text:
How to get the data path of object dimensions for using in drivers?
Is there a way to get the data path of object dimensions for using in drivers?
How to get the variable for a specific object y-dimensions for example?
Thank you
Chris

Does this answer your question? Can I get the object dimensions in Cycles? TLDR : Use dimensions[0] for x, dimensions[1] for y and dimensions[2] for z

Thank you. Yes, this could be one way. But you are always forced to place a value node into the object material. As soon as you change the material, the connection interrupts.
But I would like to read the data directly, without using material nodes.

Okay then, could you elaborate on what you want to achieve with this data ? I assume it's for shading given the topics of your tutorials :) I can think of a hacky way to get it in any material using the viewport color output of the object info node. Let met know if that would suit your need

Thank you. But it's not used for materials. :) I need it for arranging objects dynamically by using drivers and calculate a position dependent of an object size. And because the object size can change dyamically, I need the current resulting x-y-z values.

To use the current dimensions of an object for a driver, you have to use the dimensions array.

The values for the object width are stored in the array as following:
object size of x-axis (width) =  dimensions[0]
object size of y-axis (depth) =  dimensions[1]
object size of z-axis (height) =  dimensions[2]

The complete list of the object data IDs can be found here: https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.Object.html

If the driver doesn't update in the viewport or output an error, try to press "Update Dependencies" in the drivers editor sidebar. My driver were set right, but didn't work and I didn't know why nothing happened. This was the main reason for this post  here. Updating the dependencies solved my issue.

Here's an example how it could look like in the Drivers editor:

Sometimes the drivers need to be "reset" for instance when at one time you introduce an error in the expression like a division by 0. Then you have to update the dependencies for it to work again. Maybe that happened

You can use the object viewport color to transfer information to the material. Here it's convenient because the dimensions are always positive and the RGB channels can only hold positive values so we can just use the raw value.
You can either add a driver to each of the R, G, B channel of the viewport color property by hand or by using a script.
Use dimensions[0] for the $X$ dimension, dimensions[1] for $Y$ and dimensions[2] for $Z$.
Alternatively (and perhaps more intuitively) you can use dimensions.x, dimensions.y, dimensions.z.

Here is a script to automate it :
import bpy

def main():
    ao = bpy.context.active_object
    if not ao or ao.type not in  ('MESH', 'CURVE', 'SURFACE', 'META', 'FONT', 'VOLUME', 'GPENCIL'):
        print("Select a mesh, curve, surface, metaball, text, volume or grease pencil object")
        return
    for i in range(0, 3):
        add_driver_to(ao, "color", "dimensions", "dim", i)

def add_driver_to(obj, prop_to, prop_from, var_name, dim):
    """
    Add a driver to obj's prop_to property
    Using obj's prop_from property

    Both properties must be at least of dimension dim
    """
    if not obj:
        return
    if not hasattr(obj, prop_to):
        print(f"Object '{obj.name}' doesn't have a property named '{prop_to}'")
        return
    driver = obj.driver_add(prop_to, dim).driver
    # Make sure we don't add variables indefinitely :
    var = driver.variables.get(var_name)
    if not var:
        var = driver.variables.new()
    var.name = "dim"
    var.type = 'SINGLE_PROP'

    target = var.targets[0]
    target.id_type = 'OBJECT'
    target.id = obj
    target.data_path = f"{prop_from}[{dim}]"

    driver.expression = var_name

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

To visualize what we just did, set the viewport object color to "Object".

Execute the script and scale the object.

To access it in a shader access the "Color" output of the "Object Info" node and separate each channel.

Scale along X for example (Values > 1 are pure white):

As I commented in my 1st post above, it doesn't solve my needs. But it's very interesting, how you control the object color in this way and I've learned a lot. Especially the python code is very informative for me.
Thank you for this proposal!

Glad it was useful anyway :) And thank you for your tuts ;)


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How to copy rotation from Active to Selected in Python?
I'm new in Python and would like to know how to copy Rotation values from an Active to a Selected object.
I already have stored the active and selected object ids in vars and am able to select them both and set an active one. But I don't know how to "transfer" the rotation values from the active object to the selected object.
I'm using Blender 2.91.2.
Thank you

Copy Global Rotation
This example I am copying the global rotation of the active to all other selected objects.
Get the rotation matrix of the active object from its 3x3 rotation matrix, and convert to 4x4
Then for each selected object, decompose, keep the scale and location and recompose with the new rotation.  A 4x4 transform matrix is composed of translation, rotation and scale.  M = T @ R @ S. Decomposing is separating the parts into a vector, quaternion, and vector for each respectively.
import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix
context = bpy.context

ob = context.object

R = ob.matrix_world.to_3x3().to_4x4() # rot matrix

for o in context.selected_objects:
    if o is ob:
        continue
    # decompose
    loc, _, scale = o.matrix_world.decompose()
    # recompose
    o.matrix_world = (
            Matrix.Translation(loc) @
            R @
            Matrix.Diagonal(scale.to_4d())
            )

for local use the local matrix. For basis (ie what you see in UI rotation field) use basis matrix. Does a child object inherit the matrix from the parent?
Another method would be to add a copy rotation constraint to each, and apply. Apply a Transform

Thynk you very much!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Transparent faces in Edit Mode
I am not sure how it happened but all my faces are now semi-transparent in Edit Mode.

I have tried multiple settings to get solid faces back. I am not in wire frame mode and I made sure that "Limit selection to visible" is disabled as see in the picture. I have no idea why I can't get my solid faces back.
Any help is greatly appreciated,
BloodHound27

A possible cause may be the 3d viewport clipping parameters, give it a check. For a scene like this a default 0.1-1000 should works fine.

It turns out you were right @Carlo. If you re-post your comment as the answer, I will accept it as correct.

Thanks for the offer, but I think we'll mark this question as a duplicate for the sake of tidiness.

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


text:
Object property getter infinite loop
Here is my issue : I would like to add a unique Int property on an object.
This property needs to be unique even when duplicated.
So according to Duplicating object and default value of property and https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?328009-Unique-object-id I did this :
# Getter for anchor duplicate
def get_global_index(self):
#    print("getting value")
    done = False
    # get current index
    index = self.global_index #Recursive ?!
    # chek if already used (in case of a duplicate) and try a new one while necessary
    while not done:
        anchors = [obj for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects if obj.type == 'EMPTY' and obj.empty_draw_type == 'PLAIN_AXES']
        # already referenced
        if any(obj.global_index == self.global_index for obj in anchors):
            # found to try another index
            print("Trying another index")
            index = context.scene.global_index
            context.scene.global_index+=1
        else:
            done = True
            print("FOUND index")

    return index

def register():
    bpy.types.Object.list_index = bpy.props.IntProperty(name = "Index for my_list", default = 0)
    #Each anchor needs a unique index
    bpy.types.Scene.global_index = bpy.props.IntProperty(name = "Global index for Anchors", default = 0)
    #So use scene index to store the increment
    bpy.types.Object.global_index = bpy.props.IntProperty(name = "Object index for Anchors", default = 0, get=get_global_index)

BUT, The getter seems to loop infinitely and I don't understand what I'm doing wrong.
I just want the getter to check in the current objects of the specified king to check if the index is not already used (when Duplicated) because I need to have each one of them having a unique index.
Thanks !

In your getter for Object.global_index you have  if any(obj.global_index == self.global_index for obj in anchors):  Note that  obj.global_index uses the getter, hence the infinite recursion.

I see, thanks. So do you have any suggestion on how to manage this problem ? The only idea I have right now is to reference any index in a separate list, or to increment it on each get (but will increase very quickly ?)

So, based on this Duplicating object and default value of property I think I found a way.
I use a second identical property to avoid having to get from the getter
Here it is :
# Getter for anchor duplicate
def get_global_index(self):

    # get current index
    index = self.hidden_index

    # chek if already used (in case of a duplicate) and try a new one while necessary
    # Do not forget to remove self from result !
    anchors = [obj for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects if obj.type == 'EMPTY' and obj.empty_draw_type == 'PLAIN_AXES' and obj != self]

    while any(obj.hidden_index == index for obj in anchors):
        # found to try another index
        index +=1

    self.hidden_index = index;
    return self.hidden_index

def register():
    bpy.types.Object.global_index = bpy.props.IntProperty(name = "Object index for Anchors", default = 0, get=get_global_index)
    bpy.types.Object.hidden_index = bpy.props.IntProperty(default = 0, options={'HIDDEN'})

Since it the getter, I just need to return the new value. Using an other property without getter but with the same value, I can get the copied value from the getter.

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


text:
Automatic texture atlas with separated object UVs
Using the bundled texture atlas plugin I can automatically unwrap multiple objects onto one atlas. However, when I do so, faces from one object land all over the map and are mingled with faces from other objects. What I would prefer to have is to have each object occupy its own box inside the atlas - as if I had unwrapped each object by itself and then scaled and moved each of the UVs of the object manually so that they fit next to each other on the atlas. Is there a way to automate this process other than writing code?

I can highly recommend Multi Object UV Editing.

From the video on the linked page it seems that Multi Object UV Editing cannot do what I ask -- it merely creates intermingled layouts just like Texture Atlas.


text:
Can I (easily) add text to a movie?
In the movie clip editor, I've been able to easily add movies and sound as well as adding special effects using keyframes.  That's all great, but I'd like to add some text hovering over the heads of the characters in the film.  Up until now, I've been making a .png image containing the text I want and then importing that for manipulation.  It works, but it's a painfully slow process, especially if I want to edit the text later.
Is there an easier way to add text overlays to a movie for manipulation?

I am working on this also. So far, I've written a GIMP plugin to generate the frames out of images.
https://github.com/jacobq/gimp-create-subtitles
Nothing fancy, but better than by hand. I'd like to learn how to script Blender so that it inserts these as image strips from a start frame to a stop frame and sets and opacity animation curve to fade them each in and out. This way the text & cue frames define the behavior, but Blender renders it. If I can't figure this out in time I may just allow the GIMP script to generate every single frame then create a single image sequence in Blender... :S

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/29042/2843

As of 2.76, we now have a text tool in the VSE. See 3pointedit's answer.
Pre 2.76 Answer
(Also for more advanced control over the text)
First, make sure you're in the Blender Internal Renderer.

Then add a text object, and change the font settings to your liking.

Then add a new material, set the color to your liking, and set it to shadeless (this can be changed, but a lot of the time, this is basically what is wanted).

In the Properties panel (N), switch the shading from Multitexture, to GLSL.

Then make sure that your camera is aligned properly, and that in the shading settings, alpha is set to transparent.

In the VSE, add a scene clip, and choose your scene.

Then change the Blend mode to Alpha Over.
Then in the N Panel of the viewer, set the render type to textured.

In the viewer, you'll notice that the text isn't aliased properly, but when the text is rendered, it should render correctly, but if it doesn't, rendering at double the resolution and then down grading should fix the issue.

How can I do this with multiple fonts?

You would just use multiple text objects with different fonts. Only the material for the new text object would change. The rest of the stuff I talked about is global and shouldn't effect it.

How would you do this when you need multiple different titles? would you keyframe the visibility on different objects or make an entirely new scene?

@DeveloperACE I haven't touched this in forever, but I would probably use keyframes as long as they all happened at about the same time. I would separate opening titles and ending credits to separate scenes.

In recent versions of Blender (2.76) there is a caption or text tool. You add it as an effect strip over your footage.

There are some downsides to this though. For example, there is no control over the font. This makes it more suited to subtitles, instead of a title at the beginning of a video.

It is a result of the Gooseberry branch

And just fresh out of the development efforts: Font selection for Text Strips.

To add text to a movie, you can use SVG to render the text, then add it as an overlay.  To do that, first put the text into an SVG, e.g.,
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="1920" height="1080" viewBox="0 0 1920 1080">
  <text x="960" y="300" text-anchor="middle" font-family="Impact" font-size="120"
    fill="white" stroke="black" stroke-width="3">Title</text>
</svg>

then render it.  (You can view it in your web browser as you write it to make sure it looks right.)  You can render the SVG with ImageMagick, e.g.
convert text.svg text.png

Then, add it to the movie as an Image and set the effect to Alpha Over so the rest of the movie shows where there isn't text.  (Conveniently, SVG automatically has a transparent background, perfect for overlays.)
This has the advantage of being fast to render, unlike using a 3D model, and more flexible than the built-in text effect, which only has 1 fixed-width font and doesn't currently allow having a border to make the text legible despite the background.

Times change and Blender has a new feature.  Thus the edit.
Blender 2.76 has a simple text feature in the VSE.
On the date of this edit, I find the feature lacks expressiveness for frequent use. Its rather like cell phone texting.  I would still use the Blender 3D View to create text.
Lastly other free video editors have more expression for text overlays. In the Windows OS at one point, the free movie editor Windows Movie Maker had moderately expressive titling.  This might be valuable for some limited number of people.  I have not used that software years.  Lowly recommended.
Blender is for unlimited expression, not ease of use.  Well the techniques below are probably easier than hand painting them in a primitive painting program.
I have not searched extensively or recently for scripts or add ons for this task. I have written scripts to process text sequences in blender which I might later discuss here. Consider searching for scripts and add ons.  More adventurously you might write one.
Below the techniques are assuming that

3D rendering was time intensive and thus you might want keep repetitious renders to a minimum
Desired text might be subject to many edits
The text is meant to overlay the primary video only.  There is no 3D interaction to the primary video.  Its desirable to render the text separately and quickly, knowing further placement can be achieved in the Blender VSE.

Techniques

Technique 1. Write your text paragraphs or phrases in a single blender text object and animate vertical movement to only show one paragraph at a time.  Render png sequence.
Technique 2.  Create many different text objects and animate their visibility with the render icon or layer switching.  Render PNG sequence.
Technique 3. Locate a script to render text sequences existing in a typed text file or similar for a range of frames with post processing.   This script would register an on frame change event.  Result is a sequence of PNG files.

By using Blender 3D view you have ultimate control over style such as glowing and lattice warping and post processing.  Whether you want it or not.
If your timeline is stable and your text is changing you can change the data files for the VSE strip with no position placement necessary.

I have to say though, the Blender VSE has multiple layers, a feacher not in Windows Movie Maker. Although the Blender VSE is often a real pain to edit with, it gives the editor ludicrous amounts of control over the footage.

@AnsonSavage.  I did not understand your comment.  Post edited.

If you don't mind paying for an AddOn and you want quick and awesome 3D Text effects, you might consider the "IK Text Effects" AddOn. https://cgcookiemarkets.com/all-products/ik-text-effects/?ref=2

This no longer exists.

Hmm, that's sad... for more information one might ask Issanou directly or use Text FX instead...

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


text:
What does the frame_offset_end/Trim Duraion (soft) mean?
I've recently started making scripts to assist in my video editing, and it's already helped me out tremendously!  Now I want to make a script that automatically changes the video offset of all the selected strips by a set amount.
In doing this, I noticed a very confusing property about trimmed video clips.  For the Trim Duration (soft), the frame_offset_start of clips makes sense because it's the frame of the original clip where this cut begins.  However, the frame_offset_end seems to make absolutely no sense.  Its value is lower than the start value, but it's not the length of the clip and it's not the end frame.  When I increase the value, the clip gets shorter!  What is going on?

As you noted, frame_offset_start it is how many frames are cropped from start.
And same logic for frame_offset_end, but not from the start, from the end of strip!
So, If you increase that value, it will be crop more from end of the strip, and it will be shorter

Hard and soft cut, and the differences between them, explained here: Video sequence editing, cutting strips


text:
File size exceeds objects sizes
While revising an existing blender file, I realized it was getting way too big as it approached 1GB.  This didn't look right since the objects were relatively simple.  I copied/pasted all the objects to a new file which is under 300MB.  Why the difference?

Mind uploading that crazily large file somewhere (wetransfer, megashare ...)? Maybe there are some baked modifiers (Mesh Cage Bind) or lots of / large packed textures.

Related

Sorry but can't upload file b/c it's intellectual property..already read and tried troubleshooting using above ques and answers...would modifiers and textures be copied over to new file with objects?

Modifiers will be copied, as part of object data being copied (when copying object itself). Textures are saved in materials only as links to file unless explicitly packed, so they should be transferred as settings of the material setup and work properly in new file (if their location on the hdd hasn't changed)

So if I Cntrl+C copy objects in original large file and Cntrl+V paste to new file, will textures and modifiers copy over too?  But whether or not it does, original ques remains--why is new file about 1/3 size of original file?


text:
Selection to cursor does not Center object origin in 3D cursor
I seem to be having an occasional but recurring problem when I try to snap an object to the 3D cursor.. Usually works but in some cases the origin misses the cursor.. I can repeat the command several times and sometimes it will find the cursor but sometimes not.

Hmm.. seems to be a specific problem, do you mind posting a gif or perhaps some pictures even so we could take a better look into the problem ?

While preparing screencast of this problem, I tried disabling Child Of constraint and sure enough Selection to Cursor worked...before posting this question I disabled Transform constraints which didn't help but never thought of disabling Child Of constraint..seems that this constraint somehow confuses the Selection to Cursor snap..thanks Retrax


text:
Cursor to Selected not snapping precisely to 3d widget in edit mode
Occasionally the Cursor to Selected does not snap precisely to 3d widget in edit mode.  I typically set Pivot Point > individual origins with success, but I've also tried all pivot point options and 3d cursor is still slightly off from widget.  Any suggestions?  Thanks

In Edit Mode, Cursor to Selected should send the cursor to the median point of the implicitly selected vertices, so it should always be the same as the gizmo when the Pivot is set to 'Median' Is that not happening?

Oh wow, that worked!  Stupid me I didn't redo Cursor to Selected after changing pivot points.  What's weird is Individual Origins seemed to work on other meshes but is off on this one.  Oh well..thanks!

So I just changed pivot points without redoing Cursor to Selected and it moved the cursor, so I don't know why it didn't snap to the widget before,


text:
Wobbly gear ring needs fixing
Any suggestions on cause/fix for this wobbly gear ring?  Seems that while rotating on y axis it wobbles quite noticeably.  Couldn't find anything obvious in mesh but I'm somewhat of a newb at this.

what do you mean exactly? It is not a symmetrical object, is it the problem you're talking about?

I know it's not perfectly symmetrical but when rotated there is a noticeable wobble along axis of rotation.

it's also a bit tilted on the X axis

I tried the following method with some success.  It's tedious and not very precise, but hopefully someone posts a better solution.
In EDIT mode and viewing ring gear along its profile so it appears as a straight line, I slowly rotated it. Whenever I noticed the profile getting 'thicker,' this indicated a 'wobble' where the opposing arcs are not aligned because the circle is slightly skewed along its axis of rotation at that point. I then adjusted the rotation along the perpendicular axis until the profile narrowed or thinned.
These adjustments need to be made in edit mode so they are applied in object mode.

I had a wobble problem too with a rectangle with a curve modifier to a bezier circle.
I had an empty in the center of the circle that was the parent of the rectangle and bezier circle. This way I could rotate the empty and the rectangle would spin fine when animated.
This worked fine on a flat global plane or if I tilted the empty on one axis and did a Local rotation of the empty Z axis. However, when I tilted the empty on both the X and Y axis and Locally rotated the Z axis of the empty I got the dreaded “Wobble” in my animations.
I was using the XYZ Euler, Quaternion, and Axis Angle rotations. All gave a wobble. Someone on this StackExchange suggested trying one of the other Eulers. I had a wobble on the local Z axis I was rotating so I tried the ZXY Euler and it eliminated the wobble, no matter what the local X and Y angles were.
So try some of the other Eulers to see if it helps.


text:
How to make object spin/rotate constantly in 3d mode outside of animation and game engine
Is there anyway to make an object spin/rotate constantly in 3d mode without animation or using the game engine?

I'm finding this question confusing, it may just be a language problem: do you mean 'without key-frames' by 'without animation'?

Yes.  The machine I modeled has manual controls using constraints but I hoped to get it to rotate constantly while manipulating the controls for a demonstration.  I'm not familiar with Blender Game so I'm hoping I can avoid using it.

What do you mean by "in 3d mode"?

3d view...is it possible to keyframe and playback one object in a scene and manually transform other objects that are not keyframed in the same scene during the playback?

Shoot, I had no idea or forgot that Blender allows keyframing animation of individual objects while other objects in scene can be manually transformed/manipulated during playback.  No wonder my question was so confusing.  So sorry but thanks for the help.


text:
Can an object's physics simulation be activated on collision with other object?
Is there a way to activate an object's physics simulation only at a specific event - like a collision with another (physics) object?
Small example use-case: A cube is constantly rotating in space around it's own z-axis (animated by keyframes) but otherwise completely stationary. The cube is not influenced by gravity or any other physics yet. Then there is a rigid body sphere thrown at the cube. In the very moment when the sphere hits the cube they both should react according to the physics simulation: they bounce off each other and both get dragged downwards by gravity. (The actual scene contains tens or even hundreds of these objects - so keyframing each collision is not a good option.)
It's a scene for an animation, so I am not using the game engine.


text:
Mouse movement doesn't effect same bone movement. Why?
If I add a bone constraint (e.g. Limit Rotation...) and move the bone in pose mode I have to move my mouse far until it gets to a zone where the mouse movement effects the bone, so that the bone moves. If I remove the bone constraint everything works fine. What can I do to fix that?

It sounds like you need to adjust the Min/Max values of your limit - or adjust your Influence slider. I was able to reproduce what you described by leaving an axis' Min and Max values both at 0° and having an Influence somewhere between 0 and 1. Could you tell us more about your settings?

I figured out, that after I clear transform the bone movement is correct, but if I try to move that bone once again after setting it to a new position, the same issue occurs and I have to clear transform again.


text:
Can I transition from Ortho to Perspective camera?
I'm preparing for a short animation for this week. I would need to start the animation using an Orthographic Camera and then transition to a Perspective camera. Is it possible in Blender and how to do this? Or should I cheat and use a really long focal length and shorten it to achieve a similar effect?
I have a flat logo, comprising of a black circular background and a few white circular "stars" on top. The stars are connected. It looks like a little network icon. I want the logo to "become" 3D, by transitioning it from full to no opacity, and at the same time transitioning the opacity on a 3D duplicate of this network. So it sort of comes out of the logo. That's when I need to transition from Orthographic to Perspective. It needs to be orthographic in the beginning because it needs to line up with the logo. Then once it "comes out" it can be a regular 3D perspective.
So, does it make sense, is this possible to do?

@cegaton, this is awesome, I think I'll try this approach first


text:
How to animate a texture (sequentially show image textures) in Cycles?
I have 14 PNG images that I need to animate (show) sequentially on a plane material in Cycles. What options do I have?
I figured 2 solutions, but they are rather cumbersome workarounds.
Solution 1: I made 14 Plane objects - duplicates, each with a new material with the next PNG texture in the sequence, and I sequentially keyframe their visibility on and off in the Outliner.
Solution 2: Perhaps I could prepare one large texture, with all the PNGs beside each other in a row, and then animate the Mapping node X location.
Isn't there anything simpler? I tried animating the image name in the Image Texture Node, but it won't do it. Can't animate the image name.
I know I could just animate the visibility checkbox next to each texture right in the Texture Panel of the Plane in Blender Internal, but I need the same simple solution in Cycles.
Note: I don't need any fancy effect to it, just plain visibility On/Off functionality.

Have you tried loading them as an image sequence?

I could load them up as Image sequence but then they will play back 1 image per frame, and in this particular case I need sometimes 2-3-4 frames in between. I could use a workaround - prepare the necessary duplicates of the PNGs with subsequent names and play them back at 1 image per frame, but it is again cumbersome and inflexible.

How about renaming the pictures accordingly? just rename the same photo for the number of frames you need them to show?


text:
Select all 5 poles
I'm cleaning up geometry of a house's foundations (incl. walls, stairs, floors, roof etc). It's all one piece.
I need to select all 5 poles. I can't use select similar in this case, because I have no idea where and if there are 5 poles. I tried all the tools in the select menu, but selecting 5 poles doesn't seem to be there.
I can select and count 6+ poles, using the MeshLint addon. But not 5 poles.
Is there a script available that selects 5 poles or any-poles?
I would also like to ask, is it a big problem if I let slip several 6 poles? As I said, I have the house walls all in one piece, including the 2 staircases. And I don't seem to be able to avoid these few 6 poles. They are connecting the stairs to the wall. There are 8 of them. Is it a big problem?
Or is it better to split the stairs from the walls, so they don't connect with 6 poles?

"I can't use select similar in this case, because I have no idea where and if there are 5 poles" not really clear if there actually are 5 poles but if you find one you can select central vertex and run Shift+G > Amount of Connected Edges. That said I don't think there's any reason to connect stairs to walls, it will be much easier to handle with mesh if those are separate

This has everything to do with what are you cleaning the mesh FOR. Do you want to make a rendering or export it for real-time use? Are proper UVs important and what about material slots? You can select 5(+) poles by selecting 4-pole and using Shift-G Select Similar and from options select > operator but working like that won't necessarily help you towards better topology.

I tried the Shift-G with Amount of Connected Edges trick (either with or without the > operator) and it works.


text:
How to select a brush by it's name, and generate one if not existing?
I am trying to automate the task of creating an eraser brush in blender via python, as part of another operator.
I want to look for brush named 'ERASER' and switch to it, or create one and make it the active brush if not.
I found a few things online, but it looks more like sculpt brushes are easier to handle data wise than image paint/texture paint brushes. I am hoping someone might point me in the correct way of handling this.
Thanks in advance for help.
Current code snippet:
class GenericOper(bpy.types.Operator):
"""Generic Operator"""
bl_idname = "object.generic_operator"

bl_label = "Generic Operator Template"
bl_options = { 'REGISTER', 'UNDO' }

def execute(self, context):

    scene = context.scene

    #new code

    #bpy.ops.paint.texture_paint_toggle()
    bpy.ops.paint.brush_select(paint_mode='ACTIVE', texture_paint_tool='DRAW')
    bpy.ops.brush.add()
    bpy.data.brushes["TexDraw.001"].name="ERASER"
    bpy.context.scene.tool_settings.unified_paint_settings.use_pressure_size = False
    bpy.data.brushes["ERASER"].use_pressure_strength = False
    bpy.data.brushes["ERASER"].blend = 'ERASE_ALPHA'

    return {'FINISHED'}

Someone pointed me to an answer (proxe) ---   context.tool_settings.image_paint.brush = bpy.data.brushes[name]

Instead of ops you could do brush = bpy.data.brushes.new('ERASER') Then you have your brush in a variable, so- brush.blend = "ERASE_ALPHA" and so on.

If it can be avoided, it is better to not use operators inside an operator. You should not use bpy.context in the operator, instead use the context parameter that is passed in, this allows a context to be overridden and if calling other operators should be passed along.
To find an existing erase brush you can loop over the brushes found in bpy.data.brushes and see if any that are set to be used in texture painting (use_paint_image is True) and the blend mode is Erase Alpha then you can set it as the active brush in the tool settings that you have found. If no erase brushes are found, you can create a new one. Checking the name of a brush is unreliable as the user may change it to anything, such as "gomme" being french for eraser.
def execute(self, context):
    # get a list of erase alpha brushes
    erase_brushes = [b for b in bpy.data.brushes
                if b.use_paint_image and b.blend == 'ERASE_ALPHA']
    if len(erase_brushes):
        # if we have more than one just use the first
        use_brush = erase_brushes[0]
    else:
        # create an erase alpha brush
        use_brush = bpy.data.brushes.new('AlphaErase')
        use_brush.blend = 'ERASE_ALPHA'
        use_brush.use_pressure_strength = False

    context.scene.tool_settings.unified_paint_settings.use_pressure_size = False
    context.tool_settings.image_paint.brush = use_brush
    return {'FINISHED'}

Thank you for the example. In my case, I need to create a brush from the default Draw tool, and make it use the settings shown for an eraser. Polling for 'ERASE_ALPHA' might seem okay, except if the available result is a Fill tool, and that won't work for the purpose intended. As the brush is not saved as Fake User, it can be created and then dropped out, not affecting the possible saved brushes in startup. I will look at your example and see if I can modify it to work, as it is very close to what I had hoped was a possibility.


text:
How to copy an object along a path
I'm new to Blender, coming for 3DS Max, is it possible in Blender to copy an object along a path with specific parameters? Such as count of copies and orientation?

Welcome Georges :) Does this help: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/510/how-can-i-duplicate-a-mesh-along-a-curve, http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2866/extrude-along-path?lq=1 ? ?

You're welcome. Which one?

My question were related to your first link, I didn't notice the second one actually until you asked :D

Actually, looking around, this one gives a better answer, The second answer "not the script" by Igor T.


text:
how to get the Camera track setup from a 360 video?
I'm trying to overlay 3D scene with a 360 video.
The 360 camera in the video is fixed, so I don't actually need the tracker for stabilization, what I'm trying to do, is to render my objects in 3D view, then overlay the outcome on top of the 360 video in the Sequence Editor.
I created the markers in Movie Clip Editor, Solved the Camera Motion, selected 3 markers and hit Floor in the Solve Panel. The problem is, I can't get the floor to be in the right position, the result change when I select different markers to define the floor. Please check the images. I thought to try to set the floor manually, add few cubes and eye ball the camera, and this might work for this example, but what if I'm working on a different scene where I actually need the 3D camera to track the movement of the 360 video? All I can think about, is that I'm missing something that I need to check in the Movie Clip Editor, to tell Blender that this is a 360 video.

Yes, probably I'm just being dumb, do you think this would work for a moving camera? I mean would I be able to get the floor positioned right if I use a different footage where the camera is moving? @cegaton

You are right, I was experimenting using the wrong example, I'll try to redo this using a footage with a moving camera. Many thanks for your help @cegaton


text:
Show texture in UV Editor
Most probably there's a simple answer to this, but I've been trying to find it for quite some time, I'm learning UV in blender, I added a procedural marble texture to a material, unwrapped the object "cube", I'm trying to show the texture in the UV Editor so I can position the faces in the right place, I found the way to do it for an image, but not for a procedural texture.

Image textures and procedural textures are not the same. If you want to view a procedural texture as an image, you would need to create a new image in the UV editor, and Bake your procedural texture to that image.
You'll get different results depending on settings. So, play around a bit.
First, set up your texture. I am just using 'Marble' at default settings. Set 'Mapping' to use UV.

Next, in the UV editor, create a new image to store the texture data.

Then, under 'Render' in the 'Bake' tab, select 'Textures'.

Hit 'Bake'.
Once you bake the texture to an image, F3 to save the image to disk. Then you can change your Texture type to use an image, select the image you just made.
Now, edits made to the image will affect your texture.
Different Texture types are handled differently in the background. So, procedural textures have a separate toolset from image textures, and video textures.
The UV/Image editor is for dealing with image and video textures. But, when your using procedural textures, the tools are all in the Panel for which ever procedural type you picked.


text:
Particles, how to trigger object's animation on birth?
I have a particle system, I'm using an animated object as a particle, the particle system's period is 40 frames, which is the same as the lifetime, since I need every particle to play the animation once, then disappear. How can I make the animation of each particle start when it's born?
The case right now is that the animation starts when the first particle is born, so the first particle is fine, but for instance, the particle born on frame 35, is animated for the last 5 frames only of the animation!
I know it's better to upload the blend file, but I can't for this project, and screen shots won't really add any more explanation, it's a generic question for a basic operation, that I've been trying to do for 3 days! Appreciate all help.

You could take a look at this question

I came through this question before posting mine, this simply wont work, it might in some cases though.

What's the animation like of each particle intended to be like? Changes in the material? Scale of the particle?

@Poyo as I mentioned in the question, the particles are animated objects. The particle system is controlling the location and rotation of particles, the object is a simple mesh parented to an armature, the armature is animating the object.

But all objects are dupli... so how to have an animation for each ? ... well, this is your question : )

@lemon For instance in 3DS Max, you can treat instances in absolute or relative, so relative will treat each object when created as frame (1) in it's animation, so it's animation starts when it's born.
I need to know if there's such thing in Blender's Particle System, because I couldn't find nowhere, if there isn't, there must be a workaround, I'm sure I'm not the first person to go through this issue :)


text:
Eevee multicolor gradient by object location?
Alright, currently I have a color gradient somewhat hacked together with a Divide node and based on object location like this:

What I want is this - a 4-5 color gradient based on object location (so it can be split among the cubes) and not oddly hacked w a Divide node:

Ive tried plugging Object location directly into color ramp but am not having luck/cant scale the gradient. How can I do this?

Try using a map range node with the "From Max" value set to the highest x-value of an object.

Hi. Don't get exactly what you want to do from what you have. Is it to get rid of the division? Or because some element reach the colorramp limits?

In order to achieve this you need to take account of both the X and Y location - your current example is only using X from the Separate XYZ node.
Something like the following should do the trick :

Here the X and Y are used to generate the Red and the Green channel of the resultant color and the Blue is generated using some maths to color from the opposite corner of the range (ie, subtract each of X and Y from 1 to invert the range and use the minumum to combined them). The two Value nodes are used to control the Range of the fade (the one on the Mapping node) and the spread of the colors (the ones connected to the Power nodes). The start location of the range any any rotation can be controlled via the Mapping node.
This produces the following result :

To get different mix of colors you can adjust the maths to something more complicated. You could potentially add a Color Ramp before each input of the Convert XYZ node to give you more visual control of the result (with each controlling the level of that channel via gray-scale values).


text:
Curve from Mesh, how to enable handles?
I'm trying to enable the handles of Control Points in a Curve that I got from Mesh, selecting the Control Points and pressing V didn't get any results, I tried all types of Control Points. Anyone knows how to solve this? Thanks!

Toggle Edit Mode and set Spline Type to Bezier.

Tool Shelf T > Tools > Curve Tools > Set Spline Type:

Here is an explanation from the Blender Reference Manual:

Mesh objects that consist of a series of connected vertices can be
  converted into curve objects. The resulting curve will be a Poly curve
  type, but can be converted to have smooth segments as described above.

Many thanks, I had also to increase the Resolution under Curve Properties, looks like by default it's 0 when making a Curve from Mesh.

Glad to help you. About the resolution, Render U: 0 means that Blender will use the same value set for Preview U (default: 12). If you do not use a lower value for the preview, I suggest you to leave Render U value unchanged (0)

I was actually talking about resolution under Active SPline to be more specific, Because when I changed the curve to bezier, that activated the handles, but changing them didn't change anything.

I also had to set Handles to "auto" or "align" or "free".

this can now be found under curve > Set Spline Type in Blender 4.3


text:
Problems installing an addon
I'm trying to install an addon called Panorama-Tracker, here's the link to it: https://github.com/dfelinto/Panorama-Tracker
The author mentioned that commands should be pasted in a terminal before installing the addon, I copied the commands, run Text Editor in Blender, pasted the commands and hit Run Script, I got an error of check Console, checking the console I saw nothing. I'm sure I'm doing it the wrong way, is there a possibility someone can show me how to do it right?

That is the text editor (lhs of image).  You want to open a terminal of your operating system .  Which OS are you on? This is the console to check for errors too, ie the system console  http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6173/where-does-console-output-go/6174#6174 not the python console (on rhs of image)

I'm using Windows 7, I just tried Window > toggle system console, I have the command prompt open, then what, I'm sorry but my level in programming and coding is 1/100

I just tried that, I'm getting (failed to get addon path) error. @root

Thank you so much, it works finally, please put this as an answer, I don't know why the author made it to be so complicated when it can be very simple. @root


text:
Getting global axis value of the vertex with the lowest value
In Python, Is there an operator that selects the vertex (or vertices if applies) that has the lowest value on a global axis (let's say Z).
I have an object that I need to select it's bottom vertex/vertices (the ones with the lowest Z global value) using Python, in order to move it's origin to the Median point among these vertices later.

Here's a slightly shorter and faster way to do this (Version <2.8):
import bpy

o  = bpy.context.object  # active object
mw = o.matrix_world      # Active object's world matrix

glob_vertex_coordinates = [ mw * v.co for v in o.data.vertices ] # Global coordinates of vertices

# Find the lowest Z value amongst the object's verts
minZ = min( [ co.z for co in glob_vertex_coordinates ] )

# Select all the vertices that are on the lowest Z
for v in o.data.vertices:
    if (mw * v.co).z == minZ:
        v.select = True

Version > 2.8
import bpy

o  = bpy.context.object  # active object
mw = o.matrix_world      # Active object's world matrix

glob_vertex_coordinates = [ mw @ v.co for v in o.data.vertices ] # Global
coordinates of vertices

# Find the lowest Z value amongst the object's verts
minZ = min( [ co.z for co in glob_vertex_coordinates ] )

# Select all the vertices that are on the lowest Z
for v in o.data.vertices:
    if (mw @ v.co).z == minZ:
        v.select = True

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question, however, I'm getting an Error here:  minZ = min( [ co.z for co in glob_vertex_coordinates ] ), an unexpected indent, and a unknown location (-1)

Well now it worked!! I tried this several times with no luck, looks like I was doing something wrong, thank you, great answer!

I had a similar need as this question, to find the lowest vertex in the Z dimension. However, I needed to find the lowest/highest % of vertices in any/all dimensions. Here's a script that will let you do just that.
Blender version:
2.92.0
How to use:

In Object mode, select your object(s) that you want to find the min/max vertices per dimension.
Run the script. It will select vertices and then switch to edit mode so you can see them.

Disclaimer:
I barely know how to use Blender (including scripting in it).
This script is not efficient and could probably be improved greatly.
I wrote this script to select the the vertices in this picture. My goal is to create a mesh representing the rectangular "bounding box" which encapsulates all of these vertices.

import bpy
#### User params
threshold = 0.004 #Percent out of 1
select = ['-x', '+x', '-y', '+y']#, '+z']
invert = False #Select the lower or higher {threshold}% per dimension?
#### end User params

class TransformedVertex:
    def __init__(self, obj, vert):
        self.obj = obj
        self.vert = vert
        self.world_vert = self.obj.matrix_world @ self.vert.co

def isWithinThreshold(dimensionNear, dimensionFar, myDimensionPos, threshold):
    totalDiff = abs(dimensionNear - dimensionFar)
    diffFromNearDimension = abs(dimensionNear - myDimensionPos)

    return (diffFromNearDimension / totalDiff) <= threshold

# Can only do this work in object mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')

# All selected objects
objects = bpy.context.selected_objects

# All vertices from selected objects, transformed to world coordinates
worldVertices  = []
for o in objects:
    for v in o.data.vertices:
        worldVertices.append(TransformedVertex(o, v))

# Find the lowest and highest value amongst the verts
allX = [ wv.world_vert.x for wv in worldVertices ]
minX = min( allX )
maxX = max( allX )

allY = [ wv.world_vert.y for wv in worldVertices ]
minY = min( allY )
maxY = max( allY )

allZ = [ wv.world_vert.z for wv in worldVertices ]
minZ = min( allZ )
maxZ = max( allZ )

# Select all the vertices that are on the lowest {threshold}% of their dimension
for wv in worldVertices:
    vertX = wv.world_vert.x
    vertY = wv.world_vert.y
    vertZ = wv.world_vert.z
    wv.vert.select = invert

    # X
    if ('-x' in select) and isWithinThreshold(minX, maxX, vertX, threshold): wv.vert.select = not invert
    if ('+x' in select) and isWithinThreshold(maxX, minX, vertX, threshold): wv.vert.select = not invert

    # Y
    if ('-y' in select) and isWithinThreshold(minY, maxY, vertY, threshold): wv.vert.select = not invert
    if ('+y' in select) and isWithinThreshold(maxY, minY, vertY, threshold): wv.vert.select = not invert

    # Z
    if ('-z' in select) and isWithinThreshold(minZ, maxZ, vertZ, threshold): wv.vert.select = not invert
    if ('+z' in select) and isWithinThreshold(maxZ, minZ, vertZ, threshold): wv.vert.select = not invert

cnt = sum([1 for wv in worldVertices if wv.vert.select])
print ("selected " + str(cnt) + " vertices")

# See results in edit mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')

This code will find and select the lowest vertix:
(Must be in Edit mode)
import bpy
import bmesh

obj = context.active_object
wm = obj.matrix_world
#data = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)
vertices = [e for e in bm.verts]
minZ = 999999.8
for v in vertices:
    world = wm * v.co
    if (world[2] < minZ):
       minZ = world[2]
       lowest = v

lowest.select= True
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(obj.data, True)


text:
How to align the view or a camera to a certain face or object
Is there a way to align the view or a camera to be perpendicular to a specific face or object using it's normal? The thing I am trying to acheive, is to use the view to unwrap a face, so I can use it later for neighboring faces unwrap, but I'm trying to do this precisely, not by eying it.

Related - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15045/how-do-i-align-the-viewport-to-a-face-normal

Btw, were can I ask questions about BSE?

@Georges http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/

Yes, select the face and pressShift+NumPad 7.

Shift + Z will toggle Rendered view shading, even in Edit mode, what is the name of the operation that this shortcut trigger?

@Georges Sorry,I meant 7 not Z


text:
According to what method is 3D cursor's location in 3D View determined when left clicking?
When left clicking to position the 3D Cursor in 3D View, when in User Perspective view or User Ortho view, and more precisely when there's no object under the mouse, the position of the 3D Cursor looks random. I know it's not, there must be a way Blender determines it's location, but I can't find that out, is it a specified distance from view? In case it is, what is it, and can this distance be changed and manipulated?

The 3D cursor moves in the plane facing the view you are in and intersecting its previous position.
Is you set up this configuration : a camera (bottom right), a plane (selected) 90° intersecting the camera view, you can notice this behaviour.
Go in the camera view using 0, click somewhere to move the 3D cursor, and come back to the top view. The cursor will stay on the plane.

The distance of the plane is defined by the normal vector N of the view (N normalized) dot the camera-"prev cursor position" vector. Or if C is the camera, P the previous position, the distance is ||N.CP||

Yes, but it doesn't seem to have a fixed distance, how is this distance determined? try to click in view, then zoom out, click again the same spot, it doesn't keep the same distance fro the view.

@Georges whatever the distance (zoom in or out) the cursor stays on the plane it was previously. If you rotate, another plane is "defined" the same way : face to the view (parallel) and intersecting the current position of the cursor

So the previous position of the cursor defines the distance of the plane from the camera. Nice, thank you, can you edit your answer to include this?

Sorry, I just re-read your answer again, I see you explained this, but for some reason it wasn't clear to me, thank you.

your are welcome. I edited and added a bit more math definition of this distance


text:
Is there a way to save selection by faces
I'm trying to find a way to save selection faces, tried Vertex Group, the issue with Vertex Group is that it adds the faces that are marked by 4 vertices that are added to the Vertex Group, there are some cases were this doesn't apply, the image explains what I mean. So is there a way to save my selected faces, so I don't have to go through the whole process of reselecting them each time I need to do so?
If you check the image, I didn't assign the hatched faces to the Vertex Group, still when I select the Vertex Group, they get selected, I understand that they got selected because the four boundary vertices are assigned to the Vertex Group, I need to save only face selection, not vertex selection.

This is a limitation of the Vertex Groups system that has been an occasional nuisance.
The reason they are called "Vertex Groups" as opposed to "Face Groups", is the fact that selections of vertex don't unequivocally define groups of faces, since a vertex can belong to any arbitrary number of faces.
For Blender versions prior to 2.8# and after 4.0, the way I generally solve this is by using material slots instead, if you don't mind the additional pollution in the materials list.
Go to Properties Window > Materials Tabs > Add New Material Slot button, and then with the desired faces selected press the Assign button.
Since they work on a per-face basis instead of single vertex, they can correctly define face groups. You can still assign materials independently, but you can't have a face belong to more than one slot unfortunately, so you may end up having multiple slots with the same material.
Different intersections of selections on non mutually exclusive groups of faces may require an exponentially growing number of slots which can quickly become unwieldy and unpractical.
For versions between 2.8# and up to 4.0, the Face Maps feature is available, that allows saving arbitrary selections of faces into separate "Face Groups" layers much like Vertex Groups  before them.
You can find them in the Object Data tab of the Properties Window for mesh objects.
Face Maps have been removed in Blender 4.0.

But that will change the material, right?

Yeah I guess this is the best solution, in case I need several groups of faces to have the same material, I just have to copy, rename and keep same parameters. Thanks!

Yeah, you can use the same material on multiple slots of the same object. You'll get some redundancy, but I guess it's better than nothing.

This answer is partially outdated - Face Maps (which should not be mixed with Face Sets of Sculpt mode which still exist) have been (for some reason) removed in Blender 4.0. It is mentioned at least here: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/105317

@ezez indeed. I've read somewhere that they were half baked and never implemented to their full potential so they were dropped. If you ever find an outdated answer in this site you can propose an edit with updated information. If you have a better answer that warrants a full post please do publish it below

I don't have a better answer - I thought I'd simply point this out, in case some people don't know this about this change yet. Personally the only solution I know is to build a system using Attribute Groups and scripting, as Attributes window doesn't have similar nice add/remove + create groups features as Face Maps had to manage face selections. That is what I've done for one project.

Actually, in Blender 2.80 you can save face selections using the "Face Maps" grouping. It is located in the "Object Data" panel. It works the same as vertex groups but stores faces instead.

This no longer works in Blender 4.0 - Face Maps were removed in Blender 4.0 version.

It's possible to store the selection state into a Vertex Color map.
The following script creates a vertex color map Selection with a black face for every selected face and a white face for every non-selected. Strictly speaking this would be “every vertex of every polygon”. But the main difference to vertex groups is that each vertex appears multiple times in the vertex color map – once for every polygon that it's part of. So it's possible identify the faces by their vertices.
import bpy
obj = bpy.context.active_object
me = obj.data
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
col = me.vertex_colors.new('Selection')

for poly in me.polygons:
    for l_ix in poly.loop_indices:
        if poly.select:
            col.data[l_ix].color = (0, 0, 0)

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

The following script restores the selection from the vertex color map.
import bpy, bmesh
from mathutils import Color

bpy.context.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode = (False, False, True)

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

obj = bpy.context.active_object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(me)
col = me.vertex_colors['Selection']

for (poly, bm_poly) in zip(me.polygons, bm.faces):
    l_ix = poly.loop_indices[0]
    # Only look at first vertex as all should have same color
    if col.data[l_ix].color == Color((0, 0, 0)):
        bm_poly.select_set(True)

bm.to_mesh(me)
bm.free()
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

By adjusting the name of the vertex color map you can store multiple selections for every object.


text:
How to 'skin' an edge?
I have an edge, just 2 connected vertices. One vertex is hooked to one object, and the other to another object. Now, I need to create geometry around that edge, so it becomes a cylinder and is still hooked to those objects, by this one vertex on each side. I thought the Skin modifier does the trick, but it doesn't seem to work as I would expect, or I don't know how to use it properly. How to keep these hooked vertices, and generate the cylinders at the same time?

In what way does the Skin modifier not work as expected?

The Skin modifier is exactly what you need here - although by itself it will only produce a 'cuboid' skin as shown :

Here I've simply created an 'edge' (by merging all vertices of a Cube to a single vertex (using Alt-M) and selecting to merge 'At Center') and then extruding E to form a new vertex and a joining edge - all in Edit mode (Tab)). Then in Edit mode I selected each vertex in turn and used Ctrl-H to 'Hook to New Object'. This creates an Empty at each end of the mesh. I then added the Skin modifier.
Moving the empties moves the respective end of the 'edge' along with the surrounding skin. Note that the sequence of the modifiers in the modifier stack (the list of modifiers) show to the right of the above image) is important - the Hook modifiers must be above the Skin modifier as they must take place before the skin is added. Moving them to after the Skin will result in the vertices being moved while leaving the skin behind.
To turn this into a "cylinder" (with rounded ends) you can further add a Subsurf modifier.

For smooth shading you can enable the 'Smooth Shading' option in the Skin modifier.
Again, the order is important and should be Hook, Hook, Skin, Subsurf. Move the empties and the skin will follow.
This is working as expected for me. If your experience is different to this then please update your question and I can try and answer further.


text:
Is there a way to make a vertical grid show on final image rendered?
Like the faint grid in the model window background and the one on the floor, is there a way to force a vertical 'to scale' grid to show up behind the image rendered so the manufacturers can see it's to scale?

AFAIK No. But you can make one yourself and put it in the scene

One way to "make one yourself" as @gandalf3 said above is this:
add a plane  subdivided as you "scale", and use a material as "grid" and "shadeless".
it will look like this (blender render)

here I used 2 planes, you may tweak the grid appearance...
is this something similar to what you need?
for "cycles render"
you can try a "wireframe" modifier, and a suited material, like

but probably, a freestyle setup would fit both cases... I'll add that later, or others will suggest howto here...
[edit] Yes freestyle would work with both cycles and internal render:

activate the master freestyle flag in the render option tab
set a freestyle linestyle in the render layers option tab, with the color/style you prefer, and enable as edge types only "edge mark" for it
mark all subdivided grid mesh edges as "freestyle edge"
set the material of the grid to be completely transparent (different in cycles and internal, anyway remove all reflection, specular, shinyness)

like this:

results in cycles and internal can be quite similar (for the grid):

and, finally, I tried and even the wireframe modifier works in cycles and internal, only a the grid material must be defined differently (eg: white shadeless for internal, white emission for cycles).
freestyle can give you much more choice of linestyle (eg: dotted, hand drawn, etc), but the setup is slightly more complex, and since is a post-render effect, it could interfere with some of the scene setup to render as you wish, depending on the scene.

What version of blender are you using? I'm on 2.76 and I don't see the option of wire or shadeless?  I'm trying to make a 1" x 1" grid that shows up in my render window. Your/My window comparsion here: http://www.aworkofmarc.com/1/blender/blenderwindow.jpg

that was using "blender render", not "cycles render"... with cycles it could be possible to render it with freestyle... I'll check it out...

no, the simplest cycle setup should be using a "wireframe" modifier, for the "grid" objects with very low thickness, like 0.002, but that is adjustable to your other objects size... try a "diffusion" material or "emission"


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How do I gently bend 4 bottle sides inward simultaneously to create a uniform dent?
Trying to create a dent on 4 sides simultaneously on a roundish square bottle. But first in order to get it symetrical I should find away to select the same face area on each 4 sides.  Ideas? Suggestions?

I'm surprised no one has suggested proportional editing yet

Using high dense objects in this kind of modeling is wrong.

Low density topology is more easy to manipulate

I would suggest using subsurface modeling.

Add a cube and subdivid it one time and scale the middle loop inward a bit.
Add a subsurface modifier.

Now extrude couple of time to get the shape of the mouth of the bottle.
Use the circle operation from the loops tools to get a perfect circle at the top.

Add a bevel modifier and set it to weight,mark the lower loop with edge bevel weight,This will make the lower loop a sharp one.

To add the indentation we will select every side and insert a face using the insert tool with the ratio 0.5 and then by using the circle tool,convert it to a circle and then scale it with the factor 0.8 in its axis.(make sure the new edges don't have bevel weight).

Select all the new faces and then extrude them inward and mark the exterior and the interior edges with bevel weight.

and by this you have your bottle.with a clean and nice topology,you can do some more edits to math your references.

May I suggest a Lattice?

Create a Lattice object, and link it to the bottle with a Lattice modifier on the bottle object. Set the Lattice object to an acceptable resolution, and in Edit mode, move some lattice vertices closer to the center with the Scale transform tool. The deformation depends on the subdivision of the lattice and the selection of vertices. Experiment until you find the correct values for your situation.

Seems by the Lattice modifier animated example above I won't get the square-ish effect, rather rounds the whole thing(?)

@Marc More subdivisions on the lattice should help with that.

This is not a reliable modeling technique.

What may be the easiest is to just use a Boolean modifier> difference. While in top orthographic view, you can place your difference objects where you need them, perhaps start with a uv sphere. After placing the first uv sphere, press  Shift+D, then move the duplicate across on the x or y axis and repeat until you have your four target objects.
To make placement simpler, select your press  Shift +S>cursor to center, then  Shift +S selection to cursor after selecting your object while in object mode. Add a uv sphere, and press G then X or Y and move the object accordingly. Repeat for the three remaining spheres.
Add your Boolean modifier>difference to your bottle object, with 'sphere' as the target object. Then add another Boolean>difference with "sphere.001" as the target, and so on. Then apply the Booleans in the order added, and you should be all set.

You could cut the bottle into fourths and then add a mirror on both the Y and X axis. From there you can easily indent the bottle by simply moving a vertex with a connected constraint to it.

Welcome to Blender.SE MadDog!  Please try to add some more details, like maybe a screenshot or GIF of how this is done.  Thanks!

For future models you should remember to place objects in the center, wich makes symetrical and precise editing a lot easier.
Doing that later can be a bit tricky.
For doing the circle i would suggest not to select square faces like you, but rather adding a circle from the add-menu, rotating it 90 degrees along the x-axis, aligning it along the z-axis and pulling it towards you, so it is in front of the mesh. then you would want to use a knife project:
Cutting a shape out of an object with another object
get the circle behind the bottle (move along y-axis) and change the view with numpad 4 or 6 to the back and do the same.
repeat that for the sides.
when you're done with that you can select the circles with shift+alt+right mouse button in vertex mode and scale them to your needs (if you select front and back circle/ left and right you can scale them along just one axis to move them in.
it's actually pretty simple.

there might be faster ways. you could use the cut through option to save a few keystrokes. + for precise editing you can always set values for moving, extruding and scaling via your number keys. (for extruding for example you press e, x/y/z and then something like 0.2 to extrude the mesh 0.2 blender units along the desired axis)

Wow, thanks. Sounds like it would work. But unfortunately that's way beyond my current modeling abilities. I'll just mess with selecting each side one by one and using "O" in edit to dent each side.

i'll see if i have some spare time in the next days and depending on that i'll upload and link a video explaining it, so a beginner can understand and follow the steps (it's really simple, trust me. these things come with time, experimenting and practice. then you'll be able to figure out the most things on your own)

I'm grateful. Thank you. But just as I attempt to work thru it on my own now anyways... It seems like what you're describing is like a boolean operation whereas I'm sectioning one object from another.. so with that in mind don't you mean add a sphere? Not a circle? A circle is flat so cutting something flat from this does not seem like it will make a dent. If that makes any sense a'tal.

nah, i don't mean boolean. a circle, not a sphere, because it's not about erasing something of the bottle, but rather "burning" the shape of the circle into the bottle and then moving the faces inside of that "burned" circle inwards (:


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Cloth won't collide with collision object? But worked with a cube?
Ive watched all the tutorials but clearly Im missing something on how cloth collisions work -
Im trying to make clothing, so I have my collision object (body) and cloth plane (subdivided many times) setup:

Body is collision object:

And plane is cloth:

Yet I press play, nothing happens. Whats wrong here?

Do you play from frame #1 ?
Your actual simulation is set to play from frame #1 to #250.  If you play a different frame range, the simulation won't be computed.

Yes I move the timeline to 1


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How to texture paint only one part (normal map)?
Ok, Ive baked normals and there are some I want to get rid of completely - meaning go back to the purple color so they dont show up black. I dont need them and want them gone, but need them on other parts of the model. Right now I have my normal map fed into my material nodes, and I can see on my model where I want to remove normal "bumps" (where it isn't purple):

Trying to find where each "bump" is in photoshop isn't working. How can I mask OR paint over these "bumps" with texture paint? I tried painting over but they persisted. Is this possible?

At the bottom of the viewport next to the pivot options is a toggle for face select masking in Texture Paint mode. Turn that on, and either in Edit mode select the faces that are the offenders here, or in Texture Paint use the rmb to select the faces. You can sample the color from the normal map with the S key, and then paint it in masked by the face selection.


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Why are solid objects with refraction node so dark?
Ok Ive discovered refraction nodes trying to create something like the iOS blur effect - meaning a white blur.
This has worked somewhat with 2d objects, but no matter that the node has the color white when I apply the material to 3d objects the object is too dark -

I don't feel like adding an emissive is correct here. How can I make the blur be white on 3d objects?

Check the direction of your normals - and please add an inage of your nodes.

It's difficult to be sure without seeing your nodes for the material, but this is most likely due to the way the inner surface is reacting with the roughness of the refraction to refract beyond 90 degrees due to a combination of the angle of incidence of the incoming ray and the roughness. For example :

Depending on your requirement (whether you want the material to actually behave as 'refractive) you could either address this by using the Backfacing geometry input to mix between Refraction and Transparent (effectively hiding the backfaces) :

Or also use the Incoming for for the Normal so that rays are always refracted just for the roughness, not the actual surface angle :

With these sort of distances, and looking through at a diffuse reflective material, maybe simply switching off shadows would have quite a big effect, as well?


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Dont let world texture affect lighting of objects?
I've done exactly what they did here to make the background show as a COLOR (for transparent objects in my scene, etc) but not be EMISSIVE, so it doesnt reflect off onto glossy/diffuse objects in scene:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiZ087M-LjdAhX8wMQHHdZtDN8QFjAAegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fblender.stackexchange.com%2Fquestions%2F60625%2Fnon-emitting-background-in-cycles&usg=AOvVaw2R5w_1ujiDdRrmro8Dq4Fp
Yet I still have definite reflection here. Did I miss something? I have transparent turned off in film.. not sure where else

I replicated what they did in their answer on the scene of my last answer on your question and was able to replicate it: https://imgur.com/a/zkAKUgO. Please share your .blend if possible or make a version of it that shows the problem, but is smaller. We can't know what you missed if we don't know what you did

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BvBUZe-6pnNnoYfRr3sl6RbOz8-gNnrK/view?usp=sharing @WhatAMesh

Change your connection to the mix node, one socket will show in the camera the other in reflections.


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How to clear unused materials in 2.79?
I noticed Blender 2.79 doesn't show the "save & reload" option anymore.  I used to use that to clear any unused materials.  How can I do this?  I tried making all objects single users, the orphan add-on, nothing seems to work.

Hold SHIFT and click on the "X" in the Materials pane. Next time you open the .blend the material will be gone.

I don't think there was svae&reload function by default before 2.79, maybe it was just an addon which became disabled. This feature is present in Amaranth Toolset addon, called exactly as you wrote in the question

@MrZak interesting, I didn't realize it was in that addon.  I'm not sure how I got a version with it.

Hold SHIFT and click on the "X" in the Materials pane. Next time you open the .blend the material will be gone.

As an alternative to the other answer, if the material isn't assigned to anything, select "orphaned data" in the outliner and expand the "materials" category.  you can then right-click and delete any material you don't want anymore and it will be removed from the file immediately, no need to save and reopen.

Nice that's also a good method


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Unable to pose rigged hose or keyframe it
I'm new to rigging, so hopefully these errors aren't glaring :)  I'm trying to pose this hose and keyframe it, but the hose warps when I move the bones (I used a curve with IK spline for the bones).  Also, I'm not able to keyframe it.
Here's the resting pose:

Here's what happens when I try to move it:

I've attached the .blend

Unfortunately, bezier curve control points themselves are not keyframe-able.  You can, however, make a "hook" to those control points by selecting them in edit mode and pressing ctrl+h.  The hooks created this way are keyframe-able, and should give you the level of control you are looking for.

Awesome ctrl + h totally worked.  Still figuring out Anim-All too.  But how do I deal with the deformation of the hose?


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Using the fracture modifier with the principled shader?
My understanding is these 2 features are impossible to install as add-ons.  I have the current build of Blender 2.78c with the fracture add-on built in, and the beta 2.785 version of Blender that has the new principled shader.  Is there any way to use these 2 features together?  I've heard about making your own Blender builds, but I'm not sure how to do it.
Thanks!

No, both of the features you mention are part of blender's core source code and can't be combined without some work.
The principled shader is part of the current blender development that will be included in the next release which is planned to be released soon.
The built in fracture modifier is a separate development project that is being done parallel to blender's main development with plans to have it merged into a blender release at a later time. The developer working on this merges the main blender development into the work being done on occasions. Unless you know some C/C++ coding and want to help, I would suggest waiting until the next merge from master is done. You can find instructions for building your own versions of blender on the blender wiki.
The developer has a website dedicated to the fracture modifier project where you can find links to a blenderartist thread and a facebook page, so you can try contacting the developer and asking if they have any plans to merge soon, a donation to the project may help persuade them.
As you seem to have a copy of blender with the fracture modifier, you can setup a pbr shader that will give similar results to the new principled shader that you can use until the update happens. Blender guru has a tutorial on pbr shaders and you can find some pre-built shaders to download at BlenderBrit.

Ah thanks very comprehensive answer!  I've contacted Dennis to see if they have plans (and yes a donation was made :)).  Also thanks for the link to Blender Guru's stuff and the pre-built shaders.  I love Blender Guru's tutorials.


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Realistic smoke?
I've been trying to get a realistic plume of smoke (would be coming out of a gun) but I can't get it to look white, let alone smooth and puffy.  Here's a screenshot:

Here's the example of what I am trying to achieve:

Here's the .blend

Lightly colored smoke is heavily reliant on multiple scattering to produce the bright color - it's the result of light bouncing multiple times in the cloud and being reflected back to the viewer. Your material is off to a good start with white scatter color and no absorption, this will allow maximum reflectivity within the cloud. (maybe too much, actually, nothing is perfectly reflective).
But you didn't set the volume bounce depth > 0, so your volume blocks all light that doesn't make it out of the volume the first time it scatters. Increasing volume depth to allow indirect (multiple) scattering gives a whiter plume

However, you might also notice the increased depth images are noisier. (they're also slower to render). This is a side effect of increasing volume depth, it increases the possible light paths through the scene, resulting in noise until they are all sampled. If this is a problem, you can instead leave volume depth at zero and use an add shader to add in some volume emission. Not perfect, and won't react to changing lighting, but it can get you by sometimes

As for the smooth look, that's just a side effect of density. Lower density clouds don't shadow as much light, which obscures surface details. You may want to consider adjusting your ColorRamp node as well to give less harsh edges to the cloud.

Awesome great explanation.  Didn't know about the volume bounce depth...think that worked better for me than the shader solution.


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How to partially blur an image in the compositor?
I want to blur an image I used as a background in the compositor but have it blurred more towards the top and in focus in the foreground.  Is this possible to do with nodes?
Thanks

This is the node setup:

Just add a new Texture in the Texture properties panel set to Blend and Vertical. This will create a texture that blends from 1.0 at the top to 0 at the bottom.
In the compositor the texture can be included via the Texture node. This can then be passed into the Blur node set to Variable Size as follows :

Note the result in the bottom-left window (blur at the top, sharper towards the bottom). You can use Maths nodes or a Color Ramp between the Texture and the Blur node to adjust if desired.

you can use the box mask node. if you need a gradient from top to bottom you could blur the box mask

Totally worked!


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How to UV unwrap walls in archimesh?
I'm trying to create a room using the archimesh addon and I'm having difficulty in getting the material to apply to the walls properly.  I want to UV unwrap all the walls separately so they fit the wooden image texture I have applied.  However, as you can see from the image I rendered below, only one wall worked properly.  Also, I was not able to subdivide the other walls (faces).  Does anyone know where I might be going wrong?

Here is a screenshot of the wall I am trying to work on:

Here's a shot of what it looks like when I try to unwrap:

Here's the .blend


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Performance issues - make tree leaves like this?
Ok, I am trying to achieve animated, particle like leaves (low poly not realistic) like this - https://youtu.be/cKS3VM1a3TU?t=4m8s
Obviously my idea was to make a group with some leaves and make a particle system to randomly distribute the leaves, then Apply to make them objects so I can tweak/rearrange, and eventually animate.
Problem is (in cycles, version 2.79) hitting Apply ends with indefinite loading as WAY too many objects. This later needs to be brought into Unity, so thats an issue as well. In Blender the only thing that worked a little bit was just adding group instances, but that isn't a feasible solution for animating or for unity:

Whats the most efficient/correct way to do this? How can I make a game-ready/Unity ready "cloud of leaves" like in the short?


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Skybox problems: make islands have ZERO margin?
Ok, I no doubt did this incorrectly but I manually arranged my unwrapped UVs (after Smart project) onto my linear laid out skybox image - on the whole I need some pointers as to whether Im doing this right, but what I did was per Cycles - Skybox using 6 projected images (im in cycles)-
I unwrapped my image onto a cube and subdivided into a sphere:

And just made it huge. My issue is, packing islands gets me this:

And I have an issue with the margins between the islands, which creates these seams clearly:

Whats the best route to optimize this skybox here/get rid of the margins neatly?

For rendering skyboxes, I just set up the camera to be square with a FOV of 90deg exactly, go through six frames of animation, and render each face as a separate frame. I think I've done this with Unity too with no problems.

Could you elaborate on the blender version of this? Are you talking about spinning the cube or what?

Instead of having a cube, have a camera in the center of the scene and "take pictures" in each direction (one image per cube face: up, down, left, right, front, back). This gives you rendered frames that can be applied as individual faces of the cube map. You don't actually need a cube in your scene, you're just using the main camera.

I like to create skybox with uv sphere, it's simpler and easier.
Do a quick search on youtube on how to create skybox in the blender that you learn in 5 min.
It will look good like this:

No - I need to use this image/cube mapped. Its already plugged into Unity, not going to switch back and forth

Do not use subdivision surface. Cubic mapping has to stay as it stands. And apply shadeless on the material to keep out dark corners.

Ok, thanks but doesnt fix my problem with those seams


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I cant fix normals - Blender to Unity?
Ok, Ive looked at all the tutorials, turned on blackface culling in Blender so that I could see the holes that show up in Unity, and taken these steps to fix normals in Blender:

Recalculated normals
Flipped normals
Turned on the "show normals" option so I can verify the normals are THERE:

But no matter what, exporting to fbx with these settings (I have to do old FBX):

I STILL get holes in Unity. I have no idea where to turn. No holes in blender but unity:

Unity import settings are:

What am I doing wrong?

Did you import a .blend file into Unity, or did you export as FBX? I had the same issue, but with a FBX file it worked.


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Pack external files - with photoshop files?
Ok I know you can pack external images into your blend by packing external data, but I this doesnt really work with photoshop files.
I have several images as planes that link back to .ai files that are placed into photoshop files, and these are fed into blender. Packing them results in gray images - what's the easiest way to pack files so I can send the blend to another computer?

a bit late, but I think the best solution is to save those PSDs as TIFFs.
TIFF is apparently supported by Blender for Packing. And you can still place your .ai files in a TIFF file.
I am having the same issue right now, and all PSDs were't packed and appeared pink.
But all TIFFs are still there. So I think that should be a good workaround I think.


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Save/Export image from compositing tab in Blender 2.81
Any way to save the pre-rendered picture as JPG/PNG from the compositor?

One way is to connect the Viewer Node.
Then just open your Image Editor, select Viewer Node and save the image.
You can save to any format you need .jpg/.EXR are all supported.

Note:
If the Viewer node doesn't show any image, just toggle one of your nodes off/on.
Viewer/Composite nodes refresh only when there's a change in the compositor.

@Jachym wow, that worked, thanks!

Happy to help :). I had to figure it out because I often edit external .exr files.

There are a couple ways to interpret your question.
If you mean save out your render before the composite; go to your compositor then 'shift+a > output > file output' and connect it directly to your render output node.
If you mean that you rendered the image and are compositing using the live view after: There isn't an instant way of doing that presently. You can maximize the node editor using ctrl+space and do a screenshot or re render the frame. If its just for a preview image that you want to save you can turn down your resolution or ray count (be sure to have denoise in your composite node tree if you do that) to make it faster if time is an issue. The back image in the compositor is just a preview, it is not meant to be a final render product.

Thanks @Jeremy, I should've been more precise, my situation is closer to the second option. That's sad, I have a highres EXR file in my compositor and the only thing I want to change is the background color.

The way I save any scene is to use the print screen button on the keyboard. Click it then  open up a picture editor like Microsoft paint because it loads fast, and paste, crop picture if you want, and then click save as. For more options on editing the picture use a program like Gimp to past the picture into.


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Subdivide a face by connecting opposite vertices
Is there a way to subdivide a face like this? There is a lot of opposite vertices, it takes too much time to connect them manually.

The best way I found was triangulate (Ctrl-T) but it does only a half of job and requires a lot of manual edit.
If it is not possible to have done automatically, what would be the easiest method?
Thanks!

Delete the Ngon and fill with Ctrl+F

Yes, delete the face, then Ctrl F > Grid Fill, maybe you'll have to play with the parameters on the bottom of the left menu (displayed with T) to correctly fulfill

@moonboots & Cegaton you should both post it as an answer so that when people google it they can find an answer quick.

@moonboots as your solution is more complete, could you add it as an answer, i will mark it then

Delete the face, select the vertices around the hole, then Ctrl F > Grid Fill. Maybe you'll have to play with the parameters available on the bottom of the left menu (displayed with T) to correctly fulfill.


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Expand selection (Ctrl +) to the specified direction in edit mode?
It would be very handy to have an option to expand/contract a selection not in all directions only, but also to a specified one. Or to limit the selection in other way.
Is it doable in blender? Or any addons?
Here is an example (manually done) of what i would like to achieve.

If you've selected a pair of elements which bear some logical relation to one another ( e.g. along a loop, along a ring, every other along a ring ) then Select Next Active (CtrlShiftNumpad+) makes a pretty good job of carrying on the sequence you started.


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Fixing mirrored bones rotation.

So I know that after mirroring in the rigs, I have to fix the rotation problem of the left side. So I selected the original bones and had x-axis mirroring checked. Pressed ctrl+R to rotate the mesh. However, it seems that the rig just fliped itself again, which I had no idea of what's causing it.
Can anyone help me with this? Thank you so much!!!

afair, if your bones are named in a way that blender understands "sides", like arm.R and arm.L many tools use that information to do "mirrored" things more properly, could it be that? see http://www.blender.org/manual/rigging/armatures/editing/properties.html#naming-bones

Thank you. Well, I did name them correctly, so the problem still exists.


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Animations ruined after exporting?
Here's one of the animation after exporting(For source engine SMD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_rkNc6Ob7w
I have no idea what happened to the....I don't even know now

Can somebody please help me?? Thanks


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snap cursor to curve point in object mode
Is there a way to just drag the 3d Cursor to a curve point using a keyboard command/drag method? I tried to find a way but couldn't.
I have curve data at which I want to create primitives. Currently when I go Add > Mesh > Cube and the object is created at the 3d cursor.
I'd like the object to be created at the curve point so I go into edit mode and select the point then Shift S and select "move cursor to selection" then Add > Mesh > Cube. That's better but still a lot of steps.
Thank you.

In the snapping options popover, set the Snap Base to Center, and Snap Target to Vertex

Hold down ⇧ Shift RMB to move the cursor around
While moving the cursor, hold down ⎈ Ctrl to toggle snapping.

That works great, thank you!


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I'm only able to view the axis of selected object in the viewport when move tool is activated manually
Currently when I select the object in outliner I have to manually hit the move tool in the toolbar to display the axis of the selected objects:

Is there a hotkey shortcut to active the move tool as if I had hit the move tool button?
If I am in select lasso mode and hit "G" the ability to move the object is activated but I do not see the axis in the viewport until I hit the move toolbar button:

If I go to Viewport> Overlays > Object Gizmos Options and check "Move" then the 3 axis of the object are visible whenever the object is selected but also when the move tool is not activated.
The desired result would be a hot key to active the 3 axis on selected object only when the move tool is active as if I had pressed the toolbar move button.
Is there a way to do that?
Thank you.
[![enter image description here][3]][3]
I

The gizmos are disabled during transform operations performed with operators so that they don't obstruct the view in such operations. If you want to see the gizmos, they are visible(or partially visible) when you use the tools(as opposed to operators like  G ,  R ,  S ). You can hit  Shift  +  Spacebar  to get a menu for choosing tools:

As you see they have shortcuts in the menu, so you could hit  Shift  +  Spacebar  followed by  G  to activate the move tool quickly. You can also add it to your quick favorites( Q ) menu or assign another hotkey by right clicking on the tools:


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Import sequence of positions as animation
I'm trying to make a game and as any game requires, it needs animation.
I wrote a piece of software that can track a marker in 3D coordinates using cameras and save it into a file.
Is it possible to transfer those sequence of 3D positions to some object of blender and make it move? What kind if format it expects?
Thanks in advance!

Not the answer to your question, just some thoughs - does that mean that you'd like game engine to get 3d model animation as it's shown in the file where marker position is captured ? If so I don't think it's done like that; it maybe easier (and much often done like that) to rig the model and animate it as usual, save several animations (walk, run etc.) into several actions and feed those to game engine.

Well, here is what I want: given a video of a person ( from multiple cameras), create the rigging and the animation for that video. I think handmade animations may be very time consuming for me once I have no experience with that. I rather make it automatic. Once it is done, I can make a lot of animations with minimal effort.


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Brain Crease material
I've got a model of a brain, and I want to be able to make it so that in the creases it's a different material, but I'm not sure how to do that. Any pointers?

There are three options.

You could leverage the "Pointiness" value. If you use it as a mix factor, you'll be able to blend between different materials based on the geometry. The benefit of this is you don't have to bake anything.
More in the Manual.

You could also create "Dirty Vertex Colors" in vertex paint mode and use that as the mix factor. It has the benefit of not having to bake anything, but its quality is directly related to how much geometry you have (more geometry will look better). BlenderGuru has a great tutorial about how to add dirt with this tool.

The somewhat more standard answer (and probably more appropriate) is to use an Ambient Occlusion map as the mix factor. You have to bake the AO to a texture of some kind, but it has the benefit of being very accurate and providing somewhat more control than the other options.
More in the Manual.

Technically a fourth option is to combine one or all of those techniques.


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Flipping rectangle grid (or flipping tiles) with animation nodes
Dear Blender and Animation Nodes Users
I'd like to create a flipping rectangle grid animation with a controller object. I need a tutorial on this, but I am not able to find any, which I deem good or up to date.
A similar effect, and tutorial can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qYNoXmbHZo
but this one uses python code inside AN, I think Animation Nodes knows the necessary things without writing any code.
Thank you in advance, Michael

You can start by inspecting "Transform Individual Polygons" template. THEN, if you are using AN version 1.6, you have this handy pivot thing:
http://animation-nodes-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/release_notes/v1_6.html
There is actually an example over there that allows you to flip polygon face.
A little bit of observation and experimentation and you will have the flip setup.

Thank you! At the moment I am quite sure I do not have time to try, but thank you anyway.
Michael


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Weight Paint adding to wrong side of mesh, subtracting from active bone
I'm weight-painting a dog mesh, but the "Add" brush is subtracting from the spot where I click, and instead adding to the corresponding mirrored part on the opposite side of the mesh, over the Y axis. The problem becomes worse as I approach the crease between the selected leg bone and the underbelly, and doesn't seem to be a problem when I am painting the leg itself.
Weight paint was working fine yesterday, and since then I have made edits to the armature and reapplied the "symmetrize" function more than once. I haven't made any changes to the painting options except to make my brush stronger.

This problem was solved by clearing all transformations made in pose mode and then returning to weight paint mode. I don't know what exactly was causing the problem or happening however.


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Accidentally hit "toggle full screen", How do I exit?
I'm stuck in full screen in the node editor. Escape isn't working, and I have no menus and no idea how to leave except to quit Blender and reopen the program.

Ctrl + Alt + Space worked for me on OSX

To toggle out of full screen area (what I think you did)
For Blender 2.8 and later
The shortcuts are
⎈ Ctrl + Spacebar to toggle maximize
or
⎈ Ctrl + ⎇ Alt + Spacebar
 to toggle Full Screen.
You can also use the area menu under View > Area either Toggle Full Screen Area, or Toggle Maximize Area.

For Blender 2.79 and earlier
Press AltF10, or move your mouse to the top right corner and click the button that appears.
Here I start in full screen area, notice the button that appears in the top right corner.

If you just maximized the window you can get back to the normal view a number of ways.

Click the "Back To Previous" button in the info window at the top.
Press CtrlUp Arrow
Press CtrlDown Arrow
Press ShiftSpace

If you toggled blender into full screen view press AltF11.

Yup, it was Alt+F10 indeed :) Thanks for the extra info too. That's helpful.

Life savior (on MacOSX)

Alt+f10 always escapes me. Best fullscreen mode for sculpting. Thank you for the comprehensive list!

Another solution: Press F3 and search after "Toggle" and you'll find "Toggle Fullscreen Area"

You should be able to toggle panel full screen mode in blender via Shift+Space  :)

Thanks for a quick response :) but shift+space didn't seem to do anything and I wound up quitting and reopening Blender - it looks like alt+fn+F10 will toggle both in and out of full screen node editor on a Mac laptop. Sorry for the complete noobness...

On Mac none of the above worked, I got it toggling on and off with Ctrl + Alt + Fn + Space.

Ctrl + Space or Ctrl + Alt + Space works on OSX.

...but on my Blender 3.0 I must use Cmd instead:  Cmd + Alt + Fn + Space.

Press ALT+F11 to toggle Full Screen.

It's not Blender, that is in fullscreen mode, it's the Node Editor. F11 is the shortcut to UV/Image Editor.

As the edit corrected the shortcut for toggle full screen is Alt F11 not F11


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Background video is way too bright when rendered
So I've got 3 tracks that I've motion tracked and done my work to, but for all 3 theres the same issue; The background video looks fine in the "Rendered" mode, but when I render, it appears to have double the intensity of the original video file.
For 2/3 clips I was able to, by some miracle/messing around with render layers/masks, fix the problem. This 3rd clip however, is not working at all. I want to know if this is a common issue and learn the root of the problem.
Thanks so much!

Hello, welcome to BSE, adding more details, screen shots and uploading your .blend file, will help you get more accurate answers, otherwise, most probably all answers will be speculations and guessing of what the problem might be, you can upload your .blend file here: http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

So for this clip, I was able to fix it by turning off and on all the render passes (Z, Combine, Vector)... strange that it worked since I didn't actually change anything at all. Must be a small bug, no matter since it's easy to fix!


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How to apply physics to a part of my mesh
Let me start by saying I am not at all fluent with Blender.
I just modeled a character with long ears. I am now taking my first steps in rigging and animating it. The rig worked quite well and a basic animation works as well.
Now the problem. These long ears of my character move along with the head very statically. It looks very unnatural. I guess I could add a bunch of bones in it and move them into position one by one but that sounds counter productive. So I tried adding softbody physics to just the ears. I basically enabled softbody and assigned a vertex group with the ears to the mass property, but now the ears just bounce up and down.
Can anyone please advice on how I can make the ears naturally follow the animation of the rest of the body, and the head in particular?
Thanks!

Would something like this work? You can always mess with the settings of the simulation to make the ears more stiff, or more floppy if you so please.

Looks useful indeed. In my case the "hat" is actually part of the full mesh, but if I link the ear bones to the empties following the cloth, it may actually work. Ill need some time to try this, and will report back when I did.


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Removing white artifacts from composition
I'm trying to compose two layers into a single one. The first layer contains the image itself and the second one the lines from freestyle. Here are my nodes:
I want the first layer to have some lower opacity while the second one to be completely opaque. However whenever I join both layers some white artifact appear around the lines. How I convert then to the color of the line itself? If I connect the freestyle layer to viewer it seems correct.

Set this transparent color to black (also transparent, but base on black):

Also try z-combine instead of Alpha Over:

Worked as expected! I will work to understand it better. Thanks!

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