text:
Bezier circle curve can't be manipulated? How do I do so?
This guy easily does so. Examples:

Yet on the other hand, I can't? This is what happened:

If I click the middle dot as per the cursor, the vertices to manipulate the bezier circle is gone. Also, why isn't the bezier curve circle as per the video I showed? Basically, I would like to manipulate that bezier circle as per this video.
Why am I unable to do so, even though I followed the video? Thanks

Go to viewport overlay and change the "Curve Edit mode" to all and turn on "normals" checkbox

After that, you will be able to manipulate the curve in the same way

You should ask new questions on a different post, ask one question per post as the site is  made in that way. As many as you need, but one per post

Thanks, your answer worked.

@FrancisMikeNathan: if Emirs answer helped you, pls click on the checkmark left of his answer so other people know as well that it helps. Thx. And that's the way how this site works: Emir will get reputation points for this and other people don't have to keep on searching for this question. I just noticed you never did this, so please do it. thx.

Noted, I just clicked on the checkmark.


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Armature - tentacle or cable with extendable and retractable joints?

This is the machine in question whose movements (1.35 -1.38, source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfpfpzknBo8&t=266s) I'd like to replicate via applying armature. My mesh:
How do I apply a tentacle armature after the limb fully extends its joints, to make the tentacle retract into the body? Also, how do I make the body rotate at 1.26? Again, I'd like to replicate all this machine's movements, as per this video.
Thanks

Maybe this tutorial? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKfdy050JMQ

@moonboots thanks for this recommendation

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Armature and rigging for this sphere robot with tentacles?
Robot in question:

I'd like to move about the robot like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKfdy050JMQ
1:50 to 2:00
How is the armature and rigging applied? Also, how are the tentacles joined to both the main body and its "feet"?

I guess you just parent the empties at the ends of the tentacles to the body and the feet respectively (CTRL P - Set Parent to Object (keep transform)) and work from there.

@John Eason, thanks

There's a 2-part YT tutorial on creating and rigging robotic arms here which you could easily modify to create the same effect.

@John Eason thanks for this recommendation

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


text:
Unreal Engine 4 can't reflect meshes, armature, and animation as per the Blender 3 3d viewport?
I used a link or streaming plugin or addon like Link Live or Blender to Unreal plugin to import from Blender to Unreal Engine 4.
I need this character, as how it is in the Blender 3d Viewport, comprised of multiple meshes and armature to be exactly reflected in the Unreal Engine 4. Including both the armature and animation/movements.

Unfortunately, when I exported this to Unreal Engine 4, via Blender to Unreal plugin, the character came out like this:

I used the mirror modifier. What went wrong? How do I export the armature and movement to Unreal Engine 4 as well? Thanks

Since it appears to be working in Blender, I'd consider this question to be about either the third-party plugin or Unreal Engine rather than about using Blender itself so I'd consider this question to be off-topic here.

Surely mirror modifiers visual effects in blender should also apply to game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity too

I've no idea. This Q&A site is for questions about using Blender not other software.

On second thought, regarding the missing faces/meshes, I resolved the issue by simply recalculating normals. This Unreal thread discussed it. Here is how I recalculated normals.


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Shrinkwrap not projecting onto mesh?
I'm basically trying to shrinkwrap this eye onto this face:

Unfortunately, after choosing project, and the axis accordingly, the eye failed to project onto the model. It's as if I never shrinkwrapped in the first place.

How do I project this eye onto the head? Also, any alternatives to shrinkwrap in order for me to project or wrap this eye onto the head? Thanks

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

Done https://blend-exchange.com/b/oovJJVNz

You've set it to project in its Y axis (the "Y" button on the modifier.)  If we enable the display of axes on your object, we can see what direction that is:

It's looking for the mesh in the direction of its Y axis, which is up, and it's not finding the mesh, therefore it doesn't do anything.
If we enable "affect only origins" on the toolbar, we can rotate its origins to some orientation where that projection will hit the mesh:

While it definitely worked, unfortunately, the eye looks distorted, like this:

While I don't see your image (maybe automoderated?) you should expect distortion when using a shrinkwrap modifier.

While I did follow as you suggested, unfortunately, the projected eye got deformed, like this: https://ibb.co/h9xNKSC

Okay, that picture is very different than what I said, and different than your question (SW is no longer projecting, period.)  However, again, you should expect distortion when using a shrinkwrap, even when (especially when) shrinkwrapping to the nearest surface point rather than projecting.

On second thought, I had to manually "adjust" the vertices by dragging the using the E and G keys to fit them onto the face.


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Bezier curve can't scale
So I asked a question regarding a bezier curve. Helpful as the answer was, unfortunately, I now have another issue: I can't scale as per this screenshot:

I would like to scale as the above.
Instead, I got this:

Scaling works only for one side like this:

I guess you've set a different pivot point than the guy in the tutorial... Also I see in the tutorial he scales along global Z axis, which you don't seem to do.

thanks, what you suggested worked.


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Export Blender edges/lines into Unreal or other game engines
These lines are basically edges. In Blender:
https://ibb.co/4TnnZRL
Yet in unreal, the lines on the torso and ear does not show up. How do I export these edges/lines in Unreal? Do I use a Blender modifier? Thanks

The problem is that Blender shows edges as 1px lines, while game engines will show only polygons, edges will be skipped because it has no geometry to show.
Blender has an option to export edges as 0-area polygons:

But it will not help because it should have some width. So in order to render these edges, you should add some depth to it - a polygon or a tube


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Lightning not as jagged as per tutorial?
I tried to follow this guy's tutorial. While his lightning looked like this ,
mine looked like this:

Basically, I would like my lightning to be more jagged like in this youtube tutorial's. How do I do so? Thanks
My Blend file: https://blend-exchange.com/b/lAzepA73

You need to either scale up your mesh on Z in Edit mode (his mesh is probably taller than yours), or decrease the Size of your textures:

Thanks for the suggestion, but for some reason, that youtube tutorial just set the size to "1", yet had quite a bit of jagges?

In that case his mesh is probably taller than yours (on Z)


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Emission/light shines in one direction but not another

How do I make this glow visible regardless of viewing angle angle? The glass transparent settings are visible in my screenshots. Thanks

If you want to shine through the glass you have to enable the Screen Space Refraction for the material. Its checkbox is visible on the pictures.

Thanks for the suggestion, but sadly, no difference https://ibb.co/SNn5rD1

You have to enable it in the render setting too. https://imgur.com/a/roIfia1

I did enable in render setting. Still no change. :(

On second though, I flipped normals for the cube, so now the light passes through the  glass regardless of angle viewed


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Prevent objects/meshes from going or passing through other objects?
Without using physics, I wanna be able to freely move around objects like normal, but they cannot pass through certain other objects.
Any way besides physics for this? like applying a location or distance constraint, that only prevents objects going through certain other objects? But other that that, I can still freely move around objects.

For certain meshes, this is (somewhat) possible without physics.  For example, if you want to move a sphere around without interecting other objects, you can use some combination of constraints, GN, and perhaps other modifiers to shrinkwrap it outside a collection of those other "colliding" bodies, by a distance equal to the radius of the sphere.  There are multiple techniques possible for this, but I won't go into great detail until understanding whether this would be an appropriate solution for your problem (need to know the shapes involved.)
This is only "somewhat" possible because base GN (and constraints) are not aware of what happened last frame, only this frame, and so even here, if you pull your sphere directly through a collider, it will teleport through rather than move around it.  And, as mentioned, it depends heavily on the shape of the object or colliders-- it's not something I would dream of doing for an arbitrary shape.
With simulation nodes in GN, it is potentially possible to recreate collision physics, but doing so would be complicated and slow, and provide no benefit over physics-- you'd still need to bake the nodes or else scrub through the timeline in order.
The main reason for physics to exist is to solve collision problems.  Physics are optimized for this, and so using physics is the best way to approach the problem.


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How to make a wavy filter for animation
I have a simple animation, i want the animation to have a riple effect like in after effect when it makes the animation looks wavy (Like looking things underwater from above). Is this possible to achive by blender? Can someone suggest me the way to do it?

Create a plane, give it a glass material (Transmission at 1 and Roughness at O, subdivide it, give it a Displace modifier with a Clouds texture, give it a Subdivision Surface modifier, create an empty that will be the Displace object:

Keyframe the empty:


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Material appeals purple when connecting emission shader
I'm trying to make a Emission Shader with Toon Shadow, but when i connect the Emission the shader my object appear to be purple but i'm not using any image texture. How should i fix this?

That's because you connected the shaders (the green nodes) before the RGB and the ramp. The shaders should only be connected to the green sockets of the Material Output or to a Mix Shader node.

As @Vagabonk says, you plug a shader output into a color input, that does not work. Certain data connections can be mixed like vectors, colors and float values because they can be converted from one to another, like a single float can be applied to all three values of a vector, or the three values of a color or vector output can be averaged to be used in a single float input. But a shader output holds information on how a surface/volume should appear, these are not just simple numbers that can easily be split up in three values for a vector or color or merged somehow to a single float value.


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Rotation is very odd - What am I doing wrong?
A newbie to Blender here. I have a scene with some objects. One is a crescent that I created by adding a cylinder, rotating it on it's Y axis by 90 degrees and scaling it on the X axis and finally boolean slicing it in half to create the shape I want.
If I say R X to rotate it on the X axis, I am able to do that and it rotates to the position that I want (90 degrees). However, I notice that the rotation value for X in the menu on the right has changed to 90 as expected. But, the Y has changed from 90 to minus 90 and the Z has changed from 0 to 90.
Normally I might not really care about this but I am attempting to keyframe this animation and unlike when I perform the rotation using R X, the animation rotates on all 3 axises. The animation is supposed to be a spinning half disk but the animation creates something that rotates on all 3 axises.
What am I doing wrong here?
2 screenshots are attached. One before I do the rotation with x at 0, y at 90 and z at zero and then the results after I do the rotation. Any help greatly appreciated :)
Before:

And After:

your image links are broken, kindly remove or update with another image

How to upload an image to a post? or GIFs

You're not doing anything wrong.  This is just the way that Euler angles work.
There are two main issues with Euler angles: gimbal lock (or as I prefer, wonky Euler interpolation, because I think people misunderstand gimbal lock all the time because of how it's named), and aliasing.
Wonky Euler interpolation means that Euler angles do not interpolate their rotation along the shortest path.  My favorite metaphor for this involves airplanes.  Imagine you are in Reykjavic, Iceland and you want to fly to Anchorage, USA.  What path do you take?  If you take the shortest path, you will fly north, and fly very close to the North Pole.  But if, instead, you look on a latitude-longitude map of the Earth and just plot a straight line on that map, you will fly west over Canada.  Your flight path will be a straight line on your (distorted) 2D map, but once laid over the spherical globe, it will no longer be a straight line and will instead have torque.  Plotting a straight line on the 2D map like that is how Euler angles interpolate.  Your flight is the rotation, around the center of the Earth, described by interpolating from one Euler angle to another.
The difference between the path given by Euler interpolation and by shortest-distance interpolation (which would be quaternion interpolation) is big in some cases, small in others-- just like the Euler/quaternion difference flying between Anchorage and Reykjavic is bigger than the difference when flying between Bogota and Singapore.  By starting your Y rotation at 90 degrees, when you are evaluating an XYZ Euler angle, you're guaranteeing a large difference-- you're starting near the north pole.
"Aliasing" means that there are multiple values of one measure that correspond to a single value of something else.  Here, we're talking about multiple Euler angles corresponding to single orientations: the Euler angles have aliases, other values that give the exact same result.  The easiest example to imagine in your head is rotate 180 degrees in X, then 180 degrees in Y, then no rotation in Z; think about how this is the exact same rotation as rotating 0 degrees in X and Y and then 180 degrees in Z.  Those two Euler triplets correspond to the exact same 3D orientation.  This is far from the only orientation that gets aliased; there are actually twice as many Euler angle triplets in the -180, 180 range as there are orientations.  But Blender needs a single set of Euler values to interpolate between.  It chooses the angles it provides, for a particular transformation, based on its best guess of how things should interpolate, but it's just dumb software, and it can't always choose right.  The Euler angles we see are not always the Euler angles we expect, because there are multiple sets of Eulers that correspond to the actual orientation.
Usually, when we need only limited amounts of rotation (plus or minus 360 degrees), and it's all going to be in a single axis, and, in Blender, we don't mind that the interpolation will never be linear, the easiest thing to do here is to change the rotation mode to quaternion, in properties/object data/transform/rotation mode.  Once we do that, our interpolation will be along the shortest path.  However, that also means that our rotation transform numbers won't necessarily make a lot of sense to us.  (Quaternions, as implemented by Blender, are not aliased, but in most other applications they are; but because we're probably not concerned about the actual numbers, we probably don't care about quaternion aliasing.  We just want to make sure that we stay on this or that side of 0 for our W component if we don't want to do extra rotations.)
In other situations, there can be reasons that we want Euler angles.  In that case, we're best off if we never deviate far from n, 0, 0 rotation.  The first angle is basically free, as its independent of the other angles, but the other angles are dependent.  How can we assure that we don't deviate far from that rotation?  One way is to apply rotation when we have the object close to the middle of its reasonable rotations.  Another important technique is to choose an Euler order (again, in properties/object data/transform/rotation mode) such that the main axis in which we want to rotate the object is the first axis of our Euler order.
Finally, when we don't like the angles that Blender has given us for a particular orientation, we can always edit them.  We can enter numbers manually in the rotation fields and then keyframe rotation.  Or, we can edit keyframe values in a graph editor viewport.  The numbers Blender hands us are not immutable, God-given facts; they're just numbers, and we're always free to tell Blender to shove it with its best guesses.

Sadly, just changing the numbers does not produce the lateral rotation that I am looking for for this disk object.  I exported it to an FBX and imported that into Fusion and I was able to rotate it there just fine but selecting every other type of coordinate system in Blender does not give me the results I need sadly.


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Curves to mesh texture painting not working
I am having trouble painting this mesh - it's my first time doing such a thing and couldn't find a solution-
I made this "hair" with curves and  then i turned them into a mesh, then i export the UV MAP and tried to texture paint it but it is not working - it is only fully painting some places and i need each "hair" to be of a different color.

The green ones are not in the same object- there are painted  with principled material

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kdEUIapKpSGLdqYgfWYTpYSMGBV_vVH3/view?usp=sharing
this is the link of the project if you wanna check :)
i flip normals already and it helped a little but it is still happening
thank you so muchh

when i use "fill tool" for texture painting it does not pixelate - but it turn everything in one color so it is not what i am looking for -

The meshes have very bad topology- in this case the overlapping is causing the problem. So, you paint on the front faces (faces with normals outwards) but the back faces are flickering through.

Second image shows how it should be after regenerating the stripes with a clean topology:

thank you so much!


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Generating a dropdown menu in a panel
i'm trying to create a simple dropdown menu inside a panel but i can't figure out why my enumproperty doesn't get drawn.
this is what I have so far:
import bpy

class AKA_PT_Scene_settings(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_category = 'myTools'
    bl_label = 'Scene Settings'

    scale_presets: bpy.props.EnumProperty(
        name="Scale Presets",
        description="Select scale preset",
        items=[
            ('μm',"Micrometers","Set scene scale to micrometers"),
            ('mm',"Millimeters","Set scene scale to millimeters"),
            ('cm',"Centimeters","Set scene scale to centimeters"),
            ('m',"Meters","Set scene scale to meters"),
            ('km',"Kilometers","Set scene scale to kilometers"),
        ],
        default = 'm'
    )

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.prop(self, "scale_presets")

# Register the panel
def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(AKA_PT_Scene_settings)

# Unregister the panel
def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(AKA_PT_Scene_settings)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()`

I'm getting no errors, and the panel shows up in the sidebar so I assume it has nothing to do with the registration part of the code. any idea?

Hello. Panels can't hold custom properties, they're interface elements only. You may want to store the properties on the current scene for example and access that in the draw method with context.scene.scale_presets

thank you Gorgious, since I successfully created a dropdown menu in the undo/redo panel I assumed it could be implemented pretty much the same way.

Indeed, but the undo panel is displaying properties of the operator you just executed, it doesn't itself possess any property


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Capture the shortest path order
After banging my head multiple times against the wall I've decided to reach out to this community again because I'm sure the answer is simple and it's me who is missing something.
So I have this very simple setup:

At the moment i'm capturing the shortest path selection (Values of the Viewer column):

What I want is -

Instead of 0 for none selected give me -1 (I can do this easly with a switch node).
Instead of 1 give me the order value for each index according to the shorted path (first vertex of the shortest path should get the value 0 second should get 1 third should get 2 etc.). Here is where I have a problem so I've illustrated the desired result:

I've tried using accumulate field node without success because the field accumulation (I think) is based on index order and not the shortest path order, but there might be a different approach.
any suggestions on how to tackle this?

Sorry if I wasted anyone time because of course the solution was very simple indeed. If someone will ever find it useful here is the correct setup:

the key was to extract the selection to a curve and sample the nearest index which obviously is in the same location.


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Draw a mathematically correct Ellipse - How to Fix Code?
I was trying to replicate this solution: How to draw a flat ellipse surface in Blender with the following known dimensions?
import bpy
import math

#IMPORTANT : set 3d cursor to world origin
bpy.context.area.spaces[1].cursor_location = (0.0, 0.0, 0.0)

#Add circle curve
bpy.ops.curve.primitive_bezier_circle_add(view_align=False, enter_editmode=False, location=(0, 0, 0), layers=(True, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False))

#define variables
a = 10
b = 2
c = 3 # I use the half of c
d = 5

#Calculate width
width = a + b   #or width = a + d + b?

#Calculate horizontal distance from world origin of c
distance = b / 2

#Calculate height c for the circle
#x^2 + y^2 = 1, see Unit Circle
x = (distance / (width / 2)) * math.pi * 0.5

cCircle = math.sqrt(1 - x**2)

#now we have to scale the height of the circle, so cCircle becomes c. And give its width.
factor = c / cCircle

bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=((width)/2, factor, 1), constraint_axis=(True, True, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1)

#Calculate location origin
originX = -((width) / 2 ) + b
originY = 0
originZ = 0

#Set 3d Cursor at Origin location
bpy.context.area.spaces[1].cursor_location = (originX, originY, originZ)

#Set origin to 3d cursor
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR')

#Move object to world origin
bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=((width/2) - b, 0, 0), constraint_axis=(True, False, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, release_confirm=True)

#Voila

But there is a lot of errors on Blender, like this

How to make it work?

Why not use the Add>Mesh>Math function to create a surface

import bpy
import math

win = bpy.context.window
scr = win.screen

def use_temp_override():
    version = bpy.app.version
    major = version[0]
    minor = version[1]
    return not (major < 3 or (major == 3 and minor < 2))

def get_areas(type):
    return [area for area in scr.areas if area.type == type]

def get_regions(areas):
    return [region for region in areas[0].regions if region.type == 'WINDOW']

def execute():

    bpy.context.scene.cursor.location = (0,0,0)

    a = 10
    b = 2
    c = 3
    d = 5

    width = a + b
    distance = b / 2

    x = (distance / (width / 2)) * math.pi * 0.5

    cCircle = math.sqrt(1 - x**2)
    factor = c / cCircle

    areas  = get_areas('VIEW_3D')

    # ========================================================================================
    # (if) execute using temp override
    # ========================================================================================

    if use_temp_override():

        with bpy.context.temp_override(window=win, area=areas[0], regions=get_regions(areas)[0], screen=scr):

            bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_center()
            bpy.ops.curve.primitive_bezier_circle_add(radius=1, enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0, 0), scale=(1, 1, 1))
            bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=((width)/2, factor, 1), orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', mirror=False, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)
            bpy.context.scene.cursor.location = (-((width) / 2 ) + b, 0, 0)
            bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR')
            bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=((width/2) - b, 0, 0), orient_axis_ortho='X', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', mirror=False, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)

    # ========================================================================================
    # (else) execute using legacy override
    # ========================================================================================

    else:
        override = {
            'window': win,
            'screen': scr,
            'area': areas[0],
            'region': get_regions(areas)[0],
        }
        bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_center(override)
        bpy.ops.curve.primitive_bezier_circle_add(override, radius=1, enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0, 0), scale=(1, 1, 1))
        bpy.ops.transform.resize(override, value=((width)/2, factor, 1), orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', mirror=False, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)
        bpy.context.scene.cursor.location = (-((width) / 2 ) + b, 0, 0)
        bpy.ops.object.origin_set(override, type='ORIGIN_CURSOR')
        bpy.ops.transform.translate(override, value=((width/2) - b, 0, 0), orient_axis_ortho='X', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', mirror=False, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)

print("start ======")
execute()

Im not lucky: Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "\Text", line 72, in
File "\Text", line 51, in execute
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'override' referenced before assignment

you are on blender 3.2 right? or higher

yeah i fixed it now

Works like magic!!!! Thank you!


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How to denoise when baking into vertex color (color attributes)
I've been searching for quite a while for a solution for this but haven't been able to find anything.
As part of custom level making for the PC port of jak and daxter, the vertex colors are used as the baked lighting. However, simply baking with cycle into the color attribute in blender gives some very very noisy results which since it's applied on the vertex color of somewhat lowpoly models, make that noise very visible and looks really bad in game.
Increasing the sample count does help but even going pretty high still doesn't give great result in the darker areas. It also increase the render time far too much.
The only option I've had so far is to manually smooth it out with the blur tool in vertex painting. This is both extra manual work and also doesn't give the best result as both shadows and highlight then bleed into near areas.
Is there any other possible solution for my problem?


text:
Transfer animation from armature to mesh with keyframes
Soo this is quite a complex problem, I've got to a point where I got close to solving this problem but I got stuck here.
First of all, I have an animated armature with a stickman attached to it (its bodyparts are literally made of edges). The reason for the edge part is that later I want to separate every edge, in this case body part, and convert it to curves. So I have an animation, I could export it as a .mdd, and then reimported it to the base model (stickman) without the armature. This way the animation works fine, but all of the movements are controlled by shapekeys. Before converting the edges to curves I want to set the origin to geometry for all body parts, but that messes up the animation, and I guess the reason for this is that the animations are not real keyframes, rather keyframe controlled shapekeys. Setting it to the geometry would be really important for me later.
I guess I would have to somehow convert/apply every shapekey to keyframes but this is where I'm stuck, I have no idea if that's even possible.
I know this whole text can be really confusing, I tried my best to describe the problem.


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Different encodings in blend files
In working with blender, we found that blender saves files in different encodings. In the screenshot an example of default empty files created on different machines.
We would like to understand what it depends on, because we use scripts to get information about the file and here on one of these encodings scripts do not work. Very strange situation.

What I see highlighted is the version number of Blender that the file was created in. Are other versions of Blender being used on the different machines you mention?

We tested same versions of blender (3.1), we downloaded it from official site - its portable version. And same version saves in different machines in different encoding. On both machines we use Windows 10.
PS: tested now and its save normal now with header! Lol. But we need convert existing file with wrong encoding in right, Im not sure if it possible.

Could you just copy whatever you have created from the file with the different encoding  and paste it into a file that has the encoding you want? What is the encoding in the problem file? Don't bother with a screenshot, just paste the information like that you have highlighted above.


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Getting colored point cloud sequence into Blender
I have motion capture data in the form of a colored point cloud that I would like to get into Blender. The export options from the MoCap program are:

I have been trying desperately to get the Alembic to work, trying all export combinations. Yet, it always comes into Blender looking like this:

I want it to look like this:

I have found some similar posts:
Vertex color Animation from houdini to blender 2.8
https://developer.blender.org/T53711
Blender 2.81 doesn't seem to be importing vertex color for .ply
In the last post, "Joe Crozier" comments that there doesn't seem to be a way in Blender to get colors for just points. Is this true?
My other option is to export a sequence of point clouds, perhaps as PLY's and figure out how to render them one frame at a time in Blender. Obviously Alembic seems to be the easiest option.
It's possible to export meshes from this program but they are often of very poor quality as they are based on the points, which can be very sparse.

I once used this addon that allow to import a sequence of obj, ply etc... https://github.com/neverhood311/Stop-motion-OBJ  You then can instance cube for example, and render shadeless with emissive, you now could do that using geo node.

@softyodayoann Thank you. I actually found this add-on which works great as long as you are using Blender 2.81: https://github.com/uhlik/bpy
I was able to animate my point cloud using a sequence of PLYs.

One solution is to export each cloud as a sequence of PLYs. Then this add-on: https://github.com/uhlik/bpy works for animating it in Blender 2.81.


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How do you get Rid of The Noisy Stuff?

I was wondering how to make it not noisy. I looked at the one there already was and It didn't work.

This is a common question, and something that 3D artists have been trying to eliminate since the inception of ray tracing. You mention the previous post did not help you, but please read through all the responses to this question. https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/4980/how-to-avoid-noisy-renders-in-cycles
They help provide some insight into what noise is, why it is there, and how to reduce it.
Please note that posting a duplicate question is not encouraged, even if the previous question did not help you, unless you add content specific to your situation.

If you use Cycles Render, there is a really cool feature named Denoising, which is on Render Layers tab. Tick it on and it will actually denoise your render, making it look better even with less samples. As far as I remember, it's available since version 2.78.

Hi. Welcome and thanks for the answer, however the question is tagged with the 'blender-render' tag, meaning they are using the internal render engine, not Cycles (unless they have incorrectly tagged it, which is possible).

I don't have any of that...

Trex, you could try increasing the quality of the final render as you're using blender-internal render:

It's set to 50% as default


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I want to follow a tutorial but my mirror modifier doesn't work like in video?
So as you see on the video , the front side is moving together but the back side is not ! I want to follow a tutorial video but my mirror and the tutorial mirror is behave differently ! But why ? As I see on the tutorial both sides moving together ! Here is the video how my mirror works!

in your video, the modifier works as it is supposed to work, but what tutorial are you following?

Soo here is the tutorial video ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiIoWrOlIRw&t=58s  Look at 1:46 !
And then look mine !
https://youtu.be/ryaCry_p720
Its looks different !

he uses the box (B) to select both the front and back vertices, but sorry I'm not even sure that's what you're trying to do

Oops, sorry, @moonboots, crossed wires.

In the video, (having used it before,) the tutor is still using B Box-Select, in the shot you're referring to. In wireframe mode, that will select every vertex, however deep, within the box.
In your video, you are selecting directly, with a right-click. This will only select the vertex closest to the viewing plane.

Ohh man ! Thank you you just saved me ! I was trying like 4 ours ! Thanks !


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Character getting distorted while Parenting to bones
I'm trying to teach myself how to rig for the first time and after finally getting somewhere with it, but my mesh gets distorted when I try to parent it to the bones with automatic weights. I don't know where else to go from here.

This is the mesh before Parenting.
Notice how the body and the legs are skewed and distorted.
I've removed doubles, and I've removed modifiers and still it gets distorted.

most of the times, perenting needs adjustments with Weight Painting or Vertex Groups, so it's not a surprise if it doesn't work fine, please share your file so that we can test: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

It might be due to the origin of the armature being different from the one of the model. Try setting both origins to the same point and then try it again.


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geometry nodes, Weighted random value
how to define weighted random value?
for example in this node group, I want the probability of smaller numbers to be more than bigger numbers.
I tried using map range but I couldn't get any results.

You could distribute points on a curve, with the accumulate weight becoming a factor to sample, as I do here: How can I control the density or probability of an object based on material using geometry nodes?

use a random value set to float between 0 and 1, then use a math power node afterwards then remap to desired range.

@MarkusvonBroady thank u

@shmuel Thank u, it works fine, for some reason, when I use "inverse square root" it gives me a better result, but I don't know much about math.

hmm,  wouldn't recommend. you could get very hight numbers with that. it is the same as $1 \over \sqrt{x}$ or $ 1 \over x^{0.5}$ and taking the reciprocal of a low number could give very big numbers. anyway, if it works it works.


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I'm making a table Rounded Edges - Noob question

So I used a cylinder to make the table head but I've noted the irl table edges aren't just flat they tend to be a tad rounded I just need to know how to make the edges of this table rounded, I've tried smoothing the vertices and extruding them doesn't seem to work :(

have you tried bevel? select the edge, ctrl b, and change the amount of edges on the bottom of the T panel

I tried bevel and this happened https://i.imgrpost.com/imgr/2018/11/12/sticks.png

you must switch to edge mode, select the top circle edge and the bottom circle edge and ctrl B

In the 3D view, switch to Edge Select mode.
Select both top and bottom circles.
Press ctrl B to create a bevel, change the parameters on the bottom of the Tools panel of the 3D view (T).
Add a Smooth Shading and a Subsurf modifier.


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can we add a Header to UIList to show up on top of the UI component?
i am wondering if this is possible, as i can´t find any topic in that matter.
Or maybe the option is to create a fake content for the row index 0 and start adding property´s content at row 1... what do you think ? any suggestions?

i don't know whether this is what you want, but if you use the template "ui list simple" and you add this:
 row = layout.row()
 layout.label(text="Header:")

you will get:


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How to edit custom node socket noddle style as dotted line?
I am looking for a solution to customize a node link type, inside a custom nodetree.
In standard nodes, there are some data sockets that do link with a dotted line noddle, how to reproduce this with custom node? i can´t find it in the api...
Thanks a lot for your help

I don't think it's available to the API

ok, i saw some dev.talk regarding this topic, seems that the style will not be exposed.


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Blender how to create 2D shape with smooth and sharp edges
Dears, I am new to Blender 3D and I am struggling at creating 2D flat objects that have sharp vertices/edges and smooth vertices/edges I create my object, I select some vertices as "sharp" or "crease" but after applying the subdivision surface modifier the entire object is smoothed out, including the vertices marked as sharp. I was not able to find a tutorial.. Thank you for your help.

to sharpen you need to create some additional edges close to the existing one you want to sharp,  I don't think Crease could help with 2D shapes.

I think you need to post some images. Also have a look at Autosmooth in the object properties and changing the angle. This works when and object is marked Smooth shading.

Sounds like you should be using Bezier Curves instead, if you don't need clean topology. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/58626/is-it-possible-to-import-the-outline-or-profile-of-something-from-a-picture-to-u or https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/55205/how-can-i-make-a-planes-edges-taper-inwards

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos  just beat me to it: you want to have a look at 2D Bezier Curves. Although the editing interface is not quite as intuitive or flexible as some other apps, you can soon get used to it ..  there's a good little intro video here

To sharpen you need to create some additional edges close to the existing one you want to sharp, I don't think Crease could help with 2D shapes.


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I can't add icing to a doughnut on blender in the 2018 version
So a few days ago I was watching blender guru's doughnut video. I found out that that was made in 2016 and that his was working differently. On his, the selected part came out when he set the offset to 1. With mine, it just moves the selected part into the centre of the doughnut. Can someone help

Please post the video and time code of the problematic section. Your version of blender and screen shot of how it fails on your setup. We are happy to help but you have not given us much to go on.

clearcoat = 1
clearcoat roughness = 0
If your using the principled shader (which is a good choice for a donut, I would recommend it), then you can turn on clearcoat, and set clearcoat roughness to 0. This should give you a glossy finish on top of your donut. I don't know if I have seen the tutorial you are talking about, but I think this is the desired effect.
Also,
have you tried the blender from 2016? Older versions can be downloaded here: https://download.blender.org/release/


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Vector displacement along Z axis
So I'm trying to make a mineral texture for November, and I want to use vector displacement. But I can't get it to go just along the Z-axis, nor will the texture Be shown.
In the setting of the material I have displacement and bump on, and I'm using cycles. I have subdivided the plane too.
What am I not doing?

With the 'Separate XYZ' node, you're extracting the Z value of the Generated texture-space of the plane. That is 0 for all the plane's shading points, since the plane has no Z dimension.
When plugged into the Vector input of the Voronoi node, that is implicitly cast to the vector (0,0,0).
The Voronoi function is therefore being evaluated at (0,0,0) for all shading points in the plane, and returning the same value at all points.
Knock out the 'Separate XYZ' node, and you should start to see some results which depend on the shading point's (XY) location in the plane's Generated texture space.
If you haven't already, I would recommend installing the shipped 'Node Wrangler' add-on. One of the things you can do with it is quickly preview the output of any node on the way down the tree by sctrl-hift-clicking on it. With your current set-up, for example, you would be able to ctrl-shift-click on the Voronoi node, and see that its output is a blank, uniform color, or even put a little reroute in the Z output of the Separate XYZ node by shift-right-dragging across the noodle, and ctrl-shift-click on the reroute, to see that the Z is 0 everywhere.


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Hotkeys have changed, how can I fix this?
So I don't know what I have done or if I have installed something. I can't remember.
Pressing the TAB key opens this weird looking thing:

Pressing W doesn't ope the edge thing.
Those are my main concerns, and they have been killing me for a while now. I did download the blender supercharge layout, but I didn't install it directly into blender.
I don't know if this is part of any update blender has made but does anyone know how to change this.

Probably if you go to Edit >>> Preferences >>>> Load Factory Preferences

Hope that Helps
Good Luck


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Smooth out boxy faces
how could I make this beveled edge look smoother without having to shade it smooth? Applying an edge split with catmull subsurf works but this in turn ruins everything BUT the edge I am trying to fix (maybe theres a way to apply it just to some faces?).
Help would be much appreciated

You need to use Shade Smooth with Auto smooth turned on. Don't use edge split for shading purposes, It's actually very bad for that purpose.

@Jakemoyo Thank you, exactly what I needed


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Viewer node does not pop up in Blender 3.0
I am close to  nervous breakdown.
I have tried everything but the viewer node does not show up.
I have rendered the image.
I have enabled the node Wranger add-on.
When I click Shift+Ctrl+LMB the output of the node just connects to Material output but the viewer node does not show up.
Would anyone have an idea ?

Is there anything going on in your System Console while this is happening? Go to Window> Toggle System Console and then try it again. See if any Python Errors are popping up when trying to run the command.

Thanks very much for the suggestion !! Unfortunately, nothing shows up!

Hmm, then can you share your .blend file?

The viewer node won't appear if you just have the default Principled BSDF shader in the shader editor and Shift+Ctrl+LMB click on that. If you add (for instance) a Voronoi texture and Shift+Ctrl+LMB click on that, does the viewer node then appear?

Hey guys, you are the best, thank you very much !! Do not really know where the error came from..  Maybe from the fact that I use Anaconda a lot and it might have messed up with blender's python code ?? I reinstalled Blender and then it worked for Voronoi texture. Maybe its also just the fact that I was applying to the wrong nodes, even though I had tried it on a lot of nodes. Anyways, thank you so so so so much !! I can go on with my project. Have a wonderful day !!

It seems like you found the answer to this question via the comments or other sources. Please add it as an answer to the question itself, so it will show up as answered.


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Change the color of a grid of cubes in Blender
I create the faces of a cubic prism using the following function:
def SideXY(data):
grid_dictionary=[]
material_dictionary=[]
position_x=0
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False, confirm=False)
flag=bool(0)
for x in range (0,length):
    position_x += 1
    position_z = 0
    for z in range (0,height):
        position_z += 1
        bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(radius=0.5, enter_editmode=False, location=
(position_x, 0, position_z))
        material = bpy.data.materials.new("test")
        tmp=np.array([position_x,0,position_z])
        for i in range(len(data)):
            if data[i][0] == tmp[0] and data[i][1] == tmp[1]:
                flag=1
        if flag==1:
            material.diffuse_color = (1, 1, 1, 1)
        else:
            material.diffuse_color = (1, 0, 0, 1)

        bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(radius=0.5, enter_editmode=False, location=
(0, position_x, position_z))
        material = bpy.data.materials.new("test")
        tmp=np.array([position_x,position_z,0])
        for i in range(len(data)):
            if data[i][0] == tmp[0] and data[i][1] == tmp[1]:
                flag=1
        if flag==1:
            material.diffuse_color = (1, 1, 1, 1)
        else:
            material.diffuse_color = (1, 0, 0, 1)

data=np.array([[1,1], [2,2]])
SideXY(data)
data2=np.array([[3,2],[1,1]])
SideXY(data2)

Yet, my ultimate goal is to have certain points of the grid coloured differently. My goal, however, is not achieved . Excuse me if the question is trivial. I have been working on blender only for 1 day. Thank you in advance

Do you want to change the Viewport Display color of the Cube?

Exactly, I would like to visualize the different color choice

Assign material to a new Cube and change Viewport Display color
import bpy

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=2, enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0, 0), scale=(1, 1, 1))
obj = bpy.context.object
print(f"Object name: {obj.name}")

material = bpy.data.materials.new("test")
material.diffuse_color = (1, 0, 0, 1)
obj.data.materials.append(material)
obj.active_material_index = len(obj.data.materials) - 1


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How to make full transparency in Eevee 2.4.2?
I'm trying to make this shader-toon-like shader where the only parts showing are the shadow ones. But I can only get this half transparency using Ease mode on Color Ramp. Note the shadow parts aren't completely transparent

Or this weird result in Constant mode

The Shader to RGB should be plugged into the Factor of the Mix Shader. That is, if you want the shadows to dictate whether it's transparent or solid.


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Node editor Hexagon
I currently have the Maths expressions addon installed in blender.
I know it has a hexagon preset already, but it comes up with this:

1) How do I fix this?
2) How do I make a hexagon?

It looks as though, somewhere, your/the generated  expression is trying to access the 4th element of a list of size 3. In the mean time, there's a hand-rolled version here

This tree will produce distance-function along the 'spokes' perpendicular to the edges of an Ngon centered on the 0 of a given UV space.
It works by splitting the radial angle into (sides) angular regions, each region with shading-point values from (-pi/sides) to (pi/sides), and multiplying the cosine of those values with the distance from the texture space origin. If the result is put through a threshold (the color ramp), it produces a polygon with sides sides.

For the sake of illustration, I've plugged the Pass Index of the plane objects into the sides input. That's where you would enter 6 for a hexagon.


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How do i convert this equation into the node editor?
How do I make this in the node editor?
I don't get how to go around y=(-x)

Hello :). If you don't mind me asking, what are such equations in the node editor used for? I have honestly no idea.

@ᴊᴀᴄʜʏᴍᴍɪᴄʜᴀʟ ...for example .. procedural texturing

@RobinBetts Oh, thank you :).

Labelled  'Layout > Reroute' nodelets not necessary, but often helpful.
Alternatively, if you have complex expressions to convert, you might consider using @Rich Sedman's Node-Expressions add-on, which could generate a group like this:

It's best to be quite explicit with your bracketing.. In this example, when I didn't bracket the unary minus on x, the negative was applied to the whole expression, rather than binding to the variable. This is expected Python.. but maybe not obvious.


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Why are my donuts appearing lIke this
So a few months ago I did the donut tutorial in cycles, then I opened it in eevee. Unfortunately,there appears to be an outline. I have the Eevee toon shader add on, but I can't find it in my preferences, so I'm confused as to how there are outlines. My nodes are similar to the cycle nodes, but with the principled shader.

In Blender the outline called freestyle, you can find it in the properties window under the render tab.


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How can i use an imported collada file, as a soft body
I'm currently trying to make a photo scans of a guy get hit by a car in blender, but I can't get the car or the guy to work as soft bodies. This is what blender shows me under the physics tab:

Both the car and the guy are imported models.
This image above is shon for both the guy and car.
The man is also rigged.

Is this a mesh object?

Yes this is a mesh object.


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Curve Modifier- not starting at beginning
why is it, that the object does not start at the very beginning of the curve?
It starts randomly at some point but still is affected by the curve-origin - without any clear logic behind it..
in the first picture the curve-origin is at the first vertex
in the second the curve-origin is at the middle of the gemoetry

It's simpler to have both the 2 objects origin at their geometry, and have both the 2 objects at the same location, then when you'll give your object the Curve modifier the object origin (not the object tip) will jump to the beginning of the curve. If you want to make it begin at it's tip, move it along X

The problem here seems to be the origin of the object which should follow the curve, at least that's the impression I get. Can you show a screenshot of the object with the modifiers turned off? Anyway, as @moonboots said, their origins should be in the same location

How the Curve modifier works
Hopefully this is not too confusing - it's just a quick overview of the problems with placing objects correctly to deform along a curve. Maybe someone might be able to explain it better. For a basic understanding I intentionally left out more complicated things like different rotations or scale of the objects.
I use a simple geometry like a long cuboid which is subdivided very often in X direction (because it's the default deformation axis when adding the Curve modifier), so it can follow the curve more smoothly. I take a simple Bézier curve as the target.
In the first example, both objects have their origin in the same location, furthermore the curve's first vertex is placed at the origin and the cuboid has its origin to the left so that all geometry is lying in +X direction.

If I now put the Curve modifier on the cuboid and select the Bézier curve, it works pretty much as expected: the cuboid gets deformed along its X, starting at the beginning of the curve.

A different thing happens if the geometry of the cuboid is centered around the origin like in the following example:

Although the curve and cuboid still have their origins in the same location, only the right side of the cuboid gets deformed. Everything left of the origin (with X < 0) is just aligned in the direction of the curve's first vertex tangent.

Now when the origin in the center of the cuboid means that it is extended to the left or "before" the curve's origin, this might seem like extending the curve in this direction might help. So let's say I add a vertex to the curve on the left side:

But instead of just having the cuboid deform in both directions it has moved further down the curve to the left. And here is the reason: Are both objects with their origins in the same location, the deformation starts with the object's geometry offset from its origin to the first vertex of the curve.

So the simplest thing to deform an object exactly along the curve is moving them both to the same location, with the deforming object's geometry "beginning" at the origin, not centered.
These were all examples where cuboid and curve are in the same location. What happens if they are not? In the next example, the cuboid is moved 3 m in +Y direction:

The cuboid is now deformed along the curve with an offset of 3 m perpendicular to the curve's tangent (because +Y is to the "left" of the X deformation axis). The same thing would happen if you moved the cuboid's mesh in +Y direction in Edit Mode and leave the origin where the curve is.


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Armature pose different in modes. Yes, I have reset the positions
As stated in the title, my armature's position is changing slightly from one mode to another. I have reset the location, scale and rotation but i can't get the leg straight. Help would be greatly appreciated. I'm willing to provide a download link to the blender file if it's required.

you probably need to play with the Pole Angle in the lower leg IK constraint

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

It's really hard to see a "slight change" when all you provide is two pictures, one on top of the other.
I see you have two green bones, meaning they have constraints on them. May those be "Child of" or "Stretch to"constraints?
In which case, when you make a change in your rig, you need to go in each of these constraints and click either set inverse button for the "Child of", either Reset button for the "Stretch to".
If you don't wanna bother about going through each bone and clicking buttons everytime you change something, I have some python scripts for you.
EDIT: also check the IK's pole angles.

Thank you for replying. I'm sorry for being stupid but I'm afraid I simply don't understand what you mean. I'm new to rigging and asking for help, so I'm also sorry that the information i provided isn't enough.

Here: https://i.imgur.com/Yk636xC.png
There is two bones colored in green, meaning they have bone constraints. So select one of these, gon in the bone constraints tab (the icon is a little bone with a little chain link underneath). I guess you have a "Child Of" or a "Stretch To" constraint, just do what I said above, and to the same for every other bone having such constraint. If you can't understand all that, then maybe it's time for you to spend some time learning the rigging basics. It takes very few hours, and it will spare your from days of a headache.

The bone dosen't actually have a child of or stretch to constraint, it has a copy rotation constraint. There are no "set inverse" or "reset" buttons visible.

Ok. Then maybe it's your IK bone's pole angle. Check their IK constraints, try to play with their pole angles, it might just be that.

Changing the pole angle fixes it! Thank you so much for your help


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When I render my animation my main light source is not rendered. How can I get the light to show up in the final render?

//i.sstatic.net/5XYUs.png

All help is appretiated

The bottom picture is preview render and the top is the final render

Possible duplicate of Why does my object not show up?

Your light is in a different layer. Bring your light to layer number one. First, find where is light located in layers then select the light and press m to move to layer number one.


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Joining and rotating several kitchen doors
I am trying to make my kitchen in Blender, and because I have so many single meshes I would like to join them. But I also want to be able to open the dors, one at a time (hope you understand- I am Danish and not very good at English).
I have tried the Pivot Point, but I cannot make it work the way I want.
Is it not possible?

Join all the meshes you don't want to animate, like floors and walls, with ctrlJ.
About the doors: Keep them as separate objects. You can parent them to the house object (ctrlP > Object) so that when you'll move the house on your scene they will follow.
You can't use the Pivot Point of the 3D View to animate them, because it's not taken into account in animations, so come back to Median Point for example. You have to use bones, or, even simpler, use origin point:
In Edit mode Select the face where you want the rotation axis to be (ie hinge of the door), press shiftS > Cursor to Selected, go back in Object mode and press shiftctrlaltC > Origin to 3D Cursor. Now the pivot point will be correct.

I think you might also have to mention parenting ... maybe not..

you mean parenting the doors to the house?

..or the doors to the cupboards.. maybe not, they're probably not going to move.. but it's just such standard practice..

ok, edited  ;)  but we don't know enough about his object

Thank you very much for your answer.
It helped a lot and it works.
I started with some windows at one of the walls and those I parented to the wall.
Next I will make the kitchen and parent the doors to the cupbords


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Applying Textures and Particles
I made some grass on a plane, when i applied the texture to the particles it also affected the plane... i am wondering if there is a way to apply the green texture to the particles only and a dirtbrown to the ground.
appreciate any help.

Try applying a ground texture to the ground then going back to your particle system and assigning your particle’s material in the particle system drop down menus again. In that order it should work.

Thx dude, appreciate the help


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How to change where you fall
i'm trying to make a gravity game where you can use keys to change the direction you fall, solving puzzles etc. so how do i change the direction you fall entirely?

Look at this blenderartists thread and allitebooks.


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Eyes are missing from a 3D model I bought on Sketchfab when using GLTF format
I bought this 3D model from Sketchfab:
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/robin-bird-0a93168c1a2b4de0a9eebbffc9642d61
This is what the model looks like when I import the GLTF file into Blender

This is what it looks like with the materials

For some reason the eyes seem to be missing. But when I open the .blend file the eyes are there (see image below)

Since I need this 3D model for a project in another software which only supports FBX and GLTF files (GLTF works best) I need to use the GLTF file formar for my project.
Why do the eyes disappear? How can I solve this problem?
Thank you very much.

Have you tested the glTF in a viewer to check if the eyes appear there?

@scurest They don't appear in the 3D Viwer from Microsoft

Why don't you use the blend file and export the bird as glTF 2.0 or FBX? (File > Export ...)

@Blunder I've already tried but the GLTF file ist just grey. I looked into the the "UV Editing" tab and the material is there. But the 3D model is grey when exporting it in GLTF format. (I am a complete rookie in blender for your information). How do I apply the material which already is in the "UV Editiing" tab?

When you exported the bird the eyes had been there but they were just grey, right? In screenshots 1 &2, it looks like the eyes are missing/not visible at all. That's why I ask. Do you mean "Shading" workspace? There you can inspect the materials. The "UV Editing" is for the UV maps. Maybe post a screenshot of the bird in wireframe mode (key Z) and the material of the eyes.


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How can I make my stripey texture "curve" downwards with the curve of my object? Unsolved
I'm using a mapping node to cause a noise texture to compress along the Z axis, making horizontal stripes. I'd like to have those stripes curve down the object from the "hip" joint on the right, to the foot on the left, instead of staying perfectly horizontal. Is there a way to set this up?

You can use the Texture Coordinate UV output: Select all in Edit mode, shift select one orthogonal face, press U (Unwrap) > Follow Active Quads:

It will create an orthogonal UV, which will make the texture follow the shape:


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Cannot Keyframe Randomize Rotation Value in Particle System
In the advanced settings of hair particles, I checked the "Rotation" box and in its menu and was messing with the Randomize value. It worked fine and so I decided to animate it.
I clicked the diamond shape next to the Randomize slider to set a keyframe. It worked. Then I move to frame 50 in the timeline, the slider turned green. So I went over to give it a new value, but when I change the value, nothing happens in the viewport. I set a keyframe with the new value anyway, and in the dopesheet summary, it's showing me that the value is animating. But the object does not change at all. It's stuck at the first value.
Why is this happening? And how would you fix it?

Since hair is - other than particles - initialized on the first frame with the given values and has no times to start and end "emitting", the animated rotation is not taken into account.
If you want the hair to get new values assigned on each frame (what animating the rotation is basically), make sure you have enabled Regrow (left from the Advanced option).
Just take note that this means, enabled Hair Dynamics to interact with forces might not work since the hair is more or less reset on each frame.


text:
How would I distribute objects on a cloth simulated mesh and have them keep their distributed positions while not spawning in/out?
I have simulated a mesh inflating and deflating using a cloth simulation. Then, I added a geometry node setup to distribute objects on that mesh. The problem I keep running into is that when the cloth is simulated, some objects spawn in and out, or change position. I think this is because the distance between objects changes from the cloth animation and therefore objects that are too close get de-spawned. Ideally, I want to keep the initial distance between the distributed objects, but have them stay in their positions along the cloth simulated mesh without spawning in or not. For my situation, some intersecting is fine; I am mostly worried about objects popping in and out. I have attached an image of my node setup below.

Duplicate the cloth object and remove the Geometry Nodes modifier
Remove the Cloth modifier from the original object
Add a Surface Deform modifer after the geometry nodes
Target the cloth object with the Surface Deform modifer on the geo nodes object and bind

thank you so much! This solved my problem. I ran into another issue which was that my mesh was too complex and the modifier kept saying "contains invalid polygons"; however, that is a different issue. So, this solution did totally work on a reduced version of my mesh. Thank you again :)

@badatblender No problem! Depending on your mesh you may get better results using the Mesh Deform modifier instead.


text:
How do I model or simulate a "squishy" object compressed inside a container?
I'm looking for a way to create a model of an object squeezed into and compressed by a tight spherical enclosure surrounding it (think a plush toy stuffed inside a hollow ball). I don't want to simply flatten the parts of the object that are touching the enclosure; I also want other areas to bulge out as if the volume of the object is being displaced by the compression. How can I do this, either using modeling tools directly or through a soft body or other physics simulation?
Note that I am only interested in the final compressed state of the object, not an animated sequence showing how it gets compressed (although I don't mind using an animated simulation if it gets me to my end goal).
I'm also open to suggestions for other software tools that would make it easier to do this.

The way I'd do it is to add a volumetric soft body sim to the object and animate the contain scaling down around it to the correct size. Unfortunately blender does not currently support volume preservation in soft bodies, and I'm not sure of any other easily available software that does.

Check Houdini 17. I think with Vellum it could be possible.


text:
Any chance anyone looking into evolutionary algorithms for Blender?
Something similar to Galapagos plugin in Grasshopper shown in link below:
https://yazdanistudioresearch.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/evolutionary-form-finding-with-grasshopper-galapagoes/

do you test https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/65610/how-would-one-go-about-creating-a-genetic-algorithm-and-or-neural-network-for-bl ??

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about using Blender

The galapagos is just an example plugin from grasshopper showcasing the possibilities that blender can have. Anyway, I think the programming approach could be more direct and open solution :)

Manage to find a video to reproduce image with genetic algorithm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV-hah6xs2A

My objective is to test K-d tree on spatial planning with Blender 2.80.

some good codes (K-d tree) and similar topic found, showcasing computational Blender possible through python or programming approach :)
How would one go about creating a genetic algorithm and/or neural network for blender?
https://www.blender.org/conference/2017/presentations/352
https://salzis.wordpress.com/2014/06/28/kd-tree-and-nearest-neighbor-nn-search-2d-case/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc9Mp4TdS2k (K-d Tree for animation! Can it be spatial planning!?)

Three detail videos explained with python codes in K-d tree:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLguYJK7ydFE7R7KqRRVXw23kOrn6jiwqi

I suppose someone had done it in blender splitting the cube with a K-d tree algorithms shown in the animation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHkaapcPyp0
Here is another good idea of what can be done through Blender but in 3D form by just splitting the cubes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1wvssK-B9U


text:
"Child of" bone constraint moving the child to the parent
I'm following a tutorial and we are using IK (Inverse Kinematics) the person says to add a "Child of" constraint to one of the bones, but when I do this it moves it to where the parent is, but the tutorial video doesn't get that it just stays the same.
Here is without the constraint:

Here is it with the constraint:

I have no clue why this is happening, can someone please help me?

Enter pose mode, select the bone with the constraint, and hit the "set inverse" button.  It should jump back to where it was a second ago.

@Nathan Thank you so much! I really wanted to finish this tutorial and this helped!

I'll do it when i get to school :)


text:
How do I render transparency with Cycles/Clo3d
I have been stuck with this issue for some time. I use an object as hair that I export from blender into Clo to render.
Basically, the object has parts of its texture that is transparent and I can't seem to make it stay transparent while rendering (with cycles in blender or in Clo3d)but it works fine with Eeve. In Clo3d, the parts that are supposed to be transparent just take the color of the background.
I am thinking that this has to do with me applying the texture wrong but I am very confused about what to do, does anyone have any idea on how to fix it?
I've used this technique for years without any issue but I've recently updated my Mac & Clo in itself so I am wondering if it can explain the issue. I also have it with other hairstyles/Objects with transparency textures.
I've attached images of the renders in Cycles & in Clo and the PNG texture in itself.
Please lmk if you know a way!

This appears to be about Clo, and not Blender.

It's about both because I export it from blender & I also wanna render it with Cycles

If the texture contains a correct alpha channel, then all you need is to plug that texture's alpha channel to the principled shader's alpha input. No need fo the transparent and mix shader nodes. (Beaides, you are just making everything transparent, not just the parts of textures without akpha).  Maybe check your texture's alpha channel. Also, make sure your mesh's normals are all facing one direction.

Thank you @L0Lock for your answer! I tried just connecting the Alpha channel to the shader but the transparent parts stay half visible. Do you know how I can make sure that my texture's alpha is ok? And what do you mean by facing one direction?

Maybe try to share your bkend file with us so we can check ourselves, upload it there and give us the link here.

@L0Lock here it is: . Thank you so much for your help, I basically need it to look the way it does in Eevee but in Cycles

I'm missing the textures, so everything is pink x) Could you try going to File >  External Data > Pack All into File , and if you have lots of heavy textures please also do File > Save As , and check the Compress option in the sidebar before saving a copy of this file, then share it here again please?

Hi sorry, here is the file with the texture:  . It all should be good otherwise I can send you the texture separately, thank you again!

Got it! I can't reproduce the black spots we see in your first screenshot but I do notice some issues here and there that could be the cause - and also create some other problems. Just give me the time to fully investigate and make a new answer.

I couldn't see the dark spots visible in your first screenshot:

But I found some issues in your setup that might be the cause - and that also make other visual glitches in other places. So let's fix what I found and hopefully it will be enough.
Beforehand, I highly recommend using the Node Wrangler addon. You can enable it by going to Edit menu > Preferences > Addons tab > search for "wrangler and check on the Node Wrangler addon. You can unfold it to see a list of what it can do, but basically it adds a lot of useful keyboard shortcuts to manage nodes quickly.

Duplicated Geometry
When looking at your third screenshot, we could see some weird geometrical dark spots on your render:

This is known as "Z fighting", when pieces of geometry are so close from each other that the render engine struggles to decide which one to draw in front of the other.
In fact, this is even more visible if you enable the Face Orientation overlay:

When trying to select an island of mesh with L and moving it away, we can see that the mesh is actually duplicated, but each "duplicate" has its faces oriented the opposite way:

This is due to a change in Cycles introduced in Blender 3.1 for better render performances: Release Notes/3.1/Cycles/Ray Tracing Precision - Blender Developer Wiki

There can still be artifacts with rendering overlapping geometry, in some cases more severe than before. Such overlapping geometry should be removed, or have a small distance added in between.

Probably the easier solution is to delete the duplicated. We could do it in a revertible way, in case you need these duplicated faces later.
In any case, a simple and quick solution to this issue would be to add a Weld modifier:

If you don't need these duplicated meshes at all, you can apply this modifier by hovering it with your cursor and pressing ⎈ CtrlA, then you can go in Edit mode, hover the parts that are facing red to the outside, press L to select them, and hit ⇧ ShiftN to invert them. It's not absolutely needed, but it can avoid issues sometimes.
I suspect this duplicated mesh was done because some render engines (especially game engines) don't render the backfaces, so the mesh was duplicated and inverted to be able to show up on both sides. Now, it's a good solution, but many game engines have options to enable the backface rendering, and neither Eevee nor Cycles cull the backfaces, so if you don't plan on using this model on a render engine that can't render backfaces, you don't need these duplicated meshes.
Cycles render setting
If we replace your shader by a transparent shader, this is what Cycles will produce:

Because Cycles works by sending rays that bounce around the scene to determine the pixels color, but can't wait an infinite amount of time for each ray to complete its course, the amount of bounds are limited on a per-type basis.
Transparency bounds are limited to 8 by default. Since your hair is basically a bunch of planes with some transparency, you can sometimes have rays that need to go through way more than 8 layers of meshes to calculate a proper transparency.
The black area here seem to be the root of the flower, so probably most of the black spots are hard to see in the first place with the real shader. But just to be sure, we could set the max transparency bounce to 20, that seems to work fine at most angles:

Shader fixes
As it stands out now, you have two issues with your shader: it's semi transparent, and its Eevee alpha setting is not the best one around.
Unless you want to be able to see your character's bald skull bellow their hair, you should really remove that mix shader and plug your Principled shader output to your material surface:

Then, if you want to use Eevee, you might have noticed this on the edges of your hair:

This is because you set your material to use the Alpha Clip Blending Mode.
But you should probably use Alpha Hashed instead (don't forget to set it up for the Shadow Mode as well). Result:

Final result

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to explain with so many details, the issue is fixed thanks to you! I am really thankful for your help hahaha low-key saved my life ;) Please let me know if you ever need anything!!

Glad I could help! You can upvote my answer and accept it as solution (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧


text:
How to automate 2D mesh alterations based on edge conditions?
I'm trying to write a python script that will take a 2D mesh(or curve if better) that is generate via CAD Sketcher and alter it so that the edge vertexes are offset at various distances based on certain conditions. Here is an example of the input and what I want the script to output.
Input:

Output:

These are exaggerated alterations for easier viewing, but the alterations need to be done in imperial units. The primary conditions for these alterations are:

at intersections, longest edge is extruded out X inches while the shorter edge is offset X+extra inches
if edge vertex bisects another edge, ignore length and offset the bisecting edge only leave

The other conditions are the offset amount based on whether edges are exterior(aka boundary) or interior edges.
I thought this would be simple but I'm having an unbelievably hard time with this. I'm not new to coding(primarily MATLAB), but I am new to python with blender and it's incredibly confusing to find the correct methods to do this simple task. I certainly don't expect anyone to code this entire thing for me, but any help would be a godsend.
Also, if possible I would also like to turn each edge(after alterations) into it's own named mesh. i.e. exterior1,exterior2,...,interior1,interior2,...

You may want to email / open a ticket with the CAD Sketcher developer.  https://www.cadsketcher.com/

I was only planning on using CAD sketcher to created the 2D meshes and then use bmesh to do the automated edits. I used sketcher for the example images just cause it does a great job of showing exactly what I want to do as far as offsets and conditions for offsets. I'll probably try asking them though. I'm getting pretty desperate at this point lol


text:
Rotor spinning by hydropower
I am trying to figure out how to spin a rotor by using the force of water.
Now I am not coming to a good result or even close...
Please explain how to make a rotor spin by the force of the water as in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVlXncgtQus
Thanks in advance!


text:
How to create a checkbox in the Properties>Render tab?
sorry for the noob question, but i can't create a simple checkbox inside the render tab...
Here is my code...
import bpy
from bpy import context
from math import degrees, floor
#from bpy.types import *
from bpy_extras.io_utils import ExportHelper
from bpy.props import BoolProperty
from bpy.types import (Panel,
                       Operator,
                       AddonPreferences,
                       PropertyGroup,
                       )
class MySettings(PropertyGroup):

my_bool = BoolProperty(
    name = "render scene",
    description = "render a reference copy of the scene",
    default = False
    )

class BlenderCam_exportFile(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "myops.blendercam_export_file"
    bl_label = "Export File"

    def execute(self, context):
        #------------------------------------
        #    my code is here....
        #------------------------------------
        return {'FINISHED'}

class BlenderCamPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Render context of the properties editor"""
    bl_label = "BlenderCam"
    bl_idname = "blendercam_panel"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "render"

    @classmethod
    def poll(self,context):
        return True

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        scene = context.scene
        rd = scene.render
        #label
        layout.label(text="Label")
        #chechbox
        layout.prop(rd, "my_bool", text="Bool Property")
        #button
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("myops.blendercam_export_file")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(BlenderCam_exportFile)
    bpy.utils.register_class(BlenderCamPanel)
    bpy.utils.register_class(MySettings)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(BlenderCam_exportFile)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(BlenderCamPanel)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(MySettings)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

The code runs fine and doesn't return any error, but while the label and the button are present, the checkbox doesn't show up... Any clue?

Indent your code in the class declaration for MySettings, add a pointer in the register section bpy.types.Scene.my_props = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=MySettings) as well as removing the pointer in the unregister section del bpy.types.Scene.my_props in you panel change to layout.prop(scene.my_props, "my_bool", text="Bool Property") and it should function but I'll let someone else answer for cleaner coding.

I am no python expert however the reason why the bool wasn't showing it was because it was assigned to some property that didn't exists.
If you launch blender from the terminal is easier to spot those problems.
code...
    rd = scene.render
code...

output
    rna_uiItemR: property not found: RenderSettings.my_bool
    /Text:58

--
Looking the documentation,

layout defines the structure of the panel in the UI and prop
  exposes the RNA item and places it into the layout.

The prop function takes data and property as arguments which in your case was data=rd property=“my_bool”. now the problem was arising because the variable rd was assigned to scene.render thus layout.propr(data=scene.render,  property=“my_bool”)
looking the error property not found: RenderSettings.my_bool we can understand that the scene.render was in fact the wrong call as it was calling the RenderSettings where there was no property "my_bool".
hence creating the bpy.types.Scene.my_tool and assign it to PointerProperty(type=MySettings) (that points to the BoolProperty where my_bool exists) solved the problem when calling layout.propr(data=scene.my_tool,  property=“my_bool”) because in fact now we know that my_tool has an attribute my_bool
--
I am not really familiar with the blender addon workflow so I look  How can I add a checkbox in the tools UI? and made the changes to your code accordingly
.
import bpy
from bpy import context
from math import degrees, floor
#from bpy.types import *
from bpy_extras.io_utils import ExportHelper
from bpy.props import (StringProperty,
                       BoolProperty,
                       IntProperty,
                       FloatProperty,
                       FloatVectorProperty,
                       EnumProperty,
                       PointerProperty,
                       )
from bpy.types import (Panel,
                       Operator,
                       AddonPreferences,
                       PropertyGroup,
                       )

class MySettings(PropertyGroup):

    my_bool = BoolProperty(
        name = "render scene",
        description = "render a reference copy of the scene",
        default = False
    )

class BlenderCam_exportFile(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "myops.blendercam_export_file"
    bl_label = "Export File"

    def execute(self, context):
        #------------------------------------
        #    my code is here....
        #------------------------------------
        return {'FINISHED'}

class BlenderCamPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Render context of the properties editor"""
    bl_label = "BlenderCam"
    bl_idname = "blendercam_panel"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "render"

    @classmethod
    def poll(self,context):
        return True

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        scene = context.scene

        # --> new line here <--
        rd = scene.my_tool

        #label
        layout.label(text="Label")
        #chechbox
        layout.prop(rd, "my_bool", text="Bool Property")
        #button
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("myops.blendercam_export_file")

def register():
    # --> new line here <--
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)
    bpy.types.Scene.my_tool = PointerProperty(type=MySettings)

    #bpy.utils.register_class(BlenderCam_exportFile)
    #bpy.utils.register_class(BlenderCamPanel)
    #bpy.utils.register_class(MySettings)

def unregister():
    # --> new line here <--
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)
    del bpy.types.Scene.my_tool

    #bpy.utils.unregister_class(BlenderCam_exportFile)
    #bpy.utils.unregister_class(BlenderCamPanel)
    #bpy.utils.unregister_class(MySettings)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Nice! It works now!
However, i don't get why it works... what is the "rd" parameter? I mean, the scene.my_tool property, what is it and what is it used for?

I update the answer with some explanation. hope it makes sense and hope I understood correctly ahah :)


text:
Mirror modifier - the mirrored half is darker
I am working on a complex project with different 3D models I downloaded from the internet.
I have to mirror many of them relative to the global x axis (I used a plane as mirror object), but as you can see the mirrored half is darker both in solid and rendered view. The material is the same, the lighting is uniform, the normals seem to be correct and there aren't double vertices.

Also, I would very prefer to not apply the modifier

Here there is a simple .blend with one of the objects that give me this problem:

there's a surface between the two, are you sure it's not your problem?

the plane is needed to tell blender what the center of the mirror is.
In any case, I tried the same setup with a simple cube and it works, even with the plane in the middle

I remove and add mirror modifier with default setup - and it's ok.

I found the solution: the issue was caused by the plane's rotation.
It seems like the Mirror Modifier doesn't work when the mirror object is rotated, so I needed to apply the rotation of the plane to make it work

Hello :). Please mark your answer as accepted, to keep the site nice and tidy :). Thanks.

@JachymMichal sorry, I was a new user back then, I didn't know about this stuff ahah


text:
Make a Blender script run an external program
I'm making a script to share data between Blender and After Effects: i created an addon in Blender which exports a .txt file in the After Effects directory (or a custom one) and I created a After Effects script (which uses Java) with ExtendScript ToolKit that reads the file and import the data.
To improve the user's experience I wanted to execute the Ae script from Blender (if Ae is already open), and maybe share some info with it, like the path to the .txt file, the current version and some settings needed in Ae (I could generate another .txt in the windows Temp folder, but a direct connection would be better, I think).
Is it possible to do so?

The way i think to do so, (if you want it to be dynamic) is by doing a socket connection. (But i dont know After Effects). Here you have an example using the fancy async way.
* you'll have to run this somehow from After Effecs [that's what im not sure you'll be able to do]. The idea is to make a server and a client to send data between your programs, blender & A.E. in the case.
import asyncio

async def tcp_echo_client(message, loop):

    reader, writer = await asyncio.open_connection('127.0.0.1', 8888,
                                               loop=loop)

    print('Send: %r' % message)
    writer.write(message.encode())

    data = await reader.read(100)
    print('Received: %r' % data.decode())

    print('Close the socket')
    writer.close()

message = 'Hello World!'

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()

loop.run_until_complete(tcp_echo_client(message, loop))

loop.close()

this is going to be the server, you have to run it from AE i guess.
then you have to configure your client from Blender side with this other script

import asyncio

async def _send(message, loop):

        reader, writer = await asyncio.open_connection('127.0.0.1', 8888,
                                                   loop=loop)

        print('Send: %r' % message)
        writer.write(message.encode())

        data = await reader.read(100)
        print('Received: %r' % data.decode())

        print('Close the socket')
        writer.close()

def send(data):

        loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
        loop.run_until_complete(_send(data, loop))

data = "hello world"

send(data)

"""
i dont know if you need all the code or it is redundant, i edited an example from asyncIO site and worked for me. good luck"""

mmm ok, it seems tricky but duable...
so, i guess i need the Ae script to start at startup, which is a bummer (i think it would consume more resources than needed), but i'll try it anyway... the message in your example is a simple string, but i guess that if i placed the name of the main Ae script function it would work right? (like sending the name of an operator to Blender)
Also, since this seems quite tricky to understand, (i'd like to know better how it worksbefore implementing), do you know if there is any tutorial/ guide/ documentation about this?

I dont think it'll take very much resources (is a matter of the amount of data you send / receive. data = await reader.read(100) i think it means 100 bytes.
i saw some example of async on blender nation i beleave (not sure...) but was way more complex than this one.

I dont think it'll take very much resources (is a matter of the amount of data you send / receive. data = await reader.read(100) think it means 100 bytes.
i saw some example of async on blender nation i beleave (not sure...) but was way more complex than this one.
I dont know very much about operators work, i cant tell.
And finally i think data = "hello world" it can be whatever you want to send, you just have to make it to match to your AE data needs. As said, i dont know AE but i beleave there's an asyncIO bind library for JS.


text:
Refresh text in Python

TLDR
When I change the 'obj.data.body' of a Text object in Python, the viewport doesn't update. How to update it?

Longer explanation
I have a script in which I work with a text.data.body, something like this:
import bpy

mast = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
obj = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]

obj.data.body = mast.data.body

The problem is that while the body changes based on my script, the viewport doesn't update.

I noticed that the text refreshes only when I toggle Edit Mode on and off, so here there are my thoughts:

after replacing the text.data.body, toggle on and off Edit Mode to show the changes:
selectedObjects = bpy.context.selected_objects
    for obj in bpy.context.scene.objects:
        obj.select_set(False)
        if obj.type == 'FONT':
            obj.select_set(True)
            bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
            bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
            obj.select_set(False)
    for obj in selectedObjects:
        obj.select_set(True)

but this just makes Blender crash (I think switching to Edit Mode interferes with other Blender processes)
Use a modal operator to toggle Edit Mode on and off, but in Blender 2.80 (June 2019) I can't get them to work (Blender crashes), and anyway the toggle could be triggered while the user is doing something and Blender would crash
Use some functions to update the entire 3D Viewport, but bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations=1) is not recommended and it doesn't refresh the text, bpy.data.scenes[0].update() doesn't exist anymore, and I don't understand how to use 'bpy.context.area.tag_redraw()', but It probably won't work either

Do you guys have any suggestions?
(Sorry for the long post)

Please take some time to review this question.  Eg in first script mast is obj   In the screen shot the text object with body "Text" appears to be active object.  I'm not a fan of relying on context.selected_objects[0] being context.active_object   To set an object into edit mode recommend making it active context.view_layer.objects.active = obj as well as selecting it.

I used the 'context.view_layer.objects.active = obj' and again, it doesn't work. I have built an update class with the code that you can see under the picture, and it works if you run it alone, but if I change the text.data.body and then run that operator in the same script it crashes...


text:
How to highlight as object in the 3d View/Outliner?
In a script of mine I want to make an object stand out among the others in the 3D View, so that the user can see which object are affected by it.
I'm open to suggestions, but I was thinking about:

Change the highlight color of the object (like when objects in groups were green) in the 3D View
Change the background color or the Text color of the object's name in the Outliner

You can always use x-ray in the object panel

What do you mean?

This is what the object panel looks like on the right, in the display section you'll find the option i'm talking about

No, that's not what I want: wireframe can be messy for complex objects and the user may want the object to be solid, and the object color doesn't work in Blender 2.8. I wanted something more customizable and so that you can easily distinguish the affected objects


text:
What's a proper way to cut out simple windows?
I'm just trying to cut out very basic windows that are good enough for a simple low poly game. My friend is making for fun, these buildings can literally be rectangles with the boolean modifier cutting out rectangles for windows. But I was told recently the boolean modifier leaves a mess of ngons which are bad for games. Therefore I'm wondering what's the proper way? Or should I be using geometry nodes to simplify this?

If your object is simple rectangles, just use inset (shortcut i), resize, and delete the center face

Really wish it were that simple of a building I kinda need multiple windows atleast 4. But thanks for the advice.

Sometimes what I do is add Loop Cuts with Ctrl + R (using scroll wheel to add or subtract loops) until I have enough 'wall panels' to do what I want.  You can technically build a cleaner topology, but it shouldn't be too demanding in terms of excess polygons.
Use Delete X -> Only Faces

This gif is terrible, I messed my settings up somehow.  Sorry lol

More than close enough. Eventually I stopped anticipating it being answered. But this gives me a better idea. Thanks!


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Projecting a cut onto a surface around a sphere
I'm looking to cut a shape into the surface of a sphere using a 3D curve. I have a curve wrapped onto the sphere. I do not want to knife-project because the shape needs to wrap around the sides in a way that goes past the ortho view

The task feels intuitive; from the "normal up" direction towards "normal down" I want to project a cut between the curve and the sphere. But I do not know a method for this.

Just a workaround ... Curve to Mesh > Extrude > Scale, Sphere - add Solidify and Boolean > Difference (Curve), Visual Geometry to Mesh, Merge by Distance.

... THere is also Intersect Knife, but it expects  overlapping faces, that I'm not sure if Curve to Mesh and Shrinkwrap generates.

Working from vklidu's idea; just a workaround, but good enough:

I've converted to mesh, extruded out and in, done a bit of scaling to make it match the "approximate" normal direction, then added a Solidify to the ring, and Boolean differenced it with the sphere (which also has a thickness modifier on it).
At this point, I can apply everything and clean up a bunch. It gets there.

You could extrude one direction and scale to center of sphere ... solidify you should use to sphere (not curve) like that you can get single cut in mesh = less cleaning :)


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How do I extrude faces inwards without creating bad geometry on the outside
I want to create a stair-like feature on the roof. To do this I have been using loop cuts and extrude to build out the stairs. However I encounter numerous problems each time. 1. is the outside which leaves gaping hole that I am not particularly fond of. I've read that you can stop this from happening by giving it thickness but if I use the solidify modifier it still has the exact same problem and causes even more issues.

As you can see it is working but it is forming small squares as a result of the extrusions. These squares overlap on the other side as you can see below. So I guess that is my main problem currently that I cannot find a solution to. It also overlaps on the top which is a major pain meaning i cant just delete the faces as it will delete the entire top of my model.

Maybe I'm stupid but I don't care any answers would be a help as I've spent far too much time on this as it is. Perhaps there is a completely different way to create what I'm trying to create here.

Close the top area by filling it with a face. Then use the Inset Tool by pressing I, then E to extrude upwards. To get the steps in even sizes, enter values to to this. For example, press I then 0.1 and Return to inset 10 cm. Then E, 0.1, Return to extrude 10 cm.

Ditto of @GordonBrinkmann, should add this with screenshots as an answer.

@TheLabCat No time atm, I won't mind anybody else doing that... or maybe I'll do it later.

Still some issues with that. I presume you mean once i inset it i should extrude it upwards and that works fine but problem is I only need it to affect 2 sides of the room (+ the little bevel bit). I know i can use boundary for the open side but what about the right side.


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Why won’t my 3d model render even though it’s visible in the 3d viewport?
this is my first time trying to make anything in blender and I followed a tutorial on youtube (to make 3d inflatable text) that went great right up until I pressed f12 to get the final render. The final render shows a flat screen with a gradient of color from one of my light sources to a different light source while my 3d model text is nowhere to be seen (the 3d viewport shows the light sources shining onto my 3d modeled text) I’ve checked around for other people with the same issue and i can’t find any other people with the same issue or a solution that solves the problem.

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

http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53632/render-result-is-completely-blank


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How to export blender object with negative spaces to a print ready STL/OBJ file
I'm just learning the basics in blender and wanted to create things I could use to sped up the learning process so I made a custom base for Warhammer AOS chaos figures.
The method I've used is mashing objects with some being negative spaces (ctrl+-) in relation between two or more objects.
Blender preview is like this:
but previews in different viewers (windows, online) are like this:

So I'm a bit lost at how to export the file with negative/invisible objects being, well, negative and invisible as I want to print this on a 3D or resin printer, thanks.

Not sure what your trying to do but here's a good video that might help
https://youtu.be/-OynHqYd_1I  and https://youtu.be/iUUnMJtw_Qc

Yeah that would do. My whole approach was incorrect as it is better to add and manipulate vertexes instead of throwing a lot of new objects hoping for the best.