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Beveling creates a new face?
I have started to bevel my goggle edges and am running into a problem. The model seems fine but when I bevel it a new face appears on the front?! Is this due to the top piece being a Boolean modifier for the bottom piece?
Here it what it looks like before beveling:

These are the faces I want to bevel:

And this is what happens:

What am I doing wrong? Please help! Thank you!

It looks like you are also trying bevel that small edge on the sides creating a seam. With the faces selected, go into edge mode, deselect the edge bridging the face then try bevelling again.

Thank you! Worked beautifully!


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How to rig eyelid to follow non-spherical eyeball
i would like to rig sonic eyelid just like in the games.
here is my eyelid.

This surface looks spherical, but the whole sphere as big as the head or bigger. So probably you can solve it if you use really big bones for it, bigger then the radius of the head.

You start with spherical eye and eyelid that is easy to rig and then you use a lattice deformer to make both into the shape you want.

giving the geometry, maybe the easiest way to do it is to use shape keys?

ive already tried shape keys, but i could never get it to slide down withouth clipping the eyeballs bad.

yes bad idea actually, so I guess bones are the solution

is there a way to make it scale in on a curve like a garage door?

it might work but bones seem to be an easy way to do it, please take a look at my edited answer

Shapekeys and lattice would probably not give satisfying results, so you could use a system of bones and create a series of poses to open and close your eyes. Giving the curve of your eyes, 3 poses should be necessary and enough. You'll probably need to scale one or two bones so that it sticks to the eye and don't emerge out of the face. Also, you may need more bones if you want to be more precise (like 3 horizontal rows of 2 bones instead of 3x1).
The method: create 3 bones within your character armature and parent them to the head bone. Here there is one bone for each row of faces (I've simplified your mesh). Give them names like eyelid1_L, etc... Parent the mesh to the armature With Empty Groups, then assign each faces row to the vertex group it is supposed to be part of, i.e. the group with the name of the bone that is supposed to control it. Now when you'll move a bone, the corresponding part of the mesh will follow.

Lattis does not work as i want, it also needs to b part of my existing armature

i need the eyes to slide straight down like a beanie around a head

ok, edited, I've used some bones and I think it works fine

A simple way in this particular context (unconventional to do that and with some limitations, though, but very easy) may be duplicating the eye. Shift it a bit so that it becomes eyelid (change its color, etc).
Then use a boolean:

The boolean is set to the eyelid, with here a cube to change the opening of the eye (but could be another shape, another orientation, etc.).

ok ill try these methods out

the booeon bethod wont work for me as i want to use my eyelid model, and the bone method i dont know how to do fully

ok, tried to give something very simple to do. But I think if you want to use your model, you'll need to use bones (and so learn to do it). Should accept moonboots answer.

i agree bones are the way to go

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Linux KDE Debian 10 Buster Install - Blender 2.80 Exec Format Error
I just installed Debian 10. I've downloaded Blender 2.80 64-bit from the official site. When I double click the "blender" executable nothing happens. When I open a terminal in the same folder and run ./blender, I get the following error ./blender: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error. I've got a 64-bit installation.
How can I fix this error?
Thanks

Have you downloaded Blender for Linux 64-Bit? Perhaps you accidentally downloaded the Windows version. The file should be https://www.blender.org/download/Blender2.80/blender-2.80-linux-glibc217-x86_64.tar.bz2/

Hi, yes, I have verified that I've downloaded for Linux, and the 64-bit version.

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


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Using geometry nodes rotate a displacement texture around object
With the displacement modifier you cannot free rotate the displacement texture around an object it is limited to specific axis.
I want to use geometry nodes to rotate my displacement textures around objects?
Is this possible?

Apply rotation in sequence for each axis you want to rotate around.

@MartyFouts could you elaborate a little ?

for example, first rotate on the X axis, and then feed the result of that rotation to another rotation, but on the Y axis.  This is how Euler rotation actually works.

@MartyFouts I haven't been able to get your suggestion working, Would you be able to provide an example if you have time ?


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Apply map topography to my NurbsCurve?
I'm a newbie and I'm working on a race track based on my neighbourhood. So I used GIS addon to download my area as an object with topography. Then I made NurbsCurve following the track I'd like to make.
Now thing is my Curve is not actually alligned to my terrain and I don't really know how to do it. If it's possible?

Ok, I found out I can move every (point?) of my curve and snap it by Z axis to the closest face of terrain. Seems like it works.

Shrink Wrap modifier does that automatically


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Making road like in YT tutorial trouble
When I use curve modifier with array modifier to make a road this happens:
https://i.sstatic.net/ATj93.jpg
tutorial I work with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPmzhqfw-7I

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

On your file you didn't create any Curve modifier, so nothing happens. Put the Curve modifier below the Array modifier. You'll see that your object is completely swollen. That's because you have somehow played with the vertices radius as you can see in the 3D view T panel if you select the curve, switch to Edit mode and select all. Bring this value back to 1.

Thank you, I'd never realise i messed up something there

Just to expand on @moonboots' answer, because I've been confused by it myself, in the past.
Every vertex on a curve has a radius; in the illustration below, the leftmost vertex has a radius of 3, the rightmost 0.5.

(as shown above..) If Curve Normals are displayed, they show the radii.
If 'Radius' is checked in the curve's Shape panel, the radii will influence the radial scale of anything following, or deformed by, the curve. You can switch the influence off.
In Edit mode, if, as above, you select 1 vertex, the 'Radius' field of the Properties Region > Transform panel will  show its radius, and you can adjust its value there.

... if you select more than one vertex, the field becomes 'Mean Radius', and shows the average radius in the selection.

If you adjust the Mean Radius (to 1, in the example above), all the radii in the selection are uniformly scaled, so their average becomes the requested value.

If you want to set an absolute value for the radius on a selection of vertices, you can do it in the Tool Region > 'Set Curve Radius'.


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Create a glowing sphere with script
I'm trying to create a glowing object with a script.
This is the code I have so far. It runs but the sphere doesn't light up.
How can I fix this?
import bpy

# turn on bloom
bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'BLENDER_EEVEE'
bpy.context.scene.eevee.use_bloom = True

# add material
mat_name = 'EmiMat'
bpy.ops.material.new()
bpy.data.materials[-1].name = mat_name
bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes.clear()
bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeEmission")
bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes["Emission"].inputs["Color"].default_value = (0.151736, 0.0997155, 1, 1)
bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes["Emission"].inputs["Strength"].default_value = 5.

# add sphere
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(location=(0,0,0))
bpy.ops.object.material_slot_add()
mat = bpy.data.materials.get(mat_name)
ob = bpy.context.active_object
ob.data.materials[0] = mat
```

Have a look at the material. Do you have a material output?

Thanks, @Jackdaw. That was the problem. Pardon for such a noob question. Today is my first day working with Blender.
Here is the working code:
import bpy

# turn on bloom
bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'BLENDER_EEVEE'
bpy.context.scene.eevee.use_bloom = True

# add material
mat_name = 'EmiMat'
bpy.ops.material.new()
bpy.data.materials[-1].name = mat_name
bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes.clear()
bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeEmission")
bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes["Emission"].inputs["Color"].default_value = (0.151736, 0.0997155, 1, 1)
bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes["Emission"].inputs["Strength"].default_value = 5.
bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeOutputMaterial")
links = bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.links
links.new(
    bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes["Emission"].outputs[0],
    bpy.data.materials[mat_name].node_tree.nodes["Material Output"].inputs[0])

# add sphere
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(location=(0,0,0))
bpy.ops.object.material_slot_add()
mat = bpy.data.materials.get(mat_name)
ob = bpy.context.active_object
ob.data.materials[0] = mat


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Why does applying shrinkwrap make my detail go away?
I retopo'd using a subD & shrinkwrap modifier.
Now I want to make changes to the new topology, post-shrinkwrap.
However when I apply the shrinkwrap so I can make those changes, I lose all my detail.
It seems the only way I can keep the detail is to apply the subD first, but of course I don't want to apply the subD.
What am I doing wrong? Why does applying my shrinkwrap make all my detail go away?

The modifiers are dependent on the order in which they are placed. The Shrinkwrap works good because it has a subdivided high resolution mesh to use for deforming.
However, when you apply a modifier it uses the mesh that is present at the moment it is applied. Since the Subdivision Surface modifier isn't applied yet, the subdivided mesh you see is not the real underlying mesh at the time of applying the Shrinkwrap modifier.
That's the reason why you get a warning / info in the status bar at the bottom: Applied modifier was not first, result may not be as expected:

The problem here is, applying the Shrinkwrap modifier is going to permanently change the mesh, it's going from procedural to destructive modeling. But the Shrinkwrap modifier cannot change the vertices permanently if the Subdivision Surface modifier is not applied and you can still change its resolution procedural. So the Shrinkwrap has to use the real existing vertices from before subdividing.


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Blender 2.79. Rendered image show only color and not UV mapped texture
I have problem in blender 2.79.
When I want to render a model but with image texture render model appears black although uv maping is correct. But when I apply defuse shader it shows its color.
Please help me regarding the problem.
Thank you.

This picture shows with image texture


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Transparency doesn't work properly (Cycles)
I have rendered this image as a PNG with RGBA, while having Transparency checked in "Film". The Render Result in Blenders window looks promising (1st image), but as soon as I save the image, it looks like this (2nd image). Like the fire, that is missing a background object suddenly gets almost invisible. Is there something I forgot to check?

Your PNG can't keep the emission color over the transparency

Is there a way to circumvent it?

moonboots is correct ... Probably render image with Emmision pass enabled and merge this pass into alpha channel? ... but PNG will never blend with background colours correctly. You should render into EXR format and composite render onto BG in an app that supports emmisive pixels.

Or just adjust (contrast) alpha channel in any image editor https://imgur.com/1cfUQvC

you can use tricks like render with a black background, then render a b&w mask with the shape only, then mix in your video software with the layer set on Add, etc...

Emission (your flame) is not the same as occlusion (Alpha). See this image for an illustration of that: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/lighting-candle-long-shadow-against-canvas-116225665

Probably doesn't ... I can also imagine better result, but since we dont know too much about your blend file setup, it can be also some Color Management issue or what ever.

Anyway if you check your PNG's RGB (without Alpha channel) all the fire is there ...

... also Alpha contains semitransparent pixels of originaly emmissive pixels.

So, you can use some contrasting the Alpha channel to get it back.

Note: PNG will never blend with background colours properly. You should render into EXR format and composite render onto BG in an app that supports emmisive pixels.


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Help seeing new vertices, then creating a face with my new curve -> mesh
I am currently following this guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYUGMvZsu3w&t=361s and at 46 minutes he demonstrates how he turned his curve into a mesh, then a face. I have my curve, but once turned into a mesh, I cannot find any of the vertices to create a face!
Here is what my curve looked like before the mesh conversion:

Then when converted into a mesh:

From here, I can't seem to add vertices, or select it really to create a face to build off of. Any help is very much appreciated! Please and thank you very much!

You are in face select mode, so vertices and edges are not as clear.  Switch to vertex select mode if you want better vertex visibility.  If you hold Shift while clicking you can select multiple modes.

OMG thank you so much! I knew it would be something simple like that! Thank you!

Done! Thanks again!


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Blender Rigging Mesh Problem
This is the first time I've worked with character models and rigging in blender. I'm coming across an issue where, after I parent my metarig and my mesh (with automatic weights), moving or rotating parts of the rig in pose mode affects other sections of the mesh it shouldn't be (see pictures).
Is there anything I'm doing wrong? Any setting I should've had ticked in the file?
(file >)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vx3_uLa1O6uldcZ6-xG8L-cmB8pJDMbC/view

Chances are good that your normals are backwards.  Check normal direction with "face orientation" in overlays, fix, then re-weight with autoweights.

I think the first disappointment that new riggers experience is that "with automatic weights" is not infallible.
First, when you parent, watch the bottom center of the screen to see if you get the infamous "bone heat" message. But you do not have that problem.
Second, be prepared to learn about Weight Painting and Vertex Groups. You do have that problem.
When you select with automatic weights, Blender uses an algorithm to guess what part of your mesh should be controlled by each bone.  But real meshes sometimes require that parts of the mesh be controlled partially by each of two different bones.
To solve this, Blender adds the parts of the mesh to vertex groups, one vertex group per deforming bone.  But it can get that wrong and either use the wrong group or assign parts of the mesh to two bones.  This is what's happening when you move your character's left leg.
Crash course in weight painting

Select the armature
Shift select the model
Use the menu to go to weight paint mode.
ctrl-click on a bone in the leg to select it.
Use the subtract brush to remove anything but dark blue from anyplace except the leg you want the bone to control

The manual has better details and there are many tutorials.

I believe this works. Now for the headache of going through every vertex group and fixing them all! TY

you're welcome.


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Correct way to separate mesh into two subdivided parts
New here, hope this is the proper board for this kind of question.
I'm relatively new to Blender, and I've had cases where I'd like to separate an object that's becoming a bit cumbersome to handle into separate meshes. For instance this, I made a helmet with a rim (or whatever you call the extrusion near the edges) like this:

Turns out the rims almost needed more vertices than the rest of the helmet, and handling their material etc. would be easier if they were a separate object. I tried keeping the whole thing relatively low poly and achieve the curves etc. by using subdivision surface, like so:

My question is, what's the "correct" or most common way to go about this; I could just select the faces near the edge and separate them & fill the missing faces to make them watertight, but then the subdivisions wouldn't make the helmet match the rim's lines etc. exactly anymore and there would be some ugly gaps between the two. I could approximate this by fiddling with edge creases & careful positioning of the vertices that "meet" the other object, but I'm not sure this is the way to go. Is there any way to "match" or attach vertices in an object into ones in another object, so the two would line up perfectly, while still keeping the objects themselves separate?
Or am I just doing it wrong, and keeping it as a single, bigger mesh would be preferred?
This might be a very basic thing, sorry about that - it's just something that's been bugging me and I'd like to learn the correct method instead of having to adjust something I came up with later on. Thanks in advance!

I don't understand why you need to separate a mesh for the sake of material management. You can have a different material slot for the rim and for the rest of the helmet. Separating objects is useful whenever you want to have separate modifier stacks (and few modifiers support vertex groups), or separate transformation matrices, or separate parents etc.

That's basically why I want them separate - I want to sculpt pretty fine details into the helmet's faces (to be baked into normals later), so I need to subdivide the mesh by a lot to get enough geometry for sculpting without ugly edges etc. I could use dyntopo, but it doesn't support the layer brush. If I have the rims in the same model, subdividing the whole thing by a lot adds way too many vertices / faces & my machine can barely handle it.

Based on my understanding of your problem, you could separate by material slots.
Assign different material slots for the fragments of your mesh you want to separate:

It doesn't matter what materials are assigned to the slots, e.g. a single material can be assigned everywhere and the mesh will still be separated - I use different materials to visualize how I want to split the mesh. The point is to use different Material Slots, not necessarily different materials.
Subdivide:

Add a simple geometry nodes setup:

For the 0 input of the geonodes modifier only the geometry with first (0 index) material slot will be visible:

If you duplicate it, and increase the input to 1, you will get seemingly the old shape, but separated into two objects:

Now you can for example apply the modifiers of one of the parts, subdivide it more, and sculpt it. Just keep in mind to Keep Corners:

a.Make your selection.  Then you can create a vertex group out of your selection. If you miss anything it is easy to edit or reload.

b.   In edit mode, You can either Press shift+d to duplicate your selection, to leave your model untouched, or skip this step to do a cut and copy
c. Press P and choose selection

You now have a separated part of your mesh. Other more advanced users may have different advice, but to me it is looking fine when you subdivided, so, consider keeping everything the way it is, and saving a selection group so that you can easily change the material of that detail.

That's what I ended up doing; just mostly wondering if I could somehow attach the adjoining vertices / edges between the two meshes to each other, since I needed to fine tune some locations so they match better when separated.


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How to properly scale a texture from the bottom left in the compositor?
My problem is as follows:

I need to scale and offset a texture by arbitrary amounts.
I cannot find a meaningful relationship between scaling and offset on the texture node in the compositor to produce a texture that scales from the bottom left consistently.
I also need to apply an additional (true) offset which should be trivial once the formula to offset it in such a way to begin scaling from the bottom left is found.

In this example, it looks incorrect from what I want, which is regular texture scaling from the bottom left. It is instead scaling from the center (curse whoever made the decision for it to function this way):

In this example, it looks correct because I know you need to set the offset to 0.5 to compensate for the 2.0 scale:

However, I cannot come up with a formula that will give me 0.5 from 2.0 and still work across an arbitrary range. For example, if the scale is 1.0, the offset needs to be 0.0. If the scale is 4.0 the offset needs to be 0.75. If the scale is 1.5 it needs to be 0.33(some small trailing number) and so on.
I know blender is unconventional in several areas but this area is particularly painful to deal with because there's no resources that I could find to address this issue other than the inverse of what I want which is also done on a material instead of inside the compositor that can be found here: Keep texture centered while scaling I tried to experiment with that solution and apply it to my situation but I was ultimately defeated and unable to come up with a way to make it work in my use case.


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Weird pinched shading from bevel and subdivision
I have this peculiar shading issue on this pipe that I'm making, only apears after I add a bevel and a subdiv modifier, also after shading smooth. In the center of the pipe, I have this ridge extruded out:

on the corners of the ridge where it bevels into the pipe, I'm getting this weird pinched shading

I've got the edges marked with bevel weight

I've tried adding loop cuts to constrain the issue but I'm still being left with odd shading artifacts

These are the settings I have for the modifiers. I've tried playing around with them, but I just can't seem to iron it out. I'm on vanilla blender, so no hardops quick fixes.

Hello :). Combining Bevel and Subsurf on corners can cause problems. You can mitigate them (with loops, creases, clever geometry) but they'll always be there. I'd either use only Bevel, or only Subsurf.


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How to compose/ transform 2D object views (front, back, L/R sides, top & bottom) into a single 3D image
[
Can Blender compose/ transform 6 seperate 2D object views (front, back, L/R sides, top & bottom) that have been created in Illustrator (native vector file, 2D) into a 3D image? For example, make a 3D golf bag from 2D flat images

I don't think there's any automatic way to do it. You can use your image as a blueprint, create the 3 shapes (top, front and side):

Then extrude them:

Boolean the front and side (Intersect mode):
*
Use top and bottom faces to model the top and bottom of your mesh:


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Can't insert keyframe on 2D

im new on blender and recently ive been trying to add keyframe since i follow a video of creating a 2D animation with sprite sheet, but i can't insert any keyframe at all. ive been trying all the solution ive found on the internet but none works, ive been redoing the tutorial that ive followed on but the result are still the same

Are you sure this is the way they do it in the video you are following? You cannot insert a keyframe because there is no channel (like rotation, translation, scale or any other property that can be keyframed) in the Dope Sheet yet. To get something there you must choose a property of the object to add a keyframe. For example, in the 3D Viewport press "I" and choose something like Location from the context menu. But at this moment you are in Edit Mode, this will only work in Object Mode.

you mean like this? [https://imgur.com/a/8SZQqD0] i have try that too

I'm pretty sure you can't animate UV map coordinates, at least not like you are trying to do. What blender version is your tutorial on ? Have you double checked you're doing exactly the same thing ?

the tutorial that i followed used blender ver 2.91.2, me too before ive updated mine to 3.0 because i thought maybe its a version error. also recently ive try the same way on my friend pc and it worked. i dont know perhaps the problem exist on my computer

@AshuraFirdaus So you're saying when in Object Mode, you cannot add a Location & Rotation keyframe for example? In the image you linked in the comment, when you click on the already highlighted option you don't get a keyframe?

@gordon yeah, but when i try it on my friend pc , that worked

@AshuraFirdaus Is it just this file or generally every time you try to keyframe something, even in a new file and after re-opening Blender?

@Gordon , it never happened until today actually, not only this one almost all files that i try , i can't insert keyframe on it.

anyway thanks for all of the reply , i apreciate it, i think im just gonna finish this on my friend pc.

can you add a pointer to the tutorial, or is it paid?  This isn't the usual way to animate a sprite sheet, but it might be possible to make it work.


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tires are moving in a weird way
im trying to animate my car but the tire rims are rotating wrong but the treads are moving right

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

Have you ever tried the Rigacar addon? It's what I used to animate my car. It installs widgets that lets you adjust animations for steering, correctly rolling tires, etc without having to adjust piece by piece. It's a bit outdated and there was a slight learning curve to it, but it still worked and saved alot of time for me. If done correctly, it should solve your tire rotation problem, although you may have to go back and adjust a few things. Hope this helps :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3XQxA_-TzY
http://digicreatures.net/articles/rigacar.html


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Difference/Intersection not reflecting in stl export

Why are the objects taken for difference and intersection shown in stl file even though I have not selected them while exporting.

Just to confirm, Selection Only is checked in export, yes?

Need to apply bools?


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Blender "duplicates" parts of objects when grabbing
I duplicated an object, added a loop cut and tried grabbing the loop cut in order to make the object look less straight.
As you can see in the following video, that didn't work out:

I researched for a long time now and the most reasonable reason would be me having accidentally duplicated the mesh too, for which I found a solution:
Blender Grabbing Vertices Duplicates Them
... but that didn't work.
Either it's not letting me select anything with "L" or, when I manage to select something, I can't delete it with "Del".
I am obviously missing something and I don't think it's a bug in Blender.
Anyone knows what I'm missing?
Thanks in advance.

it looks like you've duplicated your mesh, please share your file (upload and copy paste the URL): https://pasteall.org/blend/

Did you make this with Bridge Edge Loops?

You can't delete with Del? And what about using X? And is there any message in the status bar saying why it won't delete anything?

@moonboots I uploaded the file.
If you try to replicate what I did above, you should get the same results.
Edit: Someone already helped out. Have fun with my donut^^.

you need to share the URL it gives, but anyway it looks your problem is solved?

At some point when the whole mesh been selected you accidently pressed E (Extrude). Even if you pressed Esc or Right Mouse Button its duplicated the mesh.
Or duplicated it with Shift + D and tried to cancel the action the same way above.
If you are in Vertex Select mode the L button only works if you hover your mouse reasonably close to a vertex, same with the Edge Select.
Can't delete it with Del? Maybe you Extruded/Duplicated multiple times, and when you are able to select something and delete it, you don't see any change because there are multiple layers of the same mesh.
In Edit mode: Press A, then M, Merge by Distance.

Merging by distance helped.
Thanks for the quick answer, quite a dumb rookie mistake I suppose.
Is there any way of knowing something like that happened to eliminate errors in advance?
Like me accidentally pressing Eor something.

If you changed your mind, or made a wrong selection and duplicated it with E or Shift + D, always press Ctrl + Z. Or turn on Auto Merge Vertices (Edit mode)


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Blender Guru Tutorial part 5: coffee cup bottom gets deformed

After selecting the orange part (alt+ctrl) and I try to scale it (s).
But then the very bottom of the cup becomes deformed..
Like this picture:

I am trying to figure out what I did wrong here. How do we scale it without deforming the bottom of the cup?

It doesn't appear that you've done anything wrong. Could you upload the .blend file and have me look at it?

Thank you for your comment! I was able to scale down the cub without deformation after making the Proportional Editing Falloff small.

I'm guessing you're making the the cup after making the donut.
When you did the icing (frosting) on the donut, you will have set the Proportional Editing Falloff to Random to create that uneven edge of the icing running down the side of the donut.
As I recall, I made the same mistake, because Andrew (Blender Guru) omits to tell you to switch off proportional editing (probably because it's a series of videos that he made at different times).
So before scaling the cup, make sure that Proportional Editing  is switched to Disable.

That solved my problem! I minimized the size of the Proportional Editing Falloff circle and the bottom of the cup was not deformed afterwards. Thank you very much!


text:
How to Link or Append objects from another file?
I've tried the instructions here but cannot get linking and appending to work.  I have a file with just the default cube in it. Then I create a new file and go to File >> Link, and browse to the file and select the cube mesh but nothing shows up.  Same result for appending. Using Blender 2.79.   Thanks

Have you tried linking the actual Object, not just the Mesh?

That was the issue.  thanks

Found the issue.  I was selecting the item to link/append from the list of Meshes, but needed to select the item from the list of Objects.

The meshes do go into your scene when you append them by the way - you can retrieve them by making a new mesh object and changing its mesh datablock to the one you just imported, which will probably have 0 users. This is also how you can change a mesh to share a datablock without the alt-d duplicate linked shortcut, which can be quite useful.


text:
Camera shakes like heat shimmer or mirage
Suddenly my camera has started to warble or shake when I play my animation (looks like heat waves/shimmer...).  There are no modifiers on the camera. It isn't noticeable in wireframe or solid viewport shading, but is very noticeable in look dev and rendered.  I'm using eevee, Blender 2.8.  Please help.  Thanks

Maybe the rendering a frame takes longer than it the time a frame is displayed. Try properly rendering your animation.

Problem was, the camera's clip start was too small (0.001), which was fine for an interior shot, but as soon as the camera went outside it had to be set higher (0.100).
Cheers


text:
export list of edges coordinates

hi, im new to blender. I was wondering if there was a way to use python to print a list of coordinates of edges or save into a text document like this:

x:(the coordinates of one end of the edge)

1

2

3

so on

y:

1

2

3

z:

1

2

3

x2: (the coordinates of the other end of the edge)

1

2

3

y2:

1

2

3

z2:

1

2

3

ignore bullet points I'm using them to separate lines

i got 3 errors.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<blender_console>", line 1, in
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'data'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<blender_console>", line 1, in
NameError: name 'me' is not defined
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<blender_console>", line 1, in
NameError: name 'bm' is not defined

Please read and follow the instructions  (copy script paste into Text Editor)  "Make sure you are in Edit mode with the required vertices selected and click "Run Script""


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Cycles modifier without cutting off

The animation in the picture has a cycles modifier that ends after 85 frames, but at the end the curve goes back to the starting position. How or is there a way to make it not go back to it's starting position, or do I have to add an extra keyframe that makes it stay there at the end?

In addition to the cycles that restricts the frame range ends at 85, add another modifier Limits and set Max X to 85 or 84.

didnt work but it's fine cus i decided to copy and paste the keyframes


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Identical nodes
I have added in a panel the possibility to change the image of a specific Image Texture shading node using column.template_ID(node, "image", new="image.new", open="image.open") and it works. But the problem is that I need to be able to modify two Image Texture nodes using a single template_id.
I have looked to see if there is a way to detect when the values of a specific node have been modified but I have not seen a way to do it. What would be the most correct way to achieve this?
Thank you very much in advance!

Thinking I have come to a solution. I had never used PointerProperty and there was a pretty simple possible solution.
I have created a PointerProperty with type Image, I have displayed in the UI the property using column.template_ID(settings, "texture_image", new="image.new", open="image.open"). To update the two Image Texture nodes I add an update function to the property that do that duty.
texture_image: bpy.props.PointerProperty(
        name="Texture image",
        type=bpy.types.Image,
        update=update_texture_image
    )

Hope it helps someone sometime :)


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Can you bake a normal map with the empty space around the objects transparent?
Is there an option in Blender to set "background" areas of a normal map bake to have an alpha of 0?
What I am doing exactly, for my own reasons, is baking the orthographic normals of various objects onto a plane in front of them, like this:

But I want everything except the object itself to be transparent in the normal map texture that is baked.
I am using a Python script to also bake maps for objects at every different combination of rotation, generating thousands of files like so:

So any solution or workaround for my particular case has to be scalable. If there is some option or feature in blender to render the empty space around objects onto the normal map with an alpha of 0, finding that is the main goal for me.
I've considered a workaround like rendering a mask with the object silhouette white against a black background and manually multiplying that with the alpha channel of the normal map in Python before saving, but if there's an option I can turn on to avoid the work of writing that script, it would help - doing that would also add to the render time, which is already quite significant, so if I can go a more direct route I would put that ahead of a workaround like that. I'm still fairly new to Blender.
Thanks!

Is it true that you can select the you can select a single object to be baked onto another single object regardless of other objects in the scene?

Is your question the same as .. How do I bake the Normals of a single object while ignoring other objects in the scene?   ?

I don't think so - I am already baking one object to another. What I'm hoping to find out is whether the background of the scene (everywhere there are no objects) can be rendered as transparent in the normal map bake.

The use of the word transparent causes me to pause. I was not aware that a normal map could convey transparency.  I could understand a transformation of a normal map that would for certain [special cases].  I could understand a transparency map derived from a normal map.  I do generally understand files of PNG or that other type .. (Open EXR?) have transparency.  So I am pausing for jargon at this point.

I may look to see if a camera aligned to the normal of a planar target of the normal map could simply render the source target to be used as a transparency map.  Perhaps there are other types of baking I never use.  Of course the source of a normal map can a face parallel to another destination plane causing confusion.

I will look into that. Yeah, my particular use is very specific, I suppose I am essentially asking for leaving those areas out of the normal map, so any way to use a transparency map is a good direction for me. Thanks!

Consider transforming your normal map to a transparency map using the Blender Compositor.  Of course there will be problems in some cases as mentioned above.

It should be possible to do the alpha mask workaround in blender's compositor, which would save the double render. If all you need is the normal map, eevee or viewport render might be faster.

I don't get this... from the question,  it looks like a render, not a bake.. Is this being baked to a UV?

One possibility is with Workbench render and the built in check_normal+y.exr MatCap. If speed is needed, this should be very fast.

Set the render engine to Workbench.

Set the lighting to MatCap and chose the "check normal" matcap.

Ensure Transparent is enabled under Film.

Make sure Color Management > View Transform is set to Standard. The default of Filmic emulates how a camera sensor shapes dynamic range, but that is definitely not what we want right now.

Use a camera with the Type set to Orthographic, aimed at your object as in your screenshot (it's a bit hard to tell if that one is orthographic already or not).

Render:

PNG images are encoded with a gamma correction with the expectation that they'll likely be displayed on an sRGB screen which will apply the inverse correction. Since that isn't the purpose of normal maps, you might want to be careful of this.
If you're decoding the PNGs yourself/with a library, take note of if it applies the inverse correction or not before exposing the values to your own code (and if it doesn't, either apply the inverse correction yourself or render the PNGs without correction from Blender by setting the View Transform to Raw).
Or if you can, use OpenEXR and ignore the last several paragraphs. Blender saves EXRs in linear space by default and most other software should assume they are in linear space. They also offer full float precision, so if you encounter any banding artifacts, switching to OpenEXR will likely fix those too. They are a bit big, however.

... use Workbench as regular render? Also Color Management > Standard (not Filmic). Saved as PNG RGBA 16 bit or EXR 32 bit.

@vklidu I did set color management to standard, I'm not sure why the values are obviously wrong in my image. Good point about workbench render, I'd forgotten that was a thing. If you want to make that an answer of your own, go ahead :)

If you have a time to edit (extend) your, would be great :)

@vklidu Will do, and yes it is thanks, color neutrality be damned! :D

This solution is possible only because matcaps are from version 2.8 in EXR :)

Thank you! This works for me. I appreciate the explanation.

Showing some transparency from images with Matte Nodes. Some Flaws Present. Image above.

The compositor may be a partial contributor to the solution. The flaws are visible.  Your files are read and matted by color.  The black pixels within a sample would be background.
Please inspect and improve the nodes.

If the inaccuracy of deriving the silhouette from the normal map is too much, you can probably arrange to extract the correct silhouette from another channel/render pass


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Why is my model being resized every time I select the armature?
I have a model from an FBX file that I've imported into Blender with an armature from Mixamo.
When the file imported, its scale was 0.010. I fixed that by scaling the whole "Armature" object back to 1.0 after the import.
But every time I select the model's armature, it automatically scales back down to 0.010.
Why? What could this be? Is this an FBX issue, or a bug in Blender? (My version is 2.83.1)
Here's what's happening:

The fields you are trying to change are green which means they are animated by corresponding keyframes. (These keep you from changing anything that is not part of the animation, unless you add or remove keyframes).
Most likely scale is not a part of your animation and you can delete these keyframes to regain control over the scale. Right click the fields and choose Clear Keyframes.


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Merge edges by distance in center?
I have been working on a mirrored mesh. Now I want to apply the mirror modifier and sew the middle edge loop of the mesh together by selecting it and merging the faces by distance.
So I choose Merge by Distance with the faces selected:

What I expected was for the faces to stitch directly in the centerpoint between them, as is the case when I merge vertices by distance.
However,  what I got was an asymmetric line, which I don't want in this case; I want an edge loop running perfectly down the center of the model.
Is there a workaround here besides selecting all the vertex pairs across the center line from each other and merging them individually?

Hello :). It does merge in center. But your selection isn't perfectly symmetrical along the centerline. No problem, just scale it's width to 0 and move it to center.

Thank you! Selecting the loop and scaling its width on the x-axis to 0 solved this for me.


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Is there a better way to see what I'm doing during retopology?
I have been struggling with striking the balance of transparency and visibility when retopologizing a mesh.
I need to be able to see the retopo mesh clearly, so I turn on "In Front" under the mesh object's properties. However, this often makes it hard to see the other mesh:

I can see the low-poly mesh just fine, but now I can't see what I'm creating the new topology for.
If I turn In Front off, then large patches of the retopo mesh become hard to make out because the high poly mesh is intersecting with it:

I thought that, perhaps, a solution would be to show the object in Material mode with materials with alpha blend on and some transparency in the alpha channel.

However, this also is very hard to see, because the patches wherever the meshes intersect are still there.
If I turn on Wireframe, there is just too much information, because of how dense the other mesh is:

The big problem here, I think, is that anything that intersects over the low-poly mesh hides its edges and vertices in the viewport in Edit mode, regardless of the transparency of the material. Unless I turn on In Front for the mesh I want to see, but that gives too much information, because in many cases I don't want to see across to the other side of the object - I only want to clearly see the mesh on the side of the object facing me in the viewport.
What I would like is:

to be able to clearly see the geometry of the low-poly mesh above the surface of the high poly mesh when I'm tweaking or retopologizing it
Not to have the geometry of the low-poly mesh on the far side of the model get in the way of seeing what I'm doing in front

Is there a better way?

The best solution so far that I could find was to turn on backface culling in viewport shading settings, and combine it with "In Front" viewport display option. Some alpha opacity is optional.
It's still quite hard to tell what's going on sometimes - screenshot as an example. I wish some better options were implemented, like "In front" but with total occlusion of backfaces, or selective wireframe toggle by object.

just dont use Blender LOL..
Best way I could find is making and instanced copy that is in front and working mesh not in front. That should hide a bit of backface edges but not all


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How to prevent normal map baking cage from self-intersecting?
I need to use a cage for baking a normal map for a retopo mesh from a sculpted mesh. The typical solutions I see for creating the cage in this situation are to create a copy of the low-poly mesh and scale it out along the normals, or to use a displace modifier to the same effect.
However, I'm observing that using the displace modifier leads to issues and artifacts where the cage is self-intersecting, particularly in areas like between the toes or around the mouth/ears where there are crevices. I don't want the cage to go through itself in these areas, but I need to scale it out far enough that it will fully surround the high poly surface everywhere else.
Is there a good solution to prevent self-intersecting when using the displace modifier that is not a highly manual process?


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Need to change the topology while weight painting without breaking symmetry
Here is the situation:
I am weight painting on a symmetric mesh, and have put a lot of time into part of the rig.
I discovered that there is bad topology in a certain section of the mesh that needs to be fixed by deleting vertices.
However, if I delete any vertices, the vertex group symmetry option (Vertex Group X under the Tool options) completely breaks, and weight on the opposite side of the model will spray across random locations when I weight paint. This happens even if I edit the left and right sides of the mesh in exactly the same way.
Symmetrizing the mesh with a function like Mesh > Symmetry would ruin the UVs.
What is there to do if you need to edit your mesh without breaking the symmetry of your weight painting?

If you're using weight painting symmetry, then your model is symmetrical, and presumably your bones are properly named with .l / .r, so you can use a mirror modifier instead (and thus, saving you some trouble when redoing some topo anyways.)
Delete half of your model.  (Select midline vert, "Select side of active" operation, ctrl i inverse selection, x delete -> vertices.)  Give it a mirror modifier.  Move your mirror modifier above your armature modifier.  Edit to your heart's content.  Apply the mirror modifier when you're done if you want (or, leave it live.)
Alternately: paint the original mesh, and weight the edited version with a data transfer modifier targeting the original, on "nearest face interpolated" mode.


text:
Where does Blender store log information?
It would be useful to know where Blender log files are stored on Mac, Linux, and Windows. It could help with troubleshooting crashes and other issues.

The paths for the crash logs are platform dependent. The following information can also be found in Blender's manual.
If you intend to add these information to a bug report, please attach the logs as file.
Windows
On Windows the location is determined by the environment variable TEMP. If you haven't modified this environment variable, it will point to C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Local\Temp\. In order to locate the crash log, open the Windows Explorer (Win+E) and type %TEMP% into the path bar. The name of the crash log be the same as your project file, but with the file extension .crash.txt. If you haven't previously saved the project before, it will be blender.crash.txt.
Linux
On Linux the crash log is written to the /tmp directory. The name of the crash log be the same as your project file, but with the file extension .crash.txt. If you haven't previously saved the project before, it will be blender.crash.txt.
macOS
The crash log will be presented through the macOS Crash Reporter. You will have to copy the text and save it in a file yourself.

Additional information can be retrieved by starting Blender with debug command line flags.
Windows
The Windows version provides batch files for convenience that allow to create log files without using the command line. They are located in the same directory as the blender.exe.

blender_debug_gpu.cmd (--debug and --debug-gpu flags)
blender_debug_gpu_glitchworkaround(--debug, --debug-gpu and --debug-gpu-force-workarounds flags)
blender_debug_log.cmd (--debug and --debug-cycles flags)
blender_factory_startup.cmd (--factory-startup flag)

Double-clicking on the batch script will start Blender with the listed debug flags and write log files to %TEMP%\blender\debug_logs. Once Blender has either crashed or was manually closed, the Windows Explorer should automatically open and display the log files. If Blender was able to start, then this will also include a file that contains the system information blender_system_info.txt.
Linux
The log file creation requires to redirect stderr and stdout into a file. Open a terminal, navigate to the directory where Blender's binary is located and then use the following command or a variation with different command line flags:
./blender --debug --debug-cycles > ~/blender_debug_output.txt 2>&1

The resulting log file will be placed in your home directory, assuming that your terminal supports the alias ~ for it.
macOS
The log file creation requires to redirect stderr and stdout into a file. Open a terminal and then use the following command or a variation with different command line flags
/Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/Blender --debug --debug-cycles > ~/blender_debug_output.txt 2>&1

The resulting log file will be placed in your home directory.

Blender's command line also allows to configure additional logging options for more fine grained reporting.

The following alternative line will put blender and the current date in the filename in linux:
blender --debug > blender-\date "+%Y-%m-%d"`-error.log 2>&1`

How does the --log-fileflag differ from piping?

I followed the instructions (Windows) I do not have any file in my folder after typing %TEMP% is it possible Blender changed the location of the crash log or am I missing something? Thank you

@BrunoSuraski It could be that Blender was unable to write a crash log, e.g. when the crash was not caused by Blender but by the OS or graphics driver.


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Import DWG natively without 3rd party tool?
I'd really like to use Blender for architectural modeling.  But just because it's been a hassle to import dwg file for reference drawing I hesitate using it.
Or do I miss something??


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How to texture paint low poly model with normal applied
I have a high poly model and a low poly model and baked a normal map from high poly to low poly. Now, I am wanting to texture paint the low poly model but am having diffculties because when I enter texture paint mode, I am only able to see the low poly model without the normal map. This makes it hard to properly texture paint the model.
Is there anyway I can do this so that when I texture paint, I am able to see the cracks, crevices, etc. from the normal map? I am using Blender 2.82.

Is it possible to paint the high poly object and bake down to the low poly, or is it a dyntopo sculpt that is too hard to set up for paint?

I was facing exactly the same problem as you and fortunately I found the solution.
What you need to do is to apply the texture you're painting to the low poly model.
To apply the texture to the model, just go to the shading tab and create a 'Image Texture' node. Select the texture you're painting and finally plug the color to the base color of Principal Node.
In the end, you will get something like this:

Don't forget to select 'lookdev' mode in order you can see the texture and the normal map while painting.


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How to texture paint large objects while retaining high quality paint
I'm new to Blender and have tried to make myself a large cave model. After I've finished it, I tried texture painting it and am successfully able to, but it seems the quality of the texture being painted to the mesh (im using Stencil) is a bit blurry. I tried the same image on a smaller object and sure enough, it painted very well.
Based on my research, it has to do with how my UV is unwrapped. If I unwrapped a small object, it is unwrapped looking large on the UV map (sorry if wrong terminology) and paints in high quality. The problem is for large objects, when you unwrap them, the islands are forced to be small (even with seams) in the UV map or else they wouldn't all fit in the UV Map.
What can I do about this? Is it possible to have multiple UV maps so I can put each island on their own UV map? Or am I doing it wrong and there is the right way to do it?

For that last part of the question, look up the new UDIM features for creating multiple image mappings across an object.

UV mapping is the way you can define how the faces of a 3d mesh are placed and projected in a 2d plane (texture).
You can increase, decrease, stretch the area in the UV mapping.
You can also attach a huge "image texture" to the mesh (UV mapping helps to map 3d mesh to 2d texture), so when you paint an object you won't loose any detail.
The bigger the texture is, the mode big the UV area should be
(in newest version of blender, you can have different UV MAP / texture with different pixel density --> check this article+video: new-udim-texture-painting, bu probabily you won't need it)
here you can check how different faces have different size as UV MAP


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best way to Queue render different project files
So I've personally been dealing with rendering bunch of projects.
opening projects, render, then wait until finish. then start another render and repeat takes too much time.
So I've been using this code and launching it as .bat
(i'm super blind in coding / scripting, i just copy pasted this code from internet)
example:

it all works well, until today i found one thing that makes this trick useless.
I'm using eevee with indirect lighting. Because indirect lighting stores the cache in memory, and not externaly. so all the reflection cube and indirect lighting is not calculated when i'm rendering with this .bat trick.
.
I'm looking for a better way to manage rendering batch of projects. and if i can see progress bar and calculate total time needed its a bonus.
.
I've heard of flamenco render manager, it seems super complicated.... is that the only way ?

Flamenco v3 is considerably simpler than its predecessor. https://flamenco.blender.org/


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animate Scaling part of an object driven by another object
So the idea is, i want to animate "Scale" an object driven by another object
visual representation:

 2.

its kinda hard to describe, but i want an object/empty to drive an object's scale / displacement / deform
What I have tried:

I tried using the dynamic paint to drive the weight map, and use that data to deform / displace
Using shape keys

if anyone have better way to do it, i'll love to hear them
thanks !

Consider Cast Modifier and Shrink Wrap Modifier.  At least the established jargon for these two modifiers may help you to pose your question.

possibly related: Compressional Wave in a Cube

Consider using a cast modifier.
Make sure you original mesh has many vertices.
Use the object field to determine the origin.
The object field can be an empty to control the origin.
When you move the empty the displacement will move also.
If your axis is World Z axis aligned you may choose to keep z unchanged in the modifier.
More to follow.
Consider also using a shrink wrap if you want more control over the modified shape.  Not yet shown.
Create slanted end at a pipe / cylinder by Rotation
I do not know your artistic vision for the deformation.  Here is a less smooth modification.


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Texture painting seams on joined/loose parts (same UVs, joined mesh)
I joined meshes together and unwrap the whole piece in one UV map. When I try to paint two loose parts there is an area that is not covered by brush but still visible on the mesh. I can unchek "occlude" and mask the part I dont want to paint but some parts are too imbricates to use this technique. I tried to increase bleed value but it seems to not changing anyting at all.
Any idea of how to get rid of these "seams"?

Can you select faces around the seem and press H to hide them? I often get such seams when there's a perpendicular face underneath that cuts through the outer face a little.

I guess the faces act like masks at their junction point. In short: the part of a face that I can't paint because it is supposed to be hidden by another face is still visible on the mesh.
If I hide faces, I will not be able to see how I paint the joint between the separated faces.

You misunderstood me, I only ask that you hide 4 faces marked here: https://i.imgur.com/ucEV9DP.png and then take the screenshot again - I want to see what's underneath them.

Oh sorry :/ here is the screenshot : https://ibb.co/JrgDFF5

You have artifacts caused by incorrect topology. Viewed from the side, your topology looks like this:

You have to correct the topology by joining the faces together, so that no face goes through another:

You could do it by first adding loop cuts (CTRL + R), and moving them as close to the extrusion as possible without going underneath it:

Then by aligning all vertices of those loopcuts with the extruding shape by selecting them, pressing G to move and then either X or Y to move along only one axis and on the surface of the shape. If the faces of your shape aren't conveniently horizontal like mine, you can use custom orientation.

Now it's time to align middle vertices of the base with middle vertices of the extrusion: select them one by one, press G twice, and move them along the line.

Next step is to go to Face Selection Mode (press 3), select a few faces and hide them (H). Now Select the faces of the base that you no longer need and press X, then F to remove them. Repeat this for the faces of the extrusion, that you also no longer need. Press ALT + H to unhide the faces.

Now switch to vertex snapping mode:

Go back to vertex selection mode (1), Press Z, then W for wireframe mode, select vertices of the extrusion, that are below the base's top and move them onto newly created vertices:

Press A, to select all vertices, then M, then B to remove doubles. Now your topology should be fixed. Press Z, then S to go back to solid mode.

It's not a problem of topology. This is a style of modelisation, called "stylized" or "hand painted" model. The point is to make a model with the minimum of polygons and if needed, some parts of the model are not connected to the principal mesh. This type of texturing and modeling is often used in games. The problem is about how we can see a part of a face but still not able to painting it.

@norab I'd say if changing the topology fixes the problem, then it was a problem of the topology. This doesn't mean the problem can't be fixed in other ways, and I too am interested to see if someone comes up with another solution.


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How to render edited Image with node compositor (no scene)?
I want to render an image that I edit with node compositor but it render only grey image. Long story short, I want to use compositor like a classic image editor. Is it possible? If yes, how can I render my edited image?

you can just drag and drop the image in the compositor and then use your nodes setup and render it with F12:

maybe you need to connect the alphas too....for your case.

Thanks for help. As you can see on my screenshot, this is exactly what I'm doing but I've got a grey render. Do you know why?

nope, but if you provide your blend file, i will take a look. Please use file->external data ->. pack resource before

I figured it out! The original image is bigger (a lot) than my output resolution so it rendered a tiny grey part of my image
Tthank you for you time!

no problem, you  are welcome


text:
Dumb question - does normal map override face normals?
It seems to be a stupid question but I can't find answer. If I use a normal map on a 3D object, does normal map override face normals or there is a blending of the normals from both sources?
I ask for it because I need to use some reinforcement loop to maintain normal on mesh when I use image maps.
Sorry for my approximate english.

The face normals remain the same. Only during rendering every pixel and/or light ray takes normal map into account as a variation relatively to the "standard" face normal.

OK so it is a mix from both face and normal map. Thank you !


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sharp/flat shading edges on low poly mesh
I would like to be able to apply a kind of "flat shading" only for some selected edges on an object, as we can see in the screenshot (sketchfab matcap mod). Since I need to export my object, the effect would have to be compatible with an FBX, OBJ or glTF format.
Thank you

Extra edge loops are you best option for exporting to obj

Do you mean support loops? If yes, it's not an option for what I want to do. As you can see on picture, there is no support loops, and the sharping works with Sketchfab.

I found a way (and I guess this is the only one if we don't want to split edges)

activate auto-smooth and set it to 180
mark as sharp the edges you want sharp

It works at least for glTF export (I didn't try other formats)


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Geometry nodes - instancing object from collection on specific point/vertex
I'm looking to know how we can instance an object on a specific vertex with the geometry node. Basically choose a vertex by its ID to assign it an object or collection instance and do it for each selected vertice.
I'm pretty sure it's possible but I can't find an answer to this question.
Thank you for your time

If your question has been solved, please be so kind and mark the answer that contributed to the solution as "Accepted answer". This will make it easier for others to see which path leads to the solution, and the question will no longer show as unsolved. Thank you! Here you can find more information: What should I do if someone answers my question?. If you still haven't gotten a solution to your question, please be kind enough to address it.

You can achieve the desired result with the node Instance on Points.
In this example I use a cube as the base and an icosphere as the object to be instantiated.
If you use the node Compare to compare the current index with a value of your choice, you get an additional selection.
You feed this selection into the node Instance on Points, which will instantiate an object exactly at the vertex you have chosen by index.


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Render AO pass issue (unwanted shadows)
When I render the AO pass is very weird. there are shadows that appear and the objects are more or less dark depending on their diffuse color. I don't understand what is happening since AO pass is supposed to not be influenced by lights. I mean, whatever are my settings.  Any idea?

After a quick test, it seems you are right and AO is independent from diffuse colors. Do you have the same issue without the Denoise ? Also, could we see the render with AO composited ?

OK I found the solution :
https://blenderartists.org/t/how-do-you-get-a-regular-ambient-occlussion-pass/1483304/4
I can't believe that Blender is not able to deliver proper AO pass in interior spaces by default...


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Convert height map to normal map in the shader editor
I can't find a way to convert greyscale image to normal map within the shader editor.
I don't talk about using height map to add details with bump/displacement node. I don't talk about baking details from an object to a normal map.
I talk about a node set up (I guess with math stuff) that convert the height/bump map from an image texture node to normal map colors with the 3 directional channel that I can use in the surface slot of my material output  node. To be clear, a real conversion as we can see on this sites :
https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/
http://www.smart-page.net/smartnormal/
Based on what is already done in Blender I am 99% sure that it is feasible so I must admit that I am stunned to see that since so long ago no node set up to convert height map to normal map in shader editor has been made (or rather that I didn't find it) wich force us to go on external tools instead stay in Blender.

I guess the easiest way would be to simply use a Value to Normal node which is described here in the Blender 4.1 manual: Value to Normal node. Unfortunately despite being there in the documentation, the node does not exist in Blender.

@Gordon Brinkmann
This is not what I'm seeking for. I guess this node, if it existed (!) would convert a value in normal value in Blender, like the bump node currently do.

I know what you are seeking for, and well, the documentation says it computes height map to "normal map", whereas the description for the Bump node says it would generate "a perturbed normal from a height texture for bump mapping" . Strictly from the wording it sounds as if they did different things and actually I've found the node now - I thought it was in the Shader Editor, but it is in the Texture Node Editor. Something I never used and I have no idea how to produce an output from it... if I could I would at least check if it maybe is what you need.

@Gordon Brinkmann - I didn't see that node where in "texture editor" section. That why it confused me. I realize I didn't know that Blender have a texture editor. Your answer didn't help me for what I'm seeking but thank you for this discover! :)

Yeah sorry, if I knew I would have written a proper answer. And why exactly is baking not acceptable, because you want to use it "on the fly"?

Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/190634/35559 . Is there a route from World Space Bump output ) > Object Space > Tangent Space Normals, using this?

@GordonBrinkmann I need to render it as a map in order to export it for real time work.

@RobinBetts on the site I gave as examples there is no question of space calculation, it's purely a conversion from an image to another.


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Blender Script - 3D Cursor management
I'm making an addon with miscellaneous buttons and I've got a problem with the cursor management. I copied a line from my custom pie menu and pasted it to my addon script and replaced "pie.operator" by "col.operator" :
col.label(text="Cursor Snap:")
        col.operator("view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected", text="Cursor to Selected", icon='CURSOR')
        col.operator("view3d.snap_selected_to_cursor", text="Selected to Cursor", icon='RESTRICT_SELECT_OFF')
        col.operator("view3d.snap_cursor_to_center", text="Cursor to Center", icon='CURSOR')

It worked like a charm. So I saved my script and the next day when I imported it again it stopped to work. The button is still here but now it is disabled.
I read that view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected need context but in my pie menu script I don't need to define a context. It works fine just with pie.operator("view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected", text="Cursor to Selected", icon='CURSOR')
Is there a way to add "cursor to selected" command (exactly the same as Shift+S) to a button in an add-on?


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I try to draw details but the brush fills the entire mesh
I have a strange effect disabling texture painting.
I try to draw a texture on a high poly object (470.000 vertices) that should later be projected onto a low poly object.
But the draw brush fills always the entire object in the moment I try to draw any.
I have the same effect with each of the draw brushes.

it depends on the unwrap method you've chosen, if you've just chosen Unwrap (first option) without marking any crease before, all the faces will overlap

Thank you!That did the trick and saved my day. I wasn't aware Dynop removed the UV from the modell and replaced it with the default.
Unwrapping with smartUV (the HP is just a intermediate map) solved the issue.

if you don't care about how you're UV map looks like, use the Smart UV Project mode

Just a comment: Smart UV Project sems not to be the perfect choice.
It produces a lot of smaller perturbations and overlaps if you have very many vertices. In the end, one has the effect of 'sprinkling' a considerable number of unwanted areas. Better to mark a seam. CTRL Right Mouse helps find a way through areas with many vertices.

Smart UV Project works perfectly and is very convenient, but you need to make sure that there is enough margin between your island (when you unwrap, Island Margin option) and that your brush doesn't have a too high Bleed option (Tool > Options > Bleed)


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How do I paint (wrap) a texture around a mesh with even texture dimensions?
Blender Version 2.8
I try to paint a texture on a surface and want to have the same texture, no matter what zoom, distance or face direction I use.
I played around with the different texture mapping options:
Stencil: disoriented, once the face is not perfect aligned with view, size depends on distance to face
Tiled: disoriented, once the face is not perfect aligned with view, size depends on distance to face and the size of the brush
3D: disoriented once the face is not perfect aligned to x-y axis.
So far it seems 3D is the right otion (as stated in another thread I lost the link). But how do I solve the disorientation?

As one can see, it looks like the texture is projected in z direction only and any face not x-y direction is disoriented.
So far there might be an option to project the texture not in global but in normals direction, but I couldn't find it.

I think Tiled or Stencil are the good solutions, but yes you need to stay at the same distance, it looks like there's no lock for the texture brush that would allow to keep the same texture size whatever zoom distance you choose. Also maybe to bring some small corrections at the end you could use the Clone brush.

Argg ... So maybe the best solution would be to invest some minutes into a nice UV seam to get a mostly even sized 2D picture and paint the majority on the 2D side. The final corrections on the seams can be done in 3D then.
My major issue is drawing a fabric texture seemingly seamless around a garment. Painting a sleeve becomes a nightmare since any brush will always get a touch to the currently sloped faces.

mmh seems a bit complicated

Is your final desired result to be this icosphere, or are you practicing toward a different result? if you can prepare a tileable seamless texture as a base, then it does become easier to align if using quads in the model. Proper UV unwrapping and scaling the uv to get the proper ratio of detail to polygon then woudl mean you wouldn't need to paint it until after you baked it down from the node tree to a new mapped image.

I would suggest with tiled patterns like this that you actually avoid manually painting until you have to deal with seams on your object. If you can use quads on your mesh, reset the UV unwrap for mapping all faces to a single tiled texture and you can then make use of Follow Active Quads to change up the mapping. Scale the UV up and down in the UV editor and you can manipulate the mapping with realtime feedback.

Thank You!
I think that's a possible way to create a starting texture to paint on.
I'll try it out in the next few days and let you know whether it worked for me.

This is how I start a lot of textures, mapping different uv schemes and then baking down to one I can paint on.

Tested and found for good!
For other here a few comments, I struggled with my 200.000 vertices HighPoly model:
1.To draw the basic texture for your HighPoly model, you have to double the model. The main model with the desired UV fitting in one tile stays untouched and is the bake target!, The second, temporarily is for tweaking the UV map and can be deleted once you have the start texture.

The UV doesn't need to fit into the tile, The tile simply is repeated.

The most left source in the nodes above is not needed. The current UV mapping seems to be used as default.

I always use multiple up layers for full effect so still use the up node to indicate which one especially when baking down.


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How to enable object for rendering
When I try to bake a normal map I get the message "object xxx is not enabled for rendering".
I found some topics but the hotkeys (Space) for  doesn't work. In fact with Space I get a lot of functions but nowhere a hint how to clear the restrictions.
In SceneCollection the capera is on (same effect if off), the object is visible.
Any idea how to toggle the render permission?

OK, seems I was stuck in a stupid way.
I selected in the SceneCollection the objects BUT NOT the group. So far the the object itself shows the camera but slightly grayed out.

You have to enable the full object path to enable rendering eventually.


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Setting rectangle at right angles to axes
I have a rectangle that is rotated off square relative to the XZ plane:

How do I reorient the rectangle to be square with the XZ plane?

Select two edges on the right and the left and all the side walls that should match them.   Then choose an axes that goes through them that will help them to line up, like this: press S, X and 0.  They should line up.
Then select two edges on the top and bottom and walls that should be parallel with them.  Press S, Z and 0 and they will line up.
Works in some cases, in others you have to rebuild.

Just a slight addition, in order for the above method to work, you'll have to change the "Transform Pivot Point" option on top, from the default, Median Point, to Individual Origins


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Light and object with an array modifier
I'm trying to make a street and I'm giving it street lamps. I designed one and gave it a bulb with a light inside. I tried to make more along the street using an array modifier, but I can't use it on all three objects. I tried joining them, but you can't join an object with a light. I also made the lamp post a parent and made the bulb and light be children, but the array modifier still didn't work. Also, I'm using Blender 2.93.1.

Why not just have a separate modifier on each object?  Give each modifier the same count and offset values.  You could even use drivers to see that the 2nd and 3rd objects have modifiers that stay in sync.

You can put everything in a collection and array a collection instance instead, or use geometry nodes for maximum flexibility


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Mesh will not move with rig
I am on 3.0.  I just created a rig for a human mesh.  When I move the any part of the rig the only thing that moves is the rig.  Its like the mesh wasnt joined with the rig when the rig was created.  Any idea how I can get the mesh and rig to be symbiotic?  I have watched to many videos but they seem to focus on only on part of the mesh having the issue.

Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer.

Did you parent the mesh to the rig?  If so, how did you?

In object mode I selected "rig"  then edit mode I selected the mesh.  CTRL + P and selected Connected.

don't change to edit mode and choose "with automatic weight"

Thank you chris.  I ended up doing this and needed to select keep transform in the drop down in the lower left.  This worked!


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Drivers Broken When Opened in Blender 4.2?
I have some drivers working perfectly fine in 3.0 series that are breaking in 4.2 when opened. Any ideas as to what could be causing this break and if there is a fast solution?
3.0 series

4.2 Series

You can try opening your file in latest stable Blender 3.x (3.6.14)  If it works, save it again, and open in Blender 4.0. If it works, save again and open in any Blender 4.x (e.g. 4.2). If this doesn't work, reduce your file to contain as little as possible, ideally just 2 elements and one driver that works in Blender 3.x and doesn't in Blender 4.x. Then upload a .blend file to share it. How to upload a blend file on BSE - good practices and advice keep in mind if it turns out to be a bug it will be off-topic to this site.

Good tip, I'll try this, thank you


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Bending with Curve Modifier doesn't follow curve
I am working on a 3D-printable design and am trying to use Blender to simply "bend" a flat object into the shape I need (basically adding two "rounded" 90-degree bends).
I've got:
hex_mesh.stl --  This is the flat object is basically a flat sheet with a lattice of hexagons cut out of it (which I designed in FreeCAD).

bend_curve_inner.svg -- This is the shape of that I'd like to bend the hex_mesh.stl into (also designed in FreeCAD).

I've imported the hex_mesh.stl as an Object and the bend_curve_inner.svg as a Curve and then:

Added a "Remesh" modifier to the Hex Mesh to generate enough vertices for the bend to work with.
Added a "Curve" modifier to the Hex Mesh to attempt to bend it into the shape prescribed by the Curve.
Messed around with the Hex Mesh origin, Deform Axis, and translation/rotation until I got to the result shown below:

This curves correctly around the first bend, but then doesn't follow the straight line or bend around the other portion of the Curve.

Can anyone explain why it's not following the geometry of the Curve?  I've done similar operations before with more complicated curves, but can't figure out why this one isn't working.
Please let me know if you need more information, and thanks for any help!

Also related with example file https://blenderartists.org/t/curve-deformed-by-curve-no-front-back/513921/4?u=vklidu

More info in comments. Just for you before closing your question and because seeing my answer with A letter I was a bit confused with orientation again ... :)
Here all rotations zero ... just orient your object in local Y axis in edit mode.

Result with Curve modifier deformed on Y axis


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No longer able to mirror objects
I'm still fairly new to blender and the last few days I had been following sculpting tutorials and was able to mirror objects with no problem. But today when I was trying to mirror them it is not working. I also get this pop in the bottom saying "failed to set value". I tried to look up how to fix this but did not get the answer I was looking for and I have even updated
to the latest version and I still cannot get the mirroring to work anymore. Any suggestions on figuring this out would be awesome.
Thank you so much.

Try changing the mirror axis, as right now you're mirroring along the axis pointing towards the camera: https://i.imgur.com/XhqYpx0.png other than that, test if the mirror modifier also doesn't work in a new file. If it works there, you can upload a file where it doesn't work, using this website: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Thank you so much for the help and resources! This helped a lot!

Your view is showing $Y$ and $Z$ axis (Green and Blue lines across the screen respectively), but the modifier is set to mirror only on $X$, which would be perpendicular to this view, therefore impossible to see.
You can add mirror in $Y$ on the modifier.

It helps if you use a different view, that clearly shows the axis you  want to work on (like top view)

Thank you so much! This helped a great deal. I also figured out something I had accidentally messed with in the transform / relations tab. But now I am good to go. You are amazing!!!


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How to I combine 2 curve points to create a mesh
I'm trying to combine these two end points of curve so I could create a whole new mesh;
which would look like a platform with a curve and whole faces.

Assuming you just want a plane the same shape as your current mesh:

In Edit mode, select Edge mode. Click one edge and shift-click the opposite one to create the outer edge. 'P' to separate the selection then go back to Object mode, select the edge, and back to Edit mode. 'A' to select all and 'F' to Fill. You then have a plane the shape of your original object.

Thanks for answering bro.. but actually I'm using a bezier curve and I've set an array to a cube so it would follow the curve.  So basically I can't select the edge option just like what you did

In future please add information like that to your question to stop people wasting their time!


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How can I apply transform on a linked object via Python?
I have myself a linked object in my scene. I can't move it manually, but I can change it's location with Python. However I also want to apply the transform. I tried it using ob.transform_apply (loc=True etc.), but the script then failed. I tried it with a different, unlinked object and it worked. Is there a way to apply transform on a linked object too?


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How Do I Lower My Polygon Count In Blender 2.8?
I Really Need Help, I Made A Dragon Egg Model And Need Help Lowering The Polygon Count

You could use the decimate modifier to cut down on the ploy count, depending on the detail of the object, this could result in a loss of detail.

can you add more information (e.g. a pic of the wires) and what the model is intended for?

Select your object. Go to the modifiers tab (the one with the wrench icon)
and set ratio to 0.5 (50%) with the option collapse active.
That means that whatever your polycount face is, will be reduced by half that number.


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How to reconnect/extend edge loop
So I made an edge loop on horizontal along size the whole side of this object as you can see in the front, and where it is in red that is me extruding the selected face. However, I messed up and had to delete bunch of geometry and then re-add it (that very long rect on right side is what I redid). So then I wanted to basically re-do the edge loops I made and extend them to this re-done geometry.
So I went and started to dissolve edges on the faces, but did not realize that the edge loop was still there, and was wondering why I couldn't re-add edge loop, until I extruded this face and saw that I only dissolved the visible side.
So my question here is, either A) How do I easily recombine my geometry (even the not so visible sides) or B) how to I "extend" the edge loop to these faces I dissolved them on.

So you want to re do edge loops on the right (square part) but not on the left (vertical rectangles)?

That picture has only face selection mode right?
Because I can see a whole bunch of zero area faces that are going to be confusing.
First thing you should do is try to get rid of those faces by selecting everything and merging vertices by distance (use a very small distance).
Once the faces are cleaned up you should be able to easily cut the edge loops you want either with the knife tool or by dissolving and re-adding with ctrl + r.

ditto, it looks like some of your edges are concealing collapsed faces. You need to merge vertices to get rid of those, then selecting edge rings/loops might work again. However, that might also depend on how dramatic your dihedral angle patterns are (the pattern of angles between adjacent face normals)


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How do I change the bone layer with a script?
I wanted to make a small script that loops though all the bones in the selected armature and puts the ones that match into another bone layer.
for bone in bpy.context.active_object.pose.bones[:]:
    if bone.name in ListOfBoneNames:
        #put that bone into bone layer 8

How do I put the bone onto bone layer 8? What is the function name for that?
When I do it manually, the console shows:
bpy.ops.pose.bone_layers(layers=(False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))

But I don't know how to use that in the script. Wherever I put it ("bone.bone_layers" or "bpy.context.active_object.pose.bones[bone.name].bone_layers"), it says that the object doesn't have a "bone_layers" attribute.

bone.layers is an array of 32 boolean values tells you whether the bone is present on each of the 32 layers.
So you could add the line:  bone.layers[8] = True
for bone in bpy.context.active_object.pose.bones[:]:
    if bone.name in ListOfBoneNames:
        bone.layers[8] = True  #put that bone into bone layer 8
        #could also remove the bone from other layers if you wanted!

Edit: thanks for spotting the typo @Jasper R! Yes, it should be bone.layers not bone.layer

Please note in your code sample you use bone.layer, not bone.layerS.


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How to create instances in the centers of faces or edges, instead of on verts?
This is what the Point Instance node creates by default:

Is there a way to create the points in the centers of the faces?

Or in the center of edges?

Does this answer your question? Instance a plane on a cylinder using geometry nodes

@Luciano No, I've found the solution (see answer below).

Figured it out: use the subdivide node. That'll create verts in the centers of existing faces and edges. From there you just have to mask out the points you want to instance.
Node tree:

Result:

The only problem is that the objects don't rotate to match the angle of the edge/face if the mesh is deformed (but they DO maintain their outward angle).

I guess you can't have everything...

This is clever ! Pretty reliable to get edge center points, although with faces with more than 4 verts it can get a little messy to output the face center. I think you can indeed extract the face normal and use that to orient the objects. You may have to use attribute transfer node from 3.0 to do that though


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Why is my rendered image darker that in viewport
I'm trying to render my character but I only need hair so I render it as PNG I need transparent background but after rendering I get darker image. I tried 8/16 PNG/TIFF but same result. I set Color management in render to Standard. On left side render on right side viewport

https://mega.nz/file/FUpn2RSR#oDO5pNHQ43ipgt8HKmk9WfDOSTDng7QlP0IzvpEX2Bo

The biggest problem is that you are in the Material Preview mode in the viewport. If you go into your render shading in the viewport, you get the same results as your render:

To brighten this up, you could add lights and even your own HDRI environment in the World Properties. If you want to have the same thing as the Material Preview, you could just disable the Scene World here:


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Blender Eevee how to render Bloom effect when using transparent background
I need to render Bloom effect while using a transparent background, I need to save PNG sequence with RGBA, when I do this, the Bloom effect is being removed by the transparency since it falls outside the geometry.

This is the effect I'm after but with transparent background.

This is what I'm getting out of the box when enabling transparent.
My question is: How can I keep the Bloom effect overlay while rendering with a transparent background?

Save as Open EXR, emissive light is still there. To make it visible just add some background https://i.sstatic.net/Yh9vz.png (originally from this post https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/164940/2214)

@vklidu you were called out by this youtuber https://youtu.be/tmb5HRU1cUo?si=AgZPRw_DrRLG-XqT&t=288. You apparently did not check if this really works when posting this comment? XD

I found a workaround with compositing:
1- Enable Bloom pass in View Layer before rendering

2- In Compositor, Add the Bloom pass to the Alpha of the image, use a ColorRamp node to control the bloom effect, and to convert it at the same time to black and white.

Check the original Alpha in the image above and compare to the next image with Bloom added via the ColorRamp node.

3- now we need to use the outcome as the new Alpha pass instead of the original one, for that, I used a Select Alpha node, linked the original image color pass to the color, the new alpha pass to the alpha.
You can see here how the bloom effect shows on the transparent background, now I can fiddle with the ColorRamp node to get the better result, but I find it easier to temporarily add a background in the compositor using an Alpha Over node, to see the results, then I can remove before final render. I also need to mention that I found it gives better results when I use "Ease" mode in the ColorRamp node, but this depends on the desired effect and the project at hand.

Also, remember to set Set Alpha's mode to Replace Alpha instead of Apply Mask from Blender 2.92.


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How to hollow a complex object?
I use Blender for creating 3D models for 3D printing, and it's great except that there is one step I have to do in an external program: hollowing. Blender's Solidify modifier only works on simple objects, but on complex objects things go bad really quick.
What I currently have to do is export my mesh as an .stl and then load it into Meshmixer because it has a fantastic Hollow feature that works perfectly and quickly.  Then I export it back into Blender.  This works, but it's very cumbersome, and I do not know how much longer Meshmixer will continue working on my Mac as they're no longer working on it.
Does anyone know of a way to properly hollow a mesh directly in Blender?  I tried the BlendShell plugin which is supposed to do exactly what I want, but it's very buggy and doesn't work properly, not to mention it's extremely slow.

I'm assuming self-intersection is the problem? Perhaps you should show exactly how the solidify modifier is failing (with screenshots for example).

Yes, it's the self-intersection problem.  Pretty much any complex geometry does this as you know, so that tool isn't really useful for hollowing out models.

Why won't a Boolean "difference" operation work to create a hollow?

@BGreenstone Did you ever find a good solution to this problem? I'm struggling with the exact same thing and have yet to find a decent solution.

@NoVa No, unfortunately.  I'm still having to export the file, load it into MeshMixer and do it there.  It's a royal pain, and MeshMixer isn't going to work forever since eventually Apple will drop support for emulation apps.  I can't believe Blender doesn't have a way to hollow objects.

@BGreenstone A solution to get around the meshmixer apple thing is to use Autodesk Fusion 3690. They have a nice hollowing feature, but you still have to go through the import/export shenanigans.

Well, an alternative is just to use any of the free 3D printing slicing applications.  You can use Chitubox and it does a quick, good hollow.  Not quite as quick and easy as Meshmixer, but it's definitely more convenient than Autodesk Fusion.  Blender really should have this feature.

The "hollow" functions on the free software that usually comes with the printers are often great when they work ... but they often don't work on extremely high-poly models.
BlendShell works nicely, but very slowly.
You can solve BlendShell's self-intersection problem by taking BlendShell's generated internal object, while it is still unconnected to the outside surface, and remeshing it and perhaps smoothing it as a separate object, before making the normals point inside again, combining it with the exterior surface, and maybe manually punching some holes through (subtract cylinder) for drainage.
The other "gotcha" with BlendShell (other than speed) is scaling. You'll want to "normalise" your model first by using the menu command "Object/Apply/All Transforms", otherwise BlendShell may be using a different scale to your actual model. If you find that the shell is jumping through the exterior surface and running amok, that's probably why.
My biggest problem with BlendShell was that, last I looked, it wouldn't run on recent versions of Blender, and files saved from recent versions often won't load into older versions. So if you're using recent Blender, you might want to finalise all other aspects of your file, export an STL version, import this into an earlier version of Blender that has BlendShell installed, save, and then reload into the later version. A bit of a pain.

You could make another object, the rough shape and size you need for an inner wall, flip the normals on it, place it inside your complex object then join the inner and outer object. (Control J, if the hotkeys for your version are the same as for mine.)

Yes, and that's exactly what I used to do before I discovered the Hollow feature in Meshmixer.  Unfortunately, the Boolean method is extremely rough and not an efficient way to do it - building a rough inverse of what you want to carve out takes a very long time on a complex model.  With a proper Hollow option you can set how thick you want the walls, and how high resolution you want the mesh on the inside to be.  That's how both Meshmixer and BlendShell work - it's just too bad BlendShell is too buggy and too slow to use.

It wouldn't take a very long time. Create a cube. Subdivide it at least twice. Apply the subdivision. make sure this new shape is bigger than the objet and use shrinkwrap to project onto your object. Vois-la, you have the rough shape of your object. Scale it down or use the shrink tool so it fits inside your object, invert normals and join.

You could also just use solidify, then use decimate to simplify the mesh of the inner island.

I appreciate the suggestion, but it's still a very manual process with no precision control.  I really need an automated tool where I can tell it exactly how thick I want the walls to be and just have it do it - exactly how Meshmixer does it.  Anything else will just take more time and result in a less accurate final model.  Blender simply needs a proper Solidify or Hollow modifier.


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UV Mappings to Material
Blender 2.79b.
Following situation:
New at Blender.
I made a model which is complete. I have create UV mappings for this model, which are complete. I am using multiple texture image files.
In 3D view, I can see the model exactly how it's supposed to be. Now, because I want to export it to Unity, I need to still apply a material, otherwise non of the texture mapping will take.
Currently there are no textures or materials linked with that model.
I just want to take my UV mappings and make it somehow into a simple lambert shader with multiple texture files or whatever. Or maybe multiple shaders, I wasn't aware using multiple textures files makes it more complicated, if true.
But in any case, I can't find a way to just apply all of this and make a material from it.
Also Blender Render shows everything correct while Cycles Render shows no textures. And of course rendering the model does not produce any textures because there is no material.

Possible duplicate of How do I convert materials from Blender Internal to Cycles?

"I need to still apply a material, otherwise non of the texture mapping will take" as you unwrapped the model it already has texture mapping and it will be transferred into Unity when exported into file formats allowing that (fbx, dae etc). When you have texture for that mapping it should work same as in Blender. Shader should be added in the end-application (Unity in this case)

It appears without textures, materials or shaders when imported in Unity (FBX). So I feel like it needs a material.
@rjg Possibly? But I don't even know what the Cycles Render is. I know it exists but that's it. I really just want to export.

As already mentioned - export mesh with UV map. Texture map can be baked if it's not enough to provide original image (e.g. if you edited something in material settings and didn't just put an image onto the mesh), see https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/13508/how-do-i-bake-a-texture-using-cycles-bake (for Cycles though). There won't be any material from Blender in Unity so don't spend time adding it, material will be added in Unity and set up to use texture based on UV coordinates.


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Photogrammetry retopology/projection like Zbrush
I am doing some photogrammetry scans using Agisoft Photoscan and importing the scans to Blender. The problem is that the UV maps are a mess, the meshes have too many polygons.
The most common workflow is to transform the untextured mesh from tris to quads using Zbrush, create a lower resolution clone, divide it in polygroups to get a better UV map and then generate displacement and normal maps by projecting the high-resolution mesh onto the lower resolution mesh.
What I want to do is to have this same workflow in Blender, but I haven't found any specific tutorial, especially for the latter of the mentioned steps.
Thank you in advance!

For automatic retopo and simplification I would recommend Instant Meshes (https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes) which is much quicker and easier than doing it manually in Blender. The other part is called "baking" and can be done in Blender.

Istant Mesh>UV unwarp>Bake High to Low (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r-cGjVKvGw)

Retopology and Baking of 3D Scans/Photogrammetry with Blender and Free Software
Purpose:
Determine if you need to 3D print, create static renders, or animations. For animations, texture baking is necessary.
Step 0: Cleaning Raw Scan Data
Free: MeshLab - fix floating objects, non-manifold issues, and holes.
Paid: 3D Coat - voxel sculpting, repairs, auto-retopo, UV tools.
Step 1: Retopology
Manual Retopology:
Use Blender AddOns for detailed edge flow.
Free: F2 AddOn
Paid: RetopoFlow AddOn
Tutorial: Retopo Tutorial
Auto-Retopology:
For non-detailed animation, use auto-retopology.
Free: Instant Meshes - Instant Meshes
Step 2: Baking Maps
Bake normal and color maps from high-poly to low-poly meshes.
General Workflow in Blender:
Clean raw scan data.
Use Instant Meshes for auto-retopology.
Import into Blender and create UV layout.
Place high and low-poly objects in the same location.
Create a texture in the low-poly mesh's material node.
Select high-poly first, then low-poly.
In Cycles render menu, select bake type and settings:
Enable "selected to active"
Set appropriate ray distance
Set margin for UV edges
Bake the texture.
Save the baked image and load it into the image node.
Connect the baked texture to the shader.

FYI: Bounty was auto-assigned and I removed my comments.


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How do I make Blender 2.8 use my graphics card?
I had been using Blender 2.79b on my computer for a while and had my NVIDIA GeForce 1650 card doing my renders fine. Then when I upgraded to 2.8, the card was not recognized as a compatable compute device. It didn't even show any options.

You likely need to update your graphics driver (https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx).

OK, that actually fixed the problem (after i reattached the graphics card to the motherboard, it had come loose). thank you for the help.


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How do I access Context Menus with Python?
I am trying to add a 'menu item' to the 'Set Parent To' context menu. This menu appears when you press 'ctrl+p' while the mouse cursor is in the '3D View'
I cannot find any way to add items to any context menus through python.
I am able to add 'menu items' to any other type of menu.
This bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object_parent.append(menu_function) works perfectly fine but I would rather have my function listed in this menu specifically.

Are context menus just not currently accessible?
If they are accessible, can someone show me how to add an item to this menu please?

In this case it's not a context menu rather an 'Operator' menu, see the keymap... I guess there is no way to add a new item to this.

@brockmann I, actually, already have looked at the keymap but obviously I didn't catch on that the menu was generated by the 'Operator'. Thanks for that clarification. Now I wonder if there is a way to override the function that generates that menu. If not, I'll make a new menu I guess.