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How to model a spoon with using edge loop only with no mirror modifier
Is it possible to use only edge loop for making the round side of a spoon? What I have done at first is making a plane shape and scaled it. After that I extruded the upper edge of the spoon. Then, I used edge loops to make the extruded part to become round which the problem is it the top of the extruded part cannot be round. Is there really no way to make a spoon just by using a plane shape? This is the image of what I have done before posting the question

Is there anyway to make the upper side of this image to be a circle or almost circle?

Welcome to Blender SE. There's a saying in business: 'There's more than one way to make a cup of tea' (also, 'There's more than one way to skin a cat'). Try including an image of your work, or better, upload your blender file. Making any object can be done in several different ways: it's down to the personal preferences and skills of the designer. But I anticipate that a subsurface modifier and proportional editing ('O' key toggle) may be in your near future.

I have attached the image. Is there any way to make the upper part look more like a circle?

Lemon nails a good workflow for spoon creation, and I'd suggest it's the most efficient one, as the use of modifiers minimizes geometry while maximizing flexibility on design. To answer your follow-up question: it looks like you currently have a rectangular shape for your spoon's neck. The most circular shape you can get is a square. To get it more circular you need more geometry. CTRL-R, hover over a horizontal edge, and scroll to generate two loop cuts. That should give you four more points to that square, giving you 8 vertices for a better circle.

@arcv, the more vertices the less subsurf modifier will influence the shape. In the attached image we don't see the upper part, but I guess it is open geometry. You need to make a face here, and probably give a loop cut vertically along the whole shape

A possibility is to use solidify and subdivision surface modifiers, starting from a plane.

Create a plane
Adjust its size
Subdivide it twice
Adjust the center part depth
Adjust the extremities

Now add the modifiers
Refine the geometry as you want
Set the shading to smooth


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Active Vertex Group Selector
I'm working with a model that has a whoooolllleee bunch of vertex groups. I'm currently in the process adding new geometry to these groups. However, this is a crazy tedious process because the only way I know of how to change the active vertex group is by using this menu:

It would be sweet if the little box that pops up after I select a group would stick around:

So my question is: is there a piece of UI or something I can have that lets me quickly and easily change my active vertex group? Or maybe some way to keep that little box open?

as you must have seen, Ctrl G is the shortcut to choose the active group, then maybe create a shortcut for the Assign button to speed up the process?

I ended buying Vertex group Utils from the blender add on store. It's exactly what I needed and works well.

You can select the active vertex group on the properties panel, in properties/data/vertex group-- select one of the vertex groups listed to make it the active vertex group.
If you have too many to scroll through, you can filter the list by name by clicking the arrow at the bottom of the list and typing in some text.  Here I'm filtering by "1":

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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-NAN UV Coordinates/Collapsed Single Point UV Unwrapping
I'm having an issue with a mesh I've been working on where some newly added geometry will not unwrap and texture correctly.
So given this piece of geometry:

I see two strange things happen:

If I select all connected faces I can see in my UV Editor that the vertices have coordinates of (-nan, 0.000). This seems incorrect/impossible.

If I try to unwrap the geometry it collapses to a single point in the UV editor (when I would expect to, ya know, look normal). Additionally, if I move that collapsed point around only some of the faces will be textured correctly. Most of them remain unchanged (all faces should be white).

Single point (highlighted in orange in the UV Editor on the right):

Unchanged texture:

Do you have any seams marked?

I tried with and without but I discovered last night that this was just an actual bug in Blender. Thanks for the reply though.

This is caused by a bug in Blender 2.90 through 2.93. At the time of posting of this answer there isn't button or operation to fix this. However, in the official Blender issue tracker thread about this problem (found here: https://developer.blender.org/T79775#1016390), someone posted a script snippet that will set all NaN UV coordinates of the selected geometry to a valid value. Note: I used this in Blender 2.93 specifically even though my mesh was created in 2.90.

Go to scripting layout tab at top (or open a text editor view)
From the text editor toolbar at the top create a new script/document
Paste the following script into the editor:

import bpy

for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    if not ob.type =='MESH':
        print(ob.name,'is not a mesh, skipping\n')
        continue
    print(ob.name,'\n')
    m = ob.data
    if m.validate(verbose=True):
        print("something was fixed with the mesh")
    else:
        print("mesh was fine")

    print(" and the cached custom data has been cleared to avoid export issues")

Run it with the play button at the top.
Your mesh should now be fixed!

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


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Unwanted pentagon in unwrap
I'm fairly new to blender, and I created a gun I would like to texture. I am using online videos to help me UV unwrap my gun, but when I try to unwrap the seamed pieces individually, this pentagon shows up. I don't really like it. Any help on how to get rid of it would be appreciated. I think it came from me clicking "Follow Active Quads" in the unwrap menu, but I'm not entirely sure.

Welcome to Blender.SE. The pentagon i likely a ngon face you haven't work on yet. Try to find out where it is (or they are...) in the model (for example by enabling "Keep UV and Edit Mode Mesh Selection in Sync " option and unwrap it the way you like it.

The first thing would be to see if the mesh has a non-square face (ie, with 5 vertices) and fix it if it does. If it does and you want do be lazy, simply add one vertex in the middle and use that to make triangles.
(Faces that are made of more than four vertices are known to cause problems in weird places, so making a habit of removing them and keeping a good topology will make things easier. I think blender for the most part doesn't have a problem with it except for edges and faces that do have the same location.)
The best way to fix the uv map is probably to make a new one. I would recommend you first use it with a checker texture to find any weirdness first, so you might discover any other problems you might have missed.

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


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How to install rotobezier in blender
Good day!
I have upgraded to blender 2.79 version but still unable to find the add on "rotobezier". Please help in this context.
Would be of great help.
Thanks ,
Sachin Sharma

Nothing on google?

https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?322742-Blender-2-69-RotoBezier&p=2548292&viewfull=1#post2548292

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


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Apply UVMap mapping on meta object
I'm able to set UVMap mapping for standard mesh object like the cube, but I don't figure out how to do the same for a meta objcet like Ball, Ellipsoid, etc.
These are the step I follow:
1) Create the object
2) Convert it to a mesh object

3) Create a material and a texture and assign them to it
4) Go under texture menu, set UV for Coordinates
At this point the dropdown Map menu is empty and I can't set UVMap as value.

Furthermore I noticed that when I switch to edit mode the appearance of my meta object is different from that of mesh object. See the screenshot below:

Did you create UV map for the object after converting? UV coordinates menu in the texture properties allows a value if there's at least one UV map. The last screenshot is not clear, are those 2 different objects?

I'm not sure on how to check if an UV map has been created and how to create it if not.

See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6755/how-to-properly-unwrap-my-mesh for one example


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Is it possible to edit certain property values in the Principled Shader when using a Normal map as a Bump map?
What I mean by this is for example, if I connect the normal map into the Metallic property of the Principled shader, is it possible to change the intensity or the amount of impact that the Normal map has on the property? If so, how do I go about doing it?

Do not connect Normal map anywhere but Normal input of the shaders. Roughness map is expected to be black and white (if even used, as in some cases glossy / specular maps used instead). As to controlling amount of normal map effect use slider in Normal map node.

A math node can be used to multiply a value - x0.5 is half strength. A colour ramp node is also a commonly used, it allows you to affect the amount differently over the range of values. Note that the vector from the normal map is three values, the roughness only uses one, You can use a separate xyz node to get each value, maybe calc an average or use only one value.


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How do I adjust animation easing in Blender?
Whenever I animate something I dislike the result because blender automatically gives your animations very stretched out and noticable easing, Is there a way to adjust this easing? Im looking for options such as: Changing easing from easing on both ends to only easing in or only easing out,changing the easing intensity and lenght and the ability to remove it altogether.

In case easing doesn't ring a bell, its old name is slow in and slow out.

Im not sure which answer to mark as the right one as both give useful insight.

You can use the Graph Editor for this. The Graph Editor allows you full control over the animation curves, including options to vary the Easing Type (menu Key/Easing Type or Control+E), setting the Interpolation Mode (menu Key/Interpolation Mode or T) - which includes additional Easing options, or by manipulating the curve bezier handles.

This will give you some things to experiment with:
File >> User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U).
Click the Editing tab up on the top of the User Preferences Dialog Box.
In the Third Column from the left there are settings for New F-Curve Defaults

Try changing the Interpola setting.


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Why are some lines on my model drawn differently?

When I look at my object in edit mode I see there are quite a few lines that look different to how they look normally (kind of striped instead of solid black).
Why is this, and do I need to fix it?

Those are edges that have been marked as "sharp". In the tool panel in edit mode (press T if not visible) you can find the tools to mark them as smooth again:


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Why are the textures rendering with white lines and dots?
I've used some stock collada files and imported them into Blender. I did not make any changes to the models, aside from reducing their size. For testing purposes, the runway can be found here.
In the below picture, you'll see that the models look fine until the scene is rendered. My output setting is 1920 x 1080 with 100% resolution and 15% compression.
Any help is greatly appreciated!

http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/945/artifacts-in-rendered-geometry-which-appears-okay-in-opengl-solid-view/946#946 and http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/73556/weird-texture-issues-when-importing-collada-from-sketchup/73558#73558

Basically looks like Z-Fighting. Either you have duplicate geometry in your objects, or your surfaces are too close together, leading to precision issues.


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How do I make my decal non-transparent?
I'm trying to make the label on this beer bottle non-transparent, but no matter what I try, light goes through it. As you can see from my node tree, it's just a decal applied with a diffuse shader. What am I missing? I need it to be totally opaque.

You don't want to Add both Texture Image and Glass Shader.
The thing you need to do is Mix both of them by Mask.
In below example I've used texture 2048x2048 with centered label and transparent background (PNG).
I don't know exactly how have you added your texture (and UV) so I can't describe precisely what should you do.
Feel free to add more information so I can extend my answer targeting your particular setup.

Exactly what I needed, thank you! Working great now.


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Vertex slide is creating a new vertex and not deleting the old one. How do I stop this?
In this screen cap you can see what happened. I slid the vertex using the vertex slide tool, but instead of moving the vertex, it just basically created a new one, and left the old one in place. I'm new to Blender, so if someone could tell me how to fix this, I'd be very happy.

Using the available information, you have double vertices at this location, most probably double faces too, it would help if you upload .blend file or provide more information about the process you're going through to do that.

Vertex slide doesn't create new vertex, you did, they were overlapping and you could not see them, and now that you moved one it revealed the other. Bottom line is you have duplicate geometry, so remove doubles to clean up your model.


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Make Blender recalculate non-faceweighted normals?
Seems like a silly question but I've been trying to have blender generate normals without weighting the faces into it, in order to then extrude along normals. At the moment, it seems like Blender is grabbing the normals of all faces around the vertex and multiplying with face size to get the vertex normal. I'd like a simple average, to result in a 45 angle at a 90 face junction. Can I do that automatically?

Should be pretty clear what I mean from the image - the normals closer to the camera are tilted more towards the normal of the face that goes off-screen, which is larger. I'd like them to be a simple average, which would be bisecting the angle between the faces.

you're showing vertex normals, not face normals. are you saying you wish th extrude (what?) along those vertex normals, but you wish they were not weighted?

Let's not focus on what I'm trying to do with the normals. I want vertex normals to be the average of face normals, without accounting for face size. That's it.
For completeness's sake though, I'm using the Extrude Region (Vertex Normals) to get a consistent edge around the model. With those vertex normals, it's extruding more on the large side and less on the small side.

From your comment it seems you wish something that the solidify modifier maybe can do easily:

which after enabling viewport display gets:

You can use vertex group to partially apply.
Surely your project is more complicated and different, but since not much of it was shown above...

Yeah, it's not quite what I need, although it's on the right track. I have an already manifold mesh (as in, it has volume that I just want to add to) of apartment walls. I added an edge loop to separate out the baseboard and would like to just select everything and extrude along normals. As you can see, the vertex normals I get by default are not the ones I'd need to get a baseboard. Solidify sorta does the trick but creates a bunch of extra geometry I need to remove. :/

I ended up using your suggestion, splitting off the faces I wanted to extrude into a separate object and then applying the solidify modifier. Worked out pretty decent, thanks


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Cycles: sharper transition from transparent to opaque areas when using partly transparent texture
I want to apply a sticker to a glass bottle that has transparent areas. I got it to work that the right parts are see-through. My problem is that i have white blurry areas where the sticker transitions from not transparent to transparent. But I want sharp edges around the border of the colored part. In other words:
I want the texture to be either 100% transparent or 0%. Nothing in between.
Here is a screenshot of the texture, my node setup and my current render result.

You were on the right track: you can use a math node in between the alpha output of your texture and the mix shader. set it to "less than" and input a number between 0 and 1.
if you input 1, only 100% opaque pixels will be diffuse, all other pixels are glass.
Here is the node setup (I used transparent and emission shaders for demonstration purposes. this works with your node setup as well), the texture I used and the result:


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Exporting OBJs that save alpha information properly, so they look normal when imported into eevee
When I first tried exporting my model to OBJ, then importing it into another document, the alpha had a weird staircasing effect:
I realized this is because it was still using the alpha from the png, but from the color input of the image, plus it it had set the color space to non-color https://i.sstatic.net/HoKQN.png
So I made the alpha it's own png image with just black and white, and used that for the alpha, which made it import correctly: https://i.sstatic.net/BCDg6.png
And it works when importing into a cycles view, but in eevee the transparency is still not visible :

This happens until I go into the settings of the material, and change the "blend mode" from "opaque" to "alpha blend". This setting does not seem to get saved when I export the objs.
So my question is: Is there any way to fix this, or will people have to change that setting manually every time they import one of my objs into cycles?

obj is a very primitive and thereby universal format. You can't expect it to save Eevee specific settings. If at all possible use fbx, but it will also not save the alpha blended mode. You could argue that the importer would take care of that for you, but most programs stopped imporving their obj importer at some point, because it's more of a "hail Mary" format for when everything else fails.

For the staircase issue: non-color is correct in this case. As for the staircase issue, make sure your image alpha is set to premultiplied.

@FrederikSteinmetz is fbx as widely supported? or better somehow? I see OBJs more often

Depends on the software. CAD won't often allow fbx, bc. it's overkill, as I said obj is simple, therefore easy to implement. Unity found a bug in their obj importer years ago and closed the issue with the comment: It's an inferior format, use fbx. FBX enables you to export shapekeys, armatures and a bunch of other stuff. There's rarely a case where one format is just plain better than another one.


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How can I programatically evaluate each pixel before final composition?
I'm using a complex compositor node setup, which in the end reduces the image to just a few solid colors. I would like to remove any pixels from the image which have no pixels of the same color in the 8 surrounding pixels (and replace them with whatever color is most common in those 8 pixels). I don't want to affect any of the other pixels.
Is there any method within the compositor I could use to do this?

Some of the sampling facilities  may provide an average of the surrounding pixels and assign that color to multiple pixels.... pixelation.  Division by X, Truncate, Multiply by (1/X)
... quantization.  Some of the tools which read in a texture may do this.  Compositor has pixelate node.

An example of a pixelated image in the compositor.  This may help for one part of your question.


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How can I pass a value (heightmap) from a material shader to the compositor?
I need to get either the 2d image data, or material data from a texture node, into the compositor. Is there a way to do this?

Please explain further what you want to do. Images and textures can be used directly on the compositor. I would think that you are looking for the MapUV functionality or maybe ID masks, but it would help if you clarified the goal you are after.

maybe AOVs? They are present in Cycles and now also in Eevee.

Really what I need is two separate material outputs on the same object, which I can then overlay in the compositor. I think AOV is what I need, but I have yet to figure out how to use them.


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How can I get shader node values from one material to another?
I have a material that generates a height map and applies it to the displacement.
Now I want to make another object, with another material, but I want to use that height data from the first object, in this objects material shader. Is that possible?

You can create a node group: Can you use another material as input to material nodes in cycles?

or Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V?


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Why isn't the value of colors in the color picker linear?
If you set the value of your color picker to 0.5, it shows on the right sidebar as being closer to 25%, definitely not in the middle. This is confusing coming from someone used to photoshop.

If you pick a middle gray halfway down the slider, the value is more like 0.2.

Could someone explain why this is, and how it affects my color choices and renders in blender?

The values are actually linear - that's the problem you observe. Our color perception is not linear. We see around 20% reflectivity as middle grey. It should be 21.4% in sRGB color space(so that's 0.241 in Blender's color picker) and you probably have your Display Device color space set to sRGB(as it most likely should be):

Actually color picker will stay the same sRGB even if you change your Display Device color space - that's kind of wrong in that case. But then no problem, because there aren't many reasonable color spaces to choose from. Wellcome to color management. Where nothing ever works and makes sense.

That's actually interesting. Maybe someone knows about XYZ color space display devices. I think I'll ask a question myself. :D


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How to stop blender from slowing down web browser while in cycles viewport?
I'm trying to follow tutorials, but whenever I have the blender window active, youtube slows down to a point where the audio starts studdering and the video stops updating. I know blender generally needs all the power it can get, but how can I make it so I can still watch videos while doing it?

Hi :). Is your cycles viewport set to high samples? That would explain the high GPU usage...

its just set to 32

well, as long as it computes the viewport, your GPU/CPU will be somewhat occupied. You can limit the max number of CPU cores, or disable GPU from rendering.


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How do I get a single IK bone to move up when the controller pushes against it?
So I have a minecraft rig that uses one IK bone for the arm.

What I want is for the bone to move up when the controller moves up as well, and when it goes down, for the IK bone to not go below its limits.

As you can see, moving the controller up and down doesn't currently affect the IK bone.

What I want is something like this, but when the controller moves. Also, I want the arm to return to position if the controller is moved forwards or sideways and for the IK to continue to be parented to the torso bone.
I hope this is clear enough of what I want. I definitely know in my head how I want the bone to act, and I feel like it is possible inside of Blender, but I've been messing around with the bones for a while now and I still can't figure it out.

The IK goal is to manage a chain of bones and bend them from point A to point B with an orientation towards point C. Here you have just one bone, you should use a damped track constraint instead, which has the simple role of pointing a bone towards another and seem to be what you need.
Then, before the damping track, you can add a Child of with only Z translation enabled. Don't forget to hit the set inverse button.

You still need to add Copy Rotation on the constrained Bone, Target:Armature Bone:Bone.001 so that it would follow the rotation on Target:Local Space, Owner:Local Space, Axis: only Y. if not Target:World Space Owner:World Space, Axis: only Z


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Blender Eevee Keeps crashing when i try to render
So I have this animation full of custom rigs that I animated in blender 2.79 and am trying to render in Eevee. When I hit the f12 key the frame renders out, but as soon as it's done blender closes.
I was wondering if anyone had any insight to what the problem might be and how to fix it.

Maby your computer just can't handle it, try lowering the resolution and other settings and see if it still crashes.

These are the stats of my cp AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor with 12 threads
16 GBs of RAM
Radeon RX 580 with 8 GBs

This is also the same result for cycles render in blender 2.80 as well

Check out this video to find solution for your issue
https://youtu.be/3g2yiAQaWCE

Instead of opening the 2.79 file in blender 2.80 i just appended the objects in my scene to the startup file for 2.80 and it rendering seems to be working so far now.


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How would I make this LED display only display only full or empty circles?
I'm currently modeling this robot and I'm trying to create a LED display material for the eyes. I'm using a Voronoi texture to act as a masking for the eye texture but the eyes are showing halfway through some circles.

I want it so that the material will only show a full circle or no circles at all.
Here is my node setup:

This is the eye texture:

Does anyone know how I could achieve this?

You can quantize UV coordinates using vector math node (snap):

Using the 'Position' output of your regular Voronoi as your texture coordinate will quantize the UV that's fed to it:

.. some function of the 'Distance' output will control the spread of illumination, or other features, per-cell.
This has the advantage that everything is controlled from one place.. the 'Scale' of the Voronoi:


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Washed out materials but good textures, why?
Sorry for the newbie question, but I can't seem to find the correct answer (and what I found I can't really understand, since I just started using the software 1 day ago. I wanted to create some fly-over video in my indoor room models, what I created with photogrammetry.
This is how my textures look:

And this is how my material view looks:

What can be the reason of this? I saw some answers about nodes, but when I opened mine, there was nothing. Also, I have limited time, my thesis defense is after tomorrow, and the idea of creating a video about my models just popped up yesterday, therefore I can't really get deep into it in the next day.
Any help is well appreciated!

Found the problem: somehow in the "Influence" inside the "Material" window, the Specular --> Color were turned off. Turned it on, and voilá, it's perfect.


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How can I select the face that raycast hits?
I want to use a raycast to detect a specific face on my model. In this case, I'm trying to set it to red.
I tried to use the raycast node, but that seems to target objects not faces, so it just sets the whole object to red, not the face.

(Using Blender 3.6.8)
Finding the index of the nearest face to the hit position defines the mask to set the red material:

thanks, this seems to work. Is the ray direction like a point relative to the source position , and the angle between them determines the direction?

Ray Direction is a vector, not a point. A line is computed, starting from the Source Position, along the direction parallel to the Ray Direction. So for more than a single Source Position (a point cloud for example), all rays are parallel. If S is the source position and N the ray direction, the parametric equation of the ray is M=S+t*N where M is the point along the ray at distance t from the source (if the length of N is 1).


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Set material of instances on Geometry Nodes
I'm using blender 3 for geometry nodes, I'm instancing cubes.

How do I add a material to them? The material of the parent object does not seem to transfer to them.

Add a "set material" node some time after they have been instanced


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Why can't I connect a color ramp to an attribute fill node?
I'm trying to set the color of instanced cubes, by setting an attribute, and using that attribute in my material shader
When I attach nothing to the value input, i can select a color and it properly changes the material color (so i know my shader is working)
When i try to connect my color ramp to that input, like below, i get a red line and my texture turns black.

The color ramp is coming out of a noise texture.
Why doesn't it like this color input (even though their both of type color)?
Also I know attribute fill is outdated, so if you have a workaround that uses a different blender3 node, that's fine too.

It's a field (note the dashed line) that's coming into a regular color socket. Also you're mixing legacy nodes with fields nodes which are not made to be compatible

Geometry nodes fields no longer has any nodes that can refer to attributes with names. Instead, names of attributes can be specified in the modifier. To output a field to an attribute, simply connect the field to the Group Output node. In the modifier, under 'Output Attributes', you can then specify the attribute to output it to.


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How to render with solid colors on each face?
I'm trying to get a retro 3d look with unsmoothed lowpoly faces.
It's pretty close, but i want every face to only be a single color (as determined by the average color based on the render)

As you can see there's a lot of gradients around the blue, and some blurring on the edges of some reds.
example of what I want:
I know I could do this with the compositor by applying a color ramp set to constant, but that would be unable to account for the blue lighting.
I would also like to animate this, so I would be unable to bake it into a texture map.

I'd say you have to resign from a shader, and calculate color based on normal and camera vector.

This is what is obtained with a Diffuse shader with roughness = 1:

Though you need to disable Cycles global illumination in order to not have light bouncing everywhere and lighting things up indirectly:

You can also obtain this with eevee:

All I did was to enable Ambient Occlusion, set distance to zero and set a higher strenght (you need to write it, Blender soft locks it at 1 otherwise):

And here's the workbench:

The workbench is basically what you have in solid view. It does have some several downsides, like being unable to use your scene's light and actual shaders. But it's also really close technology to your reference and you do have some flexibility and some options you don't have out of the box with other render engines:

that does seem to work so I may have to do that, but i was hoping i could still control the roughness

Well I think there's a way to get something even closer by playing with normals texture coordinaites, but I don't have access to Blender right now so I will have to come back on this topic later today

Also, do you need to render on Eevee/Cycles specifically? Because i think it would be also way easier to get such result using the Workbench engine. Tell me and I adapt my answer as needed.

Ive never used workbench, but am open to the possibilities if it ends up looking closer to my target. im using eevee above

Basically you want to emulate old game's style, right? I'll look into this after work ;)

im not trying to emulate it exactly, just the flat colored faces part. i think nathan figured out most of the kinks the way I was doing it, but I'm always open to more methods which might be easier / more accurate. I'm hoping to create something to add to a free blender toolkit

I edited my answer with new informations. and pictures ♥

You will get almost the entire way to your goal pic by tuning down rendering settings and using a Diffuse shader in Eevee:

I've reduced the radius of every light to 0.0, I've disabled soft shadows (and other settings like screen space reflections, ambient occlusion, and bloom), and I've told the flat-shaded sphere to just use a 0.0 roughness diffuse.
Note also that there are no true shadows in your goal pic.  You will probably want to disable shadows on all materials.  If you need the ground shadows, probably the easiest way to capture them is via shadow catcher techniques.  (In the game, these ground shadows are made by projecting the mesh onto the ground plane and only onto the ground plane-- it's very similar to how the meshes are projected onto your camera's near clip plane to draw the whole scene.)
Now, if we look carefully at the sphere I made, we're going to see that there is some very small difference in color across the face.  This is because I'm using point lights, and so the direction to each sample varies slightly-- very slightly.  In your game pic, the only lighting is from a "sun" lamp (maybe a pair-- the lighting appears to be coming from a different direction than the ground shadows point.)  If you use only sun lamps in your own render, you won't see any variation across each face.  (Or, if you put your point lights very far away, the variation will become less and less.)  If point lights were implemented in this engine, they would probably also have small variation across faces.
Notice something else from your goal pic: a lot of the lighting is ambient lighting.  More ambient lighting than you have in your first pic.  You can create ambient lighting in Eevee just by using a world with a flat color; if already doing that, you can make the world brighter in its shader nodes.


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How can I use local rotation on objects created with geometry nodes?
I have geometry nodes to spawn in objects all over my mesh. Currently they rotate with the mesh, so on a sphere they all point outwards, which I want. But I now want them to be rotated around their 7 axis, so they aren't all lined up. If I use an Attribute Randomize node set to rotation then it resets all their rotations, and they are all pointing directly upwards.
How can I make them rotate on their local axis?

Use Point Rotate node with setting Point, Z rotation is what you need:

If you want to rotate in a random angle use Attribute Randomize in vector mode, but keep X and Y equals 0:


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Ray effect in cycles
I am trying to make it so that there are "beams" coming out of the top of an object. Here is a crappying drawing:
I have made this so far:

Also related : https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/72010/29586


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I can not install manuelbastionilab from file
I downloaded it to desktop, Opened Blender,User Preference,Addons, Open from file,select manuelbastionilab file, and it just isnt working.I have been trying off and on for two days now with no luck.Can some one help please?
Here are a few screen shots on some out comes.

You didn't have to extract the files, the installation is made with zip file.

"Install from file" expects the downloaded ZIP file.


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Change and save smoke/particles color
Newish to blender. I want to change the Rainbow CC Node color from blue to red. Every time I change it to red it renders blue and the colors reset back to blue. Any help is appreciated!!!

Can I edit by going to the dopesheet and selecting the keyframe? or do I have to delete and add new?

The border around the colour swatch indicates that it is keyframed, which is causing the colour to go back to it's animated setting. The border on the colour swatch is equivalent to the green and yellow backgrounds of keyframed numeric values.
Right click  on the colour and choose "Clear Keyframes" to remove all of the animated data. The border will then disappear and your colour selection will stay.
If you only want the colour to change at a certain part of your animation, then you need to add keyframes to make the colour change when you want it to.


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Python: template_ID()-like UI for PropertyGroup
For a Blender add-on I am trying to create an UI that let's the user

choose from a list of existing instances of a PropertyGroup stored in
a CollectionProperty
create new instances of that PropertyGroup and name them
possibly delete instances

This is much like the normal chooser for ID types that you get with the template_ID() function, but for a non-ID type.

First I was thinking if it would be possible to derive an ID-type myself, but I found no information on that online, so I doubt that it is even possible. Note that my items cannot really be represented by any ID-type already present in Blender.
Things I've already tried:

template_search() gives me a nice way to look up existing properties, but because my items' name properties are not necessarily unique, it is not really an option, because I can't get the original item back from the name string.
prop() with a dynamically generated EnumProperty sort of works. However there is no way to rename the item without a secondary name input box.

I was wondering if somebody has already created a similar kind of input for another Blender add-on or even as a Python module that I could use for my purposes.

You can use an UIList, see: Create an interface which is similar to the material list box

That might be an option, but only if it can be made more compact, as it has to fit inside a node. Would it be possible to display an UIList inside a modal dialogue / popup that can be opened with a button? (I am not too familiar with the correct terms in Blender UI world) I'm ok with not having search functionality.

As you can see, UIList has a compact mode which should also work as part of an invoke_props_dialog.

Thank you, I implemented a solution based on invoke_search_popup() which I wouldn't have found without your link. I am going to post an answer to my own question once I am confident that my code works as intended.

@geloescht I'm trying to use template_search() but it's not properly working. I'm not sure how to use template_search(). If you can take a look at here, that would be really helpful.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/229373/115433

It is possible to create a group of inputs that behaves very similar to the normal chooser. This is the code to draw the widgets:
def draw_buttons(self, context, layout):
    group = layout.row(align=True)
    choose_props = group.operator('example.choose_item', text="", icon='PRESET')
    if self.item_set:
        group.prop(self.get_item(), "name", text="", expand=True)
        clear_props = group.operator('example.clear_item', icon='X', text="")
        clear_props.node_tree = self.id_data.name
        clear_props.node = self.name
    else:
        new_props = group.operator('example.new_item', icon='ADD', text='New')
        new_props.node_tree = self.id_data.name
        new_props.node = self.name
    choose_props.node_tree = self.id_data.name
    choose_props.name = self.name

The choose operator itself uses context.window_manager.invoke_search_popup() to open a search box of available items. Here is example code for the operators:
items = [('one', 'Any', "", 'PRESET', 1), ('two', 'PropertyGroup', "", 'PRESET', 2), ('three', 'type', "", 'PRESET', 3)]

class ChooseItemOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "example.choose_item"
    bl_label = "Choose item"
    bl_options = {'INTERNAL'}
    bl_property = "enum"

    def get_enum_options(self, context):
        global items
        return items

    enum: EnumProperty(items=get_enum_options, name="Items")
    node_tree: StringProperty()
    node: StringProperty()

    def execute(self, context):
        tree = bpy.data.node_groups[self.node_tree]
        node = tree.nodes[self.node]
        node.item_set = true
        node.set_item(self.enum)
        return {"FINISHED"}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        context.window_manager.invoke_search_popup(self)
        return {"FINISHED"}

class NewItemOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "example.new_item"
    bl_label = "New Item"
    bl_options = {'INTERNAL'}

    node_tree: StringProperty()
    node: StringProperty()

    def execute(self, context):
        global items
        tree = bpy.data.node_groups[self.node_tree]
        node = tree.nodes[self.node]
        node.item_set = True
        newitem = ('four', 'type', "", 'PRESET', 4)
        items.append(newitem)
        node.set_item(newitem)
        return {'FINISHED'}

class ClearItemOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "example.clear_item"
    bl_label = "Clear Item"
    bl_options = {'INTERNAL'}

    node_tree: StringProperty()
    node: StringProperty()

    def execute(self, context):
        tree = bpy.data.node_groups[self.node_tree]
        node = tree.nodes[self.node]
        node.item_set = False
        return {'FINISHED'}

Of course this is just example code and adding new items should be smarter than just adding items to a global list, but this is the general idea.


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Customize Info Editor
Is there a way to extend the range of commands what actually Info Editor logs? It seems there are actions with records on the log and actions without any logs.
For example: If I create a box object it results:
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=2, enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0, 0), scale=(1, 1, 1))

But if I select the same object or I hovering the cursor on the location property and press I key (animate the location) there is no log.

yes some commands are not logged but you can log anything whenever you like using an operators report function

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/717/is-it-possible-to-print-to-the-report-window-in-the-info-view

Could you be more specific? I can't rewrite that linked code according to my needs. Thanks!


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How do I separate by loose parts and keep the individual material?

I can get all these instances separated into individual meshes using Separate By Loose Parts after I applied the Geometry Node modifier.
When I do, they all have the same material. Is there any way for each new mesh to retain its material?

First note: Random Per Island is recognized only by Cycles, and seems to return the same value for the first mesh-island found in each object.
Depending on how you want to use these objects later, one option would be to store an attribute on each GN instance, that will persist after the GN modifier is applied. Here, that attribute is a random 0-1 float, for generality, but could be anything you liked:

That attribute will persist on the object's meshes, once the GN modifier is applied, and the mesh has been separated by parts. It can be picked up by your material:


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Convert follow path animation to keyframes
I have multiple cameras on the scene, each camera is parented to a path using follow path method. So when I play the animation all the camera moves at same time. But I need to convert this path animations to keyframes so I can change the timing of animations.
So how do I convert follow path animation to keyframes?

Well, the answer provided in the comments is the answer to your question though I am not sure this is the best way to adjust the timing of a follow path animation.
The path animation is animated using the 'evaluation time' value when the corresponding curve is selected. Make sure to delete the modifier which is associated with the curve by default in order to set custom keyframes. If you are just planning to offset or adjust the speed of the animation you can also play with the values of the modifier
Below you can see where to find the value and how to delete the modifier.

This way you can offset the animation in a non-destructive way.


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Change UserPreferencesFilePaths using Python
Does anyone know how to change the script directory in the user preferences using Python from command line?
I believe it has something to do with bpy.types.UserPreferencesFilePaths, but I'm not sure how to use it.
Please help, thanks!

See the Blender Python API Reference page for bpy.types.UserPreferencesFilePaths and see if it hels

import bpy
from bpy import context
path = "/somepath"
context.user_preferences.filepaths.script_directory = path

thank you, that works for 2.77 and 2.78, have yet to try with 2.76, but my guess is it works for 2.76 as well


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Removing default gravity in "world". Planetary gravity simulation
How to remove the gravity in scenes (or world) in Blend4Web?
I already used m_phy.apply_force_world(obj, fx_world, fy_world, fz_world), and m_phy.set_gravity(obj, gravity), but still the balls I added to the scenes always fall.
I am making simulation of planetary gravity, so I need gravity of zero.
If I make the object "static" in order not to fall, can it be moved by m_phy.apply_force?? And will it be affected by collision?

Not sure if you'll be able to get any quality answers here, maybe you'll get a faster response over at Blend4Web Forum since most devs hang out there


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How to Make Point Lamps Cast Shadows in Blender Internal Render Viewport?
I am trying to showcase how well OpenGL rendering works for complex scenes and with advanced shading while still rendering extremely fast. I wanted to display the power of being able to use GLSL viewport to get a real-time and accurate display of what the final render will look like with cast shadows and normals. I have run into a problem however with the point light because it does not cast a shadow which I need for every light in my interior house scene. Currently I am using several spot lamps pointed in various directions to give the same effect which works but is not nearly as convenient as using a single lamp. Does anyone have an idea on how to do this?

This is not supported in Blender at the moment as far as I know. Upcoming Blender 2.8 viewport rewrite might eventually support this.

Duarte is right, though using spot lamps can produce quite nice results. Switching to blender game gives you the extra option to soften the shadows, which makes the glsl render look more realistic. Please check out this tut: https://cgcookie.com/2015/05/20/pbr-in-blenders-viewport/


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How do I make an Infinitely Generated Game Map in BGE using Cloud Texture?
I am making a Blender game with a map that is procedurally generated and infinite.
With the way I am designing this game the player can travel for infinity but still get back to their original location.
The way I plan on doing this is by having a plane parented to the player that has a displace modifier and a cloud texture.
When the player moves so does the plane. When the plane gets further from the starting location it gets further from the empty which controls the texture coordinates of the displace modifier.
This should allow the player to walk in any direction infinitely because the texture never ends. My only problem, however, is that while the plane is parented to the player just fine, the displace modifier does not update with the movement.
It took me a long time to figure out how to constrain the rotation and location of the plane which I did using a vertex parent.
Now I just need to figure out how to make the displace modifier work in-game.
I've heard that most modifiers are not supported in the game engine, but is there a way to force the modifier to update with a python script, or to replace the modifier with something else that works the same way?
I plan on turning this game into a zombie game that is infinite but first I need to get this one problem fixed. Any help would be greatly appreciated! ;)
Link to get Game

A cloud texture is a repeating pattern right? Then it wouldn't make much sense to use it. Your world would become very boring.

Okay. I guess I might try out another texture but the main thing I'm focusing on right now is the displacement modifier. I need that to work in order for my game to actually work. Do you have any ideas on how to get that working?

I'm still pretty new to python. These kind of things always impress me when they work, but I don't know anything about them. I'm only pretty good at programming physics for like planes and stuff.

Well, thanks anyway! ;) I always appreciate a good critique. Looking at the game now, when moving the plane in the viewport (not the game) I can see that it would be very repetitive. Maybe I can add mountains, rocks, houses, ZOMBIES, etc, once I get this whole terrain thing figured out. I just hope that this is possible because my current build of my game which I am going to merge with these mechanics is kind of boring!
Here's a link to the other current game in which I am going to impliment this infinite terrain into: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5LVYjOK5wy6TGV4ZzZ0V0NFczA

I have the same problem with making my games exciting. I'm a bad map designer XD.

Lol! Me too. Plus my biggest concern is having a linear and boring game. I obviously dont want to model an infinite game map or cheat by using preset land pieces and spawning them in with spawners. To me that looks way too repetetive and takes forever to do the logic bricks. If you download my blend file and move the character you may see what im hoping to acomplish. More variation will be added, later though.


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How do I make a face swap animated character in Blender?
I don't really know what to call this post but basically, I saw this cool kind of animation style where the animators used premade faces and then swapped them out in order to make an animated face. The style looks really cute and I would really like to replicate it. Here is an example from True And The Rainbow Kingdom:

As you can see, the face is animated with multiple premade models that seem to be switched out every few frames when a new sound is made from the mouth. Is there any easy way to do this in Blender?
This is what my character looks like:

There are multiple ways to do this.
Assuming your three faces share topology, the simplest is to join them as shapekeys to a base version of your mouth, and animate the shapekeys with constant interpolation instead of bezier handles.
If you need to use multiple models, you can control the visibility of a mesh using drivers, driving either Cycles settings or material transparency.  Because Cycles doesn't handle coincident meshes well, even transparent coincident meshes, you may have to combine this with simple shapekeys that shrink the hidden meshes.  Again, you will want to animate with constant interpolation-- you don't want to fade in and out, and you want hard switches.
Your drivers should probably all use the same ultimate control.  A good example would be via a bone, where you set the mix node between a regular shader and a transparency shader based on, say, the global Z position of a particular bone, and you set the expression to be (var>= 1.0) and (var <2.0) .  That way, you make sure that you're never showing two meshes at the same time.

Thank you so much! I honestly never even thought of using shape keys! This was so helpful!


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Is there a way to change the emission number of a particle system, without affecting the emission number of the mesh it's separated from?
I have a mesh with a particle system.

I then split the mesh (using P > "separate by selection") and have 2 objects with 2 particle systems.

However, I like each particle system to have a different emission number, so I select U > "Object & Data, Materials + Tex".
I can then remove the particle system from one mesh (and the other remains), but I can't alter the emission number of one without affecting the emission of its counterpart. Is there another way to separate data I don't know about?

Current Solution:
There is a workaround if I delete one system, then re-add it with the appropriate number, but I'm wondering if there's a better way already in place.

Your solution is really a solution; it's not a workaround.
The reason you can't change one without changing the other is because they are the same particle system, just used in two different places. This is just like when you use the same material in two different places; when you change the color of one, it changes in both places.
Deleting the particle system and making a new one with new settings is one way to "unlink" the two. Another way is to make the second particle system a "single user copy." Do this by clicking the number that's next to the name of the particle system. This will keep all of the original settings, but make it into a separate system so that you can change it's settings without affecting the other one.
I hope that helps!

The information in this other question is also useful, but that might not be obvious: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/how-to-make-multi-user-objects-single-user

Right! I knew there was something I was forgetting, thank-you


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How can I select every Nth edge in only one direction on a plane?

Using Nth in shortest path requires selecting every every length of vertices.
I've tried manipulating checker select.
Select similar selects all edges in one direction. Adjusting the threshold doesn't help.
I don't know how to write for select pattern.
All the other similar questions don't help.

I'd like this pattern.

Is repeating an action for each row (instead of row * column) an option for you?

The mesh is very large, it would take just as long as using the shortest path select mode I mentioned above.

If there's no way to select the pattern, then the array modifier works great -- just have to reapply a few properties. I'm trying to dissolve all edges on the axis perpendicular to the edges selected above, except only for every other column.

@360ueck you should consider the new answers and vote on them respectively mark that other pretty simple one from Dan as answered instead of yours as it is way simpler.

@Samoth I've already marked my answers, but thanks for your concern.

I found a way to do that. Several steps can maybe be improved, but here is my solution:

Select an Edge and select similar> direction.

With Border (De)select, deselect all edges at the left and right border.

Border select = B click and release left-mouse-button to select the area
Border deselect = B like select but release mousebutton while pressing shift

Select all edges at the left side with shift + alt + RMB, then choose checker deselect.

Repeat this for the right side. Make sure the selections at the left and right border are not on the 'same level' (or exactly proportional). You can achieve this by adjusting the offset. Look at the screenshot in step 5 if don't understand what I mean by 'same level' (or proportional).

Select the edges near the left and right border to connect the selections at the border, like it is in the following screenshot. To do this press C to enable circle-select and follow the 'red lines'.

select while in circle select-mode = LMB
deselect while in circle select-mode = [Scroll wheel button]

Then once again, choose checker deselect.

Afterwards, it will maybe look like this:

This can be changed by adjusting the offset.

Deselect all Border edges with shift + alt + RMB.

Note: If the whole border becomes selected instead of deselected, repeat it and it will be deselected
Finally it should look like this:

I hope I could help, and it's clear enough to understand.

Everything works, except the last step. The entire border became selected and repeating didn't help. The text was a little difficult to understand, but I edited it to hopefully remedy that.

Make sure you pressed [shift] + [alt] + [RMB] while (de)selecting also move your mousecursor clearly to an edge. Or wasn't it the problem?

Yes that was it, got it now. Thanks for your good problem solving.

You can do this in 3 easy steps:

Edge select one Edge with Alt + RMB.
Click on Select > Checker Deselect (F6 for Nth Selection, Skip and Offset)
Click on Select > Edge Rings

You just have to deselect the top and the bottom edge. In the .gif it is done with Shift + Alt + RMB.
Further Reading on this answer.

Further Information:
After using Checker Deselect you can adjust the desired Nth Selection at the bottom in the Toolshelf Panel or by pressing F6.

Nth Selection
        Number of points to select.
  Skip
        Number of points to skip.
  Offset
        Offests at what point to start at.

quoted from the Manual

In Face Mode:

Select All Faces.
Hold Shift+Alt, and Deselect Every Other Column.
Switch to Edge Mode.
Hold Shift+Alt, and Deselect Every Column.

Like this:

The very first line of my question shows i'm trying to avoid this.

Sorry, that statement sounded to me like you were trying not to select/deselect along its entire length (like a border select or something on every nth column), which is the primary reason I showed how to reduce that down to a single edge on every column.

With much less steps than DrRiisTabs solution you can just:

Alternate loop select CtrlAltRMB a vertical edge row:

Add the following vertical loops to your selection via ShiftCtrlAltRMB:

This is the only part where you have to walk along one side of your whole plane and select every other vertical loop. Unfortunately, the Repeat Last command doesn't work for Selections.
Border (B)- Deselect (ShiftLMB-drag) your bottom and top row to get your final result.


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Is there a way to erase all image data blocks for a specific .blend?
When I no longer need the images, sifting through the image data blocks (or even typing the name) can be time-consuming in repetition. Especially when images have the same or similar prefixes.

Is there a way around this?

All the .001 .002 ... I see at the end of the names would indicate the image blocks have been duplicated. See if this question is any help.
Unless you see a 0 between the preview and the image name, then the image is linked to something. Only when this user count is zero will the blocks be removed when saving the file. The image may be used by an image node in your materials which you may have duplicated, or it could be a brush texture that you may have created multiple times, 3DView background images, the list goes on.

When you have a data block that has no users it will automatically be removed when you save your project and reload the file.
Blender does not delete data right away as someone may have a use for it still. An example is if something has been imported/linked/appended and has not been assigned to an object yet. Obviously you want it to stay in memory until it is given a user or else it would be gone as quickly as it was loaded!
To recap simply save your scene and reopen it and all your unused content will go away. With the exception of data that you have specifically told blender not to delete even if it has no users. (You can do that by pressing the button with the letter 'F' on it.)

The data blocks do not go away, the ones seen above are weeks old. I've saved, closed and reopened the file multiple times. I know how to save a data block, but have never done so in this file.

Nevermind, I forgot I had actually appended a few objects.


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Is it possible to have multiple seperate node editors in one project?
I want to do a project where it is necessary to use multiple green screen videos on top of one normal video, is it possible to have more than 1 node editor per project? I don't want to render my video every 5 minutes so that I could just add another greenscreen video to another part of the base video. (Picture is just for a reference, for example, is it possible to make the right node editor empty and independent of the left node editor?)

https://i.sstatic.net/OwGAI.jpg

AAAAAnd I figure out how to use scenes to get different node editors in half an hour, what are the odds? (Just add a new scene whenever you want to do different effects in node editor in the same project and then add those scenes to the VSE)


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Can I "link" values in modifiers?
I have a couple of wave modifiers on a mesh.

As you can see, all the values in the modifier options are exactly the same, apart from Offset.
Is there a more convenient way of changing one value for all of the modifiers (e.g. increasing Speed) without manually doing it for each one?
Thanks for any help given.

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/3271/create-square-array

@gandalf3, that actually does what I want. Thank you.


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How can I make metal look decayed and rotted
I want to make a plane look like its been decaying with rust holes in the jungle for decades like this picture.
I think I remember seeing an add-on that could do this, I could be wrong, but any help is greatly appreciated.

You can use this method: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/76389/normal-map-when-painting-in-blender/76395#76395 Also you don't need to paint mask, you can use procedural texture for this.

Also: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/45553/how-to-create-rust-procedurally and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37oBqhjDtBI and basically google "blender cycles rust/damage".

Not at all what I was asking. I want it to be so rusted that it has eating through the metal. I know how to make rust on an object

Final:

Overview:
Basically you can use the same method as for creating any other rust material with one exception at the end - mix your rust material with Transparent shader trough "rust mask", created beforehand. This will create hard holes in your mesh. I've used Greater Than math node to harden texture.

There is downside to this method. You can't add thickness to the mesh.
  If you add Solidify modifier, the edges will be empty. You can try to
  work around this with Volume texture but it could be an overkill.

Any way to work around the musgrave texture it causes blender to crash every time I use it

@BenSmith that's strange... What version of blender are you using? And what OS? I'll try something different.

2.79 I'm running off CPU I don't have a graphics card in this computer that could be the reason. I even just tried the materials on a cube and it was running really slow.

@BenSmith I'm trying to make something without Musgrave. Hold on.

@BenSmith No luck. Only Musgrave gives this nice rim effect. Other textures are just hole/rust, without metal. Do you have 2.79b? Try maybe making it in experimental 2.8. How much RAM memory do you have? This setup is taking something around 60MB RAM with the cube from image.

I'll try 2.8 I have 2.79a. I have 6GB of ram with an i3-2100 CPU at 3.10 GHz

@cgslav I tried adding solidify modifier and it's fine. In fact, it looks great. There's a slight difference in the corrosion pattern between the two sides and it gives an effect reminiscent of the layered flaking that badly rusted metal goes through IRL. Wonder what I'm missing.


text:
The glass window on my in wall fireplace has a green overlay on it
I have a fireplace in the wall and it has a glass window when I put the image on the plane behind the glass I'm getting this greenish yellow color is this caused by the reflection how can I get it to just look natural

We need more info, like your node setup and the raw image of this plane.

Maybe try a standard Glass shader as your material. I see you have done a lot of stuff with nodes and what not.

I get what you're trying to do.  It's a trick they call "architectural glass."
The idea is that it doesn't render gloss on diffuse areas to get crystal clear, quick renders.
You've got the order of your shaders swapped.  In your node editor, put transparent on top.


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Grid Alignment in Viewport when Numpad Keys are used
I have some experience with 3DS Max, and am switching to Blender. I am a retired Software Developer, so this is solely for self-education and mental exercise. I have an object I originally created in 3DS Max which I have imported into Blender as a .obj file.
I have done some experimentation in Blender with this model in both object and edit modes, and I seem to be making progress, but I notice that when I use the Numpad 7, 1, and 3 keys with this object, the Grid is not aligned, it appears sloped in all three views. By contrast, when I do a File->New and load the default cube, the 7, 1, and 3 keys all show the grid as exactly aligned to each axis.
I assume I have caused this myself, but I'd like to know how to correct it.

It sounds as if you entered Perspective mode in the file with your imported object. Try to press Numpad 5 to enter Orthographic mode for those preset views. Other than that include some screenshots of what is wrong from the project mentioned and what is expected from standard configuration

Aha! That's it. I need to get used to the difference between Orthographic and Perspective mode. I did not encounter this in my experience with the 3DS Max Top, Left, Right views. I think they are always orthographic (?). Does 3DS Max have a 3D orthographic view?

See https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/editors/3dview/navigate/projections.html
for difference. Regarding 3D Max I think it has both projections, see http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/index.html?url=files/GUID-B4CAECB4-37EC-40B1-B671-BDCD0EBE1C82.htm,topicNumber=d30e570608. Though I haven't used it so don't have good information on that and this site isn't fitting for those questions. As to your answer it would be great if you edit it with more information about how you solved your problem (shortcuts, screenshots etc)

As Mr Zak says in his comment:

Try to press Numpad 5 to enter Orthographic mode for those preset views.

Hi. Generally (though I'm sure MrZak doesn't mind) if someone has suggested something in the comments which turns out to be the solution, it is a courtesy to notify them and then give them an opportunity to write up their own, full answer and get any reputation points associated with up-votes/acceptance of the answer. You're of course a new user and not expected to know that - just something to keep in mind for next time.

Can you flesh out the answer as suggested here

In addition to pressing Numpad 5 to toggle orthographic projection, you can enable Auto Perspective in User preferences > Input > View manipulation to automatically switch to orthographic view when switching to an align view with Numpad 7 Numpad 5 Numpad 3 etc.
You can also toggle Quad View with CtrlAltQ to get three orthographic views and a perspective view all at once.

In Blender 2.8, Auto Perspective has been moved to User Preferences > Navigation > Orbit & Pan > Auto [X] Perspective. See also https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/154950/107598


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How to "widen" a mesh modeling from scratch

I am a 3d noob.
The captured image is taken from the back of an existing figure (Daz3d Genesis 3 in low res export) for which I am trying to create clothing. As the faces go upwards, they split in a particular "inserted diamond" way so there are more columns of faces at the top of the mesh than at the bottom. I see the diamond split occur four times in the screen capture. There is probably a correct name for this method, but I don't know it. I know I can insert vertices and bridge edges manually, but is there a shortcut? This could need to be done many times when creating a mesh from scratch. Of course I can't simply copy this mesh, I need to make my own version of it.

"but is there a shortcut?" for what specifically? You definitely do need to do this sort of thing all the time while poly modelling, but you also need to do dozens of other small things. V - rip vertex. Ctrl-click adds a vertex. F adds an edge or face depending on what you have selected. Maybe worth checking out some modelling tutorials and just watch how the process goes if you're not ready to just start doing it yourself. Sorry if this sounds unhelpful, i think this question is just a bit open-ended in terms of scope of what to cover.

I thought I had worded the question rather precisely. In the StackOverflow site, in response to a question more or less identical, I would be told "there is an opensource Java library or Eclipse plugin available, download it from whoever.com." I would guess that a very significant fraction of the questions in StachOverflow are answered by, "did you know there is a tool for that?"

Specifically addressing how to take a 'uniform grid' area of mesh and insert a new face loop ending in a single 'diamond' quad:
Select the series of vertices desired 'above' the 'diamond' location using Shift-clicks. Use Ctrl-B to bevel the selected edge loop, resulting in a triangle at the bottom. Then use Ctrl-R to loop cut down the centre of the newly created faces, such that you now have 2 new face loops running down into the 'diamond'.

This is still a "manual" process, and does need to be repeated every time one would want to perform this action, so I'm not sure if this answers the question, as the question doesn't specify how 'automatic' or how much of a short-cut is desired.
To take it further, it would be relatively straightforward to make an addon that performs these steps as a single operator, but I'm unaware if this has been done. It's somewhat subjective whether the default actions are fine- or coarse-grained enough for specific use cases, and when modelling one might very likely want to adjust the results at this fine-grained a level anyway.

Hang on!! This answer is wrong, and garbage! Using Bevel there, I created two 5-vertex N-gons. That's what I get for trying to be fancy with the shortcuts. You can do the 'proper' thing using V to rip to one side, selecting the opposing loop, F to fill , Alt-F to beautify fill, Alt-J to convert those new triangles to quads, select the triangle hole and F to fill it, THEN Ctrl-R for the loop cut. I'm curious now, surely there's a working smaller set of actions.


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animate a conveyor belt
I´m trying to make a conveyor belt, but haven't found any useful guide so far.
So.. is there a way to first make an array for the wood plank and then make all the planks follow a path?
I don't want to parent 100 different objects just to make this animation.
I would prefer to be able to use a path rather then a bezier curve since I want to be able to have different elevation in different sections of the conveyor belt and find it hard to edit a bezier curve. And I also don't want the planks to deform as they reach the edges between sections of the loop.
Thanks in advance!
Best regards
/John

If you're still curious, this helped me out a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbcCq2xbieM

One technique that might be useful is to turn the motion of a single plank into an NLA strip that repeats in a track.  Then you put that same action into a repeating NLA strip into a track on each other plank, but offset in time, so it follows the same path, but a second or so later than the plank in front of it.

I optimized my workflow by setting up the repeating strip before duplicating the object with Alt-D.  Then all I had to do was grab the strip in the NLA and G X -10


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Smooth lighting
Back in Blender 2.97b i used ambient occlusion as a shader on a box that surrounded my objects to give them that smooth light as shown in the posted picture.
Since the 2.8 version this is no longer possible since the ambient occlusion no longer exist in the shader list.
Do you have any solution to my problem or do i have to go back to the old version again?
Thank you!
/John

There is still Ambient Occlusion node in 2.80 but it's a bit different than 2.79 and it's under Input menu.
To be able to use it in EEVEE remember to turn on Ambient Occlusion in Render settings.


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Trying to hide object during animation
I'm trying to make a animation where, from a clean slate, more and more objects are to appear one after another. I have seen a method where you make the material transparent, but this doesn't seem like a good way to do it...
Since I have about 100 object that I want to animate, that all have the same material, I don't want to make a duplicate of the material for every object.
Do you have a better solution for this problem?
Best regards
/John

When ever I have had to do this I simple animate the location from on-off screen over 1 frame.

Only use rob's method, if you aren't using motion blur.

an easy way could have been to create an animation between a Diffuse and a Transparent shader, then in the NLA move the Strip of each object to change the moment they appear, but it looks like, unlike a move Strip, you can't change a Shader Strip position of an object without changing it for all the objects sharing the same Strip, am I right?

If you don't need your objects to appear gradually:

Select your object, go into the Outliner, deactivate the Show In Renders option (camera icon) and create a keyframe (i).
Now in the Timeline move to the frame where you want your object to appear, go into the Outliner, reactivate the camera icon and create a new keyframe.
If you duplicate your object, you just have to move the 2nd keyframe in the Dopesheet to change the time of its appearance.

You can also keyframe the Show In Viewports option (monitor icon) so that you can see in the viewport what will happen in your render.
These 2 options, Show In Renders and Show In Viewports are also available and keyframable in the Properties panel > Object > Visibility.

I followed the instructions but failed because, the pointer must be over the visibility, "eye" icon when you create the keyframe, otherwise it will assume you are animating translation of the object and you will not be given the choise for visibility.
At least, so it is in Blender 2.8x

hello, not sure to understand, in my 2.8 version you can't keyframe the viewport visibility (eye icon). There was another way to animate the visibility through the Shade Editor, that would have been more relevant to the question but I can't put my hand on it...

@mooboots You are right I was trying out the Render "camera" icon, that works.
The visibility in viewport can indeed be accessed from the Properties panel > Object > Visibility.
It effects the "monitor" not "eye" visibility. Be sure to set the value from the tickboxes in the Properties or Timeline and not from the Outliner, because it won’t “stick”.

oh ok I see that viewport visibility only works in the Properties panel, not optimal though, weird, anyway I guess it's rarely useful...

It works, I'm fine. After I had ticked selection inside the object properties, I tried to change the keyframe status from the Outliner, THAT doesn't work.  You need to do all from the Properties.  My bad

yes it's not logical that it can't be keyframed in the Outliner, plus when you keyframe, it makes the keyframes disappear in the Dope Sheet, which might not be convenient   :/

For those who do not understand the discussion above: I found the answer here. The trick is to hover your cursor over the properties you’d like to save in this keyframe. This means you open the properties and literally hover your mouse over the properties "Show in ... Viewports" and "Show in ... Render"

Hello, since a few versions you don't even need the shortcut, you can just click the dots on the right of field, which then become rotated squares afterwards


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Animation - temporary parent
During an animation, I want to move "Object A" along a path and at some point attach"Object B" to "Object A" before releasing "Object B" further down the path.
The methods i have tried is to parent (keep transform) and key the beginning and the end, and also the next frame as i remove the parent. I have also tried both the "Child to" and "Copy location" constraints, but with the same result.
The problem I face is that as soon as i remove the parenthood, "Object B" instantly moves back to the position it had when parenting it with "Object A".
Is there a way to make "Object B" stick to "Object A" and still has it´s own transform changing together with the parent, so that the animation is intact after relasing "Object B" from it´s parent?
I can probably solve the problem using an empty that i can transition to using "Child of" but that seems very messy, since Object B wont move after it has been dropped of.
Thanks in advance!

Related.. (if it works for you, possibly duplicate) : https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/231511/35559

there is also an add-on which can do that. i think it's called dynamic parent

I have seen that other question, but it did not help - the dynamic_parent add-on was all i needed :)

You can do it with the Dynamic Parent addon by Roman Volodin. You can also do it manually (the addon only automatizes this process):
Give a Child Of constraint to the child, at the beginning of the timeline (frame A) keyframe the Influence at 0:

At frame B move the parent towards the child, keyframe the Influence again at 0:

At frame B+1 keyframe the Influence at 1:

Move the parent and keyframe it at frame C:

At frame C-1 keyframe the Location/Rotation/Scale of the child and keyframe the Child Of Influence at 1:

At frame C keyframe the Visual Location of the child:

And also keyframe the Influence at 0, don't pay attention to the jump of the object:

At frame D move the parent away and keyframe it:

Thanks for your suggestion! I tried your example several times to no avail, but the addon worked like a charm :P

I've edited, I just forgot to keyframe the Location before keyframing the Visual Location, it should be good now   ;)


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Problem with Cycles Glass Material
I have a problem with black areas on an object with Glass BSDF material.
Don't know where they come from, I stripped my scene down to be very simple to show you the problem...
Created the object with Blenders spin tool, I checked thickness of the glass and normals, seems fine to me.
Read that this could happen when smoothing the object, tried with flatten, no change.
Here the blend: http://www.wesp.de/blender/test.blend

Thanks for your help to identify / solve the problem.

Try the edge split modifier

Solved the problem with a work-around nodes solution instead of the straight glass BDSF. Maybe not straight physically, but looks better in this case.
Thanks to all for your advices.

This Node Setup is "better" in this case at least and looks much better than the Glass BSDF.

But I agree, this is a quick fix, and should not be neccessary. I really tried to find the reason for the problem (increased "glossy", "reflections" and other parameters, built up white walls on all sides, changed the Environment map, checked the model itself ... to be sure that the black reflections are NOT physically OK), but couldn't find the reason.

Edited according uhoh's advice. He's right.

Congrats on your solution! I think it's great you took the time to post it here for the benefit of others.

As @10replies pointed out, these are natural. The dark areas are really showing you views of the actual dark areas of your background by a combination of refraction and total internal reflection. A mirror would do the same thing in the right orientation.
If you don't like the black, you have to fill the dark areas with something that is emitting at least reflecting light. As a quick test, I added more light on the sides (red and green) and you can see some of the black areas turn red and green.

Hi, OK, built up white walls around the whole scene, also ceiling and floor  so there is nothing black what could cause these ugly, un-natural reflections. Same ugly black reflections.
Could it be the model of the glass itself? (I noticed no errors there, (normals and so on...), also tried not to smooth the object, applied my subdivision modifier, and played around with the edge split modifier. No better results.
Is it possible that cycles has problems with glass itself?

Trying different node setups now... I will post the results..

How many reflections are you allowing. Some paths may have many many reflections inside the glass.

Nothing special: http://www.wesp.de/blender/lightPaths.png , but i have tried to increase all values

Under bounces I increased glossy to 12 and much of the black areas disappeared.  Here:   https://i.sstatic.net/C5qCZ.png

OK, looks much better. But even not precise. I think it's the object model, look in the upper area of the glass... In the object, in edit mode, there is a finer structure, density of faces, exactly where the "errors" occur.

So the image in my comment is just meant as an example to show that more bounces has a big effect. You'll have to experiment further with various parameters. Also, as pointed out in the answer by @10Replies some dark spots do happen sometimes, so if you find you have to go to a zillion bounces to remove every single dark spot, you can ask yourself if it's really worth it or not. Mathematically it is fascinating, aesthetically... eh. :)

I'll keep the number of bounces in mind, thank you. Now testing different Node setups for the Glass Material, ....

Read my answer here  Black holes / Water in glass
Glass does have "black areas"
Any image on the internet will have those areas

If you really want to reduce them, try playing with the IOR value of the glass, or change the thickness.
The effect is also less noticeable if you have a nice background.

Thanks, tried playing with the IOR, there are noticable effects (expectable), but didnt solve the problem.


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Low FPS clips too fast in VSE
I am using the Video Sequence Editor and when I put a low FPS clip into it it is way too fast. I think that Blender is basing the speed of the clips on their framerate rather than their actual speed and length. Can I fix this?

You can setup FPS of the scene in render settings:

But if you have video files with different FPS values in one scene, you can do this:

Add a movie strip with different fps value:

Select Video (not sound) and add Speed Control effect (Shift+A -> Effect Strip -> Speed Control)

By moving end of the strip adjust strip length to be equal sound strip:

Optionaly, you can put all this in meta-strip (by pressing Ctrl+G)

If you haven't sound strip, you can setup Speed Control this way:

Uncheck "Stretch to input strip length"

In Speed factor put {FPS of your file}/{FPS of your scene}

And extend movie clip if it needed


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How do I make a Blender render look glitchy?
I am trying to make my YouTube intro look glitchy for a tutorial because the tutorial is about how to make glitch art in Gimp. I am using the Blender VSE to do my editing by the way. I was wondering if I could make my intro look like it was corrupted with the video editor or maybe compositing.

@cegaton Yeah! I guess you're right! Could make for an interesting tutorial!

I looked around and found some answers to my problem. This method is for the Blender Internal renderer but it can be changed to work with Cycles very easily.
First, add the original movie/animation/image as a plane. In the plane's material settings set the shading to shadeless. Add a camera to the center of the world and clear its rotation. Move the camera up 5 Blender units. Align the plane in camera view so that it lines up with the camera borders. Add another plane 1 Blender unit above the plane that you are trying to distort. Scale it on the X and Y axis until it also fits the camera bounds (it's okay if it goes over a little bit.)
Visuals:

Go to a separate layer. Add a plane at the center of the world and while in camera view scale it down so that the plane is thin on the Y-axis and long on the X-axis (this depends on what you want but generally it's more believable this way.) Duplicate the plane several times. Every time you duplicate the plane, make sure that you change the size a little bit. Hit A on your keyboard until everything in that layer is selected and press Ctrl+G on your keyboard. After waiting a few seconds, (the more objects you have the longer this will take) everythings outlines should turn green or whatever the grouped color of your Blender theme is.
Visuals:

Next, create the material. Select one of the planes that you just created. In the properties panel go to the material tab. Click the "new" button. Under the shading option set it to shadeless and under transparency set it to raytrace. In the transparency settings set the alpha to 0 and the IOR to 4 (4 isn't necessary, it just gave me the best results.)
Visuals:

Next, go back to the layer with the camera and the video/image that you are trying to glitch. Select the second plane that is above the object that you are glitching and in the properties panel, go to the particle system tab. Create a new particle system. Set the start and end times to the length of the footage and do the same to the length of the animation. Depending on the length of the animation you will have to adjust the emission number value. Set the lifetime to 1 and the random value to .5. Under "physics" set it to "no." Under "render" set it to group and select your group that has the glitch particles. Move the animation 1 frame forward to see the objects. Set the size to a resonable value where the "glitchy" objects are covering a large portion of the image. Uncheck emitter. Check rotation and change the initial oriantation to something that makes your objects appear in the right orientation. For me it was object Y or even global Y. If there aren't enough particles covering your subject matter consider turning the emission number up some.
Visuals:

Now you should be able to configure the output and file format of your project and render it with F12 (for still images) or Ctrl+F12 (for an animation.)
My final result:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtl7UeVBkcI
For this render I also used Audacity to remix and distort the music. I did not go over this in my answer.
I hope that this worked for you too! I'll probably add a video tutorial to this later if/when I make it! ;)

@cegaton Okay! I added some visuals to help other viewers!

Nice result! Why not just use the compositor with displace node tho?

I didn't know about it at all! I don't usually composite so not much experience! Lol


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How to Speed Up Blender 2.80 EEVEE Viewport?
I am trying to test Blender 2.80 and get used to it. It seems to be the most unique Blender update that I've used. I was able to get very fast interaction in Blender 2.78 Internal viewport using GLSL shading but in 2.80 the viewport is slow and unresponsive. Is there a way to turn on backface culling or other performance-enhancing options
I am trying to move on from OpenGL rendering PBR-based scenes in the Internal engine and move to a fully PBR-based rendering system called EEVEE.
Are there any backface culling or other features that are similar that will enhance my experience?
I have an Intel i5, Intel HD Graphics 3000, 8 GB RAM, installed on my Lenovo Thinkpad X220 Tablet Laptop (not actually a tablet).

Blender 2.8 are discouraged for final users at the moment

I don't mind having it voted as off-topic. I'm just new to this forum and didn't know that it was a rule.

2.8 builds are snapshots of current development and are intended for testing a preview, not actual work. As parts, such as Eeevee, are not complete, there will be performance issues and bugs, and some features that are not yet present.
Given all of this, I would not yet be expecting any speed or performance features. And I wouldn't be worrying too much about their absence yet either.

You are totally right, @Sazerac and yet curiously this happened today

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos cool. Things are certainly coming along pretty quickly.

its beta now!!!!!!!!!


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Animated textures don't work in Blender viewport playback
I am trying to animate in 2d. I do it with planes that have textures on them. I recently came up with the idea of having a plane with an image sequence of mouths because animating actual lip syncing by hand takes too long and isn't really necessary for what I'm trying to acomplish. However, when playing back the animation in textured viewport shading the animated texture stays at the last frame until the animation stops. I can use the arrow keys and it works fine as well as scrubbing through the timeline, just not when playing back the animation with alt+a. Can anyone help me with this problem?

It is a very, very, very, very well known limitation of the current system.
Viewport shaders are optimized for speed and performance for smooth playback and as responsive interaction as possible during animations.
Animated materials and textures require shader re-compilation, and this is a computationally expensive and resource heavy task, that is generally preformed on the CPU rather than the graphics card). Recompiling requires constant re-upload and sending data back and forth from the CPU to the GPU which is comparatively slow.
As such, they are pre-compiled before playback to avoid constant updates or refreshes, and during this process animations are suppressed to achieve faster updates and increased smoothness during playback.
It is a limitation that will likely be overcome in future 2.8 versions of Blender and the redesigned EEVEE viewport engine.
That being said, if you plan on rendering using the OpenGL renderer whether for your final output or animation previews, offline rendering will effectively update the animated materials and correctly render your movie.
If you only have a sequence of images or a movie strip as texture just turn on the option Auto Update in the image texture node

Thank you. I actually do render these animations in OpenGl because ray tracing is pointless for 2d shadeless objects. I found that with textured viewport shading or solid with textures enabled it wouldn't work. After I switched to material I had to turn the objects shadeless but now they're animated! Also, like in the link you sent me, If I pressed alt+a over the preview area it would animate the texture even in solid!

Hi @CadenMitchell
I'm facing the same problem and I'd like to know how did you solve it. You wrote you turn the objects shadeless and the animation worked?
What do you mean with "turn the objects shadeless". Is there an option for it?
I need to have some planes with image sequences running on them when I hit alt+A in OpenGl viewport.
Thanks in advance.

@mugnozzo Shadeless just made it visible without lighting. You should use the addon called “Images as Planes” and in the import process open the folder with the images and select them all. You should check the image sequence option and the auto refresh option. If it loops enable cyclic. Cycles Renders viewport cannot display image sequences. You’ll need to be in Blender Render and set the material viewport shading to GLSL. It should work.

Ongoing bug in 2.8. In the post you can find some temporary workarounds.

offline openGL renderer still doesnt update textures for me in 2.79b.

Perhaps I misunderstand the question, but in Blender 2.93.5 I can import .PNG image sequences (with transparency) using 'Images as planes', and they display as animations with the Viewport Render.
(I import ticking Animate Image Sequences, Principled OR Shadeless, Overwrite Material. Once in the Shader Editor I select Cyclic and Auto Refresh. I note that extraordinary numbers are put in the 'Offset' box e.g. Offset = 2770097 for a 483 image sequence starting at frame 100 in my timeline... mysterious... if I put in something more rational I just get the 'pink plane of death'...).

I work with architectural visualizations and set up stills as animations so I can render multiple variations of designs and multiple cameras at once. These are not actually animations, so I don't care about performance, but the lack of this feature would make my life a nightmare, so I use this script that forces Cycles material updates on every frame change:
import bpy

def update_materials(scene):
    for m in bpy.data.materials:
        m.use_nodes = False
        m.use_nodes = True

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(update_materials)


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How do I Make a Spot Lamp Parented to my Character Cast Shadows?
I am making my first video game in the Blender Game Engine. My game is a zombie survival game where you have a gun and shoot zombies and try not to die. The game has a character which has a dim flashlight which is parented to the camera. In the viewport the spot lamp casts shadows but when playing the game the lamp does not. It is very unrealistic and makes the game feel a bit fake. Could anyone help?

Is the spot on-axis with the camera or offset?  Also, check the shadow properties under the lamp's object data tab.

The spot lamp's origin is lined up exactly with the camera's origin. The spot lamp is set to variance shadow. The spot lamp still shines on things, it just doesn't cast shadows.

Theoretically, it shouldn't cast any perceptible shadows if it's on the camera's origin.  It would be like having a flashlight in your eyeball.  Offset it to the shoulder or the firearm and see if casts shadows then.

Thank you so much! That actually solved my problem! I didn't realise it was so easy to fix!

Hey, no problem, glad it worked for you

I just had to move it down. Apparently you can't see the shadows if the object lines up with your camera exactly! Thank you bertmoog!


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Disabling occlusion culling in BGE hides nearby objects
I am making a game which you can get here. I was editing different system settings in Blender to fix my one-digit framerate issues. I disabled the occlusion culling option in the world settings and now the game runs at a stable 60 FPS. I have one problem though. Any nearby objects, such as my zombies, will disappear if I get too close to them. Also, all HUD items which are parented to my camera disappear except for my text. I checked my camera clipping settings and it's at 0.25 blender units for the near one. It's not even that I can see through a close part of the zombie like you'd expect. I mean that they just completely vanish until I get far enough away. This is really annoying. Is there any way that I can have occlusion culling disabled to boost my performance but at the same time not have any near objects disappear? Thanks!

I found out that the character that my camera was parented to was scaled which in turn scaled my camera. I applied the scale of my player and cleared the scale of my camera and now this problem is fixed.


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Sounds don't play at right time when playing in vse
When I hit play on the timeline the sound effects may trigger much earlier than they appear in the timeline, especially if the video has been playing for a few seconds prior to the sound clip.  If I start playback a couple seconds before the sounds then it appear synchronized.
Blender 2.69 in Ubuntu 14.04

Does enabling AV sync in Timeline > Playback help?

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/45310/2843, http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/50624/2843

Try enabling AV sync in Timeline > Playback:

This will tell blender to keep playback in sync with the audio, at the expense of dropping frames if the playback isn't fast enough.
By the way, 2.69 is quite an old version of blender at this point. I'd recommend using the latest version, 2.77a at the time of writing. If you wish to install blender from a repo (for automatic updates), see this question.


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Get Geometry Position in shader before armature is applied?
I'd like to use the Position output of the Geometry shader node as if an armature has not yet been applied.  In the image below I'm trying to extract the z position to input into the wave texture node to make a ribbed tube, but I want the ribs to follow the armature curve instead of staying z aligned.

Figured this out a minute after posting, the Generated output from the Texture Coordinate node works fine for this:


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Why are there dots on Edges?
Why are there dots on some of the edges while other edges do not have dots?

How do I remove these dots since they affect the subdivide smooth results?:

dots will be at the center of faces ,and it just happened that the edge is there,  the  mesh is messed up

remove doubles.

I figured it out:
This happens when Extra Faces sneaked in where they shouldn't be, which happens an extrusion is done and never moved the geometry.
Solution:
1.) Press "Tab" to go to Edit mode
2.) Press "A" to Select All
3.) Press "W" to open Specials Menu
4.) Select "Remove Doubles"
Thanks gimble3d & Sanne from #blenderchat

That means you have zero sized faces over those edges and you mesh topology is messy. Probably the leftover of unfinished operations or the result of some undesired zero sized extrude.
You can try and clean it up by selecting all with A and then with W Menu > Remove Doubles option.


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Why can't I edit image for UV Map after joining Objects?
I have 2 problems:

How do you use the same UV image for multiple objects? It looks like each of my objects have different UV Images.
Why can't I edit UV Images when I joined all my objects? I can't edit all UV Images via Texture Paint mode and only 1 UV image is showing for 1 object.

UV unwrap the mesh and select the texture you want it to be mapped to
Split the screen, turn it into the UV Image Editor.
Go back to the 3D view editor, select all the faces in Edit mode by pressingA
And back in the UV Image Edit header, you can select the image you will use as the texture.

Here is a tutorial
To texture paint it, you need to apply the texture. This is example is in Blender render, are you using cycles?

could you perhaps add instructions on how to do what you are suggesting?  As your answer is written now, someone may not be able to follow it.,

If you upload you .blend (and pack the textures into the file) I can make a gif of how to do it. Or you can read this: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/38651/what-does-unwrapping-a-model-do-and-why-is-it-important/38653#38653

Thanks. The unwrap idea was good. I selected all and pressed U to Unwrap and that made all the UV images in one image. But I still can't edit the new images. How do you select the texture to be mapped to?
Here's a link of a copy of the project: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwfXGrgxI_SrcW5aSmhUOHFxc2c

Very nice GIF thanks!
But here's the problem I am getting:
http://i.giphy.com/l41YmPSMa2TThNWb6.gif

Are you able to draw on all objects using Texture Paint Mode?

yes, there are lots of tutorials on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7ALfRw6I5I

Looks like you need to flip the normals on the hat first though. Select everything in edit mode, Then press "recalculate" in the (t)toolshelf-->Shading/Uvs-->Normals-->recalculate.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


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Transform zoom conflicts with cross effect
I'm new to this site and try to figure out how this great editor works.
When i use a transform effect on a video to get rid of the bars and zoom in,
this transform zoom dissapears as soon as i use a cross effect to another video.
How do i prevent this to happen after using any effect?