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I get many surfaces when i Unwarp my mesh,(Only two selected)
i'm getting stacked with this issue please help ! it's the first time i use blender i've been modeling for the first time without noticing that i have deferent color faces on my mesh without applying any material or colors !
the mesh looks unified but whene i apply unwarping i get splited surfaces and when i use ambient oclusion it apply only ont this splited face,it's realy strange please help !! here a link to my model for anyone who want to check it !
http://www.mediafire.com/download/oo4iubpe5v7n856/Body06%282%29.rar

your normals are mostly backwards. Press the recalculate normals button to fix it.

Oh man thank i've wasted a lot a time tryin' to find a solution to this problem !  Thank you very much !!!


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Is there a way to mute an operator's stdout prints?
I have a script that processes a mesh in various ways (shrinkwrap, bisect and other operations) and renders two images with freestyle.
These processes (and many others in blender) spew out various messages that clutter the standard output buffer and make debugging and logging quite difficult and annoying.
Rendering an image with freestyle, for instance, generates hundreds of printed lines that report the memory, which part is being rendered, etc.
Is there a way to silence all prints except my own debug prints?
I know I can probably write my stuff to a different stream like stderr but I'd really like to have more control over what's displayed and what's not.

Great! btw: thanks for your production scripts, also mentioned here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/16152/save-all-render-passes-to-a-single-exr-image/18406#18406.

Sure, good to know they're useful to other people :)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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What is the difference between a linear and angular motor (rigid body physics)?
As the title asks, what is the difference between a linear motor and an angular motor in rigid body physics?

An angular motor rotates stuff (angular impulse), and a linear motor pushes stuff (linear impulse):

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


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How do I add a sound to the start of my game?
How do I add a sound to the start of my game so it only plays once?

After reading your comment to Tim's answer, you'll need to upload your .blend. Using blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com upload your .blend so people can help you better. And then edit your post with the link. Thanks.

I'm fairly new to the game engine, but I was able to work this out so I will add my solution.
 Add a sensor and set to always>once, and then add a controller. The controller will be be an and controller. Finally, an actuator, which will hold the sound file. Set it to Sound>sound and the mode should be Play stop.
This should work with a speaker or empty as well as a mesh object if you prefer, I tested on a uv sphere with the shortest sound I could find on my PC, and it works. It will play once only upon pressing P.
Your logic bricks will look something like this:

Hi, and thanks for your answer. I was already doing it the way you describe, but Blender isn't playing the whole sound file and misses the beginning. I tried adding 1.5 seconds of silence to the start of the file to give Blender some time to load it, but it doesn't change anything. I have a second sound file called by another Always that plays in a continuous loop throughout the game, and I thought it might be interfering with the first file.


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What is baking?
What is baking used for? How does it help me?
It's a simple question and I don't understand why this site gives me such a hard time trying to ask anything.

This is a Q&A site, and we have rules to follow. When we downvote/upvote things, it's never personal. Hovering over those buttons says why we would do it. We're always only trying to help you, and others.

This is a broad question, it's not even related directly to Blender, since backing is a generic operation in most 3D software, answering this question in details, will take pages, or a tutorial, which is not what this site is for. A simple answer as the one Carlo provided a link to is already available, but you can find lots of detailed answers on other tutorials sites, or Youtube.

@cegaton, I agree, and the short answer is already provided in BSE, don't you think?

Its like painting shadows/colors onto the object, instead of recalculating the shadows constantly. If you bake the shadows, they wont change even if you rotate the light, etc.  This way you can export your models into other software with textures on them or you simply save yourself the hours of contently  re-rendering good quality textures.


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How do I split a movie file in Blender?
How do I split a movie file into parts in Blender 2.76b?

Perhaps add your ultimate goal, it could get you better answers... eg: do you want to just split a long clip and export those short movies separately? Or are they intended to be reused in a blender animation, or else? Btw, You'll find main editing toos/commands here https://www.blender.org/manual/editors/sequencer/usage.html#moving-and-modifying-strips.

I don't see how providing more information will help. It should be a simple thing to understand.... split a Blender-created video file into two parts WITHIN the Blender program.

Possible duplicate of Is it possible to split a .blend file?

Imho, just seeing how many answers and comments you got, should say something about why more detail are needed :) but, since currently the blender manual seems to be somehow missing examples and more details, let's see if this helps:
You can split ANY strip in the Blender Video Editor (VSE), when the cursor (current frame) is over it, but in two different ways: "hard cut" and "soft cut". This also applies to video (movie) strips.

"hard cut" means that the the strip will be separated in the cursor point in two smaller clips, that became then independent, and each has only the strip frames that the cut left to it, depending on the cursor position.

Then, you can move each strip even to other channels, but if you try to extend (dragging the side triangle handle) the smaller strips toward the "now missing" part of the movie, while possible, will show nothing more, of course, since the missing frames are now gone, and the strip background will be accordingly drawn transparent:

(using the transparent part in your edit will render a "frame freezing" effect - showing last possible frame from that side of strip - on the left side it will bethe first possible frame, on the right side it will be the last possible frame)

"soft cut" means that the the strip will be still separated in the cursor point in two smaller clips, that became then independent, and they will appear identical to the "hard cut"...

...BUT, while each will appear trimmed to only the strip frames that the cut left to it, depending on the cursor position, as in the "hard" cut, they will instead "keep" also the "missing" frames, just hidden (the strip has really been duplicated and both copies trimmed to show just what was expected by the cut position).
And when you drag their ends towards the "missing" part,

The "missing" frame are still there, and they reappear! So, in a sense is a less definitive cut, and you can still change your mind later, or use the same portion of the original video in boths strips, if you need.

(of course if you extend beyond original length, you will get the usual effect of frame frezing from then on, as in the "hard" cut)

I hope this answers your question :)


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Documentation on Materials and Textures
Simple question... Why is there no documentation on how to properly use materials and textures? The only documentation I can find is for loading texture images in the UV editor. The Blender search engine doesn't come up with anything useful at all when you search for "materials" or "textures". This is something that should have its own section in the docs.

Do you have a specific problem with materials or texturing you are trying to work out?

Could you be more precise about what do you mean by "properly"? If you are referring to a specifical workflow, name it. At the moment the topic is a little broad, and that's probably why it has not still being extensively coverd in the docs. There are lots of things that can be done with textures...

Blender's new documentation (https://www.blender.org/manual/) is still fairly new and it might be work in progress for a long time. Texturing a model is a fairly extensive topic, since it still has to cover two render engines, different purposes (still images, animations, game assets...). It eventually will cover the basics, but certainly not every aspect for every possible purpose.

Timaroberts - My question is specific to the Blender docs.

Carlo - By "properly" I'm using it in the same way that the Blender docs use the word when explaining that there is a Proper way and a Quick way to use UV Texturing. This is just the problem.... I don't understand what the docs mean by saying this. They don't explain and just confuse the issue.

metaphor_set - I don't believe it. I know how crucial documentation is to maintaining software development.

Well, it's still quite hard to figure out what you mean exactly. "Old folks" like us don't look into these corners of the Documentation very often, since we've assigned more textures than there are days in our lives.
Maybe you could add a link or a screenshot and highlight the exact problem?

How do I highlight what's missing?

Let us know what you're struggling with! BTW You will probably get more help for what you are thinking from tutorials and googling "how to use some functionality in Blender".

How about https://www.blender.org/manual/render/cycles/materials/index.html and https://www.blender.org/manual/render/cycles/nodes/index.html?

Yeah, but that just covers Cycles. I'm looking for an explanation on how to properly use materials and textures in BI. The problem is that the docs are very limited in explaining how to PROPERLY (their word) use them. Why do the docs offer a 'quick way' and a 'proper way', and yet not explain either one very clearly, leaving a person confused?

First, I think the answer to your question is "Why no documentation?" is simple. It is free open source software and the developers didn't yet have to time to do it in more details. However, if you have some knowledge in the subject you can contribute:
https://www.blender.org/manual/about/contribute/index.html
If everyone will do so, the documentation soon will be very extensive.
Second, it is true, that the documentation on this topics is not detailed enough. I also didn't necessarily have problems with particular materials, but wanted first to know what materials I can create, how I should do it and what different parameters mean. I found many answers in the article below. It has good explanations and many pictures. Hope it will be useful for you too.
http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/cycles-shader-encyclopedia/


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Audio Source and Blender Capabilities
Forgive me, but I am 100% new to Blender.  I have just begun experimenting.  I am hoping to build a music video in the application.  My hope is to have individual tracks from the song (example snare drum, basslines) some in and be a modulation source of some kind in the program to trigger video, move animation, etc.  Is this possible and where can I do some preliminary reading on an approach like this?
Thanks much,
Tim

I think you are looking for the Bake Sound to F-Curve feature


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Hair renders from regions outside vertex group
I have a vertex group and hair renders outside the region.  I can reverse it by the double arrow and that works - no hair inside my vertex group.  I have no modifiers applied. How can I only get hair from my vertex group?

When you assign vertices to a vertex group you assign them by Weight, i.e. how much this vertex affects/is affected by whatever is using it.  Weights are interpolated along edges between vertices, which creates a smooth look, which is what you are experiencing (go into weight paint mode to see what I mean).  Unfortunately I don't know if it is possible to not do this.  I have a couple Mickey-Mousey ideas but I'll see if anyone has anything more elegant before posting.

You are on the right track; the heat map extends beyond vertices and edges.  Unfortunately, my 2.76 doesn't look like the manual for weights...

Sorry, but what do you mean by "2.76 doesn't look like the manual for weights"?

Version 2.76 doesn't look like online manual - different weights panel.

As with many things in life, I do not know the answer. But I do know how to cheat.
In edit mode, subdivide the faces you want hairy. Create a one-face-wide border between the hairy area and the rest of the surface. Assign your weight to the inside faces, and make sure your border faces are blue. Looking at the mesh in weight paint mode will show you if the hairs need a broader border area...
I am not sure this is right, but it mostly works....

Great... and a note: When you are working on some kinds of objects -- animals, human head, etc. --  a hair cap also assures exact coverage... see: http://bensimonds.com/2011/02/17/hair-in-blender/  at the bottom of page. Not always a good solution for animation, but a really precise way to control coverages.


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Turn off incremental render
Is there a way to turn off the incremental rendering, so it only updates the viewport once the render is finished?
I'm using the "render preview" in 3D viewport, with eevee. When I rotate the view with the mouse, it is very jerky, because of the incremental render. I don't mean it's slow between frames: my scene is small and quick to draw. What I mean is that it first draws a very coarse version of the scene, then fills in details over two or three more screen refreshes. It is still quick, but the interleaved coarsely rendered frames really makes it hard on the eyes when you rotate the view.

EEVEE, just like Cycles. has Samples. Directly turning incremental rendering off is not an option, but you can turn down the samples to the lowest value. This would give you a smiliar result.

Great - thanks, I had not guessed that turning down the samples would have that effect, but it works.

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


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Texture not as preview
It's the first time I've tried using a texture and after a couple of hours, I cannot find what I'm doing wrong.  Help.  It looks fine in the preview, and looks bad rendered.  I"ve tried lights.  Ideas?

The link Duarte provides does provide an explanation.  Solved it for me.  I don't understand why someone got upset with my pointing it out.

The answer section is meant for full comprehensive answers explaining the process. Link only answers are discouraged, if the link goes down the answer becomes empty and useless for any future visitors. I'd encourage expanding our answer to include a short explanation of the issue and how you solved it

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


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Boolean difference between Cylinder and Torus
I want to create a mesh like this:

using blender version 2.83.5
It should be easy to create it with a boolean difference between the cylinder and the torus, but it seems that in the defaukt position something goes wrong.
I am new to blender forums and I never reported a bug so I want to avoid to make useless noise by first asking someone else if I am doing something wrong.
I followed this sequence:

Open a new shene and delete the default cube
Create a cylinder and leave everything default
Create a torus and leave everything default
Add a booleand difference to the cylinder with the torus as a target
Nothing happens
Apply the boolean and hide the torus. The cylinder is still there intact
Go into edit mode and you'll see the traces of the difference as new edges and verteces where the torus was
I also noticed that if the torus is not perfeclty centered (i.e. moved x by 0.001) before applying the boolean, everything works as expected.

Is this a bug or I am doing something stupid?
Thank you for any suggestion

The vertices of the torus and the edges of the cylinders are overlapping, overlappings prevent the boolean to work correctly, I think it's a problem that will be soon fixed, but for the moment you need for example to scale a little bit the torus and the boolean will work fine.

Not really a direct answer, but in this case it may be easier not to use a Boolean? Create a torus...

Select desired loops,V rip those edges,
Hover - L select unwanted faces and delete
Select boundary edge loops, E extrude, right-click to drop in place
SZ scale the extrusions up and down
F fill the top and bottom faces

Assign a Bevel modifier by angle. AltN, if necessary, to recalculate normals to face outwards.

Thanks for the answer.
Actually the mesh was a little more complicated than that, and I succesfully made it anyway using the boolean with a slightly (0.001) decentered torus, and moving back to center the interested verteces (those that were belonging to the torus before applying the boolean.
The point was, not to find a way to make it, but if is was a bug preventing it to work as expected.
Thanks for the suggestion anyway, to demonstrate once more that there's no single way to (skin a cat) get the result ;)

@ziomau10 That's cool.. sometimes Booleans are the best way. I always look for the modelling approach first, and only reach for the Boolean when it does the job better, or well-enough in a much better time.


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undoing armature skinning?
I want to undo armature skinning I pressed ctrl z but didnt work since the file was saved and opened again so I think I lost the reversing by ctrl z function

To remove all armature influence, you will need to remove the parent and remove the armature modifier from the mesh.
Select the mesh object and press ALT-P -> Clear Parent to remove parenting. Go to the modifier properties and remove all armature modifiers with the X on the right. Do not apply the modifier nor apply it as a shapekey.


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Panel locations moved
Opened my project today and the panels were in different places. Very uncomfortable to use. How do I move them back to the default location?

Just rearrange the screen as you wish by sliding the limits of the panels, any right click on them (the panels borders) will open a contextual menu with choice to either split or merge screens, and at least you can obviously change any panel to another type (3Dview, Outliner...).

This will return all settings, including UI, to those you had when you downloaded Blender.... this will also reset any changes you have made to the Blender start-up file, too.

and this will allow you to load files containing alternate UIs without loading the UI changes... (just in case that is what happened...)


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Can I use UV project modifier for a specific face?

I just need the top face to use the UV Project modifier. How can I do it?

When UV Unwrapping you select your desired faces to unwrap.

@Lukaash They are using the 'UV project' modifier.

@RayMairlot Oh, i see, silly me.

I'm assuming you want to do it with one material applied to all faces? Or can the single face have a separate material?

The simplest way to get a clean separation in texturing between the faces is to set up two materials, one for the single face, and one for the rest of the mesh. Then you can set up a UV map for each material and they won't conflict with each other due to the face assignment of the materials.
In my example, I'm actually UV projecting textures for both materials even though you don't need to do that. Just set up the UV projection for the top face in order to achieve the result you want.

STEP ONE
Create 2 UV Maps (you can unwrap the whole mesh into both maps, as we are differentiating between the textures via face material assignment)

STEP TWO
Create 2 Materials Similar to the screenshot

STEP THREE
Apply the materials to the desired faces in Edit mode.

STEP FOUR
Set up the UV Projection modifier like this (you can just do 1 projection even though I've done 2). You'll also need a separate camera for projection (you can use the main camera but it's generally more convenient to use a separate camera)

STEP FIVE
Now you should have a different material and a texture that is UV projection on your mesh surfaces.

Let me know if this is enough detail to give you a solution. I can make the steps more explicit if need be.

Thank, Can i use UV Project only in blue rect faces? i try to make no texture deform in there and just one material. http://imgur.com/lpex5mV

Sure, just disable the UVProject Mod that is operating on the top texture. Then the top texture will be fixed by standard texture mapping, and the rest of the cube will use textures mapped via the UVProject mod.


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Zoom and Crop of a video already recorded
I am trying to use Blender for editing sports videos. I need to show players specific movements they did wrong or right. I am wondering if there is a way to zoom in once I have already recorded the video?

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/42094/2843

You can select your video strip and add a Effect strip/Transform. In the params, you have a scale parameter and a position parameter

This will probably result in the magnified image being a little blurry but that is unavoidable.


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joining multi objects in blender to make one object
I saw a post asking this same basic question. My situation is this. I have a body that I brought into blender as a collida, three pieces being head, upper body and lower body. The previous answers I see for something like this say to use ctrl J to join. I even see a button to do this. But when I do it the body parts compress horizontally and become even further apart. Also no one mentions what mode to be in such as object or edit mode.
Any ideas let me know please . thank you.

also did you check the normals of all imported separated objects first?

It sounds like you objects may be scaled or have non applied transformations
Joining with Ctrl + J is done in object mode, selecting all objects you want to join and selecting the "receiving object" last.
Try applying all transforms to the objects before joining with Ctrl + A > Apply Rotation, Translation and Scale.
After that also try converting all objects to mesh with Alt + C > Mesh to apply all modifiers and deformations they may have. Only after that can you safely try to join.
Otherwise post your blendfile so we can look at what might be wrong.


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Change all image textures folder location together
I just downloaded a Kitbash mini-kit blender file and all the references to images are looking in the wrong folder.
Is there a way to change all of the images to look in a specific folder? At the moment I'm doing them one by one and it's pretty painful.

Try to Find Missing Files:

select image folder and check Find All, to search not just missing files:


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Sequencing a set of images using Filmic-blender crashes Blender
I am using Blender 2.78
I have rendered a set of png images out using Blender's default colormanagement settings, loaded them into the sequencer and output as h264 video.
Then I tried out Filmic Blender, opened up the blend file I was working on, picked the settings I wanted in the colormanagement section and clicked render animation (sequencer checked) then Blender crashed instantly. I've tried a few times and it's consistent.
I ran Blender in a command prompt with --debug-all and the log ended with
Output #0, avi, to 'C:\tmp\floursack\0001-0060.avi':
  Metadata:
    ISFT            : Lavf55.19.104
    Stream #0:0, 0, 1/24: Video: h264 (libx264) (H264 / 0x34363248), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 1/24, q=10-51, 15000 kb/s, 24 tbn, 24 tbc
Evaluate all animation - 1.000000
Error: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION

Any ideas on how to fix this? Do I need to render the individual images with the Filmic Blender colormanagement options for the sequencer to work with them?

Filmic should be in the 2.79 release. Then you can file a bug report. Until then you'd have to contact its developer (though Troy_s should read this here soon). The problem here is, that this site is not suitable for bug reports... They are considered off topic.


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Rigid bodies not colliding when going fast
I have a scene with (what will be) a treasure map and am trying to animate some coins falling onto it. I started based on this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYL9w6xsZ6g made a coin, animated its rotation for the first frame and then animated turning off animation. Everything works perfectly if the coin drops from 2 blender units or less, but if I move the start position higher then the coin passes straight through the map mesh.
On the map mesh I have rigid body passive, shape: Mesh, Source: final
On the coin mesh I have rigid body active, shape: convex hull, source: deform
I also encounter the problem if I start duplicating the coins at around 2 Blender units high, some will pass through and others will collide.
My coin is 0.237x0.237x0.047 and my map mesh is 0.02 units thick (though I've tried making it thicker and it didn't seem to help much) I'm using the Blender 2.78 release candidate

Make sure you've applied rotation and scale (Alt-A) to all objects. Also, rigid body physics becomes unstable for objects smaller than about 1 cm, so make sure you take that into account.

Thanks, by 1cm do you mean 1 Blender unit or 1/100th of a Blender unit or some other value?

Well, it will be the equivalent of 1 cm when using metric units, so whatever the equivalent of that in Blender units is will be the case.

Applying rotation seems to have made it worse, though I think applying scale is probably a good idea

Try scaling up your entire simulation.
You could also try changing the hitbox type of your coins from mesh to cylinder or cube.
The manual page about soft body collisions may help you.
It explains how the collision system works, and why your objects do not collide with the ground material.

Might want to change your link to https://www.blender.org/manual/physics/rigid_body/properties.html#rigid-body-collisions, since you aren't talking about soft bodies here.

@Sazerac I looked at that link, but it did not explain the actual collision detection system. I don't know why. It would have made a lot more sense to put the collision detection system in with the simple stuff.

Soft body is an entirely different solver than the rigid body one as far as I know. Rigid bodies use bullet, which implements its own collision handling (also its own soft body solver, which is not currently in blender). I guess the general principles are likely to be the same, but you would probably be better off finding something bullet specific.

The coins have shape:convex hull, it's the map that has shape:mesh. I'll try your suggestions tonight

I just tried scaling it up by a factor of 10 and it's generally better, but I have the same issue at around 30 Blender units now, instead of 3. Using cylinder definitely helps, but I still get one or two coins which fall through

I found that ensuring my coin is "flat" in edit mode helped significantly, but still some fall through. So the moral is to apply scale but not rotation.

Supplying your blend file would really help.

As well as ensuring you 'Apply Scale' to each of your objects you need to ensure that the Rigid Body simulation is using a 'step size' that is small enough to allow for the motion of your bodies.
The Rigid Body simulation works by breaking the motion into discrete steps. This is controlled by the Rigid Body World settings in the Scene properties.

The default is to use 60 steps per second - so objects will be 'measured' every 1/60th of a second (just more than twice per frame if you're using 25 frames per second).
For two objects to collide blender needs to detect the collision. If an object is travelling at a speed that is such that it moves completely through a collision zone within the time of one step (eg, 1/60th of a second) then Blender will fail to detect the collision and it will simply pass through.
The solution is to tell the Rigid Body simulation to use a much smaller step size for fast moving objects. For example, try increasing the steps to 600 steps per second - this will tell Blender to sample the motion 10 times more frequently so the object will have moved only 1/10th of the previous distance and is much more likely to detect the collision.
Increasing the number of steps will increase the amount of processing time to run the simulation but will generally produce a much more accurate result, resulting in better collision and less 'jittering' - as can increasing the number of solver Iterations on the same properties panel - see also Why my active rigid bodies are vibrating Continuously?.


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Maintain volume bone constraint 2x too big
I'm using Blender 2.79 and have a pretty plain scene. Cube (2x2x2) and a plane.
I added vertex group called cube to the cube, assigned all vertices to the vertex group, added a single bone, called it cube. Added an armature modifier to the cube.
Enter pose mode on the bone, add bone constraint maintain volume, leave at default Y,1,World,1 and scale the bone by 0.5 in the world z axis (bone y) now it looks too stretched.
I measured it with a new cube and it's 5.65685x5.65685x0.5, giving a volume of 16 instead of 8.
Is this a bug, am I misunderstanding how it should work or have I done something wrong?


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MixRGB vs Math for greyscale
I'm currently using Blender 2.8, but this applies to 2.79 too.
In the shader graph when using scalar/greyscale values is there any difference between using the Math node and MixRGB for the operators that exist in both?
e.g. if I use multiply in MixRGB is it going to give me inferior results to using multiply in a Math node? Particularly when generating textures from different noises and mixing them to create maps.

I asked this same question to one of the developers of Blender at the Blender Conference in 2019 and he said that they are identical.


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System have strong enough statistics?
is my system strong enough to run most animations. Seem to be having problems rendering
Intel 3.2 GHz
4GB RAM
with nvidia 610

thank you. i had a laptop before today and it seemed to render both still and animations alot faster than this pc, all though this pc has faster processor and a graphics card. the lap top only had more ram. 6 instead of 4. wondering if certain settings are needed to be changed and im missing them.


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Add multiplayer support to a single player game
I've created a single player cricket game all using logic bricks. But now I would like to make that multiplayer game so that multiple people can play on their respective machines. Is there any way to integrate networking using logic bricks, if not, how to do it via python?

I'm afraid there is no simple step by step answer to this question, since as far as I know, BGE doesn't have integrated multiplayer elements. This means you need to write the multiplayer logic yourself in a way that is very specific to your game. Not impossible, but you should probably learn about communication protocols and libraries in python and think how you want to implement this.

Hi, I know how to create a  basic client/server architecture in python. Mainly I would like to ask, how to send the game data from a client to server and vice-versa. Should I convert the game created using logic bricks to an equivalent python code or is there any way to send a complete game data via python without converting it to any python code?


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Why is the mirror modifier doing this thing?
Sorry about the vague title I wasn't actually sure how to ask it.
So I'm new to blender and am trying to use the mirror modifier. However when I move a vertice in the direction towards the cube (lets say i'm using the default cube) it looks as though i'm removing the skin from a cube shaped banana. There's another cube underneath. I'm not sure if my explanation was any good so i'm also linking a gif in hopes it will aid your understanding of my particular issue.
Thanks for any help x

click on the clipping in modifier panel

If you want to use a mirror modifier you should have only half a cube, not a whole cube, otherwise it will be duplicating an already symmetric mesh, resulting in overlapping geometry like you have there. Edit your cube and cut it through the middle and remove one half

Related - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/353/how-can-i-make-the-mirror-modifier-work-right


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Render and saving image progressively by adding samples
I am looking to save the render preview as image without taking a screen shot. I am just trying to render it sample by sample as my machine gets heated up like crazy when fully rendering with only 200 samples. I know about rendering in parts but would really just like to render sample by sample and save the image once i am happy with the result.
Any suggestions appreciated.
Thanks!

200 samples is quite a lot. I usually use the final preset

Use Progressive Refine option to render at lower quality but all image at once. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/51888/what-advantages-in-using-progressive-rendering and http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/4981/1245

It doesn't solve my problem.. but thanks.
I am trying to render for example 10 samples then add another 10 once the first 10 finish.

If you want to render 10 samples, stop render, then continue it by adding yet 10 samples quality on top of those 10 ones - then it isn't possible, not now. Work is being done on pausing render, but not adding samples to rendered image. Render parts of the image and overlay them (even in Blender).

That's too bad, such a useful function.. even just enabling to save an image from the rendered preview mode.
Any tutorials on rendering parts and overlaying them in Blender?
Thanks for your comments!

What you ask is not possible directly. It's possible only to use a workaround - basically the same technique as for stacking images in compositor.
Render with Progressive Refine enabled (to get the whole image at once) until satisfied with amount of noise for one iteration, stop the render. Change the frame to get different noise pattern. Render once more into another file / render layer (i.e. create additional Render Layer, select it and enable Pin icon to render only active one; repeat for all layers). Overlay the results in the compositor.

Setup with saving to Render Layer nodes is shown; the one with images will be the same but opening files instead. Find the most appropriate file format for that operation
Now once  you decide the image is still too noisy, render several times more and overlay them the same as before (so add several more Render Layer nodes and increase value of the Value node).
Note:  this isn't intended to be used instead of the final render (although it can be used as asked - render the same a bit more and overlay on top of already saved image). While this technique can be used to save the final render results in some cases, in most of them it might not be worth time spent on it. Instead it should provide you with 2 things:

an idea of how the scene looks like with given setup without waiting for [some time] only to preview the render;
rough understanding of how many samples does your image need to stop looking noisy with given circumstances.


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Recurring issue, Can anyone help me fix Blender hanging before the file browser appears?
I have been using Blender for a little over five years now and just recently it has started to freeze up or hang whenever I click any button that activates the file browser. Whether it be browsing for an image file in the UV editor, opening a blend file or importing/exporting an FBX the issue seems to keep resurfacing.
I've visited this site numerous times looking for answers and I found a solution that worked once. The user explained that Blender may hang before allowing use of the file browser if it's looking for a directory that doesn't exist. I cleared all of my bookmarked locations and ended up reinstalling Blender and the problem disappeared for a while... After about a week the issue was back and unfortunately even more persistent. I've tried repeating the same process but it seems like it's here to stay this time.
Is there any other solution that may help?
I have also tried creating a new user, solely for Blender, as one person suggested but that didn't fix the issue. Any help is appreciated.
(Additional Info: Startup console hangs for a minute as well. It's usually quick but it remains blank longer than usual)

Maybe try checking if there are any local network folders / resources which Blender tries to connect to. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/49201/blender-hangs-for-a-minute


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How do I increase the mouse manipulation speed?
It's an awkward question and I don't know how to word it right.
I'm working on a small object about 10cm across. When I want to inset a circular face, I can't do it to the degree I want because Blender sees that I'm zoomed in all the way and so huge mouse movements only make a tiny inset. And because the maximum inset distance is reached when my mouse cursor is over the center of the circle, the space I have to move the mouse is limited. That means I have to either inset many times before I get to the desired amount or I have to zoom out a huge way back but then I can't see what I'm doing.
So the question is, is there any way to increase the amount of manipulation per distance traveled with the mouse during an inset operation, so I can use circular insets on a small scale?
thank you.

If you press F6 after using an operator the operator properties dialog show up  where you can manually adjust the inset value.

While you're doing the inset (or most any transform), you can actually just start typing a number and Blender will use that and ignore your mouse pointer. You can see it in the header at the bottom of the view.
With Inset specifically, the scale appears to be that 1.0 insets all the way to a point at the center of the face, 0.5 is halfway, etc.


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Blender: How to change the viewport color for a line or curve
Viewport colors seem to apply only to faces and, hence, not to 2D curves. Is there a way to change the color of 2D curves (bezier, mesh, NURBS) in the viewport?
My application requires extensive 2D manipulation before applying 3D properties.


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How to fit a grid to a set of vertices
I have a 10 x 10 Grid that I have deleted all faces and edges:

I then used proportional editing to make it arched.
I am wondering, is there a way to take another grid (one that has more points, i.e. 100 x 100) and make it fit to this set of vertices?
I have tried the shrinkwrap modifier, but I couldn't get it to work on vertices. Any help would be appreciated (I am not afraid of using a python solution either, just figured there was an easy way I am missing).

Is there a reason for the faces+edges deletion? I think they could have helped you so much in this task (you can always delete them at the end of modeling).

This is a very simple example, where I created the vertices myself. Where I want to apply this, I am just given the vertices, and there are never any faces or edges. Trying to create the faces and edges by selecting all and hitting "f" doesn't do what is expected. Instead of recreating the grid, it creates a mess. I know that I could then just select the edge loops and do a grid fill, but once again, this is a simple example and in my real problem, that is not an option. So I just have vertices.

Might be interesting: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/19655/creating-a-point-cloud-from-the-surfaces-of-a-model/19680#19680 ?

That is interesting, but I am afraid it doesn't help in this case


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How can an Android photosphere be used as a scene background?
How can an Android photosphere be used as a scene background?
Should I map it onto a sphere? Is there a feature of background images I can use from scene?

Yes, there's a easy way;
Cycles
Just go to the Node Editor, change the type to World.

Then, check Use Nodes, if it isn't already, press Shift + A and add a Texture>Environment Texture node; Point the to your file, and connect it to the Background node.
If you don't like/understand the Node Editor, you can go to the Properties, switch to the World tab, and click Use Nodes, then besides the Color field, click the dot, and select Texture>Environment Texture and point it to your image.

Blender Internal
Go to the Properties panel, switch to the World tab, go to the World subsection, and check Blend Sky and Real Sky.

Then go to the Texture tab, click New click World under Preview and open your image. Scroll down to the Influence subsection and check 'Zenith Up', Zenith Down, Horizon and Blend.
Then go to the Mapping, and change the Coordinate field from View to Equirectangular.


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Can the blender game engine render diffuse material nodes?
I have a plane with a diffuse material of a blue color, a cube of a red color. I can see them perfectly well using cycles. When I use the game engine render all I get is gray no colors. Can the blender game engine render diffuse material nodes?
Is there a node that says render node to game engine renderer?

The blender game engine cannot render cycles materials. This might bring similar results, It's not currently available for download at the time of writing.

I've found a script to convert Blender internal materials to Cycles. It was unclear if it would also convert Cycles materials to Blender internal.


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An object broken when it's rendered
I have a weird error to render images. when I see the object with rendered view it is ok but only when I do real rendering part of the model is broken. Do anyone know how I can fix this?

You may have a duplicate set of mesh (your walls) that are hidden. With your cursor in the viewport press ALT + "H" to unhide objects. Or you can look in the Outliner to make sure all the "Eye" icons are on.

try recalculating normals.

Do you have any modifier on the "broken" object? I would guess, from the shape assumed in rendered version, that is being "subsurfed" by catmul-clark.

I had modifier by accident and didn't notice about it at all as you guessed, thank you very much, now I could render without that.

As one comment pointed out there seems to be a subsurface modifier active on the mesh making up the wood part of your house.
As you can filter if and how many iterations the modifier should apply, depending on whether it is a render or just the viewport, you should check in the modifier panel while having the wood mesh selected if any of this holds true.

The camera icon in the header means this modifier is active in the final render and the eye icon means that this modifier is active in the viewport.
In the example screenshot from the modifier the subdivisions are set to one (1) for the viewport and two (2) for the final render.

Yes you were right, I didn't notice I had the modifier, I don't know when I added by accident so didn't realise at all. Thank you very much, you saved me!!


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Using pointiness and bevel at same time
I'm making a chair and trying to use pointiness attribute to express the damage of paint at the edges. However the chair has bevel so when I put the bevel on, the corner gets rounder and the pointiness disappear. Is there anyway I can use pointiness as if there was no bevel?

Check my question here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/60710/hard-surface-modeling-on-cylinder as it may not seems to be related, it is covering some pointiness issue which should apply to your question. You can upload your model to: http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ it will be easier to provide good answer.

This is not possible :-(

Unfortunately no, I don't think there is a good way to do this.
As far as I know the Pointiness atribute relies on actual final geometry to work, thus can' be faked if the geometry is not really sharp.
For this specific shape You could try and fake it with a gradient texture centered of the object. It's an approximation, but with a little tweaking may achieve good results.
Just add a Gradient node connected to the Generated socket and adjust its positioning with a Vector node by [-0.05,-0.05,-0.05]. You can use a Color Ramp to adjust the progression.
You may also combine by color-mixing several different linear gradients to achieve an effect of a gradient starting from every edge.

Right thank you for the idea! Maybe that is little too focued on the corner rather the edges. might be better if I draw texture for this :)

Maybe not this is what exactly what I wanted, but if I put subsurf under bevel, the damages shows up little.


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Same first UV and texture but different second UV in each objects
I'm making a book shelf with a lot of books. They have the same material for the covers, and the colour of cover is changed randomly in the node. But I want to put different titles over it in each books with the second UV and texture. I have PNG images for the titles. Is there any way to put them avoiding make different materials for all books?

You shouldn't need different UV Maps for each book cover, if they are similar in size and placement. It's enough to use the Random output of the Object Info node to mix between a bunch of different book cover textures randomly. There's a commercial Cycles Random Texture node setup available at the Blender Market (disclaimer, I made it)

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos nice node group idea!


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Why wont my emitter render?
I have made 3 emitters in my render. 2 of those are hair - > group emitters. Of those 2, 1 is trees and the other is rocks. Both are groups rock / tree with the emitter of landscape. Landscape and trees are both rendering. Rocks are only showing in viewport but not in render. Rocks, have a texture that is working, is check to show rendered 100%. Still not appearing during render at all.

can you upload you file?   http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

On the particle properties Render panel is Emitter checked?  If not a file can you attach an image of the non working particle settings?

Have you checked the scene panel? If you want all the objects to show in the render, you have to select all the corresponding layers that are included in the viewport. If everything is selected already, check the checkbox that said use hair. If all of those are on a plane it's best to use 'hair' option over that of 'emitter.'

they're all on the same scene and they are all hair particles. When I said emitter I'm just referring to the "Mountain" in this scene which is the emitter for the hair particles of all 3 "hair" items.


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Why Are White Lines Bleeding Between Textured Faces?
I have an array of planes that I textured with an image file I made. When I look at the array in Texture mode or Render mode, I can see white lines bleeding through between the planes:
(Texture mode)

(Render mode)

I don't know how well the problem shows in these images.
I have done some research and found out that it is sometimes caused by bleeding of the alpha channel when the UV mapping is on the edge of an image where the transparency color in the image file is white instead of black. I tried fixing my image files in Krita (where I made them) and I think I turned off the alpha or at least changed it from white to black, which reduced the problem somewhat, but not completely. (I'm just learning how to use Krita)
I also moved the edges of the UV mapping away from the edges of the image file, which helped a little more. But again, not completely.
I also read that this can be caused by MIP-mapping, which I know very little about. I tried changing a few settings in the Materials and Textures windows, and one of them helped reduce the bleeding in render mode, but they're still quite visible at certain angles or (more significantly) when moving the camera.

This is probably due to MipMapping.

MIP mapping (also sometimes spelled as mipmapping) is a technique where an original high-resolution texture map is scaled and filtered into multiple resolutions within the texture file. MIP maps can be automatically generated from the original texture, but may also be individually painted or adjusted by the texture artist. Typically each subsequent MIP level is half the size of the previous, which guarantees that the complete texture (the original and its MIP maps) is no greater than 1.5 times the original texture.
Each scaled texture, or MIP level, represents what the texture would look like at a specific distance from the users viewpoint. Through the use of filters, the MIP levels give a more natural representation of how colors and details tend to blend together when viewed at a distance.

If your texture has a white default background colour and then some hard edges in your texture -> black road - then through the scaling down when generating MipMaps, the white background colour bleeds into the road. Therefore, always use a margin/padding of 2-4 pixels (depends on the texture resolution) when creating your texture maps. A good description here: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Edge_padding


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Unwanted Blurring Texture at a Distance
I applied a texture to my road mesh, and for some reason it blurs the white lines in the texture after a certain distance from the viewport camera. Here's a snapshot of it, with camera settings visible. I haven't encountered this with textures before, but I'm still new to using them, so I don't know if it's a camera issue or a texture issue. I painted the road lines onto the texture file in an external program and used the saved image file as the texture.

You may need to post your blend file. Don't forget to pack the image texture before you do.

Related : http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6683/how-to-get-anisotropic-filtering-in-blender-internal

What do you need to see in the file that you can't see here?

@AnthonyForwood posting your blend file may allow to check the possible reasons of your problem. Here only the result can be seen, not the causes.

I didn't ask why you want to se the file. I'm asking what problems you think might be there to see that you can't see in the image.

If I remember correctly this is Mipmapping


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How do I Remove a Constraint in the BGE
I saw a game demo where a wooden crate broke into planks when it was hit by an object. I want to do something similar. I assume it's done with constraints, and I found a reference to a python function for removing constraints (called removeConstraint()) but I'm unfamiliar with python scripts so I don't know how to call it and I can't find any examples. The reference is this function is here:
http://www.tutorialsforblender3d.com/GameModule/ClassKX_PyConstraintBinding_4.html
Can anyone help me to understand how to use this function, or how else I might create breakable crates?

Most often, objects breaking up is done by, when hit by something, ending the original object and replacing it with one or more rigid bodies. (ie using add object/end object actuators or the python equivalent)
Now, on to constraints. I know no way to get the constraint if it was made in the user interface. There simply doesn't seem to be a method to get constraints. But if you create the constraint from python and store it's ID's, then you can manipulate it/destroy it.
To create a constraint (this is for a wheel, free to rotate in one axis):
def joinWheel(wheel, axle):
    obj1 = wheel
    obj2 = axle

    id1 = obj1.getPhysicsId()
    id2 = obj2.getPhysicsId()

    '''bge.constraints.createConstraint(physics_id_1, physics_id_2,
                             constraint_type,
                             edge_position_x, edge_position_y, edge_position_z,
                             edge_angle_x, edge_angle_y, edge_angle_z)'''

    obj1['joint'] = bge.constraints.createConstraint(id1, id2,
                             bge.constraints.GENERIC_6DOF_CONSTRAINT,
                             0,0,0,0,0,0)

    obj1['joint'].setParam(0, 0.0, 0.0) #No X translation
    obj1['joint'].setParam(1, 0.0, 0.0) #No Y translation
    obj1['joint'].setParam(2, 0.0, 0.0) #No Z translation
    obj1['joint'].setParam(3, 0, 0) #No X Rotation
    obj1['joint'].setParam(4, 0, 0) #No Y Rotation
    #obj1['joint'].setParam(5, 0, 0) #Commented out so there is z rotation

And now we have a reference to the constraint stored in objs['joint'] which can be removed with:
def removeWheel(wheel):
    bge.constraints.removeConstraint(wheel['joint'].getConstraintId())

Thank you very much for this answer. But why does that one line of code in the middle have triple quotes around it? I don't understand that. and I'm pretty sure it's not python syntax.

Triple quotes are multi-line strings. In this case I'm using it as a comment to show what each parameter is. So, it is python syntax, but because I don't assign it to a variable, it doesn't do anything.

Okay, I just want to be sure. Will this run as a script in the BGE just as it is, as long as I have two objects named wheel and axle? Or are those defined internally? I'm still confused as to how it knows what objects to target.

No. These are functions that have to be called from a larger python script. You can see a small vehicle demo I made with a very similar joinWheel function over here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17630723/Blends/BGMC19%20Setting%20Sun.zip

But as I said, constraints are not the typical use case for breaking crates. I'll see if I can write a more comprehensive answer on the switch-objects method this coming weekend.

upbge has built in breaking constraint threshold for rigid body joints*


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One Material, Multiple Textures?
Can I assign more than one texture to the same material, and then assign one of the textures to certain selected faces of an object, and assign another texture to other selected faces of that object (all faces having the same material)? Or do I have to assign different materials to these faces in order to give them different textures?

It is possible. See the edit of my answer here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57944/bake-taxtures-to-one-image


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How to Send a Message to Activate Another Object
This is for the BGE... I have a Near sensor that, when triggered,  I want to send a message to another object, triggering that object to initiate a Steering actuator. I don't know how to use the logic bricks for sending messages and I have little experience with using properties, but I know that's what I need to use. Can anyone help me?

This is actually relatively easy to do. For simplicity, we will use two cubes.
On cube1, we can add a Keyboard sensor, connected to an And controller, which is connected a Message actuator.

The "To" field on the message actuator doesn't actually need to be filled in. If it is left blank, the actuator will simply broadcast the message to all objects, instead of just one. Since only one object will be listening for the message, the "To" field doesn't matter here. You could also set the "Subject" field to whatever you want.
On Cube2, we simply need a Message sensor listening for the message that Cube1 sent out. We can do that by putting the message Cube1 is sending in the "Subject" field on the message sensor on Cube2. That message sensor should connect to an And controller, which should connect to a property actuator. The easiest property for this will be a Boolean property. Add one, and name it whatever you want. Then, In the property actuator, put in the name of the property you just created. Set the operation to "Assign" and the value to "True." Now, add a property sensor, with that same Boolean in the "Property" field. you want this sensor to check if the Boolean property you created is true. To do this, set the "Value" field to True. Enable true level triggering. This will make it so that as long as the property is true, the sensor will constantly be telling the connected bricks to run. You can connect that property sensor to an And controller, and connect that your steering actuator.

As long as the property is true, the steering actuator will be
running. You can also easily do the same sort of thing to assign the property False, to deactivate the steering actuator.

Thank you for the explanation. I was able to figure it out last night, but instead of using a property like you suggested, I just have the first object send a message when the Near sensor is triggered, then the second object just watches for that message and activates the steering actuator when it receives it. No properties needed... just six logic bricks. Thanks anyway. I tagged your answer as the accepted one.


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BGE how can I run a sound file while a key is pressed?
In the BGE, how can I run a sound file while a key is pressed, but have it stop as soon as it's released?

So are those two questions ? Your title should match the content dude...
Take the plane and delete its face keeping the edges, then hit ALT + C and select "curve from mesh". For the sound, make an empty or whatever object, in the logic bricks panel, add a KEYBOARD sensor with "true level triggering" on, and connect it with and "AND" controller to a SOUND actuator...

You can have a sound play on a key press and stop on the release of that key by using the "Play Stop" setting on the sound actuator

When the sound actuator is set to "Play Stop," when it receives a positive pulse from the connected controller, it will start playing the selected audio file. When it receives a negative pulse form the connected controller, it will stop playing the selected audio file. In this case, we are using a Keyboard sensor, which simply sends a positive pulse to the connected controller on key press, and a negative pulse on release.


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Sample Color From Viewport in Texture Paint Mode
I have two objects I am trying to paint with two different materials. I'd like to sample from the viewport in order to maintain color choice, but cant do so -- it always tries to sample from the texture I'm currently painting on. The same goes for layers, it won't let me sample the layers below.
Is there an option to change this? A hotkey to tell it to sample from the viewport?

In Blender 2.77, enable the "Sample Merged" option.
Available in the operator properties.
If you want you can assign a shortcut for this, though we may make this Shift-S in future releases.

The hotkey is S.
It functions two ways, by holding S the current paint colour will be set to whatever is under the cursor. By clicking  RMB while holding S a new swatch will be added to the pallette. (see the end of these release notes)


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Cannot Bridge Edge Loops Without Messing Up Normals/Smooth-Shading?
I'm still kind of a beginner at modeling in Blender. I'm making a simple wine glass mesh, with an offset inner wall (for glass thickness) that I made manually. The top of the wine glass therefore has two close edge loops (rings). I want to bridge them somehow and make faces to connect the inner and outer layers of the glass. But using Bridge Edge Loops messes up the previously consistent and smooth shading. Even if I try manually filling in each face individually, it still creates inconsistent shading on the top ring of polygons that create the edge rings at the top.
I tried hollowing out a basic cylinder, creating an inner wall, and bridging both walls, and the shading remained consistent. What am I missing with regards to the wine glass? I tried recalculating and flipping normals, but no changes.

Either add an Edge Split modifier to your object, or turn on auto smooth in your mesh under the Properties Window > Object Data > Normals > Auto Smooth

Thank you very much, turning on Auto Smooth seems to do the trick!


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How to "Chamfer" or Bevel Outer Edges of a Plane like in 3DS Max?
I've been following Grant Warwick's hardsurface modeling essentials video on Vimeo, using Blender 2.80. Following the tutorial, I've made a basic hill-type shape by extruding a plane multiple times in edit mode.

Warwick, using 3ds max, was able to select the outer edges of the mesh and "chamfer"/bevel it. I used the knife tool to show what he did:

When I try doing the same in Blender 2.8, however, I can't seem to bevel the outer edge of a plane/mesh. So, I try adding a loop cut instead. But the edge flow doesn't go all the way around the mesh; I can only add one loop cut vertically, or one cut horizontally:

Is there a way to bevel an outer edge of a plane/mesh in Blender? How can I do what I did with the knife tool, to get an even edge without too many manual steps? Is that possible in Blender?

On an edge selection,CtrlShiftR, Offset Edge Slide, will get you most of the way there. It will slide a copy of selected edges along existing ones, and can be set to give an even offset. However, it doesn't create rail edges (in your case, at the corners) where they did not previously exist .. you would have to go round and J connect the vertices at the corners.
If you had to do so many of those it would be tedious, you could:

Extrude your selected edges any old where, so they are no longer on a boundary
Select the top faces I and inset the whole region with 'Boundary' unchecked
Alt-select the extruded face ring, and delete it.

Or, you could go round with K cutting across existing edges, making a  rough inset, and create the corner-rails, with no concern for accuracy, and then use GG to slide it, hitting E to make the edges parallel to the boundary. (F flips which side of the slide to be parallel to.)

Thank you, this I think is as close to what I wanted as possible.

@CPLTarun    It's been a while since I used 3DS in anger.. but I think I prefer a set of tools that is as near as possible complete and minimal.. rather than rifling the drawers for a gadget that does exactly  x or y, if only I could remember where to find it. What I miss, though, are soft selections, and being able to edit in the modifier stack.


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Matching Surface Indentations with Particle System (Dandelion seed particles on head)
I'm creating a dandelion model in blender. So far I've created a single dandelion seed which I intend to instance/duplicate as perhaps particles and spread them over the surface of the head of the dandelion stalk. Is there a way to create surface indentations on the head that match where the seeds are, like in the image below?

It can be done with particle system settings - either vertex group controlling density (amount of vertices of the emitter and topology have to allow that i.e. be dense) or a texture driving particles density (object has to be unwrapped). Related - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6250/how-to-control-hair-particle-position

You could also use a separate dummy mesh solely for the purpose of being an emitter for the particles, with such topology that its vertex perfectly match those indents on the renderably center


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Flickering Fire in shape of mesh/object
I have a 2D vector image that I converted into a mesh with some thickness in blender. Is there a way to animate fire that flickers in the shape of that mesh? I'm basically trying to create something like this, just in a different shape.
Ive tried different smoke/fire tutorials, but the I can't get the fire to not expand and rise. I need it to just flicker at that size and volume.

hi, have you also seen tutorials like this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChUkVRD_UzM (just one of many found with a simple search) or, try to share your current setup, and results, so that people can comment and correct those...

anyway, controlling the "flame rate" value of the emitting object (https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/physics/smoke/types/flow_object.html) seems the best option, see also this answer https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/7409/controlling-smoke-fire-emision-amount

Thank you for the resources! I'll check them out and see what I can do.


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Is it possible to append a camera?
Is it possible to append a camera from another Blend file? I have tried file > append > camera > camera and nothing happens.

You've appended the camera part of a camera object.  Try file > append > objects > camera

As batfinger mentioned you appended the Object Data, that is the information relative to the camera (like lens, clipping, presets, etc.) but not the camera object it self. With your method you could now add a new camera object and then afterwards go to the object data tab of the properties window and pick your appended camera data from the list. What you probably want is to append the object itself, that is with Append > Object

Thx batFINGER & Duarte. When I Append  > Object > the camera is not in the resulting list.

@batFinger & Duarte. I figured out that I name my cameras ".camera" to keep it at the top of the outliner. Apparently the "." at the beginning of the name was excluding it from the Append list entirely. Thanks all.

Append > object > and your camera should be in the list. Are you sure you haven't renamed the camera and are looking for the wrong name? I've appended many cameras this way. Can you post a blend?


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Is there a way to add a note/comment to an individual node?
For example: In a normal map node "Adjusting the strength of this node will effect "X" quality of the material"?

See http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/7825/is-there-a-way-to-make-comments-in-the-node-editor

you can use grease or script for comments about nodes.

@Dontwalk I'd suggest Generic Node Add-on which looks nicer than the built-in Frame Node: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/45933/is-there-an-addon-for-todo-management/45947#45947


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Is there a way to lock a node?
Is there a way to lock a node within a single .blend file so that it can't be adjusted by accident? I've searched the site and couldn't find an answer.

It's possible to link nodetree from another file and nodes won't be editable. As another option you can hide unused sockets with Ctrl+H but the input sockets must be unused for that to work. Other than that groups might be more flexible solution

you could just hide the node? (press H) Then it would look like this:

if you have multiple nodes, i suggest you make a node group, which will protect the nodes inside the group
I don't think there is a lock functionality


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Trouble adding two normal maps to an object
I'm having trouble adding two normal maps to a leather seat. I'm using the principled shader and each normal map has it's own uv map. When I add the second normal map it adds unwanted distortion.

If you switch the normal maps does that work? What about specifying the maps in the field on the normal map nodes? I seem to recall that connecting a normal map to the displacement output gives incorrect results. Maybe try adding the two maps together with the vector math node and doing it that way.

You are pluging normal output (3 channels) into greyscale imput (1 channel). Here is solution: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/38298/how-to-combine-two-normal-maps, did you try to google it?

This may not answer your question and I cant even explain what is going on but maybe this can help you.
Since I cant explain this answer I will take it down if I get yelled at or downvoted. lol
This is for using 2 normal maps (or more):

I have never plugged a normal map directly into displacement socket. I don't know if that is causing the problem or not.
I attached the .blend file so you can just append the node tree if you want.

@ icYou520 - Thank you! I tried that already and it didn't work for me. My guess so far is that it's something to do with the principled shader and/or the two different maps.


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Texture appears to stand still when the camera is animated
I’m modeling an address book and have a mesh with tabs (UV mapped). I’ve created one .png with a paper surface image and the letters of the alphabet in black. Animated a slow camera pan. After rendering a targa sequence the texture appears in place but there seems to be another texture or layer or grain that doesn't move. Its mostly noticeable around the black fonts but once you see whats going on its everywhere. Almost as if there is a slight transparency.
Blender 2.76 / Cycles
Link to project file and short .mov
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/34y1weq6raspbzg/AAA_lJp4Mw_lvHwdo_DXkKiya?dl=0
Thanks!


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Customizing the UV editing header
Is it possible to rearrange elements in the UV editing header? Specifically I would like to move the active UV map drop down menu to the left of the default position.

It's not exactly related, but a simple workaround could be to click RMB on the header and select Header > Collapse menus menu entry. This will minimize at least some space so UV map dropdown to be not so far away


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How to create a cloth stage valance?
I'm trying to create a cloth stage valance like this with the cloth simulator.

I've tried pinning the sides. but it's too even and I think the ends should be pinched.

I've also tried weight painting. Still not right.

Final result:

Base mesh:
As a base mesh we will use simple Plane rotated by 90 degrees and subdivided couple of times. Less subdivision = bigger wrinkles.
I've used Subdivide > 10 and than Subdivide > 1.
We need to add Mean Crease > 1 to the outer edge for Subdivision Surface modifier that we will add later on.

Vertex Group:
For Pinning Cloth we will add Vertex Group with two side edges assigned.

Shape Keys:
For folding our Cloth we need to add Shape Keys - Basis and Key 1 with shrunken side edges moved to the top of the mesh.

We can go ahead and animate Key 1 value by inserting keyframes on frame 0 with value 0 and frame, lets say, 25 with value 1.

Cloth settings:
Now we can finally add Cloth simulation to our mesh with below settings.

Most important are:

Pinning - select Vertex Group we have created before.
Mass - higher mass more curve on cloth.
Structural - lower allow more cloth stretching.
Velocity - will slow down/smooth simulation.
Self collision - self explanatory, Distance is important, it prevents cloth from intersecting.

Rest of the settings are more or less important tweaks, described in tool tips and docs.
Final touches:
Now we can add Subdivision Surface modifier and play our animation to see result (this one is 80 frames long):

Thoughts:
You can experiment with base mesh randomization, subdivision or Cloth settings to get different results.
Material used in Final Results is default Velvet BSDF with changed color.
Back drapes are made using same method.

@Dontwalk after looking at it right now I think that it would be also good idea to place some force field with strong noise to get some random results. Needs to be checked though and stupid me didn't saved the blend file :/

I did some testing yesterday and came close but didn't look as good as your method. But what I did do is I selected all the vertices and hit randomize .005. Similar result as your force field idea I think. Thanks again.

@Dontwalk I redid this and for Force Field to work (Turbulence - Strength > 50, Size and Noise > 10) you will need to change Mass > 0.1, Structural > 0.7, Bending > 0, Velocity > 0.1. Seriously I don't know why it's working in such way... It's sad that we need to wait until 2.8 for new Cloth sim - (https://code.blender.org/2017/06/improvements-to-the-cloth-simulator/).

I will definitely give it a try...

Create 2 Vertex Groups named Pin and Sew

Select your two top corner vertices and assign them to the Pin vertex group

Select all vertices on the sides and assign them to the Sew vertex group

Go to your physics tab and change your settings similar to these.

Click the auto keyframe button(red circle) and the double key button next to it.  Then select LocRotScale from the box to the right of those buttons.
Go to frame 0 and scale your mesh to be about twice as wide as you want your curtain(S+X, or S+Y) and Press the insert keyframe button(green arrow).
Then go to about frame 40 and scale your mesh again back to the size you want your curtain to be and press the insert keyframe button again.

Now go back to frame 0 and hit play and the cloth should settle into something like this.

You can play with theMass, Sewing Force, Min, and Max settings in the physics panel to change the end result.


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How do I set object origin normal to a face?
I have the following object:

How do I modify the origin so that the origin has the X axis normal to the face shown, but the object itself remains in the same position in space?

Do you want to change the origin of the object or to make object's local coordinate space based on the normal of the face? Also you can always switch transform orientation to Normal.

Same as this answer: Set normal orientation of origin

Because you've applied the rotation to your model, the easiest possible way to do this is rotating it manually.
Turn on the snapping tool by using the magnet icon in the bottom toolbar and set the snap element to Increment.
Enter top view by pressing Numpad 7, then enter Orthographic Mode by pressing Numpad 5. Use the keys G,Z to rotate along the Z axis and hold Shift until the flat faces facing the x axis are exact straight lines.
While still in object mode, use Ctrl+A and click Rotation to reset the rotation to 0,0,0.
With Pictures:

I dont know if i get the question correctly but maybe it helps you to go into object mode, open N menu and check the rotation in the transform tab (first tab). Hope that is what youre looking for

The OP asks how to align the origin to a face, which implies changing the relative orientation between the object local axes and the object vertices. Setting the object global rotation to 0 won't do that as everything will be rotated at once, local origin and vertices.


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Is there a way to quickly switch Themes?
I have my normal modelling theme:

And then I change to a 3D no-gradient white background with grid scale = 0 and no relationship lines in perspective mode:

I then use this to take screenshots of the object for further processing in Paint.
Is there a way to quickly store and switch between these two Theme layouts? I find this a bit quicker than adding a camera, white background and rendering.

You can use Only Rendered and Wold Background to achieve the same result.

Yep, sounds more efficient and flexible than theme switching


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Question on tapering a bezier curve
I'm trying to model this medieval wall sconce, in particular this vertical strap component:

So far I have a 3D Bezier curve with depth and extrude applied:

I have added a second Bezier curve with which I intend to taper the strap:

I select the main strap object and assign the taper object to be the second curve:

I cannot seem to adjust the taper curve in such a way as to achieve the desired effect.
Is this a good approach for this situation and if so, what can I do to get a proper taper on the strap? Are there other, "better" methods for this effect?

I think using a lattice here would be a good fit - check this link out and see if it looks about right for your needs.

I would convert the curve to a mesh object with Alt+C> Mesh from curve/meta/ surf/ text.
Next,  Tab into edit mode and enable proportional editing with O.
Finally, select just the top few edge loops of the new object and scale while adjusting the proportional edit radius of influence with your mouse wheel until satisfied with the result.

How are you changing the size of that white circle?

@AdamPlocher see my edit. Use the mouse wheel.

A curve is too uniform to really appreciate the shape.
I'd model it as a straight mesh using a Mirror Modifier, then apply it. After that, a Curve Deform Modifier can be used to bend the steel into shape without any distortions.
The rest is just duplicating and rotating around the cursor from above.


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How do I remap pan hotkey in UV image editor?
I've made a number of changes to the hotkeys, and I have managed to remove the hotkey for 'pan' in the UV image editor (currently the MMB will set my 2D cursor position). Does anyone know where the key mapping is located for pan in 2D mode or UV image editor mode? I can't find it anywhere and would rather not do a "factory reset" on all the hotkeys due to the number of changes I have made.
This is what I see when I filter on 'pan' for user input:

Answer is here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/73253/cannot-remap-pan-hotkey-in-uv-editor

The python for that is view2d.pan.

Hope that helps!

Unfortunately no luck. RMB seems to activate a small information toolbar at the bottom of the UV Image Editor.


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Ignore network drive in System list
Is there a way to ignore mapped network drives in Blender when saving/loading? I am using Blender at work and my work laptop has multiple drives mapped. When I disconnect from the corporate network (so that the network drives are essentially disconnected but still mapped) I get long pauses, sometimes up to 30 seconds, when saving/loading as Blender is presumably waiting for each network drive connection to timeout.
This is what I see in my System pane:

I need to ignore everything except C drive. I could disconnect those drives in Windows but then I would need to remap them again.
Appreciate any insight. Thanks!


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How to create procedural surface defects with Cycles?
How to create procedural surface defects with Cycles similar to this image?

To fake them and reduce render times use a normal or bump map with procedural texture plugged into; to make defects real add Displacement modifier and feed it with again procedural texture. Or use Displacement feature from Experimental set, like here

The simplest way is with a bump map. You can use a mixture of various procedural noise textures and a Bump node to create one quickly:

It's up to you to make come up with a texture that you like. I recommend this talk for some tips on generating realistic patterns with procedural textures.

This probably isn't necessary in your case, but if you want the bump mapping to affect the actual geometry you can use the Displacement output with Experimental Features enabled. See What is the difference between the displace socket and a bump map?

A real flintstone way of doing it would be to take a noise node, feed that into a heightmap/normal node, and then feed that into your shader.  You could take the noise map and and run that through a math:multiply node to scale the intensity of the bumps.  For that image, a scale of .2 or less  would be likely what you want.

To truly get the result you desire, you have to go beyond just texturing. If you follow the procedure described here, you should achieve something like this:

Creating the Mesh
Shift + A to add a sphere, Tab into edit mode, key Z to enter Wifeframe mode, press B to box select the center two rows of faces while in Face Select selection mode, and key E, S, and Shift + Z to scale the new vertices on the x and y axes. Tab out of edit mode and add a cylinder. Scale and transform until it reaches the desired width and height. Make sure some of it is inside the lollipop.
Adding Object Modifiers
With the cylinder still selected, key T to open the tools panel and select Shading: Smooth. Do this to both meshes. Select the sphere and add a Subdivision Surface Object modifier. Set both the Subdivisions: View: and Render: to 4. Also add a Displace Object modifier. Set the Strength: value to 0.03. Click to add a new texture. Click over to the Texture tab in the Properties panel. If the Displace modifier's texture is not displayed, click on the top dropdown menu and mouse over to it. Set the type to Voronoi, change the Voronoi: Noise: Size: value to 0.01, and the Colors: Adjust: Brightness: value to 0.7. The farther away from 1, the less bumps.
Assigning Materials
Select the sphere and add a material to it in the Materials* tab. Change the default Diffuse BSDF Surface type to Glass BSDF. Set the Color to hex EF9A4A. Set the Roughness to 0.05. Leave the IOR at 1.45.
Select the cylinder and add another material. Leave all the default settings, but up the color to full white.
Go to the World tab and change the color to hex 8C8C8C.
Lighting the Scene
Press X to delete the default point lamp, and add a plane. Move it up 3 units on the Z axis. Add an Emission shader material to it and set the Emission: value to 20. Duplicate the plane three times until there is a loose square of four of them above the lollipop. The scene should now look like this:

Preparing for Render
Go to the render tab and change the settings as follows:
Dimensions: Resolution: 570x748; 100%, Sampling: Clamp Indirect: 3, Sampling: Samples: Render: 300, Light Paths: Filter Gloss: 0.5, check Film: Transparent. Roughly:

You can change the Light Paths: Bounces if you choose. Click the Render button.
Compositing
Go to the Compositing Screen layout. Click the Use Nodes button. In between the Render Layers node and the Composite node, add an Alpha Over node. Connect the Render Layers output to the Alpha Over bottom color input. Set the hex in the top color input to 80FFFF. The nodes should look like this:

Click the Render button once more.

Not the best answer, but still a valid way of doing it.


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What is the proper workflow when adding an image texture to a material
When adding an “Image Texture” to a UV Mapped material does it make a difference if you add it first in the “Node Editor” or in the “UV Editor”?

I don't believe that this matters, as long as you keep in mind that there is both an Image texture and a UV Map involved.
The UV/Image editor knows that there is a link to an image, and so does the node editor, as you can select them both from the image texture dropdown in either place. Blender knows the image is there.
On the flip side, I know that certain things like texture baking requires there to be a present reference to an image texture in node form on the material you are going to bake to (Although it does not need to be linked to anything for it to work).
For UV purposes however, you have to realize that the UV map is just texture coordinates of the verts that make up the faces of your geometry. So for Blender there is no real technical need to even display an image to get some sort of UV map via the Unwrap functions because they automatically get placed somewhere, however for the user this is visually crucial, so you can modify them to fit your needs.
In other words, It's the end result that truly matters.
For some, they like to attempt to get a good feel for the mapping upfront and let it influence their topology, while for others, they like to ignore it until they are done getting their geometry tuned and then making the map fit the geometry. For others they do both. This is just a matter of preference, as there is nothing in the software (from what I can tell) constraining the freedom to choose how you want to go about this. There are also times to not worry about it, because you just want to brush paint your texture directly onto your mesh (then this would require that you save your painted image and reference in the node editor, but UV is pretty much automatic in this case.
A texture is still a texture, and a UV Map is the channel/conduit by which the geometry displays (stretches/ignores/skews/etc...) that texture per face.
If at anytime, you decide to straiten out how your geometry is mapping to this image texture, you can start or redo your UV Unwrapping, tweak the verts in the UV editor etc...
Hope this was thorough enough.

That was great! It makes sense to me. It's just that I've had some issues in the past trying to replace an image and Blender not accepting the new image so I wanted to check in on workflow... Thanks so much.

I know that packing an image used to cause me grief, and also when texture painting, I have had a little grief as well. There seems to be a slight update delay when saving the image in the texture slot, and what you actually get in the Textured/Rendered viewport.

Yes, I stopped packing images over a year ago. I'll keep the "delay" you have noticed in mind. If I encounter something similar (texture image refresh/change issues) in the future I'll create a new question here. Thanks again for you help.


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Trouble Applying Gradient Texture for Atmosphere Density Around Earth
I'm making a photo-realistic image/animation of Earth. I'm trying to apply a spherical gradient texture to control the density of the atmosphere volume scatter.
The problem is, my atmosphere is about 1.015 times the size of my Earth (like real life). I cannot expand or zoom in enough into the node editor to precisely control the gradient. I thought I could make the atmosphere 2x as large as Earth, so I could just move the black and white colors of the gradient towards the middle of the slider, thereby having the density fade near the Earth's surface. However, this extra size makes my GPU run out of RAM and crash even in preview mode. This makes rendering unbearably slow with my cpu.
Is there a way of being able to keep my atmosphere size to realistic proportions with my Earth sphere, yet be able to "zoom in" onto my gradient and make precise color placements?

Size of my giant atmosphere compared to the small Earth in the middle, to make color placements in the spherical gradient easier.

Actual size proportions that would be ideal.
This forum has some screen caps of people controlling density with curves/gradients but I can't seem to replicate their method.  Cycles realistic atmosphere (with scattering)

What is your atmosphere? Is it a texture on a plane behind the planet?

It is a sphere object, just like my Earth. If you look at my first screen shot, the small circle at the 3d cursor is Earth sphere. And the larger one is the Atmosphere.


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Rigging and Bone Weighting: Ignore Y Rotation (Twisting), Only Follow X & Z Rotation (Bending)
Is there a way to rig/weight bones such that the mesh doesn't twist along with the bone when rotating it on its Y-axis, and only deforms when the bone rotates on its X and Z axes? In other words, the mesh only follows the bend of the joint, not the twisting?
I need this for rigging loose clothing over my character model. In the real world, one can often twist their upper arm without their upper shirt/coat sleeve following that twist. However you twist your upper arm, the clothing follows the changing direction of the bend of your elbow/forearm, without twisting (like a tuxedo sleeve). The same behavior can be applied to the lower sleeve not following the twist of your wrist or hand.
Is there a way to replicate or closely approximate this behavior in the rigging or weighting process? I need to rig a character with a larger spacesuit design, such as in this Boeing photo.

The simplest way do this is to add another bone that is a copy of the bone with twist (e.g create a forearm-notwist bone from the forearm bone). Make sure it is the same size with the same parent, location and orientation as the bone it copies.
Then add a damped track constrain to your no-twist bone, pointing to your original (e.g. forearm) bone, and change the head/tail slider to 1 (point at the tail.
If you need to you can also add copy location and copy scale constraint to the new bone, depending on what other transforms may be applied to the original.


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How to make fractal-like bubbling pattern with spheres?
For a graphic design project, I want to illustrate a fractal-Style arrangement of “bubbling” spheres: a network of “hub spheres” with smaller spheres that each have their own hub, smaller and smaller, etc. Here is a sketch of what I mean:

Is there a way to make this semi-random, fractal dispersion of spheres in Blender (2.8)?


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Set default fbx export settings
Does anyone know how to make Blender remember fbx export settings? Specifically Face Smoothing in the Geometry tab. It keeps defaulting to Normal but I need to to be Face:

Use the operator preset, see http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/40237/is-there-a-way-to-save-preferences-for-import-exporters/40243

So that doesn't really answer the question, it says how to make an operator preset, but how do you make this the default?


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How can I round out this join?
I want to round out this right angle join between two edges. How can I achieve this effect in red?

One thing you can try is to use the bevel command Ctrl+Shift+B on that vertex. It probably won't exactly lead you to the desired effect but it brings you closer to where you want to go. Once you've beveled the vertex you can use the loop cut tool Ctrl+R on the edge to add some cuts. After that you would have to move the vertices manually to the desired position.

There may be many ways to do it (using the knife project or to sphere tools e.g.). I'll show you a method wich uses a spin tool though.

Select the vertex which creates the straight angle and rip it (V). After selecting two vertices press G twice to slide them. This way you can set the size of the round joint.

Next with the two vertices selected snap the cursor to them (Shift+S-->Cursor to Selected). Change the pivot point type to 3D Cursor and enable snapping tool (Vertex). Select the bottom vertex, snap the cursor to it and (being in side view) press the Spin button (set the steps number in a Tool Shelf as you like). Next select the vertices of the arc, rotate and scale it to make the joint.

Finally remove doubles (select the whole mesh with A, then press W-->Remove Doubles). Fill the hole with F.

UPDATE: Using to sphere tool:

Select the vertex which creates the straight angle, press Shift+Ctrl+B and set the arc's size. Enable snapping tool (Vertex). Extrude the bottom vertex and snap it to the other one as pictured below. Snap the cursor to it (with 3D Cursor pivot point type), then delete it. Select the diagonal edge, subdivide it (W-->Subdivide) and set the subdivisions number in a Tool Shelf. Next press Shift+Alt+S,1. Finally translate the arc along Y and Z axes to snap it to the other vertices.


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How would I recreate this arched pillar from Vanishing Realms?
This is from the first room in Vanishing Realms:

The part I am concerned with is the top section that goes from a straight column to this kind of splayed out effect, not sure of the correct term. Anyways in SolidWorks you would loft this in a couple of seconds, how can I do this in Blender?
Thanks in advance.

I would try with booleans, subtracting cylindric shapes from a cube gives some similar (rough)  shape... at least for the upper part.

Final result:

Modeling:
It's extremely simple.
Just add a Cube. Go to Edit Mode. Select bottom face and extrude (hit E) it down in the Z axis, after extrude - scale it down (hit S). Repeat for every segment.

After that make object Smooth and add Autosmooth or Edgesplit Modifier.


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Why can't I drag the frame position?
I can;t drag the current frame marker, only set it using the current frame value in Timeline:

Figured it out - you have to drag with right mouse button, not left.


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Why does the material tab has a different layout?
I downloaded a Blend from Blend Swap and the materials are behaving much differently than I am used to - I think it has something to do with Cycles maybe? Here is what I see:

On the left is my "normal" materials tab, and the right is from Blend Swap. What is going on here? Why are they different? Also, with the screen on the right I cannot assign a different material to different parts of the mesh:

Any ideas what I'm into here?

Looks like it is a Cycles render file, and the materials look like that since they mention 'Diffuse' etc. Your faces must be selected to use the assignment button, but in this particular file they might already be assigned but the material might not be set to use a color for the viewport....


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What are these triangles along the model edges?

They tend to fluctuate as I move the model around:

Looks like precision artifacts from clipping distance issues. Adjust you viewport clipping distances, reduce the gap between them

Ah yep that was it. The far plane was too far away: https://imgur.com/a/tMN7S

These are precision artifacts from clipping distance issues caused by the distance between the clipping planes being too great:

I reduced the far plane to 1m.


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How do I make a curved arrow?
I have a simple arrow like this:

I want to make it curved about the Z axis like this:

In this image it is a texture applied with transparent background to a plane. But I want to make it a 3D model and apply a special material.
I tried adding a curve modifier and ended up with this:

What is the best method to use?

Using the curve is ok. But you have to subdivide your mesh (mainly transversally to the curve) in order to allow it to follow the curve.

http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/34616/2217 But like lemon said you need more geometry. The mesh can only bend on edges, and you only have one edge in the arrow.

As others have stated, I need to add more geometry to deform around the curve:


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Armature Vertex Groups Control
How does the Blender User get an parent armature to bind in
[one axis orthogonal view stripes]
rather than following edge loops? ... or the same effect.

Question is now old.  You may disregard.  Candidate for deletion.
One immediate goal is to minimize manual weight painting.
A related goal may be for this weight to be dynamic
These examples are atypical, geometric, inorganic examples of using armatures and other options are being considered.  In these examples we are seeking very geometric weights.  Painting tools are not discussed here.
In this question the number of vertex groups should match the number of deforming bones
I would like to use existing modifiers or addons available if possible
I may not see any proposed answer for 24 or more hours.

Thanks.

A simple axis aligned mesh with weights in simple stripes.  A evenly spaced Y axis linear edge sequence was bound to an armature.  Next it was extruded in two orthogonal directions. No manual weight painting.
The circular ring mesh would be more difficult to achieve the goal.

Mesh Deform can work with the technique above

This is an example of desired [stripe]. Done through modifiers.  The stripe exists or is red in a small portion near the bone.  Face connectivity is [not] considered.
The armature bones are positioned parallel to global Y axis.  I would like to see only Y coordinate considered.
Single example because of lack of time

Python Script Success Results

Stripe in XY Plane or ||. Python.
Because there is little edge alignment with X or Y axis. We think this is more difficult to manually weight paint when a large, inconvenient number of weight stripes are needed.
The large stripe is for easy visibility. Color gradient along Y axis.   Concrete Python improvements are possible.
Read Python at your own risk.  Python subject to massive cleansing and refactoring.  Minimally tested. Please inspect and improve.

A comparison of Armature Placement and Mesh Modifier.  They are similar for this simple test.  Testing remains. Arrow indicates only the Armature Modifier is active.

Failures and Less Desirable Experiments Follow.

Failure.  Top Half image. Automatic Armature weights. Weight stripes with weights fail to meet current needs.
Bottom Half image. Weights manually modified to have identical weights for vertex with same Y coordinate.  Results work. Excessive manual labor.
The mesh structure makes it easy for this example. Easy to weight paint probably.  Guides are built in.

Failure. Automatic weights by edit mode scaling by .01 in X direction.  Armature Binding again.  Edit mode restore original scale. Undesirable weights visible.

Ordinary armature binding
Failure for atypical use of Armature.
The vertex group follows an edge loop.  This is [contrary] to my requirement in this example.
The vertex group for Bone.001 is shown.  Red indicates location and bone names are visible.

Failure. An attempt to use a Shape Key to flatten the mesh and then bind again to the armature.  This effort has failed so far.  I will attempt again.
Duplicating Mesh with Armature.

Specifying duplicate with flat mesh only [shape key] and applying armature
Adding Shape Key from original.
Fails with my sequence of steps perhaps because of binding recognizing face connectivity

So this prompts one to think about whether or not Blender can bind to a Shape Key.

Failure. Experiment. Faces are separate. See Gaps. Bone effects seems more localized. This is not a solution to the requirements.


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Is it true that the Blender User should name particle cache files differently across Scenes to preserve the info?
Does using multiple scenes in a Blender file increase the chances for cache file conflict and mistaken deletion?
Are there any tips to understand the interface of filenames for the cache with Particles?  After making exploratory clicks I had to explicitly specify the cache file directory, otherwise the panel stated there was no data to read. (relative directory style) (extra work).  Next the interface stated point counts (worse).  After more clicking the interface stated frame counts (better)
Next the render is correct.  Yet the 3D Viewport is not correct, not expected and out of synchronization.  Some of the behaviour makes one start being superstitious and perhaps restart Blender.


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What is physics field absorption with a collision object for particles?
I have read this information
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.90/physics/collision.html#bpy-types-collisionsettings
Does anyone have a better explanation in a few paragraphs?
The question arises when a particle has reached an mesh physics effector and the Blender User would like the particle to follow the surface of the mesh.   Does it change the velocity of the particle?  If an effector is both a field and an obstacle what happens?  If a particle has a velocity parallel to the surface of a mesh does that qualify as a collision? (Dot product to surface normal is zero)
Thanks.

Do some science, and find out!

@ZargulTheWizard: you made my day!!  ...although i understand atomicbezierslinger - the documentation could be better in some cases - i am often missing examples and "easier to understand" explanation