text:
What should I track for accurate rotation stabilization? Or, how can I stabilize motion timelapse?
If I'm taking still timelapse photos of a stationary subject while moving along an arc radiating out from the object, what should I mark to stabilize rotation?
To make the question more tangible, let's imagine a cube. In the middle of the cube there is an X which I can use for the 2D stabilization point. Now I want to stabilize rotation. But the cube's edges are going to undergo perspective distortion as I rotate around. The horizon may not be visible from some perspectives either. So there's nothing in the scene itself to track rotation, but it's obvious upon rendering the animation that there is rotational instability present.
It seems to me almost the only way to do it would be to create a 3D model that corresponds with the 2D timelapse photos and superimpose the 3D cube over the physical cube. Then each frame could be rotated to keep it's perspective consistent with the rotating 3D model. Although this seems like a possible solution, I'm not sure what workflow I would use to achieve it.
EDIT: I've been watching Track, Match, Blend and am learning more about some of the limitations. In the tutorial it was shown how panning motion can't be solved automatically. Perhaps I don't understand enough about the limitations of rotational stabilization. It seems to only work on a 2D plane. But if the camera is moving, either in a straight line or in an arc, is it possible to stabilize rotation?

Rotational stabilisation requires 2 points/trackers that remain stationary relative to each other not the edge of frame or camera.
If that isn't available then your other solution will require a good 3d solve, from lots of trackers. But it sounds like you may not have much to track there either.
Perhaps you could use 2 planar tracks they tend to track features that cover an area instead of a point.

Is there a way I could copy the positional marker track, move it down a bit, and then use it to adjust the rotation by making slight left-right adjustments?

Rotation only occurs between 2 points/markers but I don't think that you can offset the centre of a tracker to effect the rotation from another spot. Is there any chance you could get a 3D solve instead? Then you may be able to reconstruct the scene and fly a virtual camera instead.

A quick test shows that you cannot add rotational trackers. Nor can you add  alternate 2D rotation tracks (pairs) from the 1 movie clip. Also you cannot load alternate versions of the same clip to add rotational tracks.
So it seems that you can hand off stabilise between multiple markers or tracks but not for rotation.
It seems that you will have to try for a 3D solve of your camera instead.

An interesting idea would be to track one corner as a second point and then try to stabilize the second point to something like a moving average of the second track.
To put it differently: The second point obviously cannot be fixed entirely, but it should be possible to keep it on a pre-determined track. This track can either be computed by some means, or it can be constructed (maybe...) from a moving average of the actual track.
This would allow for the second tracked point to still move, albeit in a very smooth fashion.

Interesting idea. Can Blender do this?


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Creating pockets using bmesh/python
I'm trying to figure out how to create a pocket using bmesh (Python Console). The regular workflow to create the example below could be as follows —

Add a Cube in Object Mode, tab into Edit Mode and select an arbitrary Face. Then, use the following steps —

Extrude the selected Face
Scale the selected Face
Extrude the selected Face again
Translate the selected Face

The question is how to create the same result using bmesh? To get started in the Python Console,
import mathutils
import bmesh

me = bpy.context.edit_object.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

Let's just extrude an arbitrary Face and continue from there
f = bm.faces[2]
d = bmesh.ops.extrude_discrete_faces(bm, faces=[f])
f = d['faces'][0]

Now f refers to the extruded Face. The next step is to scale the extruded Face. To keep things simple, let's assume the normal of the selected Face is parallel to the x-axis. The following code only works as intended if the cube is centered around the origin
bmesh.ops.scale(bm, vec=mathutils.Vector((1,.5,.5)), verts=f.verts)

because bmesh.ops.scale() seems to use the global (world) coordinates. Is it possibible to use local coordinates instead?
Another option might be to use bmesh.ops.inset_individual(), though unfortunately it does not create the 4 trapezoid Faces.
The last two steps are straightforward, just another bmesh.ops.extrude_discrete_faces() followed by bmesh.ops.translate().

This seems to work, in edit mode (for the simplicity of example)
import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.edit_object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

face = [bm.faces.active]

bmesh.ops.inset_region(bm, faces=face, thickness=0.4)
bmesh.ops.inset_region(bm, faces=face, thickness=0, depth=-0.5)

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me, True)

Regarding bmesh.ops.scale(), it takes a space argument which is a matrix to base the operation on. If you are comfortable generating matrices then that's probably enough, but if not then see this snippet.
Template can be found at TextEditor->Templates->Python->Bmesh Simple
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector, Matrix

# Get the active mesh
me = bpy.context.object.data
bm = bmesh.new()   # create an empty BMesh
bm.from_mesh(me)   # fill it in from a Mesh

bm.edges.ensure_lookup_table()
bm.verts.ensure_lookup_table()

e = bm.edges[0]

mid_invert = (e.verts[0].co + e.verts[1].co) * -0.5
edge_matrix = Matrix()
edge_matrix[0][3] = mid_invert[0]
edge_matrix[1][3] = mid_invert[1]
edge_matrix[2][3] = mid_invert[2]

factor = (0.5, 0.5, 0.5)
bmesh.ops.scale(bm, vec=factor, space=edge_matrix, verts=e.verts)

# Finish up, write the bmesh back to the mesh
bm.to_mesh(me)
bm.free()  # free and prevent further access

I'm almost positive that there is an easier way to construct the space matrix, given a simple 3-vector, rather than my verbose approach.

Thanks! I completely overlooked bmesh.ops.inset_individual() and bmesh.ops.inset_region(). Still curious though, is it possible to use bmesh.ops.scale() using local coordinates?

I think so, you have to pass a matrix to the scale operator. http://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_74_5/bmesh.ops.html?highlight=bmesh.ops.scale#bmesh.ops.scale. Ask a fresh question, I might have time to answer!

https://gist.github.com/zeffii/71862f5b1cad1bf1d2c1 here's an example that scales edges with reference to their own matrix..

@Ailurus I've extended the answer to include bpy.ops.scale()

Cheers. I added some additional information on using bmesh.ops.scale() in a separate answer.

Figured out how to use bmesh.ops.scale() to scale a Face the same way as in Edit Mode. As it might be useful to others I thought I'd post it here.
First we have to create a translation matrix T that maps the centroid of our Face of interest to the origin. This part is straightforward — assuming the necessary modules are loaded and we have a reference to our Face of interest, e.g. like this,
import mathutils
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.edit_object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

k = 2
face = bm.faces[k]

the translation matrix T can be created as follows:
T = mathutils.Matrix.Translation(-face.calc_center_median())

Note the minus — we're mapping to the origin, not the other way around.
Next, we have to create a rotation matrix R that maps the normal n of our Face of interest to the z-axis. In order to create R, we require the axis of rotation. This is simply the cross-product between n and z (in this order). The angle between the two vectors can be determined in various ways, e.g. using the mathutils.Vector.angle() function or acos(n.dot(z)), after all both vectors are unit vectors. Note that a positive angle refers to counter-clockwise rotation in Blender.
n = face.normal
z = mathutils.Vector((0,0,1))
axis = n.cross(z)
angle = n.angle(z)

R = mathutils.Matrix.Rotation(angle, 4, axis)

Finally, we have to combine T and R. The order is important — first translation, then rotation. The example below scales the Face by 60% just like in Edit Mode.
bmesh.ops.scale(bm, vec=mathutils.Vector((.6,.6,1)), space=R*T, verts=face.verts)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Add new parametric curve object/type using Python
I'm thinking of implementing an add-on (using Python) for Lagrange curves. In short (after an instance has been added), in Object Mode there should just be a curve (i.e. the parametric curve evaluated at a couple of parameter values subsequently connected by line segments) like a Bézier curve, whereas in Edit Mode there should be a control net as well (similar to the control net of a NURBS curve) that allows the user to change/modify the curve. In addition, it should be possible to assign a numerical value to each point/vertex and edge of the control net.
My approach would be to draw the curve using bgl (given a polynomial degree, the values assigned to the edges could act as parameter spans, thereby defining Lagrange basis functions — any position on the curve can then be computed as the sum of the control points multiplied by their associated basis functions). However, I'm not sure how to make the curve into an actual object (such that it can be selected, saved, ...). In addition, it should still be possible to change the resolution of the curve at a later time.
Next, how/where to store the control net and additional information? My approach would be to create a mesh for this purpose and store values in a bmesh layer. In Object Mode this mesh should be hidden. But how to link it to the curve (changing values re-defines the basis functions which should result in a different curve, likewise moving control points should change the curve)?
I realize this is a rather comprehensive question -- I'm fairly familiar with bmesh but apart from simple scripts I don't have much experience coding things in Blender. Any thoughts on a general workflow (see steps/outline above) or references to similar add-ons would be much appreciated!

Have a look at the motion trail addon, it's fully interactive in 3D viewport (with handles you can drag). Note that it's a really complex script, because you need to do everything, from event capturing to processing and OpenGL drawning.

@CoDEmanX Thanks for the link. Hmm, would you recommend implementing this in C++ instead (and compile a local branch of Blender)?

It's probably even harder to do in C++, but depends on your programming skills. You will have more control of what you can do and performance should be far better.

There is an extra objects addon that provides a 3d function surface that should help with how to create the mesh.
For the showing the surface in the viewport I would look at CGCookies retopology tools. If you watch the demo video you will find they draw a preview over the mesh object before creating the final mesh data.
You might want to look at the PropertyGroup or Collection types as a way to add extra data to an object.
There is a chance you may be asking too much for python, maybe you need to consider it as a patch to be added to blenders main source code.

Thanks for your answer :). Ah, the retopology tool reminded me of the BSurfaces add-on. Yes, the patch approach might make more sense (partially because the description in my question is a much simplified version of the actual project).

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


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Gradient material separate z axis and x axis
I made a gradient material shown in the picture.

It should fade out on Z axis.
But on the actual mesh that I applied the texture on. The color faded out to Y axis instead of Z axis.

Any solution to this problem?

You seem to be using some cylinder object as texture coordinate origin, that cylinder object may be rotated in relation to the tree. Either remove the object from the Texture Coordinates node, clear its rotation, or apply the rotation. You also don't need to duplicate your gradient node setup for each shader. They seem identical, so you can plug the same Gradient Ramp to both the Diffuse and Glossy nodes

Texture Coordinates then Mapping node connected to your gradient texture. Just play with the rotation and you'll be all set.

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


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How to pan around the shader editor on a mac?
I just opened Blender and I opened the shader editor for the first time. I wanted to read the properties of the node which is there, but I can not since it falls outside the view. I hold my middle mouse button to pan, but that made it only zoom in/out.
How can I pan my view in the shader editor?

Shift-MMB-Drag should track you in the node editors ..  Home to centre all, Numpad ' . ' to centre on selected?

Shift-MMB does not do anything. The other alternatives I can not try since I work on a Macbook. Double finger tracking in the trackpad doesn't work neither.

OK, sorry .. I can only look up ' Blender Navigate Mac ', as you could, but no Mac here to check it out. Maybe put that it's a Macbook in your Q. title.

If you have a Macbook, you can also scroll around with 2 fingers on the trackpad. You can also pinch to zoom in and out.

On my mac, I can just scroll with two fingers to pan in the shader editor.

The suggested panning with two fingers does not work in my Blender. I have done a factory reset and that fixed the problem. The problem had to do with the key bindings for panning within the 2D view did not exist. I must have removed it in the past, not knowing what I was doing ♂

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


text:
View all timeline pressing the Home key
When pressing Home, the expected behaviour everywhere in Blender is Show all. That applies to viewport, node tree, image editor and more.
In previous Blender versions, pressing Home on the timeline, this showed all the frame range, from start to end. Now with Blender 2.8x+, this shows the timeline for all set keyframes for the selected object. Which may be useful for some people, but I would like to have the old behaviour back.
Is there any other key to zoom the timeline to all the frame range, or is there any menu entry?


text:
Can you edit vertices/faces on a text object?
Are text objects solid objects or made up of individual vertices and faces that you can edit? Can they be converted into an editable objects, maybe with the help of an add on? How about tracing it to make a new object?

Alt C is to hotkey for converting objects to curves or mesh. You will probably want a  mesh.

It's made up of automatic tracing of a font. So it's its own type.
To convert it into an editable object:
Select your text object.
Hit Alt + C and select to either convert it to a mesh or a curve.

It doesn't do anything in both object and edit mode. Does this also apply to 2.8?

I don't know. I use 2.79. Alternatives to the hotkey are spacebar > "convert" or, as you mentioned in your own solution Object > Convert to > ...

If you're on a mac and don't have alt, you can go F3 to get the command search, then type in "convert" to get the same options

I found the answer without using a hotkey.
In Object Mode go to menu Object > Convert To > Mesh from Curve/Mesh/Surf/Text.


text:
I don't understand how to UV map my model while keep all parts separated
I'm trying to texture a character. I've been using smart UV project, but it always ends up having artifacts and looking messed up.
I followed tutorials to mark seams and unwrap, but instead of getting the various pieces I "separated" via seams, I'm getting two or three separates and a whole big ugly mess with the rest of the body.
I need to keep all parts separated so I can paint on the face and not have any other random body part get painted as well.

It looks like you are having some black artefacts on your mesh. They could be a result of non confirming face normals and could possibly be the reason why the uv unwrap works badly. Try Make Normals Consistent (CTRL-N in edit mode). Then try uv unwrap again.
If that doesn't help, upload the file so we could have a look.

you have to manually make seam lines to the UV, and then unwrap from there. It would be a great starting point and easier to map mesh's problems. About black artifacts, you might have issues with non manifold vertexes, or similar. You might need to do retopology on your model to both simplify it and correct it.

I tried making normals consistent and still doesnt work. so heres the file.
I tried also making a retopology, it wasted around 4 hours, and i realized that the model i was retopologing had around 20k faces, while the original only had 5k, so i kinda gave up there because i really fucked up.
Is there any to fix it other than retopology? :(

The main issue is that a bunch of vertices are pinned (red dots in the uv view) and thus cant be moved into the bounds of the texture. Just select everything in the uv editor and unpin them using right click -> unpin.
The other seams look good, but there are 4 edges missing - one near the foot, at the lower body and on the eyebrowns.
If you add seams there you can use the regular unwrap to give each surface its own paintable uv space. (apply the mirror modifier beforehand unless you want symetric textures)

The seams you have created aren't enough. You need to add additional seams to make it unwrap properly, especially on the hand, the lower body (some edges aren't set to seams). Also, there's some unmerged verts in-between the breasts.


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Blender for Mac 2.9.1 can't find edge vertex face select buttons
I'm brand new to Blender(Mac). Every link I follow to find the three selection type buttons says they're located just to the right of the Object/Edit mode button, but not on my interface:

Can anyone help, please?
TIA
Edit:
Seems like a number of things will make the buttons appear: Quitting, restarting Blender: Changing workspaces, then changing back. Annoying, but seems to work...

Strange, but to be fair, once you start using the shortcuts (number keys 1, 2, 3), you'll probably never use the selection boxes again. They're a lot easier anyway. I know it doesn't solve your problem, but I don't think it's the worst inconvenience in the end, unless other features are missing as well.

@ChristopherBennett--I'm a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts, but nothing happens when I press those keys. Is there a modifier key on the Mac?

You are trying to edit a curve, not a mesh object.
They are different kind of objects, the menus change depending on the context. Curves have no vertices or faces.
Take a minute to read the manual (not a video) to understand the difference.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/scene_layout/object/types.html
For curves:

For meshes

@susu--
I've used Maya in the past, so have a general understanding of the difference between Mesh and Curve. But I'm brand new to Blender, and the way it handles each type, so I guess I didn't know what I had selected. Thanks very much for your answer!

Looks like a 2.9 Mac issue.  I am still using Blender 2.83 for Mac and they show up as normal, to the right of edit mode.


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How to delete D drawn lines? (Erase Annotation)

So rather per accident, I learned that you can draw blue lines using D. But now I want to get rid of them. How can I do that please?

to erase the annoation, type D + right click, or enable the annotation tool and Ctrl + left click:


text:
Proportional height editing on a curved object?
Trying to figure out to proportionally scale a circular extrude along the Z axis so that the height of the curve gradually increases and slopes upward. As if one were traveling up a mountain incline.
I can easily do that with a straight line by selecting the beginning face and using proportional editing.  That doesn’t work on a curved selection though.
I'm also open to trying to do this with modifiers or in Geometry nodes if that is possible.

On one hand to use Geometry Nodes, I think a distance along the "path" (.i.e. curvilinear abscissae) is required. Is a curve used to define the squares to extrude ? On the other hand to use the Displace modifier, could a gray scale be painted, going from white to black along the "path" ?

I tried curves but was only able to get a profile equally distributed around it instead of a sloping height.  I would like to use curves as that would ultimately give me more control over the path.  The next thing I was thinking about trying was in fact a gradient displacement.  But I need to keep polycount pretty low for this and displacement requires a lot of geometry.

Would you like the top of the "pillars" to be horizontal (constant Z for the 4 corners) or projected on the slope (as on your first picture) ?

Two answers are provided, based on Edit Mode or on Geometry Nodes.

(Using Blender 3.6.1 and Geometry Nodes)
Approach: Combine an Extrude Mesh node to create the volume, with a Raycast node to compute the length of extrusion up to a targeted object.
Documentation: About the Extrude Mesh Mode: Faces vs Edges vs Vertices

Faces: The starting face is displaced such that its centre is on the targeted object. It remains parallel to its original orientation. So its vertices may not be on the targeted object, based on initial relative orientations between this object surface and the extruded face. Lateral faces are created also as surfaces swept by the extruded face edges. Only lateral faces at the boundaries of connected faces are created if the Individual input is false.
Edges: The starting face edges are displaced such that these mid-points are on the targeted object. So vertices at both ends may not be on the targeted object. The starting face is not displaced. All lateral faces are created as surfaces swept by the extruded edges, even those between connected faces (NB: the Individual input is available only in Faces Mode).
Vertices: The starting face vertices are displaced such that these lay on the targeted object. Lateral edges are created as lines swept by the extruded vertices. However, no lateral faces are created. The starting face is not displaced.

Procedure:

0. Initialization: Add a GeometryNodes modifier to the curve object.
1. Minimal extrusion: Add an Extrude Mesh node in Faces mode to create only lateral faces at the boundaries. Offset Scale is set to zero, because whatever this input, extruded faces would not lay on the targeted object.
2. Extrusion displacement computation: Add a Raycast node to find the position, on the targeted object, of the new Top vertices created by extrusion at step 1. The Target Geometry and Ray Direction inputs are collected from the Group Input node for flexibility. (NB1: The direction vector is defined in the object coordinate system, not in the world coordinate system. NB2: The displacement is based on the position of the targeted object relative to the curve object, not its original position).
3. Extrusion correction: Add a Set Position node to move on the targeted object the vertices created at step 1.
4. Geometry trimming: Add a Delete Geometry node with Face domain and Only Edges & Faces mode set, to remove the extruded faces (i.e. the Top) and to keep only the lateral faces. This will keep polycount minimal.
5. Normals correction: Based on the input Direction vector orientation relative to the original faces normals, the lateral faces normals might be pointing at the wrong side. if so, add a Flip Faces node. (NB: In Viewport Overlays, switch ON Geometry/Face Orientation to control).
6. Semi-closure: Add a Join Geometry node to fill the beginning of the extruded contour with the original faces.
7. Geometry trimming: Add a Merge by Distance node to seal the rim between both sets of faces, laterals and originals.
Resources:

(Using Blender 3.6.1, curves and Edit Mode)
Approach: Use a mesh made from an extruded curve to snap faces during individual extrusion of faces.
Step 1: Design the slope

1.1. Shape a Bezier or Nurbs curve in top view to follow the path to elevate.
1.2. In perspective view, constraining displacement along Z axis, adjust the elevation of the curve control points.
1.3. Setup the curve parameters with Shape/Twist Method set to Z-Up and Geometry/Extrude set to a value large enough to span the path to extrude width (to adjust in top view). The direction of extrusion is controlled by the tilt attribute (in Edit Mode/Control Points) to set at 90 degrees.
1.4. Convert the curve to mesh, keeping the original if modifications are expected.
Step 2: Extrude the faces

2.1. Go to Edit Mode.
2.2. (optional) Create a Face Maps to group the faces to extrude.
2.3. Activate Snap to/Face Project.
2.4. Select one face at a time, extrude it in normal direction, moving the cursor until it snaps to the slope made at step 1.
Ressources:

Thanks StefLAncien! This helped a lot. I didn't use your exact method but incorporated most of the steps to achieve what I needed.
I used a nurbs curve from the Curve Spirals add-on to create a curve that already had a sloped height.
Set Shape/Twist Method to Z-Up.
Set curve extrude parameter as desired.
Convert curve to mesh.
Extruded on Z axis to desired height (I think with Sanp to/Face Project).
Finally, to align the uneven bottom faces of the mesh to the same ground plane I selected all bottom vertices and scaled along Z axis to 0.

You're welcome. Would a non-destructive Geometry Nodes solution be of interest for you ? I could give it a try.

Except for two or three brief tutorials I haven’t really started on Geometry Nodes yet so it would be of interest to me as a learning exercise.

You will find a Geometry Nodes solution here.


text:
Parametric design for pen adapter for 3D printing
I have this model I created for a little kid who has problems in their hands (muscular and/or skeletal). I was thinking that it would be awesome to release the design so anyone with this problems can 3d print it fairly cheap. I guess that the size of the model would be proportional to the size of the hand, but as you can imaging the hole for the pen will remain the same.
I am still prototyping the model and it´s not the final version, but I am already thinking about this part.
Some pics of the process so you can have an idea.

First picture, from left to right: v.1a @ 105%, v.1a @ 100%, v.2a @ 105%,v.2 @ 100%
Last picture is the newest version (v.2a, yellow ones were too big but sort of ok for my big hand to test and improve.
Thanks everybody in advance
EDIT: I attached everything here:

Can you upload a model to test ideas on?

Done, and thank you! I am a newbie, so don´t be too harsh on me :).

Hi. I'm not really sure what your question is.

Your question is in  the the category of questions of when a person talks about a medical problem or remedies for medical problems.  I have seen questions get quite a few points for the category.   Such a category is often immune to being closed for being off topic.  You writing above does not really seem to be about Blender.  It seems to be about product development.   I am no expert yet ... is there not a website for such ideas ... GoFundMe or Shark Tank or YooToob or something of that sort.  First of all I will not vote to close the question. (Running out of comment space so) The second of

Second of all. Your idea might help me since I really do not use a pen or pencil enough.  Will your product appear soon in drugstores or discount stores? Looks really comfy.  Do you have a turquoise color available?  What is the MSRP?

Oh I almost forgot.  I had to upvote you . Merci mille fois.

Lol? I´ve attached the blender files, I am doing this for free in my free time, I´ll release all this...

I understand your problem to be:
"How do I make this model parametric, so people don't need to change vertices in order to adapt it to their physiology"
Here I have a few pointers:

The question of the pen is probably the easiest solution: Create a mesh for a pen and use a boolien modifier to create the hole. Each grip can be scaled but the hole for the pencil will remain the same size.
Unless blender implements an node based modelling toolkit in the near future, your toolkit in order of ease to use consists of:

shape-keys Morph targets: A sphere shape turning into a cylindrical unwrapped sphere shape
boolean modifiers
scripts

There already is a node based procedural modeling kit, it's called Sverchok, and it's powerful as heck ☺

Thank you, yes, my question was indeed "How do I make this model parametric". You guys gave me a bunch of ideas that i´ll have to explore and I have limited time, so thank you again I´ll  try to me be more clear in the future with my questions.


text:
how to refine the mesh in some parts of 3D-Model?
I have created a 3D model. I want to refine the mesh at some parts (like the picture shows) of 3D model. I want to increase the number of meshes in the red circle area. Waht should I do? Thanks a lot.

Change to Sculpt mode and sculpt the changes?

Do you mean you want to refine the shapes and forms, as in sculpting more detail? Do you mean refine the topology of the existing mesh? If you mean refine the topology, then I would suggest looking at different techniques in retopology, where we turn on snapping and draw a new mesh on the surface of the old mesh, making more logical edge flow.

I want to increase the number of meshes in the red circle. What should I do?

This might be helpful https://youtu.be/IG1IEpU5VAw?t=794


text:
Bone sharing weights with another bone?
When working on a character rig (First time) I attempted to go in and fix it's weights. Apparently afterwards I gave the, "Neck" bone of our character the weights of the, "Chest" bone. No matter as I go in and remove the weights that the Neck Bone has influence on. However even after removing the weights the Neck bone had influence on, the mesh beforehand still moves with the Neck Bone even after removing the weights, I've never seen this personally. In fact when scaling the Neck bone, it acts with it's normal weights yet rotating it gives it the influence of the removed weights mentioned previously.
Here is a, "Before" picture of the mesh and Armature before fixing the weights as mentioned.

The selected bone in this picture is the, "Chest" bone with it's appropriate weights assigned.

Afterwards this is the same file with the, "Neck" bone selected. As you can see, no weights are assigned to the mesh below it.

Here is an example of what it's SUPPOSED to look like after rotating only the, "Neck" bone.

However in this example, this is the file AFTER I adjusted the weights to fix them (Moved the hair out of the way) in it's rest position.

As you can see, once I move the Neck bone in the new file with the adjusted weights, part of the character's scarf moves along with the Neck bone even though there are no weights assigned.
I've no experience in weight painting, only a couple of tutorials here and there. The specifics of this problem I am not familiar with.
NOTE. While I was fixing the weights I also added two new bones in her armature, "Shoulder" bones. They have no weight influence and they have not been touched since then. They were created by duplicating the, "Chest" bone and renamed and parented since then. I'm not sure if that has any influence on anything?
Thank you for any help on this matter. Usually when I run into problems I can fix them on my own by searching them up but this is something I'm having a hard problem finding/figuring out and had to resort asking on here. Any help is appreciated, thank you!
Edit 1: Here are the BEFORE and AFTER files of the weight paint changes.
Before:

After:

Thank you for any help!

Indeed this is an interesting problem and I'm afraid I cannot do much more without the .blend file. I recommend looking at this site the comment I posted may help you

hard to understand, please share your file: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Oh! My mistake! I should have added my blend file to the post. I will add it to the main post if possible.

@BigfootBlondy I will also check that link you posted as well in the meantime! I really appreciate the help!

The problem is that your spine is a bendy bone.  If we enable bendy bone display, we can see exactly what's happening:

The neck bone is not deforming anything.  But what it is doing is determining the bend-out of your chest bone, which is deforming things.
If you don't want the neck creating the bend-out for the chest, you can set the bendy bone End Handle to "absolute" mode (and, optionally, pick a different bone as the out-bone.)
Or, of course, you can set the number of segments in the chest to 1.

Alright so I came to a solution but it's not exact. This is more of a, "Soft" fix. In other words it's more of a workaround rather than an actual solution. I explain my findings in complete detail in this video I made for it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW3u6qJk2TQ
For those who cannot watch the video, basically both the Neck Bone and Chest Bone as mentioned in the main post are currently connected via parents. By removing the parent-child relationship from the Neck bone of the Chest bone, the problem of the Neck Bone sharing the weights goes away.
Again this is not really an absolute solution but it works for now. I can make this a workaround by parenting the two bones via, "Offset" however making them parented via, "Connected" causes the issues of the weights.
If anyone still knows anything about this a solution is very appreciated. For now this is just a soft-fix. Thanks for all the support!


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Is it possible to export keyframes with constant interpolation to FBX?
I'd like to export an animation with Constant interpolation (as opposed to Linear or Bezier) to FBX. If I export a sample animation to FBX, then import it back into Blender, the keyframes are imported with Linear interpolation. I'm not sure whether this is due to a limitation of the FBX file format or a limitation of Blender's FBX exporter and/or importer.
Is it even possible to specify keyframe interpolation modes in FBX?

For me export/import to fbx using blender keeps constant interp, bezier interp imports with keyframes every frame. Do you have the bake animation option enabled when exporting?

@sambler Yes, Bake Animation is checked. Does that make a difference?

@sambler I'm not exactly sure what the Bake Animation options does and the Blender User's Manual literally says "TODO", haha

Each fcurve should get baked into a keyframe for each frame. For constant interp it seems to only export a keyframe for each change in value, for bezier that becomes a keyframe for each frame.

After some investigation (and reading through source code), I discovered that the FBX importer and exporter only support Linear interpolation. When you choose the Bake Animation option with Constant interpolation, it creates keyframes that give the illusion of constant interpolation. However, it uses linear interpolation in between frames. Not normally a problem, but it is in my scenario where all of my keyframes last only a single frame. It can cause problems depending on how other programs sample the keyframes.


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Automatically invoke custom Python script upon moving a vertex in a mesh
I'm looking for a way to automatically invoke a custom Python script upon (manually) moving one or more vertices in a mesh (in the 3D Viewport or in the UV Editor). I've come across a couple of options while doing some searches with keywords including callback, listener and handler (see below), though I'm not yet sure how to approach it efficiently.
One option would be to make the triggering event less specific, e.g. invoking the Python script every time the 3D view is updated. In that case, bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add might be the way to go, though it does not sound optimal.
Alternatively, there is the relatively new msgbus, though on https://docs.blender.org/api/2.83/bpy.msgbus.html the following is mentioned:

The following updates do not trigger message bus notifications:

Moving objects in the 3D Viewport.

This seems to rule out using msgbus for my purposes. Any other suggestions on how to approach this?

Sub-optimally-related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/160909/handle-vertex-property-changes-with-msgbus-subscribe-rna

You need to set up a handler upon depsgraph update and check whether the update is related to a change in the geometry:
import bpy

def on_mesh_update(obj, scene):
    pass # Do whatever you want here

def on_depsgraph_update(scene):
    depsgraph = bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()
    edit_obj = bpy.context.edit_object
    for update in depsgraph.updates:
        if update.id.original == edit_obj and update.is_updated_geometry:
            on_mesh_update(edit_obj, scene)

# Make blender call on_depsgraph_update after each
# update of Blender's internal dependency graph
bpy.app.handlers.depsgraph_update_post.append(on_depsgraph_update)


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What tool do I use to make a part smooth
I have what is on image 1 (the black colors), and i want it to be like the image 2 (orange color legs)

I know that there a tool that can do it but i can't find it.

It's the subsurf mod! https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/generate/subdivision_surface.html
Extra characters to fill answer quota.

But how do i transform the octagon into a circle

Simply add the modifier.

Oh!! Thank you so much!!


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Bone Heat Weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones. Yet again
I tried many things and I am out of my options. I need just make a simple hand movement can't add automatic weighting because of that error
https://we.tl/t-y5iKQCIma4
I put the file in we transfer if someone wants to help me out.

Scale mesh and armature up tenfold, apply scale, autoweight; optionally, scale down to one-tenth, apply scale.  But mesh isn't good candidate for autoweights anyways because of non-manifold mesh, multiple mesh components.

so what i need to do to save this,or give me an advice to what to do, i am new to this and is hard and what you said earlier i dont know how to do it yet like i said i am a biginer thx for the reply you are kind!

You need to look at some tutorials on weight painting, and you need to google "non manifold mesh" and read all you can about it.

i tryed to scale it up and it worked but my hand left untouched and move to the origine of the world and the armature remains still

how can i save then the model with light on the hand and everything and making it to work?to restart and make a hand with low count mesh objects?

First, do your research (including the research I mentioned above, and including searching for answers on SE); then, play with it a little to develop your understanding; then if you still don't have it, spend a little bit of time organizing your thoughts and ask a new SE question, because your new questions are out of scope of the question you originally asked.

i manage to solve it,the problems where 2 the ring objects from my hand i removed them and now everything work just fine thx for the info and help thx a lot


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There is no "non color" in color space
There is no "non color" in color space

Click where it reads sRGB. What are the options that show?

Only linear and sRGB

what format is the image? How did you install blender? Are you using the default OCIO configuration or a custom one?

Linear is effectively non-color since it doesn’t apply the sRGB conversions.

Thank you very much for your help. I changed his download location. It's ready to use now.

The 'Linear' option is effectively the same as the non-color option elsewhere, since it doesn’t apply the sRGB conversions.


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My camera is set to an object, and every time i change that, it automatically goes back to the object when i click render
When ever this normally happens i go the the scene tab in properties and just change the camera, or i go to view-camera-set active camera and it works fine but now, when i click render it switches the camera back to the object/rig. not sure why, this is an animation, I don't know if that effects anything

Select this camera and make it active with CTRL 0 before you render.

I have tried that, it doesnt work

So this may be a bug or the shortcut is different (in that case you can use 2.7x shortcuts)

maybe you have an object constraint (track to) ?

The scene will render using whatever you have set as camera. In the scene section, pictured on the question, select the camera instead of the rig.

You've bound the camera to a marker.

And the active camera is not a camera, but an object.
When you bind a camera to a marker, it becomes the active camera starting on that frame in the timeline. Binding cameras allows you to switch cameras at a certain point in the animation. But since there are no other active cameras bound to other markers, the object becomes the only camera that will be used for rendering the whole scene.
To fix it just delete the marker. Go to the frame where the marker is and Select marker > Delete Marker

From the blender manual:

Bind Camera to Markers is a special operator only available in the Timeline. The operator allows markers to be used to set the active object as the active camera.To use this operator, select the object to become the active camera and select a marker to bind the active camera to. If no marker is selected when the operator is applied, a marker will be added. When an object is bound to a marker, the marker will be renamed to the name of the active object. These markers also have a camera icon next to the left of the name to easily distinguish them from other informative markers.These markers can be moved to change the frame at which the active camera is changed to the object the marker is bound to.

Thank you susu! This was exactly what was driving me nuts for half an hour. I did not understand what kept changing my scene's active camera when I hit render. Turns out the object was set as a camera in the timeline. I assume it can happen when accidentally dragging an object into the timeline in a specific way.

Found a way round it, changed the setting so i cannot see any bones on the rig then rendered it from the view page!

Could you explain in a little more detail how you did that? Perhaps post a few screenshots of the procedure and result


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How to motion track/set tracking points for cable/rope
How to motion track Cable/Rope in blender, I've managed to do the track for the object which has certain degree of contrast, but the cable/rope has the same features along a curved line in 3D space, if I put tracking points on the rope/wire, then the tracking points will slide back and forth along the curve because they have the same feature along the surface which I do not know how to effectively tracking the cable/rope, my goal is to track the entire calbe/rope and animate the electricity along the cable path, so my issue will be summarized as below:

1.How to track cable/rope path without the tracking points sliding, the cable/rope is static.
2.Is it a better way to wrap some circle strip every centimeter accorss the cable/rope to have the tracing points fixed on the path if there is no other workaround? Or Mocha has cable/rope tracking capability?
3.Extra issues with regard to the camera solve, if I intially put 12 tracking points from the first frame, and 10 tracking point finally managed to survise the entire frame, which I will have is the 2 died tracking point has a very high error value, and is marked as red(disabled), but the error will be added up to the whole solve error, which I thought as long as it is disabled like from frame 20, then it shouldn't contribute to the whole camera solve error from then on cause it's disabled from frame 20, but now, it seams like even the tracking points are disabled they still take effect on the solve, I want to know how to use this two points only when it is unabled, and completely discard it after disabled.

Why do you need to track the cables? As long as you have enough elements to track, you should be able to pull a decent reconstruction. Don't limit yourself to only 12 tracking points, track more and let blender evaluate which ones work the best, just make sure that whatever you track, you track accurately. It is hard to help you further without seeing what kind of shot you are dealing with. Please read the following link:https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/42329/how-can-i-get-better-results-when-doing-camera-motion-tracking. For questions about mocha use other sites.

I can solve the camera by tracking other feature points, but my goal is to animate electricity flow through the cable, so I have to track the cable,

if you must track the cable you need some feature that is there from frame to  frame, so you might need to add tracking marks (stickers, markers or whatever) on the actual cable.

Can you add a link to the video?

It is the same as the picture I listed, a charging cable pluged in the phone, and I take a camera to shoot the footage, my internet connection is bad so I uploaded picture on my question:(

What matters is the kind of movement you are dealing with, How is the camera moving?

I combine all possible movement, rotating, forward, backward


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NLA editor, I can't get two baked animations to work at the same time
I have two animations that are baked one on top of the other. How do I get both to `work at the same time? One is a walk cycle and the other is a simple movement forward for the walk cycle. I have chosen both baked animations at the same time and get the same result.
  I'm fairly new with nla editor, but I have done some research and only found examples that have baked animations beside each other, but not stacked.
Do animations need to be baked for a final render? If not I think I will use them rarely.
Also too does anyone know of any well explained videos of animations using dope sheet and nla editor. I would like it to include; how to render and save a completed animation, just as if I wanted to save it and play it on windows media player?
  If you would only like to answer the first paragraph that is totally fine.
I am now writing later in the after noon. I don't seem to be able to go into tweaking strip actions mode. When I try it says I have no active strips to enter tweak mode. Well as far as I know if the strip is yellow it is selected.
  I don't know why I would even want to bake a strip. I am not able to see any other animation when working with a baked strip.

In your NLA-Editor's properties panel (on the right); if you select your "movement" action, you can see the Blending mode. In the screenshot you provided it is set to Replace. Replace tells blender that any other tracks' keys on the same channel that are below it are overridden by the top track. You can set this to another type, for instance Add to add the location of the movement-action to the values in the idle-action.
A better way (in my opinion) would be to pay attention that the channels of your actions do not unnecessarily overlap. That means that your walk-cycle should not have keys for body-movement, and your movement-action has only keys for body-movement. If you have that you will have more flexibility in arranging the tracks later on. (In case that you design your walk-cycle by selecting all bones of your armature, and then do "insert key frame", then you will end up with a key in every possible channel, making it very hard to handle in the NLA-Editor. Better remove the unnecessary channel in the action editor then). For example, for a walk-cycle, i would only animate the up/down movements of an in-place walk cycle in one action, and make a different action for movement that effects only the x-direction of the root-bone of my armature, but nothing else.
Baking is mostly not needed for animations, as long as you have enough channels (and bones) to realize your animation. Sometimes, however, when a rig is too simple to support overlaying actions well, it might be necessary.


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Selecting a grease pencil object Blender 2.8
In grease pencil mode I was practicing making eyes. My question isn't about that though. I'm having trouble selecting objects that I make. I have each colored object on it's own layer. All colored objects are under one stroke.  What am I missing. I would assume I could just click on each layer and move or animate it. However I cannot select either colored object. I can only move them all at once by selecting the stroke in the outliner. Should I make each object under one stroke each? Can layers be be selected individually? I am able to select the colored shapes in edit mode, but not in object mode. How can I move these colored shapes in order to animate them?

The approach I would suggest is to:
TAB into editmode
Lock the grease pencil layers you don't want to move (Click the pad lock in layers box)
Select all items in 3D view
Transform them as you would like.


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cloth sewing is bouncing and not sewing up but bouncing like the picture below
cloth sewing is bouncing and not sewing up but bouncing like the picture below

Hello could you please share your file? https://blend-exchange.com/

Try reducing the "Object collision" and "Self collision" Distance values a lot (something like 0.001, or even 0.0001, its relative to the subdivision level of the mesh: the more dense, the lower the values).

it's getting worse... check the updated image

i dint check the normals it works now ...


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How to align Wave Texture to the curve
I'm making waving texture, but the band is not aligned with the direction of the curve,like this,

What I want to achieve is the band should be directed by the curve direction as the red line shows, but how to setup properly, I've tried different texture coordinate all the same result.
Edit:My shader, but I do not see any UV map after press "U" on my keyboard

Edit2:I've tried the direction is all right but it gave me un-evenly bands, do you know why this is happening,thanks.

People need to see your wireframe, UV map, nodes, and modifiers to help.

The un-evenness comes from the fact that your control points are not spaced evenly. I don't know if you can make the uvs follow the "real" length though

You don't tell a lot about your node setup, but try the Generated or the UV output socket of the Texture Coordinate node:

Sorry for lack of information, but the shape is made of a curve and set depth to0.5m, the elbow by extruding the vertex, I need to get home to show all info.

Curve objects automatically have a set of UVs. You may need to tweak the mapping node to fit the wave texture though

I've added my screen shot

@Gorgious Hi I've used your method it worked but the bands are not spreading evenly, I've added another screen shot

maybe share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/


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How to avoid gap after merging two objects
I tried to merge two objects A and B, before merging, I use the snap tool to snap each other perfectly along the edges as shown in the screen shot, After merging, the A and B become one object, then I selected them all by hitting "A", then beveling, I found the "Green X" area are beveled which I don't want to have, what should I do to make this face become one piece so there doesn't have any bevel in between?

For your own benefit you may want to put one or more images which shows your problem more fully.  The choice is yours. That image alone does not tell me much .. although it may tell everyone else much.  I do not see a bevel in that particular image.  Of course vertices can be added, deleted, updated  to get the mesh you want.

Any edge can be beveled.  Selecting all and using the bevel operation will not always get you your desired result.  Consider selecting less than all and beveling.

I put some details in it thanks

Edge can be beveled, but I have already joined the two objects at the green X edge, then why it is still an edge, it should be a single face

Better images. Although I cannot tell if your meshes are flat like a plane or 3D like cube. Please see a tutorial on loop cut and extrusion

When you start using Blender you might do yourself a favor and try to comply with Blender as it currently works.    This means seeing only a few of  the  hundreds of possibilities as time goes by.  Time consuming process.  Blender determines vertices, edges, and faces.  Casual inspection does not.  So Blender may not agree with your statements about [should].  Many times it is a situation of .. How can I work with Blender ... with all the Rules of Blender.  I suggest a tutorial series ... on noonoob ... maybe 20 episodes of 6 minutes on average.

Edges in the same mesh .. even close together .. may be identified as different faces by Blender.  Through time and tutorials this may become clearer.

Left White Mesh. A Cube with loop cuts and one face [extruded] in the z direction.  Thus having the edges you might need to control bevel operation.  Next 2nd White Mesh Selected. Edges selected and the bevel operator used.   These meshes are intended as crude facsimiles of yours.
At this time we think having a fresh start is easier than [join] operator.  Or at least equivalent.
Possible option. 3rd from left Blue image. Faces selected and [Face Dissolve] operator used for a ngon, on both sides. Yellow image on right. Inset faces.

Thanks for the solution, but this still doesn't address my problem, after a whole day's searching on the net I found an alternative solution, using "intersect/knife tool"

I finally found an alternative solution for this case, using Intersect/Knife tool to address this situation, follow the steps:
1.Select all meshes on both object
2.Ctrl+F and select Intersect/Knife
3.The edges overlapped with each other will have cuts automatically generated for each vertices(vertices sit on the edge, because the two objects were edge snapped before)
4.Dissolve limited, because the vertices on object A will overlapped with the cuts on the edge.
Then it's done.

Select object A
Go to Modifier and choose Boolean
Choose Union
Select B as an object
Done


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Texture with transparency becomes black
I made a png file in Photoshop that only has R/G/B/A channel like this:

Then I'm going to use this as my texture in Blender in shader editor:

The final result is like this all black, where the text should've been in the red area,because I only unwrapped the center face

Why is mesh all black, even the left corner dots that represents all the rest faces, are black, the area in the texture is transparent, did blender treat transparent area as Black? The Png image doesn't have Alpha channel, only R/G/B, can some one help me to understand。
Edit:This is my original image,with only R/G/B channel, no Alpha channel, you can check how it looks in Photoshop from above checkerboard screen shot, the background is transparent, though no Alpha channel, no 4Th channel, it 's transparent and I suppose the RGB for the transparent is NULL, I'm not sure if transparent pixel can be R:null,G:null,B:null, if you know what I mean, it is common to control by using Alpha channel, but Photoshop can save transparent as NO RGB VALUE

Read also: change color associated with transparency

Also make sure that your Blend Mode is set to Alpha Blend in the material "Settings" section. For me the alpha texture rendered black because it was set to Opaque

Let's start with the very basics.
What you call "transparent" is an Alpha Channel at work.
The image you are creating has tree color channels (RGB) and a separate Alpha channel, that is used as a Mask to determine how the image is combined with others.

This is what the Alpha Channel looks like:

The alpha channel is nothing magic, it is just black and white image where the opacity is set by the white element (a value of $1$) and "transparency" by the black (a value of $0$), any gray elements would be "semi-transparent".
In blender RGB information and Alpha channels are accessed separately, in other words, you must plug the Alpha channel to something to determine what gets the RGB information and what doesn't.
The most basic setup is like this.

The color of the shader is provided by a mix RGB node, that is using the RGB info from the texture (color) and the alpha channel separately, as factor for the mix with a yellow color.
The alpha channel is used to determine what parts of the texture get what color. What is black on the alpha channel will be yellow, what is white in the alpha channel will have the color (RGB) information of the image texture used.
Or you can use the alpha channel to mix different shaders:

UV mapping.
By default blender creates a UV map when you create a cube, so there is a UV map already present in all of the other faces.

The simplest way to deal with would be creating a new material and assign it to that face, but if you want to keep using a single material for the whole thing, you can edit the UV map so that all of the other faces' UV map out is of the picture, and make sure that the extrapolation for the texture used in the material is set to clip, that way anything out of the 0-1 UV space will be ignored.

If the image contains an alpha channel usually blender will pick it up, but in case it doesn't you can enable it manually.

What I see in image editor is it contains r:black g:black b:black alpha: black+ white, while in photoshop it is r/g/b:all  transparent background + black text, I am wondering what blender has done behind the scene to add adtional alpha channel and made the rgb channel totally different. Because in photoshop it still with no alpha channel

I dragged the texture directly to shader editor and nothing else, so it is blender did something to make the texture different

There is no such thing as transparent. It is alpha channel ALWAYS. Saving the alpha channel as part of the image depends on the format. Some formats can store alpha channels, some don't. Use an image format that does, and make sure that the app you are using to create the file stores the alpha channel as part of the image. It is possible also that when you imported the image into blender, you did not activate the alpha channel. See edited answer.

Read also: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/27633/image-alpha-background-renders-black-when-using-import-images-as-planes

From the information provided I can narrow down where this problem is: the photoshop png file I created does not have alpha but when it is in blender, it does, I will have to find why blender auto created an alpha channel and inverted the rgb color for me

First, you need to do something with the alpha output of your texture. For example, plug it into the alpha input of your shader. (BTW: it seems that your PNG does contain an alpha channel...)
Then, if you use EEVEE, you need to make sure that your material's blend mode is set to "alpha hashed" or "alpha blend". (See here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.90/render/eevee/materials/settings.html#blend-mode)
If your image doesn't have an alpha channel, you need to tell the shader somehow what is transparent (alpha=0 / black) and what is opaque (alpha =1 / white). You can use the color data from your image to do so, although you might need to invert it in your case.

I do not understand, because the non-text area is transparent, I already told Blender it has no color, why should I tell Blender again, when this photo is edited in Photoshop, this non-text area is empty, has no R/G/B value which is null, then what blender will treat the null value as black?

Sorry for being a bit unclear. The problem is that while blender "knows" about the alpha channel of the image, you do not tell it what to do with it. That's what the "alpha"-ports both on your texture node (output) and your shader node (input) are for. Without a connection between those two, blender just passes the color information from the texture to the shader and ignores any transparency. As an alternative (i.e. if your image does not have an alpha channel), you can feed the alpha-port of the shader with an image texture itself. Then, black pixels will be transparent, white ones opaque.

By passing the color information to the shader node is enough, because the text is black, but the problem is why the background is black as well, so I can not see the text itself

This simply depends on what background color you had set in Photoshop and in this case I assume that it was black. As Alpha/Transparency is treated almost like a fourth color component, you can have black transparent, white transparent or anything in between without ever seeing the difference, unless you ignore the alpha channel. Could you upload the original image to check properly?

Hi I uploaded another image, hope you understand what I'm confused about-the transparent area, really hard to understand if it is NULL value

Or blender will treat non-existed value as (0,0,0), or does it have pixel in the transparent area?

Why don't you just humor me and try the connection of the alpha ports like I suggested? From your scrrenshot of blender and the image you posted I can see that your image definitely has an alpha channel. Also, I suspect that the Photoshop-feature does not do what you think it does. As far as I know, this is to prevent weird colored edges when overlaying multiple images. It keeps the alpha channel and saves it to the image but forces all pixels with alpha=0 to have RGB=(0,0,0) as well.

It is still a mysterious to me the png I created has no alpha channel and when I dragged the png to the shader editor it does

And you are right I can see the alpha in blender image editor, while I did not created it with photoshop, blender did it.

Sorry, but no. Blender does not just "invent" an alpha channel from nowhere. As susu pointed out in so clearly, alpha is just another word for transparency. I still think that you should take a deeper look at what the photoshop save options actually do in this case.


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Feathering Edges in Node compositor
Is there a simple way to feather edges in the Node compositor?
Here is an example of what I'm trying to achieve.

Adding a vignette to a render is fairly common and you can find examples in many tutorials. A vignette is often circular and darkens the corners but the same principal applies.
Basically you create a mask, blur it, then use it to mix together the results you want. In this example I have used a CombineRGBA to input a semi-transparent white background that I added a render result over. There is also an Ellipse Mask if you want the rounded result.

This method even works on abstract shaped masks, which is great.

It is rectangular vignette effect. Easily achievable in blender compositor.
You need one Image with black and white colors.

In compositor.
Insert your render layer to Scale Node.
Add your black and white image.
Insert image to Invert Node.
Add Color Mix Node. Set it to Multiply.
Join Nodes from Scale & Invert to Multiply Node.
Add Blur Node and Insert Output of Multiply to Blur.
Add another color Mix node, set it to Subtract , Attach output of blur & Scale node to inputs and Join the output to viewer & composite Node.

Play with Settings for desired effect.

If you want full control over the effect in Blender and want it to scale to any image size and aspect ratio quickly, you can create the feather mask basis inside the Compositor, too:
(Right click and open image in new tab for full size)

For that, only take the original image (to get the dimensions of your image), make it white (see first Mix-Node to white) crop it with a black border (Crop-Node, invert and Alpha over white) and then blur the result to then use it as an Alpha channel or as a Mix node factor towards a white background.
A Gamma-Node after the blur can get you some fine-tuning control over the gradient of the feathering effect.

Sambler's method seems to be more straightforward, I didn't know a Box Mask node existed. Then this is more of a dirty workaround.

JulianHzg - your using the crop node is also useful, you don't need to feed the layer into it though, it appears to default to render size. I think the mask nodes came in during mango with the camera tracking.

Thanks, that's true. I'm just using to composit in a different file than the one I use for rendering, which is why I never have the correct rendering size set. Here, of course, that would be much easier.

I tried it without feeding it in there and I can't get it to work properly then. It seems to me that the size is only defined then the moment it is mixed with an image, so the crop node doesn't know which size to use.
Might be my mistake somewhere, though, but this exact setup doesn't work then.


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How to align UV maps on differently sized objects for seamlessness between each one?
I've been looking for an answer on this and I'm utterly confused. I'm very new to UV mapping (in fact, this is my first "real" attempt to use it in a way that it tiles correctly) and I've got a problem with trying to get a texture to scale, too. I've tried even the different tools like TexTools and UV Magic, and I'm still not getting a 100% match on this on TexTools, for example. I have yet to try UV Magic, but from another thread (here: Unwrap UV map proportionally to object size) there's no difference in the function of TexTools vs UV Magic? I'm not sure what is going on here... I tried the projection from view, but that creates a disaster for someone new like me. Isn't there a better way to do this?
Ok, so more details on this:
I have two items. Both are at a scale of 1.0 but have different widths and lengths. I've got a texture on them now, but it doesn't align. Below is what I'm working with:

Now, I've scaled both by 2.9x from the corner of the UV map using Smart UV Project.

Here's the thing... despite both being scaled by 2.9x, they are STILL different sizes and I can't get them to align. Here's the zoomed in version:

And here's the zoomed out version:

I hope this is not a duplicate topic! If it is, I apologize. Please lead me to the right one. I spent quite a while searching for a topic similar to this, and I've not been successful in finding an answer.
Here's what I want to do, but it requires overlapping geometry and a size change to make it work. Ideally, I'd like to not over-lap and keep the items of different sizes as they were originally:

Checkout the Texture Atlas addon.

Please tell me more? What exactly can I do with it? How would I go about doing what I'm trying to do with it?

Texture Atlas is an addon to temporarily combine objects for unwrapping them onto the same uvmap. After the UV process is finished, they are separated again, retaining their original transformations.

I see. Thanks for the explanation. That's useful; I will definitely look into it. I'd like any method possible to figure out this issue of mine since I know that there are multiple ways of doing this.


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Baking: what is being done wrong? Is it UVs?
I don't really know what went wrong. At all. I'm very new to this.
What I did:
High-res is being baked into low-res with everything exploded. One on top of the other. Low-res and hi-res are overlapping. But it looks completely abnormal, especially when exported into something like 3D Coat where everything is pixelated. There are artifacts all over the place, which indicates that something is being done wrong in Blender when it comes to baking. Note that the artifacts are there because the normal values are right on top of different parts of the mesh (I don't really understand why this happened). The last two images show that it's not right. Here's what it looks like:

And if exported to 3D Coat with this map, we get this:

Anyone have any idea what I'm missing here? Take a look at the last two images. The texture map looks all messed up in 3D Coat (the blue and purple map). Even though it's 2048x2048, it looks like pixelated nonsense. Is it related to UV unwrapping? Painting, also, makes it pixelated as well. Any help is greatly appreciated!

3D Coat might flip the green channel (or interpret it as flipped). Besides that your normal map doesn't look very smooth. You may need to increase the baking distance or create a cage object for better quality bakes.

For green channel, yes, it was flipped. I unflipped it, and it didn't help. The cage object already exists, which is identical to the LowResBake object. As for baking distance, I will try that. I thought it's already pretty good (it's at 0.05m).
Edit: I upped the distance to 0.2m. It seems to eliminate some artifacts, but not all. Some artifacts are worse. What can be done about the rest? Is it because the cage is too small? The normal map looks the same: problematic in 3D Coat.

The quality of the mesh and 3D Coat's problem may not be related. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with 3D Coat, so I can't tell if there are some settings that could be causing this. The only thing I can think of (if it's not the green channel) would be value clamping because you stored the normal map as full float .hdr/.exr or 16 bit .tiff in Blender (which 3D Coat may not support).

But the normal map looks right? The baked image itself is just a .png.

Ok, I think it's worth mentioning that the leather straps, when removed, give a normal UV map that's usable and everything looks fine, even in 3D Coat with the maps. But I can't understand why they're the problem...??

Hard to tell without testing it myself. Maybe somebody else has a good idea.

Do you have 3D Coat? I can upload the file and you can test it. It's important that I get this right because I want to use it in my portfolio, but at least I can try to understand what I am doing wrong.

No I don't. Sorry.


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baking material only turns out black from high poly to low poly model
I'm trying to bake the material from the high poly scan of a person to the low poly made in instant meshes.
I'm using a diffuse BSDF I only want the colour info to see that it can be done.
I have corrected the sharp angles and shaded to smooth.  i have smart uv unwrapped the low poly.
I have checked the normals and then changed the ray extrusion when baking.
All transforms are 0. i have smart uv unwrapped the low poly.
I have tried baking with a cage, baking with the low poly bigger than the high poly.
All end up in a straight white or black bake. All the tutorials i have seen don't bother with light before because I only want the color data?
Baking detail does work from a simple plane to another plane, so I have that going for me.
Blend file should be attached


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Geforce rtx3070 Render doesn't work with CUDA
I recently updated my PC to AMD Ryzen 3700X + Geforce rtx3070 and today I tried to render something and blender 2.83, 2.8, 2.91 and also 2.79 tells me CUDA:

Also, earlier this morning with CUDA turned on my render preview window stopped working and now its showing me only lines and says render is paused:

Please advise what should be done to fix this.. I cannot work.
Thank you in advance.

First things first - have you updated your graphics drivers to the latest version?

Hello, if you mean in the NVIDIA app - then yes. Also, I have a PALIT version of graphic card and I downloaded the latest version there.

Hmmm. Only thing I can think to try is switching to 2.91 beta build  - it worked for a user in this post -https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/jjz3ny/getting_this_message_with_my_3080_fe_cuda_binary/gafy7hh/

Yeahh.. like I mentioned, I tried 2.91.. it was the first choice I downloaded. As far as I recall it worked at first, but then stopped.

A person in the post also mentioned 2.92 alpha as a possibility, I'm not sure it will work, but it's really the only suggestion I have left

This might just be an early adoption issue - the drivers and adapters just might not be there yet. I know around the time of the 2080 launch, users were getting a similar error, and this was to do with the missing file kernel_sm_75.cubin from the cycles lib folder. However, given the numbers, the correct file to fix your error should be kernel_sm_86.cubin, but I can find no evidence such a file exists anywhere (yet).

thank you my only saviour )) I will be waiting for some fix then))) will test out 2.92 a bit later too


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Backup automatically to a hard drive
Is there a way to automatically save my blender files to my external hard drive when I work from my desktop?
Like saving it to multiple file paths. Someone on the blender community did create an add on, however it looks like it's only for rendered files. I'm looking to back up the entire project every time that I save. Thank you.

I simply use Google Drive desktop app to designate a folder on my hard drive to mirror to Google Drive anytime a change is made.

What's nice about it is that it's just copying a folder on your hard drive, so you can access and use the files as normal and everything else is taken care of in the background.  You can install the app on multiple computers to make sure that your project repository is available on any machine.
Google Drive has file version history as well, if you log in to Drive on the web you can right click on a file and select Manage Previous Versions to restore something you accidentally saved over or deleted.

As we all know, data isn't real until it exists in three places, so I still use an external drive as 'cold storage'.  I just use regular file copy procedures to do a monthly backup and then disconnect the drive.
You could also use OneDrive or DropBox or a NAS or any featureful file storage solution.

This is more of a general software recommendation question, I believe, but one thinks it may be migrated in the future.
I'm familiar with one specific program known as Allway Sync which is for Windows (multiple versions) that can be configured to monitor/check specific locations. When a change is made to that/those locations, the files are then copied/synchronized with the configured destination.
I've used this specific function to prevent data loss for a client, which worked well. The program can also be configured to respond only to a specific device, which means you can exempt a different drive from storing the synchronized files, or alternatively, use multiple drives.
The free version will work until you've performed an undetermined number of backups/synchronizing actions at which point it will request payment. The cost is relative low for such a useful, powerful program.
There may be other similar types of programs available.


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Transparent menus
I'm fairly new to Blender and I've discovered that the UI (specifically the menus) are transparent and it's making it difficult to use!
Can anyone help me turn this off?

This is the result of either an unsupported graphics card, or out of date graphics drivers (likely the former). Make sure you're drivers are up to date and look here for GPU compatibility - https://code.blender.org/2019/04/supported-gpus-in-blender-2-80/ If your GPU is unsupported, you can still use 2.79

Caused by drivers for the GPU or unsupported hardware.

@ChristopherBennett
That'll be it! I've got an older mac running 10.13 but the hardware is late 2009 so quite outdated! Thanks!

Yeah. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Like I said, you can still use 2.79 - the UI isn't as pretty and there's no EEVEE, but most of the features are still there.

In the case of the original question, the issue was likely with an outdated graphics driver. However, if anyone installed the latest version of Blender (2.93.1) and happened to reset things to the default (rather than using settings from a previous Blender version), you may notice that the side panels (toolbar, n-panel) are partially transparent.
This can be fixed by going to Edit > Preferences > Interface > Editors, and uncheck "Region Overlap". This will also prevent the 3D view from showing in the minimized sections of your sidebar.
However, if you don't mind the regions overlapping, but just don't want transparency, then go to Edit > Preferences > Themes > 3D Viewport > Panel Colors, and change the alpha values for both "Header" and "Background" to 1 (from 0.902 and 0.941 respectively).


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How to create an arch (vault) that is curved inside?
I've been struggling for several weeks' time to get this right. I have ideas, but nothing that is efficient to get the same look. I tried using half-spheres and cuts from spheres to do it, but I just can't get it to contour correctly without going the only way I know: vertex-by-vertex placement for the shape. I tried other ways (like "stealing" the edges and extruding them), but then I can't bevel them correctly to make them curved). I can manage the profile, but not the arch. Here's what I'm trying to do:

Any help is super appreciated!
EDIT:
This is the idea. Extrusion was a possibility, but something that was simple that would fit the window profile is what I was aiming for. My attempts to get them fit the profile didn't look good because beveling wouldn't work if multiple faces were extruded from the vertices of the window profile. So, manually placing two triangles and connecting them with vertices was how I managed to go about it, but it was tedious to do. Obviously I now know how to do it efficiently thanks to the answer provided below.

Could you add an example one of your attempts? I'm not sure exactly what part of the arch you are attempting to replicate

Edit:
While this method may be suitable in some cases, at the time it was written, there was no 'Bisect' option in the Mirror modifier. Since there has been, there's a better way of doing this: here, for example.

A Gothic vault is usually the intersection of Gothic arch prisms. For the basic shape:
Starting with a quarter of a circle, Z up, X accross, snap set to Vertex' and'Active'

Duplicate the vertex on X=0, drop it in Z, to give something to snap to
Under a mirror modifier in X with 'Merge' and 'Clip' checked, select all the vertices on the arc with the desired peak vertex active, and GX snap the half-arches together.

Discard excess vertices, and E extrude in Y

Create an empty at the origin, in this case, rotated in Z by 45 degrees
Assign an Array modifier ('Merge' and 'First and Last' checked) to the extrusion, Object Offset, with the empty as target.
Here, I used the shipped 'TinyCad' add-on to create the vertices shown active, at the intersection of perimeter edges.
K with Z cut through, from the new vertex to the center.

Select the external faces to be retained, CtrlI invert the selection, and X delete unwanted faces.
Here, I've also K with C to constrain to horizontal in a top view, cut the circumferential edges
If you want to bevel the peaks and troughs, select the edge-loops before applying the modifiers to a copy of the object, and bevel after applying.

The result.

Obviously there may be other actions you want to take while under the modifiers, to tweak / decorate / create suitable topology for columns, etc.

Yes! That's it! Thank you so much! I was afraid I didn't give enough information on what I was talking about. I had a vault done (by manual vertex shaping), but not the one that would align with my windows in a circle as shown in the pic. Now I finally know how to move on. Again, awesome answer.

.. @LucidityofPower   It sounds as if you should be able to borrow the arch from your windows, and go from there. I've found that array merging, etc. can be quite prone to rounding errors.. take the time to carefully extend the merge range in the modifiers just not so far as to damage the rest of the mesh, it can save a lot of fiddling later.

Aye! I will take that into consideration. I'm no stranger to borrowing geometry, but I am a stranger to creating geometry like this. Thank you for the additional advice!


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How to reduce rotation-caused coordinate/displacement problem?
I rotated an item 180 degrees with the pivot being at 0,0,0 (cursor). It was a large item (or more specifically a bunch of walls that were individual items). Then I rotated other items to 45 degrees, with the same exact problem. I noticed in almost all cases that the items rotated ended up having fractional location changes that were different from even the same items directly below them. Is that a problem? Is it normal? Is there any way to fix that?
Example:

Zoomed in to the max, we have this (item had its rotation applied in this case, because I see no reason not to):

The unrotated item looks like this, though (straight edges):

Is this an algorithm problem? I don't understand what is happening here X_X
File:

Instructions:

Right side is copied from the left side (left is original side) in wire-frame mode with box-select (CTRL+B). Note that the origin was set to cursor from the beginning.
moved 15 grid-spaced in the Y direction
then rotated on the pivot point (cursor) 180 degrees (although it shows 540 because I rotated it to test different angles).
Clicking on individual parts of the newly cloned & rotated wall shows that some wall parts now have an offset.

I'm sure, that I don't quite understand your problem yet. However there is a marked Location offset (-0.0000002). Could it be that the objects are rotated around different centers?

I don't think so, but I could be wrong. There should be no offset imo. Maybe I should attach the part that is giving me a problem. I've uploaded the file and updated instructions for how to get the problem.

The 'errror' is caused by the limited precision of floating point numbers. A fix would be quite difficult and in most use-cases completely unnecessary.
After the translation, the objects matrix seems to represent exactly what we expect.
>>> bpy.context.object.matrix_world
Matrix(((1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0),
        (0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 15.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)))

After the rotation however, the value of 2 * pi gets included in the matrix.
Matrix(((-1.0, -3.2584136988589307e-07, 0.0, -1.3113416343912832e-06),
        (3.2584136988589307e-07, -1.0, 0.0, -15.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0),
        (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)))

Since we have a limited amount of digits in floating points, it will only be an approximation. Applying this approximation to certain numbers will result in rounding errors. If you scroll until the view won't let you zoom in anymore you have reached the limit of Blender smallest units and are seeing these rounding errors.

Oh, really? :o So is this a problem? does it affect anything (exporting into game engine, for example, or can it cause any lighting problems)? I've been bashing my head against a wall for weeks now, going as far as replicating geometry to get it to perfectly align. Is this worth the effort, or it is inconsequential when importing into a game engine or something else? Please advise. (Btw, thank you for the explanation--really helps me understand now why this is happening.)

If you can, ignore it. Lot of numbers can only be approximated with 32bit floating point numbers. However, they are usually rounded to numbers which are close enough. Notice how this is the reason a lot of operations (remove doubles) need to have a distance threshold. In most use cases there is no need for extreme magnification.

So, no effect on how lighting translates or what the final representation of the meshes look like when they go into another program? I can ignore it, I just don't know if I should. What do professionals do when they face this problem in this case?

If you can't ignore it or need complete precision, you will have to use a CAD software (or rewrite how Transformations are handled.

Sorry, one other question: this is common in game engines, for example? I don't want to have something that can screw a game up in the future, so better get into a habit of having correctness now if I can through your advice.

Yes, the imperfection are going to be retained and possibly accumulate, but they're still going to be too tiny to care about. If you want to blueprint precise machinery, don't use Blender. Most visual artists won't have time or reason to view their work magnified x100000, especially in an artistic context. Image output is likely going to only have less than 4000 pixels and only 8bit color depth. Rule of thumb: look at your work through the final output/image/camera/device. Do you see anything wrong. If not, others won't either.

Thank you very much. You've given advice and enlightened me to a high degree with your information. And no, I don't care about precise machinery--this is for games, after all (who is going to 3D print, exactly, a huge building?). I want to be a game modeller :). Again, a huge, huge thank you for taking the time to help/explain.


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How to combine faces of an array (roof)?
The goal is to combine the faces, instead of having them overlap. That overlap of faces actually is very chaotic and difficult to combine if I make the object that I'm arraying (a spherical fragment) smaller (this gives it a nicer, smoother look). It seems as though there should be a simple solution to this, but I have no idea what this solution is. After all, array merging seems to affect the whole fragment instead of just the top faces. I've tried booleaning, grabbing (changes dimensions while it is arrayed), changing it into a curve (seems to mess everything up), and re-sizing it. The curve that it follows is directly below it and follows the wall's pattern. Anyway, maybe someone knows another option...?

File:

Array + Curve Modifier https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/49639/how-to-smooth-an-arrayed-object-so-the-breaks-between-objects-are-less-obvious

This already has curve modifier. It'd be impossible otherwise without it to follow the curve.

@cegaton please check file that I just added. I don't see how this method can be applied without creating a mess because some faces are connected, and I cannot have gaps between the curve and the object that is acting as the curve. I tried bridging, but it's not as easy as you think. Perhaps it is the way to do it, but I need more elaboration. I can't seem to get the effect I'm looking because of the awkward overlaps.

Overlapping answer with @cetagon .. (credit him).. although not quite sure if this is exactly what you're looking for.
Using Bridge Edge Loops, as described, borrowing an appropriate profile from elsewhere in your model, and filling the profile so you can use the 'Interpolate Surfaces' option of the operator.

My stuff on layer 10.

Ok, then, it appears you've steered me in the right direction. There's no other way to do this after spending several more hours on testing methods that don't involve doing it manually. As mentioned in the comment below, it's a pity that I couldn't apply a curve-based method. Thank you for your help. I hope I haven't been too capricious in my question-asking. Most of my "problems" stem from my lack of understanding of Blender's limitations. I've given credit to @cetagon as you asked. Thanks, again. Your answer was very helpful and clarified what cetagon wrote previously.

@LucidityofPower    Sorry, I've had to be away .. I've tried other methods, (eg using a simple open curve as a bevel profile for the path) the profile would have to adapt to the rotational and linear variations between the rails, top and bottom. Personally, I would use Bridge Edge on the simpler rails, without the bevel creases, roughly to match the profile, GG slide and GZ raise the horizontal loops in Z by hand to match /snap to the profile (a copy of it)  in the YZ plane, and then put the bevels in.

No problem! That's exactly what I had to do. I lined everything up and it worked out in the end after tweaking with GG and cutting through faces with knife project.

@LucidityofPower Zakerlee. Keeping the hand work to as simple a stage of the model as possible.

Hence why I asked here :) Thank you, @RobinBetts


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Problem with blur in video editing
Hi i really hope someone can help me out with this: I'm trying to blur a section of my video, the part where my motorbike speedometer is, and basically i followed this tutorial on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_06cWLUZ_Bg BUT the thing is that no matter what ,the section which get blurred(on the right) does not correspond to the section i selected(on the left)
Because i thought it was kind of a sync problem between the "actual" video and its "reference" video in the UV/editor i selected Start = 0 (in the UV/editor properties ) but nothing changed, also by selecting Offset = 0 too.
So...what the hell is going on here?
thanks!
p.s. If you need more details just ask.

It's because you have a different aspect ratio in image and final render. You can do 2 things:
1) set render size equal to video demissions

2) tune  aspect ratio of image in display settings in movie clip editor

Ok don't get mad but... where do i find the ratio of the video on the right ? I mean when i import the video at first it's too small so i zoom in with the mouse wheel and then do the same when i import the video on the left window . But after i did this i can't find the aspect ratio of the left video anywhere. Appreciate the patience.

@entropic.chaos Ratio of the video on the right goes from render demissions. So set up it equal to video demissions


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Why is my vault's bevel unevenly applied?
I don't quite get what's going on. I tried everything: applied rotation, scale, tried re-making the geometry, and nothing works. Could it be that a slight misplacement of a vertex causes such a dramatic change in bevel? It makes no sense. This was created from being mirrored, but it won't apply right. I tried all modes, which I will show below. There is only one that works, but since it doesn't apply it evenly to the bottom portion, I cannot use it as it destroys the top. I need this in order to get the profiling right (otherwise it shows an ugly, impartial application which I demonstrate below as well).
Here are the different types of modes of bevel that I tried (note that they're exaggerated to show how they are unevenly applied).
Offset (note the twisting of one side and another side's disproportionate look):

Width (it looks OK, but it's not when the bevel is applied in excess because it shows that not everything is scaling in the same amount):

Depth (really weird--should not be such a dramatic difference!):

Percent (this is the only one that works relatively better, but it applies most heavily at top, whereas I need it to be applied to the bottom evenly, too):

Here's the reason for why I need the bevel:

Here's what happens when bevel is applied:

Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Note that the file is found here:

can you share us your .blend file? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

@MichaelBenDavid sure, here: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/5903/
P.S. I know that there is geometry going through geometry. I'm not worried about that because it's never seen by the eyes. I just need to bevel the thing :\
If you need the WHOLE file where this fits, let me know--I cut away everything that doesn't belong to this exact problem. And thank you for your response!

Just making sure we understand the problem: 1. You want to bevel the 'spokes' where the arch-prisms join. 2.You want the width of the bevels to conform to the width of the molding all the way along their lengths?

Yeah, I guess that's it? The goal is that I need it to be level to the wall on the back side, yet connect to the profile so that it looks as though they're one piece with the vault (see last image in my post), and since I don't know a better way to do it, I have to manually tweak it so that the profiling isn't too protruding (or my other profiles/pillars that rise up and connect to those "spokes" are too far apart on the X axis for me to make it look good when connected with another object) -- (like a sphere, which then has to be really fat to accommodate the difference).

There is a genuine problem here, IMO... you would expect the 'width' setting to yield a constant length in the newly-created transverse edges (the 'sleepers') .. but it doesn't. I've never noticed this before. I think it will have to be a workaround?

Any suggestions, @RobinBetts ? I'm utterly lost. I did everything I could. I'm now trying to re-create it for the 4th or 5th time, but using the knife tool instead of booleaning it all together and then knifing it in hopes of getting exact same geometry... Since there are no vertices to snap to, it's not working out very well, lol. I don't know what to do anymore X_X if recreating it isn't going to work and this problem just keeps recurring. Dump the project and move on to something else because it's all broken? lol

Not yet. I'll have a play when I get the chance... and maybe someone else will explain it away..

You have my gratitude for taking the time to find a solution. Please do let me know if any ideas come to mind. I've been stuck for many days now. Thank you ^_^

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

How do you get to Killarney?  Well, sir, I wouldn't start from here if
  I were you....

Just teasing.. I think some of this may have been be easier if executed before the array was applied. (Making an array out of arch-peak-to-arch-peak sections may still speed things up when adding detail?) This is a fix, rather than a solution, I'd like to know why the Bevel works the way it does.. whether the algorithm could be improved.

Make a copy of your existing path-curves (you can CtrlJ join them into one curve object to save time later) call it, say 'Miter Path'
Make a copy of your existing profile curve, and delete all but its flat base .. 'Molding Base'
Use the Molding Base as a the Bevel Object for your Miter Path. You now have a set of ribbons
With the ribbons anywhere you like in Z, select them, and then the Vault object. Put the (active) Vault into Edit Mode
From an orthogonal view down Z, hit 'Knife Project' in the Tool region. This will cut a set of edges into the vault where you would have liked the bevels to be.
There will be some extraneous vertices.. there are various ways of tidying them up ..  I selected one of them , then used Select > Similar > Number of Connecting Edges to find the rest, and then X > Limited Dissolve to get rid of them.
I also selected the penultimate vertices around the pole of the vault in order, hit J to make a ring of edges, and deleted the faces at the pole, assuming there will be some kind of boss or rosette there in the end.
Now you can delete the faces between the knife-projected edges and CtrlE > Bridge Edge loops creating the flat bevel to accommodate the molding. CtrlR cut a loop down the middle of each bevel.
ShiftD Duplicate the central loops of the bevel,
P separate to a new object, and AltC convert to a curve - U resolution 1 - this will be your new path for the molding profile
Move the origin of your molding profile to the center of its base - (this point will lie on the path). Use the molding profile as the Bevel Object for your new Molding Path. You may need to rotate it in Z in Edit Mode to get the molding to face the right way.

I apologize  for the lack of step-by step illustrations - everything important is done by step 5.

Alterations on Layer 11.

I tested this out and it worked perfectly. I noticed that I had to bridge some areas and get rid of extra stuff as mentioned and got the perfect result. I also modified your method a little to try to simplify it for myself. It worked as expected. I never used knife project before, so this is something new for me that I just learned through your help. Thanks a lot! That really solved this issue!

@LucidityofPower  Glad it worked ..  and glad you found your own ways around it :)


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Mirroring during retopology creates aberrations on mirrored axis
No idea how else to explain than to show this:
It should be mirroring it, but for some reason the other side comes out really weird. And not just this part. There are other parts, too.
Side A with mesh off:

Side B with mess off:

Side A with mesh on:

Side B with mesh on:

Even the back is messed up, where it is supposed to be symmetrical (note that the right side is the mirrored part):

For comparison reasons, here's the matcap version of the rear as shown above. It's symmetrical, as you can see, because it was done symmetrically when sculpted:

Out of interest in rearranging modifiers, moving the shrinkwrap modifier before the mirror and hiding the mesh makes the holes disappear that would otherwise be there, but the mirroring is messed up if mesh is enabled in that the "keep above surface" on the mirrored side doesn't work:

Again, it should not happen, but it is. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I noticed something: if I remove mirror modifier from the modifier queue, and reapply it so that it goes to the end instead of being the first modifier, the whole thing shrinks, but no aberrations in the plane-based retopo mesh happen when everything is applied (no holes or weird topology problems occur--although the mesh is slightly smaller and an inverse relationship happens where the original mesh now sticks out a lot more vs the new one). Is this a Blender bug?

Another update: I tried putting an object at [0,0,0] and have that serve as the object axis on which to mirror. But it ends up being a problem; even if I move the object as the pivot point for the mirror, something is still wrong with the mirrored side.

hard to understand, could you please share your file or at least the part with the problem? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

try to remirror your rabbit with the dyntopo Symmetrize button, you'll see that you'll see holes both sides. But what is your final goal with this shrinkwrap? I don't think you could avoid holes, except with a big offset or with some manual corrections. And even if you have holes, what's the problem? I guess you're not supposed to keep both the 2 objects...

It's probably a symmetry problem as you said because I found out that doing a "Bool Mesh Symm Function" on the ears fixes this. It also means I need to re-topologize a lot of the parts but at least it works now. I should have used this before actually doing retopology. Argh. Thanks for your help, btw. The idea is to reduce poly count, and shrinkwrap helps keep the planes on top of the surface. It's absolutely necessary. Now all I need to do is simply "grab" the pieces that aren't falling into place and they automatically go on top of the new symmetry. Easy fix.

Yes I understand the retopology, but once you've done it you can get rid of the high-poly version, so maybe the holes are not so important

Right. That's the plan. I just need to clean it up and then it'll be fine. I just wanted to know why it was so strange. Now I know.

Your high-poly object is not really symmetrical, try to remirror your rabbit with the dyntopo Symmetrize button, you'll see holes both sides.

Thank you for your help, @moonboots, you've solved my issue with symmetry. I also wanted to add that symmetry with the ears in particular was fixed by doing that without having to re-do everything. That was the only problem (I thought I had copy-and-pasted the ears right, but apparently I didn't).