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Bezier Curve does not want to work with Array or Curve modifiers
So I've got a bezier curve and I want to use it to create a super simple road. The road object is literally just a plane. Whenever I add the array modifier to the road and set it to fit curve it only extended twice the length it was. When I add the curve modifier it rotates it slightly but nothing else. I'll attach the blender file (~900kb) so you can see exactly what I mean.
Here is the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cxgDtm2K-N7xxrM9HdsopXwDzs1MIFWJ/view?usp=share_link

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.

ok, that was a trickier one ;)
The problem with your curve(s) are: It's not just one part, they consist of two parts.
You can verify this by selecting the curve and press ".". Then you will see that the curve isn't really centered.
One easy way to fix it is: With your blend file opened, just add a cube, then press "." so that the view gets centered around the world origin. Then press x to delete the cube. Now you see there the rest of your splines.

Select it in object mode, go to edit mode and just delete the vertices (do these for the other curves as well).
Then it works.

Yeah this solved it, thanks Chris! Would have never figured that out on my own lol!

that's absolut normal. When i started Blender i was helped a lot and wouldn't have figured out it myself too.


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How to pick up a cloth simulation
I've recently watched Disney's Encanto, and I am in love with the clothing design. I've been doing some experiments in blender, and something that I just can not figure out is how to pick up a cloth half way through a simulation. Essentially I want to use a Hook modifier in conjunction with a cloth simulation, in which the hook only takes effect part way through. I have set up this example scene in which a cloth falls onto a ball. I have an empty in the scene which I would like to pick up the cloth and drag it off the ball, from a particular vertex.

I would imagine that this would involve a Hook modifier, but I'm still stumped.

did you use your vertex as PIN in cloth simulation? If yes, please provide blend file

I didn't use the vertex as a pin, because I don't want it to be pinned all of the time, just sometimes. Is there any way I can do this using the pinning functionality?

nope. you have to use pinning. You can adjust the pinning by using vertex weight edit modifier. Set the weight of that pin to 0 as long as it shouldn't pin.

Maybe take a look at Blunder's answer here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/243170/animate-a-falling-cloth/243181?noredirect=1#comment413856_243181 ... or you could move another collision object?

Thank you Chris that really helped

you are welcome

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Transparent render problem
My transparent object show jungle?
Every time I make transparent object there is always a reflection of a jungle. why? how do I get normal transparent object?

The reflection you are seeing is that of a hidden HDRI image which provides both lighting and reflections to the scene. You are seeing this because you are in Material Preview (aka "LookDev") mode which uses a simpler render engine as well as HDRI reflections in order to give a "fast preview" of your textured objects. To see the proper rendered preview (without the "jungle"), switch from Material Preview to Rendered preview (farthest right of the four little circles in top right), or by selecting from the pie menu after pressing Z.

Thx you very much.

In the  "Material Preview" viewport shading blender shows you the object and uses an internal environment map to light the scene.
In the Shading dropdown menu

you can choose which environment map to use

or you can choose to use the scene World

but in this last case you'll need to set the world properly in the node editor (or in the proporties panel).
You also need to have something around and behind the object to reflect/transmit it.

Thx you very much

You're welcome!

Is there any complete guide on node?

I think so. Search on YouTube for "blender world node editor" (specific for the world, considering your question). There should be a lot of stuff.

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Pursuing Blender
Well I am a teen and For the past month I have watched other Youtubers make animations on Blender.I am from India where animation colleges don't use Blender. I have always been fascinated in how animation movies are made and 3d creations
If possible I would like your opinion on:

Is  Blender ideal for me?
Are there courses for free or for a less price where I can understand using nodes and making moving 3d models in Blender?
Are there colleges that teach and use Blender that are out of India?

Would Love to Have Your Opinion.
Thank You....

First off, blender is free, but can do the same work as a lot of $1000 (75,000R) software, so it's hard to go wrong. While blender isn't "industry standard" at the moment, nearly all the same modelling techniques are used, making it a very good tool to learn how to use 3D software (in general), with techniques that apply to all modeling programs.  Because blender is free, it has the largest available selection of free tutorials of all the 3D modelling softwares. Though this is just an opinion, I would say blender is a good starting choice - a good (risk free) way to learn 3D software.


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Cloth Vertex Groups Problems in Animation
I am currently animating my character. I set the parent of the cape to the neck bone and assigned vertex groups in the cloth modifier. However, when I animate it, there seems to have something under the cape. Even if I remove everything that is supposed to be under the cape, it still looks like the situation in the photo below. Please tell me how to solve this.
Link to file: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CL1vz-TE52nkvyK6aDs268PHjIFtQ96R?usp=sharing

just move your collision modifier after the armature modifier:

Got it, thank you so much!

@Vic if he answered correctly, check the validation button  ;)


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Cloth Simulation Breaks
I have trouble using cloth simulation and rigidbody. I attached a string to a pumpkin (which is the rigidbody part), and I set the string to have a cloth physics property. However, when I start the simulation, the string just breaks without reason. Please help me solve this problem.
Link to file: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CL1vz-TE52nkvyK6aDs268PHjIFtQ96R?usp=sharing

maybe you should fake the simulation? what is your final goal?

I don't want the string to break. I just want the string to be hang on the character's neck. And I haven't heard of faking simulations before, what is it?

First off maybe you should pin the top of the rope and parent to the body so that it stick to the neck?

Is it possible to have multiple pin groups pinned? I'm already pinning the bottom part of the string on the pumpkin.

Why do you even use a physic simulation to begin with? This doesn't look like a scenario that asks for it. A bunch of bones would do it in a simpler way.

Yeah thats true, but I'm still wondering why the string breaks.

because the physic simulations are not completely accurate   ;)   you often need to cheat, and if you can do without physics, do it

got it, thank you!


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How to export from a blender file the .obj and .mtl file with texture
I am new to blender. Here is my need.
I downloaded nice 3D models, e.g., from here. It includes a .blend file and the Texture file in jpg.
When I open the .blend file, I can see the object with texture. What I need is that I want to save it to .obj and .mtl files with the texture.
Here is what I did (I'm using blender 3.2.2)

Hit File -> Export -> Wavefront (.obj).
Select OBJ Objects and Material Groups.
Set Path Mode from "Auto" to "Copy".
Set Forward to X-axis and Up to Z-axis (this is just for my need).

Then I export to a folder, where I see a .obj and a .mtl file. But if I open the .obj file in a new blender file, I cannot see the texture. In particular, the .mtl file does not have map_Kd nor a path to the texture.
Here is what I tried:
I tried to manually modify the .mtl file by setting "map_Kd PATH_TO_TEXTURE." Now, if I open the blender and import the .obj file, I can see the color but still no texture.
Can anyone help me with this? Thank you very much in advance!

Same here. Looking for an answer.


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how can I extrude several Bezier-curves with the exact same height?
-in Object mode, I create those 2 Bezier-curves (the rectangle and the star) and a circle-curve

-I set all the scale for all of these three curves to 1.000

-I set the origin for each curve to its geometry
-in Object Data Properties, under the title Shape: I click on the button “2D”
-Fill Mode: Both
-Geometry: Extrude: 0.5 m

-> result/problem: every shape has a different value of extrusion
How can I get the all extruded the same height?
enter image description here

ps: I have the exact same problem when making voluminous tubes out of Bezier-curves: the extrusion value I put in the field is always the same, whereas the thickness of each tube is different.
Thank you very much for your time and effort! I appreciate it.

If you Ctrl-A  applied the object-level scale of the curves, to set their scale to 1, their previous scale might have been baked into their 'Radius' setting, to compensate. In Edit Mode, N-panel, 'Item' tab, check the Mean Radius of the control-points.

Hey Robin thanks for anwering. I guess you are referring to the tubes-problem with the "radius". Right now, I'm just worried about the extrusion of the curves. I just tried out both versions (one with and the other without Ctrl+A): it always gives me a different height/depth when it comes to the extrusion...

Hi, Thereo, Radius scales extrusion height, too ... can you share your file on https://blend-exchange.com/ ?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/86873/radius-on-beveled-curve-incorrect

Hi Robin, I just uploaded one of my files with the exact same problem (it's different forms/ extruded curves but the exact same problem). I'll post the link to the file here below:


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planes from images not correct
I have been following a tutorial and they put a image from plane image on the side of the scene to add shadow from off camera, it says you have to click the diffuse plus transparency. I don't have that option anywhere. What can I do?

are you using cycles?

yes, I have umped between that and blender render and nothing happens. I am also using version 2.79

Anyone? Bump...

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


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Model's end not following bone
I'm just so new to blender I can't even figure out why this is happening. (picture)

that part of the mesh is surely missing weights

Looks like a weighting issue. This should fix it:

Tab into Edit mode.
Select one set of the problem vertices (making the armature modifier work in edit mode will be useful here).
Go to the mesh properties tab of the Properties panel (the triangle), and find the vertex group matching their bone. Hit Assign.
Repeat with the other arm.

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Why are two of the teeth stuck in space away from my dinosaur?

I'm sure there are a lot of other issues with my file, because this is basically my first actual animated rig in Blender, but the only issue I'm really concerned with right now is the two bottom teeth that are floating in space.
In edit mode with the mesh selected as well as rest position of the armature, the teeth are in exactly the right place. But when I'm in pose mode, where I've actually animated the dinosaur, two of the teeth are floating in space. Please let me know how to get them to stay in the mouth where they're supposed to be!
Thanks in advance!

Without knowing the details of your rig, the most significant difference between the two floating teeth and the adjacent teeth or the teeth on the other side is the vertex weight in the DEF-jaw vertex group.

Assigning full weight to both teeth for this group seems to fix the problem.

That did it! Thanks so much! I didn't realize I had to go to a specific vertex group to weight paint it properly.


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Replacing one object out of two, how does it work?
I have a character out of 3 parts, i pressed cntrl p and made it to one object.
Now I want to replace one cube with these three parts. I tried cntrl l and i tried it with the properties menu but it doesnt work either. Sorry I come from Germany, so my english not good but I hope you are able to understand me anyway.
So thank you

Please clarify your question. Ctrl+P Parents an object to another. They stay seperate objekts.

Sure but i thought that could help... so how can i replace one object with two or three or four... other objects? For example i have one cube and this cube i want to replace with a group of objects like two circles. In blender game engine

...i have the simple things like movement and so on binded to a cube so now how can i replace that cube with my game char which is out of three parts so that the movement keeps

You need to clarify your question. You mention the Game Engine in the comments but nowhere in the question and tags. What is it exactly that you are trying to do? Please edit your question and clearly state your intentions with some screenshots of your scene

I solved it myself. I made the three meshes together by pressing Ctrl+J so that it is one object and then I replaced it with the cube. Then I went to edit mode and selected one part and pressed P and chose selected. It's again a separated mesh.


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fps setup... camera looks into character... how to fix this?
How can I make the body of my character in the blender game engine invisible (just for the camera) so that I am not able to look inside the body anymore.
I could make a camera collision but thats not so useful for that case because I still want to move my camera fully downwards.

Why you show the character at all? Is there any situation it will be visible to the camera? If you really need you can have parts of the body like arms and legs. In general it is a good idea to restrict the camera orientation to stay inside a plausible range.

the reason is the multiplayer otherwise just arms fly around

You have a splitscreen game (= two players playing at the same window)?

no, i will make it online but i want to add the multiplayer function later

In this case your camera will never show the players character. All you see is the character of the other player (which gets remote controlled by the other client). The answer is: You do not need the player character as mesh.


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shape acquisition from structured light
I am working on 3D reconstruction using structured light technique. Can the hardware(consisting of camera,a projector) be simulated in blender to generate the light pattern and project it on the object so that the generated images can be used to plot the point cloud?


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How to make an object follow the end of another object that is following a curve?
How do I make an object that follows another object exactly like this but without the deformation issue?

https://i.sstatic.net/D5bK9.jpg
(The curve can be manipulated using the empties through hook modifiers, the object with the deformation issue is not parented to anything. I used a curve modifier for the object with the deformation issue and it is tracking the curve shown, it is moved in a position so that it always follow the end of the tentacle and its rotation is correct)


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How to fix this ngon after beveling the corner?
I used a bevel on this edge and got this ngon in the mesh. How can I fix this?

Why do you need to fix it, what's wrong with it?

@GordonBrinkmann: assuming he wants quads or tris, because he wrote "ngons"? ;)

@Chris Assumingly yes, but I would like to know if he needs quads for a reason (which might be important as to how you convert it best into quads - like as few as possible or preferably many similar sized quads) or if he just believes in the myth that "no matter what purpose the mesh has, always use quads!" Same goes for tris, simple solution would be just to triangulate automatically with Ctrl+T. But without knowing why he needs it, the result might not be very satisfying.

I wanted only to use quads because I had problems with adding supporting loops on the edges. I found another way of doing this without adding the ngon. I just extruded and moved the edge and it didnt added extra ngons.


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The colors don't appear correctly when I append a grease pencil animation into another file
I just started using blender for a school project. I downloaded brushes and used them in my grease pencil animation. It looks fine on my screen (first photo) but when I append it into another file, it looks translucent and messy (second & third photo). The colors are not showing properly. Please help my deadline is tomorrow haha.

Please share your blend file with https://blend-exchange.com/. We need more information about your issue.


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Sound to samples not working
Inserted a keyframe in Shape Keys Key 1 Value (Relative checked).
Graph editor:Clicked sound to samples, downloaded audio.
f-curve shows up. Play animation,nothing happens.
Please help. Thank you

It should work right out of the box, so you'd better check some obvious things, like the corrispondance between the name in the graph editor with the name of the shape key, and the values shown in graph with the value of the shape key.

If this doesn't solve, please upload your file, packing your audio (Menu File > External data > Pack Resources).

Hello Josh, Attempting to pack the file, I cannot pack the file because I get an error saying: dried ground brush not found. And I cannot find it either. Comment? Cheers

It didn't pack that brush, but it did pack others external resources, including sounds.

How do I upload the file?

https://blend-exchange.com/

Josh :  I do not understand what just happened. I made a small copy of the file to send to you. Then the animation worked. And I went back to the original file, and now the animation works. Have not the foggiest. I spent a week or more trying to get this to work, and without doing any new, now it works.  ??? Tk

By the way, could you tell me how to continue packing the file automatically by somehow getting rid of the dried ground brush which prevents the file from automatically packing resources.


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Baking hair on to a normal map
How can i bake the hair particles to a normal map?
If i try to convert hair to mesh, and do it normally, blender doesn’t do it, since the mesh does not have any faces.
I tried using the skin modifier to give the strands some thickness, and while it did work, and i managed to bake the particles to this plane, it is horribly laggy, and blender just crashes if i try to to use it for anything more complex than this quick test


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How to texture particle object hair
I generated some low poly fur using hair particles and a single triangle object

How can i sorta "sample" the texture underneath the particle object origin, and color the entire triangle in the color of that "sampled" pixel?

Here is a similar question (https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/203035/how-to-add-a-texture-to-the-emitter-surface-of-a-hair-particle-object-over-ridi). But the question mentions an Image Texture while the accepted answer uses a procedural Noise Texture with object coordinates and no UV map. I guess that won't work for you :-(


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Hold function in geometry node
I would like to implement a hold function: a function that holds the value at a previous peak for a specific amount of time.
I would like to mitigate the change of a parameter with this. By default this parameter is very volatile and I want to hold its value at the local maximum of the, say, last 2 seconds. It means that it will be able to grow, but the decrising phase will be mitigated for a while.
I need to use this function in the Geometry node. Unfortunatley in the Geometry nodes I'm not aware of any buffer node which I can use to store the local maximum for a specific number of frames.
I tried to use the Random Value node because I believed that it will change it's value only if it gets a new Seed and store its previous value until the Seed is changed. But unfortunately it is updated if any of its inputs are changed. (I set the Min/Max to the variable I wanted to store, and it keeps changing).
Do you have any ideas? Thank you!

You may want to have a look at Simulation nodes https://youtu.be/0p_Rds5w01U

or at least tell us which Blender version you are using...

ATM GN only has one state so this isn't really possible

Andris would a rolling average be acceptable? Easier, I think.. @Gorgious.. we have sorting, and we have the Simulation branch of GN, (or the buffer-hack,) , so maybe it would be possible to stash values on proxy geo. from frame to frame?

@RobinBetts yes, you're right ! It's just I'm a bit hesitant to advise people to go that route because Simulation Nodes and the buffer hack are an alpha product and, well, a hack :) Honestly I would either wait for an officially supported way to store & retrieve arbitrary data using GN or try out established solutions like Sverchok, Animation Nodes. It might even be solvable with a relatively simple python script. But the question is a little bit too open-ended, could you add a bit more info about your actual setup, OP ?

Thanks for the tips. I'm quite new with Blender. Saw a video or two about the buffer-hack but with limited knowledge I was not able to digest. Instead I wrote a Python script where I was able to store values through different frames in global variables. Global variables don't smell good from my previous studies but at least it works.


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Prevent Particles from falling
I'm animating a space scene in Blender were to asteroids collide and explode. I used a particle system and an explode modifier to realize it. The only problem is that the particles fall down after exploding. Of course I want them not to fall because i want to simulate no gravity. I already gave the particles a mass of zero in the physics tab but they are still falling.
Does someone know how I can stop the particles falling?

You can control the effect gravity has on the particle system under the Field Weights section:

+1 That's possible, too. I disabled it for the whole scene because of the sentence "Of course I want them not to fall because i want to simulate no gravity." So I thought overall no gravity would fit the situation best instead of just disabling it on the particles.

Agreed, thought I'd include this answer as well since it's nice to have this fine level of control, I'd +1 your answer but my reps not high enough.

That's okay, no problem :)

Since your scene takes place in space, there is no need for gravity. Disable Gravity in the Scene Properties:


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Looping hair with a jumping animation
I'm using hair dynamics for my particle hair to animate a short 60 frame jumping animation. I'd like to have the hair be at the same location from the first frame to the last frame for looping purposes.
I tried different simulation start and end points,
Tripling frame count from 60 to 180 and using the simulations from 120-180,
but they all appear slightly different.
Any tips? Thanks

you could do this with a mesh cache. Export your hair as a point cache 2 times. Then use meshcache influence to interpolate between them.

So point cache is the same one as baking on hair dynamics right? So I bake them twice, and insert those into the mesh cache modifier? Do I need to make two mesh cache modifiers?

@Chris Good idea. For someone who never did that a proper answer how to do this would be great :)

@Search: exactly. So you "bake" (export pointcache -> you have to enable the add-on for that) just the two "slightly" different hair "frames", then give two cache modifiers...i think even one is enough...because it changes then from your "slightly" different to your loop start as you want it. Baking is normally multiple frames -> pointcache has just one frame ;)

Thanks for the detailed answer. But I might be doing something wrong. Baking the cache > Export as .pc2 using the add-on > add MeshCache modifier on the hair > File format is pc2 > File path is the exported .pc2 file > influence set to 1.0 > Turn off hair dynamics > and if I start the animation there is no movement.Hair particles stay on the head but my scalp object shifts to a weird location away from the head.


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Adding shader effects if material is not controlled by the principled BSDF?

I apologize if this is not enough information, I will add more if necessary.
This is an object (hinted in the picture) imported from DAZ Studio and I'd like to create a wet effect to this object. But controlling any of principled BSDF node does not make any changes.
I'm guessing I have to add something in between "Dicktator Shell" node and "Material Output" but I'm not sure what to. It seems like none of the tutorial videos out there helped me out to solve this issue.
Cheers.

I would rather examine what this "Dicktator Shell" and the "DAZ Dual Lobe" node groups are doing on the inside. They both have shader outputs (green), meaning they only pass the complete shader information to the next node. You don't have separate color (yellow), float (grey) or vector (purple) outputs to manipulate certain aspects of the shader. So the question would be, what happens inside the group so that changing the Principled BSDF doesn't seem to have any effect? And if it really doesn't, what use has it to plug it in there anyway?

However, at least the "DAZ Dual Lobe" has a few float inputs, for example Roughness. Maybe changing values there might help in creating a wet effect. But there the mix factor Fac is set to 0.5, so I guess it uses half the values of the Principled BSDF settings and half its own. Then I would should either change the value to 0 or 1 or change the roughness on both, the Principled BSDF and the _"DAZ Dual Lobe" nodes. Therefore I'm voting to close this question unless you provide more details, for example tab into the node groups to show us what is going on in there.

Changing anything before the dicktator shell node doesn't have any effect. Not even the DAZ Dual Lobe. The dicktator shell and the dicktator UVs v2 acts like its own texture. (I'm not sure if I'm explaining this right). I'd like to show you the node group but I'm sorry, where do you find the node group tab? There's not a node group tab on the right vertical tabs.

What I meant was you have to press Tab with a node group selected. It's like going into Edit Mode on an object. Then you can see what's hidden inside the group. But if changing anything before it doesn't have any effect, why are the nodes even there? Does it change something if you delete them?

Oh my gosh, didn't even know there were more nodes inside a node. https://imgur.com/a/a4TQ8v6 < This is what it looks like inside the Dicktator Shell node. But changing the principled BSDF from here works!
But if you could still shed me some light on how to make a wet effect from here, I'd be grateful.

How to make a wet effect is a different task then just figuring out why your changes had no effect. First of all, there is so much going on inside and there's another "DAZ Dual Lobe" inside additionally to the one outside where I have no idea what it does. Then what exactly do you want as "wet effect"? How you you want to spread wetness on whatever your object is? Is it supposed to be cloth, concrete, glass? There are different kinds of "wet effect" and there are many tutorials out there for different looks.

I did take a look at multiple tutorials regarding wet effects and they all start from scratch so it confused me since I'm having to insert them in between pre made nodes, not to mention all the ones I tried had no effect hence the original topic of this question. But now I'm starting to get somewhere thanks to you over the node group discovery. The wet effect I want it is on the human skin. The shell node name gives it off. Here's the DAZ Dual Lobe node group here https://imgur.com/a/a4TQ8v6. So I guess I'll start messing with the shader nodes inside the Dicktator Shell node group...

What happens if you set the 'Influence' to 0? And then vary it?

The dicktator shell node has its own texture and a UV map so setting it to 0 gets rid of the texture. But yes the nodes before it work if I do do that.


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How to edit first and last keyframe in the graph editor seamless for a looping animation?

This ia short animation loop where a ball floats up and down on the surface of the water. And the middle keyframe is where an outside force slightly pushes it up the water. So the ball floats up with a little more speed then down and this repeats.
My issue right now is that the at the point where B loops back to A, the motion doesn't look smooth.
Is there a trick to making the graph's flow from keyframe B to keyframe A smooth and seamless without manually having to do trial and error?

You can duplicate the keyframe A:


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Is there not a way to completely delete an object from the scene?
I don't know if this is just an issue for me but deleting a rig along with all its hierarchy including bones and mats in object mode doesn't fully delete them for me. The object disappears from the outliner, but if I switch to Blender File mode, images and materials still remain, resulting in a bigger .blend file if I decide to import another object.

You can either:

save the file, close and reopen it: every unused and unprotected datablock will be removed.

go to the outliner, set its mode to "Orphan data", click the "Purge" button, click it again until it will stop acting, as it works on hierarchies with one by one steps. If some items are unassigned and protected they will show a shield icon (fake user), you can choose if to remove the protection and delete them or leave the shield and mantain them in the file.

For the repeated purging to step through the hierarchy, there are also Recursive... cleaning options in the File > Clean Up menu which will do the repeated purging for you.

If the material is no longer used, it will still appear in the Outliner, with the prefix 0, but if you close and reopen the file, it won't be available anymore, Blender has got rid of it (that's what happens to the data preeceded by a 0). The image that your material use will still be here because it is one level below in the hierarchy, but this time it has the 0 prefix and if you close and reopen again the file, this time the image will be deleted. This is how the things are done in Blender (yes a bit complicated).
But to quickly get rid of all the unused datas you can go into the Orphan Data list of the Outliner and click on the Purge button, of File > Clean-Up > Unused Data-Blocks.
As pointed out by Gordon, there is also Recursive Unused Data-Blocks option also including any indirectly used data-blocks i.e. those only used by unused data-blocks.

Like commented above, there is also Recursive Unused Data-Blocks option also including any indirectly used data-blocks i.e. those only used by unused data-blocks.

@Gordon Brinkmann Oh ok thanks I've forgotten this one


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Baking indirect illumination from emissive material to texture (Cycles)
I make models for video games, and bake most of the details to textures that are used in a separate engine (Unreal, Unity, etc). I've tried out baking in Blender, and while stuff like normal maps and ao works fine, I have an issue with the emit bake type. When baking a map from an object that has a material with an emission (simply set to white in this example), resulting map only has the silhouette of the object, but it doesn't have any indirect illumination from it on adjacent objects.
Normally I use Vray in 3ds Max to bake out this sort of lightmap from a highpoly to lowpoly. It greatly improves the look of assets with small lights that would be too expensive to do in-engine. So it would be great if Blender's Cycles could achieve the same result. Is it possible and I'm missing some settings, or this functionality is not supported?
Screenshots for clarity. Some test objects are projected to a plane. The small box has a simple BSDF material with emission. When rendered with Emit bake type, only the silhouette is baked. Third screenshot is the desired result - rendered using Vray in 3ds Max for illustration purposes.

Did you ever find a solution? The best I could do was to bake from actual lights but it's not the same

Unfortunately I'm still forced to use Vray in 3ds Max for this. I'd try Vray in Blender, but they never did release a version of 2.8.
It's a very specific use case, I can understand why it's overlooked by the devs.


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How do you crop a video in the current Blender Video Editor?
How do you correctly crop a video in blender and remove all resulting blank space that appears along the side of the video?

I have already applied the "Crop" and "Offset" options in the video transform settings, but that results in the blank space shown in the attached image. I found a tutorial that shows you can modify the render dimensions to remove the space (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2MVqRYUatI), but the interface is outdated and if you update the dimensions in the "Output" panel, all it does is scale the video resolution down (not actually changing the dimensions).
Does anyone know how to crop a video and remove blank bar on the side?

If you want to change the resolution of the project to fit your image, select the image strip, and select this:

Thanks for the response! I just took a look and it looks like that menu is specific to images (I'm trying to crop a video).
However, I did find the set render size option for video nested under [Strip > Movie Strip > Set Render Size]. When I tried clicking it, I notice the resolution of the "output" is changed, but it does not seem to remove the blank bar on the side of the video.

That function should change the output resolution to fit the active strip(white outline + white text). So if you selected that strip above the area to the right in your screenshot above should be removed(remember to uncheck crop and offset from that strip).

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I was able to get an effective crop by:

Selecting Strip > Movie Strip > Set Render Size
Enabling offset -> SET POSITION X TO BE A NEGATIVE NUMBER (this was used to crop the left side of the image)
Enabling crop -> SET RIGHT TO BE A POSITIVE NUMBER (this was used to crop the right side of the image)
Changing the Output Resolution X by subtracting the sum of the absolute value of offset x + crop right

My issue previously was that I was setting the Crop left and right, which results in distortions when changing the resolution.

I have previously tried to address the oddities of crop and offset(but later gave up on trying to improve the vse): https://developer.blender.org/T74323

Thanks to @tintwotin for pointing me in the right direction, I was able to get an effective crop by:

Selecting Strip > Movie Strip > Set Render Size
Enabling offset -> SET POSITION X TO BE A NEGATIVE NUMBER (this was used to crop the left side of the image)
Enabling crop -> SET RIGHT TO BE A POSITIVE NUMBER (this was used to crop the right side of the image)
Changing the Output Resolution X by subtracting the sum of the absolute value of offset x + crop right values

My issue previously was that I was setting the Crop left and right, which results in distortions when changing the resolution.


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How do I toggle visibility on a specific material group?
I have a mesh with diffuse and normal textures, and I've parted it out into several groups so I could distinguish metallic sections from non-metallic.  Let's say that the main texture group is A, the metallic portions are B, and then I've got a sub-section of B, which I'll call C.  C has the same material settings as B, but I distinguished it from B in the hopes I could toggle its visibility.
Just for context, C is a mask that covers part of the character's face, and I'd like the option of showing the character with and without the mask.  How can I do this in Blender?

This part which you call C which you say is a mask, is it an image texture (ie. the mask is an image) or is some faces selected to assign to a new material slot?

It's a literal mask that the character is wearing, so yes, it's some faces of the mesh selected and assigned to a new material slot.  B and C both have the exact same material setup.  I separated C into a new material group in the hopes that I could toggle it on and off.

So you just need to hide the mask's geometry and this geometry is part of the mesh you are working with and you don't want to seperate it right?

I'd prefer not to separate the geometry.  This model has an armature and animation attached, and I'm worried that attempting to split up the model will mess all that up.

In that case the answer that I have provided will work perefectly fine.

Some supporting screenshots may have been helpful to figure out what you are doing and might have spared some comments asking for clarification...

You can use the Mask modifier.
Select the faces that you want to hide and put them into a Vertex Group. Now just use that group in the Mask modifier and click the invert option next to it. You can now toggle on and off the visibility of this modifier to see your character with and without the mask.
You can also add a custom property to use it to drive your modifier's visibility.

Very cool, thanks!


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How can I get my renders to look more like what I see in my viewing window?
I have a character animation I'm trying to render.  When I'm working on it in the main viewing window, it looks like this:

To me, this looks great.  The water looks just like I want it to.  When I render it, however, this is what I get:

Now the water is washed out and plastic.  The metal parts are also wrong; they look more like ceramic than metal.  Very little of the reflection is coming through.  What am I doing wrong?

You are not exactly doing something wrong, but to me it looks like the first one is Material Preview. Unless you enabled Scene Lights and Scene World in the viewport shading options, the Material Preview uses a default HDRI to light the scene. In the second image it looks like the lighting is very different. Of course the lighting makes a big difference on how things look like. The Material Preview uses Eevee for display, so if you want the render to look like the preview, you should enable Scene Lights and Scene World, this way they should be mostly the same.

Of course if the Material Preview looks better because it has a better environment lighting, then using scene lights/world will make it look less good (= like the render, not the other way round). However the problem  is not that the render quality is worse than preview per se, it is a matter of not having a good lighting / environment setup for it to look better. You could as well disable Scene Lights/World in rendered view to make it look like the better Material Preview, however this will only work in the viewport. If you hit F12 to render it will always use the scene lights/world.

Never mind, I just figured it out.  It's in the View menu, and you can select Viewport Render Animation.  It is ridiculous how I didn't know that.


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How can I fix the weight painting on this Unity mesh?
I have a character from Unity:

When I export her from AssetStudio, she comes through badly distorted like this, especially in the arms.  I suspect the weight painting is messed up, but I'm at a loss on how to fix it. This is the HD version of this character.  The LD version doesn't have this problem, so I was hoping to transfer the weights from the LD version to the HD version, but the best I've gotten it to work is that some body parts get corrected while others get worse.
I've also tried clearing the mesh's parent and the re-parenting it to the armature using Automatic Weights; this made it a bit better, but there was still a lot of distortion.  I could use some solid suggestions.  How can I get this character's weight painting to work correctly?
Here's my .blend file, with both HD and LD versions:
Blend File

Transferring weights by data transfer modifier gets rid of most problems:

Where problems remain are where surfaces on the source (LD) mesh are very close to each other: hair, robe, chest are all basically on top of each other, so getting weights from the nearest won't necessarily get weights from the right bit:

The chest is getting weight from the hair mesh.  But we can prevent it from doing that by separating out LD's hair to a new object:

Then we can transfer weights from the body, to the body, and from the hair, to the hair, without the surfaces of the two competing with each other:

And, we get immediate improvement.
The more that you part it out, the more specific you can be about which part of the LD you want to copy from.  You may wish to part out the HD as well so that you can transfer weights from different parts of the LD to previously undivided parts of the HD.  Likely, the next bits you'd want to part out would be the various shawls.

Thanks @Nathan.  I think this will work.


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How do I adjust the level of influence a texture map has on an object?
I have a model with a variety of image textures, including textures for the metallic and roughness nodes.  I've found that if I invert the image maps for those nodes in Photoshop, then plug them into the nodes with an Invert node, and turn the Fac down to 0.75 on each of them, I get those textures to behave perfectly.  It does seem like a fairly stupid way to do it; shouldn't I be able to apply a Fac to those nodes without having to go through the inconvenience of inverting it?  How can I do this?

You could use a Color > Invert node for the inversion, and a math node (color/float) to multiply by a factor between zero and one. But textures made correctly for a material are meant to work together as is. Small tweaks may happen to appeal user taste, but you shouldn't need such drastic changes. Are you using those maps correctly?

Probably not.  I have a image file that's channel-packed, and it contains the metallic, specular, and alpha textures.  I use the red channel for the metallic node and the inverse of that texture for the roughness (or vice versa, I can't remember now), and the metallic bits of the model look perfect, as long as the effect is turned down to 75%.

Then all you need is a Separate Color node to isolate the channels, and then do the rest as I mentioned above.

The setup could be made like this:

Use a Separate Color node to isolate each color channel. Use an Invert Color to flip the Red channel (you could also use a Map Range node with its "From" settings swapped, or a flipped Color Ramp). Use a Math node to multiply the Red channel by 0.75 (equals to 75%).

Hey, that's very helpful.  If I remember correctly, I was using the setup I had before because Blender would export that setup mostly intact, which meant the folks to whom I distributed this content didn't have to fool with the node setup.  Maybe it's time to let that go and focus on doing it the right way.  Thanks so much for your help!


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How do I get this object to join with the animation?
I have this figure with a sword as a separate object:

This character has a 422-frame animation, and the sword is supposed to be a part of it.  Basically, the character is supposed to take out the sword with his right hand (which means the sword springs out of nowhere around keyframe 41), twirl it around, and then carry on with his animation.  My problem is that I can't seem to get the sword to join with the animation.
The armature has a bone called bn_r_weapon, and that seems to be the bone that should be controlling the sword.  I have tried many things to get this to work.  I have added a vertex group to the sword that matches that bone's name and then tried various parenting methods.  I've tried to parent to the armature, I've tried entering Pose mode and parenting directly to that bone.  One of three things happens: 1) the mesh badly distorts, 2) the sword joins with the animation, but rotated and translated completely wrong, or 3) nothing happens at all, and the mesh stays right there on the floor while the rest of the character carries on with the animation.
Please help.  I'm completely out of ideas.  I have tried to follow advice from similar threads, but they always result in one of the three outcomes I described above.  My blend file is here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/vpsy3rl7n7ckwgm/SM_WIP.blend/file
How can I get this sword to join with the character's animation?

In object mode go to frame 50, move and rotate the sword until you get the desired pose, shift select the rig, go to pose mode, select the bn_r_weapon bone and press Ctrl P > Bone.

I was hunting for a procedural way to do this, but your solution really does solve the problem.  Thanks!

The file contains no clue to where the sword is supposed to be.

It's supposed to be at the same location as the bone bn_r_weapon.


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Change Subdivision Surface (2.9)
if I add a subdivision modifier with CTRL+2 the cube changes the way I want it to. How can I now mark the individually created faces? Unfortunately only the group is possible.
In Version 2.83 it worked without problems.

What are you talking about? It worked exactly the same in prior versions - with the modifier not applied you cannot edit geometry generated by it, only the geometry that is used by it to generate the result.

Hello :). You can see all faces by unchecking Optimal Display in your modifier (it's enabled by default in 2.9). But to select the faces, you still need to apply the modifier.

Thank you very much. I missed the apply button. It changed a little bit in Version 2.9 and i didnt find it.
Now it worked!


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Baking in Cycles ver 2.9 issues
Has anyone else had issues with baking a texture in cycles in the 2.9 version?  Whenever I try to bake the texture, it crashes instantly.  I tried it on a simple plane and cube thinking that my scene was too complex but it does it every time.  The last version of 2.8 still works great.  Is there a new setup, or will it be a bug fix in the future?

There is no such issue with me when i do baking :)
Set render settings to default (Supported , CPU) maybe you are using Experimental for GPU .
I had some Crashes when I was using Experimental for feature set
I hope this helps you
GL.


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Blender save files wrong
I'm really new to Blender. I have problem with saving .blend files. When I save file in Blender, and try to open in another Modeling app, it's just nothing. I think this is of ngons, but i don't know what to do. http://www.mediafire.com/file/12u2csyge7ff7d9/file.

The other software likely doesn't support blend files. Check what files formats the target software supports. Blender can export to other formats through File > Export. More exporters can be installed as add-ons.

Unity supports .blend files.

Blender saves the files correctly.
Ngons have nothing to do with this (always search for the meaning of words before using them).
Different applications support different formats of 3d objects and object attributes. No single application is compatible with the many different formats that exist.
To open the files in a different app, then you have to export in a format that the other app can deal with.
When you convert an object to another format, not all attributes (textures, animations, constraints, modifiers, armatures or simulations) will be saved a s part of a format that does not support such attributes.

read the following link as well: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures

Thanks for link susu. I had the same problem. When I took the .blend file and imported it to the Unity, I had the same error as in the link you sent. I am very new at Blender and did not really understand what was going on and asked this stupid question. But I have another question, how to export UV coordinates with your mesh into Unity. I changed the Path Mode to Copy, but it changed nothing.

I see just black mesh, and I can't change material of mesh.

This site works different than "forums", don't ask more than one question on the same page. Create a new question in a different page.


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Alpha has problem when export as png
Whenever I export a render result as png, the alpha(translucent)parts has no problem when view in image editor(pic.1). But when I view them in other software after save as png, they disappear or look very strange(pic.2).
Can anyone solve this? I export a lot of png in my workflow because I have to ps render on photos. Sorry for my English.

OK got it, something to do with my material.

I'd need more information, bc. I'm not sure what the problem is, but it seems you saved the png without alpha

@FrederikSteinmetz Thank you for answering, it happens that my material is a no noise glass material I downloaded online, it doesn't render alpha pass correctly.

Just curious: why use a downloaded glass material? No noise in the shadows? Anyways, watch captain disillusion's alpha channel rant on youtube, it should help.

@FrederikSteinmetz Yup, that's why. Blender guru's glass material, said to reduce render time a lot. New to blender so I downloaded it. Thanks for the youtube recommend! This community is great!


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using png as texture, color it white appears to be much larger than color it black

At first I thought it was just perception of my eyes of the two colors, but the different is too big to be ignore.
How to fix it and what's the cause?

i just made a little test [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/2ShS3.jpg and it looks like your are totally right and your eyes work great! ;)

@Chris Thank you for the effort. And can you find a fix? I fixed it by altering the graphic on the png in other software, but it's a lot of work, hope there is fix in blender.

i wish i knew how...no...i am also interested in answers as well ;)


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Rigging: Only one leg moves in Unity, but both legs move in Blender?
I'm new to Blender and Unity, only one leg is moving correctly in Unity but in Blender both legs/armature bones move the model. One thing that did happen is the problem leg was originally not lifting and just moving forward and I had to go back and fix it, I'm thinking something happened and I don't know how to backtrack.
The missing leg is leg_R and that's the problem leg, any idea what's going on in Unity?
Playing the animation in Dope Sheets works perfectly in Blender though.
One thing I noticed, not sure if this is relevant, but under relations there's these blue squares and all bones show up in the first blue square, but the second blue square has the problem leg missing:

For clarification, those blue squares are layers and clicking on one of them moves the active selected bone to the corresponding layer. All the visible layers can be set/viewed under the Armature tab>Skeleton.

As for your problem, I can't know for sure. Try to reimport the exported model in a fresh blend file to see if they work well as intended, if they don't, it would be a problem with your export.

Okay thank you, I just started over and made sure everything was moved correctly the first time, when I went back and changed it is when I threw it off


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Eyes won't move even using with ARP
I was doing a sims 2 render, following a tutorial that I saw on Youtube, note that it's my first time doing a sims 2 render and using blender at the same time. I am using Auto Rig Pro/ARP. The problem is that the model's eyes doesn't move whenever I rig the head. I have no idea what to do next, as I tried rewatching everything from the tute but still the eyes won't budge. :(
here's the tute that i'm following recently. I am using Blender 2.8, as reccomended in their video.
Model's blenderfiles. The facerigs one is the most updated while the gonerilmybeloved file is the backup one before I added some rigs

IDK about the tutorial, but do you understand how armatures and rigging fundamentally work? Like, vertex groups and the Armature Deform modifier and all that? (Also, I’m pretty sure NOBODY calls it a “tute” )

The body has the Armature Modifier to control the mesh, but the eyes object does not.

To solve this select the eyes object first then the armature object, press Ctrl+P and select "With Automatic Weights".

This adds the Armature Modifer to the eyes object, set the object's parent to the Armature object and the adds weigths to the vertices for each deformation bones.


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Creating a round bowl shape with wavy edge
I want to create a mesh like below.

I thought there are some ways to create this, but I don't think there is perfect way.

Make a curve part of the wave and apply array modifier.
It is very direct way but hard to manipulate the wavy edge I think.
Make a wavy curve and roll it and extrude.
It's easy to manipulate the wavy edge shape, but it will be a cylinderic shape, not a bowl.

Is there any better way for this? Or what's the better do you think?

That's a perfect use case for geometry nodes (that's of course just my opinion), so with a node setup like this:

you can do these things here:

It is amazing but paradoxically decreasing productivity. You focused on the wavy edge, I mentioned though. As you can see, the example mesh has more details such like inner edge(sides are not perfectly sphere), sides angle(sides are not pointing perfect +Z) etc. I agree, it can be done by the code as well, however I don't think implementing is easier or faster than this one. But I will check as answer because showing about the geometry node system what I didn't consider.

Start with a cube. Give it a Subdivision Surface Modifier (Level 2) and a Cast Modifier with the Factor set to 1. Apply them both in top to bottom order. This will give you a "round cube".

Select the top half of faces and delete them.

Select the top ring of vertices - select every other by using Checker Deselect

Move the selected vertices "down" on the Z-Axis, and then scale them in slightly to make them match the curvature of the rest of the "bowl"

Add a Solidify Modifier and another Subdivision Surface modifier to make things rounded. Shade smooth to make it smoother:

If you want more definition in the edges of the bowl, add a Bevel Modifier between the Solidify and Subdivision Surface Modifiers. You can play with some of these values to define slightly different "shapes"  to the edges. I recommend increasing the bevel angle to 31 so it doesn't bevel the edges running towards the bottom center of the bowl:

Instead of moving the vertices down on the Z axis and scaling inwards eyeballing to keep the curvature I would rather double-tap G to edge slide the vertices down.


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Is command line rendering faster than normal rendering?
blender users!
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/command_line/render.html
This manual write-on command line rendering is faster than regular rendering.
I tried it, but the result was that the speed did not change that much.
Is it true the command line rendering is faster?

faster doesn't mean "half the time" - it just means "faster" which can be from 0.00001 milliseconds to hours....so since you already recognized yourself that the speed changed, i do not really understand the question!? If you want to know how you can render faster - just search for that here or on google and you will find a lot of answers like decreasing samples etc.

True. The difference can also be drastically impacted depending on your test render, your hardware. Also whether you render a single frame or a sequence. But in the absolute: there's no UI to display and update, so your hardware can focus "more" on rendering.


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Import error : how can I see .obj objects correctly in Blender?
I wanna import .obj file with texture to make city scene.
So I downloaded  mesh  : .obj ,  material : .mlt  , texture : .jpg ..
Then I imported .obj in blender and I successed.
But I couldnt see any object.
How can I see it ?

Thank you for your comment. But although I changed scale to 0.1 ,1 , 100  , It isnt work.
.obj file has vertexs correctly. but I couldnt any object... blender is too hard for me.

I solved this problem. The object was created in 0,0,0 , but "in model view transformation" , the vertexs were far away from 0,0,0. I found the solution here thank you


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Mapping of Transfer Attribute node is confusing
Signed angle is connected to the viewer with and without transfer attribute node in between, see pics below. The sixth and seventh points are circled out in 3d viewport and they have an attribute 0.393 without the transfer attribute node, which is the average over 4 linked edges.
However when we use "Nearest faces interpolated" mode for transfer attribute, one becomes 0 and the other becomes 1.125. This I cannot understand. Shouldn't these two points be symmetric along z axis therefore have the same value? How can I get this 0 and 1.125?

Domain interpolation can be finicky regardles, but I'm not getting the same result yo do, they both get 0 or 0.314. With Transfer: https://i.imgur.com/gqFztVx.png without:  https://i.imgur.com/d9p0Z8S.png Can you share your file?

Thanks for the response! I found that when Transfer attribute is in the tree, the attribute changes if one tweaks the length of the model along axis in edit mode. For example, you can drag the most right face along x axis and the numbers in the viewer change as if there's a critical point. This is my file https://drive.google.com/file/d/108mOVkKCsD5MDsL8NRQmdsZu-wS2tcCW/view?usp=share_link


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Extending Cylinder with Threading?
I have a cylinder with a thread pattern in the middle, and I am trying to extend it. I tried using the boolean modifier on the middle section and was able to use the array modifier to extend it but it didn't merge. Even though the pattern matched the vertexes are at different positions.

can u pls provide blend file? thx

@Chris Here's the file: https://easyupload.io/v7jr8x

ok, unfortunately you already applied your modifiers...i hoped you didn't.  do you have a version with non-applied modifiers?

No I don't have the original.

Convert your tris to quads with an AltJ, simplify the mesh:

Hide the cylinder, use the Knife to cut a segment (K to activate, A to cut perpendicularly, C to cut through), and press V to rip right away:

Remove the other parts:

Unhide the cylinder and align it with the segment with the Snap (to Vertex) option:

Right click > Shade Smooth, in the Object Data panel click on Clear Custom Clear Split Normals Data, and Auto Smooth :

Apply the Rotation and Scale of your object, give it an Array modifier on Y, enable the Merge option :

You’ll need to correct the topology to make the vertices of the instances stick to each other:


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Making Threaded Rails?
I'm trying to create basically one cylinder going into another cylinder like a bolt/nut, but have the outer cylinder be more of a tube. So the inner cylinder is short like the nut, the idea is to have the inner cylinder be able to slide freely through the outer cylinder.
I need it to move 4.75mm into the outer cylinder per 90 degrees of rotation. So I don't think the same thread pattern as a bolt/nut will work. It might be more accurately like a gun barrel pattern, but the bullet meshes with grooves of the barrel. Sorry I don't really know the terminology.
Here's a general idea of the model, except the tube is suppose to have the grooves as well.

Quick but imperfect solution:
Duplicate this object and use both Relative and Object offset to create a longer sort of... drill bit type object that maintains the rotation you want.

Then use *Boolean Modifier to subtract the inner object from the outer.

This does leave some internal faces that need to be removed, I haven't figured out how to prevent that.  Merge option won't do it for me.

After cleaning up the top two 'ribs'.


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Is overlapping but not connected geometry bad?
In hard surface modeling, I sometimes end up with overlapping faces whose vertices aren't connected:

Is this bad geometry, and should I try to connect them with vertices, or is this totally fine?
The models are for use in games / for practicing and just for fun.

I don't know why the image looks corrupted in the post. It's fine on imgur.

If you encounter a situation where you have 2 faces that share the same geometrical space, sometimes the camera has a hard time deciding which face should be shown in "front". This is known as z-fighting, and usually manifests as a flickering on the surface of the model where the two faces share a space.  This can be visually distracting/realism breaking, so it's best to be avoided if possible. Also - historically, making model assets for games came with the task of producing as few faces as possible in the final model - 2 faces in one spot would have been a massive no-no a few years back.

Most of the time it doesn't result in z-fighting, as it's inside the mesh. Also, sometimes avoiding this kind of geometry results in more faces. In the example I would have to add an edge loop, which could potentially add many more faces.

If you know that most of the time it doesn't result in z-fighting and keeps face numbers down, you already have your answer. By the way, if you simply delete the bottom face of the extrude, there is no z-fighting and you even have one face less than before. No need for edge loop and connecting (this would be necessary for beveling maybe). By the way, the preview looks messy because the background is a fine pattern and the preview is scaled down which leads to interference patterns, Moiré effects etc.

I don't think this can be answered objectively. For instance, try to add a bevel modifier to this geometry : You won't be able to. Try to 3D print ? You will have to remesh it. Try to use a boolean modifier ? You will most certainly run into artifacts. But it will render just fine in Unity, provided you make sure you don't have Z fighting. It really depends on your end goal. The best bet if you want clean geometry is to always keep manifold meshes with quad topology. In your case I would create a whole new object in place of your extrusion. Helps keeping the polygon number low too.

Nowadays you can do this with Alt + E -> Extrude Manifold.

but it does generate two pentagons that have to be knifed away.

Should you avoid it? Yes.
Does it necessarily look bad?
It depends on the direction of the normals of the two overlapping faces.
If the normals are facing the same way you might have some bizarre results in Unity or other game engines. If they're facing different ways and you're using a 1 sided material shader it's not going to look wrong, just 2 sided, and you might not even notice it because a side would be on the inside, and if one only cares about triangle/face count it's totally ignorable.
Anyway, yes, as I said, do avoid overlapping things if you can.


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Hair appears different from viewport rendering preview and actual rendering

Above is the viewport render preview.
Below is the actual render.
I would like the render to look like the viewport render.
I've matched the viewport display and render options to be identical, so they'd appear the same but it's not. What the heck is the problem here?

For the bangs specifically, the number of child particles in "single hairs" is set to 10 for Viewport but 100 for Render. Simply set both to 10 instead:

And here's what you're looking for (fantastic hair, btw):

Hope this helps! Peace and God bless!


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Unusual Vertices issue with rigging a low-poly model?
I've been following a tutorial on how to rig a really basic PS1/Resident Evil-like model. Things have been going fine up until I had assigned the torso vertex group.

I've checked the weight paints and for any loose vertices to the best of my ability but I'm still unsure as to what's going on?
Here's the tutorial that I've been following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0YOZHvGPR8

Hello, as Spood says, please share your file: https://blend-exchange.com/

It appears like you have vertices that are unassigned to a vertex group.
To verify this is the case, in edit mode with your mesh selected, first ensure no vertices are selected with Alt+A. Then go to your vertex group and with the torso Vertex Group selected press the Select button:

This will select all vertices that are in this group that have weights. You should notice the offending vertex will not be selected. To resolve it, select the vertex and press assign, and it will put that vertex into the Torso group with 1.0 Weight.
If this isn't the issue, feel free to share a .blend file and it will be easier to determine the root cause.


text:
I have problems with dream texture depht 2 doesnt start the texture
I cant start texturized 3d with dream texture stabilityai/stable diffusion depht 2

That appears to be something to do with a third-party addon which is not part of Blender so you should ask the addon developers directly rather than here.

make sure your object's material is a default new material


text:
Possible to mask reflections in Eevee?
I've tried outputting the Is Reflection rays into an AOV node to achieve this, but doesn't seem to be working, even though I got the expected result in the viewport, as you can see from the preview in the compositor below.

The brute force solution would be to render a flipped version of the objects that I need to mask the reflections of on a low render time configuration, such as Workbench with flat shading...
I'm open to inventive solutions.

You want the ball to reflect in the floor plane, right?

I want a mask of the ball's reflection in the floor. It is a reflective plane in this case, but if I could find a more general purpose solution that works on different reflective geometries, that would be better.


text:
Absolute lost at words for how to describe this softbody/fluid?
I recently saw a video THE VIDEO
It's of a softbody(i think) cow getting mashed up and broke apart, I have no idea how to describe it so i cant search for a tutorial and the closest thing i found was this
THE OTHER VIDER
How would i do this

This is a soft body plastic deformation and tearing simulation. Currently, Blender's built-in soft body system does not support tearing, and (to my knowledge) the Mantaflow fluid system is not appropriate for the extremely high viscosities needed to emulate it.
Thankfully, there are a couple of free options you can use:
Molecular Addon
Probably your best bet, the Molecular addon uses a very flexible meshless mass-spring system to approximate a wide range of soft body physics (when combined with CubeSurfer) as well as simulate granular flow. Most relevant to your problem is the feature for breaking bonds. Unfortunately the documentation is offline, so I cannot link it to you now.
FLIP Fluids
FLIP Fluids is a fluid solver for blender that supports high-viscosity liquids. While it appears to be a paid addon, it is possible to use it if you compile from source. For your problem, all you need to do is crank the fluid viscosity up and have a blob of fluid in the initial shape of your body.
In the future, I hope the new soft body sim and particle nodes will be up to the task.


text:
What's the best way to solidify a model with complex/messy/disorganized geometry? (Mix of 3D print/Blender problem)
I have a model of a Porsche Boxter that has several layers that "don't exist" (basically it has a bunch of holes in it). I want to make it 3D printable/3D printer-ready, but every time I solidify the model with the solidify modifier it messes up the entire file and becomes really bumpy. I can't separate the parts easily because the geometry is insane. I also tried remeshing but it kept crashing my computer and ruining the definition/sharpness of the shape of the model. I've made it manifold as well and it still doesn't work when I run it through the 3D printer slicer. Any suggestions?


text:
Extruding Edges (Coffee Bag Sides)
after encountering too many errors in the surface of my first attempt, I have now decided to completely remodel my coffee bag. I would like to pull the selected edge inward. However, when I try to do it with G, or even with E for extrusion, I only move the line, but not the entire surface. How can I accomplish this?

That is what happens:

I am trying to create something like this:

Thank you in advance. I am thankful for any tips and hints.
If I am not on the right path, I am open to any suggestions. Thank you.

I'm not a pro at editing vertices, but have you tried selecting the entire face?

Yes, then unfortunately the entire face moves evenly.

Those parts are not topologically good either, you need to give it thickness:

You could begin with an inset (press i then B for Boundary so that it sticks to the mirror axis):

Then extrude this part:

Add some topology and push this edge (after that give your object a Subdivsion Surface modifier, add some support edge loops where you want your edges to stay sharp, etc):


text:
How to make this node configuration only convert the outer shell into blocks, instead of filling it fully
Im using this node setup to convert ships from eve online into a blocky blueprint for minecraft
files are .stl that only have the outer shell, somehow my geometry nodes modifier fills it fully, reducing performance greatly, i only need the outer layer to be represented as blocks

It seems this is a duplicate: GeoNodes : How to delete interiors faces after voxelisation?

not working sadly, its leaving a lot of emptied faces

Add a Mesh to Points node, connect Input Geometry to Mesh
Delete the Distribute Points in Volume node
Connect Points from Mesh to Points and Points from Instance on Points

didnt work, a bunch of overlapping blocks on top of each other

alright sorry. have you looked at the comment on your original question, it looks like the solution worked

not really, its leaving a lot of faces deleted on the outside


text:
What are the "white dot" icons turning into diamonds at the right of control in array modifier
This is a very newcomer question, and I'm probably missing the vocabulary, since pasting the keywords of my question in search engines leads to nowhere(*)...
Here is my issued.
Following a tutorial on array modifiers, I accidentally clicked on the white dot located at the right of most controls, for example Count. This turns the white dot into a hollow  diamond and the control background becomes green. See screenshot:
I've no idea what purpose these dots and diamonds serve, but I noticed that:

this locks the changes to the control field (in fact I can only change it value transiently before it gets reverted)
I did't find how to disable this "diamond lock": clicking on the diamond doesn't change it back to a dot!

The dots are indeed present in the screenshots in the array modifier page of the manual, but are not discussed unless I missed something.
So I'll be glad to get some feedback (perhaps I only need a clue about the name of this dot/diamond feature). Or perhaps I got hit by an UI bug (I'm thinking here of the difficulty to disable the "diamond lock"). I'm using Blender 4.1 on Debian stable.
(*) a web search for "white dot icon issued" leads to discussions about specular dots... while "diamond icon" leads tutorials on how to model a diamond...

The green backgrounds mean that you've added an animation keyframe to the value which you do by clicking on the dot. To remove it, right-click on the field and choose 'Delete keyframe' or hover the mouse over the field and hit Alt-I.


text:
What do these icons in the Collection tab mean?
I'm trying to find information on the icons in the Collections tab in Blender:

Some of the icons (lights, pose, etc.) are self-explanatory, but the ones I've circled are unclear.  I have looked around SE and in the Blender manual, but I can't seem to find them, since I don't know what to call them in the first place.  What do they mean?

This is not a 1-1 reference but you can try looking through this

From top to bottom you have empty / armature / object / mesh, is it what you're trying to know?

I'd say "mesh object" rather than "object". Empties and armature are also objects, but with a different content.

Thank you.  I just didn't know what to call them, and now I do!

Most common icons you'll see in the Outliner are also listed neatly in the Add menu (Shift+A in 3D view):

Looking at your screenshot, the circled ones respectively would be: an Empty object, an Armature object, a Mesh object, and a mesh. The orange color indicates that it is an object, whereas green ones represent data-blocks. You can think of an Object as a container that holds relevant data-blocks together. For instance, the "mat_body" object in your scene contains the "mat_body" mesh at the moment. They are named the same, but that doesn't mean they're the same thing: a mesh (a collection of vertices, edges and faces) is only one type of data-block that could be contained by an object. You could assign a material, an animation, or a modifier to that object, and all of them would be listed there with the mesh.
You can learn more about data-blocks in the manual here. Here's a full list of data-blocks available in Blender from that page:

Thanks for this.  I didn't know about the Add menu.  It's going to be a big help.

why can't the Blender devs just add tooltips to the icons?! Are we living in 2024, or 1924?


text:
How can I condense an animation into fewer frames, thereby speeding it up?
I have a scene with a large number of objects, each with a looping animation.  Most of them have the exact same animation, and it loops through 21 frames.  I have other figures I want to add, also with looping animations, but these animations are different, and have a different number of frames.  For instance, I have a one-off figure with a 31-frame looping animation.
I need to alter the 31-frame animated object so that its animation is sped up and condensed to fit in exactly 21 frames, so it will complete its loop in precisely 21 frames to match the rest of the objects in the scene.  How do I do this?

you could try to scale the keyframes in the Dope Sheet but another solution is to push the animation in the NLA and speed up the strip, this way you don't have to modify the action itself

Can you help me understand how to do that?

Select the object, open the Dope Sheet, switch it ot Action Editor mode, select the action you want to speed up, click on the Push Down button, the action will disappear from the editor, it is still available in the dropdown panel if needed, but it is now visible in the Nonlinear Animation editor:

Open the Nonlinear Animation editor, you'll see the strip that contains the action:

Clicl N in order to open the panel on the right, click on the Strip tab and under Action Clip, play with the Playback Scale value in order to speed up or speed down the action:

If you want to quickly reopen the action in the Dope Sheet editor, for example if you need to edit it, select the strip and press Tab

That worked perfectly.  Thank you!


text:
How do I flip a rigged model to its mirror image?
thanks for looking.  I have a mesh with armature, a robotic right hand.  I have the model completed, and now I want to create its mirror image, a robotic left hand.  I can flip the mesh and I can flip the armature, but I can't seem to figure out how to do both at once.  Failing that, can anybody give me some guidance on how to do each individually and then merge the new mesh and new armature?

You need to make sure both the mesh and armature are selected:

In Object Types > Visibility, make sure both mesh and armature are selected
Press A to select all
Right click and select Mirror > X-Global


text:
How do I align these two mirror-image objects?
I'm adapting another person's .stl file for my own purposes.  In the picture, you can see the left side of the gun, which I duplicated/mirrored successfully, but I need to position these two halves together to fuse them into a single object.  I understand how to merge them into a single mesh (Ctrl-J), but I don't know how to position them effectively so that they will merge without any gaps.
How do I do this?

Please following these steps:

Delete half the model

In Edit mode, from front/side view, select a vertice at the center of the model (where you want to merge the two halfs together).
Press Shift+S > Cursor to Selected

In Object mode, right click and select Set Origin> Origin to 3D Cursor

Add a Mirror Modifier. On the Mirror Modifier, check the 'Clipping' checkbox

(Optional): Hover your mouse over the Mirror Modifier and Press CTRL+A to apply it.

That worked perfectly.  Thank you!

Glad to help :)


text:
How do I get Blender to export a single mesh instead of multiple meshes?
Thank you for taking the time to help.  I have a model in my Blender workspace that came from the source subdivided into four individual meshes/armatures/materials.  I merged the meshes into a single mesh, and set up the new, single armature the way I wanted it.  I exported the collection as an FBX, but when I import that FBX into other programs, it's still showing up as four separate meshes.  How do I get Blender to export the collection as a single mesh/armature?

You have to join the meshes in Blender before exporting (CTRL+J). If you need the originial separated parts duplicate them before joining.

I had already joined the meshes and armatures in Blender using CTRL+J.  They look correct in my Blender workspace, and they behave correctly in Posing mode, but when I export it, it exports it as four separate meshes in one FBX file.

Please share your file here: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Done!  Here's the link:
https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/gGW1lvMx/

This file contains only one mesh (I tried it in Unreal Engine too), but there are 4 material slots on it. So you have to assign 4 materials to it in any software (probalby thats why you see separated parts). You can remove the unnecessary slots in Blender, but it will cause overlapping UVs, so you have to repack the UVMap if you want to use it with only one material.

I see.  I hadn't considered that the materials were the culprit.  I'll have to research on how to take the existing material maps and redo them to fit a figure with one mesh.

That did the trick.  I deleted the materials, and it showed up as a single mesh thereafter.  I was able to re-apply the textures properly in my other software, so this was a big success.  Thanks!

@FFeller, how do I give you credit for answering this topic?

Nevermind, this were just a few comment.

Just to mention: Your target 3D-Software might support "combine" when importing. Unreal Engine at least does, when importing FBX.

Like FFeller mentioned, select all the objects, right-click, and press Join. Make sure you shift click one of the objects so that at least one of them is selected, otherwise it is impossible to join them.
In the FBX export screen, there will also be an option to export only "Selected Objects", or just the "Active Collection".
Select the objects and collections you have to export, and tick both of those. If are still having problems, maybe export the objects as OBJ and everything else as FBX.

Thanks!  I already joined the meshes and set up the armature to where I needed it to be, and tested it in Blender.  It's not exporting correctly, however; I get four separate meshes in a single FBX file

Are you importing these into Unreal? If so, tick "Combine Meshes" in the FBX import screen. If it's not UE, then I'm not sure.

No, I'm importing them into Poser, but it has to be a problem with the Blender export, because the same thing is happening in other software.


text:
How can I get meshes I generated in Blender to stop rotating some parts 90 degrees on import to other software?
thanks for taking the time to read my question.  I have a mesh that I've rigged and set up in Blender, and I'm exporting it as an FBX to use in other applications.  I use a program called Noesis to translate Blender's export into a version my target software, Poser, can read.  It looks fine in Noesis:

But when I import it into Poser, some (but not all) of the bones are rotated 90 degrees:

I can manually re-orient the bones and make it work, but I'd rather understand the problem.  Poser doesn't have any options when importing FBX files, so I'm hoping this is something I can fix on the Blender side.  Any idea how I can export an FBX without this result?

Hard to tell without knowing all the details of your project, but often things like this amount to a Z-up vs a Y-up issue or something similar. For example, blender uses a Z-Up system as a basis for it's orientations, whereas something like Unity, uses Y-up. Usually there are settings to convert in the exporter, but you are saying there are no config options in the one you are using?

Yes, that's correct.  The only options Poser offers is to scale the imported FBX.
I've been experimenting with the axes, and while it does point the problem bones in different directions when I change these values, it doesn't do it correctly.


text:
Geometry Nodes - Select More/Less
In Edit Mode you can use Select > Select More/Less > More to add all vertices that are connected to the selected vertices to the selection. How can this function be replicated in geometry nodes?

This can be done with the Interpolate Domain node.
Selecting more:

Each frame of the gif is created by connecting the nodes A, B, and C to the output. This works by using two Interpolate Domain nodes; the first converts the value to a float on the point domain, the second converts to the face domain, which uses the average of all connected vertices as it's value, then rounds that value to 1 because it is set to boolean. The result is expanding the selection to all vertices that share a face with an already selected vertex. You can also use the edge domain to expand to vertices that share an edge.
Selecting Less:

Selecting less works the same but you invert the value before and after the Interpolate Domain nodes.
Solution created in Blender 3.4. Should also work in 3.3, but the viewer node works differently so the results would have to be visualized another way.

This is genius, thanks!


text:
Simple script to snap FK to IK using Rigify. What am I doing wrong?
Trying to craft a simple script that checks the rig_id of the currently selected Rigify armature, and then snaps FK to IK. This one liner works: bpy.ops.pose.rigify_generic_snap_ja0c9ogre41cfd56(output_bones='["upper_arm_fk.L", "forearm_fk.L", "hand_fk.L"]', input_bones='["upper_arm_ik.L", "MCH-forearm_ik.L", "MCH-upper_arm_ik_target.L"]', ctrl_bones='["upper_arm_ik.L", "upper_arm_ik_target.L", "hand_ik.L"]'), but the rig_id is hardcoded here.
import bpy

# Get the active object
active_object = bpy.context.active_object

# Check if the active object is an armature
if active_object and active_object.type == 'ARMATURE':
    # Check if the armature is a Rigify rig
    if "rig_id" in active_object.data:
        # Get the rig_id
        a_rig_id = active_object.data["rig_id"]

        a_output_bones='["upper_arm_fk.L", "forearm_fk.L", "hand_fk.L"]'
        a_input_bones='["upper_arm_ik.L", "MCH-forearm_ik.L", "MCH-upper_arm_ik_target.L"]'
        a_ctrl_bones='["upper_arm_ik.L", "upper_arm_ik_target.L", "hand_ik.L"]'

        # Substitute "CURRENT_RIG" with the rig_id in the command
        command = f'bpy.ops.pose.rigify_generic_snap_{a_rig_id}({a_output_bones}, {a_input_bones}, {a_ctrl_bones})'

        # Execute the command
        exec(command)
    else:
        print("The selected object is not a Rigify rig.")
else:
    print("No armature object selected.")

The error I'm getting is:
Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "E:\Blender Assets Out\DAZ Pose Assets7.blend\Text.003", line 21, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 4.0\4.0\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 106, in __call__
    C_exec, C_undo = _BPyOpsSubModOp._parse_args(args)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 4.0\4.0\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 60, in _parse_args
    raise ValueError("1-2 args execution context is supported")
ValueError: 1-2 args execution context is supported

I would suggest that you print(command) before the call to exec(command), and edit your question to include the printed string.  exec() is not blender specific, so someone might scold you in this forum...

Just my noob Python. I had to escape the characters properly to make it work. Funny that ChatGPT 4 didn't escape the characters inside the F string in the original script that it gave me, similar to the working script below.
This is working:
import bpy

# Get the active object
active_object = bpy.context.active_object

# Check if the active object is an armature
if active_object and active_object.type == 'ARMATURE':
    # Check if the armature is a Rigify rig
    if "rig_id" in active_object.data:
        # Get the rig_id
        a_rig_id = active_object.data["rig_id"]

        # Substitute "CURRENT_RIG" with the rig_id in the command

        command = f'bpy.ops.pose.rigify_generic_snap_{a_rig_id}(output_bones=\'[\"upper_arm_fk.L\", \"forearm_fk.L\", \"hand_fk.L\"]\', input_bones=\'[\"upper_arm_ik.L\", \"MCH-forearm_ik.L\", \"MCH-upper_arm_ik_target.L\"]\', ctrl_bones=\'[\"upper_arm_ik.L\", \"upper_arm_ik_target.L\", \"hand_ik.L\"]\')'

        # Execute the command
        exec(command)
    else:
        print("The selected object is not a Rigify rig.")
else:
    print("No armature object selected.")
```


text:
what is proper workflow for modeling huge structure
main goal
I'm currently working on my hobby project to recreate colleage building.
And my main goal is to make real size building and export it to unreal engine so that player can enter the building and walk inside it.
the building is composed of three big lecture room parts and one long part that connect all of them
problems

UV for such building is too large that baking texture is impossible

Since many of materials i used is procedural material I have to bake them to export to unreal
Aside other minor problems that i have to bake for over 10 procedural material just for one part and horrible computer performance can bake no more than 2048 by 2048 pixels, Each faces of UVmap are so gigantic and overlaped to each other proper baking is impossible.
I know smart UV unwrapping can make all faces fits into texture image while unoverlaped, but this solution tend to break alignment which leads to third problems

Doesn't know proper way to make hollow inside for players to walk in

Any mesh in blender has hollow inside, so the method I tried - placing large cubes and other props inside the cube - is an effective way to recreate the scene of a single room.
But it gets tricky when it comes to huge structure with many rooms inside.

alignment of tiled texture is very annoying and time-consuming

Most of building exterior is tiled. metalic tiles, yellow stone tiles, red stone tiles, windows, etc.
Which means just slight off of UVmap make it look terrible.
Smart UV unwrapping can solve this problem in some case but neighboring faces might be detached in UVmap. Which leads to first problem.
Image for context

problem 1

problem 2

problem 3

Possible Solution?
these are few possible solutions I come up with.
mark seam then smart uv unwrap
I don't know much about how UVmap works, I learned that smart uv unwrapping consider marked seams.
It may prevent detachment of neighboring faces, fixing problem 3.
scale the texture
My procedural textures are 5x5 tiles so normal sized UV draw gigantic tiles.
Instead of scaling UV to fit as much tiles as i want, scaling texture into somthing like 500x500 tiles may fix problem 1.
break down into small units and modularize
Instead of placing every rooms and interior objects into one big box, making modular walls and assembling them like lego blocks seems to be ideal way to construct multiple room inside building.
But even though i was right about this, will it be better assembling in unreal engine? or assemble in blender, join every part, then export?
It's been like 2 weeks of struggling and it's literally destroying my mind. I will appreciate every comment and answer about this question. please help me.

Don't try to make everything in a single monolithic mesh with large unique textures. Break things apart into logical objects, a building may be broken into say floors, or individual rooms. In the game engine case it may be worth having separate interiors and exteriors. Recycle materials for common finishes, use tileable textures shared across objects for common materials, make them seamless and let them repeat over several stories or cover large surfaces. A building is not a character you don't usually need a lot of bespoke textures.

Thank you for your advise. By the way what does it mean separate interior and exterior?  Do I have to make rooms independently, not using walls and floors to 'form' a room?

You don't "have to" see what best fits your particular needs. For performance reasons many game engines use some form of culling or partial loading to avoid having a whole model loaded at once. If you are in a room, the invisible room across the wall needs not be loaded, nor the whole level above and below. You can go from a whole monolithic building down to individual rooms, with many steps in between like a whole level, or even several connected rooms in a single object. The finer your division, the better granular loading you may get, see what your particular engine likes best and adapt.


text:
how can i make tiling with a dent in the gap?
I'm recreating colleage building in blender and i'm having trouble making material for metalic tiled wall like this.

(sorry for bad resolution)
I tried using brick texture node and displacement to make indent but all geometry was all just flat faces. It just looks like it has indent
I think it's because the material is applied to simple cube mesh. but i couldn't find appropriate ways to add more faces to mesh in this specific situation
Subdivision is inefficient because i only need more faces between gaps.
At this point, i also considered just using loop cut, bevel, extrude to manually make all faces and also manually applying metalic wall texture and mortar texture.
But it's so time-consuming selecting face one by one in edit mode. Because this metalic wall is all over the building like pillar and other side of exterior.
If material do it by itself, i can just play with simple square in UVediting for different part of building and it will be super efficient.
How can i solve this problem?

Does it need to be in geometry? Would a bump-map do?

Strongly consider whether it will be worth it to add the geometry.  This is one of those judgement calls between additional realism (in this case, probably negligible) and additional render time.  Also consider that when you destructively make these changes it's much harder to come back later and change to a smaller brick, for example.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a wall with the appearance of an indent is the actual goal.  Whether the indent is real or fake hardly matters; as long as it looks convincing enough you're the only one who will know.

Bump map also work great accept for corner of pillar. But yeah it doesn't worth more effort and render time. Thank you for your advise

But still I wish I could know if making indent is possible


text:
How to get rid of the line in Blender
I connected two parts of the mask in one, I joined them, and remeshed them.
But I have this line, how to get rid of it?
I need it to be as smooth as the mask itself.

Hello could you please share your file? https://blend-exchange.com/

Hello and welcome. Please use a title that matches the content of the post. It should read like a question, be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the problem so that anyone searching for similar issues is likely to find this.


text:
Trying to animate cutting hair particles as if animating a haircut
I am trying to animate a haircut using hair particles with hair dynamics over a human head model.
I can make objects cut the hair particles using dynamic canvas and brushes, but I only seem to be able to make the paint source of the dynamic brush work with proximity.
This limits the way objects cut the particles.  No matter what distance or alpha value I set, the hair particles are cut the same length over the head that the brush object runs through.
I however want the hair particles to only be cut where my dynamic brush object moves through.  So some hair particles should be shorter than others based on the head surface being oval, i.e. I want to simulate a flat top style, but can't cut straight across.  It always cuts the particles to the same length over the surface.
If anyone has a moment to load my test project here I would be very grateful please.
Hair cutting test
If you can figure out for example, how to make the object named 'Plane 002' slide through the hair particles as currently keyframed and only cut the hair particles where the plane passes through.  Ideally I would use Mesh Volume on the dynamic brush to set the cut, but I cannot make this setting work sadly.
Any tips to allow an object to cut particle hair length at exactly where the brush object passes through please?


text:
Scene and config file management best practice (a library for scenes ?)
I have a scene with assets, cameras HDR world, a cycles rendering and rendering presets, and I would like to use it as kind of a template file.
This way I could use this scene in several files knowing that if I change the template, it will update all other other files using this scene. Just like the asset library but for scenes and renders.
Does this feature exist ? Is it relevant ? I am looking for best practices.
Thanks.


text:
Blender built as a Python module, now how do I install and use it?
I built Blender as a Python module on Ubuntu 20.04.
The installation instructions are not very clear.

I don't have a /usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages folder.
When I run make install it says: No rule to make target 'install'

Okay, I think I got it.

cd to ~/blender-git/build_linux_bpy and run make install
this will install to a local path (~/blender-git/lib/linux_centos7_x86_64/python/lib/python3.7/site-packages/2.91)
setting WITH_INSTALL_PORTABLE=OFF on the command line before the call to make install had no effect
~/blender-git/build_linux_bpy/CMakeCache.txt defines the PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES variable
I found this by running a search using grep -rnw . -e 'PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES'
I set this PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES to /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages
I chose that path from the list returned by python3 -m site
I can now import the bpy module from a python script

If anyone has a better way of doing this, let me know! Cheers.


text:
Water like simulation through pipes without using fluid physics and baking data
Can someone please tell me how to create this fluid animation without using fluid physics properties in blender. Baking data is lengthy process.
Want to avoid that to show such kind of fluid animation.
Just want a fluid simulation.
It doesn't has to be real.
If you Can please tell me how to create such simulation.

Hello :). Please add an example of similar animation. Based on this still image, curves with bevel could work well.

can you tell me how to do path aniamtion of this fluid fake effect. so the shaded tube starts flowing from keyframe 1 to last

Hello :). I can't post an answer now, but search for animating bezier curve bevel. Perhaps this could help: https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/98632/78972

thank you very very much. it worked. i used bavel start and end with keyframe.


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Complex materials are not baked
Hello/ Help me figure it out. Never had any problems with baking in Substance Painter, but decided to sing in a blender and not in any way. Normal, AO and Roughness are Baked without problems, but Diffuse does not want to. It just gives a black texture. There is a scan. What is the error? I tried on the same model with a simpler material, everything works. and then I change to another, more complex material and everything is baked black square) in the photo, the material that is not baked... I can't figure out what the problem is.

I'd suspect your problems come from the use of the Fresnel node, which is view dependent, so baking can't really handle it.  It's used to mix between diffuse and emission, and any emission, for purposes of a diffuse color bake, comes out as black.  But I'll tell you straight off, your diffuse color, if you ignore the view-dependent stuff, is the single solid color of blue you have in your shader's Base Color field.

no, it didn't help... I tried to disable Fresnel node and emission the result was the same. but then it turned out that this is the Metalic controller. without it, everything is baked. thank you!

@ EVA-Stud Oh yeah, I missed that metallic value.  Metallic has no diffuse, it's all specular.

And it turns out that you can't upload all the maps here as it is done in Substance Painter? I did not find a metal map how to bake, base color is also not the same. Is there any functionality in the blender that would bake all the cards similar to Substance Painter?


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How would I create a rotation speed controller
So I was trying to Create a Animated set of gears that play continuously through out a project. I have managed to do so using drivers a number of ways. (setting the frames or position of a moving empty on a graph with a generator set to have them move continually along one axis) But I need a Custom Property Variable that can accelerate and decelerate the speed of the gears rotation. If I just multiply the custom property by the Constant rotation speed then when I lower the value over time the gear reverses direction as the number is decreasing which I don't want. Can some one point me toward how I would make a custom property that works in the following way. 0 = no speed. 1 = normal speed. 10 = 10x speed. -1 normal speed reverse ect... I'm thinking I will need to use expressions of some kind but I'm a bit stuck as to how I would set this up. :/

If you want to do this live, it's not possible without something like Animation Nodes.  In order to know the current rotation of a gear, knowing the current speed is not enough-- you need to know the complete history of speed.  And drivers and constraints don't know history.

how would I do this with animation nodes then. I do have that.

I'm afraid I'm not competent enough to answer that :(  Hopefully someone else can.