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Blender Python convert units to imperial
I'm writing a script that needs to make geometry using imperial units. The scene is set to imperial however this has no effect on Pythons end of things. I need to know the value that equates to an inch when using traslate functions.
Note this is not a duplicate of another question asking to get imperial lengh from Blender units.

If it isn't a duplicate q, the answer can certainly be gleaned from the q marked as dupe Is there a bpy function to convert from blender units to Imperial?
scale /= 0.3048  # BU to feet

which pretty much comes from 1bu = 1 metre
import bpy
import space_view3d_panel_measure as pm
scene = bpy.context.scene
uinfo = pm.getUnitsInfo()

def bu_to_inches(scene, d):
    scale = scene.unit_settings.scale_length
    # 1bu = 1 / 0.3048 ft
    return 12 * scale * d / 0.3048

def inches_to_bu(scene, d):
    return d / bu_to_inches(scene, 1)

# 1 bu in scene units
x = pm.convertDistance(1, uinfo)
print(x)
# 1 bu in inches
x = bu_to_inches(scene, 1)
print(x)

# 12.33 bu in scene units
x = pm.convertDistance(12.33, uinfo)
print(x)
# 12.33 bu in inches
x = bu_to_inches(scene, 12.33)
print(x)
# how many inches 12.33 bu is to bu
print(inches_to_bu(scene, x))
# how many bu 1 inch is
print(inches_to_bu(scene, 1))

Can someone please explain the factor 12 in the conversion in 'bu_to_inches'?

The comment mentions a blender unit in relation to feet. There are 12 inches in a foot.

The space_view3d_panel_measure  module is not available in new versions of Blender. Anyone know if it was removed, or if there's a replacement?

To piggyback off batFINGER's answer,
Here's a function to dynamically convert between any 2 units. You can use it to convert between the default and scene units, or any 2 units supported by blender (or you could add imaginary units to the dictionary).
import bpy

SCENE_SCALE = bpy.context.scene.unit_settings.scale_length
SCENE_UNIT = bpy.context.scene.unit_settings.length_unit
BLENDER_UNIT = 'METERS'

units = {
    'MILES': 1609.344,
    'KILOMETERS': 1000,
    'METERS': 1,
    'FEET': 0.3048,
    'INCHES': 0.0254,
    'CENTIMETERS': 0.01,
    'MILLIMETERS': 0.001,
    'THOU': 0.0000254,
    'MICROMETERS': 0.000001,
}

def changeDefaultUnit(defaultUnit):
    '''Recalibrate the unit conversion dictionary so that the all units are relative to the specified defaultUnit.
       The default dictionary is relative to 'METERS', since that is the default blender unit.
    '''
    newUnits = units.copy()

    for unit, value in newUnits.items():
        newUnits[unit] = value/units[defaultUnit]

    return newUnits

def convertUnit(value, sourceUnit, targetUnit):
    '''
        Converts the source unit into the target unit.

        Usage Examples:
            1. To convert 39 inches to blender units (meters), use `convertUnit(39, 'INCHES', 'METERS')`
            2. To convert 3 blender units (meters) to feet, use `convertUnit(3, 'METERS', 'FEET')`
            3. To convert 1 scene unit (let's assume it's set to inches) to default blender units (meters), use `convertUnit(1, SCENE_UNIT, BLENDER_UNIT)` or `convertUnit(1, SCENE_UNIT, 'METERS')`
            etc...
    '''
    newUnits = changeDefaultUnit(sourceUnit)

    return SCENE_SCALE * value / newUnits[targetUnit]

This comes in handy if you're doing a lot of unit conversions, and trying to standardize them in your scene.

To directly answer the question...
1ft = 0.3048
1in = 0.0254

As a note to others reading this thread batFINGER's answer includes space_view3d_panel_measure module which is solely for printing out units in an easy human readable format and is not needed for unit conversion. His script also includes 'scale' which is the scale value set in propertys/scene/units/scale. Unless you are using a scale other than 1 (default) it to is unnecessary although it would be good if your script will be used by other people in which case you never know if someone is messing with scale settings or not.
The simplest way of doing unit conversion is...
distance = 2+(11/16)
inch = 0.0254

distance *= inch

Here distance is the value in inches we want converted. In this case we did 2+(11/16) to demonstrate how we would include a fraction. Its the same as saying 2" 11/16" in real life. The simple equation "distance *= inch" will convert distance from inches to Blender Units.
Below we can demonstrate a translation by moving the X axis of a selected object by 2" 11/16"
bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(distance, 0, 0))

A full script example for this is...
import bpy

inch = 0.0254
distance = 2+(11/16)
distance *= inch

bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(distance, 0, 0))

As a note to those who have down voted this answer, I put this here because the OP explicitly asked for the value that equates to one inch which is 0.0254. That value was not explicitly given by other answer(s).

It would be nice to add the correction needed when the user does tinker with the scaling factor.

Old question but I didn't figure it out from reading the existing answers so I'll leave my own.
I was messing with the area() function and noticed that the returned value wasn't changing when I altered the grid size or the Scene Properties units.
it was returning 1/10.76 the square foot value that I saw in the measurements overlay. And I just couldn't figure out what this magic number meant. It wasn't meters, because 1 foot * 0.304 = 1 meter. Didn't look like there was any relation between these numbers.
But then a coworker helped me realize. The formula to convert square meters to square feet is exactly that multiply it by 10.76. So, the blender units were actually square meters, and I'm bad at math.

Use:
bpy.ops.script.execute_preset(filepath="C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\2.78\\scripts\\presets\\units_length\\inches.py",
                              menu_idname="SCENE_MT_units_length_presets")

It will change your file's default unit to inches. All subsequent python commands should be given in inches.


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Is this is double-sided plane?
I have a hair object, and I wonder how it was done.

Is this hair composed by planes?
And if yes, are they double-sided? To me it looks double-sided because it is also visible from the other side.
I have also uploaded the project here if somebody needs to take a closer look.
Thank you very much!

yes it is made out of planes. Read my answer here to see if it is double sided.

By default blender shows the backsides of single-sided faces. To make faces double sided, enable Double Sided in Properties > Object Data (see http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/9049/599).

No they are not double sided. You can check this by going to the N menu and checking Backface Culling under Shading options.

So you mean that these are just simple single-sided planes? You did not really refer to whether these are planes or not.

Yes, that is the default for Blender

@tmighty This question might help: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/10711/double-sided-faces

Do you think you spot anything unusual with the planes or how they were created? I am asking because when I add a new plane and export my new mesh to a game engine (Unity in this case), this plane does not pick up a material and stays untextured while the other planes are textured.

Part of the same mesh?

Yes, they are part of the same mesh. I have even added some between the original planes to see if the location plays a role, but it does not. The only difference that I see is that my planes are quads, and the original planes are tris.

No, it wouldn't. Planes are single-sided by default in Blender

I wanted to say that my planes have 4 edges, and the original ones have 3 edges.

That doesn't have an effect either. You have to manually make them double sided

Sorry I have not enough reputation for a chat, so I am asking here: You said that they are not double-sided, so I am a little confused why you talk about double-sided again. I have even converted them to tris using Ctrl+T, but that didn't make any difference either. Do you still have any idea why my planes would not take up a material? I am not sure what the difference between my planes and the original planes are. Do you still have any more idea?

@tmighty Do you not want them double sided? They aren't so if that is what you want you are good to go

Nope, I was just hoping you would spot anything unusual about the original planes.

Everything I see is completely normal :)

One last thing: In an fbx viewer, I can see that my new planes do not reflect the light as the original ones do: http://s23.postimg.org/vobzvc0qz/light1.jpg Isn't this weird?

Is the same material applied and are they UV unwrapped?

OMG, I love you!!! I forgot to unwrap it using "U"!! Thank you!!!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Fixing disconnected vertex
I have a planes mesh of which I thought it was connected.
But when I drag the one edge around, I can see that it is not connected.

I tried just everything I could image, but I have not been able to fix it.
Can anybody show me how that could be done?
I have uploaded my blender file here:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36943
Thank you very much for the help!

In edit mode RMB the vertex labeled 1 then Shift-RMB the 2nd vertex.

Alt-M (merge) select At last.

Thank you! Since you have seen my project. Does it not happen for you that part of the model and grid disappears when you zoom in this far?

@tmighty Yes it happend to me also, it is the camera clipping , See http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/4946/where-can-the-viewport-clipping-parameters-be-changed on how to fix this.

You also could use the snapping tool:

Choose 'Vertex Snap' and then grab the vertex close to the other vertex. Hold Ctrl to activate the snapping.
Then the vertices should snap together. When you have snapped all your vertices you want to Merge, select everything by pressing A. Then press W an choose 'Remove Doubles'.
This is a much faster way to do it if you have to snap multiple vertices.

This works even better with automatic merge

oh thank you!! never heard about that. (I never have to use Remove Doubles again !! :) !!)

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


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Filling a corner
Somehow I have managed to mess up the corner of wall of my house.
The left side of the image shows what it currently looks like, and the right side shows more or less what it should look like.
I tried a simple "Grid Fill", but I guess that is not what I need.
Could somebody tell me how he would fix this? I was thinking that I could perhaps use the remaining 2 faces on the bottom of the corner, but I am not sure.

You can use those 2 vertices in the bottom. Just turn on Snap during transform with Shift+Tab, set it in Vertex mode, select vertices and extrude along Z. Then you can use Alt + F or something like that to fill faces

Unfortunately the vertices are not placed exactly on the grid, so the snapping does not work.

It will, if you select snap to Vertex. You can see my answer for more info

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood how it works. I thought I had to press Shift+Tab at the beginning of the extrusion procedure. I did not understand that I had to extrude and when the extrusion is near to where I want it, I THEN have to press Shift+Tab. Now it works great! Thank you.

Select those two vertices in the bottom. Turn on vertex snapping with Shift + Tab and selecting Vertex.

Use E > Z to extrude along Z, and hover your mouse over adjacent vertices of the mesh:

To fill the faces quickly, create an edge on the topmost loop. To do that, select top one extruded vertice and one from the top loop. Make edge with F. Use Alt + F to fill faces, then Alt + J to get rid of triangles. Do that for another side.

it would've been much simpler to extrude one of the long edges.

hm.. Yeap. Proposal of OP made me blind.

Depending upon the purpose to which you wish to put your house, you might want to delete the faces in the ends of the walls before filling in the geometry.

@brasshat and that's another thing I didn't think of. Btw it can be done very simple by Ctrl+Shift+Alt+M, or typing 'Select non-manifold'. So there were so many corrections to the answer that I feel  I should rewrite it


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Normal map creation
I have prepared a hi poly version of a rocket and a lo poly version of it.

Both are at exactely the same position. They are 2 separate objects.
In all videos that I have seen, people select both models at the same time, then they click "BakeMode:"->"Normals", and that creates a normal map.
However, I can not select both meshes at the same time, and when I click "Bake", I am getting a "circular reference in texture stack" error.
I have uploaded my Blender file here: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/38512
Would anybody be willing to take a look at my Blender file to see if I made an obvious errors?

i have an answer cooking, but before i post it i demand you tell me where you learned to texture like that.the texs on both the grenade and the launcher are amazing!

The error "loop in texture stacks" tells me it's trying to bake to a texture of the texture it baking of, of the texture its baking to, of the texture.... ect. ect. All you have to do is uncheck these little boxes that define which textures are active on the mesh so that the texture your trying to bake to is the only active one.

Thank you, I also had to select "Selected to Active", and now it works. :-)

oh. i assumed you had that already. sorry! :/ just make sure you ahve your hipoly selected before your lowpoly


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Moving faces radially
I would like to move faces radially, but for some reason they don't want that.
When I move the faces, I expected them relatively to the middle / radially.
But as one can see from the screenshot, they move... ermhhh, differently.
One the face with the white circle moves as I expected.

Can anybody tell me how to achieve a radial movement?

Ensure that the Pivot Point is set to '3D Cursor'.
In edit mode, select the faces you want to move radially.
Hit 'Shift-S', then select 'Cursor to Selected'. The 3D Cursor should now be in the center of your selected faces.
Hit 'S' then 'Shift+Z'. This will scale your faces in X and Y but not Z.
Move your mouse or enter a value from the keyboard and hit enter when the faces have been moved radially to the correct position.

Can you also tell me how this would work for rotating the faces shown in the screenshots? I would like to have the facing downwards, but that gives me the same problems as my initial problem, but 'R' then Shift+Z won't fix it for me.

You may want to ask a separate question for this, but... Enter edge mode, select just the top edges of those faces you want to face downward. Then hit Shift+S, Cursor to Selected, then 'S' and move your mouse. Should work.

Shrink Fatten.  Keyboard Alt-S.  Move Selected vertices along the geometric surface normal.

You're looking for Shrink/Fatten operation. This will move selected faces or vertices along their own surface normals.
To do so, select your faces or vertices and hit ALT+S.

If you leave my original text unaltered first you are welcome to add your verbiage after mine.   10 sentence maximum, since I see 5 bullet points in another response.  Then I can see how your verbiage has some value in this somewhat uncomplicated request from the original poster of the question.   There is the official invitation. @Polosson

done. It's not highly relevant modification, but tries to be more human readable. Without wanting to be unkind, of course. Cheers!

What an amazing improvement!  I am staggered and textless.

Thank you, that does what I want in this special case, but I would like a more generic approach, thus I think I will try out the 3D cursor.

Perhaps you want to scale them with the pivot point set to the object's center?
If this causes them to move in the Z direction you have two alternatives to compensate:

g z to adjust their position afterward.
use the 3D cursor as a pivot point after you copy it from the object origin, and then adjust its Z before scaling the faces.


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Creating high poly from low poly model
I have created a low poly mesh in Blender.
Now I would like to texture it in a different program.
Therefore I would need a high poly model.
When I add a "Smooth" modifier, nothing happens, my model still looks blocky.
I expected my model to become smooth and the jagged edges would go away:

Can somebody tell me how I would do this?
Thank you!

To make it LOOK smooth, select the object, hit 'W' and select 'Shade Smooth'
To ADD POLYGONS, you can optionally select all faces (in face select mode) and hit 'W' then 'Subdivide' This will quadruple your face count. Once that's done, you might want to hit 'W' then 'Smooth' (which actually moves vertices to achieve a smoother mesh).
Or, you can go add a Subdivision Surface Object Modifier, adjust the 'view' and 'render' values until you like the mesh. Apply the modifier to get back to a fully editable mesh again.

I have used "w", then "Subdivide Smooth".

No, I have changed my mind. I am using the "Faces: Smooth" option. This gives me just the results I wanted.

Seriously how did you not know this 0.0

Subdividing a triangle makes 4 faces - so it's always quadruple..

@Jerryno  thanks. Good catch. I'll update the answer.

I'm not sure I completely understand what you want to do, but try a Subdivision Surface modifier or a Multiresolution modifier.  You can then "apply" the modifier to make the increased subdivisions permanent.


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Weight Paint Bone Selection vs Vertex Group Selection
Trying to learn about weight painting. I have a fairly complex armature (human skeleton, imported from Fallout game) and corresponding clothes that I would like to weight paint.
I weight paint mode I can select bones in the armature with RMB on the bone in question. But some of these bones are very close to each other, is there some other way I can select them? I can't find them in any panel?
I can find the vertex groups however. But I'm not sure selecting the vertex group called f.ex "right_arm" is the same as selecting the bone called "right_arm". Selecting the bone, seems to also select the vertex group, but not vice versa? Ie, if I do "select right_arm vertex group and then rotate it, I don't get the expected result (the right_arm bone doesn't rotate). But it's all good if I RMB select right_arm bone in the 3d-window.
What am I doing if I have selected f.ex right_arm bone, and then I select left_arm vertex group and then I start weight painting? I can't just wrap my head around that...

When I have this kind of doubts, I generally build  a simple armature (2-3 bones), a simple object and try and experiment the behaviour I'm not sure about.
Anyway: the best way to select bones close each otheror overlapping is to separate them into different bone layers and turn on and off the needed layers.
The weight is an attribute of a vertex, relatively to a vertex group, which belongs to a mesh, so when you do some weight painting you are workng on a mesh, so if you select a new vertex group the weight painting will be relative to this latter vertex group, no matter which was the last selected bone in the armature.
When you add to a mesh an Armature modifier and select as object your armature, every time you move  a bone in pose mode Blender will search in the mesh if there is a vertex group with the same name, and will move the belonging vertices according to all weights in all vertex group.
This relationship is often set by the shortcut Ctrl+P
 (with automatic weights).
An useful and often unknown tool is: if you select your mesh, enter edit mode and select a weighted vertex, in the right properties panel (N
) you can find the vertex weights tab, which tells you all the weight assignements of the active vertex.

Thanks. Followed your advice, and so it seems that bone-selection is really irrelevant when it comes to assigning weight, it just so happens that blender helpfully selects the corresponding group when a bone is selected. Bone layers look nice, will be using that, thanks.


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Use lattice on part of object
I'm trying to model a simple chair, and I want one of the back legs to be curved/bended. I tried using a lattice for this, with a vertex group set to the vertices in the leg. But the result is super-weird as you can hopefully see in the picture.

The vertex group (RightBendyLeg) can be seen selected in yellow.
I don't understand why the leg grows on the z-axis, as I would think the lattice has almost the same size on the z-axis as the leg. Can someone explain this behaviour?
If I wanted to created a bend/curved leg like this, is there a better way than using a lattice?
Thanks.

The problem can stem from applying scale to the lattice. You shouldn't do it. Apply scale to a chair, create new lattice for the leg and don't apply scale to it. Then this setup should work perfectly, but I would suggest to subdivide the leg little more to get the effect, you need.
Also in my opinion it would be easier to just use proportional editing directly on the leg vertices to get desired curvature. Lattice doesn't give more control in this particular example.
I would also suggest you to split the chair on 2 and use mirror modifier to ensure, that bending will be exactly the same for both legs.

Totally agree with everything you wrote. And I want to underline that this is really not case where lattice can be helpful.

Thanks. You're probably right about the proportional editing. I just wanted to get this as well. And another thing I think I did wrong was I matched up the lattice in edit-mode instead of in object-mode.

This indeed seems like an applied scale problem. It's debatable question if lattice give little control here, because it's non-destructive editing. You can bend it with Curve modifier which could point to any curve you like (or use Curve modifier on the object itself).

There is plenty of options to make shape change non-destructive (like f.ex. shape key) so in my opinion using lattice or curve modifier to change a shape of a leg in such a simple chair would be an excess of form over substance

authors: Ксения Комарова


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Record the mouse on a slider?
So I know that there is a way to record the mouse movement on an object. I activate Auto Keyframe, I select the object I want to move, I press play, press G or R, and as I move the mouse keyframes are dotted along the timeline and the object in question moves as my mouse moved.
However, is there a way to do this with sliders like Shape Keys or Focus Length? I tried to drag while playing, but it just jitters back to what the first keyframe is set to and no new keyframes are created. Would I need to create an in-scene slider?

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


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Bezier curve does not always follow hooks
I've imported a Source model (smd and vta) which includes a skinned armature and Shape Keys data. I then want a curve to run along the face and follow the facial expressions from the Shape Keys. I learn of the Hook and Vertex Parenting, so I make the curve with so many points, make sure each point is in the same place as the key vertices I've selected, Hook each point to an Empty, as well as a few of the point's handles, and parent each Empty to the selected vertices. So far so good when going through some shape motions.
However, when I pose the armature the curve seems to get very large loops, as if the handles were pulled extremely far. When I go into Edit Mode again, the points seem to have stayed in their original place and size. I decide to try and parent the entire curve object to the armature's head bone, which offset things. Rebuilding that, I try again to pose the armature, but the curve still gets loops. I even placed the curve object at the center of the world, which pulled the loops even further.
It is as if the curve points do follow the hooks, but their handles don't want to follow anything, neither a hook or keep with the relative positions of their points. What am I missing here?

It looks like some of the curve vertices are not hooked or you were trying to hook them twice to another empty without deleting previous hook first. BTW you don't need to hook handles to anything. If you hook the curve vertices to empties in exactly the same position then it should follow it exactly.

@Mzidare I was hoping not to have to set so many hooks (over 30 verts).

Probably there is an easier way to achieve what you're need, maybe without using curves. What's your goal? Why do you need the curve to follow the facial expressions?

@Mzidare Believe it or not, big bubbling tears on a very expressive face. I first tried fluids but either too much to calculate or went right through the model. Then figured metaballs on a curve would work just as well, at least up to the drop-off point.

Have you  tried shrink wrap with the curve parented to thee head bone?

@Mzidare Made a new curve that follows the line I want, added Modifier Shrinkwrap and set the Target to the model, and, well, it follows... Nearest Vertex, not a fixed vertex. It won't follow the facial expressions.

How about adding shape keys to the curve itself that would be driven by the same item as face shape keys.

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


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Align rotation with the snapping target, on a different axis?
I am stacking quite a few tall objects on uneven surfaces. To accomplish this I turn on Snap during transform, Snap to Face, Closest and Align rotation with the snapping target. This works fine, and my tall objects stand up-right on the surface. However, now I want some of these objects to lie down on the uneven surfaces. Is there a way to set what axis the Alignment is to follow? Instead of the bottom face of the object aligning to the surface (blue arrow up), have the right face align to the surface (red arrow right)?

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/80641/rotate-an-ico-sphere-with-20-sidesicosahedron-to-align-with-the-level-grid and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/56882/how-do-you-rotate-an-object-so-that-a-particular-face-is-parallel-to-the-ground

Hm... Attach to a rotated Empty and snap the Empty sounds like a good idea. Thanks.


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Flowing tears on moving head
As the title says, I want to have tears flowing from a pair of eyes but I seem to not know how. What I tried was to have a domain cube cover the head, the head (which isn't a separate mesh from the rest of the body) be the obstacle, and two inflow spheres (3 segs x 3 rings) for each eye corner, but the domain cube doesn't change shape. Have not linked the domain to the head bone or started animating the armature just yet. Started by seeing if it could be done. So, what is the best way to make tears flow from eyes and run down the cheeks?
For reference, the body mesh size is about 0.4 x 0.6 x 0.2, and the inflows' sizes were like 0.001.

How big is your domain? Make sure you Apply Scale on each of your Domain, Inflow, Obstacle meshes and that your domain resolution is set high enough for you inflows to be significant - the resolution indicates the number of fluid cells along the domain’s largest dimension so should be more than domainsize/0.001 in your case.

@RichSedman The inflow and domains were sized the moment they were created. Domain was 0.1 in radius. As for the body, I couldn't find "Apply Scale" in the Search for either mesh or armature. However, I did create the inflow sphere again and this time a size of 0.005 and I got a flow. The moment I turned the body into an obstacle my computer died.

Use Ctrl+A to Apply Scale. The Resolution defines how big the cells of the simulation are - they’ll have to be smaller than your tear inflow so if domain it 0.5 and inflow is 0.005 you’ll need resolution of 100 minimum (that will make for a really poor simulation - you want to look for much higher resolution - perhaps, say 10x the expecter tear size). But that high resolution will likely require more memory than you have - hence the crash. Make the domain as small as possible and apply scale after resize. Before baking simulation check how much memory it says it requires too.


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Custom anisotropic material not quite working as expected
Working in Blender 2.82a, I have noted that the Anisotropic does not work in eevee, so I try to create my own. I managed to make it half work, but I may have misunderstood a node value.

If you follow the pink "scar" you will see that it shifts as I move the view, but when I move the light the "scar" does not shift. The Shader setup is as follows.

I am guessing Incoming is not the node I should use if I want the "scar" to react to the lights. What should I use instead?

Hello :). @RobinBetts to the rescue: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/168190/

Perfect! And figured out the maths to have it shift when shifting the UV. Thanks!


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procedural wood texture shader
i have found a realy good procedural shader tutorial to learn and use it on my model... but the set up nodes are to big and with the 2.81 is more harder.... i reach to a part that i´m stuck and can´t find the 2 nodes to complete it, the stain and grooves icon, i search evreywhere and i cant find them in blender did they disapeared or move or changed names?
this is the shader tutorial im folowing https://www.blendernation.com/2017/10/20/procedural-cc-0-pbr-wood-shader/

Those look like they're just Invert Nodes (Add > Color > Invert). You can right click a node and rename it to whatever you want - I'm assuming that's what the person did in the tutorial.

thanks for answering but that din´t work..

Strange. The color of the header suggests it's from the color section, and all the color nodes are here - https://ibb.co/gJ6WJSX. The only node it seems to match is the Invert Node, so unless he's using some kind of add-on, I don't know what else it could be.


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After render when click Play Rendered Animation, it says 'file not found." What do I do to fix that?
So, I am new to blender. I downloaded a Youtube intro from a video and put it into blender, changed the name, and put the thing that makes it save when it is done. I never closed it and when it was done, it didn't save so i saved it myself but I can't figure out how to save it as a AVI Raw file that way. So then I just saved it as a blender file and went to the file and clicked Play Rendered Animation and it said "File Blah Blah.avi not found" or something like that. I clicked play at the bottom and you can here the sound but the video is just a grey square with a plus in it, like a window. What do I do to fix this?

When rendering animation we usually do so in sequence. Meaning rendering images one by one and save them as Jpegs or other image format. That's because it's a better way of rendering animation for post production work... like color correction and adding special effects. You will want the check if you have specified the local drive location where then renderer should output those frame to. And the file you downloaded is rendering to an AVI or a sequence.

See if this answer or this answer helps.

@hawkenfox Thanks! I did check where I saved it and did make sure it was a AVI Raw. Does it matter if it is AVI or AVI Raw?

@David Thank you! The first answer helped a little!


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UV mapping after importing
I am working on level design in Google SketchUp. I use Blender to create and edit the UV map of the final mesh that I use in the game engine. I am sure I will still add details to the level after I have UV mapped it, but that would mean UV mapping it all over again face by face, and link faces to materials again because the new level would have to be imported again. So TL;DR:

I'm exporting the Google SketchUp model as COLLADA
Importing it into Blender and UV mapping it

--- WHAT I WANT --

Changing the model in SketchUp and re-importing it without having to UV map the whole thing again.

I am also considering continuing the level design in Blender, but SketchUp is way faster, so I would like to stick to it. I hope I was clear enough about what my problem is.
Thank you for your time :)

If you mean that second time you want to continue unwrapping model in Blender, you can pin existing vertices on UV map. They will stay in place even when unwrapped. See more about pinning - UV unwrapping a modified model

The model isn't modified in Blender, but in SketchUp and then re-imported. That means that as far as Blender knows, it's a totally new mesh and has nothing to do with the old one.

What are you using Blender for in this case ?

UV mapping the faces of the final mesh, removing doubles, dissolving faces

For import / export use some format which supports UV maps. Once imported in Blender open UV map which should be stored with it, pin everything there and you should be able to unwrap further. Pinned verts won't be changed. Export again in that format.

Google SketchUp cannot import any format that supports UV mapping and at the same time preserves my model(it only supports .3ds, but that triangulates all my faces)


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Tracking and solve error
Im tracking a scene, and have 14 points tracked with a solve error of 1.16 im trying to get this below one. I have found a point with a solve error of over 2 so i tryed deleting this to see the effect on the overall solve error and blender doesn't like it saying "some data failed to reconstuct" does any one know why this is?


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Fluid Sim multi coloured domain
I am trying to have 2 different coloured liquids splashing at each other, i have managed to colour one of them which colours both when i try to change the other it changes both. How do i get 2 different coloured in flows?

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5469/different-materials-for-each-fluid-inflow

Unfortunately, what you are attempting to do isn't yet supported by the Blender Fluid Simulator. You can't have fluids with different properties/materials interact because the fluid properties and material are attributes of the domain rather than of the inflow objects.
As an alternative, you may choose to use Blender's SPH Fluid Simulator, which uses the particle system rather than the fluid sim.
Here's a previous answer to a question very similar to yours : Different materials for each fluid inflow?


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Fluid simulation in moving object
I am working on animation in which I have moving object filled with liquid. Problem is that liquid is reaching over the mesh. Scaling does not fix the problem since the liquid does not follow up the animation.
Any idea on how to fix this?

This question could benefit from a .blend, since there are a lot of settings that would need to be replicated to create the example gifs.

For liquids contained within a mesh you should always ensure that the ‘container’ has thickness (either by modelling the thickness or by adding a Solidify modifier. You should then ensure that the Resolution of the fluid domain is set high enough so that each cell in the simulation is smaller than the minimum thickness of the container. This will ensure that the fluid does not protrude outside the mesh.
For an cleaner boundary (eg, if the container is transparent) between the fluid and its container (to stop them intersecting) you can add a Boolean modifier to the fluid to remove the parts that intersect into the container mesh.


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Can't open .BLEND files
Theres hundreds of these questions probably, or i'm just dumb and somehow can't open them. When I open a .BLEND file it just says Windows doesen't know this error. And I have blender installed. Is there some kind of addon i needed to check or something? Sorry for this dumb question. And when i just open blender and pick the file and drag it to blender, i see nothing. This is an intro template BTW.

@cegaton no it doesent :( theres no open with in there.

Did you try using command line with -R argument ? What it does is registering .blend format and exitting Blender. After that .blend file format should be associated with Blender

I installed via Installer.

Only one such file behave that way or all the blend files that you tried behave similarly. Also state your system specification and attach the blend file you are having problem opening.

Am answer to question 67906 may also be the answer to this question.

You could check Windows registry using: regedit and manipulate these entries:
In case none of the entries are found in the registry you could save them in a text file e.g. "blend.reg" and import the settings by regedit.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\blendfile]
@="Blender File"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\blendfile\DefaultIcon]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\blender.exe\", 1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\blendfile\shell]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\blendfile\shell\open]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\blendfile\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender\\blender.exe\" \"%1\""

I have been having a similar problem and I have finally figured out a solution. If you are using Windows, go to the .BLEND file you want to open and put it up in a smaller window. Left hold on the file and drag over to the Blender icon program on your desktop and click "Open in Blender." It should open just fine.


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Can I incorporate audio into my output avi render?
I am using blenders video sequence editor to put together a video with overdubbed audio.
I have dragged a video clip and and audio clip into the sequence editor. BUt when I render, it is only rendered without sound. When I go to the Properties>Render>Audio, it just gives me the opportunity to output an audio file.
Is there a way to have it render a single video file with audio?

Could you show the Output settings (some video formats don't support audio at all e.g Avi Raw) in the Render tab and the eventual Encoding-> Audio codec panel?
Relate (probably duplicate) question: Rendering Sound In Video Sequencer

That's perfectly fine. This Button Audio does, what it says, it "Mixes the scene's audio to a sound file". It does mix down actually all Audio Strips into one which you have placed inside the set Frame Range in the VSE.

When you want to render out a Video File, you have to hit the Animation Button. It will render out your active "Scene".

Though in the Post Processing Panel you can check (which is by default) to process everything through the VSE. This is obligatory for the Audio MixDown as there is the only place to import Audio Files (or Movie Files containing one Audio Strip). These will be used during your Playback as well.

When you want to have a Video file as output with sound, you have to use the Animation Button while having an Audio Strip placed as described above and having your File Format set to a Movie Option (like H.264).

AND very important: you have to choose an Audio Codec in the Encoding Panel which comes available once you choose a Movie File Format like AAC or MP3.

This is set to None by default which would result in a Video file without sound even though you placed one in the VSE properly when hitting the magical Animation Button (Ctrl F12).


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Is there any way I can make a curve and/or a mesh from a wavefile?
So I want to make a mesh surface based on a wave file. I have been trying to convert sound to curves so I could extrude it to a mesh plane, but I am relatively new to Blender so I am not sure how to do this. Do anyone have any suggestions for a solution?

You can do that with the Animation Nodes (AN) addon.

Make a new AN tree.
Make a Sound Bake node and load your sound. Then click on "Bake".
Create an "Evaluate Sound" node and set its Frame Type from Offset to Absolute. The sound object you baked should be selected automatically.
Create "Loop Input" node and connect the Index socket to the Frame input.
Click on the plus icon next to New Generator Output and type "Vector List". This should create a new node that you can move to the right.
Connect the "Strength" output socket with the "Vector" input. A new "Combine Vector" node should appear inbetween, because a vector consists of 3 values and the Strength is only a single value. Reconnect the sockets like in the image below.
Insert an optional Math node to be able to control the width of the curve.
Create a "Invoke Subprogram" node and choose the loop you just created. Then set the Iterations socket to the number of frames you want to have in the final curve (too high numbers can slow Blender down, you may want to uncheck "Always" in the toolbar so that AN doesn't recreate the curve multiple times every second)
Create a "Spline from Points" node and connect it to the Vector List output of the other node.
Create a "Set Splines on Object" node. Then click on the little plus icon which will create an empty curve object in your scene that you can use as output object. The last step is to take the Spline we created before and put it on the Curve object. If you do this connection a "Create List" node gets inserted automatically because the Set Splines on Object node expects multiple splines (but we only have one, so we create a list with one spline).

Now you should see the curve in the viewport. You can just remove all nodes now or just make a copy of the curve in order to edit it further.

Thank you so much! This works like a charm. Seems like there's endless possibilities with sound in the animation node system. I really want to learn to use it better.. Is there any literature you can recommend I read to get a better understanding of how I can utilise it?

Well there is the documentation here: http://animation-nodes-manual.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
It doesn't have much content... but there are a few links to external sites that can help you.

I've done this myself in the past, but the way I did it was fairly indirect. I loaded the file into Audacity, and took a screenshot of the audio visualization. Then I opened that file in Inkscape and cropped the screenshot to just the part of the audio that I wanted. I traced the image and saved the file as an SVG. I then imported this SVG into blender. Here's what that looked like when finished.

If you need help with the intermediary steps, let me know. None of the steps are overly difficult, but using an unfamiliar program can always be a challenge. :)

Hi Jacob :) I had this as a backup plan, but I wanted something a bit more detailed. Something like the f-curve you get when using the 'audio to markers' plugin, but as a curve in the 3d view instead.

Hi I dabbled with this in 2013 as part of my Sound Drivers (then Speaker Tools) addon.  The code required is still there (soundsurface.py) but needs to be run & edited manually, once the addon is installed.
I did get as far as wiring up the curve surface, which is a nice way to demonstrate how this is done.
A wav file (batman.wav) is associated with a speaker and then baked using default settings across 16 frequency ranges to custom properties (the channels) AA0 to AA15 into action SOUND_AA_batman.wav
Clicking on the actions button in the visualisers toolbox gives me

the 16 frequencies as curves, which gives a nice vis of the "surface".  This is simply the fcurves baked to a curve.

The following code uses the fcurves of the action going in the time directions and adds a crossing action to give me grid points, from which I created a displacement map, (top right hand corner of image below) which then used on a subdivided grid to give the surface effect.

The script to produce the displacement map is included in the sounddrivers addon as "soundsurface.py" and needs to be opened and run from the text editor.
This part needs to be edited, you will need to edit 'SOUND_AA_batman.wav' to match the channel and wav file name you use, and the settings on image size and frame step can be played around with,.
action = bpy.data.actions['SOUND_AA_batman.wav']

sound_surface_texture(action,
                      bpy.context,
                      frame_split=1,
                      image_size_x=1024,
                      image_size_y=1024)

All going well you will end up with an image named "SoundSurface" which can be applied to a grid as a displacement map texture.

Thanks for the reply! :) I ended up using the Animation Node approach but I am stoked people want to help out in a matter of hours :)


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Whats the cheapest particles to use? Both in Blender Render and Cycles
So, if I want to use an insane amount of particles, what is the cheapest render setup? In PCU usage?
In Unreal Engine the sprite particles (billboard) are very cheap to use, but can be set to use GPU instead of CPU.
In Blender, will they be much cheaper to use on a CPU than low poly mesh objects?
Would a plane with texture and alpha work just as well, for use in cycles for example?
Can I use the GPU for the billboard particles in Blender?
Would love to get some more information on this. Could not find the answer anywhere.

There is the general notion of ... Near Photo Realistic NPR rendering requires more compute time either on CPU or GPU.  Simply speaking Cycles is certainly more intended and recognized for NPR then Blender Internal Render.  This might imply Cycles renderings take more time if NPR is the goal.  The above comment is worthwhile.  You might want to give a specific number rather than the [insane] description.    Of course  we want to avoid a hardware description here.  You might specifiy the tests you have completed already.

I dont really have any specific project im working on for this question. I have been trying to figure out whats fast to work with, and if sprite based particles would give me any bonus in computing time. But i might have asked the question poorly. Lets say I make sparks in Blender Internal, and use one hundred thousand particles. Would it be cheaper to use billboard particles than object based particles? Would it be a big difference? Is mesh harder on the CPU?

I think the best thing to do is to benchmark. My five cents are that (personal best guess based on seven years of Blender usage, but not backed by actual tests):

If you are only rendering the particles (black or photographic background), you can get away by using only one (or 2 for antialias) sample in Cycles. It should be fast.
If you have something else Cycles-powered in the scene, you would have to crank up the samples, thus rendering bounces from  the particles. That could be a real pain. You may want to do a mixed composite.
If you are doing it in the internal in the first place, stick with it.

Using the "Halo" setting (in the internal) could give more pleasant results than "Billboard" if you are doing sparks or somesuch.
Cycleswise you could give a shot at the new point density input for a volume. It has the good side of not requiring you to make physical planes orient themselves to the camera. I am pretty sure it is far slower than anything else though.

I guess billboard and halo is easier to render than objects because they dont need to calculate bouncing?

True, plus they are slightly easier to set up. [Brought to you by: the laziest man to ever walk this earth.]

Hahah :) well, easy setup in Blender means more time for pumping weights in your spare time!


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Bezier curve lacking handles
So I wanted some stiff hair particles, but a little twisted. I made hair, added a vortex, baked to the frame/shape I wanted, and then I hit Convert. This turned it into a mesh, but the mesh was like invisible lines in render. It did not retain the shape from the Cycle Settings. From a few searches, I decided to convert the mesh to a curve (ALT+C - Curve from Mesh) and bevel.
However, the problem now is that the resulting tubes have jagged edges. I went into Edit mode and found that none of the Control Points have any Handles. How can I get/create handles in a curve? Tried setting all the Handle Types.

perhaps T menu > Tools > Set Spline Type > Bezier? Also, in the N menu make sure that Handle is enable in the Curve Display

Ah, thanks. Now just to get this to follow the armature...

solution is T menu > Tools > Set Spline Type > Bezier. Also, in the N menu make sure that Handle is enabled in the Curve Display


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Cannot use the sculptdraw tool
I was sculpting a model with the sculptdraw tool and I accidentally pressed the "2" under the icon (circled in green in image). I figured this out by pressing it several more times so I have 4 scupltdraw tools (Circled in red in picture). Now when I try and use the tool nothing happens. All other tools are working fine. I am guessing all I need to do is delete the duplicates but I don't know how to do that and which tool is the original.
Thanks in advance

If my answer doesn't solve your problem somehow, can you upload your file to http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ and share it with us so we can see if there is another issue.

I'm not sure why you can't use the tool since duplicating brushes shouldn't affect their properties however, you basically made duplicates of the main brush and then made them permanent by ticking the F. To fix, hold Shift and click the X which will unlink the brush and set the number of users to 0. Select the red paintbrush icon and select the other duplicate(s) and repeat, also untick the F as well.
This is how your brush menu should look after. Notice the 0 beside the duplicate brushes and the F beside your original.

Now that you have unlinked the dupes, save your file and open it again (can use CtrlShiftO and select it at the top). Select the icon again and select your original brush(set).
Since datablocks are so key in Blender, I'd recommend reading on how to identify and know what is happening in the future as this applies to other areas such as materials, nodes etc. What does "users" means in term of datablocks?


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How do I apply a texture in Blender Render without it being influenced by the object it's applied to?
Ok, I'm not sure if I'm even asking the question correctly, and what I'm trying to do might be a bit on the weird side.  So, I'll try to explain what I want to do, without sounding like a madman.
I have an image, shown below:

Now, I know how to apply the texture in the usual way.  Getting it to look like this is easy:

What I want to do though, is this:

I can achieve that effect in the compositor simply enough, but I want to avoid using the compositor if at all possible.  I was wondering if there was a way to do this with BI?
The reason I'm trying to do something so silly, is that I am primarily a pixel-artist, and I've been experimenting with trying to generate decent-looking pixel art via Blender.  Once I'm able to do the above, I can then produce something like this:

Thanks in advance for any advice or nudges in the right direction!

What render engine are you using? Use Screen or Window space texture coordinates

Blender Internal.  I'm not entirely sure how I would use Window texture coords in the node editor?  Or do I not need to?

Its quite easy, just pick the "Window" coordinate in the texture panel under "Mapping"

One bit of advice though is that during animation, when you move the object or camera, the texture will move with it. i.e. your "pixels" wont stay in the same spot, so you will potentially have a flicker in your "dithering".
For stills though this is totally fine.

I've tried this method previously, but it's not quite what I need.  The shading on the object is still visible.  I need to be able to completely eliminate everything, basically having the object act as a mask of sorts.  That is, of course, unless I'm missing something in the settings, and doing this will actually get me what I need to do.  I've tried it though, but I'm not yet a Blender expert, so I might indeed have overlooked some crucial step.

Sounds like you need a tutorial for a custom shader and its not really an issue of the texture coordinate. But you're in luck since I did something similar with my ink shader like 7 years back: http://matrep.parastudios.de/index.php?action=view&material=793-inked-sketch
Download that shader and try to replace the noise textures with your pixel grid and play around with the color ramp, it should give you the effect you need. Its based on using the color ramp as a contrast control for light input. So your shadow is mixed with the pixel grid. (no nodes)

Alternatively make a new question and I/we will try and guide you through the process of making your own.

In Cycles you would use the Texture Coordinates Node:

You would use the Window output from this one to get the results you want

With Cycles, it would indeed be easier to just use that node.  My problem with Cycles though, is that it really is more geared towards photorealism and the sort, and there's really too much tweaking involved in order to get the simple NPR style that I'm looking for.


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How do I apply scale to an armature while keeping the deforms on amesh that has shape keys?
So a bit of background as to what I want to do:
I'm trying to create a single mesh which is parented to an armature for use with different characters.  Rather than building a character model from the ground up each time, I want to build a sort of universal mesh that I can use for different characters.  That mesh would have a bunch of shape keys for things like phonemes and the sort.  The mesh is then rigged to an armature, including bones for things like the lips, jaw, etc...
Now, what I want is to use that mesh+rig for different characters.  So, if I want a tall character, I would scale some bones up, fix proportions, etc...  The mesh would also be adjusted to make the character thinner, fatter, more muscular, etc...
For the face, I plan on making a new shape key and then editing/sculpting the mesh to look how I want.  As it's based on the same original mesh, in theory all my phoneme shape keys should still work reasonably well with only minimal tweaking.
My problem though, is that if I scale the armature around, it makes rigging new things like clothes, shoes, etc...  quite difficult.  So, how do I apply scale to the armature, while also applying those deformations to the mesh?  Right now, I can't just apply the armature, as Blender tells me it can't be done to an object that has shape keys.
Thanks in advance for any answers, and apologies if I'm not asking quite as properly as I should, I fairly new to BSE.


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Has the way the way the Shader to RGB node functions changed in 3.2?
So I'm using the 3.2 alpha, and was working on my comic which I do with a toon-esque render. But then, I noticed that my bump maps weren't functioning properly. After much tinkering, I tracked it down to the Shader to RGB node. And it seemed quite odd, so I did a simple test:

There, I have a grayscale image with some doodles to do the bump map, and coming from the Diffuse node, it looks fine. However:

As soon as I throw in the Shader to RGB node, the bumps that had been there previously vanish. At first, I thought I might have just made some sort of mistake with my setup, so I tested it in Blender 3.1, but it works as it should:

So my question is, will the Shader to RGB node be deprecated in 3.2? Or is this just a temporary quirk with it still being an alpha? Or perhaps, am I doing something completely wrong which is why it's not working properly?

As of today's 3.2.0 beta ( f11dba88923f ) the same is happening when I tried it.  I've found no indication this is intended behavior -- you might've found a bug.

I found this post by searching the same problem: I had a shader to RGB node in 3.2 beta and it didn't work as intended, but opening the same setup in 3.1 (and 2.8 I had kicking around) did work.
downloaded a fresh copy of 3.6 and it works again, so it's something about that exact build.


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Render only Nodes that Change
When compositing with Blender, oftentimes I'll end up with a large node graph, with most of the nodes not changing at all.  However, whenever I add another node, even if it's not connected to the rest of the nodes, or if I just add a Reroute pin, blender rerenders the whole graph.  This seems like a waste of time to me, since only the nodes downstream of any changes need to run again.
Is there a way to make Blender not rerender the entire graph every time a change is made in the node editor, preferably just rendering the nodes downstream of the change?

you could just save the part you don't want to change as an image and continue from an image node, it's a bit frustrating to do, but it definitely saves time.


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Adjust margins (padding) between Editor windows
I'd like to add a few pixels of padding between the Editors to make it easier to resize them. I believe there is a 3 pixel range to get the "double arrow cursor" for resizing. Apparently I am not coordinated enough to consistently place my cursor with that kind of precision. Is there any way to increase these margins through scripting, perhaps by modifying an existing script in the directory? Obviously this is doable on some level, but aside from getting into the source code or too deep into the data structure, is this a reasonable task for a novice programmer to accomplish?
This is what I'm shooting for...

I don't think this is possible without diving into the C source, but this would a nice option to have. Perhaps even if only the area where the mouse changes into the double arrow is increased, without adding visual padding

I got curious about this, and ended up looking around in the source code. I haven't tried anything, but the stuff around line 1166 in source/blender/editors/interface/interface_panel.c looks relevant. That said, questions about the C source are considered off-topic here.

Gotcha. I'm probably not qualified to monkey around in c so I guess I'll just have to live with it for now. Not such a big deal, but one of those little glitches in the Matrix that makes me swear under my breath every once in a while. But hey thanks for digging into that for me. I really appreciate it.  Maybe if I'm feeling adventurous or really bored I'll have a look at that code... Ok so I looked over the "off-topic" link. What's protocol? Shall I just delete the question?... Anyhow, thanks again. Have a good one.

If I understood your question correctly, you are more interested in solutions that don't involve the C source (such as python). As such, it seems like a perfectly on-topic question to me (though I suspect the answer is "not possible"). I thought I'd mention that C questions are off-topic, lest I give the wrong impression by jumping into the C myself.

Not spacing between windows, but you can adjust some of the spacing variables on Linux at least via ctypes hack - https://gitlab.com/snippets/14620

There's not a way to do this without diving pretty deeply into the source :-/ It'd certainly be nice to make the borders wider, but we don't have that kind of access to the UI with Python.


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Python Script attribute error while using node editor
I am trying to use blender python script for creating textures in cycles render mode. While executing a script which is to be used to get the nodes, I am getting an attribute error
AttributeErrror: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'nodes'
Here's the code I am using
import bpy
import os

mat = bpy.data.materials["Material"]

nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes
material_output = nodes.get ("Material Output")

node_texture = nodes.new(type='ShaderNodeTexImage')
node_texture.image = bpy.data.images.load ('C:\\Users\\KM\\Desktop\\Blender\\auto.png')
node_texture.projection = "LINEAR"

links = mat.node_tree.links
link = links.new(node_texture.otputs[0], nodes.get("DIffuse BSDF"),inputs[0])

The error is from the line "nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes". Hope you guys can help clear the doubt.
Apologies if the question seems trivial, I am very new to blender and Thanks in advance for your help

probably this material has been created for the blender render engine (by default nodes are disabled ) so you just have to enable using nodes before accessing the node tree by the following line : mat.use_nodes = True then you'll have access to the node tree, you can do a test before accessing to avoid getting into errors


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How to export tangent data from blender with python
I an trying to implement normal mapping in opengl es for which i need the per vertex tangent data. Is there some means to get that from python blender api

you will need tangent and bitangent, and also UV coords of vertices. The first is answered in the duplicite, how to get the UVs is here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/19727/7777

Thnks for the suggestion


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Creating models from vertex groups
I have a humanoid model with its parts like head, torzo, leg etc assigned to vertex groups with corresponding names. I want to make models from these vertex groups. Is there a way to accomplish this without deleting the other vertex groups.

It was as easy as selecting the vertices in the vertex group and pressing P key and selecting Selection from the drop down menu.


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Extract Texture from a 3D blender model
As part of a project, I want to convert a 3D Model into a 2D image, my goal is to extract the texture from the model using blender.
I know UV unwrapping goes by the following steps:

Import object.
Unwrap object.
Apply the image(texture) in UV image editor.

Now my question is, does a procedure exist to do the following steps:
a. Import object which already has texture.
b. Extract the texture from this object and save as an image file.

Well I am new to Blender and I apologize if my question seems trivial. Thanks in advance

Generally when you have a model, your texture is a separate image file. Why would you want to do something to extract it, if all you have to do is locate the file? Unless you mean procedurally, then it's a bit different. You just need to be a bit more specific. What do you want to do this for?

@Tardis : Alright, My project is based on 3D cameras. The system i developed gives me a 3D model of an object for e.g a doll head. Now my next goal is to extract the texture from this object.
As you can see, I am not using blender to apply the texture in the first place.

Thank you @cegaton, I will read the article about Baking.

@Srijith How are the colors represented on the 3D model you have? Vertex colors? It should be possible to unwrap the model and bake the texture as cegaton suggested

@gandalf3 I just read about baking and it seems to be what I am looking for. Let me try it out and I'll get back to you guys with the results. Thank you

Has the baking done the job? If the object already has the material applied and it displays correctly inside of Blender then you should be able to simply find it in the UV Image editor and save it as a seperate external file? Is it possible to upload the file for us to take a look at? :)

Im New to blender and I found an easy way: (first time ever in blender)
-Open blend file
-open uw window
-in the icon with a photo , search for the textures
-once selectes just click on the file button
-export it


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new object added to existing animation won't render
I'm very new to Blender.  I made an animation that rendered to PNG, then mpeg fine using the Blender Render engine. When I later tried to add a new animated object to it, I can see it animating in the 3d view correctly, but the object doesn't make it to any new rendering. I checked some online help posts without any luck. The rendering (camera) icon for the new object seems active in outliner.  The new object was created by duplicating an existing one, then edited.  I'm sure there is just some setting I overlooked or accidentally changed but I can't find it.  Any help or points in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Is it possible you could upload a .blend with the problem object?

Thanks a million gandlf3.  I got busy pulling my hair out trying to find the problem and when I finally refreshed the page saw the answer in your first "read". I left my previous rendered PNGs in the video sequence editor, and just like magic, problem solved.  It never pays to panic and there's no substition for knowledge.  Thanks again.


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Midi in/out for game engine via animation nodes
Is there any chance you may add a node for implementing midi signals in a store-ready game engine product made in Blender? :D
Or is this just impossible (and a stupid question)?
Marius

The idea of implementing midi into animation nodes is relatively old:
https://github.com/JacquesLucke/animation_nodes/issues/332
It might be possible that we have a node for that later but then there is also the problem with the game engine. AN doesn't work with the game engine.
So unfortunally I have to say that this is just impossible.


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Convesion of curve to mesh makes faces behave strangely?
As you can see in the image here,
the outer ring of faces were converted from a curve into a mesh. I welded the points together and proceeded to paint the texture via zbrush. However, I later realized that the outer mesh does not have the texture. Instead, it's black, or requires a separate texture instead. It doesn't show up on UV mapping either.

I think this image kinda illustrates the idea better in that you can see that the outer mesh isn't highlighted like the others.
I appreciate any help since I'm rather confused on what it means.
I've also had the problem where the UV map likes to split parts of the mesh which I'd rather preserve. I've even created seams myself but it still wants to create extra seams. Is there any way to fix this?

Uploading the .blend will help checking what the problem is.

It's nsfw so I don't think that's allowed. And I THINK I may have figured it out via sheer dumb luck. Tq anyway

However, I do still have the problem that even though they are all the same material, programs like Daz3d still recognizes them as a separate 'surface' for materials

Sounds like you need to join the two objects together with Ctrl+J and UV unwrap one more time.

It's actually joined already but UV unwrapping doesn't seem to 'see' the outer ring

I seem to have figured out the problem. For some reason, they were both different materials, so Blender considered them separate groups even though they've been merged. This explains why they are different colored. The reason why they don't have the blue outline is because they are not shaded 'sharp' like the others.

HOWEVER, in Daz3d, it STILL recognizes it as 3 separate bodies for some reason.


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Is there a way to turn an obj into a partial shrink wrap for another obj to deform into?
As you can see in the image below, I have two faces. One with a complete head, and another as just the face. I'm trying to deform the one with a complete head to match that of the 'face'. Shrink wrap doesn't work as it just causes the entire head to shrink into the mask and I cannot combine it as the mesh for the head cannot be deleted/merged as I plan to use it as a morph target in Daz3d. Any help would be appreciated.

Shrinkwrap contains a vertex group field. Just assign the needed vertices in a group, and specify this group in the shrinkwrap modifier.

How do you group said vertices? And also, sorry to bother, but how do you select the vertices accurately? Does it have to be done by eye?

To create a group : go to the properties panel and the data tab. and below click + on the vertex groups. Then back to 3D view go to edit mode on the complete head. Then yes, select the vertices accurately and assign them to the group.

@BlenderScrub You can also go straight into weight paint mode after creating the group and mirror paint the vertex group.

@BlenderScrub --  perhaps.... to define an exact vertex group, you could visually in editor place the smaller mask over larger, put larger in edit mode, alt_select smaller, Mesh::knife_project, and then create a new VG group and Assign.

A possible technique to define an exact vertex group for shrinkwrap

visually in editor (orthogonal mode) place the smaller mask over larger, put larger in edit mode, alt_select smaller, Mesh::knife_project, and then create a new VG group and Assign.

move the target mask somewhat close to the larger mask, add Shrinkwrap modifier and set vertex group (I used shring_wrap as the VG name).

If you need to increase the accuracy/detail, you may want to subdivide the shring_wrap vertex group and possibly subdivide the SW target as well.


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How can I keep my objects or groups as particles level on the field
I'm making a forest along hills. I managed to setup my particles to follow the topology, but when I add more objects into the group, the new objects float above the topology randomly. Of course I have it set to random, but the altitude should be along the topology. How can I fix that? The objects that are duplicated are slightly below 0 on the z axis and then they are selected as the group to set for the particle.

Have you made sure that the origins for each object aren’t set below their mesh?

Is your Particle Type set to Emitter, or Hair? :)


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How can I flip the direction of an animation
Hi Im starting to learn how to animate in blender. I made a simple walkcycle animation but i want to add the same animation into another action where my character walks in the other direction. I tried to just simply rotate the rigged model and did set all the keyframes but that changed also the direction of my other actions.
Example of the idea: action 1: walkingcycle in left direction
                     action 2: SAME walkingcycle in right direction
Thanks for taking your time to read through.

You can convert your animation to an action strip in NLA Editor and use strip's properties to reverse animation:

Note that after this conversion you won't be able to edit your animation, i.e change keyframes' position or add new ones. So you may want to create backup of your mesh with editable animation.

beat me to it :D

@MrZak I think he meant mirroring the animation on some axis, reversing will not make the rig turn left or right.

@Denis yes thats what i meant. He is walking backwards now but that was not what i wanted XD.

well, I misread your question. Then it seems to be this can help you ?

I already tried that one. It only mirrors/flips the animation without the amature. Isn't there a way to rotate the amature without affecting the animations?

@George yes that's a bit difficult to accomplish since you need to mirror the location and rotation of the root, I'm sure there is an addon for that.

I heard about this addon, but it seems it isn't up to date for now

That addon is not compatible with the new versions of blender, this is the only addon that I know of that does the job but it cost 15$ http://blog.machinimatrix.org/sparkles/

This is the only thing I can think of. That addon from scio.de worked for me (sort of), but did nothing (0 pasted, 0 deleted, though telling it did something) so I think it's really no longer a way

Thank you all for your effort! Nothing really worked the way i wanted it to but i guess you can't fix anything :/. Thanks again!

@George sparkles addon works perfectly

looks like this video shows a simple way to do it. simply change the x scale to -1 at the armature objetct properties and apply deltas (ctrl + a and choose "all transforms to deltas")
https://youtu.be/oKGWD65wqxo?si=dhs7YS6q-583poXS


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Particle system - steers along path
I have few arrows to follow a particular path such a way that the arrows will always orient along (steer along) the path. Using 'curve guide', I was able to make the arrows flow along the path, but the arrows do not change direction according to the path.

As you can see arrows are always facing the same direction. What I want is the arrows should change the direction according to the path.
I tried my level best. But no result :( Please help me. you can find my Blender file also.
Blender file
Thanks and Regards Sabin

First make the arrow point in X direction by editing the mesh:

Then enable Rotation tab for particle system and check Dynamic:

Your particles will now rotate along the Curve guide accordingly:


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How do I set a custom shape for multiple bones?
I've tried finding a solution for this, but I can't seem to locate one.  Or perhaps I'm not asking the right questions.
Right now, I'm using Blender 2.79b, and what I want to do is to select multiple bones in an armature, and set the custom shape for all of them without having to do each bone one by one.
Mostly it's because I've got a model with ten fingers, and each finger has two control bones that should use the same custom shape, and I would rather not have to set the custom shape twenty times if there's a possibility to do it all in one go.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Make sure the Copy Attributes Menu addon is enabled (by default embedded with Blender).
Then select first the bone(s) that should receive the shape, then the bone that has the shape holding the Shift key > Ctrl-C > Copy Bone Shape

That does the trick, thanks!


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How do I achieve the traditional 3/4 perspective of JRPGs using the camera?
first a bit of background.  I am primarily a pixel artist, and I tend to work in the 3/4 perspective usually seen in old SNES-era games, like so:

That's something I pixeled up.  Now, I'm trying to achieve a similar effect in Blender, to create a pseudo-3d/pseudo-2D pre-rendered look.  I could just do it all with traditional 2D tiles, but going the 3D route saves me time when having to reorient stuff for combat-sequences in an isometric projection (think similar to the Breath of Fire series).
When doing that pseudo-isometric view, it works fine.  What I want to know though, is how to achieve the 3/4 perspective view in the first image.  Right now, I can achieve something like this:

In that, I'm using assets I pixeled up previously, textured onto simple geometries.  I've set the camera to orthographic with a scale of 16.  The X/Y/Z rotations are 45/0/0.  My problem though is that the tiles are turning out rectangular and not perfect squares.  In the pixel art, the front of the cabinet is exactly two tiles across and two tiles high.  The top of the cabinet is exactly two tiles wide and one tile high.  In the render though, it's not lining up perfectly.
Is there a way to set up the camera (or something else, perhaps) to get the perfect squares that I'm looking for?
Thanks in advance for any help, it's most appreciated.

I think the main problem here stems from the fact that the perspective you want to achieve is not a real 3D projection,and thus is not geometrical possible to achieve directly from a 3D model, I think

I don't have the answer, but Duarte may be right : after all, using a camera results in a perspective, whereas what you are looking for is not a perspective but an axonometric (there are no vanishing points and thus all objects within same plane look parallel).

Have a look at this

Ah, interesting, hadn't considered that might be the case.  Also, that link is an interesting read, definitely helpful, thanks!

Keep your camera angle 45° and have your geometry dimensions like this:

Then you will get the perfect squares:

I haven't read the @user47789 's question to the end, so had to delete my answer. I tested yours and it works like a charm. May be very helpful for me also. Thanks!

Ah, I see.  So if I'm understanding correctly, it's not exactly possible to use perfectly square geometries and still get perfectly square renders using the angle I want to achieve?  Hmm, that might take some wrangling, but doable I suppose.

@lakan-inocencio yes, correct

You can change the Aspect X under Scene->Dimensions to account for the 45 degree camera rotation.  When testing, I found that $\sqrt{2} \approx 1.4142$ worked to create perfect squares given your constraints.  This way you don't have to modify your actual geometry, just the final output image.

Here is an example render where I overlayed checker patterns to verify we indeed have perfect squares.

In Blender 3.6 aspect ratio can be found under:
Output -> Scene -> Format


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Map Nasa Heightmap to Sphere
I'm pretty new to Blender and I'm trying to map a Nasa Heigtmap onto a sphere. I've tried to use the Displace Modifier but the heightmap is streched:
I think this is because Africa is at the UV spheres pole, but I have no idea how to change that.
Help would be very appreciated!

try to using microdisplacement

It should also be noted that the earth is so ridiculously big that any mountains are pretty much neglicible compared to the rest.

Try this. 1. Apply scale and rotation of the object. Activate the object than press Ctrl + A button, than choose scale and rotation. 2. Unwrap the object perfectly to a rectangular shape. Delete top and bottom vertices. than make one vertical markseam, than unwrap the sphere. please learn how to unwrap UV sphere, in somewhere tutorial. 3. add more polygon, increase subdivision surface to highest level. if needed add double subdivision surface modifier, more polygon more detai.


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Apply all transforms? After qutting edit mode it resets everything back
In Edit Mode I apply few transforms to a grid (wrap, rotate, change location), but when I got back to the Object Mode - everything's gone, and all I see is my default grid.
What am I missing? How do I stop blender from erasing all changes I've made?

Please be more specific, some screenshots could help. What is the "grid" you mentioned and how do you apply transforms to it. If you want to apply transforms it's done in Object mode.

Does you mesh have any shapekeys?

Grid is a grid from Create -> Grid. Transforms are in Edit Mode, Mesh menu -> Transform (various options in this sub-menu). Yes, I do have shape keys.

That can also happen when you have keyframes already set for that object.  The moment you try and move to another frame, even just one, everything to do with those keyframes will return things to the way they were.

So you didn't apply any transforms to the mesh, you edited mesh in Edit mode with scale / grab / rotate etc. with shape keys added to the mesh. The reason are the shapekeys present in your mesh, that's what they actually do - allow transitioning from one form into another. Either delete them or edit the mesh while Basis key is selected.


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How to create the same animation for different meshes?
I am trying to create the same skeleton animation from a mesh to a different mesh, which already has morph animation (shape keys were created). So I deleted the first mesh, kept the skeleton (which already has skeletal animation) and then, imported the second mesh with morph animation. I scaled, rotated and changed location of the second mesh so it fits the skeleton. Then, I did the process of rigging (I selected the mesh + shift + selected the armature, then clicked "ctrl + P" to create parenting). And it worked, the second mesh was animated according to the skeletal animation of the first mesh. Nevertheless, when I try to export this mesh to three.js as a skeletal animation (I chose pose mode, because when I choose rest mode, it gives me error), the mesh is displayed in a messy way and not with its normal shape. How can I fix this?


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How can I create different animations for a mesh on Blender?
I have an avatar mesh and I want to separate different animations, each animation in a different timeline in order to create blending animation. I do not know how to begin this process on Blender. Can someone help me please?

Check out the NLA Editor https://www.blender.org/manual/animation/editors/nla.html

If I'm correctly interpreting what you mean by "blending", this seems like a job for Shape Keys. http://www.blender.org/manual/animation/techs/shape/shape_keys.html?highlight=shape%20keys

Actually blending animation means mixing different animations.

@batFINGER But before using NLA Editor to mix different animations, I have to create the animations first. But I don't know how to do it using Action Editor. Do you know how? I tried to create 2 animations, but I wasn't able to separate them in different timelines.

Quick run thru with just start up file and default cube selected. Hit i and insert a keyframe, the cube now has an action. In the Action Editor hit Stash .. it is now in the NLA.  Add a new action by either hitting the + NEW button in the Action editor, or by simply adding a keyframe with the cube selected.  Once your actions are in the NLA you can slide them around on the timeline, for example walk animation from 1 to 100, run from 90 to 250.   There are options on how to blend the animations, on the link above.


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Using matplotlib in python script to enable plotting in add-on
i would like to create an add-on that can plot graphs using matplotlib inside the add on frame.
Does anyone have any experience  with using matplotlib or any other python lib in blender?
Is it possible to plot the graph in an add-on frame?


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Motion Tracking - Link track to empty and move camera instead of empty
I have some footage that I've added a single tracking point to and linked it to an empty. This successfully moves that empty in my scene in relation to the tracker and I can add objects into the scene and parent them to those empties and they stay in position. However, some of the objects I'm adding are in motion and have particle trails, and the trails do not behave correctly since the objects are moving around based on the movement of the empty, as well as their own keyframe animations. Is there a way to invert the "track to" constraint on the empty so that the translation of that empty is inverted and applied to the camera so that the camera is translating, and the empty is "pinned" to its initial position?

maybe you have to change some options of the particles, such as the gravity, etc.

I did something similar to this to avoid having to do full camera solving and achieved it by converting the track into an f-curve and then using the scale tool to invert the track (scaling by -1 in the y-direction) for each of the channels. This produced an empty that moved in the opposite direction to the original footage which I could then track the camera to. This can be achieved as follows :
Create a new Empty to act as the target and add a 'Track To' constraint. Uncheck the 'Active Clip' checkbox and select the relevant the Movie Clip containing the track. Set the Object, Track, and Camera. This should result in the Empty following the chosen point in the footage.
Click the 'Constraint to F-Curve' button in the Constraint panel. This will remove the constraint and convert it into an F-Curve on the empty so we can then manipulate the F-Curves.
Select the Empty and open a Graph Editor window and make sure the mode is set to 'F-Curve. You should see F-Curves for its X, Y, and Z locations.
Press 'A' until none of the graphs are selected (each press will toggle all or none). Right-Click on the 'X Location' curve to select a point on it. Press 'L' to select all linked points (ie, the whole curve). Press 'S', 'Y', '-1', Enter to scale it by a factor of -1 in the Y direction only. Repeat for the 'Y' and 'Z' curves. This will reverse the direction of motion for the empty in each direction.
Select the camera and add a constraint to Track To the empty and the camera should now mimic the motion in the original footage (rather than its inverse).
If you need to adjust the point at which the camera is pointing you can use the F-Curve editor to select one of the curves again and move the entire curve up or down (right-click curve, press 'L' to select the whole curve, 'G' then 'Y') to adjust the position.

Nice solution! This seems like this should be a checkbox that is really easy to add.... Hehe


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How do you recommend I overlay textures on object 'Faces'
I have started making this map as you can see below with the help of this team. I have made some textured images to use for the 'room' that I have made with CrazyBump. Now I tried to import the image as a plane. However that stretches the image out and is not what I am looking for. What I would like to do is be able to select individual subdivisions or boxes if you will and be able to say put this image on this box or that box.
How would you all recommend I go about doing this. I am interested in knowing some different approaches so I can look into the different options.
I have a hardwood flooring model I made that I would like to insert in the recessed parts of the image.
Thanks

EDIT:
I created a new project for a test bed. Added a plane, increased scale by 8 and then subdivided by 15. Next split the screen and made the new side UV/image editor. Next I went back to the original side and right click a box, then pressed B key and dragged over a random group of boxes. Next pressed U >> unwrap and then U >> smartUV project.  On new screen clicked image >> open image >> floor image
Now the whole thing goes pink at this point. Not sure why, even though the UV side of things is okay. Now I scaled the image out and then added the same texture from the material tab to the texture tab.
Now what I am left with is what I am talking about the brownish area around the textured squares I chose

On a side note, what books would be recommended to teach you how to use different function of blender.

you might have your image mapping set to "extend" mode, it means it will take the color of the last pixel of the picture and duplicate it to every part of your mesh that has an uv coordinate outside of the picture as in your example. To solve this you can either scale your UVs to fit into the picture or set the image mapping extend mode to "clip" or "repeat"

First of all, import images as planes creates a new mesh, dimension as the image of your choice, unwrapped and with the texture applied: it's not what you're looking for, you want to apply a texture to your already prepared mesh.
There are many approach to this task:
In your case I would go like this:
Numpad 7 and toggle 5 to get orthographic top view,
select all horizontal faces,  U to unwrap, project from view, rename the UV map as something like "UV Top view".
Then H for hiding already unwrapped faces (Alt H to return to whole mesh)
Numpad 1 to front ortographic view, select vertical and visible faces, create new UV map (plus sign), rename it as "UV front view",  U to unwrap, project from view, and so on .....
Then choose different UV maps for every part of the mesh when texturing.
The concept is to create different UV maps mapping useful portion of your mesh in the most useful way. It's good to have a single UV map only if you want a seamless texture over the whole mesh, but I think you're not going to use the same texture on walls, floors and ceilings!
Then we can think about the floor as example of workflow:
Set a new material for floor, set your images textures (even with bump, spec, ...) select all floor faces, in the UV editor window select all and S - scale the "top view" UV map as desired scale (i'm assuming everything is tileable); in the Image editor you can use S X to scale the UV map along the horizontal axe, and S Y in the vertical one, to achieve the desired overall scale and minimum stretching of the texture.
You will have to specify to all your textures the correct UV map.
It's more difficult to say in words than do it: experiment it with a simple mesh and a couple of textures.

I'm getting lost a little here. The UV map portion is about making different 'groups' of faces so it will know how to position the image correctly, right?

What is mean't by project from view?
I believe I did the process succesfully, before it turned all objects in the project pink. However now I selected a 8x6 group of faces on a new test project which was a flat plane cut up and when I layed the image down (a hardwood floor image) the rest of the flat plane that was not selected turned a brown color.

After you've pressed U to Unwrap, one of the options (like smart UV project) is project from view: it creates an UV map as it's seen by the viewport. I would suggest the book "introducing character animation with Blender", by Tony Mullen.

I figured out why the rest of the room would turn brown. Again something right in front of my face that I could see. I was viewing the texture by changing the mode from edit mode to texture paint mode. I didn't realize the viewpoint selector was next to it and hit that by mistake. I am not sure why it makes the rest brown but when you change the view point to material or texture it shows properly.


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How to add unique materials in duplicated bodies?
I duplicated a football player but when I wanted to work in only one of them the changes of materials happend to both of them ! Please tell me how to work on materials seperatly !!!

Just add a new material in the player you're editing. Make the material you want and then deselect everything in editmode, click on the material it currently has and which you plan to change, click select in the materials tab, click on the new material you added, click assign and delete the old material.


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Simulate Infinity mirror effect
I'm trying to model an infinity mirror but can't seem to get the reflections working correctly. I have a simple node setup of a glossy and transparent into a mixed node and the geometry node connected using the backfacing node to the FAC of the mix shader. I only have one "layer" of reflection ... how can I get the mirroring effect of infinity.

In Render Option in Light Paths panel, select Full Global Illumination in a intergrator presets dropdown, that will increase glossy bounce number and , total  bounce number

Adding a plane - glass and transparent shader as a lid and bumping up  the reflective bounces helped immensely as suggested by Duarte Farrajota Ramos. Adding a light only added a firefly issue and wasn't needed anyway. The effect was almost there. Changing the Light Path panel intergrator preset to Full Global Illumination completed the infinity effect.

I think your node setup might be reversed, you probably want the glossy shader in the upper slot of the mix shader.
Anyway it may not work that way, if I understand correctly you may need a reflective 'lid' on your box so there's something else for the ground to reflect. Also since 'inside' your box it's dark so there is no light to reflect. Even though it's backfacing is transparent seen from inside it is all mirror so no light is getting in. If you add a light to the inside of your box it might work.

One side note if you are aiming for a 'infinity mirror' effect you may want to bump up the number of reflective bounces for cycles under the Properties Window > Render Tab> Light Paths > Bounces Glossy otherwise after that number of bounces cycles will return black instead of the actual reflection.


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VSE won't decode full video width unless it's divisible by 8
It seems that my Blender reads/decodes videos in widths that are multiples of 8 – and any remaining pixels are left out. Is there a setting for this? A way to change it to multiples of 2?
I'm running Blender 2.76b on Windows 7 and I recently started using it, so far only as a video editor.
What happens when I for example import and preview an 854×480 MP4 is that only the leftmost 848×480 pixels are shown in the Video Sequence Editor. The rightmost 6×480 are invisible in the preview and they will be black when the video is rendered.
I've tested using a number of H.264 and H.263 MP4 and AVIs encoded with avc1, x264, Xvid. And the same thing happens with an 852×480 DivX: the video width is shown in multiples of 8 and the remaining pixels are left out.
HOWEVER, when using Uncompressed AVI, the entire 854×480 is previewed and can be perfectly rendered to an 854×480 H.264 AVI. (When importing the rendered H.264 back into Blender, though, I will only see 848×480 pixels.)
It seems that only the width is restricted as I can successfully preview a video with a height of 478 pixels (not a multiple of 16, 8 or 4).
I hope this is a silly newbie question with a simple answer...

That's probably no Blender related question but about Video Encoding Formats? It's usual for encoding in small file sizes to use blocks by 8x8 pixels (like in JPG)... But have you already played around with Image Crop or Image Offset?

Well, I don't know if it's an issue within Blender or with an external decoder. But this issue doesn't occur with the same videos in other programs such as MPC-HC or Virtualdub. Only Blender seems to be reading them in widths of 8.
Playing around with Crop and Offset doesn't solve it. With Image Offset the image can be moved further to the left, but the rightmost pixels remain invisible. And Image Crop... well, I guess it only crops out pixels?

The only workaround (I tried it once but I don't want to do it again) is to pillarbox the videos in Virtualdub: By re-encoding a 854×480 video and adding black pixels to make it 856 pixels wide (a multiple of 8!) I can get Blender to read the full width, and I can then use Crop and Offset to make a render in 854×480.
(And yes, the same thing happens with other widths. With a 716 pixels wide video Blender previews and renders 712 pixels and the remaining 4 are left out.)

authors: Дмитрий Богомазов


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Vertices not Showing up on Object
Hi so I just added a circle with vertices 32.
and when i go into edit mode they dont show up on the circle? I need to do some work with it and i need to see the vertices.
Any ideas why its not showing up?
I have tried alt-H and that wont work.
Thanks

Switch to vertex manipulation mode

You need to switch to Vertex manipulation mode. Just press Ctrl+Tab and then V.

ughh i cant believe I missed that. thank you so much :)

that's ok. We all do that sometimes. I forget shortcuts I know very well more often than you'd think. I tried to find the W menu with Ctrl+W for a while once.


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Unwrapping gone wrong
I've been facing a small artifact when unwrapping to an image.
On the right is the picture I am trying to unwrap and on the left is the image that has been generated.
For some reason the face I have selected hasn't been completely filled in. I have no idea why this is happening and why it is only happening for this specific face. On other meshes this material has unwrapped just fine.
Could anyone give me a hint?

in the left image, I see 6 selected vertices, while in the right image, there are only 4, apparently. Could it be some overlapping geometry, somehow?


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Two different GPUs, one for viewport the other CUDA one to be used exclusively for rendering
I'm struggling to manage the following setup. I have an Intel i5 with intergrated graphics which was driving successfully the OS GUI so far. I've added a GTX 580 which I would like to use it only for GPU rendering in Blender, in order to avoid having UI freezes while rendering .
I've managed successfully to GPU render in 2.75 (Ubuntu 14.04.2 x64) but the single monitor I have is now connected to the GTX 580, instead of the onboard GPU it was connected so far.
When the i5 GPU drives the monitor, the NVidia drivers are disabled,even if they are installed along with CUDA 7.
The first step is to connect the monitor back to the i5 GPU (via the appropriate setting BIOS) and leave the GTX idle,then setup the GTX for GPU in Blender system settings, but then how do I tell Blender to use the onboard graphics card for Blender UI only?
Thanks in advance

The GPU selection in the system settings is only for selecting the device for rendering. AFAIK blender can't redraw itself with a specific GPU not used by the rest of the display.


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Multiple meshes with rigify: One does not transform at all
I have been experimenting with the latest rigify version where there is a horse rig added.
The hair meshes do what they should when I go to pose mode and behave somewhat okay.
The horse main mesh however does not. I have seen in weight paint mode that there have not been applied ANY weights though I selected so. Any solution to let it be re-calculated?
Thanks for your help!

What method did you use to weight paint? With automatic weights on parenting?...

Correctly. I parented and selected "with automatic weights" in the options there.

Have you tried selecting a deforming pose bone(s), then go to weight paint and choose weights > Assign Automatic from bones.

Do I have to do that with every bone or just the deform bone layer with all selected?

Either way..  8^)

"Warning: Bone heat weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones" what now?

Found out that there was an issue with too many verticies in the object causing the automatic weight painting mode to not work at all. By doing retopology and/or simply decreasing the face count and repeating the steps it will work.


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Possible to use textures with different uv-maps on the same object (same faces, different seams)? [Game engine]
I am trying to put different textures on an object, one for a better shading and one for markings (the object is a horse model). I want to keep the UV orientation of the shading texture I already have rendered but use a different one for the markings since I don't want to have some of the seams where they are on the shading-texture.  I already packed the one of them into the .blend file, as a thought that like this the UV is still loaded correctly for this one. Is it safe to use a second UV map now or is something that I need to pay attention to first? I don't want to re-render the whole texture since my computer is not the fastest. I hope, someone can help me here.

You can use multiple UV maps per mesh, and you can arbitrarily assing any of them to any texture independently of the others. Just go to the Properties Window > Object Data > UV Maps, and press the +button to add a new one. Packing textures is used for file transfer convenience, it has no effect on UV maps used.

okay thank you, then I know what to do now (=


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Open GL render active viewport: Sky color disappeared
I have got a sky color as well as a texture set, but since some time the viewport render only shows a transparent or black area behind all objects. I use game engine, but blender render does the same. I had that some time before, that there is no sky in the viewport render but I would like to make it visible again. I don't know how to do this, so has anyone got an idea what I could do?

I'll suggest the obvious here - in Blender itself, press N, open the "Display" tab and make sure "World background" is ticked.  "Only Render" is also a good idea.  In the properties panel at extreme right, open the rendering icon, (little camera at left) then it's "Shading" tab.  The Alpha slot should be set to "Transparent".  The Post Processing tab further down is safest with it's two boxes unticked unless using actually the VSE or Compositor.

The above locked me out before I could correct the "Transparent" mistake.  That should read "set the "Shading" tab to "Sky" .  Open the "World" icon (little blue globe at top) and it's "Sky" tab, set that to your desired sky colour.

Thank you very much. The alpha was set to transparent, that was the problem. Now I could solve it^^