Rendered Preview mode you'll switch to another display mode that will take the material into account. Your material called blue base currently has an Emission node, it will emit light, you should replace it with a Diffuse or Principled BSDF node:

Once done, here is what it gives in Rendered Preview mode, if I put a Sun lamp (with a Strength of 4), this is the best display mode to evaluate how your object will look like once rendered (but note that if you are in Cycles it won't allow you to see the painting in real time, in that case switch to Eevee or use the Material Preview mode). As you see the texture is much brighter than what we see in Solid Preview mode, so you should not trust what you see in Solid Preview mode in terms of color accuracy:

Wow! Thank you so much moonboots! I have no idea how that emission node got in there so I wasn't looking for it. I am so glad that you were able to figure it out for me.

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


text:
Link volume to collection
Helly everyone,
How can I correctly link a volume object to a collection?
When I'm creating a volume like this:
vol = bpy.data.volumes.new('Thing')

I wanted to link it like this:
bpy.context.scene.collection.children['Collection'].objects.link(vol)

That gives the error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: CollectionObjects.link(): error with argument 1, "object" -  Function.object expected a Object type, not Volume

So it suggests, that I should link a volume, not an object. But how can I do that? There is no "volume" next to the object function...

You first have to understand a fundamental design orientation in Blender :
Objects are containers. They have a number of properties, and all objects are linked to some kind of data. Even Empty objects have a data attribute, which evaluates to None. Mesh, camera, lamp, lattice, curve objects and so on are all fundamentally the same type of containers. What separates them is the data they are linked to.
Here's how to create an Object, link your volume data to it, and link it to your collection:
import bpy
vol_data = bpy.data.volumes.new('Thing')
vol_obj = bpy.data.objects.new(name="MyVolumeObject", object_data=vol_data)
scene_col = bpy.context.scene.collection
# Notice what's linked here is the object, not the volume data :
scene_col.children.get("Collection", scene_col).objects.link(vol_obj)


text:
How do I hide objects in the final render?
I just finished a character model, and I'm trying to render T-Pose shots of it for my portfolio. The character looks fine in the rendered preview in the 3D viewport,

but the render itself ended up looking a bit different.

I found out that this was because everything in the file appeared in the render. Is there a way to hide objects from the render without having to delete them from the file?

Make a new collection and move the other objects to it. Then when you want to render, disable (not hide) the collection.

Alternatively, you can enable the "Render Disable" icon in the outliner by first selecting the "Filter" tab and clicking the render toggle icon (the little camera)

After this, the camera icon will appear in your outliner next to your objects (where the viewport hide "eye" is). Click it to toggle whether or not the object will be hidden in the render:

Thank you so much! How do I disable a collection?

Just un-check the box to disable.


text:
My ALT+C button isn't working
So I am in Blender 3.1 and I am trying to learn how to make a transformational text animation in Blender The creator of this text animation is from tutor4u.
This is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do0jF3zb5_U&list=PL6_z3o30LJDxmA24pwg2TvBo6vwqNl4TJ&index=6.
I am at the 2:21 mark and when I try to press ALT+C, the Mesh from Curve\Meta\Surf\Text just doesn't show up. I would some help on what to do.

That tutorial was done with a very old version of Blender (2.76) and the Alt-C hotkey was removed in version 2.8 by the look of it. Use the Object > Convert > Mesh menu route instead. You may well find other problems following a tutorial that old in a recent Blender version!

Or right click > Convert to > Mesh

Forget the shortcut (Alt+C), and just do it manually - select the object (text) then Click Object > Convert > Mesh from the menu at the top of the viewport:


text:
Blender shows wrong items on the material tab
I am trying to figure out, why my blender is showing the wrong lists in the material tab when I add new material.

When it should display my principal BSDF on my materials tab.

Is your render engine set to workbench by any chance?

Yea, it was set to workbench. Changed it to eevee and now it works! Thanks


text:
create an object from scratch by using numpy
I'm trying to create one object from scratch using numpy (in the example, in order to make it very simple, only two vertices and one edge).
The code below works (Hurray!) but ...
Could anyone give me some advice on how to approach the problem.
Is there a shorter version, or more efficient way to create object from a numpy array ?
Thank you !
import bpy
import numpy as np

# Vertices and edges (straightforward)
vertices = np.array([
        0, 0, 0,
        1, 1, 1
    ], dtype=np.float32)

edges = np.array([
        0, 1
    ], dtype=np.int32)

# vertices and edges number (general way)

num_vertices = vertices.shape[0] // 3
num_edges = edges.shape[0] // 2

# Create mesh object based on the arrays above

mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(name='mesh')
mesh.vertices.add(num_vertices)
mesh.vertices.foreach_set("co", vertices)

mesh.edges.add(num_edges)
mesh.edges.foreach_set("vertices", edges)

# update mesh object

mesh.update()
mesh.validate()

# create object

obj = bpy.data.objects.new('created object', mesh)

# Add obj to the scene
scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.collection.objects.link(obj)

# Select the new object and make it active
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
obj.select_set(True)
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj

yes there is !
I've finally find a way to build all parts (even faces) with from_pydata!
more details here
# Vertices and edges (straightforward)
vertices = np.array([
        [0, 0, 0],
        [1, 1, 1],
        [1, 0, 0]
    ], dtype=np.float32)

# edges are built when faces are generated
# but it is possible to directly implement edges
# edges = np.array([[0, 1]], dtype=np.int32)
edges = []
faces = [[0,1,2]]

# build mesh data, object and do some check-up

mesh_data = bpy.data.meshes.new("my_object_data")
mesh_data.from_pydata(vertices, edges, faces)
mesh_data.update()
mesh_data.validate()

obj = bpy.data.objects.new("my_object", mesh_data)

# add the object to the scene
scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.collection.objects.link(obj)

# activate the object
obj.select_set(True)
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj


text:
Trouble exporting high poly mesh from blender to Substance Painter
I am trying to export a high poly sculpted mesh from blender and use it to create a normal map within Substance Painter.  For reasons unknown the details do not come over.  Am I supposed to bake the high poly first or something I am unfamiliar with the workflow from blender to Substance Painter this way.  FYI, low poly I brought from Maya into blender as FBX, fully unwrapped prior.  Then converted into high poly using the Multisolution modifier, sculpted and then tried to export.  If I can get the high poly out correctly then use it as the _high in SP it should be a piece of cake.

Hello and welcome, did you apply the modifier? Blender modifier are proprietary and export tools not always work as intended


text:
How to show or hide specific bricks using vertex colors?
Hey fellow Blender gurus!
A little bit of brain teaser here (or maybe not). I have two Brick Textures (of different color) and an unwrapped cube. What I want is use vertex painting to create some kind of a mask that allows showing or hiding a brick in case there is a painted vertex inside of it. So there should be some kind of filling, where the vertex color gets "propagated" over the entire brick. Please see the pictures attached. Is this even feasible to do?
I am new to Blender and I have no idea how to approach this tbh. Googling or ChatGPTing didn't help.
Thanks :)

tbh i think you are using the wrong tool to achieve your goal. Shaders are a "per point/pixel" thing and there is not a "kind of" attribute statistic node as in geometry nodes. So in my opinion a better chance to solve this would be animation nodes/geometry nodes. In GN you could rebuild the brick texture as geometry, use the attribute statistic node to decide, which instance to use and the two instances would have different colors.


text:
Is there a way to reduce light to specific material?
I've modeled an object in geonodes and have one issue with its shading. Object has 2 materials: one for hexagonal faces and another one for sides. I don't like the shininess of the faces and want to somehow reduce their brightness, but no matter what I change in the material setting they remain shining. I guess the lighting is just too much, but if I reduce then the sides of the sticks will be too dark. Is there some workaround?
Here's sample blend file: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgCDDnfGXq0l3DUmW_kpBhXpTOld?e=pjLO14

Couldyou share a minimal version which has the problem on https://pasteall.org/blend/ ?

Make the sticks a lighter color, or make the other material in question a really dark color. It sounds like basic physics to me.

@TheLabCat I've added sample blend file. It looks like hexagonal caps are overexposed, but if I lower the light power, then other parts will be underexposed. Also no matter what color, roughness, etc I set for the caps, they always look just white.
Making 2 renders with different light settings and then merging them in photoshop sounds like an overkill.

Will check out when I get a chance if not solved already. For future reference, use blend-exchange.com when possible, or pasteall.org/blend for larger files

Use blender 3.2 it has new light groups

Something is weird with your setup.  I tested the blend file to see if I could replace the shader with one that would ignore the physical lighting setup, and even when using the Holdout shader (which should be purely black or transparent, not even regarding lighting at all) those faces are still pure white.

It's not the material that's the issue here, it's that geometry nodes is merging the geometry of the mesh with another copy of the same geometry that has the default material (which is bright and fairly shiny) and that's what's causing the white reflection.

This shows what's happening - the above image shows the result when replacing the material (actually, all the materials) with a shadeless green, it ignores light and only displays green, and yet the white faces STILL show up with this node tree - because when the extruded mesh geometry was passed to two Set Material nodes, it was duplicated, and then when those two sets of geometry are merged, they keep the default material in whatever location was not selected.  By displaying just one of the set material nodes (the Sides in this case) we can see that the faces are still set to the default material.  I'm not actually certain why this only causes problems on the extruded faces (perhaps some sort of z-ordering issue), but that is the problem here.
It can be resolved by using both set material nodes in series, and not performing a join material node, like so:
This sets the material in both places, but doesn't duplicate any geometry.

thx a lot, I wasn't sure how to connect them


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Detecting misconfigured rotation and scale parameters in textured meshes
I'll preface this by stating that I'm a developer and not a 3D artist, and am still getting my feet wet with 3D modeling, Blender, etc. I have written some software that generates textured mesh models (OBJ/MTL files) for me, and I can then import them into Blender and view them.
One such model can be found here - if you're interested!.
The problem is, in each case, when I import the OBJ file into Blender, there's always two issues that require manual correcting:

The model is extremely tiny and I need to zoom way in on it; and
The model is never rotated/oriented right-side up, and I always need to play around with it so that I can have it oriented correctly (and by "correctly", I mean right-side up and front-facing)

For example, let's take the model I linked to just above. When I first import it into Blender, this is what I see:

But after zooming in on it and rotating it manually, it becomes:

So my theory (but please correct me if I'm wrong!!!) is that my software is either not configured right, or has a bug in it, and is not storing "orientation parameters" (scale, rotation, etc.) in the OBJ file (or any of its constituent files) correctly. And, because these parameters are incorrect, when Blender goes to import the model, it displays the model correctly - according to the incorrect parameters!
So, my question:
Is this theory plausible, and how could I tell? I'm not familiar with OBJ models/files, but perhaps there's a way to inspect their contents (in Blender or from some OBJ data reader/tool) and see what these 'orientation parameters' are incorrectly set to?
Perhaps I can import a model into Blender and see what its default 'orientation parameters' are, then manually correct them, view what its new 'orientation parameters' are, and then use their difference to figure out what needs to change in my software?
The desired end result would be able to run my software, generate a model (OBJ + MTL files, etc.), import them into Blender and have them displayed correctly (again, right-side up and front-facing) without the need for manual correction. And if my theory is correct then I need to tweak something in my software to write accurate 'orientation parameters' to one of these files. I'm just not sure which file nor which parameters. Can anyone help steer me in the right direction here?

Please use BSE's image adding tool. My browser can't establish a secure connection with the other site that you are using, so I can't see them at all.

It looks like your software is not storing the orientation parameters, what method does it use to align the mesh to coordinates?

What do you have "Clamp Size" set to for the .obj importer?

Thanks @pycoder (+1) - I'll try to get you those images in the next 30 mins or so. Per your Clamp Size comment, I'm looking at Blender's UI right now, trying to figure out where I can find it! According to this answer I should be able to see Clamp Size inside a menu called Import OBJ, but I've searched high and low, and don't see that anywhere. Any ideas as to how I can find it?

Thanks @Denis (+1) - when you ask what method I'm using to align mesh to coordinates, can you elaborate what you mean by method? You mean which algorithm I'm using, or just an explanation of the process I'm using, or something else? Another way to put it: in your mind, what are the typical methods that are used for this sort of thing? Thanks again!

@smeeb does your model generated from photos or some kind of scanning equipment? some software use GPS coordinates from the metadata to align the model and give it a scale.

Hi @Denis - I'm generating the models from photos using a 3D reconstruction pipeline of tools (specifically OpenMVG, then MVE then finally mvs-texturing). There's definitely no GPS data in my input image set, and offhand I'm not sure which of those tools is responsible for aligning mesh to coordinates. I suspect its the first one (OpenMVG) but will do some digging and get back to you. Thanks!

@smeeb you need at least 3 points that you know the distance between them and the angle, to give the model its scale and alignment. If you don't have that you will need to do the corrections in your software or in blender manually.

I think it will be easier to discuss that problem on chat...I can post images there for you.


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"Search for unknown operator" On Start-Up After Removing Module and Shortcuts
For lack of a less drastic alternative, I created a whole module just for setting bpy.context.window.screen to a specific screen, since bpy.ops.screen.screen_set is relative.
I originally named the module's operator class SCREEN_OT_set_screen and operator screen.set_screen, played with setting the shortcuts both in the user preferences menu and in code, then changed the name to SCREEN_OT_set and the operator screen.set.
Despite wiping any references to it in User Preferences->Input and double-checking by looping through all items of all keymaps of all keyconfigs, I still get this twice on Blender startup:

search for unknown operator 'SCREEN_OT_set_screen',
  'SCREEN_OT_set_screen'search for unknown operator
  'SCREEN_OT_set_screen', 'SCREEN_OT_set_screen'

I make sure to set the shortcut key after registering the operator class, and it persists when I rename the module class back to the SCREEN_OT_set_screen that it's looking for, or even remove the file from scripts/addons entirely.
Where in Blender's start-up process is it likely still looking for this and failing?

Search for "SCREEN_OT_set_screen" (literally, a text search) in your startup files. On Windows they're located in C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\config\.
The files are "userpref.blend" and "startup.blend", you can open them with a text editor.
First, backup these files to somewhere safe.
Delete all the text starting from and including the first "DATA" word right before the first occurrence of your operator name, until the next "DATA" word after the last occurrence, but don't delete this last "DATA" word as it's the start of a neighbor entry.
Then save and try opening Blender. Save your user preferences and startup file from within Blender, just to make sure.


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Animating a Nurbs Path's Influence
Say you have a spiralling object with an armature rig, which in turn has a Spline IK bone constraint to a nurbs path, as per a tutorial for a bending phone cord.
Now you want to animate the various poses you've made by warping the nurbs path, such that you can import it into Unity.
I've tried adding LocRot keyframes of all the armature's bones in each pose, as well as "Object (or Pose)->Animation->Bake Action"; none of the armature's changes from the Nurbs path's influence come through in any Action clip. Ideally one would just animate the positions of the Nurbs path; alas, Blender doesn't let you add keyframes of individual vertices of anything in Edit Mode.
Some light to shed?

Every curve has Shape key options - animate the curve through shape keys and bake the animation of pose-bones for export into unity.

Perhaps convert the NURB to a verticed curve. Then create shape keys of the various desired poses and key framing their values would achieve your goal.

Actually, I just made a quick example with several shape keys of a default NURBScurve without converting to a meshed curve. Pose your NURB in object mode, click on the "data" tab for your curve, Shape Keys and press the Plus button to create a pose "Basis". Switch to Edit mode and reposition the Nurb control points as desired for your second pose. Switch back to object mode and press the "Plus" button to add your second pose.

Shape key animation did it. For posterity, you hover over the value slider under the shape key list and hit "I" to insert a frame with that value.
Thanks Jerryno and user2511.


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Is there a good way to join these two objects up?
Blender Newb here. So take with a grain of salt. : )
I'm learning blender for my job so I'm trying to 3d out some of our past work. I've got this monument sign I'm trying to do to teach myself.
In the picture I've got you can see there is the horizontal curved blue object and the vertically curved purple. I'm trying to get these two curved object to meet at the yellow line to form a doubly curved edge.
Is there anyway to do this without haven't to piece the vertices together one by one?
Let me know if you need more info.

Please post .blend file to: http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ so I could elaborate more on this topic.

You want to totally close the shape along the line ?

Yeah. I'm trying to get the outward edges of the blue and purple to come together at the line.

As @LukeD said this is hard to give a solution if we do not know how blue and purple meshes are inside. You should upload your file at the link he indicated. But anyway, if blue and purple inner geometry are not homogeneous (same amount of vertices, more or less), the answer won't be self evident. If they are not, please indicate if this matters or not.

Okay. I'll upload it when I get back to the office.

The .blend should be posted.

Did you create those objects in Blender or import them?

I created everything in Blender. No external program was used on anything.

I don't really know where to start. Do you have any reference image with final result?

I have posted the reference image I have been using.

With your mesh this connection isn't possible (theoretically is but practically not). Do you want me to make answer with completly different method to model this element?

That would be helpful yes. Thank you. Like I said I've still got the fresh Blender smell and tried piecing this all together over a couple of days.

Could you find my website in my profile and conntact me trough email? We could discuss details before I post answer.

I've made answer (second one) but still if you want to know more about whole modeling process and material assign reach me trough mail, because this isn't related to this question.

There are a few approaches I might use.
Boolean modifier is the most straight forward route - make the blue and purple parts larger so they overlap, and then use the intersection operation. A route like this usually works well in CAD software, but it's often not the best in Blender.
A better approach in Blender is using its mesh editing tools like proportional editing (the o key in edit mode).

Start with a plane, rotate it to face the front and press TAB to enter edit mode.
Use S + X to sale in one axis and S + Y to scale in the other, and G to position it into the right space.
Subdivide it using loop cut, to get a bunch of edges along where it needs to curved (use the scroll where to increase the number of cuts):

Select the one or two vertices in the top middle (using RMB and SHIFT+RMB if selecting two). Press o to use proportional editing mode. Press g to start moving the vertices. Press z to only move on the Z axis. Use the scroll wheel to increase the size of the white circle so you start moving all the vertices at once. You can try SHIFT+o to cycle different fall offs ("Inverse Square" worked best for me):

The bottom is also curved. We'll fix that later.
Now do the same for the other axis from the top view (press 7 on the numpad), but this time select both the top vertices and bottom vertices. Again, use g to grab, and now y to constrain to the Y axis.
Let's fix the bottom edge. Turn proportional editing off using o. Switch back to front view using 1 on numpad. Select the whole bottom row by holding ALT and clicking and edge (or B and drawing a box around it). Press S to start scaling, z to constrain to the Z axis, and 0 to scale to zero.
The whole thing may need its position fixed now. a to select all and use the on screen widget to move it around one axis at a time

To finish it, and add the ridge at the top, you can use extrusions:

Select the top row using ALT+LMB
Press e followed by y and drag the mouse to extrude outward along the Y axis
Press e followed by z and drag to extrude upward along the Z axis
Press e + y again to extrude it inward

Reference setup:
First of all setup your reference image by adding it to your viewport and setting it to te center of the grid as shown in the picture below.
Check Background Images then Add image, select Axis, open reference image and finally setup H and V values.
Do this for Front Ortho (1 on numpad) and Top Ortho (7 on numpad) view. 5 on numapad to switch between Ortho/Perspective view.

Creating a mesh:
Create Cube.
Shift + A > Mesh > Cube.
Position it as shown in picture below.

G > Z for Front View.
G > Y for Top View.

Modeling mesh:
Front view.

Go to Edit mode - Tab - and press Z for wire view in both viewports.
Press CTRL + R to make a Loop Cut, position your cursor over cube to get verticall cut and Left click on it then Right click. Deselect all by hitting A then press B for Area Select, select right side of our mesh, hit X > Vertices

Now using method above (deselect all by hitting A > B) select vertices and move them accordingly to the picture. It's important to select them by Area select because we want to select both side of the mesh.

It's time to add more Loop Cuts (CTRL + R) and position it using the same method as above. Remember to move them only on Z Axis - G > Z or drag Z Axis (blue arrow) with Left mouse button.

Top view:

In Top view do the same to match curve from reference. This time move vertices along Y Axis.

Final touches:

Go to Object Mode Tab, press Z for Solid View and add Mirror Modifier.

Set Shading to Smooth and turn on Autosmooth.

What else?
Now you can add the rest of elements or extrude them from this base mesh. I've made some of examples in different layers in this blend file:

First layer - simple mesh with Autosmooth.

Second layer - Autosmooth with Mean Crease and SubSurf.

Third layer - Mean Crease, SubSurf with Loop Cuts.


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How to tile a texture over a cube in cycles?
My issue looks like this:

The wood simply tiles improperly. I have given it a smart UV unwrap and basic texture coordinates and it is looking pretty bad. I want it to tile properly, as the texture should, and not in a random way as you can tell from the picture.
This is my node graph:

How do I get the wood to tile seamlessly?

Basically it's a UV problem:

If faces A and B can be contiguous, at least one between B and E or A and E (my case) will not be seamless, unless you want this effect which is really fake:

Anyway, for the first option, in edit mode select those edges: AE, ED, EC, DC, AF, FD, FC; Mark as seams, U to Unwrap.
For the second option place your viewport as you want to see the cube, select all vertices and press U "project from view".
I noticed also that in your node system the coordinates mapping affects only one of the 3 textures, which generally is an error.


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UV Image Editor won't allow me to search for textures
I have a 3D tea cup model that I've loaded into Blender v2.78 and I'm trying to access its 2D texture so I can play around with the texture and make some changes to it.
So I had a similar question to this one and I'm struggling to follow the accepted answer because of what I'm seeing in Blender.
When I open that BLEND file in Blender I see:

I've confirmed that the top window is the UV Editor. When I click on the "Icon with a photo" (which is instruction #3 in the accepted answer to that other question, I'm trying to "search for textures", but as you can see it will only allow me to choose View, Paint or Mask:

All I'm trying to do is to extract out the texture to this tea cup, any ideas what my next step should be?

Update
I selected UV Editing layout and see this:

So the options I'm seeing are:

Render Results
Viewer Node
Alexs_Apt_8k.jpg
wooden_fence_texture.jpg

None of these seem applicable to my tea cup!!! Again, I'm just trying to get the 2D texture image of the tea cup model that I see in the Camera Persp screen below the UV Editing window.

And where is your texture located in your computer? Or you just need to save what you see in the 3D view?

I think you don't want to assign a texture but want to render the scene to get the resulting image?

Thanks @JanKadeřábek (+1 for both) - I might be fundamentally misunderstanding Blender here, so maybe I am confusing you! I assumed the texture was embedded inside the BLEND file, am I correct? If so, I have the same BLEND file saved on my laptop as what I posted on GitHub (link is provided above). And if not, please let me know! That will clear up all my confusion!!!

I also have access to an MTL file that came with the tea cup, might the texture/image be in there?

Your very top editor is the uv image editor, but to use it you need to drag that whole bar down to see the window - what you think is the uv image editor is actually a node editor, and below that is the 3d view and then the timeline.
Use ctrl-left/right arrow to get to the UV Editor layout, and then use the button next to the 'New' button to browse that available images in the file - if there is an image texture in the cup's material, then it shoudl be available to open.
[![
edit: your material for the cup doesn't have an image node hooked up, and there isn't an image to go on the cup material in the file. Looks like you need to add an image node and then open the image you say you have in the mtl file, or go back to blender render and try to import the object with the mtl intact to get the image in the material.
Image as reference for the UV Image Editor]1]1

Thanks @Craig D Jones (+1) - please see my update. I took an educated guess at what you mean by "dragging the whole bar down" but as you can see in that screenshot, I'm still not seeing what you're describing. I also tried the Ctrl+Left/RightArrow like you mentioned but that didn't work either (although I'm on a MacBook Pro so perhaps Blender responds differently on Apple machinery). Any other ideas? Thanks again!

Where the new screen says 'Custom' at layout, click the icon to the left to see a drop down of available layouts and switch to the UV Editing layout.

Thanks again @Craig D Jones (+1) I think I'm almost there. Please see my latest update...I'm not in the UV Editing layout, but the grid on the left-hand side of the screen is empty. Any idea how I can get it to load the 2D texture image for my teacup? What I'm really trying to do is export it as JPG/PNG so I can edit it externally and then reimport it later (after I've edited it). Thanks again!

See my last edit - added a screen shot - if the image is in the material, then you should be able to call it by clicking the icon to the left of 'New' and choose it from the list of images in file.

Thanks again, so close! Please take a look at my latest screenshot/update. Looks like perhaps this tea cup model doesn't have a texture...is that possible? I uploaded the BLEND file to GitHub if you or anyone wants to take a look.

I have edited my answer for you, it should be now clear how this works in Blender.

While there aren't any images packed into the blend file, the mug model does not use any image textures.
The material for the mug is a simple mix of diffuse and glossy using a layer weight node to control the mixing.

The two missing images are used for the environment and the table.

All images in the .blend (packed and external) are available via this select menu in UV/Image Editor or by pressing Alt+O there.

You can also drag&drop an image from Windows Explorer to the UV/Image Editor.
If you want to copy your .blend to another computer and access the images you are using in the project, you need to:

copy all the images to some folder on the other computer and use File > External Data > Find Missing Files to re-link them

or
embed the textures to the .blend, which can be done:

individually for each image by clicking on UV/Image Editor > Image > Pack Image

globally for all external assets by navigating to File > External Data > Automatically Pack Into .blend

Personally, I always make a folder for my Blender project and copy necessary images to the project's subfolder called "textures".
Then you can simply zip the project folder and copy it to another computer. The .blend will still have access to the textures because it uses relative paths in default.


text:
(How) Can I get rid of these fireflies in the zDepth pass?
https://i.sstatic.net/twSI1.jpg
How do i fix the firefly type artifacts? None of the leaves have a glossy surface so that shouldn't be causing the problem?
Here's a file of just the front tree. (sorry for the file size)
Updated version.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m46lz9vzqehhh7/Toussaint%20-%20Copy.blend?dl=0

I don't think they are fireflies. Those same spots are in the color render too. Maybe reflections or highlights... Nice job BTW

Does the second picture contain some post-processing with the faulty z-buffer? The leaves look weird where there is an error in the z-buffer. If not, try fixing this on your model.

Would it be possible to post a blend with just the foreground bush to let us see the error up close? That would be helpful. Also a screenshot of your comp nodes would be good too.

@cegaton i updated the file for you

@cegaton That's because there is not leaf texture for yours. Just test with any leaf texture from cgtextures

@elmo274 zdepth pass doesn't use textures, only geometry. How did you obtain your zdepth image? Is it a mist, depth shader or something else? If you want to get correct zdepth for transparent objects look at this: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/27044/compositing-fog-destroys-png-alpha-in-images-as-planes-when-using-cycles/27049

@jerryno its not the texture per say, but the shape of the texture. If the material does not have a leaf texture, the result would be rectangles seen in cegaton's render. But if you add in a texture, the material creates an alpha so the leaf looks like a leaf and not a rectangle. If that makes sense.

Glossy shaders won't affect the z-pass at all. The z-pass is literally a gray-scale of how far away each pixel is.
The answer to this question is exactly the same as any other question dealing with Cycles noise (though it might not seem like it at first). Noise in regular renders is a precision issue, and the noise here is also a precision issue. The way that Cycles improves precision is with more samples.
It's slightly different with the z-pass in that there's not nearly as many contributing factors to "how far away is this pixel" as there are to "what color is this pixel." But there are some. The main contributor is likely anti-aliasing. But even then, the solution should be the same: render more samples.
cegaton's recommendation to adjust the near and far clipping planes, is also a good idea.
If that doesn't help... well, I may just be mistaken... and that's okay.

Please read this: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/36072/is-z-render-pass-accuracy-dependent-on-sample-count-are-others-like-object-id/36089#36089. This answer is wrong.

Excellent comment. I did not expect that to be the case. I'm interested to experiment with rendering a couple of these with different seeds and stacking them...


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blender vse video height not divisible by 2 or pillowboxing
I record an area of my desktop for upload to youtube with ffmpeg the area is a 16x9 aspect ratio with a width of 2952x1458
I can upload this video to youtube and it plays properly but of course I need some editing, mainly to remove some junk frames from the beginning and end of the video.
I load up blender vse and make the preferences changes

and go down and edit the encoding settings as well

mainly to go along with youtube recommended video settings
The problem is that when I try to hit animation, blender complains that this video's height is not divisible by 2.

When I change the percentage below x & y to 100% from 50% then the output video has horrible pillow boxing. As you can see from this screenshot:

How can I actually get blender to just take the video that I recorded, cut of the few parts that I don't need and export the video, in pretty much the same way it came in, while avoiding these issues?
Edit
I grab the screen with this ffmpeg command
ffmpeg -an -f "x11grab" -framerate "120" -video_size "2594"x"1458" -i :0.0+5,+257 -c:v "libx264" -crf "16" -bf "2" -flags "+cgop" -movflags "faststart" -pix_fmt "yuv420p" -preset "ultrafast" "$1".mkv
here is the raw upload: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NzSlo3knbk
here is the out output from blender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYUTu6UV5ug
these are the export settings that I setup in blender render preferences

EDIT: The most direct answer to the question is the discrepancy between the capture dimensions and the export dimensions. The video is being captured in 2594*1458, which is a 16:9 ratio, whereas blender is exporting at 2952*1458, which is not a 16:9 ratio. It is likely to be a simple typo. This ratio difference is causing the letterboxing on the exported video.
sambler: Requiring dimensions to be divisible by two is a limitation of the H.264 encoder in Blender.
Original post
Render Dimensions:
The first problem here is blender downsizes the video to a non-divisible-by-two height. A simple way around this is to bump your scaling percentage up or down one or two percent. A better way would be to manually input dimensions instead of using the percentage slider. Blender can do math in text input fields, so you can simply put 2952/2 into the X dimension and 1458/2 in Y. If the result is an odd number, just bump it up one pixel. Amaranth Toolset (included in blender) has a nifty tool to show the final resolution of the render. Enable it in your user prefs and a new line of dimensions will show up in the render properties:

Letterboxing:
The second problem is letterboxing, the black bars on the top and bottom of the video. This is actually Youtube's fault because your video isn't a perfect 16:9 aspect ratio. To see your aspect ratio, simply divide your width by your height, in this case 2952/1458 = 2.024... Compare this width/height ratio with that of HD video: 1920/1080 = 1.777... You can see now the ratios are different. This difference ends up as letterboxing on Youtube. Pillarboxing occurs when your video is more square than the 16:9 player.
There are three ways you can deal with this difference: upload the video in its original aspect ratio and accept the letterboxing Youtube gives you; crop the sides off the footage to get a perfect 1.777... ratio on your output; distort the footage to fit within the desired ratio.
Personally, I would take the letterboxing because it means the entire area of my footage is visible without distortion, especially because the whole desktop is important.
Distortion:
If you absolutely do not want letterboxing, but still want all of the footage, you will need to distort the footage to fit in the 1.777 ratio. To do this, simply change your render output dimensions to a 16:9 ratio (2592/1458, 1920/1080, 1280/720, etc.). Blender distorts VSE strips to fit the render dimensions.
Cropping:
To make your video 16:9 ratio, your dimensions would need to be 2592 wide by 1458 tall (or some percentage of). A normal application would allow you to crop the video, but blender does not. You will need to use a transform layer on your VSE footage to compensate the aspect ratio difference between your footage and the new render dimensions.
Start out with your footage in the VSE. Change your render dimensions to 2592 wide by 1458 tall. Your footage will look distorted; this is expected. Select your strip in the VSE and add a transform layer effect. Open the properties region for the strips by pressing N. The Effect Strip panel contains scale controls for X and Y dimensions. The one you need to worry about is X. Input this value into X: 1.139 - this corrects the ratio difference. I came to this number by dividing your original ratio (2.024...) by the desired ratio (1.777...). If you have multiple strips, you will need to do this for each one because the effect strip is linked to only a single input strip.

Final Thoughts:
Letterboxing may be ugly, but it is a necessary evil if you don't want to lose information. Cropping may be more acceptable for camera footage. I can't think of a time when distortion is acceptable.

The thing is, when I record my desktop with ffmpeg and upload that video directly to youtube it looks just fine, no artifacts or anything.

The thing is, when I record my desktop with ffmpeg and upload that video directly to youtube it looks just fine, no artifacts or anything. Once I put the video in blender vse to do a few edits and cuts, then export the video from blender vse that's where the issue crop up. Even if I click on the clip and click set render size.

I'm not understanding where you're getting 2952*1458 as a 16:9 ratio. That's not 16:9. My guess is you have some kind of anamorphic transform somewhere. Can you post a sample for us to look at?

I just edited the question, adding two video links to youtube and the export settings from blender.

There's a discrepancy in your settings from your original question and your edit. You capture in 25941458 but your export from blender is 29521458. Change your blender export dimensions to 2594*1458 and it shouldn't give you letterboxing.

This is a known limitation when using H.264 for encoding video. While there are variations available when encoding H.264, we don't have access to them in blender. The encoding options used by blender requires a height that is divisible by 2.


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Is there an alternative to the Geometry -> Normal Output?
This is the matte I need, created from the mesh with this ring displacement using the "normal" output. I will be using a different displacement in the end but I need this specific information. I am making a fully procedural material and want to avoid baking this texture. I could just manually make circles where they are here but I'd rather use this idea so I don't have to manually change them later if I need too. Is there some way of locking this texture to stay how it is now or is there an alternative node with a similar effect? I just want a matte that's white where the outside and inside wall of this displaced ring would be.

First time using blender stack exchange, sorry for the symbol brap at the beginning and whatnot

I want a texture on top of the ring but since the rings sides aren't completely vertical (an intentional design) If I use the texture that the ring is using then the texture i want on top will show up on the sides, so i want this matte so i can subtract it from the top texture so it does not show up on the sides. When i use this matte from the Geometry node, it works, but then when i put it into the displacement the whole mesh updates and the matte changes (as expected).

Have you tried the normal output of the "texture coordinate" node ?

Same Story, I've settled with just doing it by hand which isn't too bad. Does the job well

Taking the dot-product of the Normal output of the Texture Coordinate node with (0,0,1) will return the Z component of the surface normals, in Object space.

This ring has a curved profile on the inside, and is tapered on the outside.
This discrimination is good.. if you had displacements on the curved surfaces which resulted in |Z| = 1 normals, you could further discriminate by absolute Z location in Generated texture space...

Either way.. or both ?

.. or just strip out the Z with separate XYZ, .. force of habit..


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Hard time getting my coiled thread like 'painting' to look right
I'm an industrial designer and I'm trying to make 3D recreations of my work in Blender, I mainly use a technique that consists in coiling threads over wood surfaces as you can see here:

For a closer look at the threads see here:

The thing is that I already got the 3D model basically done with very accurate dimensions, as you can see here:

However, I'm having a really hard time getting the threaded textures to look right, I already made a texture taken directly from a photo of my work

But the results I'm getting aren't the best.

What am I doing wrong? What's the best approach to simulate those materials in Blender? Should I stick to making (better) textures or there's a good way to make realistic procedural threads like the ones used in my work?
I'll share a photo of my Texture Nodes

and here are the rest of the nodes used for the material

(The nodes called Patterns and Fabric are from a tutorial that teaches how to make fabric-like materials).
I won't be using AutoCAD or any other industrial design software since I'm looking to do some cinematic animations/effects with the models that are more easily achievable with Blender (2.82 btw).

Welcome to Blender.SE. Could you exactly point out what doesn't satisfy you with your current setup? Did you tried to use a noise texture to simulate the fibers threads?

I'm trying to achieve a more photorealistic look, but the texture I made seems a little too repetitive, I haven't tried the noise texture yet, I have only made my own textures directly from my real life work, do you think that using a noise texture could work better than the scanned texture I made? Or can I use both in tandem?

Drakfix - this can absolutely be done procedurally. I have an example ready, and am hoping the question will re-open so I can post it. I will if possible.

Ok, at the risk of this question staying closed, I'm just gonna post a .blend file, so at least you get it. You'll have to do without a description for the time being, I'm afraid. I made 2 materials - a simple one (the plane), and another more complex one on a model which includes a displacement map which you may or may not want. Hope this helps you figure some stuff out at least. File is here - https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/Z6KG86El

Christopher, thanks a lot! The materials you made are AMAZING, almost better than the real stuff, I'll get around tweaking it and I'm sure I'll get a good result. You are a life saver

For those interested, I was able to accomplish this material with something like this.

Although it looks congested, the concept is rather simple - I used wave textures to mainly just compose a bunch of different small line maps of different widths and rotations and adding them together. I probably could have done this more efficiently, but I was just prototyping. I also made some small color lines as well, because it looks like the background is disturbed by some other colors in addition to the black. After that, it was just a matter of mixing them together.

To get a realistic thread look, I combined 2 more wave textures, one sharper and at an angle to the other to make a rope like shape.

I then mixed this pattern with the original horizontal lines to get that wrapped-thread look. Afterwards, I mixed this combo with another wave texture with a smaller scale, which I used to form the large stripes.

For the background, I simply used a gradient texture with aqua colors, but I also used a slightly distorted noise texture to add some yellow as well. I mixed these together using a diagonal gradient as a factor, because in the image you have it looks like the yellowish tinge is mostly in the top left corner areas.

Lastly I made some normal and height information from a black and white version of the small stripe mix. I kept the values very low to give a subtle effect. The final result looks like this:

I made 2 versions of the material - one of them is a simple version using an emission texture to make the colors pop (done entirely from object coordinates), whereas the other one I aimed for a complex, but realistic thread like art look which is more costly because of the displacement, but looks more realistic (done mostly with generated coordinates).
I'll also upload the .blend file. It is here -
Happy Shading!

Thanks again for such a detailed answer!

I love this material so much, I just have a little question, I made a custom gradient based on the colors of the real work (that gradient has 104 color shades) what do you think its the best way to accomplish such a complex color grading on the materials you just made?

Hang on. Let me do a little research and I'll let you know. I think you can use it as an image texture, but I don't know if that would mean you have to unwrap the UV's and use them as a texture coordinates.

Ok, yes, it is absolutely possible, and with minimal work. I don't have time right now for a full breakdown so I'll post another .blend file. All I did was add an image texture (your gradient) and connect it to UV texture coordinates. I used this in place of the gradient setup I had made, and replaced it in the graph. I had to UV unwrap my model, and make sure that the front face(s) were all one piece in the UV map, and scaled to take up the whole image. I removed the color lines too. You should be able to tell from the file. It is here - https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/lD3bqoeO

Oops, I just noticed I thought I was being smart by rotating the image 180 degrees to make it look "right", instead I made it look wrong. Just undo the 180 degree rotation I have on the Z-axis of the image texture in the mapping node. I also forgot to mention, I had a little trouble getting the brightness just right, maybe try reducing the effect of the threads or ambient occlusion. Careful through, you can only go so far before you lose the "thread" impression -  I'll leave that at your discretion.

I'm having a little problem with the .blend, when I try to see the material in Render Preview or Material Preview, I get a completely pink texture, like it was missing. I already tried using External Data --> Find All Missing Files, renaming my gradient to gradient.jpg and setting a new texture in the 'CHANGED!!' group in the material nodes, what could I be doing wrong?

I might have forgot to pack the texture again. All I did to get it was save the image file from the link you gave in the comment (the gradient), and used that as an image texture. I think that's all you have to do. Just click the folder icon on the image texture node I added, and pick the image (wherever you have it on your computer). If that's not working i'll post again. EDIT - I just downloaded and tested myself - it should be working. What does the name say in the material slot?

The name in the material slot is AquaGeneratedSpace as you can see in this image. Also this is how the texture node is looking right now, nothing is working for me, not even adding a completely new texture, it's really weird...

Well, the first thing I see is get rid of the .001. Image files have to end in their extension, I believe. Other than that, I'm not sure. It looks like it packed the external files, but failed to pack the INTERNAL ones. However, the file, when downloaded, works fine on my PC. Maybe you just have to open the one that's working (or make a copy of it), and make the changes manually. I wish I could help, but I don't think there's much more than I can do from here. Maybe someone else can confirm if the (second) file I posted is working or not.

I got it working by appending the material into another project! I'll be trying some adjustments now, thanks a lot for all your help!


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How do i preserve transparency in .fbx file?
I have created a model, in it there is a transparent object. I made it transparent by changing both the alpha values as well as the Blend Mode. My problem now is that I can't retain transparency when exported to an .fbx file.
I have to re-change the Blend Mode each time after importing the .fbx.
Can anyone please help me to retain transparency settings, so that as soon as I import the file, I get a transparent object the same way it was before export?
Here is the blend file
I am using eevee.
if someone could help, i'll be really grateful.

FBX has not concept of Eevee's different transparency options, thus this information is not stored in the file. You would have to use a .blend file for this. Could you perhaps explain in what context you need to retain the blend mode, perhaps there's a different approach to get the desired result?

What are you trying to do with the fbx export? You will need an alpha map texture to tell whatever is reading this what the alpha is. Chances are its going to just be a grayscale image at .3 , you could make an alpha map and then modify once its in the 3d package/ blender. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_mapping


text:
Glossy reflecting only one object
Glossy in camera tracking
I am having some fun with camera-tracking in Blender.
That is my result so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8-GudfIzi0
My question is: how can I make this table reflect the ship?
Nodes are standard Blender's setup for motion tracking.
There is a plane on Backround layer, receiveing the shadow. I tried adding glossy shader to the plane. But then plane is reflecting surroundings (light and skybox) which is breaking the effect.
Good solution for me would be if plane could reflect only the ship, and be transparent to all the other, but I don't know how to approach this.
Do you know any trick that could help me out?

A while back, I found this tutorial on YouTube. Perhaps you can do something similar.
Another thing you could consider is taking a picture of the desk and mapping it onto your shadow-receiving plane. Then try adding glossiness again. This should provide a nicer rendition.


text:
Moving from material to texture, how do I keep diffuse/specular settings?
The sole purpose of my models is to export them into a game engine (Unity).
I model in low poly with flat shading, and the goal is to be able to use a simple color palette to be shared among all models in the game.
I'm inspired by this guide: http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/go-beyond-retro-pixel-art-with-flat-shaded-3d-in-unity--gamedev-12259
It suggests unwrapping and then moving the faces over to the right color:

Can I somehow make this color palette automatically or do I have to make it in an image editor? Or can I perhaps make it manually in blender (the next best thing)?
My real question is, though, how do I keep everything from getting super specular, as textures are wont to do? How do I get my diffuse/specular settings over into the texture?
Complete beginner at this, as you can see.

It is possible to make color palette automatically through scripting in both unity and blender, but with given info and case it's beyond the scope of this question. You can create texture manually in blender through setting UV/Image view from view to paint, creating new 2px*2px image, and painting it with brush with radius 1.
For your other question, there is no simple automatic way to put unity-compatible specular data into your texture. The specularity behaviour depends purely of the choice of the shader and supplied textures in unity, and without further info it's hard to say much about how to proceed with that and also it's not really blender-related question, so you need to go look for unity-related tutorials and forums.

 To get the look in that tutorial you need to switch your material's shader in Unity from standard to Legacy > Diffuse

There's no such thing as a specular map to send with the model?

None that i'd be aware of. Also, as you have not stated what kind of shader you are using or what kind of result you are hoping to achieve, there's not even way to know what kind of specular map you are going to need.

I see. This is more complicated than I thought, but at least I know now what not to search for!


text:
Glass shader blocks light?
I know a commonly duplicated question is "Why is light not passing through glass?" or "Why does my glass shader ignore lighting?", But mine's a bit different.
The Problem
I 3D modeled a type of weapon called a kukri in Blender, and I created a little display for it:

The speckles are the lighting emitted from the little spotlight-type things on the corners, I'm just running low samples at the moment.
As you can see, the shading looks dandy. Now let's see when happens when I put a glass cover on top of it:

Everything on the inside goes dark. Here's a representation of the geometry of the cover:

What I've Tried
I've tried the following node setups, neither of which solved the problem.

Here's my settings:

Download the .BLEND

IMO, the black contour are due to reflection and this is normal. Why don't you lower the thickness of the glass box?

I'd second @lemon. This looks normal. Is the glass not just reflecting the dark environment that surrounds it? Change the world to White or a brighter Gray and it should look OK.

Change clamp indirect to 0.  You have it set to .01, which feels like it should only affect it in a small way but in truth the smaller the value for clamp the more of an affect it will have.  0 = off.

This solved my problem. After a year of using it, I'm still not quite sure what Clamp does..

@JoshSilveous, Clamp direct and indirect, as the names indicate, clamp all scene light values that exceed the entered value, one exception is 0, which means don't clamp, so when you enter 0.1 in Clamp Indirect for instance, that means that all lights information bouncing to Camera that exceed this value(0.1) will be scaled down to (0.1) value.

@Georges what value would you then recommend to get rid of the fireflies in my scene without removing the lights in the case?

@JoshSilveous depending on whether you're using standard Blender LUT or Filmic Blender (Wide Dynamic Range), I use the latter, I rarely use Clamps, but when I do, I usually set Indirect to around 10-14 direct always above 14.5, but each scene is different, it depends on your lighting setup, for standard Blender LUT, usually 3 for Clamp indirect, 6 for direct works fine, but you need to experiment with it, always try to use the less clamp (higher value) that removes the fireflies, overusing it will kill your lighting, quote:"Clamps are dangerous creatures".


text:
Hide instances that intersect with an object
Dear Blender community
I am new to geometry nodes, and can't figure one thing on my own. I have those roof tiles as instances on points, nothing too fancy, but I want to hide some of the tiles in case if they intersect with a chosen object. How do I do that? Gut feeling tells me to dig into proximity nodes perhaps, but not sure.
Please see the pictures attached. All tiles that intersect with the sphere must disappear. No tiles must be cut in half (if I would want that, I would have just used boolean).
Thanks in advance!

To clarify your question: (1) is the masking object always a sphere (with a centre and a radius to compute distances...) or could it be a more complex object ? (2) do you want "not to instance" tiles (using the Selection mask of the Instance on Points node), or do you want to remove "realized" tiles afterwards ?

Hi Stef!
Instances must be realized. The shape could be anything, a sphere here is only for simplicity of explanation. In the matter of fact, I don't want the tiles inside the object removed, I want them to have another material. I just thought if I figure out how to remove, the rest I will also manage.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/300089/165102


text:
Loading render kernels doing every run
We have a docker container where we start blender rendering. But every time Loading render kernels takes 3 minutes from render. This only happens when running a render inside a docker container. If you run blender outside of docker, the loading is done only once. Any thoughts on what this might be related to?
It seems to me that there is no folder inside the docker container where the cache should be saved. But I can’t find where the cache is generally saved in Linux.
Blender 4.1.1
Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS (Focal Fossa)
Thank you.
Regards,
Andrii


text:
Does anyone know how to make torn fabric in geometry nodes?
Does anyone know how to make torn fabric in geometry nodes? Like this:

Hello and welcome to BSE. What have you tried?

I was trying something like that

How do you want to model this ? With curves ? With edges ? With faces ? Do you want to mesh it, or to prepare data in GN that are used after in a Shader ?

Hello and welcome juan,
The main idea is to distort the mesh with a Noise Texture and then bring the mesh back to the faces of the original object with a Geometry Proximity and a Set Position node:

I hope it helps.

@quellenform Thanks for the edit.

thank you very much it was what I was looking for! <3


text:
Absorption and scattering coefficient vs. Material subsurface properties
I did not find any information yet about the link between the subsurface parameters in the material properties (method, weight, radius, scale and anisotropy) and the physical equations explaining the subsurface scattering with parameters like refraction index, scattering coefficient and absorption coefficient. For a project I would like to understand the parallel between material measurements and how to render it in Blender accurately. Any help would be helpful ! Thank you very much!


text:
Can't add anything to Geometry Nodes, "Add a node to the active area"
As the title, new project, tried plane and cube. Cannot use Geometry nodes :-/

I guess you accidentally clicked in the wrong row when opening the dropdown menu with editors. You are in the Texture Node Editor, the Geometry Node Editor is exactly the next below it. By the way it would help with answering your question if you showed the complete window, then the menu bar would immediately show on the left by the icon that you are using the incorrect editor.

Make sure that the editor type is set to "Geometry Node Editor":


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Driver "Transform space" option is mixing different rotations
When frame is switching from 5 to 6, red monkey weirdly flips and green rotates well.
Red one is using empty's X rot Transform space as variable. Green - empty's data path of X rot.
Empty is keyframed for all rotation channels and it seems that Driver is mixing them like as World space

You can see how drastically driver value has changed (from 2.896 to -0.246), while empty was barely rotating

Is it a normal behaviour? And should I always stick to data path connection for driver in similiar cases?

While I'm not sure of the cause, if you clear the rotation of the empty and only rotate it on the x axis the issue stops.


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Why Internal and Cycles are so different when rendering a duplifaced object with particle system?
One object is recreating another as dupliface instances. But those one which is being instanced has got particle system + explode modifier. Cycles renders OK, but Internal fails on this task, though its viewport shows right relationships between objects.
EDIT: I found how to make it work in Internal - just switch to object mode in render settings of particle system and keep it blank. Anyway I'm still curious why is it acting like that...


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Rendering problem with Neon lights - Blender guru tutorial
Complete beginner here, I've been working on making neon lights from Blender Guru's tutorials and it looked pretty good on my viewport.

However, when I tried to render it there was a dark halo around the pipe  material that didn't go away even when I disabled a few nodes in the shading workspace.

I couldn't find people having the same problems on the comments section either.

You have the duplicate of the original, flat text object still visible. You can delete it, hide it from the render or put it in a collection you disable with the checkbox. I hope that this is clear enough, otherwise just ask me your remaining questions.


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I'm trying to view the liquid in my glass bottle, but the glass is too reflective
Here is what I'm looking at when I'm in the shader. I have liquid in the bottle but I can't see it. Not sure what I'm missing I tried turning off glossy, flipped normals and some other things but still can't view what's inside the bottle. Rendering it proves to be the same issue as well. Please help!

The image you show is from Material Preview mode, which uses EEVEE to display the scene. If you are using any blender version pre-4.2 and using EEVEE (this includes material preview), you must change the material's Blend Mode to anything other than opaque for tranparency to function. (Scroll down in the material options - Alpha-Blend works fine for most applications)

@ChristopherBennett If this is a "regular" glass material in one way or another like Glass BSDF or Principled BSDF with Transmission, then changing the Blend Mode doesn't help anything, that's for alpha transparency. For transmissive materials Refraction has to be enabled in the material and the render settings. For a pure transmissive material without any faking with transparency the Blend Mode can even be left at Opaque.

I'm using Blender 4.2 and I tried both options but still it doesn't show clear glass. here is a screenshot of when I tried to raytrace. https://postimg.cc/TKZvj4Ry

Here is another screenshot of my material for the glass. https://postimg.cc/NK8kbyt1

I'm also using cycles instead of EEVEE.

Viewport Shading has some improvement but it's still not perfect. This is after changing the blend mode to Alpha Blend. https://postimg.cc/N2w11YnN


text:
Blender 2.7 Principled BSDF missing
I have seen many blender tutorials in youtube - some people use blender 2.7 and they have a Principled BSDF.  Mine's missing:

Principled BSDF was added in 2.79. It looks like you're using 2.78.

oh ye i forgot to change the blender shortcut in my desktop thx


text:
Normals not working properly, even if recalculated
I have been making some models for a Unity project. I have a problem only with this model,

idk if they are the normals because it seems that they are fine.

the funny thing is that in Unity looks fine, but in blender not.

could you please share the object with the problem? https://pasteall.org/blend/

sure  https://pasteall.org/blend/0bde5189f2dc40d88a5d55c5da29c69b

In the Material Settings, switch back the Blend Mode to Opaque, I guess it's your problem?

Thanks man, that solved it :D


text:
Adding texture to object
I'm trying to import an object with a obj. file. The shape comes in but it doesn't have any texture. This is the first time I'm trying this.
Is the coding correct?
from object:
mtllib Mandark.mtl

o Inst3D_RefRep.558

v 0.011818 1.659554 -0.150772

vt 0.080000 0.221000

usemtl RefRep.558_Body.png_Body.png

s 1

f 1/1 2/2 3/3

f 3/3 2/2 4/4

f 1218/900 1216/897 1217/895

o Inst3D_RefRep.558_Ref

v -0.153880 2.519897 0.040634

v -0.150564 2.538620 0.018198

vt 0.823000 0.878000

vt 0.823000 0.986000

usemtl RefRep.632_Body.png_Body.png

s 1
f 1298/966 1299/967 1300/968

f 1298/966 1300/968 1301/969

From mtl.:

newmtl RefRep.632_Body.png_Body.png

Ns 90.196078

Ka 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000

Kd 0.409600 0.409600 0.409600

Ks 0.125000 0.125000 0.125000

Ni 1.000000

d 0.000000

illum 2

map_Kd Texture\Body.png

newmtl RefRep.558_Body.png_Body.png

Ns 92.156863

Ka 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000

Kd 0.512000 0.512000 0.512000

Ks 0.250000 0.250000 0.250000

Ni 1.000000

d 0.000000

illum 2

map_Kd Texture\Body.png

Are you sure there is no texture on the object? Are you viewing it in solid view, material preview, or render view? The default is solid view, which in turn by default will not show textures even if they are set up completely properly. To learn more about the subject, visit the blender manual at docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/display/shading.html

Also, you seem to be asking about the syntax of the OBJ file. If you wrote that yourself, well done, because that’s good stuff to know, but it isn’t strictly Blender related.

Hi, thanks for the post.  This question is getting close votes because it lacks details or clarity.  You can edit your post to include more details, or in this case a screenshot might be helpful, and it will be automatically queued for review to be reopened.

Make sure the texture is in the same folder as the blend file in a folder named Texture


text:
Viewing "Layers" of an Imported Model
I downloaded a free .obj anatomical model that I imported but I am unable to relate to the different systems of the body.  It just looks like the external mesh, but it is supposed to have veins, muscles, etc.  Those systems are listed on the scene view, but I can't figure out how to view them separately.  I am an osteopath who wants to use this as a model for my youtube videos.
My screenshot:

Hi. I suspect your question is receiving downvotes for the sensitive nature of the model illustrated. Consider posting a different screenshot that shows nudity.

What you are seeing in the outliner are just materials applied to the model, there doesn't seem to be any additional geometry for the body systems you are looking for.

To add on to Duarte's comment, you can view the materials by clicking one of the two rightmost of the 4 little circles at the top right of the viewport - these are your preview modes, and the two on the right (Material and rendered) show materials. I don't know how your project is set up, but you can likely switch between the viewable materials by manipulating the material slots. You can find these slots under the material properties tab (the tab with the same pink checkered globe as you see in the outliner).

Maybe there is hidden geometry underneath the skin of the model ? If you go into wireframe mode (Z > Wireframe or click the leftmost disc in the topright of the 3D viewport), do you see internal organs ?

Thanks, everyone.  I viewed it in mesh mode and it looks like it's just the skin.  Being in the health field, it didn't even occur to me that nudity would be a problem in an artist forum, but I'll remember that next time!


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How to install molecular 1.1.2 Addon at Linux Blender 2.91
In Blender 2.91 on Ubuntu 20.04 (Kernel 5.10.6-051006-generic) I can not install the Addon Molecular from: https://github.com/scorpion81/Blender-Molecular-Script/releases
It works fine in Windows 10 with Blender 2.91.
The problem might be something missig in python, but I don't know how to fix it.
I found this line migh be giving a hint on the problem: https://github.com/scorpion81/Blender-Molecular-Script/blob/60385f589d3d31261cfb51802a915dd0355d500c/make_release.py#L29

#TODO, blenders (or a compatible) python bin needs to be in $PATH, and if you use blender's you need to copy the python includes from SVN
#into the include folder of blenders python, too

The Blender system info says Python 3.7 is in place:
=====================================

= Blender 2.91.0 System Information =
Blender:
version: 2.91.0, branch: master, commit date: 2020-11-25 08:34, hash: 0f45cab862b8, type: Release
build date: 2020-11-25, 08:51:08
platform: Linux
binary path: '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/blender'
build cflags:  -Wall -Wcast-align -Werror=implicit-function-declaration -Werror=return-type -Werror=vla -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wno-char-subscripts -Wno-unknown-pragmas -Wpointer-arith -Wunused-parameter -Wwrite-strings -Wlogical-op -Wundef -Winit-self -Wmissing-include-dirs -Wno-div-by-zero -Wtype-limits -Wformat-signedness -Wrestrict -Wnonnull -Wabsolute-value -Wuninitialized -Wredundant-decls -Wshadow -Wno-error=unused-but-set-variable -Wimplicit-fallthrough=5  -fuse-ld=gold -std=gnu11   -msse -pipe -fPIC -funsigned-char -fno-strict-aliasing -msse2 -D_GLIBCXX_USE_CXX11_ABI=0
build cxxflags:  -Wredundant-decls -Wall -Wno-invalid-offsetof -Wno-sign-compare -Wlogical-op -Winit-self -Wmissing-include-dirs -Wno-div-by-zero -Wtype-limits -Werror=return-type -Wno-char-subscripts -Wno-unknown-pragmas -Wpointer-arith -Wunused-parameter -Wwrite-strings -Wundef -Wformat-signedness -Wrestrict -Wuninitialized -Wundef -Wmissing-declarations -Wimplicit-fallthrough=5  -fuse-ld=gold -std=c++17   -msse -pipe -fPIC -funsigned-char -fno-strict-aliasing -msse2 -D_GLIBCXX_USE_CXX11_ABI=0
build linkflags:  -Wl,--version-script='/home/sources/buildbot-worker-linux_centos7/linux_291/blender.git/source/creator/blender.map'
build system: CMake

Python:
version: 3.7.7 (default, Jul  9 2020, 12:52:49)  [GCC 9.3.1 20200408 (Red Hat 9.3.1-2)]
file system encoding: utf-8:surrogateescape
paths:
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/scripts/startup'
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/scripts/modules'
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/python/lib/python37.zip'
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/python/lib/python3.7'
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/python/lib/python3.7/lib-dynload'
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/python/lib/python3.7/site-packages'
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/scripts/freestyle/modules'
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/scripts/addons/modules'
    '/home/p/.config/blender/2.91/scripts/addons/modules'
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/scripts/addons'
    '/home/p/.config/blender/2.91/scripts/addons'

Python (External Binary):
=====================================

binary path: '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/python/bin/python3.7m'
version: Python 3.7.7

Directories:
scripts:
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/scripts/modules'
    '/home/p/3d/blender/blender-2.91.0-linux64/2.91/scripts'
    '/home/p/.config/blender/2.91/scripts'
user scripts: '/home/p/.config/blender/2.91/scripts'
pref scripts: None
datafiles: '/home/p/.config/blender/2.91/datafiles'
config: '/home/p/.config/blender/2.91/config'
scripts : '/home/p/.config/blender/2.91/scripts'
autosave: '/home/p/.config/blender/2.91/autosave'
tempdir: '/tmp/blender_Yjx2oy/'

Maybe @scorpion81 himself could give a hint?

scorpion81 did a new build local and uploaded a new version. Now I can install the addon and it works as expected.
link to the github page


text:
Shadow problems with point light radius
When I increase the point light radius, it ends up creating artifacts on the textures for seemingly no reason.

Even though I I have High Quality Shadows (High bit-depth and cube map resolution).

I want to create a smooth texture just like the corner of the photo, but for some reason it ends up creating these squares with what looks like many "vertices".

Please write in english, use an online translator.

Those are Shadow Terminator artifacts. The most common way to deal with them is adding more geometry, usually with a subdivision surface modifier.

But starting with blender 2.9 you can control the Shadow terminator aritfacts directly in the Object Properties. In the Shading section use the slider for Shadow Terminator Offset:

eu uso o eevee e meu modelo ja esta com essa modificação

@MeguiTaA12 this site works in english.


text:
Starting an animation in python, letting it run for X frames then pausing it, and then having the second half of a script run
I have a script that adds rigid bodies to a scene, then I'd like them to fall into a box and then export their final resting place, but need to delete objects that do not end up in the box(as to only export the box and the objects within it and not the ones that miss the box). Is there a way to run part of the script, animate 40 frames then pause the animation, and then run the rest of the script?
Something like (the box is already in place and in practice it will be multiple objects being added in semi random positions)
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=2, enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0, 3), scale=(1, 1, 1))

bpy.ops.rigidbody.object_add()

bpy.ops.screen.animation_play()

run for 40 frames
animation stop
rest of the script
Thank you!

I think this might be a good use case for "apply visual transform"


text:
Wireframe overlay is not working
I'm a beginner in blender, I use the AMD kit (motherboard, processor and video card) I was taking a course and ended up being stopped by a problem - my Wireframe overlay doesn't work, I've tried everything, uninstalled, updated blender and my video card driver, and nothing solves it. Can someone help me?

Interestingly, there is another location in the UI where you can try to turn this feature on, and, strangely enough, turning it on in one place doesn't turn it on in the other place. So it may not be exactly the same feature in some sense. But it looks the same, as far as I can tell. So it may work for you to try this as a workaround.
Go into the Object tab (not the Object Data tab) of the Properties Panel. Expand the Viewport Display section, and then click the Wireframe checkbox. Visually, this feature seems to be the same as using the overlay function. But as I said, the overlay checkbox will not be affected by clicking the display checkbox here. I don't know why.
Let me know if this works for you.

Obrigado pela resposta amigo, porem, infelizmente não funcionou! mesmo assim não aparece o wireframe


text:
I want to make the surroundings glow with a rim light
(3) With Unity-based software, when backlighting a character, I want to make the surroundings glow with a rim light.
Example:

I want to set the rim light to the clothes and display the rim light on something that uses the Unity engine, such as the VRMLive viewer. is.
The part made with Vroid reacted when I set RImcolor in the Vroid shader, but (human part)
The clothes look different.
I tried setting it using MN toonshade node, but it didn't work.

Thanks, I do it but it couldn't.
I add more information at Question.
And I couldn't do this.

you will need to "bake" the emission lighting using an Irradiance Volume in order for the light to affect the surroundings.

I would combine your existing material with an Emission Shader, using a Fresnel as a Mix Factor to "force" the emission to the rim. You can also experiment with the Fresnel and Facing outputs of a Layer Weight node, however, I think a simple Fresnel should suffice.
You can include a ColorRamp to gain better control of the "tightness" of the rim lighting. You may have to set the emission strength rather high. Don't forget to turn on Bloom if you're using EEVEE (highlighted right side).
If you are using EEVEE, you will need to "bake" the emission lighting using an Irradiance Volume in order for the light to affect the surroundings. If you're using Cycles, you will have to render the scene first, then use a glare node in the Compositor to get the "glow".

I edited it after watching the answer.
It looks good in Blender, though, in Unity it became white.
Maybe the texture disappeared.
Img4 is another dater that succeeds.
I added a new texture and connect the main texture.
It can use rim light upper the texture in Unity software.
The data structure is not the same structure.
But I don't know how to do the same things in this file.
I watched this setting at Unity game software(VRM Live viewer)
The setting becomes emission so the body becomes white.
I control emission setting decrease so texture appears.
It doesn't become rim light setting.