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Object shifts about after changing XYZ Euler to Quaternion (WXYZ)
I have a problem when I change the rotation type of my object (3D View > Properties region (N) > Transform panel > Rotation) from XYZ Euler to Quaternion (WXYZ) to avoid a gimbal lock problem with a collada export.
I find that after the change, while the bone animation still plays perfectly, the object now seems to shift around slightly. I believe it has something to do with the root position or the in place motion as child bones seem to behave perfectly.
Here is a video of the problem. The initial import using euler is on the left and the right side shows the change to quaternions. Note how the feet are very grounded on the left but on the right they drift about and leave the ground.
Any suggestions on how to fix the issue would be greatly appreciated as I think I'm pretty close to getting it working!


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How do I Rescale a character
I want to make a bunch a similar characters with varying body types. I figure to go in pose mode and modify the bones then duplicate the distorted body mesh. Just that I can't figure out what to do with the bones.
How do I make the modified scaled/translated/rotated bones to become the Rest Position pose and reset transform scale/rotate values?

https://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27351
Other site says to do this but I don't see any Pose button.
   Pose > Apply > Apply Pose as rest Pose

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How can I work around applying a modifier to a shape with its shape keys?
Blender says: I can't apply a modifier while it has shape keys.
If I don't apply the modifier It doesn't allow an FBX export of its shape keys.
So I have to delete all the shape keys apply the modifier then build back the shape keys.
The only way I know how to do this is making a duplicate of the shape with the keys intact and sliding each key one at a time to a value of 1 then select the shapes to then select Join as Shape. It's a long tedious procedure especially if you have a large number of shapes keys.
Is there a better way than how I am doing this?

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


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Is there a find/replace names
I imported a model via FBX and I want to delete all the prefixes added including the materials color names and bone names.
Is there a Find/Replace for names so I can delete all prefixes?
eg: Copy_HairColor => HairColor
eg: Character1_Hip   => Hip

I created and add-on for such situations: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?272086-Addon-Name-Panel-1-5

You can try Proxe's addon here https://github.com/trentinfrederick/name-panel
and see if it will work for you. It is supposed to support batch renaming, so maybe that could work.
Edit: I will try to get some working examples in picture form tonight and update here.- craigo
From the author, Trentin Frederick:

Summary
This add-on allows for batch naming operations and displays object datablock names in a single panel within the 3D view, don't take my word for it though, check it out
The whole goal behind this add-on is to consolidate names and naming operations, while granting fast access to a few options here and there, I hope that this add-on saves you a lot of time.
Overview
This addon offers a panel that displays object related datablock names below the object and object data name fields, offering quick access within the 3D View to all available datablock names, along with an occasional option or few, like a mini outliner, filter options are located towards the top of the panel and the panel itself is located in the properties shelf of the 3D view and in addition this add-on comes with a series of operators that save a lot of time when renaming datablocks, the operators are as follows;
Auto Name
This operator allows for quickly naming objects and those object's modifiers, constraints, object data and for pose bones, bone constraints. It works by assigning names based on type, the names used are defined by the user and can be saved with user settings. (Options saved with the current scene)
Batch Name
This operator is the big work horse here, through its various toggle options and input fields you are able to perform find and replace text operations (with regular expression support) to almost all datablock names in the file and control how duplicate names will be numbered. The pop-up is a bit clustered but is fairly straightforward to understand once you use it a time or two, the tool-tips indicate what the option is doing/allowing.
Note - This operator can be accessed either through the item panel special menu or in the outliner header, it can be called from any window type, just search 'batch'
Batch Name Copy
This operator is meant to fulfil the need to transfer names from some object datablocks to others, essentially copying them and pasting to the targets, this is done on a per object basis unless the 'use active object' option is active, which will then transfer the source name from the active object to the selected objects.
WARNING! - By default all three operators DO NOTHING, you MUST activate the appropriate filters in the operator's pop-up
If you have any questions, comments, concerns or suggestions; please reply to this thread.
Please report any bugs either on this thread or github.
WARNING AGAIN! - By default all three operators DO NOTHING, you MUST activate the appropriate filters in the operator's pop-up."

Could you maybe explain how to use it a bit? Thanks!

I have seen that it installs now to the tool bar as a Name tab, and if you select all the objects you need to rename you can press the icon of the three stacked bars and there are operators for batch renaming, auto naming, etc. Choosing one will cause a panel to pop up that allows input for the new name, any suffix or prefix, and then other arguments. Pressing okay, I renamed 6 cubes as craigo.003-craigo.008 in a few seconds after installing. I think it is almost self explanatory, but proxe has a pretty good thread there of insight on what he is working on.

Oh, sorry, I meant as an edit to the answer. It's fantastic that there's a good thread over there, but we don't really like having link only answers here. The issue with them is that we can't guarantee that they'll stay up for forever. If for some reason BA went down, the addon would be referenced here but if anyone tried to learn about it, they couldn't because of the dead link. We'd rather have an explanation to go along with it, and maybe a direct download link.

Okay, I will see what I can do about that then.

Edited the first post answer to include a direct github link and the original description and illustration from the author's thread.

Fantastic, looks great. I'm going to quickly add in a link to the BA thread because you are quoting his post there. When quoting we it's nice to give a direct link to the source.

Okay, I thought I was on the right track this time - I'll learn :D

In Blender 2.8 we now have "batch rename". Just go to Edit > Batch Rename

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


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How to set layer hierarchy?
I need a matching hierarchy of shape keys to match a saved file form another app. I need the shape keys of the head first, then the tongue, then teeth, etc.
Is there a procedure to bump up or down a layer in the outliner? Already alphabetical order is turned off to see the actual order.
The only way I know is the long way, to unparent and then reparent each layer from the armature in the desired order one at a time.
But if there was a shorter way of doing this that would be a time saver, that is what I wish I knew.

Do you have to match the exact name of the shape keys as well, or are you only interested in the order?

Both, but the name matching is not the unknown part of my task.


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Can a light make ramped shading?
With a scene that has no ramped materials and no toon materials, can a light source provide cell shading?
I wish for the final effect to look like the image below the light emits yellow and the shadows are blue. Everything has cell shading and anything put into the scene gets the same cell shading.
Preferably done in blender render if possible.

See http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/10939/1245. This is done the same in BI.

http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/10939/1245 Has nothing to do with what I want. I don't want to use ramp shaded materials. I have multiple characters and multiple props, cars, buildings, cities, I can't spend countless hours making ramps for hundreds of materials.

Explain better then. http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/10939/1245 is compositing, not materials setup and is done once regardless of the scene materials. In BI one material can be set up to rewrite any other one and any object added to scene will get its options. To make shadows blue change Ambient Color in World settings to blue. To make lamps shadows sharp for Spot lamp enable constant falloff in Lamp, set Blend to 0 in Spot Shape. To make lamp emit yellow make its color yellow.

When I read http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/10939/1245 I see nothing there to help me make a scene that is completely cell shaded. That could be because I never used a node or composited anything in Blender until a week ago. To my untrained eye all I see is ramp materials explained.

I know that nodes affect the output image as in compositing. But the linked page doesn't show me how to make cell shading using the compositor. I don't know how else to say it.


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Cycles. How to prevent shadows when using backface culling
I was given this example to enable backface culling with Cycles Render but I wish to eliminate the shadow from the backface culling without eliminating the shadow on the other.
How do I prevent shadows to emit form a specific material in cycles render while that material is using backface culling render nodes?

I thought I erased that title and put the correct one. It was very late and still wasn't able to get it on my own.

To remove the entire shadow as well as the backface culling you could simply combine the Backfacing socket of the Geometry node and the Is Shadow Ray socket of the Light Path node and use that as the input of your Mix Shader as follows :

However, removal of the shadows of just those culled 'backfaces' is compilcated by the fact that the 'Backfacing' socket is dependent on the actual ray being considered. This means that using the Backfacing output to cull the backfaces for the Shadow rays will result in different faces being culled for the shadow than are culled for the camera view - this is presumably not the desired behavior. This would be less apparent when the light sources are close to or behind the camera and would become more significant as the light sources move away from the line of sight of the camera or viewport - and the shadow would not match the mesh.
To resolve this must use a fixed point of view for the backface culling for the Camera rays and the Shadow rays and, ideally, all rays. This will ensure that the view of the material will match its shadow. As the hidden faces are based on the camera view it will be possible to see the back of the faces via reflections.
To acheive this, use the following node setup :

The Combine XYZ node defines the Vector of the Point of View. For 'traditional' backface culling this would point directly between the object and the camera and this would then result in all 'true' backfaces being culled. The node tree is split into a number of frames for clarity. These are as follows :
Shader - Transparent and Diffuse shaders mixed via the Mix shader based on the combined output of the other frames.
Frontfacing - Uses the Dot Product to determine the direction of the surface Normal in relation to the Point of View vector. A positive result will indicate that the Vector is in the same direction as the Normal - ie, it has been struck on its 'Front' face. The Subtract and Multiply nodes are used to filter out the actual 'Backfacing' rays since those need to be handled differently due to the 'Normal' of the face will having been negated.
Backfacing - Similar to Frontfacing but to deal with Normals that have been negated due to the incoming ray being incident on the 'backface'.
The results of the Frontfacing and Backfacing frames are combined via an Add node and then passed into the Mix factor.
The input Vector can be manipulated in Worldspace coordinates to point in the direction of the camera. However, a more versatile approach is toautomatically generate the vector based on the position of the camera or other target object. As the camera or objects moves, drivers can be used to get the associated coordinates and these can be used to generate the required vector for the culling as follows :

Here is an example of the back face culling with shadow emitted only from the 'visible' non-culled parts of the mesh :

And a demonstration of moving the culling viewpoint (shown as a glowing disc) :

Blend file available here

I don't have a node called Maximum, is that an addon?

I don't think I am asking the right question or being clear on what I want to accomplish. This seems to be way over my skill level as the simpler  example node connections do don't work as described on my side. I'm just gonna call it impossible to recreate and give up on this and try another way.

Hi @EricHuelin. Sounds like I've over analysed your problem. The Maximum node is a Math node (Add/Converter/Math) set to Maximum - it is a bit confusing if you don't know it changes the heading. If you can clarify what you're trying to achieve I'd be happy to help.

Thanks Rich but when I started to learn how to do this I never expected it to be so complicated. All I wanted to do was make toon lines by duplicating a mesh add a modifier to displace + reverse normals + material is black. I don't want to use cycles render but seems blender render doesn't allow this but I could be wrong. Cycles does allow to do this except the mesh under it doesn't get any light because it is covered over by the mesh that makes the toon lines. So I wanted the toon line mesh to not cast a shadow but the material below needs to have shading in order to apply ramp shading.

@EricHuelin Would Freestyle be of any use for your toon lines - instead of duplicating the mesh? I've not got much experience of it but it does sound like that's the kind of thing you're trying to do. You activate it via the Render properties and you  can set the line style and properties and these are automatically overlayed onto the render.

I know about freestlye, I also know it cannot be exported via FBX but backface culling can. I want to have models I create in Blender be tested first to see how line creases on a character before exporting I also want to gradually learn to do everything in Blender as I do with other software that I use for animation.

Something about freestlye that looks different than backface culling it's subtle aspects like natural tapering and how you have more control over where it is applied.

@EricHuelin Probably best to raise a new question specific to your final goal with images of the effect you're trying to achieve. I'm sure someone who knows more about such things will be able to assist.

You don't have to use material to make object to not emit shadow. You just need to uncheck Shadow in Object Cycles settings.

If you necessarily want to make it by use of materials, this is a node setup, which does exactly the same:

And this is a material nodes setup, that allows to see only shadow emitted by visible faces (and bottom) of an object with back face culling

This is expected outcome of the last node setup:

Please can you explain how that works? Especially the use of the Tangent node.

Not really. I came to that node setup by doodling around with what I felt to be useful :)

Ah - I see... use of Tangent has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I'll give it a try and see if Ican figure out what it's doing. I've got a different solution that I'll add later when I get chance.


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Does Blender have a tool that does auto lip sync
Detail: I don't use bones, I use 100% shape keys with my rigs to do facial expressions.
How do I make Blender do automatic lip sync?

Blender has a plugin for automatic lip sync.  You can download it here: https://morevnaproject.org/2015/11/11/automatic-lipsync-animation-in-blender/  However, I do not know if it works with shape keys.


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Does Blender have an asset library plugin?
Is there an addon or plugin to have a visual asset library to drag and drop onto the 3D view area other than the file open/browsing dialog?

Actually there are quite a few, a free one is https://github.com/BlenderAid/Asset-Flinger

This one seems very great : https://blendermarket.com/products/asset-management/ (I haven't try it yet).


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How to exclude hair particles from Freestyle using Cycles?
In blender render this is possible by disabling solid and freestyle in render layers. Cycles have use hair and use use surfaces checkbox, but disabling then din't exclude the particles rendering in the layer.
I forgot to mention that i'm using object particles in a scene that contains nature and a house. I'm trying to achieve a scene where the house have Freestyle lines but not nature related objects like trees and its leaves(emitted as particles object).

In the particle hair Render settings, check 'Strand Render':

Thanks Drudge. But I forgot to mention that i'm using object instead path so it din't work because the option is not available.

In that case, you need to use Groups to control your freestyle lines. Put objects you want FS to go on into a group and select is as inclusive in your lineset. Leave whatever object you are using for the hair out of the group.


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mesh doesn't follow armature correctly - bones outside the mesh
I set up the armature and weight painted every bone and everything seemed to be fine but the mesh doesn't follow correctly. it moves, but not as expected. (it seems to move too little)

I tried to fix vertex groups manually. There  is just one Armature Modifier.
I really don't get it :(
here is my blend file: http://sta.sh/0edcqulrf04

To help others help you, you could try to add a link to a .blend file, or show at least one screenshot of your weights.

@m.ardito thanks, i'll just uploaded the blend file!

I think the problem is that your weights, give influence to the movement of that part of the mesh (an arm of the creature) to two different bones:

So, afaik, the end of the arm, being influenced by two different bones, is a "compromise" (or more properly a "blend") of the position of the two involved bones.
I roughly tried to correct the weights of the first image:

and you see the mesh now behaves better, hopefully?
(btw the other arm of your model already has a similar setup and the mesh moves like expected)


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Can you skip frames with no animation?
I have 1800 frames of animation to render for a school project thing, of which only 1/4 of it has animation. I have 7 more days and my computer just doesn't have the strength to do all of the 1800 frames in that time.
Can you skip frames that have no animation? Because that would really help me if there were only around 400 frames to render.
This is different than the other one because those answers weren't Windows compatible. Also, is there a way to only render 1 frame, then only a section on that frame onwards? I have what is technically a still image for ~800 frames, but only a small section is moving, is there a way to render the whole image, then only render and then use that image for 800 frames but only re render a small part of the 800 frames every frame... I didn't know how to word that right but I hope you get what I mean

Possible duplicate: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/15649/599

Also related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1718/is-it-possible-to-render-only-keyframes-from-dope-sheet

You can skip frames where nothing changes.
Probably the simplest, is to manually render out different sections of the animations. It works by splitting the different parts into sections, and you render out each of these sections individually.
You do this by setting the start and end frame to match the parts of the animation you want to render, and then pressing animation, making sure that you have it outputting to the correct folder. You then repeat the process. With the parts that aren't animated at all, just render by pressing the render button, or by setting the start and end frame settings to be the same frame (making them only render that frame).
You then need to import everything into a video editor and stretch out the frames that where rendered as a single image instead of an animation.

I was thinking of that yes, but is there any way to auto skip these frames where nothing changes?

@biophaz3 You can launch multiple instances of Blender (or use multiple computers if you have them) and set each one to render a different range of frames. Or alternatively you can just modify the content of the frames you don't need, for example by hiding all the objects in the scene during that span - this will at least speed up the render time and you can delete the blank images later. It would be nice if there were a built-in feature to skip spans of frames, but for now there are those options.

There's probably a way to do it with python if someone wants to explore that. What mentalist said is fairly accurate, although I have a feeling that trying to render using multiple instances of blender on the same computer would slow things down instead of speeding them up.

I did have another idea that might work for you. You could compress the parts that don't change so they only last one frame in the animation and then when editing stretch them out. Same principal, just different ways of achieving the result.

@TARDISMaker If for example there were three instances of blender running at once each rendering a frame, yes it would take about three times as long for each instance of Blender to finish rendering its frame. The total required computations are the same. The idea is that you save time by not computing spans of unneeded frames.

Okay then I'll just run multiple instances of blender thx everyone for taking the time

I found a script that compares the f curve values and if they are the same it skips the frame but it's not windows compatible because it uses a subprocess to copy so if someone can make it windows friendly it can help, the script is in the linked post that gandalf3 linked


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Render only a certain part of a frame, reuse the rest of the frame from the frame rendered before
I have ~800 frames which are technically still. In these 800 frames, only a small section of it moves, is it possible to only render the first frame fully, then only re-render the small moving part of the 799 frames left and reuse the rest of the image from the first rendered frame?
I want this rendered for 800 frames

Only this part moves for those 800 frames

Does this help: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/33903/3710 ?

related: render-just-part-of-a-final-image, and  render-borders

I normally split the scene's object to forground and background, placed in different layers, then render the background once, and the foreground every time - and composite them together in the compositor. http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/introduction-to-the-compositor/
Also:
http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1775/composite-transparent-overlapping-objects-from-different-scenes/1907#1907

@TLousky Hey you seem to know a lot about blender... Is there any way I can contact you so you can help me?

@bi0phaz3, I don't know more than the other people who commented on your question, but you're welcome to contact me here on the private chat.

@TLousky how do I access this private chat?

@TLousky how do I use the compositor to do what you did?

You can solve this by separating the foreground and background elements and rendering them separately, then using the compositor to re-combine them.
Result of this approach
First, render only the very background - the object(s) that is behind everything else, and save to file:

Then, make sure you set the background to transparent.
Then render the static foreground elements (the elements above everything else that aren't animated) and save to file:

Now you can render your dynamic, animated element separately from the rest. Make sure you render to an image sequence of PNGs with transparent background:

Now all you need to do is open the compositor and use alpha over nodes to composite the static and dynamic elements, then render it all out together to one video file (or a new image sequence):

Alternative node setup using Z combine:

You can find the blend file that was used for this answer here. Good luck!

Please use a more permanent blend file storage like http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ ; the links do not expire there whereas pasteall links do after 5 months.

Will rendering the background image once, and putting the swirling DNA is another layer and using Z Combine to join the static image and the swirling DNA together also work?

Also, you put a lot of effort into answering my simple question, taking your time to remodel the model and uploading a video showing the result. I thank you very much and I very much appreciate your help kind sir. Very satisfying

Goot point @RayMairlot, updated.@bi0phaz3: you're welcome, wish I started out doing amazing 3D as early as you, good luck! :)

@TLousky Thanks, and also, will the Z Combine method work too?

@bi0phaz3 - Yup, sure will: https://bioblog3d.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/z_combine.jpg

Thanks @TLousky, I think I can replace the image sequence with a RenderLayer input so I don't have to render the image sequence then combine, which takes more time. And so if I'm not mistake, higher Z-Values will be placed further into the background, letting images with less Z-Values overlay it?

Sounds like a good idea @bi0phaz3. And yes, higher values mean further into the background.


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How do I create a sprite asset that can be used multiple times in a scene?
I am making low poly videos of people shooting guns.  I want to be able to place sprite muzzle flashes on the tips of their guns, and be able to import that as an asset.
What I have done is created an empty to act as controller/container for an Image on Plane of 8 frames of a cartoonish muzzle flash. This starts and ends with a transparent image.

There is also a point light in there to add light to the scene.

Because the muzzle flash may occur on any frame, I gave the empty properties to control light intensity and frame offset.

I then created a driver to make the Image Series meshes (the two planes in the scene are linked duplicates) frame equal to the FX_Start_Frame property.

When viewing the material, this appears to work, as the frame listed is equal to what I keyframed in my custom property.

However, despite this, whenever the image cycles over, that is hits "frame 9 of the image sequence", it acts as though no image can be found.

What am I doing wrong here, why is blender rendering as though it does not know what image to display.

First of all, I don't know why the images aren't loading although maybe there's an issue with drivers? Have you considered changing from an image sequence to a sprite sheet? As he images appear quite small you could just make a long image strip with all frames next to each other then offset the UV to change frames

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


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Tell Blender to ignore tracker for camera solve
I want to have blender ignore some markers during camera tracking. I have drone footage of someone running around on a rooftop and shooting at "things" to be added post.  I tracked his gun barrel before doing the camera solve. Naturally if that marker is included in the solve, I get a massive error.  If I delete that marker, I get a good solve. I spent a lot of time putting in that gun barrel track (frame by frame). Can I tell blender to ignore it (or more trackers) during the solve?

Why not delete that track altogether?

That is what I did, and then I added an object to save the tracker under.  I had to track the gun barrel by individual frame, and I didn't want to throw away 20 minutes of work. I realize that is small potatoes, but I figured it might save me more time in the future. I am beginning to believe it is not possible - that all trackers linked to the camera are used, and that is the intent of the programmers.

Well, if you would like to keep the marker, you could clear the tracks, then re-track all of them except the one you wish to exclude. Tracks are calculated individually depending on which ones you select, and the solve will reflect that.


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Using Geometry Nodes, how do I make modular fence components perfectly follow
I'm trying to make a generic geonodes wall generator.  I'm going to be working almost exclusively in grids, and would like to be able to just draw out my walls including 90 turns.

The above is using my node set-up on 4 curves and manually placing them together.
If I try and use 1 curve I get this:

I tried to avoid using the curve tangent, because of course that will not make a square, even
when the handles are set to vector.
Instead, I converted the curve to a mesh, and then tried to use the vectors between the new vertices to align the fence.

It mostly works.

As you can see in my second image, the curve is a square. The generated vertex positions look right.  Is there anything I can do to fix this?

I made this geo node setup, maybe this will help you. I used the edges normals for the vector socket in the align vector to euler to get the planks to be aligned correctly

This is great, but it still doesn't work for Bezier curves.  For some reason Blender appears to ignore the request to align with generated edges and instead averages out values.

try to resample the curve to evaluated


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Is it possible to use "Animation Nodes" when exporting it to a game engine?
I want to export an animation to Godot game engine. Would that game engine specifically support the use of "Animation Nodes"

No, animation nodes are Blender exclusive data, unless you convert to static meshes it mostly can't be easily exported to game engines or otherwise. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures

How would I do that?

As Duarte Correctly pointed out, animation nodes are Blender exclusive data. If you use a format that supports animations, such as Collada or Alembic, you should be able to export the animations as keyframe animations. However, this will only work for the basic location-rotation-scale animations, things like mesh deformations created with animation nodes will not be exported. A similar question has been asked here if you want a bit more info: Blender page animation collada file in Scenekit
If you have any issues, you can also check out this question that the creator of the addon answered: Convert Animation Nodes to Object and Keyframes


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How do I move an object on the y axis infinitely

I want to use animations to move this object on the y axis infinitely. Additionally is it possible to add conditions, for example if the object's y axis is past 10 meters than I would want to rotate 30 degrees on the x axis?

I don't know how to do it, I know how to do animations using keyframes but obviously I can't use that if I want to make the cube move forever along the y axis. I want something that can continuously move the object non-stop.

Wrong re keyframes. You can extrapolate an fcurve or use a simple driver based on current frame.

Yeah I could do that but then eventually it would restart all over again as the frames have ended, is there a way to do animations WITHOUT using frames?

Setting the y location of the object to a multiple of the current frame should do what you want, the object will always move as long as the time is moving forward:

As for the condition, a simple node tree like this can be used:

If you want a smooth rotation, then using such node tree should work:

You said:

Yeah I could do that but then eventually it would restart all over again as the frames have ended, is there a way to do animations WITHOUT using frames?

The move node can be used, it will move the object each execution no matter what the condition are, so it won't reset.

I have a few questions, are you using the "Animations node" addon that you had to get from a third party source?
So using the "move node", allows for the cube to still move even if the animations ended, did I understand it correctly?

@Jack232 What do you mean by getting AN from a "third party source"? And yes, the move will move the object each execution regardless of the timeline.

How do you create that specific node tree?
What I meant was since there is an addon called "Animations node" which is not in the Blender's Repository so I had to get it from Github.
I don't know if you have used that addon to create the node trees or not.
Additionally if I were to use the Node Tree as you have used, would it work if I exported it to another game engine?

@Jack232 Ok, you used the Animation Nodes tag in your question, so I just assumed you wanted to use it. Animation nodes is a procedural system that won't work in any game engine, unless of course you bake the animation you did using that system. What exactly are you trying to do?

In reality I want to create a walk animation but using frame system, the walking animation restarts when the frames end and I don't want that.

@Jack232 So it is a character?

Yes it is a character, may I know what do you mean by unless of course you bake the animation. How would I do that? Can you bake the animation in ANY game engine?

@Jack232 I don't see where the "game engine" come in in your question. Is your question about BGE?


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When I rotate my legs using the assigned bone, it weirdly makes the legs thiner, any solutions?
For some reason when I rotate part of an object it makes the legs thiner
Without rotation

With rotation

Anyone know how to fix this issue?
I have parented the object to the bones with empty groups

Looking  at your images, it seems some sort of "robotic" spider, so it could also be made of separate arms sections, and in this way moving the lower section would not impact the upper at all... just an idea. Instead, if you need an "organic" spider, you have to follow @Mentalist answer.

It's because the topology of your legs doesn't have enough geometry, so it doesn't deform well.
Look at some examples comparing good and bad joint topology. (The good ones have a denser, "capped" extrusion)

For my model what should I exactly do I know I could add loop cuts but how many would I need and where would I place them?

Just look at the first reference image and create something similar. You can use Loop Cut (Ctrl R), or Extrude (E) the knee cap.

But if I used many loop cuts all around the leg, what if I rotated the leg and the legs very slightly becomes thin to the point where I am unable to determine if it actually got thinned out or not?

I really don't know what you mean by that. But if after you fix your topology you still have issues, it probably means there's either a problem with your vertex weights or a problem with your armature.

I added extra loop cuts and it does something different and weird. I just want it to rotate without it stretching weirdly.

Redo your vertex weighting.


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How to prevent legs from stretching when moving other parts of body?

I wanted to move this part of the leg as highlighted in the image

As you can see this part of the leg becomes stretched and thinned really weirdly. Does anyone know how to prevent the leg from becoming thinned and stretched really weirdly and to prevent the dimensions from changing?

Are you modelling (making the mesh shape) or rigging (making bones to do animations easily)?

I am rigging. Do you know how to fix this issue?

There are some tips to fix your problem.

subdivide
weight paint
preserve volume

1. subdivide
For a "good" rigging, your model seems to be too low poly. I suggest you add some loop cuts (near the joint) or add a subdivision surface modifier above the armature modifier.
Make sure that your new vertecies have appropriate vertex weights.
2. weight paint
By using weight painting, you can manipulate "the influence of the bone on a certain vertex". If some of your vertecies seem to move too much, decrease the vertex weight, mainly at the vertex paint mode.
3. preserve volume
At the Armature modifier panel, there is a check box labeled "preseve volume". Ticking it may improve your armature deform.

Where is the Armature modifier panel located @Allosteric?

When you set your armature as the parent of your mesh, you will get an Armature modifier in your mesh.

Oh ok thanks :) How would I know how many loop cuts I need to prevent my legs from deforming?

I guess one above and one below the existing loop would be enough. If that doesn't appear wonderful, taking a close look at models by others (especially at joints of character models) would help.

i recommend setting up IK since you arent animating using rotation alone.

Hi. Please expand this answer to explain how the user should set up IK.


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Is my Inverse Kinematics bone working correctly?

Take a look at the bone selected.

Now take a look at the selected bone. Shouldn't it be moving down as shown in the video tutorial I have been watching?

https://youtu.be/jp_SqjB0468?t=14m22s

Please edit your question without asking two times the same issue https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/98431/is-my-inverse-kinematics-not-working-correctly-or-is-it-working-correctly

This is not the same question if you carefully read the two questions they are different.


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I am having troubles installing "space_view3d_turntable_y_up.py" Blender addon
As shown in the link https://gist.github.com/rraallvv/5959426
How do I install this particular addon (space_view3d_turntable_y_up.py)?
Furthermore can this addon replace the y and the z axis?

Please elaborate on what issues you are having.  Installing an addon

I ran the python script in the text editor, yet I am not noticing any difference. Is this addon broken or something? Also am I understanding correctly that this addon is supposed to swap the z and the y axis so that the y axis is pointing up?

The location suggests '3d view > Ctrl + LMB-drag',  ie hit control key while dragging with left mouse in the 3d view.


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How do I get rid of an edge?

How can I get rid of the selected line?

The solution depends on WHAT you want to delete so please clarify. If you want to get rid of the vertecies and faces too, that's DELETE. If you don't want an edge there while keeping the vertecies and faces intact, that's DISSOLVE. As cegaton points out, dissolving is not a wise option unless special cases (such as retopology)

If you want to get rid of the edge without creating a hole :
In edit mode, Select the edge,  press X then click dissolve edge.

Note that in case of simple dissolving form of the original mesh won't be preserved and it will be converted into simple quad because geometry supporting that will be removed. To avoid that and create an Ngon use Limited Dissolve; if original faces weren't co-planar this will lead to non-planar Ngon triangulated not as expected when rendering.

Sorry that does not work :(

In edit mode, press X and select Edge in delete menu.

Note that this will delete faces which were sharing that edge as well.

Sorry that does not work mate :(


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How to create a procedural brick texture for a simple building without object size changing the texture size?
I want to create some procedural textures that I can quickly reuse to texture objects.  For this example I want four sided cubes (ignore top and bottom) that are wrapped in bricks.

But, I want the bricks across different objects to be the same size, even if the objects are different sizes. You will notice in the image above that the "large building" is twice the size of the "small" building and the large building's bricks are also twice the size. I believe this is because the procedural texture in "UV mode" is based on the bounding size of the object, so the brick size does not change regardless of if the scale is normalized.  If I use the object node option, but that will not wrap the bricks around the cube. The only way I know to wrap the bricks is to use the Texture Coordinate node and UV as an input.
Here is my material setup.

I think the key would be to use some math so the input value nodes to the brick height and width nodes are based on the object bounding box size, but I don't know how to get this as an input to modify my brick size.
I also tried using a different object for the "object node" in the Texture Coordinate node, but the bricks did not wrap.
Thanks.

Use procedural texture coordinates like Object or Generated and then use a Vector Transform node to convert between coordinate spaces, like object to world

The problem is Object and Generated do not wrap around an object, meaning bricks only appear on one side of the "cube".  The Vector transform does not seem to help this.

You have to mask faces by their respective normals, and map the texture coordinates accordingly for each one of the facing directions with the correct UV projection

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/112843/how-can-i-make-my-procedural-brick-texture-map-correctly-to-both-a-cube-and-cyli/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/90387/how-to-map-a-procedural-brick-texture-to-a-sphere/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/70444/how-to-create-a-procedural-brick-texture-for-a-simple-building-without-object-si/70571#70571

When I read Rich Sedman's first answer, I realized that what he does with the two materials can be solved with a single material using a trick called triplanar mapping.
What is the problem here? 3D procedural textures can be made size-independent using Object coordinates, but the brick texture is only a 2D procedural texture, so it does not wrap around the mesh.
What is triplanar mapping? A 2D texture is projected along the X, Y, and Z axes, and then we blend among these based on the angle of the currect face. It is used mostly for things like terrains, rocks, tree trunks but can be also used here (assuming that the faces are either in the XZ or in the YZ planes, so that we don't get blending artifacts). Cycles does not have built-in triplanar mapping support, but one can construct it from nodes, an example is here: http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/78446
The following is a simplified version of the blendswap material, because in this case we only need two projections (X and Y - this is strictly speaking biplanar mapping), and I also took out the mapping nodes because the scaling can be tuned in the brick texture. Note however, that the mapping nodes could be useful to reduce the discontinuity at the edges, as in Rich's answer.
The nodes:

The result:

One drawback of the previous two answers (both my own and lbalazscs's) is that the faces are assumed to be parallel with the X or Y axis - neither solution copes well with surfaces that are not square with the axes. This can be addressed by using vector maths to determine the texture coordinates based on the surface Normal and a reference vector. The reference vector (Orientation) determines in which plane the wrapping will take place (in our case, around the outside of the building) and this can be adjusted if necessary (eg, if the brickwork needs to be skewed).
Here is the material :

The Orientation vector is defined in a Combine XYZ node (named Orientation). This allow it to be easily amended if required. This vector is passed to a Cross Product node along with the Normal of the surface. The Cross Product generates a vector which is at 90 degrees to both of the input vectors. Since one of those vectors is the Normal of the surface, this means that the resultant vector is directly along the surface. Since the Orientation node is vertical (0,0,1), this generated surface vector must therefore be horizontal. Both the generated Horizontal and the (vertical) Orientation vector are passed through Normalize vector nodes to ensure they have a magnitude of '1'.
To generate the Texture Coordinate at the sample point on the surface, we use the Dot Product to combine the Object coordinate with each of the surface vectors (Horizontal and Vertical). The result of this will each be a scalar value representing the component of the coordinate in the direction of the Horizontal or Vertical vector and these are used as the X and Y texture coordinates by combining into a vector.
This produces a mapping that wraps around the mesh in a specified direction with the same scale for each surface and for each mesh (providing the Scale has been applied with CTRL-A and produces the following result (with a mesh that includes walls that are not 'square' to the X/Y axis) :

As mentioned, the Orientation vector can be amended to change the orientation of the wrapping. As a demonstration, setting it to (0.2, 0.5, 0.75) can produce the following skewed brickwork :

Maybe add an object input as the orientation. Seems more intuitive to align in 3d viewport.

Cool! Although this is still not the fully generic projection along the normals: it does not work if the orientation vector is perpendicular to the face: with the default vertical orientation it cannot be used to texture the floor.

Ideally the orientation would be a scalar, defining the rotation of the texture around the normal vector. But this is so far the most generic solution, great work.

@Leander thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into updatig the answer for this.

@lbalazscs Thanks :-) It's not ideal but I think the roof and floor would probably be better as a separate material - that way there's more control over the trasition betwee the two. I'm quite surprised how well this material copes with complicated meshes - tried it on a Suzanne head with surprisingly good result (I should add an image of that!). I think the biggest remaining problem is that the texture is centred on each face rather than being offset to join up with its neighbours - not such a problem for bricks I guess, but looking into generating an offset for each face for a better match.

Ratio from comparison for UV scaling
You can get the ratio of the scaling between an object and another in cycles node editor by following the process described in this answer.
If you choose an unitary empty as object for comparison, you'll get a ratio that is equal to the size.
As you can see in the image below, scaling the object give to each shaded pixel the same variation of colur:

We can now use this colour (think it as a "value"), to scale the UV map of the object with the help of a MixRGB node set to Multiply.

Note: the proposed ratio algorithm isn't currently taking into account the object's rotation

Very nice solution.

How does that work with 'Apply Scale'? Presumably it relies on the fce that the scale is different and applying scale would reset the texture scaling back to 1.

It doesn't work at all. It's all based on the object scale, you are right. It's pro is that you can use your custom uvmap. To be really honest, this could be useful only if you are duplicating several times the same mesh and scaling it, not with different objects with different shapes, etc... but I thought It worth trow it in anyway.

UV mapping is unsuitable for this as the scale is dependent on the size of the faces. There is no simple way (that I'm aware of) of determining the size of the actual face within the material to scale the texture appropriately.
The solution is to use Object coordinates - these are centered on the object origin but are the same scale for all objects - regardless of its size (provided the Scale has been applied).
However (as has been pointed out) Object coordinates do not allow the texture to be wrapped around your mesh. The solution to this is to use different materials for each orientation of faces. This way, the faces that are pointing along the X-axis can have a texture that is aligned with those faces, while those aligned along the Y-axis can have a texture that is aligned with those faces.
Add each of the materials to the mesh and, in Edit mode, select each set of faces and Assign the material to it. In this example I have created two materials - one coloured Red and the other Blue - to show how the materials have been assigned to opposite faces :

In my example I have two materials - one for the front and back faces and another for the side faces. If your mesh has faces at other angles then you should assign additional materials to those (eg, all faces at 45 degrees would be assigned a third material, those at, say, 30 degrees another, etc.).
Each material should then be set up identically but with a Mapping node set to orientate the texture as appropriate for that set of faces. For example, for those at the sides, the texture should be rotated 90 degrees around the X axis as shown.

Adjust the Mapping of each material to align the texture on the associated set of faces. For my second material I used the following rotation :

The bricks are now scaled the same, regardless of the size of the mesh/faces.

You may get discontinuity of the texture at the corners (see the edge of the smaller cube) as it changes between the different materials. You can adjust the Location Mapping values for each material (and potentially add further materials to allow some faces to be adjusted without affecting others at the same orientation) to offset the texture to reduce the discontinuity to acceptable levels.

Upvoted, but I think that if you use a trick called triplanar mapping (in this case a "biplanar" would be enough), then you don't need to assign different materials to different faces.

Thanks. I was thinking that perhaps there would be a way using the True Normal -  but the maths gets way more complicated and I don't see how to avoid the discontinuity at the edges. I might try down that route at some point but would be very interested to see another solution.

I added my idea as an answer. Actually it is based on a blending based on the normals, so maybe this is what you really wanted.

Nice. I did have a go and came up with something similar - achieved in a slightly different way (manipulating and mixing the vectors up front) that gives similar results but also caters for faces at other angles. I'll maybe add it as another answer if it seems worthwhile. Thanks!

Oh, I guess you are creating a custom planar projection for each face, where the projection angle is the same as the normal. Well, if you are already finished, you might just as well post it as another answer :)

A different topic is that it is possible to determine the size of an object in Cycles with drivers: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/3493/can-i-get-the-object-dimensions-in-cycles

@lbalazscs That's interesting, thanks for sharing. I never thought of doing it that way. I'll certainly need to have a play around with that. I've added my further answer.


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Why can't I see flames through the camera?
While making a cheesy rocket, I noticed I cannot see the flames through the camera.  I can see them in ortho and perspective view when set to render view mode, so I don't believe it is a material issue.
Here is a screen shot showing the issue:

Here is a second screen shot, in which I change the domain's material to simply an emission so it is not weighted by smoke density.

It almost looks like the active smoke domain is cutting out the flame, but why this would happen, let alone only happen in camera mode, is perplexing to me.  Also, the below does not reflect adaptive smoke domain (unselected).

Try to untick "Clamp" in your multiply node, it limits the output to 1

Something appears to be masking that area, like when you have a hole in the domain.

Removing the clamp did not do it.

Matt, it does look like there is something masking the flame, but why would it only mask when looking through the camera? Also, there are no other items in the scene that could mask.


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Drivers do not appear in graph editor
I am attempting to create a driver to change the color of a material. However, after creating the material, I cannot find it in the graph editor.  I have the object selected that has the material, and I also tried deselecting the Arrow Button that forces only selected items to be displayed.
Also, if I create a driver for a different object, say a cube's position, the drivers will still not appear.  Creating a new document fixes this issue.

Please add a screen shot, showing the purple field of the driver you've added and your graph editor in driver mode.

Sometime the properties of a given object do not update right away in the UI, try deselecting and reselecting the object in question (you will need the graph editor open though, and be in driver mode) the specific property that you have added a driver to should now show up in the tree to the left.


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Multires Normal Baking Leaving Blank Image
I know there is a question with this same wording, but the solution given is not working for me.
I have a "Venom" head that is modeled and ready to bake out a normal map.
I have tried setting the multires "Preview" to 0 through 5, while keeping "Render" and "Sculpt" at 5.  Note, while the multires is set to "not visible" below, I tried with and without visibility enabled.

Regardless, the Normal Map only bakes a blank normal map.

I solved this after messing around for about 45 minutes - posted anyway in case someone else is as boneheaded.  The multires needs to be set to "Render".  Once I did this, it worked fine.
EDIT: To clarify, the multires modifier "render button" (the button that determines whether or not the modifier is used during renders) must be "on" when baking the normals.


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Making a textured sphere using color coded height map?
I was trying to create an image of a fantasy world as viewed from space, and so I was wondering if there is a way to apply a texture to a sphere, separate from the actual color of the sphere, using a color coded height map such as
this one

created in John Olssen's fractal world generator. I am sort of new to blender and don't have a lot of experience, so this was meant to be like practice.

Run the color through a "Seperate HSV" node to get the Hue. Then invert the hue and you'll have a more or less accurate result. If you want to make the mountains taller relative to the grasslands I imagine you could do it using RGB curves node. You may also want to get rid of the sea's variation in depth, so that it doesn't look like the sea is uneven. I would recommend doing that by hand or at least without blender.
Let me add, that you don't really want real displacement. You would need extremely dense geometry and it wouldn't look good either. A planet is so large, that its surface imperfections and bumps can not be noticed from space. At least our planet is like that. A simple bump node would give you the detail you need in the reflections (mainly via fresnel). Hope this helps.

It could be that you want to use the height texture as a bump map (the Displacement input of the Cycles Material Output node).  This is used to modify the surface normal, but does not affect the geometry of the scene.  If you view it face-on it looks good, but if you view it edge-on, the illusion can be destroyed.
Another option is that you want adaptive microdisplacements, which is an Experimental feature (have to enable "experimental" feature set in Scene properties) which combines the Adaptive checkbox on the Subdivision Surface modifier with the Settings > Displacement > True option in the material.  This actually modifies the geometry, and if you magnify the displacement enough you can get some dramatic geometry.
I found a video at https://www.blendernation.com/2016/09/06/quick-tip-blender-2-78-cycles-displacement/ which starts out with the bump map and then shows what options to change to turn it into a displacement map.

I'm confused. Edge on view? For a sphere?

A rough outline of one possible technique is to use node-based materials and use the value from the height map to choose which of several other materials should be mixed into the output.
Perhaps the range 0-10 maps to a chunk of the node tree that gives a "sea" BSDF, and 10-12 maps to the "shore" node tree, and then 12-20 are "forest", and 20-28 are "mountain" and 28+ are "snow".  You would end up using a lot of math nodes to do the comparisons and mix the node trees for the various biomes.  The node tree will get even larger if you want a blended transition between biomes (maybe 27.8-28.2 are blending between mountain and snow).

The biomes and such were going to be put in with the color of the sphere. The image I posted is just the height map.


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How do I get the glass material to stop weirdly showing the object inside the glass?

Under the Cycles Render, I inserted a pyramid with the emission material attached to it and it is inside the octagonal shape glass. When I am rendering the scene, the pyramid weirdly is being displayed as seen in the image and this appears to be happening on the edges of the shape. How do I fix this?

How do I check the glass's material thickness?

if you didn't design it as a glass cover, like a lantern glass, having just some thickness, then it's a bulk object full of glass material... it will for sure behave different.

Sorry I am not too sure what you mean. Could you please give me a demonstration as to what I have to do to solve such an issue please?
What I did was that I created a octagonal shape and then I added a glass material to it. What am I supposed to be doing in order to avoid such an issue?


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How do you match the rotation of an object based on the edges of another object?

How do you match the pentagon's edges with the edges circled in blue?

You could use snapping, but I would use vertex snapping, instead of edges: enable snapping, choose vertex, then in edit mode start the rotation (on the correct axis).
While rotating, move your cursor over a vertex of the reference shape, to get the alignment. Sometimes, depending on your exact setup, and the various object transforms, it could work also in object mode.
Here is a simplified example:


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Is this a bug in the mirror modifier?

So I added a mirror modifier to the cube as seen and I have inserted a loop cut.

Now I grabbed the loop cut and dragged it, the line circled in red still exists

Now I press control Z and now look at the red circle, suddenly you are no long able to see the loop cut line. Why is this happening. I updated Blender and this is still happening?

The red line isn't part of your geometry.  It's the global X-axis.  Blue is Z, and Green (not seen in this view) is Y.

I believe this is intentional. Other actions can trigger this behavior as well, such as switching to object mode and back instead of using undo.
I'm no developer, but I think I may know why this is the way it is.
First, the point of wireframe view is (usually) to be able to see through your mesh. It can also be quite handy to observe the structure of your mesh as well. However, the wireframe view can get very complex very quickly, especially when dealing with complex models. To help simplify this, Blender hides certain edges from display that it determines aren't adding much to the overall wireframe view. In object mode, this occurs as well. It's not too extreme usually, and there is an option to force Blender to draw all edges in Object mode, which can be found in the display panel of the Object tab in the properties panel.
It appears that this process of hiding certain edges is executed for certain operations only. Some of these include using undo, or switching modes. When adding new geometry, such as wit the loop tool or subdivide, it displays all the new edges.
The reason that the edge is determined to be 'not necessary to show' is that it doesn't really add anything to the wireframe view, since it could technically be removed and the resulting mesh object would be the same when viewed with solid shading. Another way to understand when an edge will be drawn or not is to view your object in solid view. If you cannot see your edge, such as in your case, it won't be drawn in wireframe view. If you make the edge meaningful in terms of it's contribution to the structure of you mesh, such as by moving the edge up along the Z axis, the next time you update the mesh, such as by switching modes, it will be displayed.
So to directly answer your question, it isn't a bug. I don't really know why you would need the edge to be visible in edit mode when using the mirror modifier though. If you do really need the edge to be visible for some reason, you can always click the little 3 vertex button at the top of the modifier, and that will draw all of the edges/vertices/faces like the rest of the mesh, as well as allow you to select them.

Oh ok thanks man. The lines help me see the two sides. That is all. I get what you are trying to say though :)
When I click on the 3 vertex button, it would make the otherside more darker and when you select the verticies, you know how near the vertex there is a yellow line? when the 3 vertex button is selected, when the verticies are selected, you can only see the yellow dot being selected, you can't see the line near the dot becoming yellow.
I just want to be able to use the normal view and for the lines to not disappear from the view, any fix for this?

As far as I know there is no way to force blender to draw all the edges unfortunately.


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How do I reset the scene?
Coming from Max I'm having a really hard time learning Blender (even with the 3dsMax Blender plugin that I activated). I want to reset the scene to default like 3ds Max File -> Reset. How can I do that in Blender, if that's even possible? Not reset preferences, not erase my settings, just reset the scene. Thanks.

File->New->General

Ah, that was it! Thank you.

On the top menu click on
File->New->General


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How can I wrap a mesh around another?
I want to wrap the barbed wire around the heart. Similar to the shrinkwrap modifier, but while keeping the volume of the mesh. Is there anyway this is possible?

have you tried curve deform?

@m.ardito I'm very new to this program, if there's any steps you can give me to follow i would be much appreciated. Thank you.

There are already many question with answers detailing this, eg: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/33434/how-to-add-curve-modifier-to-text (although is about a text object). Try to search for similar threads, and if something is not particularly clear, ask referring to them.


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Thin Black lines on start up?
Okay, so I have this triangle looking thing, made of a thin black line on every startup file. I have made a few different startup files to try to fix it, but it shows up on every one. Any info?

If there is only one object in the scene which is called Plane (seems from Outliner that it is) then indeed this is GPU driver problem.

Do you have any addons enabled? If I recall correctly there used to be an addon that saved the 3D cursor position history and showed thin lines like those.

Nvidia did just update, but I did recall enabling the 3D Cursor Control Add-On. I disabled the add-on and this resolved the issue. Thank you guys, for all your input.

You can restore the factory defaults by clicking: File > Load Factory Settings.
Then press ctrl+U for the default


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Help with joining parts of a model using boolean modifier
I'm trying to merge together two parts (the ones in the images) of a model using a boolean (union) modifier, but I get an error saying "Unable to execute boolean modifier". I browsed around a little but couldn't really find an answer which worked in my case, so I'm wondering how I can get the boolean modifier to work ~

I'm guessing your model is non manifold.
Also, edges directly placed on other edges will cause the boolean to fail in certain cases. you should make sure that this isn't causing any problems.
Another thing: did you check if the normals are facing outwards?

Are you able to post a .blend?

The problem was non-manifold geometry as mentioned in comments. After making mesh manifold Boolean modifier worked properly.


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Align vertices to X-axis
I was wondering if there are any easy ways in Blender apart from grabbing individual vertices to bring all the vertices in the picture down so they perfectly aligned on the x-axis?

Scale with S then press X and then 0. This will bring all of your vertices into the middle and all aligned. This works with all axis: X, Y, Z.


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Help with modelling a sword hilt
I'm having some trouble modeling the bottom part og a sword, which you can see in the pictures below. I was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers on how to model something like that, because I'm a little lost ~

There are many way to model depending on experience, style and end use. Here’s one approach:

Delete the default cube.
Add a plane > Press SHIFT + “A” and select “Plane” from the drop down menu.
Go into Top View > Press “7”.
With the plane selected go into “Edit Mode” > Press “TAB”.
Subdivide once > Press “W” and select Subdivide from the drop down menu.
Select five vertices and delete them > Press “X” and select Vertices from the drop down menu.

Add two Loop Cuts > Press CTRL + “R” > Left click and drag to where you want it then Left click again to set in place.
Select three vertices and extrude . Press “E” and drag holding CTRL to snap them to the grid. Left click to set in place.

Add a Mirror Modifier (This can be done any time after step six). Check off boxes “Y” and “Clipping” in the Mirror Modifier panel.

Select all of the vertices. > Go into Front View by pressing “1”. > Press “E” to extrude. > drag downward.

Press “S” to scale outward.

Press “E” to extrude downward.

Add a Subsurf Modifier and set Shading to Smooth to finish it off.


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Blender True displacement option not available
I tried to turn on true displacement, so I turned on experimental features but when I go to the object settings, where the displacement options are, there isn't anything there:

As you can see, I have experimental features turned on:

I don't know what to do, how do I turn true displacement on?

You find the displacement settings in the materials panel

Did you try to render?

The displacement setting in the material panel are there, yes, but when I render it's just as if it had a normal map despite being subdivided, so no true displacement. Edit: Looks like it was in the materials settings, so never mind.

You find the displacement settings in the materials panel. There you can set it to "true displacement".

Oh, thank you. Was this changed recently? In any guides I found, it said the displacement options were in the object settings.

When the feature first came out, Blender Guru made a tutorial about it (link coming soon) and I can't remember that the option was at a different place than it is now. I'll look that up later.

https://youtu.be/dRzzaRvVDng?t=18m14s


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Blender VSE Issues and Future
I am now done mastering the learning curve for the VSE and done with my first video project (20min, 5 channels, 100+ clips different format, pictures, transitions etc). I switched from years in KDEenlive to Blender because of the positive reviews regarding OS video editor choices and instability and linux only limitation of KDEnlive.
Now it turned out that Blender VSE was mostly rockstable and has a nice "video building feel". But in the current state (2.78) it has major and minor issues that would prevent me from trying another path again and I would like to know if there is anyone either helping me with the issues or working actively on fixing them.
Major ones:
(1) The rendering is terribly slow and does not seem to use more than one core. h264 rendering on my SSD/16GB/skylake i7 is more than 4x faster in Handbrake (same codec, same file). KDEenlive is way faster with ffmpeg too. I checked all the info here and other forums on it. No luck. Need 3h for those 20mins. Rendering picture movement and transitions is even worse - 2-3  FPS only.
(2) Sometimes some seemingly random audio clips in the big video project are not rendered. Everything is fine in the VSE, plays fine there. In the rendered video there is first sound then when some clips should fade in there is silence. Later on when other clips come in sound comes again. WTF - i found no solution on the web to it. I could just reimport the clips again doing keyframe fiddling again etc pp. This is a killer problem.
(3) Going back through your user modifications needs endless ctrl-y/z keytrokes because it seems to register non modifying user input as zooms/moves somehow as steps... weird.
Minor ones:
(4) Frame rate conversion issues. I could not make some clips withe different framerate (25 instead of 50 project fps) work in VSE. If I did a speed adjustment (2x) it played with  half speed, if I did none it played double speed, but 1.5x -> 1.5 speed. A nasty bug but I should have transformed everything with handbrake prior to importing them in VSE.
(5) A pity that there is no easy and in the strip editor visible "gamma cross for audio" - or a coupling option with it. you always have to mess with keyframes (or crossfade sounds) and they get messed up very easily when you move your audio clips.
(6) No audio correction - appreciate the volume and pitch modifiers but some basic filtering would be nice.
(7) Waveform drawing does not seem to be affected by the volume setting though this would be a very easy enhancement (to level out volume differences)
(8) Imported photos seem to be scaled and therefore deformed to the VSE aspect ratio and there is no other fix than to transform them again. There is also no slideshow pan and zoom automatism like in kdenlive, you have to do it by hand - but its doable with keyframes.

All in all I want to applaude the blender creators that they did such a capable video editor "en passant" and the community seems to be very helpful and professional.
With some issues resolved and some features added it could become the VLC of video editors.
Anyone in the know if there is a plan for that?
Best regards,
George

Best place to put bug reports? http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1377/best-place-to-put-bug-reports

Best Place to put Feature Requests? http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1190/best-place-to-put-feature-requests

Assuming no one on this site is a Blender Dev, I would say no. We don't know what their plans are

I have done lots of editing in the vse and 1 and 8 are the worst. I have written a script for 6. 2 and 3 never happened to me before. I would vote to close this question. Please ask separate questions (all your points are valid as a separate post). There may be solutions or add on which you don't knwo about yet.

Hello, my question was to confirm either something a bug and/or post it as a feature request. Thank you for your comments where to put both and also for comments that confirm my observations or point to solutions.


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How do I make smoke dissipate after its stopped
So I have made a smoke simulation and set the starting point and the ending point of it. Is there any way I can make the smoke dissipate after it's stopped? Since right now it only freezes.


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How do I apply textures to imported .obj?

I've imported my OBJ, have unwrapped my object, and have both textures, but I can't figure out how to apply them

What a coincidence! I've worked with a very similar model before! Writing an answer :)

Since you have Blender Internal selected, I'll assume you want to use GLSL shading.
To see textures in the viewport, first select GLSL shading, and make sure the viewport is set to textured mode.

Now, In order to have a texture, your object first needs a material. Add one, and name it whatever you want. (When I did it before, I named it "paint" - but the material name isn't important.

Now that you have a material, you'll need to add a texture to that material. Add a texture on that material, and then open your image for that texture.

I added some better lighting to the scene, and already it is working.

(In this case, the OBJ already had a UV map - all I had to do was use the default unwrap option, to use the map already with the OBJ)
But lets say that you wanted to also add an emissive texture, to create glowing bits. In this case, I'm using a black and white texture, and it can be simply layered on top.
On your same material as before, add a new texture (just as with the first one). Add your emissive texture as the image, and there will only be one setting that you need to change to make it work: change the blend mode from "mix" to "screen."

Instead of being all black (except the white bits), this texture should layer on top of the first texture, with the white parts displaying properly.


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Duplicating a rig doesn't work
When I create the left side of the body with ik bones and then I duplicate them for the right part to be symmetrical and then I try to armature deforme with automatic weights only the left side is attached to the body and the left side also controls the right side. Why is that?

There can be different situations, but the concept is that the stack order of operations is important:
When you duplicate (or mirror, or copy and paste inverted, etc ....) something, the copies will retain all the issues of the source: this is the reason why your right side of the character is piloted by the left bones (probably you copied or applied the mirror AFTER assigning wheights).
One of the  correct sequences could be:
Finish half a mesh, set a mirror modifier and apply it (so you have a complete mesh).
Finish half a rig (Left side); rename all bones with a name which ends with .L (or .l); select all .L bones and copy and mirror them; while all new copied bones are selected, choose "Armature - Flip names";
So, when you have  a complete mesh and a complete rig, you can go with automatic weighting and everything will work as expected.
Remember that - before parenting - you could need to ALT P clear parent and delete all vertex groups of the mesh, to "clear" any previous unwanted setting.


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How do I make glowing line?
I have a question here.
I'm doing an animation where there's a glowing line coming out from a globe (like what in the video down below), but i don't know how to do the exact effect in Blender.
Glowing Line
I tried some glowing shader on a curve but how do I make the line move from spot to spot? do i have to make a trace or something? thank you guys.

Animating the front of the curve
Assuming, as you say, that you have already created your Bezier Curve, all you need to do is:

make sure that the Curve has a Fill Type = Full and a Bevel Depth greater than zero

animate the Bevel End value using keyframes, from 0 at the start frame to 1 at the end frame.

Shading
You say that you have already found a shading solution. Let me share my solution anyway:

Enable "Use UV for mapping" in the Curve properties.

Use this node setup (the "Add" node is from "Converter > Vector Math").

Animate the Y coordinate of the Combine XYZ node. This will allow you to create the moving blobs of light along the line.

Thank you for your amazing demonstration! That is very clear and well-explained!! I learned a lot from you and thank you a lot! :-)
May I have another question here? Can I remove the shadow of the curve on other objects?

Glad it helped! For the shadow, there is a "Ray Visibility" panel in the "Object" properties window. Uncheck "shadow": done!

You are a lifesaver, Nicola! Thank you so much :-)


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Why do my normal maps look like trash?

(in blender Cycles) I have created a Sculpt of a head with dynamic Typology, created a retypology. Uv unwrapped the low typology (no mirror modifiers). I then created a 2048 by 2048 new image to bake the normals to. I baked the image and here are my settings everything is smoothed with the generic smooth vertices toggle. I am sure that the normal maps should have better results than this from what i see other people getting on youtube I have put quite a bit of time into walking around in circles on the internet and in blender so help at this point would be very welcome.there is also a weird cuttle fish effect on the faces skin I dont know if that is just a product of the pixels but to me it looks obvious and ugly.
I just created this account to ask this question so i am yet to figure out how to post my blend file but hopefully i can solve that one.

your normal map appears to be indenting instead of bumping

related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/13648/is-it-possible-to-invert-normal-maps-in-cycles

I don't think normal maps are intended for displacement inputs. As Duane said, you should attach it to the Normal input of the shader.

First, if it isn't already, set your normal map texture to "non-color data." It doesn't work properly if it is set to color data.
If attaching the normal output to the normal input of the diffuse shader doesn't work, this node setup (courtesy of @david) will invert the normal map.

thanks guys for the replies. I connected the normal map to the normal input of the defuse shader. This fixed my ugly shading problem. for anyone else who had this problem, it is important that you also change the image texture to non colour data otherwise it turns your mesh darker and may have you scratching your head for an extra 15 mins or so.


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Limit Rotation for bones
I am trying to learn the proper way to use limit rotations for bones in my character. I have a good mesh and I have the bones inside but I cant seem to get the limits right. Please help me

You might want to be more specific. What is wrong with the limits? I would guess, you have got the convert option set wrong, try that.


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Slightly edit/scupt the rigged character in Zbrush without loosing weights
I have a character in Blender with a complete rig, I want to sculpt it slightly in Zbrush, but then I need somehow transfer all weight into edited/sculpted model.
What is the best way to do it? The polygon count will remain the same.

If you only need to slightly tweak the character using sculpting tools why not just use the ones already in Blender?

I need to use Morph brush and Project tools, I can't find the alternatives in Blender, unfortunately.

Ok, maybe you'll find this post useful, you can try using a Data Transfer modifier to generate the vertex groups on your re-imported mesh.   https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34719718/transferring-rig-weights-from-one-mesh-to-another-in-blender-2-76/34760742#34760742

I wonder, maybe I can just morph somehow original mesh to edited mesh, vertex count is the same, so I think vertex numbers/IDs will match too, right?

This may require some trial and error but if the imported mesh has the same topology you may be able to just add it as a shape key somehow.


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Is it possible to animate multiple axis parameters as one spline?
I'm relatively new to animation and wonder if there is a way to animate multiple axes (position, rotation...) as a single animation curve. For example, I set two poses in frame 0 and frame 15, and I want to change the easing/interpolation between these poses by hand.
It would be perfect if there were a single curve to interpolate between these two poses, but as far as I know, people usually just tweak each curve separately. Or am I missing something?

A location is 3 values: xyz, so it's already 3 curves. You probably don't want the object to move along a single, straight line connecting points <0, 0, 0> and <1, 1, 1>. You could apply some multipliers to the relation between a coordinate and a single value driving it (e.g. a custom property suggested by A), but then it would still be a straight line, e.g. connecting <0, 0, 0> and <1, 2, 3> for <a, 2a, 3a> formula. Going further, you probably not only don't want location components to be synchronized like that, but also you don't actually want to synchronize rotation with location…

It seems you're asking for some kind of quality of life feature that will allow you e.g. set the interpolation mode for all keyframes of a given frame, but with a laconic question we can only guess what you actually want.

You can add a custom property and make it drive as many properties as you want. If you keyframe the custom property, it will have a single animation curve. However, unless you're happy with a one-to-one relationship, you will still need to define how each of the driven properties will react to the custom property. This means that you will still probably need to customize a curve for each driven property, but it will be a one-time setup step.
Another option is to use an Action constraint. It takes one property as input and performs an action in response. Since an action can record the changes to as many properties as needed, this setup will create the one-to-many output you want. However, you still need to create that action which means manipulating a curve for each property the action has keyframes for.


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Best Practice on animation multiple Actions for a game character
I want to ask, what is the most proper approach for handling rest pose in actions. Do I need to just set the keyframes for ALL of my bones at frame 0 for each Action? Or is there a better way to reset the pose?
For example, I made 3 Actions and didn't use the neck bone in all of them, now I want to add 4th Action with this bone involved. So now I need to go back to 3 of my previous Actions and add this bone at frame 0 with the rest-pose parameters. I don't know, this seems like a wrong way to animate.

if you don't want the bone to get its loc/rot/scale from the previous action, yes, keyframe it in the other actions

Thank you, I'm doing it already, just thought that there was a better approach to this.

I'm not sure that there's any option in the NLA that can reset the bone action if the bone is not keyframed but I may be wrong


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When exporting FBX Animated Character, hand placement becomes wrong in some frames
I wanted to test an animation in Unity quickly, but I noticed, that the hand placement was wrong at the end of it. Then I reimported the FBX back into Blender, and the animation is still slightly corrupted. I've tried many different FBX export settings, but nothing worked, all transforms are 1,1,1 and everything seems fine.
I'm using Blender 4.0 and rig was made with Rigify.
Here is the video, The first half is from One instance of Blender with the original Animation, and the second is from the imported FBX:
https://streamable.com/nheh0d

I think the issue is caused by a constraint that's not applied correctly. Try the following:

Hide all Bone Collections except DEF.

Select all deform bones.
Run the Bake Action operator (can be found under Pose > Animation) with the following settings.

Export the animated character again, and test in Unity.
Do not save the blend file as the baking step will break the rig.

Hi,
Thank you for the answer. When I baked the bones the animation became broken again even without exporting. So, something was wrong during the baking step for sure.
Do you have any other guesses as to what can cause this issue?

Looks like this has something to do with the (Tweak) bones. Because, when I didn't use them, the animations looked fine.
Still, looks like a non-normal behavior, baking is supposed to bake animation one-to-one with precision, no matter what constraints are used and how.

@PlanetControl I am not exactly sure. The way I suggested to bake the animation is supposed to account for all constraints. There could be something else that's breaking the animation. I will have to dig around. If you can share the file on Blend-Exchange, I may be able to figure it out.


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I joined two objects together, but when I edit the object, they aren't completely joined
I am currently making a bird in Blender, and I accidentally separated the wing of the bird from the body. After realizing I didn't need to separate the objects, I then rejoined them back together (control J).
Now I am adding bones to the object, but when the wings flap, you can see a hole in the bird's body where I separated the objects. How do I completely join the wing back to the body so this hole doesn't exist?

You have two edge loops that overlap perfectly, one on the body, the other on the wing. To fix the issue, select everything, then press W and choose remove doubles.


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Jagged edges from joining with boolean modifier

I am sculpting a mesh and joined the head to the body with a boolean modifier and every time I join any meshes together they form these edges that I can't sculpt away. Both meshes have had all modifiers applied and the only difference is that the head was not sculpted and contained a different number of vertices from where I joined it to the body.

Is it possible to just sculpt them out? Like smooth, and clay? You have Dnytopo enabled, which may help.

Are you sure that all vertices and edges match fine? Try removing doubles and apply rotation and scale to that mesh, also if you could share that topology so I can see if there is another kind of issue

Umm I dont know if you already solve this, but I Have those kind of problems when I use zbrush usually is because your object wasnt dynamesh prior to merging, and you only merge them together in their plain sculpt mode so you are not adding geo to the object but intersecting the geometry of both meshes, also boolean is horrible because you get ngons everywhere, thats why some geometry can collapse on itself like is doing in your picture. Probably blender works similar to the dynamesh in zbrush.


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Is it possible to motion track footage from an iPhone SE?
I cannot find sensor width or focal length for the camera in the iPhone SE. Is it possible to motion track footage from this device? And if so, what do I fill these specifications with?
Extra:
In my research I found the following.
If  it helps, the iPhone SE and 6s use the Sony RGBW IMX315 12MP BSI sensor.
The sensor size is 1/3″ (4.80 x 3.60 mm). I'm unsure which is the width, but one of these two numbers has to be it. That leaves me with the last detail, the focal length.
Thanks in advance for any help.

I don't own that device, if you could provide a sample video we'll be able to take a few test on the footage (remember to provide enough parallax and feature points). You should be able to get the focal lenght from the camera solver, aong with K1 and K2 if the tracking has been succesful.

For that camera model the focal lenght is 4mm, that corresponds to 29mm for full frame sensors (36x24mm).


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Blender molecular addon to create full object
When using the molecular addon i was thinking about how these molecules could be rendered in different ways. Firstly, each molecule as a ball, this is how it is normally done, but i want to find out how to do it another way.
Is there a way of using all the outside molecules as vertices of a object and creating a solid object using these. This could be done by making faces between the outside molecules of the object.
Is this possible and how would i accomplish this?

CubeSurfer add-on from the same developer. It's a mesher for particles.

Hey, LukeD, this seems as a valid solution! Why not expand to a full answer? Thanks.


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Why cycles engine renders in how many samples it wants, not how many i give it?
Today i tried making a scene, normal procedure for starting work in blender, switch to cycles, delete cube, make my scene and finally give it full render to see how it came out. Surprise, at first it didnÂt want to render in more than 40 samples no matter what i put in "sampling -> render"
 All good, i said, restart, maybe after that will work. Not only i lost my work (but that because i forgot to save) But when i opened it again, i did nothing except switch to cycles and increase sample count. I put it to 100 and give it render, only to see that it rendered 135 samples. What is happening and how i fix?
Here is image of problem circled with white:

I believe that is the "Tile" size not the number of samples. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/settings/scene/render/performance.html Also, when you have blender set up the way you like it you can go to File > Save Start Up File and it will open that way moving forward.

It is not the Tile size either, it is the number of Tiles.

Thank you, was a bit weird, did not observe that until now. I think the fact that scene was kind of noisy put me in a wrong conclusion


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Issues Mirroring Weight Paint
I have setup R and L labled bones and am trying to copy all of the weight gradients of the bones labled L, to the similar named bones labled R on the symmetrical model.
The model is resting in the center of the scene, and all R labled bones have been exactly mirrored across the x-axis as well as being rotated normally to "view axis".
Thanks for the help!

So what issue are you having?

You'll need empty vertex groups for the right side, which you can automatically create when you parent the model to the armature. Also make sure you are using a mirror modifier and it has the vertex groups option turned on.

Clear, like delete all of the R vertex groups? (I'm almost a complete beginner so sorry if I sound dumb with this program.)

No no, you need the R vertex groups - they should exist, but do not contain any manual weights unless you want them to influence the left side, too.

I ran into this problem recently, too. A simple fix was to parent the mesh to the armature again, and doing so with "Empty Groups". This will create properly named .L/.R vertex groups that will hold the weights that the mirror modifier will put in them.


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Is it possible to mask animated displacement textures?
I'm in the last chance saloon and I can't figure this out.
I'm trying to create an edge mask that will softly blend out an animated bubble displacement texture.
I've created the bubble displacement on a plane which is phasing through the textures z axis via a controller linked to an empty. The problem is that the edge of the plane is clipping the animation. I need the animating bubbles to softly falloff before the edge of the plane so I can seamlessly place in situ in the environment.
The bubbles have been created via modifiers. I will be rendering this through Eevee and not cycles, just in case you need that info.
Hope that make sense. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Could you upload your blender file (https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/) so that I could see how you're creating your texture and better be able to work on it?

https://i.sstatic.net/atxN0.png

You could create a vertex group and then in wait paint mode, paint a gradient onto those vertices, and then use that vertex group in the displacement modifier.

For an All-Modifier Approach that doesn't require any editing the actual plane
They way you can mask out the edges is by creating a mask texture in texture paint mode with white all around the edges of the plane.  Then you can use that along with a Vertex Weight Edit modifier placed before the "Texture" vertex weight edit modifier you already have to remove the edge areas from the vertex group.
First, copy your "Texture" modifier and move the copy up to come first.

Then, go into Texture Pain mode and turn off all your modifiers so that you can see what you're doing better.  Then, go into the "Active Tool" tab of the Properties editor, and under "Texture Slots" set the Mode to "Single Image" and press "New"  Name it something like "Texture Mask."  You should then see a black image appear in the Image Editor and the plane in the 3D view should also turn black (make sure you're in solid view instead of material view.  That threw me off at one point).  Then paint a white edge around the plane.

Next, switch to weight paint mode and turn on the "VertexWeightEdit.001" modifier you copied from the "Texture" modifier.  You should now see a bunch of spots on the blue plane.  Now, go into Texture tab of the Properties editor.
Make sure the modifier is set to the correct one (VertexWeightEdit.001).  Then click the "2" next to the name of the texture.

Then, set the Type to "Image or Movie" and choose the "Texture Mask" image you created earlier.  Then, go back into your modifiers and change the VertexWeightEdit.001 modifier's Texture Coordinate from "Object" to "UV".  Also, select "Group Remove" and set the Remove Threshold to 1.  You should now see your mask appearing in red against blue on your plane.

Finally, turn on all your modifiers, and everything should be working properly.

Hi Elliot, I did try that but I had to subdivide the mesh before painting the weighting on. My modifier stack starts with a subdivision to get the geometry started, I just don't apply it, which i why i cant weight paint on the plane to start with...did that make sense :/ Can you use a texture as a weight paint? and can you still use that within the modifier stack? I've never worked with modifiers this way so i'm having to learn fast. Thanks for your reply btw.

@Sinzalot Ah, okay.  What I did was first apply a low-poly subdivision surface modifier and then add a second one on top of that, but I'll try to figure out how you could do it without applying any modifiers.  In the mean time, though, you could just go into edit mode and subdivide it once by adding two perpendicular edge loops and assigning the center vertex to the modifier, but that doesn't give you too much control over how it looks.

Elliot, Yeah i just did a weight test by dividing first, the vertex group worked in the displacement modifier but then it throws everything else off. Is there a way of me uploading my scene to help?

@Sinzalot You can upload blender files through blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com

If it does work, dragging the empty in the Z axis animates the texture...you can see the edge clipping, many thanks Elliot.

@Sinzalot I edited my answer.  And thanks for asking this question.  I learned a lot about modifiers that I never knew before.

Hi Elliot, you sir are a star!!! I'll give this a go later tonight and let you know how it goes. Many many thanks, I know not everyone uses modifiers this way :) So glad I asked instead of driving myself crazy.


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Make Surface Subdivision bend the mesh
I have a problem, I want to make a simple engine design.

But whenever I apply the SubSurf modifier, I run into a problem.Here are some pictures:

The corners of the flaps are not positioned well! I found out what the issues is: Surface Subdivision doesn't "bend" the flaps.
(Image where the flaps are a diffrent mesh)

So my question is: Is there a way (other then manually) to make SubSurf "BEND" the flaps?

Check here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/96342/how-to-save-curve-shape-of-cylinder-with-such-deform/96344#96344

SubSsurf doesn't "bend", like the name says it subdivides. A flat surface will still be flat after subdividing. If you want it bent it must be curved before subdividing

BTW I am not longer using this engine model(designed a better one), but I would still want to know how to bend it. Oh and @DuarteFarrajotaRamos I tried subdivideing it a couple of times and manually beding it but no luck.

I am not quite sure with the phrase "bend". Do you mean you want the segmented edges fit a kind of circle? ... and do you need the slits to be actual meshes?


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Alpha aliasing issue when object is not selected
I seem to be having an odd issue but it only happens when an object (with material that has alpha) is not selected and I assume it's only affecting the viewport.
I have 2 objects, an eye and the eye highlight (white dots).
The eye highlight has transparency because it's circular of course and it appears in front of the eye.
If I do not have the eye highlight object selected, this is how it appears:

When I do have it selected, it appears correctly:

(I have "Outline Selection" option disabled to make the problem clear).
Does anyone know what might be causing this issue?

If it is only affecting the viewport what issues does it cause? Viewport preview is not meant to be a full representation of final render

Hi, please use the question editor "add image" to show images, since it's free, permanent and embeds the images in your post, simplifying other's understanding...


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How to produce an object that fills another objects?
I have a scanned object that looks like a complex bowl. I would like to make another object that fills the bowl as if it is liquid poured into the bowl. Ending up with two models that are positive and negative of each other. I hope that makes sense. I am new to this software.
Is this possible to do in Blender?

can you provide some screen shots

I found my answer here:
http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15547/molding-an-object-negative-mold