text:
Is there a caveat to using drivers on node properties?
So, it seems to be a trivial matter to use a different seed on each frame (it looks nicer in animations). I.e. type "#frame" into the seed value and viola! You now have a driver. In fact, if I turn on "auto-run python scripts," it even updates interactively.
HOWEVER, this appears not to work in the node editor. I have a texture that I'd like to animate (by driving the location in the mapping node), but the driver I've added doesn't get updated; neither interactively, nor even when I render. It will update each time I open Blender, but never again.
Anything I'm missing? Or does this just not work?

This sounds like it might be a bug. You could try reporting it, see this post

If you want the driver on the mapping node to work correctly you need to add it via the outliner, not the node editor as you might expect.
See this tutorial http://vimeo.com/40389198 starting at ~18:30 for directions on how to make it work.
It don't know if this is considered a bug but the behavior certainly isn't very user friendly.

Link only answers are discouraged. Please add some more information to your answer

Awesome! That tutorial shows exactly what I needed to know.


text:
How to activate ANOTHER object's actuator (Python)?
Normally, we activate actuators like this:
controller = logic.getCurrentController()
actuator = controller.actuators['AddObject']
controller.activate(actuator)

This activates the actuator called "AddObject" that belongs to the current controller.
But let's suppose that I want my scene manager to tell objects to delete themselves. The "End Object" actuator has to be on the object to be deleted, not the object that's doing the deleting (unlike the Add Object). I add an "End Object" actuator called "EndObject" to the object I want to end, and then I use:
scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
cont = logic.getCurrentController()
for obj in scene.objects:
    if obj.name == "Critter":
        obj.actuators["EndObject"]
        ....

... and then what? Using:
act = obj.actuators["EndObject"]
obj.activate(act)

...doesn't work because obj doesn't have a function called activate, nor anything similar that I can find.
Any ideas? Am I using "End Object" incorrectly?

You do not do that. It is not supposed to "remote control" objects that way.
You can indeed connect logic bricks of different objects. But this quickly ends in a chaotic mess.
You can delete objects via endObject(). In difference to the actuator this does not need to be called by a controller of the object to be deleted.
Your sample could look like this:
import bge
scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()

for object in scene.objects:
    if object.name == "Critter":
        object.endObject()
        ...

I suspected it was something like "you're not supposed to do that" ;-) Thanks!

Hi Monster. I really want to know :) https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/97394/how-to-activate-another-objects-actuator-python-really

Yes, this is another way to deal with such a situation.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to extrude edges along their normals
I am trying to find a way to extrude edges along their normals either by modifiers or geometry nodes, I tried using wireframe and skin modifiers but both show artifacts in some cases.
I need this for much bigger applications so hand modeling is out of the question.

This is what I'd want the result to be like
[

I don't think we can do it with just edges and just inside Geometry Nodes quite yet, but you can manage it using the Solidify modifier in Complex mode along with some other maintenance actions. In the setup below, I'm doing it in three steps:

Add a Geometry Nodes modifier, extrude the edges on the Z axis with an Extrude Mesh—Edges node. You could simply extrude them manually in Edit Mode of the object, but this keeps it more procedural.

Add a Solidify modifier. Make sure it is using these options:

Mode: Complex. Sole reason we're using the Solidify modifier and not an Extrude Mesh—Faces node inside Geometry Nodes—it doesn't have a Complex mode yet so it can't keep an even profile.
Thickness Mode: Even
Offset: $0.000$, so the extrusion is centered around the lines

Add another Geometry Nodes modifier, which simply flattens the whole mesh by scaling it—Scale Elements—down to $0$, and removes doubles—Merge by Distance—so that no excess vertices are left. You could also do this by scaling the object itself down to $0$ via its Tranform panel and adding a Weld modifier, but again, this keeps it more procedural.

When you say you need this for much bigger applications then the following method might still not be what you want, but at least this will get the result you want so maybe it helps:

Select all edges with A, then fill them with F:

With the new faces still selected, press I to inset those faces. If they inset as a whole, press I again to switch insetting to Individual. Inset as you like or maybe with a certain value by entering this while insetting, so e.g. .1 to inset 0.1 m:

After insetting, delete the inner faces with X > Delete > Faces. Then select the outlining edges:

Go to the Edge menu at the top or open the edge context menu in the viewport with Ctrl+E and choose Offset Edges > Extrude:

In the tool options you can set the same width as you did for the Inset, in my example 0.1 m:

Side note: The extrusion outwards would work without filling beforehand, but inwards it won't get you what you want with this method.

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


text:
UDIM file name conventions
Can someone clarify what is the accepted file name convention for UDIMS for 2024

FILENAME_1001
1001_FILENAME
FILENAME.1001
1001.FILENAME

or some variation thereof... or do any of these work?

According to https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/uv/workflows/udims.html#file-substitution-tokens all four variants can work. It depends where you have the special token  in the filename.

All of them should work, don't forget the file extension

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


text:
Armature problems, permanent creases
I'm a beginner and I'm having problems with creases when moving joints. Here are some examples
(Blender 2.8)
Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

Screenshot 3

Screenshot 4

Screenshot 5

I tried to change the weights, but it didn’t work. Tell me how to set up the normal operation of the armature.

I'm not clicking on strange links. Please just paste images here, no need for 3. party image hosts. (if they are images)

If I understood you correctly, then for a smoother position of the skin, you need to add additional bones, I have seen something similar where the upper part of the arm consisted of two parts, this makes sense, although it complicates the process, but since the result is more important, this option is not bad, just a question - and how then these bones should be called so that the animation works correctly? And also how should kinship be established? I have so far quickly watched the video that you recommended to me (Muscle Flex Rig and Animation - Full Timelapse), it’s just with the addition

Is this a Rigify metarig? This rig is not for animation. You need to generate the actual animation rig. Another thing, if the arm is raised more than 90°, the shoulder bone must also be raised.

what does "This rig is not for animation" mean? Are there rigs specifically for animation? which ones? how to generate them?

Rigify's real rig is the animation rig. It's a common misunderstanding to use the metarig for animation. You need to generate it from the metarig. Have a look here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/215051/107598 -- here https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/275168/107598 -- and here https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/279008/107598 -- There is also CloudRig which is a feature set (extension) of Rigify. It was used for the Sprite Fright movie. And there is BlenRig. It was used in early movies. Lastest version is BlenRig 6. It has a setup guide. I haven't tried it yet.

You can definitely reduce the creases by tweaking the weights a little bit, but you can't remove them completely with your current armature setup.
Do understand that vertices just follow your bones' transforms. Weights just control how "strong" is the influence. The creases are here simply because the vertices do what you ask them: you rotate an arm bone, so the vertices rotate around the bone.
There are ways to make these weird deformations go away. To make it simple, let's say there's the hard way of simulation, and the simple way of manual correction.
The hard way
The most accurate but hard way is to actually simulate the physics of the skin sliding around with muscles contracting and moving around. That's complex to setup and definitely have quite an impact on performances when animating, but it's ultimately the most accurate.
There are addons that do it well, like X-Muscle, but it's often a few bucks to spend.
X-Muscle System 3.0 - Blender Market
You can do it manually, it's basically a matter of creating your muscle as meshes, bind them to your bones, inflate them as they should with shapekeys, and use a shrinkwrak modifier on the skin mesh with a vertex group to snap the corresponding area of the skin onto the muscle.
The simpler way
It's not "simple" as in "easier for you", that only depends on the level of complexity and realism you want to achieve. But it's definitely easier to set up.
Instead of trying to recreate how the skin actually behaves in real life, you can instead try to "correct the shape". Two main ways to do that: adding bones here and there that you can manually move around to bump up/down areas (or sometimes can automatically replicate some muscle contraction or skin slides like we can see there: BLENDER - Muscle Flex Rig and Animation - Full Timelapse - YouTube), or make what we call "corrective shapekeys" to fix the mesh when the bones are in a particular rotation or position.
Basically, put your bone in a position that creates an issue (I.E. your left arm rotated upwards), create a shapekey that fixes the arm crease, and then make a driver on the shapekey's intensity so that it activates depending on your arm bone's rotation.
More about it: Corrective Shape Keys - Blender 2.8 Tutorial - YouTube

I have limited access to Internet and Blender right now, so I can't really detail more than this. But let me know if you need more, and I will come back later to edit my answer, if nobody already made it up by then.


text:
Automatic weights problem
When I try to add bones to an object, and go to automatic weights, the body just falls down and the bones are still in the air then, where the body used to be before clicking with automatic weights. How can I fix this problem?
I have uploaded my file with that problem with eyes and teeth I guess, here blend file

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

Could you post a couple pics of what's going on please?

Have you enabled other physics like cloth or softbody, rigid body? A mesh usually doesn't fall down without a reason.

You don't know how to make a screenshot or how to upload it here? Windows has a program named Snipping Tools that can create screenshots. Edit your question and you will see there is a toolbar. One is called "Image" where you can upload images to your question. Blender's physics you can find in the Physics tab on the right side on the screen where all the vertically icons are. It usually also adds a modifier to your mesh. When you're new to Blender check out some tutorials on YT.

Thanks for the image. Ah, indeed it "falls down". Now I got it. That's because the mesh is rotated and the rotation is not applied.

You need to apply the scale to the mesh. See my answer below.

When the eyes and teeth are separate objects (in the outliner) you can select them and parent them to the armature with automatic weights. When they are just loose parts of the body mesh (I understand that they are now) you need to assign them to the vertex group that has the same name as the head bone in edit mode. Remove them from all other groups as described here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/237997/tongue-and-teeth-dont-follow-the-movement-when-i-change-the-pose-any-suggestin/238000#238000

We should make a chat. The number of comments gets a bit high. But you don't have enough reputation for the chat. So here is another comment: The Remove from All Groups is hidden in the dropdown menu. I'll update the answer here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/237997/tongue-and-teeth-dont-follow-the-movement-when-i-change-the-pose-any-suggestin/238000#238000. Make sure you have only selected the eyes (Alt+A=unselect all),then select one vertice and press L to select the eye. Keep the mouse over it, then Remove from All Groups,  then Assign. Repeat the steps for the teeth

You can share files here on BSE (https://blend-exchange.com/help). The file won't be deleted. -Or- you can upload it at https://pasteall.org/blend/. Here the file gets deleted after 5 months. And after the upload, you will get a new URL in the browser's address bar. Copy it here, it's the key to access the file. (Going to delete a few of my old comments)

The file is linked in your question see above! I've edited your question and added the link to your shared file. Just had a look at it and updated my answer. See below.

Thank you so much. I am beginner in blender so if you don't mind to ask you a question how did you manage to move almost every part of the mesh? Is it with some bones or how? Does it already have some bones, are they that dots you were talking about?  Also, I have to do the animation exactly on this mesh, so I need to ask you too is it possible to do an animation on it? And I have to ask you too, why the mesh lost its color? Thank you

And is it possible to fix all these problems on this mesh?

You're welcome. That's too many questions to answer here. If you like send a message at https://blenderartists.org. My name is JoeBlunder there.

Okay, I have entered on that platform and found you but I don't see the option to send you a message, so I created this: https://blenderartists.org/t/problems-with-mesh/1333809?u=glitter_sparkles

If you could tell me where to send a message or something like that or where to post my answers, I would be thankful.

Before you bind the mesh to the armature (parent With Automatic Weights) you need to apply the Rotation of the mesh. Your character was modeled lying on the floor and then rotated by 90° to get it up. When you bind it to the armature it's reset to the original position on the floor. You need to apply the rotation to tell Blender that the standing pose is the new original position.
Select the mesh in Object mode, then use Ctrl+A > Apply All Transformations. This applies Scale, Rotation and Location.
To have everything nice and clean you can do this for the armature, too. Then parent them together.
If some loose parts of the mesh such as the eyes and teeth don't follow the armature then the automatic weights didn't work correctly. This happens often for loose parts. You need to assign them to the head bone manually as described in this question here: Tongue and teeth don't follow the movement when I change the pose, any suggestins on how to fix this?
Update after inspecting the blend file
There are several problems.
The rig (armature object) is not ideal. Your model is 90 meters tall but all bones are tiny and aligned vertically. I don't know how to fix this easily. The bones for the eye are overlapped by the upper and lower eyelids for example. It's not very comfortable to use and I am not sure if automatic weights work well with these tiny wrong aligned bones. Maybe consider using Rigify to create a new rig?
There are two Armature modifiers. Remove the second one to fix the teeth and eyelashes.
Furthermore, the mesh is not aligned properly. You need to move it a bit to the left (←).
For the left eye (on the right side) the vertex group acts weird. Even if you use the Remove From All Groups button there are some verts of the right sleeve moving along. I've deleted the group, created a new vertex group with the same name, and assigned all vertices of the eye to the group. Then it worked.
The mesh has a lot of loose parts. Automatic weights don't work very well with loose parts. If you parent the mesh to the armature (With Automatic Weights) you will notice that there are problems with the feet. And around the area of the belly/back, there is a hole when the character bends. This can be fixed with a remeshed duplicated dummy model that is used for the automatic weights. Then the weights are transferred back to the original model. This method is described here: heat weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones or check this video.
If you're new to rigging then it might be easier to start with Rigify or a model that is already rigged like the Rain or Vincent. Vincent uses BlenRig. If you want to try BlenRig 6 beta for your character model you can get it here.
I've done the automatic weights and transferred them, and fixed the eyes. It works except for the legs. It's the bad rig with these tiny bones. It's the dots on the screenshot. It's not a custom shape but tiny sticks:

The mesh has not much geometry for the upper arms, and they bend not very well. The rig has no IK. That's another disadvantage when you want to animate the character.
Blend file: https://pasteall.org/blend/6d5634b7e22a4d93abf21dd2713039fb


text:
When I go to the next frame the character I drawn is on the next frame, and every time I erased it deletes the character face on the last frame
This is the character I was drawing on one frame. But once I went to the next frame and drew on it, the character was still there even though it's supposed to disappear.

The line is still there even though it's supposed to be gone. Is there anyway to get rid of this problem?

Maybe you got confused by what is displayed. It's normal to see the previous and next frame but slightly faded. That is called Onion Skinning and you can turn it off in the Overlays dropdown.

Turn off Onion Skinning in the Overlays as shown by ticking the Onion Skin checkbox.


text:
How can I speed up my render times in Eevee?
I started learning Blender this past July and I have fallen in love with it. I've felt very accomplished by all that I learned myself, so I decided to start a project related to my job. Since I had 5 months to make it, I thought I would have plenty of time to have it completed.
And that was true...until I tried the rendering process.

The first few renders I did in Eevee were fine, clocking in at about 35 sec/frame. However, as I added more to the scene, performance drained slower and slower.
This has somewhat puzzled me because I have a GTX 1060 GPU with an i7 2600 CPU. I also have a Mac Mini with the M1 chip, and both computers are now clocking in at roughly the same amount of time, which equates to about 1 1/2 minutes to two minutes per frame.
I have completely scratched the idea of rendering this out in Cycles; this is all in Eevee. I have checked everything I have read that can slow down render times, but most of what I read is pertaining to Cycles. There must be something specific in my scene that is eating up processing power, but I can't figure out what it is.
Now this project is going to be shown at my work's Christmas party in two days and I'm starting to panic that I won't have it rendered in time. I'll pay a render farm if I have to, I just want to be sure that rendering this out myself is what it is and there's no improving it except to sacrifice noticeable quality.
I will upload my .blend file if anyone wants to take a look at it and give me some suggestions. Any help is GREATLY appreciated! :)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S0Tl5WlUubuVSIVtSdFTPFu4rcZGhR7j/view?usp=sharing
Edit: Screenshots of the cars

...the whole room

...the gramophone and window

Overview/wireframe

P.S. Happy Holidays!

Some of this still applies https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/52559/how-to-render-a-scene-faster-in-cycles

Congratulations on a very good animation.  I would think that reducing the render samples would help the most.  You could cull objects that don't appear in the scene.  Have you thought about using a render farm?

maybe you know already but you could copy the blend file to both computers and let e.g. one render from 1-400 and let the other render the rest. It is also possible that you use a cloud blend file and let Blender do that syncing for you...then the output file should be the same cloud folder and you have to uncheck the "overwrite" checkbox in the output settings/output/image sequence

and for just a few month experience, you animation is really GREAT!!!!

Thank you all for such helpful input! I will adjust and play around with the settings you mentioned and see if that helps, but I have a gut feeling that this is just part of the process that all of us Blender users have to face at some point lol. Using both computers and letting each render half the project is a pretty good idea, I'll try that too. If all else fails, I dont mind paying for a render farm to make this project look as good as it deserves to be.

As an additional side note, I greatly appreciate the compliments as well. I am the only one at my job who does anything related to media production, and doing this by myself means that alot of the people I work with don't understand how challenging this can be. So it really means alot to me! :)

The blend file is quite big (934 MB). The scene has almost 4.7 million vertices but the number of vertices per object varies widely within the scene. The police car has 1 million vertices. Yes, it's in the focus of the camera. But do you need it this high-poly? No, you don't. The truck has only 20k (in words twenty thousand) vertices. This means you could replace the police car with 50(!) trucks, poly-count wise. Also, the ball that the truck steals has 200k vertices. That's way too many for a simple sphere object. Use modifiers where you can and only apply them when you really have to.

Keep in mind that high-poly objects that are UV unwrapped have huge UV maps. If only a little part is visible Blender and the GPU must load and process all the data. The gramophone is another example of this. It's in the background but the disc (Circle object) has 100k vertices (=5 trucks). So the scene requires 4 GB in memory. You get the idea. Have a look here (https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/244520/107598) to identify the heavy objects. And this short video I've Been Using Blender Wrong for YEARS! - Maybe You Have Too...


text:
How can I match 2 different armatures
I am a real beginner, this is like the 3rd time I am using Blender.
I exported the csgo files into the software but I can't animate them because when I enter the pose mode I can only move the character and the gloves keep standing still (image 3).
So, I was wondering if there is a way I can move the gloves and the character at the same time and how I could do that, maybe if I could match both rigs. Any kind of help would be good.

Hello and welcome! You can upload and add images directly to your question so readers get immediately an overview and don't have to click back and forth between the text and the images. This saves time.

You could try to change the parent of the gloves to the parent of the character and change the used armature ("skeleton") in the Armature modifier of the gloves. -Or- just select the gloves object and the character's armature (must be selected last) and parent them With Empty Groups (Ctrl+P). This does the same in one operation. But it's just a guess, I have no clue if this will work for your objects.

@Blunder: if he really uses Blender for the 3rd time...he won't understand what you are writing ;) and he shouldn't rig at all ;) He should just watch beginner tutorials and try to follow them...just my 5 cent. But i admire your patience ;)

Yes, you're right. This thought also crossed my mind as I was writing the comment. But Apolo managed to import fully textured models and rig them properly. He did a good job and might be an experienced Maya or 3DS Max user ;-)

You can merge armatures and meshes. There are a few questions and answers about this if you search for "merge armature" for example this one: Joining 2 Armatures and keeping the weights.
But I guess, there is no need for this and you can get away by just using the body's armature for the gloves. While the glove's armature seems to have no bones for the head and lower body, the body's armature looks complete. It has bones for the whole body including the hands.
You can try (no guarantee that it will work) and use the body armature for the gloves. This will only work when the bones for the hand have the same name in both armatures. The names of these bones must match.
To change the armature of the gloves do the following...

in Object mode, select the gloves mesh object. It's called "w_glove_ct_s..", located under the armature.
clear the parent relation ship by pressing Alt+P, Clear Parent. This will also automatically remove the Armature modifier from the modifier stack.
still in Object mode, select the gloves, and press Shift in viewport (or Ctrl in the outliner) to select additionally the body's armature "tm_professional_..."
make sure the armature is the active object = selected last, highlighted in an orange color
press Ctrl+P, With Empty Groups to parent the gloves to the body's armature
check the modifier stack and the relationship. If you have more modifiers make sure the Armature modifier is in the correct position, usually first. Make sure there is only one Armature modifier.
the gloves should be in the correct position now.

Armature modifier on modifier stack (ops! Ignore the Collision, it should go after Armature)
Parent relationship


text:
Texturing - how do they make it realistic but specific?
Blender beginner here. I have a question related to texturing, but not how to texture and that kinda stuff. All I want to know is, how do you make the textures? By that I don't mean taking pictures, I mean more how do they make very complicated things, into a texture that fits? Sorry if this is confusing.
An example: a fox. I saw a model where the texture itself had realistic fur (attached the texture that I'm referring to as an image). I'm just wondering how do they do that? Since the model itself was quite realistic, and it doesn't look like they could just find an image on google and fit it.

Another example: buildings with unique textures. Like, a fantasy - more unique - special, version of some sort of already existing material (marble, etc). I do not understand how they make the texture? Like, I don't need an advanced explanation, but it would help if someone could at least try to explain it.
Sorry if this is confusing, I have never posted a question before. Thanks in advance :)

You can use a fur texture in Texture Paint mode, with a Draw/Stencil brush (unwrap your object with the Smart UV Project option, give it an Image Texture with an image that you're going to paint on). Make sure that the Blend is set to Mix with a white color, you can also choose Hue and choose a color to give your texture some coloration. When you've painted the whole object, you can whiten or darken some parts with a simple Draw brush, choose a white or dark color and Blend > Lighten or Darken.


text:
Make Edge Slide Clamp Off By Default
Is there a way to do this? The edge slide tool seems to reset with every use, and setting the current scene with the checkbox unticked as a startup file does not seem to do anything.

You can change the default keymap.

Got in Edit > Preferences > Keymap.
Search for "Edge Slide"
Uncheck "Clamp"

Click the hamburger menu in the bottom left corner > Save Preferences.

You can also do the same for the vertex slide:

That being said, this one is more often accessed as an option of the Move operator instead, but this one doesn't have exposed options in the keymap:


text:
Trouble with flipping the normals
I'm working on a piece of clothing in Blender 4.2.  I enabled the option to show "Face Orientation", and everything is looking right. The blue sides are facing outwards.

But in Unreal Engine 5, the textures are inside instead of outside.

There are no modifiers waiting to be enabled, and the object's origin point is inside.
I have many other objects in the same blender file and they don't have any problem with inside-out materials when imported into Unreal.
I made it by copying my character, discarding the unwanted faces, scaling the ones I wanted, and then using the mirror modifier and the cloth modifier.
I noticed that the dress' vertices were duplicated, so I merged them all by distance and thought that this would solve the problem, but any attempt to recalculate the normals in any way doesn't seem to help.
I also tried flipping them so that red shows outside, and doing this, the textures do appear on the outside as they should, but they seem to be showing what would normally be inside, because it's all shadowed.

Normally it should look like this:

just a guess, have you applied the scale? If it's negative this can flip the normals when you export the mesh.

Wow, correct guess! Thank you! The X scale was negative in object mode. Is there a way to mark your comment as the solution?

Ha! Don't let the scale fool you! ;-) Comments cannot be accepted as solutions. But I've posted it as an answer so you can accept it now.

Check if you have applied the Scale to the object. A negative scale value can flip the normals when you export the mesh.
The scale is displayed in the viewport's side panel (N) and should be (1.0, 1.0, 1.0).
Here is an example and how to fix it (apply scale and recalculate/flip normals if needed).


text:
Rigify in Blender 4.2 Problem - rotating the hand also rotates the forearm
I am rigging a character with a robotic arm and the parts of the arm should rotate independently from each other. But no matter what I do I cannot seem to find a way to make it work.

I have checked previous solutions and also each bone constraint of all DEF, MCH and ORG bones but nothing seems to solve my issue. Whenever I rotate the hand, it affects the forearm and whenever I rotate the forearm it affects the upper arm which is not the functionality I am looking for.
Any help is highly appreciated. I am using Rigify and Blender 4.2.

By default, Rigify's modules are tailored for soft body animations. It uses intermediate bones and bendy bones to simulate things such as how a human hand rotation gradually affects the flesh before the joint.
Non-destructivbe change in the metarig
One way to avoid this on mechanical rigs, is to go in Pose mode on the metarig, select the Rigify sub-rig's parent (the parent of the limb module, such as the first arm bone, leg, finger, ... You know you got the right one if its Bone data tab shows a Rig Type in the Rigify Type panel), and set the limb segment and b-bone segment to 1. Then you can re-generate the full feature rig.
Example for an arm:

(You can see the result in the "DEF" layer.)
Manual destructive change in the final rig
If you find modules that have limb/b-bone segments, but you can't change them in the metarig ; or if you need to keep some of them and remove some others within a single module, you need to do the change on the final rig. But it will be overridden any time you re-generate the rig from the metarig.
B-bones are the easiest to handle: in the "DEF" bone group, select any bone you want, and set their b-bone segment number in the Bone data tab > Bendy Bones panel:

To remove segments, it's a bit harder because they are built on different groups and have constraints to update.

In the DEF bone group, select the middle point between the two bones, and hit ⎈ CtrlX to dissolve it, turning the two bones into one.

In pose mode, select the bone you just un-segmented, update its Stretch-to constraint to target the correct bone (usually the next bone in hierarchy, tweak bone if any), then hit the Original Lenght's reset button:

In the "MCH" and any eventual "Tweak" bone group (my example is the right arm, so "Arm.R (Tweak)"), delete the unnecessary tweak controller bone and its MCH bone.

Thank you so much!
I didn't imagine that the b-bone segments will have such functionality and was going crazy about trying to figure out where this rotation was coming from. Thank you! Thank you!


text:
press the / key to isolate an object, my blueprint background images also disappear
I need a little help. When I press the / key to isolate an object, my blueprint background images also disappear. I want them to keep showing even after isolating an object to model it separately. Does anyone have any suggestions?

The function you mention is called the Local View (Manual).

Local view isolates the selected object(s) so that they are the only ones visible in the viewport.

All you have to do in order to keep your background images visible when toggling On local view is to select them alongside the object you want to isolate.

Thanks for the response, but it's not feasible to have to select the blueprints and the object all the time. However, if that's the only way, I'll have to keep doing it like that. It would be interesting if Blender had a checkbox to keep my background images active even when I isolate objects.

@PauloMateus No, not really. That's the whole point of isolating objects - to isolate them. Just like in audio editing software the "solo" button - to isolate that audio track. If you want others isolated as well, you have to select them as well. Of course you could do that by having them all in a collection where you can select them together more easily.


text:
Why does my texture only attaches to a certain part of the model? And how can I fix it?
I'm new to Blender, I use the 4.0.2 version and tried applying a UV Map to design my model, but my texture is stuck in one place. I tried reapplying the UV Map all over the model, removing it, double-checking if the image is attached to the color, merging the objects, marking seams, and deleting textures and images on the model. I cannot fix the issue, though. Any help on this is greatly appreciated!

Texture:

UV Map:

It would be helpful if you showed the texture and the UV map in your question. Or even upload the file with the packed texture here: https://blend-exchange.com and follow the instructions to edit it into your question.

The model has 2 material slots. The first is empty, the second is assigned the red material. The head parts have slot 2 assigned and are red, while the rest of the model has slot 1 assigned and is white. If you only want to use one material for the entire model, delete material slot 1 (it is the one above the purple entry in the screenshot).

@Blunder Thank you, the first slot had nothing but a + sign, I wasn't able to delete it but I tried adding the red material to it using the icon beside it, and the entire form is now the red color! I'm unable to draw with the texture paint though, but I believe I'll make it a separate question. Cheers!


text:
Blender doesn't recognize '-P' or '--python' command line argument when called with subprocess.run()
I'm trying to run a headless Blender from inside a Python program. I intend to have Blender run another Python program after it opens a file.
I can make this work from the command line as such
D:\Documents\Programming\████████>"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.6\blender.exe" "kitchen table.blend" -b -P animate_book.py -- "./███████/███████/scripts/chapter-001.csv"
Blender 3.6.0 (hash c7fc78b81ecb built 2023-06-27 08:27:30)
Read prefs: "C:\Users\████████\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\3.6\config\userpref.blend"
Read blend: "D:\Documents\Programming\█████████\kitchen table.blend"
Info: Total files 73 | Changed 29 | Failed 0
Info: Saved "chapter-001.blend"

This works as expected, opening in background mode, loading kitchen table.blend, and running the script using the custom argument after the --
However, when I try to do the same from Python I can't get Blender to digest the --python argument. Not as -P nor anything else, like --python-text.
Any insights?
I run a Python command like:
subprocess.run(['C:/Program Files/Blender Foundation/Blender 3.6/blender.exe', 'kitchen table.blend', '--background', '--python animate_book.py', '-- ' + chapter.title_filename + '.csv'])

But I get the following error:
Blender 3.6.0 (hash c7fc78b81ecb built 2023-06-27 08:27:30)
Read prefs: "C:\Users\████████\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\3.6\config\userpref.blend"
Read blend: "D:\Documents\Programming\████████\kitchen table.blend"
unknown argument, loading as file: --python animate_book.py
Error: Cannot read file "D:\Documents\Programming\████████\--python animate_book.py": No such file or directory

I've looked around a bit, and found Blender doesn't recognize --python as a command line argument, but I don't seem to have the same problem? And it works from the command line already, just not from the Python subprocess.run() call?
Any thoughts appreciated.

Perhaps separate --python and the scrip file name in different quotes, as shown here?

OMG, I'm a knob... Thank you.

Made a test script on my own:
import subprocess

subprocess.run([
    'C:/AppInstall/Blender/stable/blender-4.0.0+stable.878f71061b8e/blender.exe',
    'C:/tmp/test.blend',
    '--background',
    '--python',
    'C:/tmp/script.py'
    ])

Using two declarations for --python-  and C:/tmp/script.py works, while combining them as one --python C:/tmp/script.py doesn't.


text:
Toon Shader applies to only half of the model (or is messy)
I have followed tutorials for the Toon Shader. It works for single objects or objects that never had the mirror modifier applied to them, but whenever I join objects, it only applies itself to one half of the combined object.
Even when I join the object into one piece and apply the Toon Shader, the outline is improperly shaped, being distorted and stretched in a very random fashion.
I have tried both individual solidify modifiers for each material and one solidify modifier for the entire object, but nothing has worked.
Is there any way to fix this issue?

This looks like an inverse hull method, so I reckon this has to do with modeling, not shading.
Inverse Hull Method - NPR Wiki
I hope you made the outline shell using a Solidify Modifier, so that it is editable at any time?
For the issues with mirrored objects, I guess this is because you mirrored them by duplicating and scaling by -1? You can do that, but this essecially invertes the mesh, making its normals pointing inside instead of outside. Also, this is a dated method.
Nowadays, we just use the Mirror modifier: more flexible, non-destructive, and no normals issues like this.
To check your normals orientation, you can enable the Face Orientation overlay:

To fix this, ↹ Tab into Edit Mode, select everything with A, and hit ⇧ ShiftN to recalculate the normals. Hopefully, if your mesh is correct, it should set all normal is the right way.
This should fix the mirrored objects issues.
As for the irregularities in the outline, it really depends on the model.
In your Solidify modifier, make sure Even Thickness and High Quality normals are enabled. Then, you can use a vertex group as influence and paint in Weight Paint mode where how thick you need the outline. Thicker outlines are more likely to intersect other mesh parts, so crowded areas like the face usually have smaller thickness:

If you can't reach the result you need this way, I suggest you to save a backup file from there, then apply your Solidify Modifier, and then edit it by hand to better adapt it to your mesh needs.


text:
How to reduce the polycount of an mesh?
I imported a dress I made in Clo3d to Blender, but it has 5 million triangles and similar in vertices and edges, how can I reduce poly count so it doesn't make my project slow?

If you use decimate, you first put the object in edit mode, hit 'a' to select all vertices (or an area to decimate), and then when you "cleanup -> decimate" you need to change the Ratio parameter from 1.0 (nothing) to something like 0.5 (50% fewer vertices).


text:
Image in UV Editing workspace lookings faded in the viewport
I added an image to my object in the UV Editing workspace, unwrapped it, and rotated it to be right side and in the middle, but on the other side of the head, the image is almost faded and not vibrant? I'm new here and don't know what it's about.

By default, the UV Editing workspace's viewport isn't set to be able to show textures on the mesh, so you had to make changes to that in order to be able to see that texture. (By the way, if you want to work on your textures or shaders, the Texture Paint or Shading workspaces are more appropriate than the UV Editing workspace.)
There aren't many ways for a texture to be shown "shadeless" in the viewport. I can think of only two out of my head:

Use a shadeless material (which you didn't as we can see the principled shader in your material settings and the image plugged in its base color input)
Set the viewport to Solid view with flat lighting and texture color:

If you didn't do any of these, then your mesh and their textures will always be shown with some form of shading and/or shadows from the viewport render settings if in Solid or Material views, or from the scene's lights and surrounding objects if in Render preview.


text:
Can I apply modifiers to a flip fluid simulation
With flip fluids addon, can I take a baked simulation and then modify the mesh as if it were regular geometry?
For example, can I apply a decimate to make a low poly version of the simulation?
Doing this does work in the viewport but then is not applied when rendering. I do have the camera icon activated in the modifier.
EDIT
Apologies, a more specific question:
I have a baked flip fluid simulation mesh. I am experimenting with stylised looks. As a simple test, I want to apply a decimate modifier to the fluid surface mesh to create a low poly mesh.
This does work as expected in the viewport. However the decimate modifier has no effect on the rendered output.
One workaround I have found is to export the sim as an abc and reimport it, then apply whatever modifiers. Is that the best approach?
Thanks

You should be able to. I don’t like how this question is raised like you’re wondering whether or not you can do something, but then you change it suddenly to you tried it, and something‘s gone wrong. Right now we have very little info as to why it’s going wrong.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.


text:
Noise texture follows mesh topology
I'd like to create a texture that follows the topology of a mesh. So say I want a noise texture distorted to the thickness of my plane. I figure this is a UV thing, so I've tried messing with the UV layout to expand the edges, thereby scaling down the noise texture. But this doesn't work - either with a blank UV going into a procedural texture or an image texture.

Desired layout is below.

When subdividing the mesh, I get these strange lines.

Is your node setup definitely set to use UV's? Can we get a screenshot of how its set up?

Redo your mesh with only triangles or subdivide your object. This a limitation inate to quad modeling.

Subdivided quads worked better for me here. I wonder if there is a better way with gradients plugged into the vector input.


text:
A problem of binding rigify_Controls and mixamo armature
I'm using the Expy-Kit add-on to convert mixamo armature to blender rig then try to bind the walking armature and this happens.

What happens to my character and how to fix it?
update:
The arms didn't follow the armature.

Hi Please use a title that reflects the content of the question. It should be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the issue so that users can at a glance understand what your post is about. Use the [edit] link below your post and avoid anything not strictly essential to the post. Remember, your title is the first thing potential visitors will see, and makes your question findable for future users. See "What is the problem with posting an image or link and asking “How do I do this?""

Have you followed some tutorial? Like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ars_rEC3oP8

I find out the first picture problem is the rotation of the armature. But now there is a second problem pop up...

i have the same problem too
any solution?


text:
Blender fluid simulation liquid particles leaking
I am trying to make a fluid simulation and the particles keep leaking out at the side of the biggest box.
I have tried adding surface thickness, the particles stop generating after certain amount of surface thickness.
I also have solidify modifire added, but it also stops particles generating if i increase the Thickness on solidify.
Increasing Resolution divisons also did not work. How can i solve this?

*edit: added screenshot of the flow cube and the effector.

Would you please elaborate how you have setup your simulation? Where does the liquid come from? From the cube in which it should stay? To emit liquid into the scene, the cube has to be set to Flow. To work as an obstacle for the liquid, the cube has to be set to Effector. It can only be one of those two. Or is there a hidden Flow object somewhere?

maybe share your object: https://blend-exchange.com/

@GordonBrinkmann Thank you, I added the screenshot of the flow and effector object. The liquid should come from the box with the blue particles inside. It is set to fluid type:  flow, flow behavior : geometry. Effector objects are selected four seperate object parented to arrows object and their faces that the liquid shoud flow are deleted.

In your cube you need a fluid::effector::collision to "hold" the fluid.  It  must have a thickness of at least 0.5


text:
Shader based intersection mask
I am trying to create a material that would allow me to create a mask on a plane based on intersections between the plane and other geometries.
Illustration:

I need to get from this

To this.
Is there any way to do this using only shader nodes, alternatively by code in python? I am trying not to use boolean operations as they are computationaly heavy for larger scenes and often fail. If not can you suggest the best approach to achieve this effect?

Would Dynamic Paint or Geometry Nodes be acceptable? If not, OSL?

Anything is accaptable as long as I can dynamically recalculate the mask whenever objects move without causing lags and while I can use it both in cycles and eevee. Do you have any ideas?


text:
Get vertices positions in an animation
I have an animated character with bones. In its frame, there is an Eyes object that interests me. I want to know its position in my render during the whole animation.
I can have its position (the one of the first frame), but the coordinates do not change during the animation.
def get_coordonnates_objet_in_render(obj,cam,scene):
    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(bpy.context.scene.frame_current) #useless?

    #here I am not sure
    dg = bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get() #getting the dependency graph
    dg.update()

    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_object(obj, dg)
    mesh =  obj.to_mesh(preserve_all_data_layers=True, depsgraph=dg) # apply modifiers with preview settings
    mesh.transform(obj.matrix_world) # apply loc/rot/scale

    #after I think it is good

    # needed to rescale 2d coordinates
    render = scene.render
    render_scale = scene.render.resolution_percentage / 100
    res_x = render.resolution_x *render_scale
    res_y = render.resolution_y *render_scale

    vertices = mesh.vertices #obj.data.vertices

    verts = [vert.co for vert in vertices]
    for i in range(len(verts)):
        verts[i] = obj.matrix_world @ verts[i]

    coords_2d = [world_to_camera_view(scene, cam, coord) for coord in verts]

    # 2d data printout:
    rnd = lambda i: round(i)

    X_max = max(coords_2d[0])
    Y_max = max(coords_2d[1])
    X_min = min(coords_2d[0])
    Y_min = min(coords_2d[1])

    verts_2d =[]
    for x, y, distance_to_lens in coords_2d:
        verts_2d.append(tuple((rnd(res_x*x), rnd(res_y-res_y*y))))
        #print(tuple((rnd(res_x*x), rnd(res_y-res_y*y))))

    Y_max = max(verts_2d, key = lambda i : i[1])[1]
    X_max = max(verts_2d, key = lambda i : i[0])[0]
    Y_min = min(verts_2d, key = lambda i : i[1])[1]
    X_min = min(verts_2d, key = lambda i : i[0])[0]

    verts_2d.clear()

    print((
        X_min,
        Y_min,
        X_max,
        Y_max
    ))

def main():
    os.system("cls")

    obj = bpy.data.objects['Eyes']
    cam = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
    scene = bpy.context.scene

    get_coordonnates_objet_in_render(obj,cam,scene)

At first sight, you're transforming mesh with matrix_world twice. And the created bmesh is useless.

I removed the bmesh and commented out the mesh.transform(obj.matrix_world) line or removed the for i in range(len(verts)):, but it doesn't matter. The problem is the same


text:
How do I reduce my file size?
I have a .blend file that is almost 100mb (hence why I can't upload the file to blend-exchange.giantcowfilms).  I've been trying to append other 3 other objects into a new file, and the file is just so huge and slow.  I tried resizing everything to a much smaller size but that didn't change the file size.  I tried decimating everything too but that just made everything look horrible.
I've uploaded the file to google drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzCN0fElYa3HVklHME5rYTdhazg/view?usp=sharing
How can I get this down to a decent file size?
Thanks

Have you turned on file compression?

Other Alternative would be to zip - trying to zip a already compressed file would make little difference - your file up and try other cloud services like dropbox or mega.co.nz. if your file is just too big.
If you file contains animated simulation data, it's wise to delete them before uploading the file. Also you will want to keep what is necessary to discuss the issue you were having, meaning deleting all the other elements that would not matter to the problems on hand.
CONCLUSION
78mb on the one circuit board object named "curve.001". It's the poor conservation of polygons. Meaning your object have too many polygon for it's purpose. The film strip object is too high res in the mesh count too, with very bad topology if you want it to bend nicely along a bezier curve.

Unfortunately the compress file option didn't minimize the file size, but thanks for letting me know about that feature...didn't know about it.  I'll upload it to google drive and hopefully then you or someone can have a better picture of what I might be doing wrong.

I think I found the offending object in your scene ... what I did was delete object randomly and look at when the file size start to drop drastically. There is a circuit board sort of object in the joystick model that contribute about 65mb of file size to the file alone ... am diagnosing the issue there. It's pretty high res model 1.76 million triangles.

I conclude it's 78mb on the one circuit board object. I guess it boils down to poor conservation of polygons. The film strip object is too high res in the mesh count too, with very bad topology if you want it to bend nicely along a bezier curve. Pick up the subject on "topology".

Thanks hawkenfox I had no idea it was the circuit board...too bad because I liked that part.  I wonder how people are able to make super detailed movies in blender without their file sizes becoming gargantuan.

They would use normal map and tricks to make low polygonal object look like they have high mesh count. It's important to note that you need to plan before hand what is required. If you need to view your model really up close you may need those physical polys, but if the view distance is far off , you could just get away with applying a texture image to a simple box. An example would be, in a architexture visualisation , you wouldn't care to model the screws on a furniture because they are just too small... you could use texture to create those details if it's really necessary.

Those are awesome tips.  I'll keep them in mind as I build my scenes.  Thanks!

To lower the number of faces of your mesh, try the decimate modifier with unsubdivide, it will considerably decrease your file size, mine went from 317mB to 44mB

Thanks Arod for the tip! I tried using the decimate modifier on high poly objects (such as the stitches on a couch, pillows / blankets on a bed, etc. While it did heavily reduce the poly count in the scene, it didn't seem to dent the file size much (I'd probably have to decimate a lot more objects in the scene to have an effect). However, using the "compress" option when saving brought a 670 MB file down to 212 MB, which is pretty impressive, if you don't mind the slightly longer time to save. :-)

For what its worth, File ->  Save As... -> (new file name) -> Save As, quite often reduces my .blend files sizes to ~1/3.  I have no explanation for this.
I've also tried New -> Append -> (Old File) (select all, tedious, sometimes if there is one Scene that is easy) -> Append -> Save, but this rarely reduces the file size at all and it introduces the possibility of losing something.

I significantly reduced file size by reducing my "image texture" file size.

it would be helpful if you said how you reduced file size and how that affected your specific model.

Occasionally, when I paste something into Blender (usually from another .blend), it'll paste the entire scene without my notice.
Check if you have any extraneous scenes and delete them. If you did, make sure to go to File > Clean Up and clean up the extra data they'll leave behind.

One thing that can increase the file size a lot is Shape Keys
Go to the Ouliner > Blender File > Shape Keys and delete them.

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


text:
Four views face rendering
How can I do the rendering technique shown in the photo with Blender?
I have a 3D model (Person's head) and I am trying to render it in a way that shows its four sides simultaneously, just like the image that I uploaded.

I need such a visualization in order to use it for projecting a hologram using a pyramid display.
Actually, the work shown in the figure was done with OpenGL using the glViewport to get four viewports that can contain the object from four views and I am trying to do the same work but this time using Blender, this is the whole story.
I have also duplicated my object into four different views but when I try to render the whole scene I get only a part of it because the camera is not getting the four views together.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

@Baccar Ala, I suspect this is a question that can get a nice complete answer in minutes if you clarify what you mean and form it in a specific manner.

I have a 3D model (Person's head) and I am trying to render it in a way that shows its four sides simultaneously, just like the image that I uploaded, I hope this explanation makes things more clear, and thanks in advance.

Sorry, but to me the question is still not clear. Can't you just duplicate the model 3 times and rotate the copies by 90° each time to create such an image? Maybe show what have you tried and where you are stuck? What do you mean by "rendering technique"?

Actually, the work shown in the figure was done with OpenGL using the glViewport to get four viewports that can contain the object from four views and I am trying to do the same work but this time using blender, this is the whole story. Anyways thanks very much for your prompt response.

I still don't see the problem. Do you want to render an image like this https://i.imgur.com/PkMSTkF.jpg?

Yes exactly, I have also duplicated my object into four different views as you did but when I try to render the whole scene I get only a part of it because the camera is not getting the four views together.

Do you use 4 different 3D viewports in Blender and try to render an image from these? Maybe create a little demo with Suzanne (Add > Mesh > Monkey) and add a screenshot of it to your question and the camera settings (focal length). The question is closed but you can edit it and it can be re-opened. Blender renders (F12) what the camera sees. If the camera can't capture all 4 at the same time you might need to adjust the camera's focal length and its distance to the objects.

@Blunder what's the point of using 4 different viewports (what does that even mean?) when you could just duplicate it 4 times around a curve? (referring to the OP)

@Blunder Oh I guess you mean "views"

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/52231/rendering-a-stereoscopic-image-in-blender-2-77

The problem is kinda solved, thank you very much guys for your patience, very much appreciated.


text:
How to animate shape keys using python scripting?
I am new to Blender and Blender scripting, and I want to animate a character model's facial expressions using Python. I have read that shapekeys can be used to set various mouth poses, but I’m unsure how to animate these shapekeys through scripting.
Could anyone guide me on how to approach this or point me to any resources that explain how to animate shapekeys with Python in Blender?
Thank you!

What do you mean by "how to animate shapekeys with Python"? Relative shape keys can be applied to the basic shape by specifying a value between 0 and 1.  So, you are just looking for a script that sets this value? There are also absolute shape keys but I guess you are using relative shape keys for the facial expressions, don't you?

Do you want to drive your shape keys via python on every frame, like from some capture device? There are drivers that you write in python. And also application handlers.

Give an example of a rig or a character you are trying to animate and what is the animation information you want to apply with python.

Yeah.... question is too vague....

So, assuming that you have shapekeys created (good basic tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i519chZ-esU ), all you need is to set keyframes with different "value" for each shape key.
In a python script, you can set keyframes for the value of each shape key as in this small example:
import random
import bpy

#getting all my shape keys - see below how to find them
key1 = bpy.data.shape_keys["Key"].key_blocks["Wiggle_R"]
key2 = bpy.data.shape_keys["Key"].key_blocks["Wiggle_L"]
key3 = bpy.data.shape_keys["Key.001"].key_blocks["Stretch"]

#creating a random animation
for frame in range(1, 200, 40):

    #set the value for each shape key
    key1.value = random.random()
    key2.value = random.random()
    key3.value = random.random()

    #add keyframes for each shape key
    key1.keyframe_insert(data_path="value", frame=frame)
    key2.keyframe_insert(data_path="value", frame=frame)
    key3.keyframe_insert(data_path="value", frame=frame)

To find the path of each shape key, go to the data tab of your object, select one of the shape keys, right click the "value" and "copy full data path".
Notice that this code only adds keyframes, so, if you want to change the animation, you should delete the existing keyframes first.
To set some other properties of the created keyframes, you can access them in bpy.data.actions[actionName].fcurves[curveIndex].keyframe_points, where actionName is like "KeyAction" and "Key.001Action", although these names change if it's not the first time they're created. You can see the names in the dopesheet by selecting some row and pressing N for properties.


text:
My leg bones don't seem to be working properly? (from what I know)
I saw a nice model and I decided to check her out and animate her, but the legs weren't moving the way all the other models legs that I have imported looked like. (video)
First off, her leg isn't supposed to move up like that, and second her feet are acting as if the grid is an actual floor. But my point is, they aren't supposed to be constantly moving with the model when I move her leg. It's supposed to stay static unless I decide to move her foot.
I've put a model that actually works and the model I'm using to compare them (pictures below), and I, myself have tried to solve this but I didn't succeed. Since this isn't my model, I am not entirely sure of what they did, but maybe any of you might know?
I am providing the blend file with both models so you can see the comparison up close and maybe even find the difference between them that makes one move properly and the other one not.
Blend file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oNY-u3omwKBSQtJ4dgYPS6ff9zBmhqq7/view?usp=sharing
How it's supposed to look:

What it actually looks like:

I'm not sure if I should provide a GIF of me moving the other model's legs, but if I need to I will.

One of the models has IK legs.  The other doesn't.  (It has an IK foot, but not IK legs.)  This is why the legs animate in different ways.  To animate the second model, you need to use a different animation, one based on FK animation.

Looks like an MMD model, so it may be why the rig acts a bit different than usual...
In that case, select and move the IK bone of the Foot to animate, instead of the leg bone: this bone


text:
I'm trying to render an animation, but the pixels are messed up
What happened to the carpet? Why is the render messing up the pixels and stuff? Someone, please tell me how to fix this. I'm using Cycles render.

looks like a lot of noise.  Are you using Cycles?  then you might need to use a denoiser.

Hello and welcome. Instead of having users go through links and external sites please use the builtin tools to embed images in your post. See How to upload an image to a post? or GIFs

Try to increase the Sampling > Render > Max Samples

I am assuming you are using Blender 3.0 and above, well they are using a new way to render in cycles and intersecting geometry will have this issue like the carpet so what you can do is select the carpet and move it up by a very small amount like 0.001 m or even smaller.

And also cycles renders with interiors are known to be very very noisy so to deal with that, You can use the denoiser if it is a still image you need but if its a animation you may have to increase the Amount of samples until the noise is barely noticeable.

Ty!! this worked

@hii np but if you could, you can mark this as the answer...

I think you need to enable Denoising. Go to Render Properties/Viewport and enable Denoising. Then go to Render Properties/Render and enable Denoising also. I hope this is helpful.


text:
Why doesnt my texture show?
i am pretty new to this and tried multiple tutorials and googled a bit but my texture is just not showing. How to make my texture show on my model? as you can see in this screenshot, the texture works for the cube but doesnt for my model. I have opened the UV Editor if that helps... Any ideas?

https://workupload.com/file/dAcc45GumvH

Please show the Shader Editor, you need to plug the Image Texture node into the Base Color input of the Principled BSDF

i added the picture. it seems to me i have it connected?

have you assigned this material to the object? Select all its faces in Edit mode and in the Material panel click on Assign. Or maybe pack the image (File > External Data > Pack Resources) and share your file? https://blend-exchange.com/

I added the file

what object are you trying to texture? I can't see any material for the one called Cube for example: https://zupimages.net/up/22/46/l4qs.jpg

Huh thats weird. I am trying to texture the "Cube" which is the photo camera. I actually can see the materials  in the cube. One is "fabric" the other is named "zakladni_material"

maybe you need to re-save. Before saving, don't forget to pack the image, and share again

For some reason i cannot share it. The file is now too big. it wasnt before? maybe by packing the files it became too large??? I honestly dont know, i am doing this for the first time

yes it may be too big, use workupload.com

added the new file, thanks for the help btw

You have not assigned the material to your object, select it, switch to Edit mode, select all the faces, or the ones to which you want to assign the material, select the material, and click on Assign:

Oh thanks a lot! I really dont know why it didnt occur to me, spent good two hours on that!

you're welcome, maybe follow some tutorials about materials, mapping, etc


text:
Use Glass BSDF with emission Texture
I have a glass material in front of a cube with an emission texture.
In render, the glass ignores the texture and I only see black.
How can you see emission texture through glass refraction ?
Here is a screenshot to show what is currently happenening (1 = Emission, 2 = Glass) :

Please add a tag for the render engine so it's clear that this material is for Eevee or Cycles.

In Eevee you have to tweak some parameters to have a correct transparency with glasses: Choose Alpha Blend in the material settings and also activate Screen Space Refraction:

Activate Screen Space Reflections and Refraction in the Render panel:

Also, deactivate the Screen Space Refraction of your emission object, you won't see an object that has Screen Space Refraction or Alpha Blend behind another one in Eevee .

I have it turned on, yet I still can't see through it.

please share your file (only keep the useful objects): https://blend-exchange.com/

I added it in the main question

You need to also deactivate the Screen Space Refraction of your emission object, you won't see an object that has Screen Space Refraction behind another one in Eevee

Oh indeed ! Thank you


text:
scroll wheel not working in Blender (eratic behaviour)
I think this is a problem related to some microsoft update, but i'm asking her for help.
Because the answer her would help a lot more Blender users than just me.
System info windows 11 this started around half juli 2023
The eratic behviour (it zooms in and out) i notice on scrollbars in chrome.
I have no special driver in place just normal windows, normal mouse with 2 buttons and a clickable mousewheel in the middle. A month earlier i never had these problem so i suspect a microsoft update / setting change.
The system isa gamesystem 3080ti gpu, so might be part of a mulitmedia update or so but still there should be an option to go back to old behviour I hope
The mouse is a bluetooth mouse (and yes i changed batteries as well)
Its only the wheel part, clicking and moving works fine.

First suggestion would be to try another mouse.

I dont have another wireless mouse, though it happened just as microsoft released some gaming mouse update, i dont know how to disable / remove that update. And for the record its not a 1000hz gaming mouse, its a bleutooth normal logitec nothing fancy about it besides that its on bleutooth

If it happens on scrollbars in chrome as well as having problems with Blender it's obviously not a problem that we can advise on here as it sound as as if it's a Microsoft problem.

@John Eason, thats exactly what i said and why i posted it with "windows" cause this affects other Blender users as well, so if someone knows something about it all blender users can find an answer


text:
Baked texture is too dark
I baked a procedural texture and now it renders very dark.  For the node setup I simply plugged in an image texture node with a diffuse shader (with roughness set to 0) into the material output.  No lighting was changed, the mesh was smart UV unwrapped and the image was baked to a transparent background. Is there a common reason for this?
Here is a screenshot (.blend is way too large to upload unfortunately).  The highlighted part is usually rendered much brighter with more visible detail.

This is what it renders like without the bake and here are the bake settings:

Thanks

Would you mind uploading a screen shot? If you can upload the .blend file, it will be even more helpful.

How is the render result like before baking. And, would you mind showing us the baking settings?

I noticed that in the outliner, one of your objects is turned off for rendering.(the dim camera icon) I am not quite sure whether this is relevant in this specitic case, but having it on and having it off raises different results even for baking.

That's the cube that is parented to R2D2 to help him along the path.  But I know what you mean...in this case no lighting was changed though.  All variables are the same between the rendered version with bake and without bake.

Maybe, you should simplify the problem by omitting objects. make a duplicate of your .blend and remove objects (and modifiers) or replacing it with primitives to reach the most simple file which still has the problem. If you still cannot find the problem there, I recommend you upload that simplified file.

@Allosteric sorry for the extreme delay...busy time of year!  I wasn't able to find the problem by omitting objects and materials so I've uploaded the .blend to google drive.  Here's the link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YxW3FF6IsNiuAGKzhSu078imhsrV8TlL

You have two points to refine.
1. Use the emission shader.
2. add transparent input.
1. Use the Emission Shader
I should have noticed this earlier but when you bake with combine, the shader to use is usually an emission shader.
2. Add transparent input
As far as I know, combine baking does not support transparent shader. Your node system requires the transparent nodes that you already use.

Oh I see...didn't realize baking didn't support the transparent shader.  That's really good to know.  So in terms of baking with combine, you are saying you must use emission?

As far as I know, the diffuse shader is the main cause of darkening. However, I'm not quite sure whether the emission shader is the best answer since you need to controll the strength.

Right makes sense.


text:
How to add realistic grunge to crevices
I'm modeling BB8, and having difficulty getting really good dirt and grunge on him in the right places and the right texture.  I did watch Andrew Price's video on how to add grunge using dirty vertex colours but as you will see the effect I'm going for is not quite the same as what he did.  I'm trying to get precise, accurate dirt that really looks like something has been rolling on a dirty surface for a while.  How can I achieve this?
Here's the reference photo I have been working off of:

Here is the render:

Here is the vertex paint settings:

Here is the node group I made for the grunge (it is plugged into the principled node):

And not sure if this helps but this is the grunge image I was using (colourized with brown in GIMP):

Here's a link to the .blend (was too big for giant cow films): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1edSlMISPUr0KYetTipJ9FHTacljA2am3

You have a few things going on in your node group that I don't understand from looking at the nodes, such as the multiplication of two image textures towards the bottom (not sure what's being multiplied and why).  Also the inputs into your mix node seem strange, you seem to be using your grunge map as a factor too many times--I am guessing something simpler will give you the results you are looking for. Maybe you would have better luck posting your blend file?

@risingfall I've slightly modified the node group but multiply seemed to thicken up the colours of the image textures.  They are the same texture, but one was modified with a noise texture.  But admittedly, I am not great at nodes so if it doesn't make sense I'm all ears!  I've uploaded a link to the .blend

Maybe more control will be with Geometry node > Pointiness option. It's similar to vertex paint but allows more setup for smoothing because relies on nodes. Note that this might not work as well as base geometry seems a bit not dense enough to allow smooth transitions.

@MrZak Yeah unfortunately it made ripple like textures around the edges...not sure if  a different node setup could have worked...but was worth the try!

Okay I think I may have found the issue?  Where you have an Add node I think you really want a Multiply node, as follows:

And the render looks more like this:

Which seems more like your reference photo I would say.


text:
How to use all the audio and video strips in the VSE as a video texture?
I've been able to use images in the past to create a video texture, but for this animation I've inserted several movie clips and audio in the video sequence editor.
My question is, is there a way to simply amalgamate all those video and audio strips into one thing that can be opened as an image texture?
The idea is that I could have the TV I modeled playing various scenes at different times in the animation.
Thanks!
EDIT:
I figured it out.  It's a bit of an awkward method and there might be a better way, but it works.
STEP 1: Plan your scene with audio and video clips you want to add on your TV in the VSE.
STEP 2: Render into Xvid rather than AVI jpg (to ensure audio is captured).  Make sure you check the sequencer in post procesing, not the compositor.  Otherwise, when you render your animation it will render all your objects and scene rather than the strips in the VSE.

STEP 3: Save your rendered video as something like "audio for tv" because in reality, you are going to import it again to get purely the audio.
STEP 4: Go back into the VSE and render your strips to jpg or whatever image format you prefer.  Use a separate folder as there will likely be a ton of images.  These will be the images for your TV screen.
STEP 5: In the VSE delete all your strips.  Add the video you just made earlier and erase the video strip, keeping the audio.

STEP 6: Now add your images you rendered for your video texture in the texture panel as an image sequence (you can add actual video files to make video texture but my preference is image sequence because if Blender crashes or you have to stop the animation for whatever reason, you can always finish where you left off).

STEP 7:  Lastly, go back to the render panel and check the compositing box under Post Processing and uncheck sequencer to render your animation.  If you don't do this, you won't be able to render your images (when there is anything in the VSE and you try to render your scene as images Blender won't render them unless you remove all strips in the VSE or have sequencer in the render panel unchecked...a little sneaky reason why you frustratingly can't render and often don't know why).

No the VSE is simply a post production tool at the end of the 3D chain. You'll have to render the sequence out then import that as a video texture. You cannot define a scene output for use in other 3D elements. However you can use Compositor or VSE in another scene's compositors or VSE editors.

Good to know.  I've used your answer in a way that gave me much more flexibility.  I've posted my method in my question.


text:
set position of each instance according to a formula
I'm sure I'm butchering things so I'm sorry in advance.
I'm trying to create "bricks" and I want to offset each vertical edge (or vertex along vertical axis y in this case)
I want each iteration of instances to apply that formula and displace edges/vertices randomly.

It's not exactly what I want to do "mathematically" but it does what I want it to do.
I ended up instancing the squares then I set position by using a noise and put Index output into the noise's vector (not 100% sure what this does and how I can control this)
I still am very curious if it is possible to do what I asked for in the original question


text:
What was/is the last Blender version supported for Windows/Linux 32-bit computers?
What would be the last version with 32-bit support? Preferably Linux.

2.80 was the final 32 bit build. (a versão mais recente para suportar 32 bits é 2,80)

please ask questions in English and use an online translator if needed (por favor, faça perguntas em inglês e use um tradutor online se necessário)

@ChristopherBennett - Tanks.


text:
extra hidden faces?
As you can see I have the face select option active, and yet I have found that I have a lot of edges with dots on them and when I select the dot and press X and delete face then the dot goes away and nothing else gets affected.
The dots are not the issue. I realize that when I use the face select tool, then the dots will only appear in the center of every face to demonstrate that is a face. But there are somehow tiny faces that blender has found that appear to be right on edges.
So for some reason, I have a lot of very tiny basically nonexistent faces that were made, and I had no idea how. I am individually selecting them all and deleting them because I have found it has caused me issues when doing some stuff with that object.
So my question I ask is there an easier way to select all those very tiny faces and delete them all at once.

From the menu at the top of the 3D viewport  (with your object selected in edit mode) try Mesh > Clean Up > Delete Loose.

When I did that, it just deleted 4 faces that were supposed to stay and it didn't even touch the ones I'm having issues with :(

Yeah, not sure then - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's hard to tell without seeing more of your project. If you want to post a .blend file so the people here can have a look, you can do it here - https://blend-exchange.com/

Something happened and many sections that I was nowhere around got deleted, so ill have to figure out how to fix that or ill just go back to my backup model. So ignore those areas. You'll see the area I'm talking about in the round sections that are supposed to be magnets.

Yeah. I see it. It looks like you have some messed up topology in that area. Inside the cube, if you look at the "outer" ring of the magnet, there are duplicate faces - there are some unattached edges too, but if I select them to delete, it takes stuff you want with it. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to get into the full details of it now, but I suggest a full re-work. I'll try to give it another look later when I have time, but hopefully before then, someone else can show you how to fix it. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem there is a "quick and easy" to fix this one.

Ok, thank you. I'm sure it had something to do with the way I had to make the circle on the face. I started with the solid side then subdivided it by 10 ten subdivided it again by 1. Then I selected the faces I wanted the circle to be and used the loop tool to make the circle. And extruded the circle inside the cube. After I did the extrude I noticed the faces that connected with the circle didn't look flat. It had a gradient look, kinda like the way beveled edges look where one side is lighter and the other side is darker. So I selected those faces and used the inset face tool and pulled the.

So I selected those faces and used the inset face tool and pulled the handle away from the face, and that flattened the face. So I'm kinda thinking that had something to do with the extra tiny faces I'm finding.

Also, I think I know why those faces got deleted that were nowhere in the magnet. I set the viewing range to 1.5 m so when I select the dots to faces I wanted to delete without confusing it with all the dots on the other side of the cube. I think that just because I can't see it doesn't mean I still couldn't select it. So when I was selecting the faces around the magnet it also selected other dots on the opposite side of the cube without me knowing because I couldn't see that far, so ill have to start over or duplicate to one of the previous backups.

"I have a lot of very tiny basically nonexistence faces" - Do you mean the little dots in the screenshot? That's the center of the face. The dots are an overlay, visible in Face Selection mode. You can turn it on/off in the Overlays menu.

@blunder the dots are not the issue. I realize that when I use the face select tool, then the dots will only appear in the center of ever face to demonstrate that is a face. But there are somehow tiny faces that blender has found that appears to be right on edges. I hope that makes sense now, if not let me know. I did upload the blend file above, so you could look around the circles extruded on the cube and see the dots I'm talking about.

You mean the fact that faces centers (dots) that are right on an edge. Ok, I see... Yes, that's because you have duplicated vertices. Do a merge By Distance and the dots on the edges are gone. Enable Auto Smooth to fix the shading. But as Christopher Bennett already mentioned you have also a lot of flipped and overlapping faces. Turn on the Face Orientation overlay (red/blue) and check the inside of the box, especially the circles. There is some mess.

https://ibb.co/fk8Bxds is this the main cause of my issues. I've never seen this stuff before.

Yes, this is what I mean. Turn on Face Selection mode with the dot overlay. You will notice that there are 2 faces, the small blue one, and a bigger, flipped, red one that overlaps it. Just select and hide/delete the big one and you will see what's going on. The faces are basically connected to the same edge and overlap. That's bad. You need to clean it up, delete the unwanted faces.

I tried looking up what dot overlay is, and I can't seem to figure out what that is still. I didn't know I could hide faces, I thought you could only hide a whole object. That's new, thanks for telling me that. I deleted the small blue ring from the previous image. And when I rotate to see the circle from the outside, the whole circle is red. I selected it and thought I could just rotate it 180, but then it really looked messed up. I didn't know about auto smoothing....

I think most of my problem was how when I saw the shading issue I used the inset face to fix that, it made those tiny faces I'm complaining about. https://ibb.co/album/ydR7Wf this is what I was dealing with (they are numbered in order) and in the end after I used the inset face to pull it out you could see it added those dots on the edge lines. So thank you for that for all this. I do have another issue if you think it can be solved. I might have to make all this over again, so I may have to go this way. https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/229051/permanently-joining-objects-forever

Here is a summary of the comments.
1. Duplicated Vertices
The first issue, the "hidden invisible tiny faces", which this question is about, are caused by duplicated vertices. If you active the face center overlay (Center), a little dot is shown for the center of each face. You can see them in Edit mode when you active Face Selection (3) mode.
The problem is shown by the fact that there are some face centers (dots) exactly in the middle on one edge, marked yellow in the screenshot. These faces have some width but a zero-length.

The fix for this is easy. Select everything (A), and press M, and choose Merge By Distance. Additionally, you need to enable Auto Smooth to get a clean shading.
2. Holes In the Mesh
If you have activated the Face Orientation and switch view mode (Z) to Solid, you will see there are some holes in the mesh. The outside of the cube should be blue, the inside red.
You can use the F key in Edit mode to fill the holes. Use Edge Selection* (2) to select the edge.
For larger holes enable the "Mesh: F2" addon in File > Preferences. Then you can create a squad face when you just select 1 vertex in the corner. Make sure you are in Vertex Selection mode (1). Then confirm (left-click) or cancel (right-click/Esc) the drag mode after the new face is created. Doesn't matter what you click just don't accidentally move the newly created vertex.

3. Overlapping Faces
There is a large flipped red circle (N-gon) that covers the underlying mesh. I'm not sure if you need it (is it a cover with transparent material?). If you want to keep it, make sure it gets flipped (blue).
If you peek in there you will see that the walls of the round structure have 2 edge loops that overlap with the narrow outer edge of the sticking out rim. You need to fix/recreate these walls/edge loops. Then you can use (Alt)+(N), Recalculate Outside and Blender should be able to fix all the flipped faces.

Thank you. That helped a lot visually seeing it. And I couldn't figure out how to fix the holes I created by accident, so I went back to a previous backup model. Luckily I duplicate each stage and hide it in case I need to go back I won't have to start from the beginning.


text:
Trying to finish a blend-file before the 20th for my daughter
So, I've followed all the tutorials that I can find, and as straight forward as it seems, it just ain't. I load the template, I change the text, I set the output file, go to render and it starts, everything looks great and it renders up to 99% in about 3 mins then just closes itself and doesn't leave a file. I'm dying to get this done before the 30th as it's for her birthday and she's obsessed with 20th c-fox.
I'm running a 78702gb with an a10 7850k & 12gb 1600mhz ram, Blender 2.79a win32. I downloaded the template from this youtube tutorial and have tried several others, I've tried image formats as well as different video formats to render to, it just keeps closing and creating a blank file (0bytes) - here's the temp I changed
Blend file: https://filebin.net/kd29v2vc5k5hol2f
Test with Blender 2.92
Render works without compositing in Eevee and Cycles:

Blender always crashes in Eevee and Cycles when these nodes are used for compositing. After deletion and recreation of the node setup Blender works fine. The recreated Composite node looks different.

Provide your blend file. Looks like you are a beginner and until you have shown us all settings and screenshots we need to tell you what‘s wrong - you are much faster with providing your blend file

Is this an animation or image to render? (For an animation it is better to render all images as png files and create the video file from the single images.) Which render engine is used?

blender 2.79a win32, i downloaded the template from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbixwwuSY-U this tutorial and have tried several others, i've tried image formats as well as different video formats to render to, it just keeps closing and creating a blank file (0bytes) - here's the temp i changed https://filebin.net/kd29v2vc5k5hol2f

ok, your question is now closed - maybe open another one -> you can open as many as you want, but next time with more info ;) i recommend to change the output  -> file format to png under render properties, so whenever your computer crashes, you still have all images so far. Then you just need to render the rest. When your computer is ready with rendering all images you can easily open blender again with file -> new -> video editing, put in all your images there and make a video out of it.

Instead of adding comments, please use the [edit] link at the bottom
of your question (https://i.sstatic.net/lXFuK.png) and add more
information on how you set up your project.
Add images that
might help us understand your scene and settings.
See How to add an image to a post

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/102265/pause-blender-project-and-restart-and-continue-after-a-day

You can edit your question and after review, it can be opened again. -- About the problem: I've tested your provided file in Blender 2.92. It crashes Blender every time if I just render the image. It's the composite node setup for some reason. If I disabled/delete/recreate it then it works fine. The file is a 2.79 file. The Blender 2.8 is a major update despite the small increase in version number. Update your Blender if you can and use at least the 2.83 version. Then fix the nodes in the compositing tab and use PNGs to render the animation. Have a look here: https://youtu.be/zTWWlyOf8n8


text:
Why is there such a difference between pre-render image and post-one? Could you give me some information how to handle it?
I have been trying to handle the problem with the difference between colours. In vain :) You're my last hope to do my best and keep going on in improving the skills.

Hello. You can embed images directly in your question. This way readers have not to click the link, accept cookie agreements, click again to return to the question, and do another 3 clicks just to see the other image.

The secret / difference is compositing. In the viewport "rendered"-view there is no compositing.
If you render your image with F12, compositing will be used.


text:
Complex Woolen Stitches, 3D Modeling Issues
I'm trying to make like this stitches with 3D but I failed. I'm trying many ways (see below) without success. How can I make it?
stitch circular pattern:

close view:

b&w colors:

stitches blend file
1st workflow on the left: overlapping horizontal and vertical mesh lines:

2nd workflow on the right: single knitting stitch, extended to a plane by 2 Array modifiers:

"I'm trying many ways but not success" Could you show us what you tried and why it did not satisfy your needs?

You get a better result if you model a little horseshoe or something that looks like a "Q" and make it 3D.


text:
how do I change shortcut number in pie menu?

the image is the Ctrl+Tab pie menu but my question is about pie menus in general.
You can see there are numbers next to each pie menu button.
I'd like to customize the numbers (I think those are kind of random?). Is it possible?
Thank you.

Hello. I don't know if you can customize these shortcuts but I think the numbers are not random but follow the layout of the numpad


text:
How to edit location of each vertex in uv map and it's related vertex in 3d view?
I'm new to blender scripting so don't judge me If my question is stupid.
I'm trying to make a script for blender 2.79 or 2.83 doesn't matter.
The whole idea that I want to make a script for is that I want to have access to all uv vertices and their related vertex in the 3d view.
To be exact, I want to get and set the location of each uv vertex and it's 3d view vertex.
How can I get access to it and How can I set them to a different value?
Thank you in advance!

It's often not about judging that a question is "stupid", more often about the seemingly lack of effort to seek answers before asking.

Thank you, but the problem was that I tried my best and searched the whole day for it but couldn't find something. anyways thank you.


text:
Shape key transformation and armature
I did a werewolf transformation using the shape key. Human to werewolf. So I rigged the human form, but as I feared, when I switched to werewolf form, everything is messed up. Is there a way to fix this and the vertices continue to follow the weight paint?
Sorry if I asked a stupid question or if I did it in the wrong place.
Thx in advance.

Hello and welcome. You're in the right place and it is not a stupid question! Rig is very sensible to rest pose positions... but if possible you should upload your file or provide some significant images (what is "messed up" exactly ?) in your question so that some here could help you. You can upload the file using this site http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

You should try to keep both at the same size (eventually, you can scale the werewolf after) and do so both models stay in the same floor plane. All that in edit mode (no scale at object mode). Also you can notice on the images that ww legs and arms are far from the bones: try to keep the mesh vertices around the same positions as the man. That should be better after that.


text:
How to make an edge mask without ambient occlusion in EEVEE
Is it possible to make an edge mask without turning on ambient occlusion in EEVEE? I've tried using geometry nodes too, but since it is based on the geometry, I'd have to do a lot of subsurfs to get a high-quality result.
Thank you!

No, it's not possible.  Shaders operate only on sample (fragment) data.  They do not see edge data, or even, directly, vertex data (they see their own, interpolated, instance of vertex data.)  If you want the edge angle in some fashion, use GN.  If you want to be able to stop using GN attributes in shader parameters, for export or for performance, output your GN attribute to emission and bake a UV texture.

@Nathan actually this would be possible if Blender provided partial derivatives ddx and ddy which take advantage of pixels being run simultaneously in groups and specifically in subgroups of $2×2$ allowing you to compare the normal with 3 neighboring pixels. Maybe in OSL that can be done? BTW, the derivatives are screen-space (hence pixels) so this would be a problem if the other face of an edge would be occluded

@MarkusvonBroady It would be possible, for the sample that immediately bordered the edge.  And I would be positively delighted if the node editor exposed screen space derivatives, for a lot more reasons than this.  But I don't think that guest is interested in a 2-sample wide map of edge angle in this case-- I think they want the edge angle, interpolated across the face, since that's what a GN attribute in shader nodes will give them.

@MarkusvonBroady Note that if they didn't really need it interpolated across the face, just wanted it derived from screen space derivatives, they could use a bevel node in Cycles to acquire this.  Which compares normals via screen space derivatives.  I think.

When they're smooth there's also no edge…

@guest GN reads the true edge angle; if we want the angle, at the edge, of the normals of a smooth-shaded mesh, it approaches zero.  I think that there may be some misunderstanding of stuff here.  What I'd recommend is asking a question that focuses on what you've done so far, what you want to achieve, and why what you've done doesn't achieve that.  It's often a better idea to ask about an exact, specific problem rather than something general.

I just want to use the unsigned angle output as something like the Geometry node's Pointiness output. but useable for EEVEE too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

I've just changed the title to "How to make an edge mask without ambient occlusion in EEVEE." Maybe this would explain my question better.

@guest It's still not a great question, and you'll probably not get answers because of that.  I'm sorry.  If you want pointiness in Eevee, ask about that, not "edge mask," which doesn't have any single meaning.  But, don't ask that, because you can just google "pointiness in Eevee" and find a lot of answers on the web.  And if certain categories of answers aren't going to be useful for you, like "no AO", then we want to know why that won't work for you, so we don't recommend some answer that doesn't use AO, but still doesn't work for you because it violates the unstated reasons for no AO.

Also please take a look at other questions on this site (especially high rated questions) to get a better understanding how to ask questions.


text:
Why won't this 2D stroke be hidden in an 3D object?
I've been trying to figure out why this mesh doesn't cover the grease pencil object in the final render (as shown in the figure below.)

There can be many reasons: you placed the GP object closer to the camera, you set it visible in front, you composited it in front, you messed with the shaders, .... If you want to know why it does it in your specific scene, I'd suggest uploading your file on Blend-Exchange so that we can check ourselves.

I understand!!! Thanks for answering me anyway! ;)

can't reproduce the issue https://i.imgur.com/SepHqKM.png

Please, read careful messages that Blender provides you:

So enable Z pass as Blender suggest you:

Thanks! That really helps a lot!

@RyanHarrisArchibald consider marking this answer as correct then


text:
Hair Particles not Reendering w/ Weight Paint Object Animation
I am making an animation that follows the "grow grass in Blender 2.8" tutorial for the floor plane. There is more going on in the scene, but all of that is working properly.
In viewport, the hair particles are visible, though sometimes their number is displayed improperly (fixed by playing the animation in viewport).
In render, the particles are visible ONLY if I keep the sphere object used to emit the particles (from the 2nd tutorial) visible in the render, which is undesirable. Otherwise, the hair particles show up in very few frames of the rendered animation (5/100) random.
Here are my render and hair particle settings:

And here's the render settings:

Here's a sample of the renders w/ the grass "flash":
Thank you so much!

To clarify, you can't use the 'Show Emitter' checkbox because of this?

@AllenSimpson no, the box is checked! Everything seems to be working fine on paper..? Even still renders tend to get the hair show up more often than not,  but animation glitches. I will try again to see if this was a bug of sorts, but it has been rather persistent until now.

I mean if you uncheck show emitter it should not appear in renders, and you could keep the extra object in your scene with no problem.  Check the objects in the outliner to see whether you accidentally keyframed visibility.

Yes, that solution ended up working! Because I had the sphere object that was acting as the brush for the canvas disabled in render but still had the "show emitter" tab on, it was acting glitchy. Once I turned on render visibility for the object and unckecked emitter, it was working. Thank you Allen!!!


text:
How to embedded animation/effects to other file format?
I am trying to produce some AR contents using blender. The following questions always bite me as a beginner:
Animation did by Procedural Material or Geometry Node, can those be exported into other file format as *.fbx, *.usd or *.glb etc?  For instance, the dissolve effect showing in this link. here
Is it possible to bake that effect into a *.fbx file and make it present in a AR scene?

Hello and welcome. While files, images, and external videos or links may be helpful additions they should not be the only way to obtain information about your issue. Don't make understanding your question rely on downloading a file, watching a video or visiting an external site. Use the builtin tools to upload images or gifs, along with thoroughly explaining the problem in written form so it can be indexed and searched for thus helping future visitors with similar issues.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures


text:
Is there a reason these facets of the diamonds are just rendering black/dark?
Is there any reason that the Facets are rendering in large dark patches,
Is it to do with the lighting, the facet pattern, the booleans.
Been having this problem for a while so any advice is appreciated.
File attached.

EXPANDED PREVIOUSLY ASKED QUESTION

SAME QUESTION NOT ANSWERED NOW ELLABORATED

You can edit the same question.

Please don't post the same question more than once. If you get no answers edit the original post and provide further details, rather than making duplicates

Film> Transparency > Cristal render (mark it).
Also raise the bounces.
Also make sure glossy clipping is above 10