text:
Why is only the hair based particle system appearing in two levels of particles?
I have a plane with Reed sticks applied on as particles in Layer 1.
These Reed stick Particles consisted of a group of objects with their own particles applied on another layer.  These group of particles systems are in layer 2.
When I render the scene I can only see one Particles "called HAIR in the scene" I can not see " SEEDS and LEAVES" particles, even in the view port. I have double checked that hey are under same group objects. Can you please help me to find out what's going on? Thanks
Does hair get special treatment?
Cycles engine.
You can download the blend file here

Visibilities are on as shown below

please see this .....   http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/27818/is-it-possible-to-recursively-instance-object-particles  . You can probably delete comments on the above question.  I have.

Image Above
Right Side Render.
Left Side Yellow Particles Emitter in Layer 1.  Group in Layer 2.  Brown Cube Reeds. Golden Seeds. Green Leaves.  Reeds, Seeds, Leaves are part of the emitter.  The [join] mesh command used.
Nail Shaped Hair is the second Particles system of the reed emitter in Layer 2.  The Hair appears as strands in the 3D View Window.

Image Above
Second Emitter complex in layer 2.
Primary
You have already successfully rendered the emitter and the hair particle system.  I have done the same in a new file.  I have not succeeded to render the non hair non emitter.
You could have a finished model with only the group particles hair system present.  The seeds and leaves can be part of the emitter.
For the seed and leaves you can convert them to non particles and be part of the emitter. The particles system can be used to generate the model. Then press the button [convert] in the the modifier panel for the particle system.  The hair particles remain. The emitter is now a complex  of reed, leaves, seed.  Your artistic needs would determine if that is suitable.
You do NOT need to convert hair.  The [convert] of the hair seems to produce edges only which will need to use something like a solidify modifier
Secondary
I used a particle instance modifier ... different from a particle system ... and I could duplicate hair but not object particles.
Tertiary
I will seek a few more alternatives.
Older
Verify your Object Cycles Setting, Cycles Ray Visibility: Camera checkbox is [enabled] for the missing particles.
Verify your particle systems camera render option is TRUE
Under the object Duplication Panel for the missing particles make sure the either None or Frames are selected.  Do not use Verts Faces Groups.
Verify all particles system generate particles for the frame above.
Verify that all materials are created for the render engine.  Cycles Render is compatible with Cycles materials.  Blender Render is compatible with Blender Materials.
Verify that the Render visibility is on for the missing materials.  The camera icon in the outliner panel.
Verify that you have no  transparency in your material.

I've double checked materials all are for cycles render, all objects camera and viewport visibility is on, yet still I can not see the other two particles

I've checked the ray visibilities under cycles settings, and its on for all, nothing seems unusual here. However what I realised is I keep particles object groups in a separate layer, then the actual scene... do you think this could be causing some problems here?

Did you investigate the Object Duplication Panel? ..... I tried experiments to have particles showing in 3D View with [objects ] particles on different layers. Layers can be excluded.  Yet particles as you have witnessed can change the bring items into view from different layers.  Have you only one render layer? I could not recreate your problem ... yet. Of course I can remove the whole emitter and thus all particle system. I will investigate again.  I usually do not suggest this .... please consider posting a simplified  file which has the problem.

ok, I checked the one dup panel but couldn't see anything weird there. I have added the blender file in the question content, thanks for the help

Thanks for the answer, i'm gonna study it tomorrow proparly when i reach my computer, however briefly i have these things challenging my understanding right now :).. 1- So its not possible to use a particle emitter to emit other group objects with particles on, in order to do that , the group objects must be converted. Correct? 2- the actual emitter i want to be use is on Layer 1, whereas Layer 2 has group objects with their own particles on , so they can't be on different layers? 3- the layers which group objects on must be visible on the  scene - layer panel? Thanks again

See above changes.

Ok, It seems like particle instance can work here, or converting the least amount particle system is a quicker approach, as I couldn't completely get how particle instance can be set up correctly, but I'll figure it out hopefully :) thanks again for the help


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Tapering a tentacle mesh with uniformly scaled suction discs
How can I taper the tentacle while maintaining the circular shape of the suckers along it's length?
I have modeled a simple tentacle using the array and curve modifier.
Imagine the tentacle as a set of cylinders with two circular suckers.
I then go to edit mode for the curve and reduce the radius of each point to achieve the tapering of the tentacle.
Everything is fine except that the suckers have an oval shape instead of the initial circular shape, especially towards the end of the tentacle where the radius of the curve point is largely reduced.
Thanks

Have you tried a lattice modifier deformation?  If the mesh is fine enough it might be a way to achieve what you are looking for.

Hi. I tried the lattice modifier but the same. I also added a vertex group containing the suckers to exclude them from the deformer but nothing. I guess my solution is to go into edit mode for the tentacle and correct the shape manually for each sucker. But that means that i have to apply the array modifier and i need it to stretch the tentacle when i manipulate the curve.

Please place an image in your question to clarify you question. The simplest image that illustrates your problems will be fine.

Is this a highly animated mesh or a static mesh?

Duplication on Faces
Consider Proportional Editing manually or by modifier.  Curve guide with [no] radius adjustment.

Above Detail view. Blue Tentacle Curved Form Tapered.  Discs Not Tapered. I used a semi torus as a disc for this discussion.

Above the Duplication Settings for the tentacle highlighted above. Scaling is uniform for this feature.  No ellipse forms are introduced.  This feature renders duplicates and does [not] render the two original meshes.  Surprising but useful.  For the question above you need one mesh for visual rendering and one for placement of duplicated discs.  Total 2 Meshes for final render.  One mesh visible. One not visible.

The disc is parented to the other mesh, this is a requirement .

Above larger view.  Curve Highlighted.  Second set of Discs not placed on any other mesh.  This is just to show versatility of placement.  Original straight Cylinder form with no modifiers.  The two gray cubes used as the tapering objects for a Warp Modifier. I used the warp modifier, as one option, because I wanted visual interaction. You need [not] use the warp modifier. You may [proportional edit] by hand.  You may also use [shape keys].

Above show 2 (two) blue tapered meshes.  The highlighted blue mesh has the curve modifier disabled so we can see both blue meshes easily. The highlighted mesh was copied from the other and then Duplication on Faces was turned off. One blue mesh is rendered and has [no] duplication on faces.  The other other blue mesh is for placement of discs and is not rendered.  This separation of placement and render is a feature.  It is highly likely you need to use 2 meshes in the same fashion.

Above rendered image showing custom placement of discs by deletion of faces, not vertices, of the duplicator.  The viewable mesh was not changed.  2 Meshes are used as stated above.

Above the deleted faces of duplicator.

Above rendered image smoothed and using subdivision surface modifier.
Secondary
You can consider [Make Duplicates Real] on the duplicator to create multiple meshes and turning off face duplication on the duplicator.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How do I put an image onto the surface of a mesh?
How do i get the .tga image on the right onto the mesh on the left?

thank you

If you just want to make an object use your image texture, try creating a new material under your "Material Properties" tab, then choosing your image.

As long as you have unwrapped your Object, your image should be applied to the object. If it looks stretched, choppy or just tiled in a way you don't like; this is a reference to a node structure I use for my meshes.
But if you are planning on using images as like a background or even a wall, there is one option for you that I use pretty consistently and is built right into blender!
First thing you will want to do is go to your User Preferences under File -> User Preferences. next, go to the Add-On Tab in the middle and search for an Add-On called Images as Planes. Once you find it, click the little check box and close the User Interface window. Now, you can press Shift - A to add a new mesh as you normally would and instead of choosing a mesh, go to the bottom and select "Images as Planes". This will bring up a new window where you can choose your image file, and once it has been imported it will show up in your world as a plane.

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


text:
non-uniform scale and vector mapping in blender uv unwrapping
Hi i am trying to apply some bump maps and normal maps to a floor in my scene but when i uv unwrap it blender warns of non-uniform scale and i think because of that Vector Mapping is resulting in some wired shape


text:
How can I render objects with very shiny surfaces?
I am trying to render a kitchen sink / Faucet

Here is another reference image of what I want

What I have got so far is this

Settings for World:
I have used an environment map HDRI with 0 saturation.
Material settings:
Triad with glossy, glass anisotropic and there mix shader combinations and the new principled bsdf shader too but didn't get the required result.
Studio lights:
Followed multiple youtube tutorials on setting up studio lights in blender but the results were not what I wanted.

LEAVING CYCLES :
Decided to try some other software
So, Downloaded Keyshot 5 but keyshot wasn't able to produce cycles like results LoL.
Not : I have always struggled to get professional quality product rendering in cycles

So now I'm back in cycles looking for help.

I'm not sure what the problem is, all you need is a glossy node with roughness at about 0.01 or less

Please [edit] your question and describe specifically how your render differs from what you want.

I don't know how it differs i just want it to look exactly the same. If you see in the reference image it looks like that the object has glass mirror property with that awesome reflection

This is perhaps a bit left field, but tutorials on glass; e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=643CAA5Zh_8 may give you some ideas.
I was recently trying to produce the opposite effect to yours - a dull metallic sheen, and I found tweaking the material's fresnel parameter (as discussed in the linked video) useful.

I usually don't post questions on forums because i get my solutions from youtube but in this specific condition non of the youtub videos worked but thankyou for your time and suggestion


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Python parameters from blender
How can I pass parameters in python from blender?. I'm try this, but don't work
blender -b file.blend -P file.py "param1" "param2"

This work
Line command
blender -b file.blend -P file.py -- "param1" "param2"

file.py
for i in range(6, len(sys.argv)):
    print(sys.argv[i])


text:
DAG zero... Getting clearer information from the Console Window
How do I get more detailed information for the following message?
This message appears in the Console Window.
DAG zero... not allowed to happen!

The goal is to know the cause of this message and correct the situation.

Could you tell a bit more about the context? What operation were you performing before the error? Which are the steps to reproduce it?

I do not have a timeline because the file is weeks old and I ignored the message when I first saw it.  I open the console periodically for warnings and to see messages from my scripts.  I am not claiming I know of any negative effects of just continuing to ignore the message.

I believe the last work was volume rendering with particle point density in Cycles.

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


text:
Dynamic Paint and Cycles and Fire Simulation
Does Dynamic Paint work with Cycles and Fire Flow in the following way?

Fire is moving as determined by Dynamic Paint Vertex Group
Not just a single beginning frame of Vertex Group
Cycles Render not Blender Internal Render.

If it does work, what are the practical settings in Blender?

Additional Context
I can see that the Weight Paint is successful in 3D View.
I cans see a successful Dynamic Paint with Fire with Blender Render.
This Blender User has Cycles with these results
Successful

Particles which allow some movement with associated texture
Full Mesh Fire
Static Vertex Group
Single Texture

Failed

Image Sequence as Texture

The mesh emitting flames is both a dynamic canvas and a smoke flow, it needs to use the same vertex group for painting and smoke flow.

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


text:
Blender Particles
In this link
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/physics/particles/emitter/vertex_groups.html
It is written
Length
    Defines the “length” of the particle distribution.
What does this writing mean?

It effects the hair length:

It takes the length of hair particles (edited with Particle comb brush) as input and multiplies it by the weights.
Only the Density vertex group affects Emitter type particles. Length and the rest are for shaping and rendering hairs

A Particle System can either be of type Emitter or Hair.  Are you stating that [Length] has zero or nonzero effect on the type [Emitter]?

@atomicbezierslinger yes, only the density input effects Emitter type particles, the rest is for shaping and rendering hairs.

I suggest the proposed answer be updated with your comment information.


text:
Blender Animation Nodes Particle Information
Blender Animation Nodes (BAN)
How does the Blender user obtain the Particle Rotation Data in a later version of BAN, visible in a previous version of BAN?
Short and sufficient answer please.
A comment below has led me to include the screen capture below

What might the term "pattern-matching" mean in the image above?
All responses within 48 hours have the same priority.  No need to rush.  I may not be able to see responses for that amount of time.

BAN Earlier Version
On the left side of a previous image is a
Particle Info Node with Rotation output enabled

BAN Later Version
On the right side of the previous image is a
Particle Data Node with Velocities output enabled.
The user does not see the Rotation output available.

While there are other outputs available, see node properties for other values to display, the rotation is not there. This has already been reported as an issue on github.

Rotation data is stored as unit quaternions in Particle data as stated in the API. And since it is a bpy_prop_collection, it allows fast access through the foreach_get function. So, we initialize a quaternion list with length equal to the number of particles using this expression:
QuaternionList(length = len(system.particles))

Then foreach_get is used to copy the quaternion data from the particles to the initialized list using this expression:
(system.particles.foreach_get("rotation", quaternions.asMemoryView()), quaternions)[1]

The creation of the tuple and sampling of the second element is just to make sure quaternions are actually returned from the expression node. So the node tree is as follows:

You can now convert this to Eulers using the Convert Rotation Type Node and use it as you wish. The output list, however, is not masked based on the alive status of the particles, meaning all particles are output even if they are dead or aren't born yet. To mask it, we can first get the alive_state of each particle, to do this we can use a list comprehension (since foreach_get doesn't support string data, and alive_state is either "DEAD", "UNBORN", "ALIVE" or "DYING"):
[particle.alive_state for particle in system.particles]

But we actually want a boolean that tells us whether or not this particle should be kept, and we can do this by some if and logic statements. For instance, to get the particles that are alive or unborn, we can write:
[particle.alive_state == "ALIVE" or particle.alive_state == "UNBORN" for particle in system.particles]

We can then use the Mask List Node to mask the quaternion list based on this boolean list:


text:
Edge Loops and Python. Enumerating and Analysis
Does Blender Provide any Edge Loop identification in Mesh or BMesh?
If yes, what is the link or document that describe such support?

Showing edge indices of a selection.  Image Above.

Crude Console Output from a Python Blender Script.  Please excuse the many flaws of omission and commission in presentation and explanation.  The intent is to show cyclic and non cyclic edge loops.  Simple Case. The arrow shows a correspondence between selected edges and console text.  The text will be transformed into text compatible for Python Execution.  Click to see larger image for improved readability. Image above.

Blender Python Code Sample.  Subject to extreme cleansing and refactoring.  Read at your own risk.  Image Above.

Probably inessential and subject to deletion
Console Window Output with debug identification.
ED_undo_push: Loop Select
wm_handlers_do_intern:       handled! 'MESH_OT_loop_select'

Just to clarify I am talking about the connected edges the users see when they
Alt-Click in edit mode and perhaps other selections.
Here is an example context

Given a edit mode selection or vertex group selection. Consider only the selection as though it were isolated.
How many cyclic and non cyclic edge loops are present? What are they?
The answer might be a Python list of lists of vertex indices.

I am asking for a reference to tested Python in this question. I am not asking for new Python to be written.
I have some Python script.  I do not want to reinvent functionality. Although there could be some merit in Blender Python programming exercise. This analysis is not supposed to be the most general case.  It might not even need to algorithmically efficient such as big O = n squared. Preprocess.

These edge loops you are talking about are not stored anywhere. Alt+Click is a tool that selects edges along quads. This selection is calculated on the fly.

I once wrote something that tests if the current selection is a closed edge loop, can try find it if it could help. Can't say its too heavily tested but worked fairly well for its purpose. Don't know of any built in method to either recognize nor enumerate edge loops.

Just to clarify,  is this the same as selecting an edge and calling Select Edge Loop ?

@TLousky.  Thanks.  No need to find Python .... yet.  I have something perhaps similar.  It Selects an edge loop.  So that functionality can be used as building block.  Same results as user gestures.

Not a big fan of all the caveats on this question?  Why not show some of your code ie what you've tried so far?  A link only answer to proven code? Console output with debug info? Yep  it is just a shortcut to bpy.ops.mesh.loop_select  To select an edge loop from an edge, with verts v1 and v2, edge is edge loop i of v1, keep selecting next edge, which will be edgeloop i of v2 .. etc until you get back to starting edge, or not.  Each vert must have 4 edge loops etc.


text:
How do I work with grayscale?
I would like to work with greyscale like this photo.

I have a landscape and models. What should I do first?

This site works best if you only ask one question per post. However, you can post as many questions as you would like. Also, your reference image in your first question in not grey scale, only shades of grey. It is "Monochromatic" shades of one color.

Before changing all materials check this (clay render): http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1404/how-to-quickly-do-a-clay-render


text:
How to add an image in a specific area of the object in Cycles Render?
I am trying to add an iris to the eye.
I go to Object Data / Vertex Groups/ and I click in + . I select the area where I want to put the iris.

I go to texture/material and I add my iris.
and Blender put the iris in the whole eye.
I know I miss something but what?
Thanks a lot!

Possible duplicate of http://blender.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/26865

Possible duplicate of Add different materials to different parts of a mesh?

Idle Chit-chat
Your title says "Cycles Render," but your screenshots are from Blender Internal. Also, in your last screenshot, you need to select 3D Viewport > Toolshelf > Edit > Shading: > Smooth for the eye to not be pixelated in the viewport render.
However, if you are going for realism, I would suggest switching to Cycles Render (much faster, newer, better, AND built for photorealism). So, this tutorial is for Cycles. This will be the final result:

Materials
I will use a sphere to represent the eye (smooth shading), and the following eye texture from Google (full size linked) in my demonstration.

With the sphere selected, go to the Materials tab in the Properties panel. + New a material to the sphere. Go into the Node editor, and use the setup shown.

Now, go to the sphere in the 3D Viewport. Tab into edit mode, Numpad 1 to front view, and Numpad 5 to orthographic view. Enter Face Select Mode. Select these faces:

Press U and select Project from View (Bounds). Split the screen into a 3D Viewport and a UV Image Editor by dragging the marks in the top-right corner to the left. Make sure you are still in edit mode. Open the image of the eye through the toolbar at the bottom of the UV Image Editor. The orange should already be aligned over the eye.
Final Notes
I added the nodes at the bottom to create red veins in the eye. It's more realistic.
Here is the finished .blend file:

Thanks @Shady. You are right I took the screeshots in Blender Render.

@Meri You're welcome. Please consider accepting this answer if it helped you.

Hi @Shady please can you tell me where Multiply is in Note Editor? Thanks

Converter > Math. Don't forget to accept, please!

Sorry, yes I am going to accept. Thank you for your help. It is very useful.


text:
How can I add an image to a texture in Cycles?
I would like to make cat's eyes. I did the cat in Cycles Render and the cat has different materials all over it.

I made the eyes in Photoshop.
I want to add the eyes like a texture in Cycles Render if it is possible.

Have you tried moving so that you are viewing the cat head on, _tab_bing into edit mode for both eyes, keying U, and selecting Project from View (Bounds)? From there, you should be able to go to the UV Image Editor, load in your image, and align the projected mesh. You should also be able to create a simple material. Look (here)[http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/8697/how-do-i-put-an-image-texture-on-a-material-in-cycles] for more.

Idle Chit-chat
I don't see any reason why you should not be able to simply unwrap the eyes and add in your texture, as I said in my comment. I will, however, elaborate here.
Materials
I will use a sphere to represent the eye (smooth shading), and the following eye texture from Google (full size linked).

With the sphere selected, go to the Materials tab in the Properties panel. + New a material to the sphere. Go into the Node editor, and use the setup shown.

Now, go to the sphere in the 3D Viewport. Tab into edit mode, Numpad 1 to front view, and Numpad 5 to orthographic view. Press U and select Project from View (Bounds). Split the screen into a 3D Viewport and a UV Image Editor by dragging the marks in the top-right corner to the left. Make sure you are still in edit mode. Open the image of the eye through the toolbar at the bottom of the UV Image Editor. The orange should already be aligned over the eye.
Final Notes
For whatever reason, the eye did not show up right from the pure UV editing, so I had to add the Mapping node to the node setup.
Here is the .blend file:

authors: Денис Головня


text:
Can I move the items that I have already copied in Array?
I would like to do some barrels and in the top more. I use Array.
My problem is that I can't move the last barrel on the top. How can I do it?

you might apply the array, so it becomes one large object, then separate object in edit mode press P loose parts, now you can re-position all separated objects.

I have tried some times but they are not separated plus I have more objects disorganise

make sure you are in mesh edit mode, pressing P will only work in mesh edit mode, it wont work in object mode. (its at the bottom of that panel a pull-down menu)

Thank you so much for your answer but it doesn't work. Maybe because I have an object with so many details. I put it everything together before. To be honest I don't know why it doesn't work. I have found another answer. Your help is appreciated.


text:
How to work with three point lighting system?
I try to use three point lighting system but I don't know how to put the free light -90 opposite from the first plane.

One method is to set the pivot center type to 3D Cursor, place the cursor wherever you like, select a plane, duplicate it (Shift+D) and rotate (R) along the Z axis by 90 degress (you may type a rotation value using your numerical keyboard).

The other method is using a Mirror Modifier. Choose the axis you want your plane to mirror and input the name of your illuminated object in a window under Mirror Object:. Then apply the modifier.

Go to Edit Mode, select all mirrored meshes (A), then press P-->Separate-->By Loose Parts to make them separate objects. Now select one of them, snap the cursor to the center of it (Shift+S-->Cursor to Selected). Enter the Object Mode and press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C-->Origin to 3D Cursor to place the origin point within. Repeat the same process with other planes.

You may now adjust the transformations of the planes changing the transformation orientation type to Normal (tap G, R or S twice to make it work).


text:
Do I have to download a model to create a human being?
This will be my first animation and I don't know what I have to do to create a human being.
I think I have to download a model. Can you tell me a secure and free website?  Do I have to create the bones, face, cloths after the model?  Can you tell me the steps that I have to follow to create an animation please?

I suggest learning to model your own. reliance on make-human or other software develops skills that give you model like this because your modeling skills will never improve. Being a self sustained modeler is fun and you can really gain valuable experience.

@VincentScalia do you know any good source of tutorials for human modelling? I've used google and they all seem to use models.

Start with basic modeling. Not just humans. If I get around to it later today, I can put a tut together.

It's always best to learn the long ways before taking the shortcuts. In your case, don't try to start by using something like MakeHuman. Learn to do it with traditional modeling first, and then look at the short cuts.
Some of the most common ways to model a human are Sculpting, Box modeling, and Poly modeling.
Sculpting is exactly that, sculpting. It's really good for organic modeling. Most of the time, when people use sculpting to model a character, they'll use dynamic topology which adds resolution to a mesh in the area that you're sculpting in. Sculpting usually requires a level of retopology, where the sculpted mesh is remodeled using the original as a guide to create a cleaner mesh.
Box modeling is probably the easiest to do. It usually works by starting with a cube and adding a mirror modifier on it so that only half of the model has to be modeled. You then start extruding portions of the cube to form different parts of the head and body. Box modeling also will usually require retopology, as the faces won't usually follow the forms of the mesh properly.
Polymodeling is probably the hardest out of all of the options, but is also the only one that doesn't require retopology. It works by manually extruding edges to form the different parts of the mesh. It's difficult because you're working on making the mesh form right, and getting the topology right at the same time.
Out of the three of those, I would most recommend Sculpting, because it's the most organic and creative way to work, and let's you completely forget about your topology.
Now, since you did want to know where you could go to get human characters, I'll recommend that you head over to Blendswap. The models are all free, and can be used under different licenses. You might even be able to find a decent one that is already rigged.

great minds think alike... Apparently ours do too.

@VincentScalia to an extent :)

Makehuman is indeed an excellent tool.
To answer the second part of your question, and complete the precedent answer, concerning animation, you can import the model into blender by activating the mxh import plugin https://thomasmakehuman.wordpress.com/mhx2-documentation/import-into-blender/
Then, you can import .bhv mocap datas founded on the net (a lot of free ressources are availables) :

mocap.web.fh-koeln.de/webgl-search.php

(I can't put more than 2 links on this site because of my reputation wich is still too low, but a google search will do the job)
You then need to add the addon called MakeWalk, wich you can find on the makehuman site (same pb with the url, but you can find it on the thomasmakehuman site already listed). This will allow you to load and retarget your downloaded bhv files.

You can use an open source software, MakeHuman for the starters. It can create customized, rigged human model, which can be imported into Blender.
http://www.makehuman.org/


text:
Is there a way to intensify the colours of an image?
I've added an image. Unfortunately, when I render the scene the image looks washed out.
Is there a way to intensify the colours of an image?
Many thanks,
Meri

Please specify Cycles or Blender Internal render engines. Adding that as a tag really helps us post relevant answers. I have posted a Cycles answer just in case that is what you want

Use the Hue/Saturation node. Increasing the Saturation will increase the color intensity.

Note that there are other factors that could be resulting in a washed out render. Also this is a Cycles specific answer.


text:
Cover the Curve Bezier with a Plane. It's impossible to duplicate it and R it
I did a Curve Bezier and I wrap with a Plane to make a ribbon.
When I try to copy it and rotate the ribbon(plane) is undone.
After the Curve Bezier. I did: Modifier / curve / object. Curve Bezier
In this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTVgyjh4Yro  7:25
it's possible to copy the ribbon.
Thanks a lot.

Alternative ways to make the ribbon.

To Duplicate it you should have both objects selected the Plane and the  Curve, but in order to make it successfully the active object when you dublicate should be the Curve.
Your problem is that you selected only the plane when duplicating

Hi @Meri :) Please consider that this is not a forum. If Igor solved your issue, you should accept the answer for future visitors. Also accepting is the best way to say "Thank you". Please see the tour: http://blender.stackexchange.com/tour.


text:
VSE sync audio beat to clip length
I like to make a video with a bunch of images and an underlying music track. Now I would like to sync the length of the images to the beat of the music. I know that there is a Bake Sound to F-Curve, but I have no idea how to use the data of that f-curve to an array of clips and influence the length of those clips.
I tried google search, but didn't found any solution for my problem. Maybe anyone has done something similar or has an idea. Thank you!

Maybe you'll find this useful: https://blenderartists.org/t/addon-audio-to-markers/639081

There is a option in N-panel in VSE editor "Draw waveform":

If you activate it blender will draw audio waveform on selected sound clip:

You can use it as a guide for trimming and moving video-clips

Thanks, but that would still involve that I manually move the lengths of the clips. I was hoping that there is a way where I could maybe map two thresholds to this wavedata and then everytime they switch a new clip is created. I hope you understand what I'm talking about :)

You could try these add-ons to do the beat detection in Audacity, export the labels and import them as markers into Blender(I haven't testet it): https://blenderartists.org/t/audacity-labels-to-timeline-markers-script/576619


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Rigging my First Model - How do I IK rig the legs?
This is my first character model I have made and am trying to rig. It is nothing complicated as I am trying to learn how to create and rig a character before trying to make things complicated. However, I can't figure out how to IK rig my character's leg. I have been following
this tutorial, but once I get to the Leg ik.L bone things start to mess up such as the bone separating or the whole leg twisting  to the right and left of the model very strangely. So, I decided to change the foot to a more simple style and I was hoping somebody would be able to help me IK rig the leg and foot.

Also, I plan on using the mirror modifier or tool to mirror the bones to the right side of the model.

You should attach your .blend file to show how have your rig twist or turn strangely. Use the link http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/


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Edged and plain faces?
So I've never done it but now that I see other models with it everywhere I wonder why? I included pictures because I'm bad at describing things. (This is also why I ask here, I don't know what terms I'd search for)
-Is it needed or recommended to use edged faces? If so, please explain what you'd use them for in modeling or animating.
Plain Face

Edged Face

Thank you.

See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/18853/when-are-tris-used-effectively, https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1684/what-is-the-technical-difference-between-an-ngon-and-a-bunch-of-tris?lq=1 and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/36270/how-can-tris-be-used-to-an-advantage. Could possibly be a dupe of one or two of those

Quads are not always necessary, but are usually preferred when deforming a mesh for animation &/OR Rigging. If you are creating a static model (eg. a sculpture of a statue, etc...) Then it can be acceptable to use Triangulated faces, as there is no reason to worry about the integrity of the deformations.
Notice the deformation smoothness when we bend a cylinder.

As for my version of face Definitions:
NGon technically a face with vertices > 3, but because we have names for 3 vert, and 4 vert faces, this is commonly reserved to describe a face >= 5.
Quad = 4 vertices.
Triangulated is just the primitive minimum for a face to exist, as the vertices that make it up = 3.
Two vertices make an edge with no area.
One is just a single point (Vertex).

Alright, so plain aka Quad faces for animated models and edged aka Triangulated faces for non-animated models. Thanks Rick Riggs! Edit: Also, thanks for the picture examples!


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Blender 3d view port rotation issue
I have a model under construction - this is ok but I've done something to the way it relates to other objects in the 3d view.
With just the model in the view all appears to be fine when I rotate the view in any direction.
If I add two new objects to the scene and rotate the view, the new objects move as expected in relation to each other but the model always appears to be in front of the other two objects - it never passes behind the other two objects.
If I duplicate the model, the two models behave as you would expect but both are always in front of the others in the scene.
I think I've set some parameter on the model but I can't see it!

Welcome to the site.This sounds like a pivot point issue. I'd suggest doing a search of Blender Stack Exchange using the search parameter "Pivot point", and review the questons and answers shown by the search.

It sounds like you've turned on x-ray for your object.

I spent hours yesterday playing with the pivot point - wasn't that. But it was x-ray!!!! thanks

It sounds like you've turned on X-Ray display mode for your object.  You can toggle X-Ray mode under the Object properties tab > Display Rollout.

X-Ray display draws the object in front of all other objects (which don't have X-Ray enabled).  It is most often useful for armatures to keep them from getting lost inside the meshes they control.


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Trying to do camera motion-track, python-error in clip.py
after a long pause with motion-tracking (did this in old 2.xx-versions), i wanted to use this with my better camera and better footage on a new blender 3.3.0.
The calculation works as it did before, i get an error of about 1.9 px, looks well.
But when i try to Setup the tracking scene, it leads to an error
Error: Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/blender/3.3/scripts/startup/bl_operators/clip.py", line 973, in execute
    self._setupCamera(context)
  File "/usr/share/blender/3.3/scripts/startup/bl_operators/clip.py", line 606, in _setupCamera
    cam.sensor_width = tracking.camera.sensor_width
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'sensor_width'

Any hints how i can get oround this error? I am using bleder on an arch-linux.
The file shows this:
def _setupCamera(context):
        sc = context.space_data
        clip = sc.clip
        tracking = clip.tracking

        camob = CLIP_OT_setup_tracking_scene._findOrCreateCamera(context)
        cam = camob.data

        # Remove all constraints to be sure motion is fine.
        camob.constraints.clear()

        # Append camera solver constraint.
        con = camob.constraints.new(type='CAMERA_SOLVER')
        con.use_active_clip = True
        con.influence = 1.0

        cam.sensor_width = tracking.camera.sensor_width
        cam.lens = tracking.camera.focal_length

Thanks for your hints
Hartmut

There have been some updates to blender in the near future.
I restarted the project once more, with the same footage, all was the same. And this time the building of the scene funtioned as expected.
So it seems to be an error that was erased by updates, or i did something different in the first try and made something wrong.
for me this case is closed. I will ad an other question dealing with shadow catchers, cause they are the thing now... :)


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Can Blender be an alternative to Zbrush?
Blender has nice sculpting tools. Dynamic topology, variety of brushes and texture paint make it really nice sculpting software. But can it be an alternative to Zbrush? Can I make good looking hi-poly models without lots of annoyance?
While I find many Blender tutorials about making characters, I didn't find any for 3D textures. For example - can I make something like this in Blender - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR12Ja51iRs ?
And is it possible to make an UV map for hi-poly model without loosing stability? I've tried make an UV to hi-poly rock - Blender has frozen and I had to close it.

It can, but it is of course not as good, or as easy as Z-Brush, since it is dedicated solely to sculpting. I am voting to close this as primarily opinion based. In future things like this should be put on BlenderArtists :)

An important note about stability is that all software can become unstable, I have ZBrush and over the years it has crashed plenty and horribly. The sane approach is to save often and save using sequential files names (memory is almost free these days), this applies to Blender and all software... If you want to avoid redoing stuff.


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GLSL Lightsaber (per vertex lighting)
Here's my script, which I activate in the game engine with a python controller, applied to a cylinder.
I managed to achieve a pretty good result by following the tutorial on
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GLSL_Programming/Blender/Silhouette_Enhancement
at least when the tube is vertical.
when I rotate it by ninety degrees, strange thing happen.
someone wanna give it a look?
To me, it looked like the best way to draw a lightsaber without billboards, though perhaps there are smartest ones.
import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

VertexShader = """

varying vec3 varyingNormalDirection;
varying vec3 varyingViewDirection;

void main()
{
    varyingNormalDirection = normalize(gl_NormalMatrix * gl_Normal);
    varyingViewDirection = normalize(gl_ModelViewMatrix * gl_Vertex);

    gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex;
}
"""

FragmentShader = """

varying vec3 varyingNormalDirection;
varying vec3 varyingViewDirection;

void main()
{
    // I project the two vectors on the plane y = 0
    vec2 normalDirection = normalize(varyingNormalDirection.xz);
    vec2 viewDirection = normalize(varyingViewDirection.xz);

    const vec4 color = vec4(1.0,1.0,1.0,0.3);

    //      opacity equals infinity when view and normal have an angle of 0,
    //      equals 0.001 when they have an angle of 90
    //      I also multiply for the dot product between view and normal
    //      which is 1 at center, 0 at edge, to increase the falloff
    float dotProduct = abs(dot(viewDirection, normalDirection));
    float opacity = min(1.0, dotProduct * 0.01 / (1.0 - dotProduct) );

    //      with opacity I'm also varying the color, from green to white
    gl_FragColor = vec4(1.*opacity,1.0,1.*opacity,opacity*2.);
}
"""

mesh = cont.owner.meshes[0]

for mat in mesh.materials:

shader = mat.getShader()

if shader != None:

    if not shader.isValid():

        shader.setSource(VertexShader, FragmentShader, 1)

        mat.setBlending(bge.logic.BL_SRC_ALPHA, bge.logic.BL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA);

i have tried that (I dont know GLSL ) but what it does is make the object green with a white reflection even if i rotate the object is this the desired result ?

The result should be http://images.buystarwarstoys.com/products/9288/1-1/ahsoka-tano-toy-lightsaber.jpg

sorry but is does not fade at the ends, also the white line is moving according to the view which shouldn't happen

can you get the local coordinates of the shading points ?

the local coordinates of each point are given by gl_Vertex, for each vertex


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How to "join" edges to one loop
I've tried different ways to join the two edge loops to make them into one.
The result I'm looking for is one complete loop that I can grap and slide.
In the current state I need to select both set of edges and slide them simultainously.
E.g. when starting Blender with default cube. If I insert an edge loop. I can press g twice and slide the edge as one. Looking at my example I need to connect the two set of edges into one so that I can press g twice and the slide the edges.
I've tried to fill between the verts. I've tried to bridge the edges and then delete the resulting faces. I've tried to extrude on vert and merge it with the snapped vert. None of it Works ?!?

Your topology seems to consist of a lot of tris and ngons. These are generally considered bad for ease of modeling, among other reasons. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/3607/599 and http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/89/599 for some more detail.

A set of edges must fulfill some prerequisites to work as an edge loop. To simplify: they all must be connected in a row, part of a surface, and surrounded by quads.


text:
Find submesh and replace with instances
I have a lot of meshes of different houses, each house is a single mesh, but parts of this single mesh has some repeating features, such as windows, doors, etc.
I am looking for a way to reduce the poly-count of the mesh, since this will be used in a (Unity) game.
Is there any simple way to select a single piece of the mesh (E.g. a window), separate this into another mesh, and let blender find similar shapes (may be rotated) in the original mesh and replace those with a linked duplicates?

AFAIK there is no real solution at the moment. In your case it probably makes sense to find a developer who can implement this idea in c++, because using unit_test_compare() is really slooowww. Another idea would be building a custom 'library Add-on' in order to instantly work with linked duplicates. Unfortunately I have no idea about unity. Just out of interest: How linked duplicates can help to reduce the polycount?

"How linked duplicates can help to reduce the polycount? " Yeah I thought the same initially then I made a quick test exporting to fbx and indeed there is a difference!

It doesn't necessarily reduce poly count, although it can have a big impact in scene optimization through memory usage if the particular task can take advantage of instancing (Cycles rendering does I believe), it can also have a positive impact in workflow modularity and amount of manual work required to do an edit. Blender viewport does have some trouble with large numbers of independent objects, so it can also have an adverse effect in viewport performance unfortunately.

you can write a script to separate every object into loose parts.
Then for every object do a unit_test_compare with the data of the other object if the result it's "Same" then make it a linked duplicate, but before copy the world matrix to not loose the position scaling and rotation and apply it to the newly linked duplicate
ie.
print(firstObj.data.unit_test_compare(secondObj.data))

will yield to the string "Same" if they are the same and "Number of verts don't match" for different objects
Let me know if this is not enough
edit : possible duplicate answer

While this will certainly not deal with different rotations or orientations automatically the closest thing I can think of without resorting to coding would be the following, assuming each window, door, or other feature is a separate entity from the rest of the house mesh (with no shared vertex or faces)

Enter edit mode on your mesh
Select a single face or edge from one of soon-to-be independent objects, like say one of your windows, that as a very distinct feature, like a particularly unique face area, a unique number of concurrent edges, a particular length, or a specific number of surrounding faces, specific to that type of window
This will allow you to use Shift + G to select similar and choose the particular feature that is unique among all windows
Adjust the threshold to a value low enough that will only select edges exclusively from sub-objects of the same type (windows in this example)
Now press Ctrl + L to select all linked so that Blender selects the whole windows
Now you have all windows selected and you can separate them from the main mesh using P > Selection
Exit edit mode and enter edit mode on your newly created all-windows mesh. If all windows are comprised of a single linked set of faces you can now use P again to separate all windows into their own object with the option By loose parts
Every window should now be an independent object, although still not sharing objectdata, so now exit edit mode, with all windows selected and press Shift + Ctrl + Alt + C and choose Origin to geometry
Still with all windows selected (make sure one of them is the active object) now press Ctrl + L Make Links > Object Data
Your windows should now be all correctly placed and sharing object data, although rotations will still be messed up

If these are regular orthogonal buildings manually rotating them back into place should not be too laborious, as they will likely fall into either 90 -90 or 180 rotations but will still require some manual labor.
If someone smarter than me can come up with a way to solve this last part without manual work I would love to hear it.
For whole buildings, if they are all equal or share a few different designs that repeat you could separately build a few groups comprised of several repeating parts (windows, doors, etc) and use group instances to replace whole buildings making a more modular approach, though I can think of no technique to correctly place them in the scene.

If you could go thru similar steps for the flat bottom face of each house, and iterate through them, you could set view to selected (Shift+Ctrl+Numpad 7), change your coordinate system from global to view, and add an empty at that location, then you could switch back to global, and do a rotation delta to figure out how you need to rotate. If you can merge this answer with this comment into a script it sounds pretty powerful.


text:
Rotate view around Y-axis
I'd like to be able to rotate my VIEW (not my model, not my camera either) around the Y-axis. This would allow me to select some vertices using a box selection. I fear it cannot be done, but I hope some one proves me wrong.
My research so far is little promising:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-981266.html
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_HotKeys/3D_View/Object_Mode
Q: How to rotate my view around the Y-axis?

Does this help? http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15049/how-to-roll-the-viewport It's hard to tell from your question what you mean as you don't state which axis you are currently facing.

Indeed, it does help! I used the word 'rotate' instead of 'roll' to search this forum, so I didn't find the post.
I try to rotate the viewport around the global Y-axis. The answer is to use (on Mac, at least) CTRL + SHIFT + SCROLLWHEEL.

Appearently, I created a duplicate of: How to roll the viewport?
For a quick answer:
use CTRL + SHIFT + SCROLLWHEEL.
Thanks to  @Ray Mairlot

You don't need to worry about answering this, I have marked the question as a duplicate and if you/others agree it will be closed and the duplicate will be linked to.

these are the shortcuts for view orbit :
Ctrl+Alt+MMB  rotate view around global Z axis
Shift+Alt+MMB rotate the view around the view horizontal axis
for your case :

press 3 to get in Right view
Shift+Alt+MMB to rotate around the y axis

I'm sorry, those combination do not give the right result. They work the same as when I would press 8 & 2  or    4  &  6    on the numpad.


text:
Put complex shape flat on the table
I have a complex (i.e. irregular, concave) shape obtained by photogrammetry. Now, I'd like to put it flat on a table. How to achieve this? (It ridiculously balances one point now. )

Is there a smart way (method, heuristic, approach) of manipulating it using Blenders' transform tools?
Can it be done using physics?

(I tried using physics. It works when I choose a 'box' for collision bounds, but when I choose 'triangle mesh', it wobbles on the table and then falls throug :D )

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/22888/599 and http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/5213/599

Thanks! The second link is indeed a more complicated version of my problem.    The first one lacks the rotation of the object: the cilinder mentioned already has its axis paralel to the XY plane.

In my answer to the first question I mentioned the drop to ground addon, which takes some rotation into account. Transform snapping can also auto-rotate objects, but likely not the way you want.. You might want to try convex hull if you haven't already. Triangle mesh is pretty unstable, but you might be able to get it to work by increase the number of iterations

Thanks. With help of both your comments, I fixed it. If you'd like, post them as an answer, so I can mark it as 'the' answer.

Looks like you beat me to it ;)

Credit where credit is due, I'll remove my answer  : )

For simple situations you can probably get away with snapping or the drop to ground addon.
For more complex situations, rigid body physics can be used:

You can probably use the convex hull collision shape (also see unexpected reactions in a quiet simple rigidbody physics simulation), but if you need concave collisions then you'll have to use the Mesh collision shape.
The mesh collision shape can be quite unstable, mesh to mesh collisions in particular.
One way to mitigate this is by increase the number of simulation steps in Properties > Scene > Rigid Body World:

But this doesn't always work completely. If you need to use the mesh collision shape, try to have it collide with a non-mesh shape if possible.
Also see Tips for making Mesh Rigid-body collision shapes more stable

The second comment by gandalf3 lead me to the correct answer: the Blender Game engine isn't needed anymore. I was put on the wrong track by the dominos example on the Blender wiki page (http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Tutorials/Physics/Rigid_Bodies). Using 'enable physics' in the properties --> physics using Blender Render, I was able to drop the thing on the floor using the convex hull.

Yes, the wiki is old and mostly outdated. The new (still a work in progress) docs are here.


text:
Collapsed faces on subsurface
On subsurface I'm getting unexpected result like on

but I would like to receive result with smooth surface (not collapsed faces)
What could be wrong in my model ?

do they meet at one point

This happens around non-quads (faces that don't have exactly 4 vertices). The solution is to add supporting geometry so that the curved surface is surrounded with quads and the tris/ngons are on flat surfaces surrounded by more quads.

@Chebhou yes, they meet at one point. I will check it later, thx for support,

@gandalf3 ok, I will try to fix it, thx

@gandalf3 Chebhou (I can only ping one of you :O) do either of you want to answer this so we can take it off the list?


text:
Duplicate while transforming object
I'm looking for option for duplicate object, while moving. It works that way, that I grab the move arrow, or rotate, but instead of changing original object's position, it duplicates in new position I choose. I'm not talking about ctrl + D.
It's something like here: https://youtu.be/zzVoZ5WygW4?t=1m14s - user holds shift key and moves object to duplicate it. Is something like it in Blender?

Did you try Alt+D?

in edit mode select_all then Ctrl+left_click anywhere  and separate at the end, also try duplication options  by frames, vertices ,faces ..


text:
how to fix parts of model not being rendered in texture mode
can someone tell me how to fix the hands and the back of the neck to be rendered like everything else?

Looks like UV issue mate, send please the .blend file.

I actually somehow fixed it. idk what the hell i did though. but here is the blend file of the working one. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dICnhzT3DlVPhWbXxHEduhawurs8eZCO

So good U make it working. Btw U upload the scene without textures so I could see NOTHING ;)

glad everything's working out.

oh sorry jan :P ya i am still learning


text:
i don't know how to make smoke particles in blender render
I'm trying to create an object that emits red smoke from it and i can't find a way to create colored smoke(or ANY smoke). I'm new to this so I don't know how to use Blender too well, can someone please help me? also I'm sorry if the tags are wrong or something (I'm new to this site too).

You can use the Blender Smoke renderer link OR set up a particule system that will emit planes that are textured for that purpose (clouds texture in color/alpha channels plus multiply a circular blend in alpha factor)

Related - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5951/can-i-influence-the-direction-in-which-fire-and-smoke-dissolve. Find some tutorials about smoke setup in Blender like this for beginning. You can create particle system which will control emitting smoke or emit smoke directly from mesh.

You click on the header bar then click on object(note: object, not object mode). Go to quick effects then quick smoke

Welcome to the site :) Your answer is being flagged as low-quality. Is it possible you could elaborate a bit? Perhaps add a screenshot?


text:
Should i buy a better CPU or GPU?
i'm going to buy a new system mainly for blender, and i'd like to know should i spend more money on the GPU or the CPU?
the current 2 setups would be:
i7-5820k (6 cores) + 2*GTX980  (double monitor)
or
i7-6700k (4 cores) + 2*GTX980Ti  (single monitor)
I'm moving from a AMD laptop, so i don't have much experience in which usage is more common

when you will be rendering your scenes, it will be either GPU or CPU, you don't need two ultra hardware, CPU allows more Ram usage but two GPUs can hold up if they own enough memory. The risk with gpu is to run out of memory during heavy renders while the advantage is to be faster

My CPU is out performing my GPU by a factor of about 3 - 1 for a particular rendering example (cycles render - high poly - hair particles). That's a 12 core i77800x vs NVIDIA ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 TI OC.

Depends a lot on what kind of work you do.
If you use Cycles render engine GPUs are generally faster at rendering, but as stated their biggest limitation is memory and feature availability. Some features can't still be rendered in the GPU and complex scenes can exceed available memory.
If you do a lot of physics simulations, cloths, particles, or animation, you are going to need a good CPU, and for very big or complex scenes that won't fit your available graphics memory you are also going to fall back to CPU for rendering anyway, so go with a beefier CPU option as it can be more versatile.
Personally I would go with better GPU option though, I own a GTX 580+980ti and they are great for rendering. Memory is big enough even for relatively complex scenes these days, and the speed is better than CPU rendering. Also even a mid-range CPU these days can handle most use cases at a reasonably acceptable speeds.
Good GPUs will also help in viewpoint performance and quality, and can additionally be used for gaming, if you are into that sort of thing.


text:
Select normals pointing in a certain direction
A collegue has modelled, in Rhino, a small transparent plastic bottle (the type commonly seen holding small amounts of cosmetics etc.) with an embossed logo on the wall of the bottle.
The mesh is pretty evenly divided until it gets to the embossed logo where the mesh gets very, very dense due to the bevels. It's imported into Blender as an .obj file.
For the most part, the normals all face out as should be the case, but around the embossed area the normal direction becomes random - some face out, others face into the bottle mesh making glass rendering impossible.
I've tried just about all the normal management functions (there aren't many) but it literally comes down to me having to individually select the reversed faces and and then flipping the normals. This is not a practical solution.
I'm wondering if anyone might be able to write a script for me, that would work something like this: 1) Import my mesh, set its base at 0:0:0. 2) Place an empty at the bottle's centre of mass, so-to-speak. 3) Run script, in Edit Mode, that selects all the normals on the bottle mesh that point towards the empty's z-axis.
Surely then I could simply click on flip direction and solve this issue?
Feedback is welcome!
Thanks
Jacques

Does Making Normals Consistent operator  help ? See http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/12165/how-to-make-all-faces-flip-to-the-right-consistent-direction

Hi Mr Zak, I have, but it doesn't do the job. My suspicion is that the import from Rhino messes with the normal direction so Blender has no way of knowing what direstion is consistent. Thanks.

In most cases Make Normals Consistent (Ctrl+N) operator should help, see  Why are some faces in my mesh darker?. With all selected run it and it should make all normals pointing the right direction.
However there are some cases when this won't work, i.e. it will consistently flip normals instead of making them pointing one direction. Probably there isn't yet solution exactly for every case like that, still you can use Non Contiguous option of Select Non-Manifold operator:

Non Contiguous
      Selects edges that belong to exactly 2 faces with opposite normals.

link to manual
Execute it in Vertex or Edge Selection mode; it will select all edges which form problem faces, however depending on complexity of model selection won't form faces which you'd like to recalculate. You may want to run operator several times to feed all the faces to operator.

Thanks for that, looks interesting. Will give it a go tomorrow morning and report back.

you can select face with certain normal's direction (say, outside); then "Select -> Select Similar -> Normal". And flip selected normals!

It's worth pointing out that the Select Similar/Normal provides a Threshold setting that can be adjusted to indicate how 'similar' the normal should be to be selected.

If the bevels are clean (I mean no triangles), what about selecting the two adjacent edge loops, delete faces only, and then bridge edge loops?
Also I experienced similar issues with double faces not made of the same double vertexes (so remove doubles did not help), maybe check if it is the case at first.


text:
Generate a Random Value between Two Limits
How do you generate a random value from between two values of my choosing? So, for example, I want to generate random evenly distributed values from between, say -.5 and 7? what is the node setup to achieve this?
Thanks
JK

You mean "random" for each object? Using the Object info node and some math or "random" through the same object (ex: per face, per vertex..)?

So you mean "random"... what? What kind of node editor are you interested in? Could you make an example of usage of this random value?

Duarte Farrajota Ramos came up with a better suggestion with the Object Info > Random value.  Then you just run it into a standard linear interpolation function t*(a-b)+b.  If you're feeding in random numbers 0..1 it does not matter whether a<b or a>b.  You still get a value in the range a..b.

The extra nodes at the bottom with the vector coordinate going into the noise texture will give you a solid color, but it will be identical on all objects that use that material.

http://imgur.com/b8mputo

Hi Mutant Bob - thanks - not quite right - can you see my imgur above? the material is then noisy. it should be a solid colour randomly chosen from within the wavelength limits - side question: shouldn't you subtract the small number from the large one?

@JKCapeTown Adding a Normal node connected to the Vector input of the noise texture will make the color solid.

Use the same node setup, instead of a Noise texture as input use the Random socket of a Object Info node


text:
Increase size of column width in save dialogue short list view
our filename conventions are rather long and i can't see and/or edit them in the Blender save dialogue short (or long) list view.
Is there a way to make the columns wider?
Thanks
JK

Set the file display size to Large.

If you still can't read the labels, you will have to decrease the font size in the User Preferences.
Ctrl+Alt+U opens the User Preferences. Then go to the Themes rider and change the Points value under Widget Label: Kerning Style.

Right clicking on a folder/file item will display its name in the File Name box of the File Browser.

Thank you. The 'Large' button does exactly what I needed.

authors: 02 ทวี แถวอุทุม


text:
What is Blender's maximum render size?
What is Blender's maximum render (not scene) size? Like in either MegaPixels or a pixel length x width dimension. On my side it seems to be locked at 22000 pixels. Using the Cycles render engine to render TIFFs.
Thanks
JK

Just for me to know - for what type of practice do you need images in that size? As HDR Background? or for printing purposes? I did renders for printing in 7000x5000 px until now.

I personally rendered ~ 30x10k for film work. The task was to render with resolution enought to do close up shot.

The maximum render size is computer dependent, and therefore also scene dependent. In Cycles, it is further constrained by GPU RAM if you are using GPU rendering; my experience is that my Titan X is fast, but easy to overwhelm. Note that having multiple GPU cards makes rendering faster, but each card must still be able to get the image into GPU RAM (as I understand it based on StackExchange info).
We sometimes render images bigger than 30K in one or both dimensions. The easiest way to do so is certainly to send off your image to a farm that supports tiling. Your images will be broken into segments and rendered individually, then recomposited. Depending upon the farm, some features (compositor, render border) may be disabled, and this approach is less useful with some global illumination schemes.
I suspect a python ninja could create a plug-in to do this, allowing the same approach on your desktop... although another advantage of a farm is that you do not have to sit through a 1.5 billion pixel render.
FYI: http://archive.vcstar.com/news/special/outdoors/lookout-tower-gives-glimpse-underwater-as-channel-islands-park-turns-35-ep-972578364-348067821.html
That is one of two wall images, each more than 50 feet tall. Done in Blender (although in multiple scene files).

https://kevinlorengel.gumroad.com/l/SuperResRender - this add-on does exactly the same! It is free!
Huge thanks to Kevin Lorengel

The maximum rendered image size will depend on how much RAM you have, with the scene size adding to the RAM needed.
Up to v2.66 you can enter a resolution up to a maximum size of 10,000 in both directions and from v2.67 that increased to 65,536 and you can then multiply that with a scale up to 32,767% which leads to a maximum of 21,474,181 in either direction (or 3,270,000 before 2.67).
Given a resolution of 65536x65536x100% blender allocates 98G. While it tries to start rendering I don't have enough RAM for it to get far in any reasonable amount of time.

I don't think it is locked to 22000. I have personally rendered image 43000 + pixels in one dimension.
Biggest picture i rendered was around 30000x10000. All those was in multi layer EXR and .png
The bigger problem i found is saving those images. Blender crashed on me when i saved images this large. I have to render it in parts and compose whole image after.

I just tested this, and with an empty scene and a 20K*10K render, Blender memory usage goes from 800MB to >9GB when saving to PNG with default settings. Everything was locked until paging ended.

And imagine you saving a multi layer EXR with channels for depth, diffuse, glossy, etc. I lost quite alot of time before i rendered all the stuff by parts using render regions. It was not possible to save the whole image, Blender rendered it, but was not able to save it after. And it was on machine with 32 cores and 64+ GIG's or RAM.


text:
Automatic mesh fill generation as two edges bend away from each other
While animating two cube primatives bending away from each other I'd like Blender to fill in the gap with a neat curved mesh? Is this possible?
Hopefully the images convey better what I'm trying to achieve:

and so on...
Thoughts?
Thanks
Jacques


text:
PBR painting directly
Is it possible to use Blender to paint PBR textures?
I mean painting like in specialized programms, where you paint with a setup material over normal map, metallness, roughness and color simultaneously, defining surface look and feel with single stroke.

Yes,Thise is possible using a new branch under developing right now (Not officially).
All you have to do is to create images in the image editor and use them in your nodetree,and you can paint in the viewport of in the image editor.
You can see PBR painting at the end of this video
And you can download the branch from here.
Edit for the question in the comments:
Yes you can in the viewport painting,just check cavity mask and edit the curve to get what you need,
But I love doing it procedurally using nodes and pointiness feature.

wow! can you also tell if this brush supports features like painting only in cavities or edges?

@curlybrace I edited the answer.


text:
how to simulate 3dmax cellular map for displace like in video?
found a very cool way to make nice rocks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0XQVS1qxZI
here a guy uses 3dmax with displacement with cellular map.
tried using voronoi in such a way, but i get wrong results. don't know what am i doing wrong here.

Please advice how to achieve this:

is it even possible to do in blender?

It sure is possible. I made a similar rock in a few minutes. You can check my settings from the image.

You can do this with one displacement map but for some reason I got better results with two. Put them underneath a subdivision surface modifier, and the displacement modifiers should have their strength reduced to the same number (.3-.5). The realism of the rocks comes from playing with the voronoi texture settings: size, and distance metric were most important. I found distance squared worked best. Also the color ramp can help level off any circular spots in the texture.
Hope that helps. Good luck!

thank you! i understood my mistake! i was making the rock from already subdivided icosphere! and this method need low-res icosphere (howhere in video it seems to me that he uses a very smooth one)

My pleasure. Glad you figured it out!


text:
Why when I try to add a point to the curve bezier I duplicate it
When I try to add a point to the curve bezier ( by selecting one of the two endpoints, then holding Ctrl and clicking LMB). Sometimes Blender add a point other times Blender duplicate the same point. The photo shows the duplicate point by selecting one of the two endpoints then holding Ctrl and cliking LMB. Why?

Consider

You may be unintentionally creating a new disconnected subcurve of the entire curve object.  This happens when the active vertex is not an endpoint of the curve.  Curve objects can have many disconnected subcurves. Flexibility and Complexity.
First select an end point of the curve.  Next control-click  the location  where you want the new point to be. The new point can be moved immediately after.
Optionally Click two points and subdivide to add a new point if that suits your needs better.  The new point will be in the current curve.  Subdivide is on the menu or keystroke w.

Yes, there is new point but without line, I mean when I change to object mode doesn't appear.

Yes, there is new point but without a line joining the selected vertex of the curve, I mean when I change to object mode the new point doesn't appear.


text:
half animal has a mirror. Can I move the tail from one side to the other?
I have modeled with a mirror. Now I want to do the tail. The tail has to move from one side to the other but I can't because half animal has a mirror.
When I try to move the tail from one side to the other, this is the result.
Is it possible?  Can I take off the mirror just in the tail?

Is this for an animation? Also, this is happening because of Clipping is checked, means once vertexes connect to another one, they will stay together until clipping is unchecked.

Thanks @Luka ash  for your answer. I am leaning to modeling  before animation. I will do it like you said. Thanks

Thanks @Mr. Zak for your answer. I will folow your instructions. Thanks

@Mr Zak.  I did it but when I cliked mirror again half of the tail appaer, I mean I don't want to have two tails. How can I do it?

@Luka ash. when I diconnect Clipping two tails appear. I want to do a circle with one tail. How can I do it? Thanks

Provided that this is Mirror modifier it will mirror every part of the mesh. If you'd like to position part of that object somehow you need to do that after modeling and applying Mirror in order to have all parts of mesh accessible for independent editing.

Try selecting the tail in edit mode, hit P with the faces selected then go into object mode, select the tail and apply the mirror modifier, then back into edit mode and you should be good to go, if that's what "Can I take off the mirror just in the tail?" means.

If you're trying to create a pose for the animal (where the tail is not in the center) this should be done in Pose Mode after you've rigged it.

Another alternative is to keep the mesh symmetric with the tail in the center, and then add an Armature with bones to control the tail and then pose the armature to make the tail off-center.
The order of the modifiers (mirror and armature) are probably important.
Edit:  is a .blend file illustrating the technique and proving that it is possible to pose a mirrored mesh without applying the mirror modifier (leaving it as a modifier).


text:
Loop cutting parts of an object instead of the whole object in Edit Mode
I have the below objects in two different versions of a blender file I'm working on. However when I click loop cut in Edit Mode with nothing selected, in one version (left image) I can cut the object as a whole. In the other (right image), it allows me only to cut parts of the object. I'm not sure why.

I read one post that indicates I can only use loop cut when an object has four faces, however mine has the ribbon in the middle and on the left version cuts fine.
Can someone explain why this is the case? Sometimes loop cut allows me to cut an object in half all the way around and sometimes not.

did you remove the doubles in the second picture? W-->remove doubles in edit mode

Yes, I did it.  I have to tell you when I extrude to make the ribbon I used E and S.


text:
Can I make details with Metaball?
I try to model a mouse with metaball. I don't know if it is the best tool for modeling.
The structure is too solid. Can I make details? I don't know how to make the fingers.
Thanks a lot!

Hi, you can always convert meta to mesh (ALT + C), after getting a good overall shape... and then, add details in other ways.

If the mouse is supposed to be an embossed ornament, you can finish up using the sculpt tools. If this will be a character to be viewed from multiple angles it may be easier to start over with a quad mesh - or shrinkwrap a quad mesh over the sculpt. If this mouse will need to be animated or put in other poses, it would be best to create a symmetrical model that looks how you imagine the mouse would look if viewed straight-on, and then rig/pose it. So depending on your end goal, the best approach may vary.


text:
How can I activate Shape in Tree tool?
It seems that Shape option is not activate. How can I activate it?

Many thanks

I think ur using older version

I highly recommend using an improved version of Sapling that can be download from GitHub:
https://github.com/abpy/improved-sapling-tree-generator/archive/master.zip
Also, you can find this manual and presets useful too:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?395082-Blender-Sapling-Tree-Tutorial-%2528free-download%2529

Thank you Jan. Please can you tell me how download it?

I tried the link that you sent me but I don't have any idea how to do it. Sorry. Can you help me?

Download the zip and copy the folder "add_curve_sapling_3" into your Blender addons folder. If you use Windows it is located in C:/Users/your-username/AppData/Roaming/Blender Foundation/Blender/2.78/scripts/addons
Then you need to activate the addon in the Blender, it's name is "Sapling_3". Also disable the old Sapling addon.

I have Mac. How to open add_curve_sapling_3 in Blender? Many thanks

Ok. I did it. Many but many thanks. Have a good evening.

Does this improved Sapling work for you? Is that Shape option enabled? I am glad I could help you! Good evening for you too :)

Sorry, it is not working. I have the same problem as before. Why? I diablee the old Sapling addon.

So you select Add -> Curve -> Add Tree 3.1 and you don't have the Shape select enabled?

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


text:
MakeHuman is destorting my MakeClothes clothing (Blender)
I'm trying to make clothes in Blender with MakeClothes.
I've added the model "Female Average With Help". I've selected tights as the object to change and have scaled it up. All I wish to export is the top.

When I press "Make clothes" it doesn't wrap around the model correctly...

I don't understand the warning I get in the image above. I don't think it has anything to do with the problem though...
Anyway I go to MakeHuman. I can import my top but as you can see, it has problems. Make human has added additional geometry to the model.

I follow this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eskfzfU4NsI

Have you solved the problem? We have made many clothes without problem but with the last Makeclothes and Makehuman (1.1.0) we start to have the same triangle distortion like you have. :/


text:
Strange subdivision in Multires modifier
I want to create simple character in Blender using Sculpt. When I add Multiresolution modifier on object and click Subdivide, it will generate unsymmetric figure.
How it looks before subdivision:

How it looks after subdivision:

I've solved it. I had several redundant vertexes on the right "arm". I've removed them and it works fine.


text:
texture not seem to show up in texture shading mode
I added image texture to a material, uv unwrapped it and choose texture shading mode but it still not show up a texture in a viewport. Any thoughts on why is it happening?

the surface of the chest needs to be shown textured.By the way Im using old computer, - can it be a hardware problem?

You can read about the texture draw type in the 3D viewport here. It may be easier to check whether it's hardware problem by inspecting your file (or part of it, downloaded here). If it works fine, then this will be the answer

 here's the blend file

If anyone finds out that on his computer it works fine, please, write a couple lines here

@Mr Zak also it gets black in material shading mode

Your setup works fine, so I think the problem is not in your file. Did you have such problems before? What video card do you have?


text:
Can an add-on be automatically installed and enabled?
I am developing a program that will include a custom importer and exporter for blender.
I would like the installer for my program to be able to automatically install and enable the import/export python scripts.  Here are the steps I think I need to do:

Find the blender add-on directory.  My program is windows-only, so I presume this will just be in %appdata%\Blender Foundation
Copy my add-on files to a subdirectory of the add-on directory
Enable the plugin in blender
Save the user preferences so that the plugin stays enabled after a restart.

I can work out 1, and 2 is easy, but I'm not sure that 3 and 4 are even possible without using the UI.  Is it possible to do them programmatically, perhaps via a python script that I launch with blender?

Part 1. Your user script paths.
Type bpy.utils.script_paths( and press tab which returns
script_paths(*, subdir=None, user_pref=True, check_all=False, use_user=True)
Returns a list of valid script paths.
:arg subdir: Optional subdir.
:type subdir: string
:arg user_pref: Include the user preference script path.
:type user_pref: bool
:arg check_all: Include local, user and system paths rather just the paths
   blender uses.
:type check_all: bool
:return: script paths.
:rtype: list

script_path_user()` returns the env var and falls back to home dir or None. For example –
>>> bpy.utils.script_path_user()
'/home/batfinger/.config/blender/2.76/scripts'

And the addons paths
>>> bpy.utils.script_paths(subdir='addons')
['/home/batfinger/src/BlenderGIT/qtcreator_build/bin/2.76/scripts/addons',
 '/home/batfinger/.config/blender/2.76/scripts/addons',
 '/home/batfinger/src/Blend4Web-master/blender_scripts/addons']

Part 3.
Look in scripts/modules/addon_utils.py
from the console
>>> from addon_utils import enable
>>> enable(
enable(module_name, default_set=False, persistent=False, handle_error=None)
Enables an addon by name.
:arg module_name: The name of the addon and module.
:type module_name: string
:return: the loaded module or None on failure.
:rtype: module

To enable my sound drivers addon for instance
enable("sound_drivers")

Check out the source, there are other handy addon utils in there.
and for part 4, there's the operator to save user prefs.
 bpy.ops.wm.save_userpref()

Thanks for the timely answer, it pretty much solved all my issues.  I'd upvote it, but my reputation is apparently too low.

@mushin That is ok, you will soon have enough rep. For now you did your part in accepting his answer. Welcome to BSE.


text:
How to move a model with all the bones?
When I try to move my model with all the bones I can't.
I'm going to Object Mode and I select everything and then I'm going to Edit Mode and I try to move the model with the arrows but I can't.

Does someone know the answer?
Thanks so much.

move them in "pose mode", since you only want to move the whole body, you just need to move the bottom bone (the one of circle shape with 4 arrow out of it) in pose mode.
I recommend you watching some tutorials, this is a very basic question.

Thank you. I'm there. I can't find the tutorials for my version and from one version to another the options are different. My version is 2.74.

I'll find the way to move the whole body. Thank you


text:
Shrink MakeHuman model
I have two MakeHuman models in the same blend. I'm trying to make the second MakeHuman model small but I can't.
I made the first MakeHuman model small. I did it with the "Scale" command. I didn't have any problem.
I try to do the same with the second MakeHuman model but it doesn't work.

I use the keys but nothing seems to have happened.

On the same screen  I have another object, the shoes.
What possible issue could stop a model from scaling when the option is applied to it?

One thing I can think of is if you linked the second model. It doens't look that way. Anyway, it is a guessing game and you should probably attach your blend file for us to look at.

@Gunslinger thanks for your comment but I don't understand it.

Also, make sure to scale the parent armature, not the human mesh. I might be misinterpreting what I'm seeing and that floating armature seen at the back really belongs to a third character that is hidden behind that plane but it looks to me like the armature has a different scale ans transformations than the mesh it's supposed to control....

authors: Ігор Спасівський


text:
How can I enlarge selection without numpad?
The  command Crtl+Numpad + makes the selection larger by adding loops to the selection.
The example of mesh:

I want to select 3 loops more. At the moment I do it with Circle Select tool via C but I want to do it faster.
Here is the desired selection:

Related - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/45911/emulate-non-number-numpad-keys and http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/124/how-to-emulate-a-number-pad-and-3-button-mouse

Why don't you make a Vertex Group and add those verts to it so you can quickly select them again later without using any selection tools?

Actually, [Crtl]+[Numpad +] is quite fast (and intuitive) to do... what would be your preferred command? As Mr Zak commented above, you can customize commands, the only problem being is: there are already so many command shortcuts... it's crowded. Also could pie menus be another way?

Just press ctrl and numpad + three times. :)

I don't have numpad. I have found other commands. Thank you anyway!

Okay, sorry. I didn't realize that in the title you asked how without a numpad. I was just thinking of the end of your question where you were wondering a fast way. I'm glad you got it. :)


text:
Rotation, move objects are not working in OS X 10.10
I started working on blender in mac OS X 10.10, none of keyboard keys like G for move , R for rotation are not working as the way expected. I have added emulate 3key mouse also but didn't get any response from blender screen.
How to troubleshoot  keyboard shortcuts, mouse settings work for blender in mac
OS X ?

are other shortcuts working fine ? are you using the default "Blender " keys layout

have you tried setting keys configuration to default, or possibly deleting blender and installing it again?

I am using default blender keys layout only, but shortcuts not working in blender.

Enabled Emulate 3 mouse button its working fine now.
Hold MMB for rotate
Hold Shift+MMB for pan
Mouse scroll up/down for zoom
Right click to select object
Left click to complete the selection and process.
ESC key or press again to undo the changes happen in the selection process.


text:
extrude shape from sphere
I wanted model a robot for nothing else than improving my blender skills. I've started with an image I found online but have hit a hurdle early on. I started with a sphere to get the main head shape but have not found a good way to extrude the detail shown by the red arrows.

Apart from extruding I also tried modelling the detail as a separate piece of geo with snapping to faces turned on. I almost got what I wanted but the results were not great - I am sure there is a simpler way.
What would you recommend ?
Thanks
rob

Could you please tell me why Snap to Face isn't working for you very well? Could you post example of it? I'm doing it this way and everything works ok.

One option would be to make a mesh that from the front has the profile you want, but is a prism/cylinder with flat ends; then do a boolean intersect with a sphere of slightly larger radius.  Then you can union that with the rest of the robot head.
Once you are confident you will not longer have to adjust the geometry of any of the elements of the boolean you can apply the modifiers to create a final mesh.  or not.
Also, you probably want to use a UVsphere with the poles on the sides where the ears are.

If the fact that the sides of the "face" are coplanar to the YZ plane is a problem, an alternate technique would be to discard all but the outer face polygon and then extrude/scale relative to the origin to give it conical sides.  (this way the rim polygons would be perpendicular to the sphere's surface instead of perpendicular to the X axis).


text:
Get index of the polygon that a particular tessface belongs to
I can do this to print the indices of all the (tessellated) triangles in a mesh:
ob = bpy.context.active_object
me = ob.data
me.calc_tessface()
for f in me.tessfaces:
    print(f.index)

Also, if I want the indices of all the polygons, I could do:
for f in me.polygons:
    print(f.index)

However, is there a way to figure out which polygon does a triangle belongs to? Alternatively, is it possible to iterate over all the tessfaces belonging to a polygon?


text:
Blender console formatted printing: Is there a maximum length?
With the default cube mesh and Blender 2.77, if I run this code in console:
for f in bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].polygons:
    for v in f.vertices:
        print("%f %f %f" % bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[:])
        print("%f %f %f" % f.normal[:])
    print("\n")

I get the following output (truncated for brevity):
-1.000000 -1.000000 1.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
-1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
-1.000000 1.000000 -1.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
-1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 0.000000

-1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
0.000000 1.000000 -0.000000
...

However, with this:
for f in bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].polygons:
    for v in f.vertices:
        print("%f %f %f %f %f %f\n" % bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[:], f.normal[:])
    print("\n")

or even this:
for f in bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].polygons:
    for v in f.vertices:
        print("%f %f %f %f %f %f" % bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[0], py.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[1], py.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[2], f.normal[0], f.normal[1], f.normal[2])
    print("\n")

I get the error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 3, in <module>
TypeError: not enough arguments for format string

Why can I print 3 floats easily but printing 6 floats doesn't work? Is Python's formatted printing different that C's (in this respect)? Or is it something Blender specific? Is there a maximum limit on how many 'arguments' the format string can take?

print( "%f, %f" % (1, 2) ) , more information here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15286401/print-multiple-arguments-in-python

@lemon Putting all the floats in a list works for program 3, but it is tedious to type. Is there any way to make it work for program 2 (with two separate lists)?

Have a look here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/455612/limiting-floats-to-two-decimal-points and combine format function as you need

@lemon Uh, that was not my problem. Anyways, it is solved now. Thanks

You can also change the end character of print from its default "\n" (carriage return) with print(str, end=",") for example.  Something like cube = bpy.data.meshes.get("Cube") and for v in cube.vertices: would make the code a whole lot more readable... and also I vote to close this q as it is not really about blender python or the console, rather a syntax error.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is primarily about python.

In python the string formatting operation ('%') accepts a single argument and in your first (working) example that's exactly what you've got as it's a single element with 3 components. in your other (not working) examples you're trying to pass multiple values to '%', each containing 3 values. Your solution is to simply combine them into a single tuple by appending them with the '+' operator :

for f in bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].polygons:
    for v in f.vertices:
        print("%f %f %f %f %f %f\n" % (bpy.data.meshes['Cube'].vertices[v].co[:] + f.normal[:]))
    print("\n")

This doesn't work directly (same error), but putting a parenthesis around the entire second argument (list1 + list2) makes it work. I can't edit it because SE wants me to edit more that 6 characters


text:
Custom exporter does not preserve scaling
I am using the following exporter:
mesh = bpy.data.meshes['Plane']
for f in mesh.polygons:
    for v in f.vertices:
        print("%f %f %f %f %f %f" % (mesh.vertices[v].co[0], mesh.vertices[v].co[2], mesh.vertices[v].co[1], f.normal[0], f.normal[2], f.normal[1]))
    print("\n")

The 'Plane' mesh is the default plane that appears with SHIFT+A -> Mesh -> Plane after scaling it by 20 and dividing it in triangles. When I run the above script, the output is:
1.000000 0.000000 -1.000000 -0.000000 1.000000 0.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 1.000000 -0.000000 1.000000 0.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 -1.000000 -0.000000 1.000000 0.000000

1.000000 0.000000 -1.000000 -0.000000 1.000000 0.000000
1.000000 0.000000 1.000000 -0.000000 1.000000 0.000000
-1.000000 0.000000 1.000000 -0.000000 1.000000 0.000000

As you can see, the scaling information is lost. To make sure, here are the relevant parts of the OBJ export by default OBJ exporter:
v -20.000000 0.000000 20.000000
v 20.000000 0.000000 20.000000
v -20.000000 0.000000 -20.000000
v 20.000000 0.000000 -20.000000
vn 0.0000 1.0000 0.0000

How can I get the correct scaling information? Do I need to retrieve the scaling factor/matrix somehow and transform each vertex manually?

Unless you apply scale, rotations, transformation to the mesh the vert coordinates are "local".  Eg for the default plane combinations of -1, 1 for x, y and 0 for z.  If it is the mesh of an object that is scaled by 20 (with no rotation or transformation) then the global coords are 20 times the local.
To get the global coord multiply by the matrix_world of the object.
ob = context.scene.objects.get("Plane")
if ob:
    mesh = ob.data
    # global vert coordinates
    for v in mesh.vertices:
        print(ob.matrix_world * v.co)

btw that print statement is awful..
for i in f:
    v = mesh.vertices[i]
    print("%f %f %f" % v.co.xzy[:], end=" ")
    print("%f %f %f" % f.normal.xzy[:])

Also look at bpy_extras.io_utils.axis_conversion it gives you the matrix to convert from -Z_FORWARD Y_UP to -Y_FORWARD, Z_UP and other combinations.


text:
Prevent overlaping loop cuts from merging
I'm trying to create two parallel loop cuts on a pyramid. The way I saw how to do it is to first make one loop cut in the middle of the pyramid which will be vertical to the base, then do a second loop cut and push it against the first one to be parallel also to the base. The problem I'm having is that when I push the second loop cut against the first, the two loop cuts seem to merge together because when I try to move the selected loop cut, then both cuts seem to be moved around.
How can I prevent the second loop cut from being merged with the one it's on top of?

Most likely one of these two options is on:

Proportional editing, on left and the first edge loop is influenced when you move the second one

Auto merge vertices, on right and the vertices were actually merged when you moved the second one onto the first

Yep proportional editing was the problem. What does that actually do? After I separated the two edges and enabled it again, they didn't seem to move together again

Proportional editing allows to influence nearby vertices when you move some. Have a look at the doc here https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/editors/3dview/controls/proportional_editing.html#proportional-editing


text:
How to move vertexes uniformly?

I have a half a cilinder which I want to modify uniformly to 2 concave sides on it. How can I move all the vertexes on one side in a uniform maner to create this shape?

You can do what you want using the "Proportional Editing" in Edit Mode.

See how it works on YouTube: Demo Video
Note: you can change the effect range (gray circle) by using mouse wheel (which is broken at my mouse...)

Use the Smooth setting in this case and just select one centre vertex on the curve. I'd also set the transform pivot point to 3D Cursor, set the effect range to around half the diameter of the circle, and then scale inwards (using Shift-Z if it's a cylinder rather than a circle). I can do a full answer if required.

Thank you! I was looking for it for so long, somehow all the google answers where for more complicated tasks.


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Why does "merge by distance" not work here?
I'm using blender 2.92 and trying to apply "merge by distance" on a mesh. You can see in the gif that I first select the vertex to show it is overlapped, then "merge by distance". I expect that after the "merge by distance" was applied I would end up with only one vertex but we can see that nothing changes after I apply it.
For context, I created the mess by starting with a cube, scaling on the X axis then I scaled the two sides to 0 on the x axis to create an edge shape so at that point there are two edges overlapped. I'm guessing it has something to do with how I attempted to create the edge on this mesh?

You have not selected both vertices to be merged. One is 'In Front' of the other, so hiding it from selection.
You have 2 options:

AltZ, toggle into X-ray mode in the viewport, so the back vertex is no longer hidden when making the selection

or

Check 'Unselected' in the operator's F9 Adjust Last Operation panel, which will merge selected vertices to all others within the given distance, selected or not.

Right, it works that way. However why does it not if I select everything with A and then F3 > "Merge by distance"? Seems it does work if I view it in wireframe mode

@IustinianOlaru If A followed by Merge by Distance isn't working, your threshold is probably too low. Also, the tool should work the same no matter what shading mode you're in. ;)

Another potential problem is scale. If your scale is for example 0.001, then whilst your threshold distance may seem OK, the scale could be stuffing it up.

For those who are doing everything right—selecting all vertices and correctly setting the merge distance, but still can't get vertices to merge, check the object's scale in Object Mode. If the scale is smaller than (1, 1, 1), it affects how the merge distance is measured in Edit Mode.
The solution is to apply the scaling transforms to the object (or simply Apply All Transforms if it won't disrupt your work). Once that's done, return to Edit Mode, and the default Merge by Distance value should work as expected.


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Knife cut through not working
I'm using blender 3.2 and I'm trying to use the knife cut through feature but it doesn't seem to work as expected or I might be doing something wrong.
When I try to do a cut through, I press the K shortkey then I press the Z to activate the cut through. What I would expect to happen is that I can make a line on a mesh, and the cut through would go through the obscured meshes, what I get instead is this blue line which locks my vertex choices around this line. Any ideas what's going on please?

Z was the former shortcut to cut through, now it's C as Jachym says

Z is a shortcut for locking to the Z axis.
To cut through, the shortcut is C
All shortcuts are live updated on the bottom status bar ;)

Thanks, seems the documentation is outdated :)

If you've enabled Cut Through (C in Blender 3+) and it's still not cutting through all faces, it's probably because there's a second toggle called "Occlude Geometry" in tool properties (open with N). Try un-ticking it. Not sure how the two interact but it helped with my mesh.


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"Undo" on a single object
Is it possible in blender to undo the changes done onto a single object. Say I have a model, and I made a few changes. At a later point I realize I want to make two variations form a similar base. Could I then duplicate the object as I have it now, then select the original, and undo all the changes on the original object so I can create a second version from a common point?

im afraid thats not possible but u could just make a duplicate backup Shift+D and make it invisible Huntil u need it.

If I understand you correctly then yes it is possible if you have enough undo steps to get back to the "original object".    Edit > Preferences > System > Memory and Limits > Undo Steps.
One method would be: In Edit or Object mode > Select your modified model > Ctrl C (to copy it to your clipboard) > Make all the undo steps necessary to get back to your original object > The in Object mode > Ctrl V (to paste back the modified object into your scene).
Another method would be to copy the modified model (Ctrl C) > Open an second instance of Blender and paste (Ctrl V) it in there for safe keeping. Then, when you are done with all the undo steps, you can go to your second Blender instance and copy and paste it back into the original instance of Blender.