text:
Transfer weights of selected faces to an other bone possible?

I forgot to apply mirror modifier to my model before I parented the rig to the mesh. I did that afterwards but it made occur some errors with the weight paint.  The screenshot shows my problem especially for the leg. It's weighted for the bone I crossed with red. The other leg is controlled by the very same bone.  The mirrored bone on the other side on the other hand doesn't have any weighted part on the mesh.  Is there any possibility to just transfer the selected faces (as visible in the screenshot) from one bone to an other of the rig? Or do I have to delete all vertex groups again and re-connect model and rig?

Ah I just figured out that I accidently named the bone .L instead of .R. That might be responsible for the error...

I don't know how you named your bones, but each bone should have been assigned to a vertex group named as the bone. See the mesh "object data" properties tab, under "vertex groups". There you can select/deselect, assign/remove vertices from the selected vertex group.
You can control which vertex is in which group, and eventually remove wrong vertices from the wrong leg group and assign them to the right leg group.
Beware that weight painting can add painted vertices to the selected bone's group.
Marco

Thanks for your answer^^
I already found the panel for the vertex groups but have no idea how to change them. I so far only used weight painting when something went wrong but the result was always a bit... strange. There is a black arrow that lets pop up some more options. I am not sure what exactly to do now. I just know that removing them lets the bone have no influence anymore but not how to add/remove single faces from a group

Try to get the basics here https://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/meshes/vertex_groups/vertex_groups.html, then if still needed I'll explain more how it's done. I'm busy just now... sorry

Okay no problem, I'll try (=

Okay I see now what to do. The thing I'm confused about is the weight panel. Do all selected verts have weight 1.000 then or the weight they had before on the other group? I want to keep the amount of weight the way it is right now.


text:
Baking problems with joined object
Like the heading says, baking occures problems to me. In the baked texture the object I joined into the horse mesh before (but deleted all faces and replaced them until every face looked like it was connected to the original mesh, which seems not to have happened? I don't know) shows black holes. In solid view nothing shows any problem. I already deleted the vertex colors which brought no result. Like told, the joined mesh was replaced; at least the faces all were replaced again. I'm totally confused now. What to do?
Edit: Due to armature deform I have got several vertex groups added before I changed the eye surroundings. Maybe the problem here?
Screenshot:

Problem solved here. An object I didn't recognize was allowed to be rendered which caused the error.

Problem occured due to an extra object that made the lights not be rendered at that position. Solved here.
[Edit: It was a hidden object of the same scene being still allowed to render. The baking so accepted its shadowing for the texture and made this happen -- Rendering just had to be disabled.]

Could you please add a little more information, so that people in the future who may have this problem can find help here?  Thanks!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Keyframed animation into path animation
I have got an animated object that is an opening door. I keyframed the movements; not rig there. Now I want to get rid of the keyframes and create an animation path that does just the same but without the keyframes. Is that even possible? I am not that skilled with animation nor do I know what is possible and what not. Hope someone can clearify this for me. I want to use this created path for the BGE and apply it (on the relative movement from the local space on) to more doors later on, so that I can use it in a python command later on (to toggle the door opening). I know this might be an advanced question, but I thought why not ask. If it's too demanding I will ask out of this forum, though, so that I don't bother anyone with almost doing a tutorial for this.
Thanks for helping.

Your demand sounds a bit strange considering the fact the BGE does not support paths.
You already have an animation. You can simply play it. To play rotation or location animations at different locations ensure the animating parts of the door are parented to a not animating object, such as a static empty.
Sample structure:

base (fixed)

frame (fixed)

wing left (animated)
wing right (animated)

You can align the door by moving and rotating the base object. (Indeed the frame can act as base too).

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


text:
Material colors of faces set to specific random ones by node editor
I figured out so far to make different objects with the same material and a color ramp in the nodes editor be chosen to have one of those colors somewhere in the ramp sceme. When I now got for example objects that contain lots and lots of leaves; how can I make (for the start, I will later have to define it so that connected faces will have the same, though) each face being used as well for exactly that material choice?  I would need something to tell the nodes that I want the faces to be changed instead of the whole material. Possible? Not? Any other solutions that would give compareable results?
Thanks for helping me. (If needed, I'll give a screenshot of my current nodes, though they are messy because I also made the alpha value be set by the shadow and distance of the light source to a different amount -cough-)

If I understand correctly, you’re trying to get each face to be randomly assigned a consistent colour. Something like this https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/80299/29586 should help - it, generate the UV with each face assigned to a single point. A random texture should then give each face a random solid color.

-> connected faces having the same actually. There are leaves from sapling generator addon that I want to behave this way.


text:
Texture problem: model only renders in black and white
So working with a head model, I have a color image for texturing the face/scalp/neck and have the UV mapped properly to the image but when I render the image is always in black and white only.  I cannot find anyplace in any settings or in materials or texture panes where I can see why this should be so.  If I delete all materials and try to make a new one, I am only allowed to select black and white images of the color texture.  If I reload or replace the texture with the same image again, same thing.  It is in color in the Texture selection in the 3d model window but as soon as I render it, in the 3d window or via actually rendering of the still image, it is black and white.
WTF?
Here's some screen captures:

Where would I find that? I could have accidently hit a hot key at some point and not realize it but where is that setting?  Looking at output in the "camera" pane, it is set to RGB and 16 bit color.  I don't know of any other settings.

Found the issue.  In the material pane under preview one of the settings was wrong.  I changed "color" to  image texture and then was allowed to select the texture image.  That corrected the color rendering issue.


text:
Exporting skeletal mesh to fbx splits many bones into a bone and an "end", increasing the bone count
I have been trying to get meshes from Blender 2.82 into UDK 3, then from there using the models to mod games.  This is turning out to be impossible because when I export fbx (exporting to psk is no longer supported but is better for UDK 3) it takes a model with 42 bones and creates an fbx that has 67 bones (all the additional "bones" are bone ends that do nothing). These extra bones cannot be removed in UDK (apparently) and it makes it impossible to use the model (upk file) in any game because the bone count is wrong. How does one export to fbx without adding fake bones (the bone ends) to the final skeletal mesh?  This didn't used to happen with 2.7x and before.

I have been able to delete the extra "ghost bones" added by fbx export in Blender by re-importing the fbx file and getting rid of them in edit mode, however, there is still ONE additional bone that I cannot eliminate but I do not know if this is part of how Blender 2.8x now works or if it is fbx. The armature name itself that contains all the bones is being counted as a bone by UDK when the fbx is imported into it.

PSK exporting is possible with this plugin.

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


text:
Where is the setting for changing the appearance of armature bones?
In 2.7x and earlier, it was a simple matter to change the appearance of armature bones from the fat/bulky pyramidal shapes they default to, to some other form.  Where is this function in 2.8x?  I've been looking all over the place to try and find it with no luck.

Same as before (unless it has changed in the latest versions?), Properties panel > Object Data > Viewport Display > Display As > B-Bones, etc:

If you want a custom shape, select the bone in Pose mode, then in the Properties panel > Bone > Viewport Display > Custom Object (and select a mesh that you've created for this purpose).

and who's Norbert...? :)

one of my secret project character  ;)

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


text:
Rendering multiple borders by a script
I'm working on a script that divides rendering into parts using borders and then renders random selection of parts.
An example script looks like that (it actually renders all parts):
import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene

scene.render.tile_x = 16
scene.render.tile_y = 16
scene.render.resolution_x = 800
scene.render.resolution_y = 600
scene.render.resolution_percentage = 100
scene.render.use_border = True
scene.render.use_crop_to_border = True

n = 4
m = 4

cnt = 0
for i in [x * 1.0/n for x in range(n)]:
    for j in [x * 1.0/m for x in range(m)]:
        scene.render.border_max_x = i + 1.0/n
        scene.render.border_min_x = i
        scene.render.border_min_y = j
        scene.render.border_max_y = j + 1.0/m
        cnt += 1
        scene.render.filepath = "res_{}.png".format(cnt)
        bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)

The script works as expected but I have noticed time penalties by rendering this way. From logs I can see that the bpy.ops.render.render() command is "synchronizing" and "updating" the scene every time executed.
Is there a way to do a scene preparation for rendering once?

Does it help to add empty and go to local mode before running the script ?

I'm not sure what engine you are using, but have you tried 'Save Buffers' & / OR 'Cache BVH'?

Pawel,
Not really an answer
even though the code below looks like a significant rewrite, it's mostly just for generic OS use...
What I had noticed running through the script below (which is likely causing the sync & updating issues you're referring to) is that the renders are generated based on the segmented window throughout the entire animation sequence, then moving to the next segmented window and running through the entire animation sequence again.
As such any interpolation of animation & raytracing, etc will be recalculated not only frame by frame, but each segment frame by frame.
If you watch the console while running this you should see what I mean.
    """
This script:
Verifies, the active blend file is saved
Generates a folder for the active blend file where it is saved
Generates sub folders for each scene
Renders for each scene
All naming is based on names used in blend file (blend file name, scene names, object names)
For different render options change the true/false option at ~line 52 & blender menu options
"""
"""
http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/47530/rendering-multiple-borders-by-a-script
"""

import bpy
import os

filepath = bpy.data.filepath
osdir = os.path.dirname(filepath)
osfile = os.path.basename(filepath.replace('.blend', ''))

selected = bpy.context.selected_objects

list_of_all_scenes = bpy.data.scenes
scene = bpy.context.scene

n = 8
m = 8

if bpy.data.is_saved:
    for scn in list_of_all_scenes:
        bpy.context.screen.scene = scn
        if not os.path.isdir(os.path.join(osdir, osfile, scn.name)):
            os.makedirs(os.path.join(osdir, osfile, scn.name))
    for scn in list_of_all_scenes:
        bpy.context.screen.scene = scn
        cnt = 0
        scn.render.tile_x = 16
        scn.render.tile_y = 16
        scn.render.resolution_x = 800
        scn.render.resolution_y = 600
        scn.render.resolution_percentage = 100
        scn.render.use_border = True
        scn.render.use_crop_to_border = True
        for i in [x * 1.0/n for x in range(n)]:
            for j in [x * 1.0/m for x in range(m)]:
                scn.render.border_max_x = i + 1.0/n
                scn.render.border_min_x = i
                scn.render.border_min_y = j
                scn.render.border_max_y = j + 1.0/m
                cnt += 1
                bpy.context.screen.scene.render.filepath = os.path.join(osdir, osfile, scn.name, scn.name + "_cnt(" + str(cnt) + ")_frame(" + str(scn.frame_current) + ")_auto")
                bpy.ops.render.render(animation=False, write_still=True, use_viewport=False, layer="", scene="" )

authors: Александр Музыченко


text:
Trying to close out my windows at the right
these extra windows in the right hand column keep coming up. I can create more, but don't know how to get rid of them]1


text:
How can I swap Textures and Materials
I just started with Blender after using Max and Maya for years. I am currently at a company that uses a very old modeling program so I was able to 'get' them to install Blender for me, which is awesome.
So far it's a great program but I had a difficult time figuring out how to swap out textures and change up materials etc. It would be great if this was a bit more user friendly. As it is I have to X out the texture that's in there then use Open to go find another one, instead of just using a find texture or replace texture. Is that the only way to do it?
Also is there a way to select poly elements such as the barrel of a gun, instead of just the faces, and then applying a material? In Max you can select elements so thats the only reason I am asking. If theres something similar.
The 3D painter is also awesome! That's primarily what I am using it for.
Added Q's:
1) When I paint in the 3d view and I have a UV/image editor window open, it seems like they don't sync up and they are actually different textures, but I can paint on both of them. I am sure this just takes me getting used to the UI.
2) Is the UV editor window the only place you can save out your textures?

what render engine are you using? I'm asking because the texturing process and options are different for each.

I am using Blender Render. Hope that helps.

You should seriously consider using the Cycles Render engine since you’re going through a learning curve anyway. Cycles is significantly more realistic and in addition the Blender Render engine is being phased out.

I got excited. Sorry for all the questions in the same post. ;)  I am using the normal (?) renderer because these are really low poly models with no extra maps on them unfortunately, just diffuse. :(  So even though I will hit on Cycles, it's not needed right now unless you think it helps.

There is no reason to use Cycles if you don't want to make realistic renders. For basic renders, if you don't need something fancy, working with Blender Render is faster and it also renders faster as it is more simple. You can start to learn Cycles whenever you will need it.
I highly recommend to watch YT tutorials for beginners, I find Andrew Price good (search "Blender Guru"), also you can read official Blender Manual in the free time :)
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/
One advice - try to not compare it with Max as the workflow in Blender is just different.

On replacing Textures
You don't actually have to delete the texture. Instead you can "reassign" the slot by just opening a new one.
Assuming you have already a material with a texture

Go to Properties Window -> Texture Panel
Select the desired Texture slot
Scroll down to "Image"

Now here are two possibilities:
If you want to switch between two textures to chose which one looks better, hit the upper folder button and open a new image texture.

Notice how you now have two textures in your selection box?
If you want to switch between them, just click the selection box and change the texture.

If however you want to replace the texture with another one, hit the lower folder button (under Source:)

Notice how your original texture got replaced with the new one
]4
On replacing Materials

Go to Properties Window -> Material Panel
Hit the "+" Button on the right side of the Material Selector. This basically creates a new material slot.
Select the new slot and hit "New".
Make changes to your new Material (Textures, colors, whatever)
With that new material selected Tab into Edit mode and hit "Assign".

You still have both materials to chose from.

There is no equivalent of 3Ds Max's 'elements' selection mode for Blender currently.
You can however press L while hovering any vertex, edge or face to select all linked geometry which is the equivalent of an 'element'.
If you already have a geometry selection pressing Ctrl + L will extend selection to all linked geometry of current selection.


text:
VSE playback frame rate drops down with effects
Am learning Blender for video editing and having a great time with it (brain hurts a bit, though).
Have added the gamma cross effect to a project and it is all working beautifully, except ... as the fade in happens using the gamma cross, the frame rate drops to 25fps. The project is in 50fps.
All worked fine with no dropped frames at 50fps prior to adding the effect.
On Xubuntu-core 15.10 and Blender 2.74. GTX 970, 16Gb RAM and i7 6700.
TIA and just ask if any further info required.

do you actually mean the preview drops to 25fps or the output movie - say an avi format - has a frame drop from 50fps to 25fps causing stuttering in the video?

Thanks for replying and sorry about the delay. Good point. Haven't checked if it's there after it's rendered to avi. It drops to 25fps when I'm editing the raw footage and audio and add the fade from black using the gamma cross and fade to black at end.

Will do test, render a short avi with a fade in and out and report back. Was going to say that in the last comment in a new paragraph but didn't realise hitting enter would post my comment! :)

I'll just clarify: I fade from black using the gamma cross at the beginning of the footage. While the gamma cross is happening, the frame rate stutters around 25fps. Once the gamma cross section is finished, all good and back to a steady 50fps. Same in reverse at the end. All good until 25fps when the gamma cross fade to black happens.

If that happens only during preview and not the final out put avi file, that could well just mean that your system have a hard time managing the memory required to playback the gamma cross section. If that's the case there is nothing to worry about.

New box, specs in first post. Thought that would have handled it fine. No?

Hit enter again!!! I'll do that test with a short avi tomorrow and have a look. I'll keep my fingers crossed the avi is fine and, once again, thanks for your input. Greatly appreciated.

Perhaps I have something configured wrongly in Blender? Still fumbling around a bit in there, learning as I go basically.

You could check your user preference on system setting. I kinda remember off the top of my head there is some sort of memory limiter somewhere. It could be causing part of your video to be loading into memory in real time ... The cache is set to too small a number.

The Tutorial Series from Mikeycal Meyers should get you going


text:
Random Particle Image Textures
I was looking at this post (How to add a Particle Texture?) and was wondering if it were possible to set the particles to random image textures such as playing cards.
Currently, I have a particle emitter that just shoots out card shaped cuboids. Do I
need to add each individual card texture to the particle texture tab and add texture randomisation there or do I need to set up the Dupli Object (render tab of textures) to randomise the textures? Ether or I'm not sure how to achieve texture randomisation. Is there a way to do this?

What render engine do you intend to work with? Should it be in 2.79b or 2.80?

@Jackdaw Im going to use 2.79b Cycles Render

This setup is a bit fiddly but it gets the job done :-P

The particle system needs to be set to render a UV unwrapped object, in this case it's a simple plane.
(The billboard particle sadly doesn't work in cycles 2.79b. In Blender Internal there is already functionality to randomise with tiles in the billboard particle settings.)

I am using the object random input in the material to get a normalised random scalar (0 - 1). I can then use this to scale and offset the uvmap to select one of 4 images in a texture.
The input value (2) is the number of horizontal and vertical tiles and can be changed if needed.

Would it be too cheeky of me to ask you to add the file to the post? I never really got too deep into the node editor and that looks a little intimidating. With the file it is easier to play around and see how this whole thing works.

Sure... just needed to learn how to do that properly first :-) I have updated the my answer with a link to the blender file just below the render.

Thank you,  it's a lot more clear now what I have to do.


text:
How to animate a rig by using a video as a source?
I have a series of movements that I want to animate, I have videos of the front and side of these movements and would like to know how to setup Blender to use the footage to create the animations.
I have looked at mocap but the cost is a problem and some of the motions have some subtle details that need to be replicated exactly.

You could go with a low cost mocap solution using the xbox kinect. The best software to record your movement I know is Brekel Pro Body V2. If you would go this route, the price tag will be about 275 euros.

In the 3D viewport, you can add background images to use as reference while modelling or animating. You can also add an image to an empty to get an image floating in the viewport that is always visible as you move around. An image sequence or movie can be used as well as a static image.


text:
What's the usage of "Set/Get property" nodes in sverchok
I found there is no input/output socket for this two nodes:

So I don't know how to use them....
I guess the original node is Eval Knieval, and it was divided into two seperate nodes:

But where is the input/output sockets?

It was indeed derived from Eval Knieval node, but we felt it was cleaner to have dedicated nodes for In and Out instead of a multi-purpose node that switches its outward appearance.
For Get and Set it's shockingly simple, you paste/type the attribute path you want to control and the node automatically detects what kind of Socket to add.

Last question at BSE...How to copy full data path quickly without typing?

or upvote this question: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/39564/python-script-to-print-tooltip-value-when-mouse-is-over-a-property

Still related to this topic, but kind of wanted generic data from Sverchok to AN. Ok, in Sverchok, I use GET and SET. In AN, I use script node.
Supposed I am using petal_sine.py Script node, and I like the Verts List output and want to just pipe this into AN.
I type this in AN Script node:
vector_out = bpy.data.node_groups['SVNT'].nodes['Script Generator'].outputs[0]
And I am getting none.

ask a new question @BlenderSushiGuy , the stackexchange comments section isn't for QA. or ask on sverchok issue tracker.


text:
Problem at Selecting Points after Extruding
I am very new to Blender and googled my Problem now over 2 hours, but didnt found anything. That's my Problem:
I extruded my Mesh and want to Merge to Points. When i am about to select my two Points, the Program selects all Points along the extruding Path.

How can i change this setting and just select only the two Points?

Related - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/26781/how-to-select-and-move-multiple-vertices

There are several things to keep in mind in your case.
First, it seems you're holding Ctrl while selecting vertices. This means you select these vertices and every vertice located along the shortest path between them.

To select only 2 vertices you should hold Shift while clicking on the vertices.

Second, you have double vertices in your mesh, at least those which are selected. Select all, use W and in the menu choose Remove Doubles. Read similar question here.

You are my Hero this Evening! Thanks alot, Sir!

@Mr Zak What kind of keyboard capture soft you use?

@Gonzou I downloaded KeyCastOW (because I'm on Windows) along with Screencast addon because I didn't manage to make Screencast display Shift or Ctrl in such scenarios. It works for Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C of course, but not in this case.


text:
Selecting every vertex above a selection (In the Z-axis)
i have this problem where i want to separate houses based on some data that describes the lot. My problem is that i want to be able to select the part of the model, that correspond to such a lot.
If i select some faces on the bottom of the model, i want to be able to select every vertex that is contained within the faces, and every vertex above (Like creating a bounding box around the vertices).
Is there a simple way to do this automatically. I have tried select->Active Axis, but it only works for a single vertex. If i make a script that does this for every vertex in the selection, i still only get the outer edges and not the entire lot.

This is the selection i can get from the lot

This is the result i want to achieve
I hope someone will be able to help me

Nicolai

I guess if you had quads and not tris, your job would be much easier using loop selection tools... they don't work on tris, because the topology is not suggesting "loop paths" in any way... imho.

I guess that makes sense, if i could loop around the quads, but my idea was if i could somehow project a bounding box UP, and then select all the contained vertices. It needs not be perfect, but it would be a start

can't you just press L when the mouse is over the lot. It looks like these objects are all separate. L will select all geometry connected to the lot (ie whatever is under the mouse when you click it).

If those objects are combined, you can try to select them from the top View for those bottom faces using Opthographic projection

The object is not separated. This is what i want to do. I want to script this so it selects autonatically, so doing it in orto view is not feasable

Doing such kind of operation using ortho view is the fastest (and afaik most used) way. You can script that and assign a shotcut on created addon, but it will be defintely much longer.


text:
Can you export thousands of objects in a blender scene to .obj format Individually (and automatically)
I have a model of a large city, where every house or cityblock is an object. I can manually pick each object and export them, but it is very tedious since there can be thousands of objects, and i would like to do this generally.
Does there exist such a tool in blender or anywhere else, that can take a large grouped scene and export the objects (Houses and the like) individually with some form of naming convention?
Thank you.

That question (Export every object into separate files) also has an answer with a bit of code to get you started.

Okay, i am new to Blender stackexchange, thanks for leading me in the right direction everyone. Much appreaciated! :)


text:
how to? pivot editor camera around object
How do you rotate around an object with the editor camera instead of orbiting around the center of the scene (middle mouse button).

Related - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/3505/viewport-pivot-point-changed-from-scene-objects-to-around-viewport-camera-origin

Numpad-. makes the selected objects the center of rotation.
If this is not a duplicate question, I will be surprised.


text:
Rendering Grease Pencil animation?
What is the workflow for rendering/exporting grease pencil animation? Seems that the new updates for 2.78 are intended to make the grease pencil a production ready tool for making 2D animation in 3D spsce. There must be a way to render, right?

In version 2.79, a grease layer still cannot be rendered directly on top of 3D objects (except using OpenGL Render as explained in the answers -- But this rendering is a preview for the 3D objects, not a true one). However GP layers can be rendered and composited with the true 3D rendering, as explained in this video: Quick Grease Pencil composition with Blender which is linked by the manual.

To render grease pencil animation you have to go to Render>OpenGL Render Animation. Render will have dimensions set in Render properties so it's best to draw while in camera view to avoid stretching.

One way is to render with opengl, using the menu or the icon:

but this can't be enough in some cases...


text:
How to efficiently remove a huge number of UV Maps from an object?
I currently have a model coming from an external source (Revit Architecture) with lots of objects (+3000). I have tidied the model up somewhat and have reduced object count to under 100 by joining objects. This results in objects that have hundreds of UV maps.
Deleting UV maps one at a time is time consuming and tedious. Is there a way to get rid of all the UV maps on an object with a single command or does this require some clever python scripting?

you go via python: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/36523/how-can-i-delete-uv-layers-with-python

Thank you! How would you modify the last script (delete by index) to go through the whole list of UV map indexes the mesh has?

if your UVmaps have consecutive names (UVMap01, UVMap02, etc) you can create a cycle to run through all UVMaps. If not, you have to create a list with the names, then read the names from that list.

The UV maps are not consecutively named. How would I go around creating a list of the names?

as in https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?254004-Accessing-UV-data-in-Python-script
import bpy
obj= bpy.context.selected_objects
for ob in obj:
    if ob.type == 'MESH':
        bpy.context.scene.objects.active = ob
        while(len(ob.data.uv_textures)):
            bpy.ops.mesh.uv_texture_remove()

you have to try if it works. Maybe change "texture" with "map" or something... I'm a complete noob in python

I'd go for the low level approach used by @CoDEmanX in post 13 of that BA thread https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?254004-Accessing-UV-data-in-Python-script&p=2687622&viewfull=1#post2687622

authors: วาซิม งามเสริฐ


text:
Rendering fluid simulation and assigning material to water
I am working on some fluid simulations in Blender, however this tool is completely new to me and I am having some issues in rendering the output to have a realistic aspect.
I have built a water basin, with a water piston which pushes the water and makes it flow on a geometry located on the opposite side of the basin.
My interest is to see the interaction of water waves with the texture of the geometry.
Therefore I need the output to be neat and with a very good resolution.
Here below some of the issues I am recreating:

I tried to set up the water material in both Cycles Render and
Blender Render, however when I set it up in Cycles render the water
area disappears when rendering the simulation in Blender Render. I want the water to appear
transparent and with a realistic aspect. Which settings will give me
the desired effect?
I would like the fluid to behave like water when it flows down
through the texture. However it looks too viscous. The liquid
viscosity was set, as instructed in the forum, to water however the
final result looks more viscous. What can be the reason for this?
After the water flows down the surface, some water drops stay
attached to the surface. Their shape is weird, not round as it
should, but sharp. See here zoomed in picture:

I would like the lighting of the simulation to be atmospheric (neat
but not too strong), how can I get this result? I saw some tutorials
but none of them helped me getting the result I desire.

Here is the link to the Blender file I am working on right now (https://www.dropbox.com/s/7mhe9dntwrmzvss/Doc.%20Forum.blend?dl=0).
Thanks a lot in advance!!!

Welcome - it is better to ask one question at a time, the material and lighting is a different issue than improving the fluid sim. Try increasing the real world size - under the domains fluid world settings.


text:
How to recreate foam when sea waves impact on surface
I would like to recreate foam when my sea waves impact and flow through the texture of my geometry:

As you can see the flow recreates a nice interaction but still it does not look completely real.
You can find here the doc:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c0ezgnimw45pwq2/doc.%20forum.blend?dl=0
Thank you all in advance!

See my answer here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/60844/dynamic-paint-cycles-how-do-you-make-waves-caused-by-an-object-to-turn-white/60853#60853

Thank you @metaphor_set I will try to follow your instructions.

@metaphor_set is there by any chance a way to do this in Blender Render and not in Cycles? For some reason this rendering tool works better for me..

Not that I know of, I'm afraid. Blender Internal has no Pointiness in the Geometry Node. There might be other methods, but this one is the only one I've ever tried.


text:
Blender stopped recording the rotation keyframes
I'm using Blender 2.92 and I've made an animation in around 110 frames using the Auto Key option. But suddenly Blender stopped adding keyframes upon rotating the controllers. It allows me to animate the movement only. I can't even animate the scale for the controllers that have the scale functionality either. I am using the Vincent model rigged in Blenrig. I checked the channels, they're not locked, restarted my computer, but no joy.
Moreover, I can animate the rotation by using the Rotation channels in the N panel.
File attached for your kind support.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/gxf397m7lq4eh02/Vincent_Animation.zip/file

please....if you upload a blend file, keep the file suffix as .blend. This makes our life easier. And next time please use https://blend-exchange.com/ to upload your file, because this is one of the "official" sites to share blend files. Thank you.

Oh I didn't know. Duly noted!

Found it!
In the N panel > Active Tool and Workspace settings tab > Options header > Transform > Affect Only
so I accidently checked "Locations", and they're suggesting to uncheck all (Origins; Locations; Parents).

your end frame is at 113 so Blender will not autokey your animation over this end frame. If you raise this to ...e.g. 1000 you can auto - keyframe a bit more time.

I raised the end frame higher but it didn't fix it. You see, I am still able to animate on the translate axes, but not the rotation and scale. Like Blender locked the rotation and scale for some reason. And I started to believe that it's really not an animation thing. I just disabled auto key and tried to rotate and scale the still tree in the scene, it won't let me do it. Is there something in Blender that locks the rotation and scale beyond the N panel?


text:
How do you rig nunchucks for character animation?
I tried to add an armature and IK system to a simple nunchucks models I made. I didn't want a real world physics for the chain, as that won't serve the complex character (combatant) animation.
I couldn't make a rig that can be controlled from two different grips. I don't want to use the curve deform for the chain in the middle cause it's too glitchy for an extensive animation (I believe).
Does anyone know how to rig nunchucks for sophisticated combat animations?

Look into using empties to parent sections of an object.

Maybe create a root bone in the middle of the chain and two IK "arms"?


text:
Extending an F-Curve in a certain channel
I am animating this long walk for a character. And it is super easy to duplicate the keyframes of the walk cycle. But I'm facing the challenge of keeping the Torso (The Root) consistently going forward on the Y axis. I am not a big fan of NLA. And I also want to add some nuances to the walk throughout the animation, so for me the Action Editor is a no go.
In the Below Image on the Graph Editor, I managed to manually duplicate the Y keyframes from 1 to 41. At frame 41, the walk cycle ends and I have to repeat it a couple of more times. But unlike the rest of the walk cycle keyframes, the Torso's are not stationary and they have to dynamically translate along the Y channel. Is there a way I can extend "prolong" this curve consistently across in the Y Location Channel?
I also attached the Blend file for your reference.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/tsdmfmr9h1ii44i/Blender+Exchange+File.blend/file

If you select a point of the F curve you can read its values on the view tab on the right of the curves window (just under modifiers).
I'm assuming that your first keyframe you want to copy is frame 3, value 0.7, and the last is frame 65, value - 2.3.
So you want to copy the curve with an offset of 63 frames on X and a value of 3 on Y.
So select the curve points, shift D to duplicate, X to move on X axis, 63, Enter.
Then Press G, Y, - 3 Enter.
Then you'll have to globally adjust the Y values of the copied keyframes to compensate the needed little movement between frame 65 and 66.


text:
How do I select all the bones in the middle?
I have a biped armature. And I want Blender to ignore the Right and Left bones. I want to select the bones that their names don't end with either R or L (want to select in Edit mode).

The simplest way to do this is to select by pattern and use the pattern *[!LR]. Putting the exclamation point ! as the first character of a character selection list says to invert that list, that is select any character except those in the list, so this pattern will select any bone name that does not end in L or R.
You may want to enable case sensitive if you have center bones that end in lower case l or r.
No scripts or extra steps are required.

Since you included the scripting tag
import bpy

bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern='*[!LR]')

Genius! thanks a ton!

I see that you've added scripting tag, but this task is not too complicated to use Python!
Press menu Select → Select Pattern...
In the window input * [LR]* if you have L and R separated by space and *.[LR]* if it separated by dot. Also if L and R is at the end of the name you can use *.[LR]
Then press Enter in the field to activate selection. (The is no Apply (Select) button, so this can be a little tricky)

Then you have all L and R bones selected, simply invert selection by pressing Ctrl + I

If you put ! between [ and L you don't have to invert.

@MartyFouts it looks like you give good hint, but this will not work, because it still searches for separator (. or _ or space)

You need to remove the last * for my comment to work.  You're searching for L or R anywhere in the string.

Blender doesn't treat bone suffixes as case sensitive, so I used a regex to match both cases. The thing you might have missed if you tried yourself is that there are 3 different bone definitions, there are bones, edit bones, and pose bones. You edit edit bones, pose pose bones and leave bones pretty much alone.

import bpy
import re # regular expression library

arm = bpy.context.active_object

if arm == None or arm.type != 'ARMATURE':
    raise ValueError('You must select an armature')

# Set edit mode
if bpy.context.mode != 'EDIT':
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

for ebone in arm.data.edit_bones:
    # a regular expression that matches names ending in a period followed by l,L,r,R
    if re.match('.+\.[RrLl]$', ebone.name):
        ebone.select = False
        print('{} selected'.format(ebone.name))

    else:
        ebone.select = True
        print('{} not selected'.format(ebone.name))

Select centre bones.
To do this in any mode, can for all but edit mode set the select attribute of an Armature.bone
Select Pose Bones Per Script In Blender 2.8
For edit bones, can either toggle out of edit, do as above and back into edit mode, or set the select on an edit bone.
Either way selections are reflected in all modes.
Edit left and right to suit, for example if your bones end with "_Left"
left, right = "_Left", "_Right"

".L" and ".R" have been used here as default.
`
import bpy

context = bpy.context

left, right = ".L", ".R"

ob = context.object
arm = ob.data

assert ob.type == 'ARMATURE', "Select an Armature"
col = "edit_bones" if context.mode == 'EDIT_ARMATURE' else "bones"
for b in getattr(arm, col):
    b.select = not (
        b.name.endswith(f"{left}")
        or b.name.endswith(f"{right}")
        )

Note: can make this case insensitive, by converting both name and suffix to lower case, with
b.name.lower().endswith(f"{left}".lower())


text:
How to change individual textures using an array modifier
I have made a road out of a plane and used the array modifier, so the road follow a path.
What I would like to do is to change the road texture on some of the planes, so the road don't look so repeated. Some talk about the modifier UV Project but I don't understand how that is going to help me changing the textures on some of the planes.
Please help

The blender native array modifier unfortunately does not allow for different materials per array object, therefore to get the effect that you want there are only 3 ways:
Option 1:
Apply the array modifier and separate the resulting object by lose parts in mesh options and apply separate materials. This will obviously mean you also have to apply the curve modifier and place it where you want it first, etc
Option 2:
The UVProject modifier will allow you to uv project a picture to the entire object from an projector object (like an empty). In this case you would have to have one road texture that has all the variations in it already and project it using the UVProject modifier onto the array object. However this means that you cant add random variations automatically, and you have to plan the texture ahead of time to the length of the entire road object.
Option 3:
Use the Advanced Array Modifier build:
https://developer.blender.org/T26662
(Option 4)
(I do not have an Animation Nodes build available to me for testing right now so take this with a grain of salt, but i am pretty certain that you could offset a texture/material per object segment with Animation Nodes)

You may want to try mixing other image textures using object coordinates from other object(s):
Similar to UV Project, it projects towards the local Z axis of the object chosen (the empty object here in the attached case).

(While this is the Cycles solution, it also works with BI based on similar concept, but different setup.)


text:
Play Rendered Animation is all gray
I have created an animation that plays properly when I'm in normal object manipulation mode but when I try "Play Rendered Animation" it just shows a blank gray screen (below), though the /tmp/*.png values are changing. I have tried this with Blender Render and Cycles Render with the same output.

I definitely have a light source, and here is what it looks like when I simply click Render for the current frame:

What should be happening is that spacecraft in the image does a "flyby" of the planet. I am using Blender 2.76 and am very new; your help is much appreciated! I can't figure out how to attach the .blend file, but here are the error messages I have in the terminal:
Executing command:
'/Applications/Blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender -a -f 24 1.0 -s 1 -e 200 -j 1 /tmp/0001.png'
ndof: 3Dx driver not found
playanim_toscreen: no ibuf for picture '/tmp/0039.png'
playanim_toscreen: no ibuf for picture '/tmp/0052.png'
playanim_toscreen: no ibuf for picture '/tmp/0030.png'
playanim_toscreen: no ibuf for picture '/tmp/0035.png'
playanim_toscreen: no ibuf for picture '/tmp/0045.png'
playanim_toscreen: no ibuf for picture '/tmp/0052.png'

So there might be a number of things that are happening. Firstly, I would just create a folder and set it as the location where it saves all the rendered images. I personally don't like using the temp folder because there might be other stuff in there. Then you need to go to the Video Sequence Editor and select "open" and select all the images you rendered and the play it.
Here is a Tutorial
The other thing that is unlikely is maybe something is in front of the camera that is hidden to the viewport but isn't hidden in the render check this in the Outliner. If you want to do a test animation to see how things look just lower the settings and samples and then put it together and see how it looks or you can just play the animation in the viewport. Hope this helped, best of luck to you.

That did help!! Thank you so much, that is a great tutorial!

For me was nearly the same problem..
for me the solution was to check the "file extension" check box at
Scene >> output >>
(somehow accidentaly i have uncek it)


text:
new object or more geometry for detail?
So when modeling, sometimes I add so many random edge loops to tighten up subdivision that the topology just ends up looking ugly. These random edge loops come from creating detail (such as a fin on a dolphin or a wing on a plane). What is the recommended way to deal with things like this? Is it better to simply add more edge loops/geometry to fit this extra detail in? Or is it better to create a brand new object/mesh/shape and append that to the current geometry?

This is really a personal preference thing. I personally dislike appending objects because it often ruins the loops of the mesh. The ugliness of the mesh is fixable by point manipulation. you can drag the points to move them into places that look better. another thing that might help with that is the "adjust cage to modifier result" Basically it makes the lines appear as if they are actually on the subdivided mesh, making point manipulation a lot easier to visualize. I used this when making a face model, it saved me a ton of time.


text:
Rocket engine thrust. Point density node?
I'm trying to create a futuristic missile/rocket seen where a missile is flying with exhaust spewing from it's tail. I thought I figured out how to make a cool looking blue exhaust by using a particle system coupled with a point density -> emission -> volume node setup on a pyramid shaped domain, but I'm having some odd behavior.  When the missile is flying straight up it looks great:

However, when the missile continues to fly and turns to the side this exhaust/particle system setup looks funny.. almost like a cardboard cutout, and only takes up a portion of the needed volume:

My node setup for this material and particle system is as follows:

Has anyone stumbled across similar issues? I want this exhaust to be full and uniform across the entire domain instead of this half volume weirdness.  I have tried increasing the particles and messing around with other particle settings to no avail.

This is most likely a problem with Vector space. From your screenshot you are using 'Object' space but this will move along and distort with the location, rotation, scale of the domain object. As the missile moves and drags the domain (I presume it's parented to the missile) the coordinates will change. To resolve this try changing to World coordinates as shown :


text:
color 'blobs' in normal map - how to fix them?
My normal map I created from a high poly mesh to a retopologized low poly mesh is showing some errors. There are places at the ears, some at the neck, head; everywhere where there are high resolution details or the mirror edge, it shows color errors like in the image below (green dots on the normal map or in general really weird color blobs). Is there a way to manipulate the color/influence the settings so that this does not happen? Both models got slight differences in their form, apart from that their topology is completely different.
I'd be happy for any help.

So, there is an option to reduce such artifacts. How? Using a cage. The cage is a duplicate mesh of the original mesh that you then set up to raycast for the normal mapping. An alternative way is to color pick the pixels close to where it looks fine and just gently move/paint them in place so the deformation disappears. I didn't know that back then. Cages are also really fragile beings. Don't apply any modifiers to cages. Leave them be. Otherwise you will get mosaic-like deformations. To fix those, you'd need to use a new copy of the target mesh and set it to fit the broken cage with an unapplied shrinkwrap modifier.
Hope this helps!


text:
Scripted expression: Can I even include &&s? If else and special conditions
I'm attempting my luck with scripted expressions today, and my specific situation is about using &&s as following:
-((((rotation_euler_l*2.9375)+(rotation_euler_r*2.9375))/2)+0.35) if(((rotation_euler_l+rotation_euler_r)/2)<=-0.025 && -(rotation_euler_l+rotation_euler_r)<=0) else -((((rotation_euler_l*2.9375)+(rotation_euler_r*2.9375))/2))

Which, oh wonders is not working. ("ERROR: Invalid Python expression") I am assuming that I might also have misplaced a bracket - but in case I did not -
Q: Is Blender able to read the "&&" expression common in languages like C# where you write things like
if ((left+right)/2 == 0 && left+right <=0 ) {do something;} else {do this instead;}

?
My code is working if I remove the && condition from the if bracket:
-((((rotation_euler_l*2.9375)+(rotation_euler_r*2.9375))/2)+0.35) if(((rotation_euler_l+rotation_euler_r)/2)<=-0.025) else -((((rotation_euler_l*2.9375)+(rotation_euler_r*2.9375))/2))

Where did I go wrong? Hope somebody can explain why the uppermost code sample is throwing me an error. Thanks in advance.

That's a python question, not a specific Blender one! Use 'and' instead of '&&'. (Without the quotes.) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2485466/what-is-pythons-equivalent-of-logical-and-in-an-if-statement

Thank you kindly for letting me know. I never properly learnt python so I am prone to errors. Thought Blender does not do "&&"/"and"s, after googling the issue led me to no related question - didn't assume python uses "and" instead of "&&". Your suggestion worked, wanted to let you know.

Good to hear! it's a long time since I used python myself so I had to look it up and check. Blender uses standard python notation so if it's wrong in native python, it's wrong in blender! :^)


text:
Animated bendy bone for copy position is wonky
Working with bendy bones and Auto Rig Pro. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/armatures/bones/properties/bendy_bones.html
I am animating this bendy bone with a handle. All fine and dandy. The true transforming bones in the neck are four separate bones that are supposed follow each other. This might not be optimal, but the ARP state forces me to keep these bones.

My plan: Basically the four separate bones shall fill out the space of the bendy bone, no matter which position, so I have a neck that follows the curve of the bendy bone.
My problem: I tried different settings, but it never truly follows the curve of my bone, when moved in pose mode, or the initial position looks wonky compared to rest position. (Rest position see the aligned bones:).

I tried a copy position constraint, then read copy transforms is better for shear and twist.
I tried Local Space, I tried World Space, neither works the way I need it- Pose Space looks just broken. The bones snap outside of the curve, just like in the first image, they need to be properly aligned in order for the animation to look correct, though. And I tried to find a way using different head/tail values, I tried Copy Transforms as well, result was the same wonky thing, only difference was the rotation alignment (which I could care less about in that regard).
Heck, they won't stay on their place along the BBone where they should. Is this bugged or am I just stupid? Please help.

A Bendy Bone is like a Bezier curve. It has 2 handles and the curvature is calculated by the handles. I'm not sure if you can align 4 normal bones along the B-Bone. Mainly because you don't know the curvature. An Armature bone constraint gives also weird results.

Hm, after quick research I would say that the Armature Bone Contraint is the key and should work. Maybe I did something wrong. Have a look here: https://youtu.be/hUdefdwx-CM


text:
Blender Game renders the scene wrong
I am making a house in Blender in wich i want to walk around using Blender game engine.
Everything displays well, but when i press "P" to start the game, it renders only a few poligons from the entire scene.
What can be wrong?
Thank you so much!

Did you try to recalculate normals?

I did just now, still doesn't work.

@Andrei , you may need to manually flip normal or give the trouble walls thickness, alternatively, you can un-check the backface culling option under game-options in the materials tab. It also looks like you are using MultiTexture to render your scene, GLSL gives better results.

I unchecked Backface culling, i set the shading to GSLS, i applied Solidify modifier, the same. I don't know how to manually flip normals...

Some faces won't render so what it means is that you propably have Backface culling activated(means that only the faces in the direction of the normals are getting rendered).
Select the object whose faces won't appear.
Then go into edit mode by pressing tab.
In the "N" panel find the mesh display and under "Normals" select faces (the 3rd icon).
Blue lines (these segments are called Normals) are gonna come out of the faces of your object. The faces will be rendered from the side these blue lines go to. So if the faces that won't render have their blue lines going inside, it means this is your problem.
What you should do to fix this is:
press ctrl+N (with the faces still selected) and then in the "T" panel the "Make normals consistent" option is gonna appear with an unchecked box. Check it and it should be fine. This is the manual way in case of selecting all faces and pressing ctrl+N won't fix your problem.
p.s. if you want your plane to render both ways, deactivate backface culling in the "N" panel below shading mode.

I apreciate your consistent answer and i did everything you've said, but unfortunately this couldn't solve my problem, only partially. I atached prints: http://postimg.org/image/83gj0xq6p/   and                                http://postimg.org/image/extrqmfa5/

Can you share the blend file through http://www.pasteall.org/blend/ , so I can have a look at it?

Oh my god, i figured it out, "Backface culling" was enabled in many other materials, i though it was something general wich is enough to disable it once. Than you so much for your advices!

Nice job lev, couldn't have said it better myself... oh.. one sec. :D


text:
Texture Paint dot
I'm trying to use the Texture Painting Tool, but I get some ugly results :3. When I'm using a Noise Texture, I get a small dot in the middle.

I'm painting on a plane, which I divided 5 times in x and y, then UV-unwrapped it, scaled it by 5, add a Material, add a Texture, new Texture with 2048 x 2048 in UV-View.

Okay... and I changed the curve to vector handle which is a bad idea, it should be a clean curve, problem solved, I think it should stay for people <3.


text:
Auto Smooth Shading of old file
I tried to use a .blend file that is 1 year old. I wanted to use the mesh to animate something, but I noticed I used EdgeSplit instead of auto-smoothing a year ago. Here is the problem, when I "remove doubles" and turn on auto-smooth nothing happens. Is the file corrupted, does Blender doesn't support older .blend files? Please help, I literally sat 3 hours here pressing random buttons like a monkey and nothing seems to work <3
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_kJOb3u2J0gX0VCWUU2aW02ckU

Auto-smooth? Also you can't remove doubles as there are none.

Apparently Auto Smooth wont work if you have custom split normals, if you want to use it you will have to remove any custom normals and loose it's data.
In the Properties Window > Object Data (Mesh tab) > Geometry Data Panel > Clear Custom Split Normals Data button and you should be able to use Auto Smooth
Otherwise just add an Edge Split Modifier

Omg thank you very very much <3. So, looks like whenever I use an EdgeSplit modifier, Blender makes these custom normals? <3

Not sure how they are created, I think it's not the Edge Split modifier, they are either created by hand or using the normal edit modifier, or created by some addons,  but I'm not sure


text:
How to import brush sets?
A couple of tutorials I looked at said you had to turn on the import add on, but they're a little old, and I can't find that option in the add ons section. I'm guessing it's been made into a full feature, but how do I find that?

Do you mean for sculpting?

I mean for texture painting though I'd also like to know for sculpting.

I don't know anything about texture painting, but I can show you a way to import images to modify sculpting, if that helps.

Cool, how do I do that? Can I import them as an entire folder?

Sculpt and Texture Paint brushes can be imported as any other thing you might want to import/export between .blend files (objects / meshes / materials etc.).

Create new Sculpt / Texture Paint brush. Adjust its settings (in particular, change its name for something recognizable). In example below the brushes' name starts from "export-Brush...".
Save file which will be used as library (you will import from it).
Open new file, navigate to File > Append, find your saved file. When Blender's file browser enters file's contents, choose Brush.

Both Sculpt (default and non-default) and Texture Paint (only created by you) brushes will be stored there. You'll see there as many brush sets as there were  additionally created in the original file.

Note:

You can link brushes instead of appending if you want to avoid editing them.
You don't need to pack textures in the main file if image textures were used; they will be stored in the brush settings. Note though that if file with imported brushes will be moved somewhere (or texture file will change its location) you'll need to provide it with textures in order Blender to find them.

Idle Chit-chat
I switched over to an answer to give a, well, answer.
Stuff
I do not believe that you can import them as an entire folder, but I would do more research before you take my word for it. The way I did discover was to take an image (I chose a bark texture specifically for sculpting from textures.com).

From here, I went into Blender and to Sculpt Mode. I keyed T to open the tools bar and from there went to Tools > Texture > + New. I named the texture 'Tex' to make it easily recognizable.

Then I moved over to the Properties panel, and more specifically, to the Textures tab. I made sure that  was selected and  as well. I selected Image or Movie for the type of texture. I opened the image. I sculpted, and the image changed the way that the brush (I used the default SculptDraw brush) removed/added pieces to the mesh. I assume you know this, but also make sure to use Dyntopo. 3 pixels worked for me with this texture, as it's a fairly low quality texture.
Condolences
I am sorry that I could not help with texture painting, but I hope that the tips here are able to help you in your quest to become a better Blender person. Blenderer?
=Puck


text:
Is it possible to export a 3D object made in Illustrator to Blender as a mesh?
I've got a logo I'm making in Blender and Illustrator. I am currently arranging the logo in Illustrator and then I save it as an SVG and import that to Blender where I extrude it.
But the process of converting it from Curve to Mesh in Blender makes it have a messy overly complicated mesh.
When I take the same text and extrude it as a 3D object in Illustrator it looks much much better. I grab it, and I can see a wireframe of some kind. So is it not possible to just export this mesh created by Illustrator, and skip the step of converting to SVG and importing it into Blender and then converting it to Mesh? It seems like it would result in a much cleaner mesh if that were possible.

I'm not aware of Illustrator having the capability to export as a 3D file format, but that kind of question has been asked on the Adobe forum . At Blender StackExchange we can suggest how best to turn 2d Vector files into 3D.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because , the way this is phrased is a question about a feature of Adobe Illustrator export types and not Blender.

Say this is the result of the SVG import, it's still a Curve Object.

because it is still a curve object, you can do almost the same things to it as  a Font Object.
Set the type of curve to 2D, you'll get more options.

Like Offset, Extrude and Bevel with depth, divisions. Technically if that's all you need and your shape can be bevelled nicely then you don't even need to convert to mesh or ever see the mesh.

Simply convert the curve to a mesh before extruding, you should get an n-gon that remains intact (select 2d mesh and in edit mode select all and make a face) this way you only extrude the border and retain a quite simple mesh. In case of artifacts you can also retopologise the n-gon into quads as necessary. This should be simple and straightforward. Tutorial on this you can find  on youtube searching for "import svg in blender"

authors: Василий Балюлин


text:
Why does my extruded text go wonky like this? Why does my text go weird when I convert it to a curve?
I am making a 3D logo.
When I create a text object and use solidify mod to make it thicker it does this:

When I don't use the solid mod, and instead convert it to a curve to do a curve extrusion it does this:

Why is it doing this?

Did you try using the text settings rather than manually extruding it?

Excellent thank you very much. This worked!

Also,  If I then convert this into a mesh or curve later will that mess it up? I want to eventually port this stuff to Unity.

@DavidA.French Try it! I am fairly certain it will work. If not, just convert it to a mesh.

I actually have a problem before that. I need to do some editing on it's composition before using it in Unity but it's acting super janky once I convert it to a Mesh. :( http://i.imgur.com/nwKU8ZR.png

I'm not sure why that is happening. I think it is because the letters are connected. If in wireframe mode the model looks good, you could probably manually fix the faces.

The missing fill in your curves is caused by overlap. If the curves self intersect Blender doesn't know how to fill them correctly.
Either:

Move them slightly apart in edit mode (just enough not to overlap), or
Use the offset option in Properties Window > Object Data (Curves) > Transform > Offset (be careful as too much offset will cause problems of their own) ; or
If you really must leave them exactly as they are optionally use a different material slot on each independent spline (this is a workaround for the problem but kind of works because Blender wont try to fill them together).

Again if you are working with curves don't use the solidify modifier, instead use the curve extrude option which should yield better results.
That being said, I think you started on the wrong foot, if you plan on curving your object the way you show in the image you will never get a clean solution from curves. Because of the triangle based topology  of curve object you will never get a clean smooth curvature.
You can try and minimize it by using a Subsurf modifier but it will generally maintain it's triangulated appearance.
You should do this from scratch with a mesh object with an even quad based topology

Thank you very much. This helped a lot. I ended up getting it to work using the extrude text function. If I then convert this into a mesh or curve later will that mess it up? I want to eventually port this stuff to Unity.

No, converting to mesh or curve should maintain it as is, just have in mind that converting to mesh is a 'destructive process' in the sense that you cant go back to a curve cleanly, so remember to keep a copy of the original object around.

Hmmm I just tried converting it to a curve and it did indeed mess it up. That was after I had applied a simple deform mod, so I'm going to try and see if holding off on applying that helps.

This is how it ends up looking. Getting rid of the deform mod doesn't help. I realize that maybe this is just a problem with this font being poorly formatted but I had this same problem yesterday. I went through 7 hours of painstaking clean up. I tried using a PNG converted to SVG but it converted poorly and the points were all janky so I basically had to completely rebuild the extruded stuff. I thought a font would be cleaner.

http://i.imgur.com/nwKU8ZR.png

As I mentioned, if you plan on deforming this you are better of start using a mesh object purposefully modeled from for this, Curves don't deform too well

You mean the best method is to make the text object and then hand box model a mesh that looks like it?
I guess you mean like with the SVG. But like I said the SVG gave me some really bad output all. I guess if I build it in Illustrator natively, cutting out the PNG step that might improve things but it seems like the path for this font might just be hard for Blender to read?

Yes I mean box model it by hand with a mesh over the font object as visual guide. It's a lot of work, but all other curve based solutions (text object, SVG, Traced PNG, Illustrator or otherwise) will suffer the same triangulation issues

Thank you so much for the help. I have one last question. I actually retried the SVG without going through the PNG conversion step and it came out much better, super easy to extrude, no problems. But when I do the final step to convert it into a mesh, the result mesh is very unsightly. In researching this I've seen stuff like the remesh mod. Would a mod like that help at all? Or something else?

Never used it myself but yes, sounds like it might help. Of course it is never as good as well thought out manual topology, but for this case since it's just a deform modifier it may suffice


text:
How do you group objects together without joining them?
In Photoshop you can create a folder and put all the layers under that folder. This makes them easier to manage. How do I do this in Blender?
I'm not looking to do a boolean union or grouping them. I don't understand what the point of ctrl-g group is honestly. It would be nice to have something like the photoshop folder that enables me to manipulate multiple objects at a time, cleans up my hierarchy view, and doesn't join stuff together. Any help? I know this is probably super basic but I can't find it looking online.

there are many ways to do this, if you group objects together you can then add a group instance of that group, this is an empty that controls all the geometry in that group.
Alternatively you could use an empty, parent everything to it and then disable the ability to interact with the objects.
You can also just parent everything to an object of your choice, probably the biggest one of the group, and control everything that way.
It depends what your objective is by grouping.

Okay I was looking through the documentation and I saw the stuff about parenting. Are there specific best practices for that? Based on pipeline or animation tool use norms? Also, how exactly do I do that? I kept trying to click and drag one object on top of another in hierarchy to get it to become a child and that didn't do anything.

Have a look at the link Duarte posted up there too, parenting cannot be done in a drag and drop fashion, tough I guess that could be a pretty good suggestion.
To parent select all the objects you wish to parent and last the parent hit ctrl+P and select object, when it comes to best practices I'm not aware of any, just keep your workspace tidy, and make hierarchys that make sense, for example, it makes sense for a "table" object to be the parent of some "magazine" objects, not the other way around.
And this is personal preference, but abuse empty objects.

It's possible to parent with drag and dropping object to be child to the object to be parent in the Outliner, see Outliner section in this answer. However it might not act as expected in some cases especially without enough practice so it's best to start with usual ways like Ctrl+P and stuff.


text:
How to I translate an edge in edit mode precisely using numbers?
I have a box centered on the origin of the scene. I want to grab the bottom right edge and pull it in towards the center to taper. I want to do this on the left side too, and I want to be able to translate that edge precisely using some kind of number input, so that I can control exactly how far it goes, and replicate it on both sides perfectly. I know that I can probably do something similar using mirror mode, but I'd like to know how to do this for more than just this, as it would help me to be more accurate when I'm box modeling.

To Translate any selected Vertices, objects or edges you press G and then after that depending on what axis you want to move it on you press the corresponding letter, which can be Y,X, or Z.
Secondly, you can either move it yourself with your mouse or type in a number. You can use numbers with decimals and or negative numbers which will translate in the opposite direction.
As for getting the edge to where you want it to be you will have to experiment with numbers. Hope this helps, and good luck.


text:
Why render settings are not related to the active camera?
I am doing some interior design rendering and I have multiple cameras in the sceen to show different details, and I also have a few panoramic cameras (equirectangular) to show the entire room.
I find annoing that when I switch the active camera, I need to manually tweek the render settings to match the selected camera (2/1 for equirectangular, 16/9 or 4/3 for still, ecc.).
I believe that the settings like dimensions, resolution, sampling (and so on) settings should be tied to the camera in order to have the possibility to have cameras dedicated to different needs (low res, high res, panoramic ...)
Do you know why it is not working like this?
And do you know if there is an addon that can do that for me?
(otherwise I may write one... ;)
Thanks.
Regards.
Mau.

Please do write one :)

I think the phyilosophy of having these settings tied to the scene rather than the camera is to use different scenes (which can be linked) for each of these different camera settings. Seems a bit cumbersome though

Yes the settings are tied to the scene and you can link them. But anyway the two or more scenes will share all objects even newly created ones.
If you have 10 cameras you will end up with 10 identical scenes with 10 cameras in each.
True that you can have only the right camera active and visible in each scene and hide the others, but if you happen to switch camera in one scene you screw up anything.
So you need to keep everything in sync manually
But anyway, short of writing a specific addon this is the closest solution to my need


text:
Will Blender update OSL specification from 1.5.1 to 1.6?
Open shading language is a great feature for cycles render(Customizing parameters and algorithm so on. I try to put OSL to my lighting and shading pipeline. But OSL specification 1.5.1 leak some features like widget(For instances, Checkbox,Min-Max value etc.). It will be great if Blender can update OSL specification from 1.5.1 to 1.6. It can enhance the user(people who use my shader to work) experience. It is possible to update?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about Blender development, and not about how to use Blender.

The OSL specs have 'suggested' metadata, which are not part of the osl core-specs and the implementation of which is really down to how programs implement their OSL node tree. See related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/31380/can-a-script-node-using-osl-have-a-checkbox  I suspect at some point OSL will be updated

not a bad question btw, but this isn't really the venue for asking about blender future plans.. there are mailinglists and irc (freenode) #blendercoders

The developer Thomas Dinges (Dingto, implementor of the OSL node) said this on 29Nov2015 "we will update OSL at some point, not sure yet when exactly though"


text:
How can I make a flat, spiralled surface?
I'm a bit new to Blender so I apologize if this is a really simple thing.
I'm trying to make a peppermint candy in Blender (like this:
,
one of those red ones that looks swirled. So I'm extruding a circle, slightly rounding the edge, then there's a flat surface, and there are equal cuts of the disc that alternate red and white. Is there a way to basically twist the whole thing around the centerpoint such that the bands curve like that?
Thanks very much!

Look up proportional editing

I've used proportional editing for some simple resizing/reshaping...I guess I don't quite see how it would be used for this problem. Would I use it with a rotation?

Yes, that would be the way to do this

In Object Mode add Shift-A a circle (Mesh/Circle)

Change to Edit Mode Tab make sure you're in vertex select mode.
Extrude and Scale E,S,0
Change to Face select (see image below)
Click a random face, select all A
From the menu pick Select/ Checker Deselect

Create another material and assign it to the selection
Add loop cuts Ctrl-R RMB

With the inner faces select you're there
Set proprtional editing O and rotate R

You might want to select the outer edges and extrude them to add the on colored border as in the reference image.
Result with some tweaking:

Oh, awesome. This is incredibly helpful! Thanks very much!


text:
How can check UV problem?
I am new in Blender,
How can I understand normal of UV are correct or not?
In maya, we can understand, by color either UV is correct or not but in blender I didn't find any tool,

Thanks

What is correct/incorrect about the shown examples? Rotated UV island by 180 degrees?

While UVs are seldom "right" or "wrong" you can visualize distortion compared to 3D model geometry by enabling "Stretch" in the UV editor Properties panel under Display:

With hard surface modeling this makes the out of place vertices pop but the biggest usage is perhaps with organic modeling where you have complex unwrap shapes and you want to tweak out the hard to spot local stretches.

Its seems to be missing in the Blender, there are several useful plugins for UV maping, you may search for Blender UV add ons


text:
Squished armature after deleting animation
I am having a problem where my aramture seems scaled down on the y axis after deleting an animation action. Has anyone experienced this and know how too fix it?

probably you deleted the animation in a frame where the scale value of some bones was not equal 1.0. Go to pose mode, select all bones and press alt-s, alt-g, and alt-r to reset scale, position and rotation of all bones.


text:
Circle Mesh - Can't Adjust Vertex Count
I recently tried to create a circle mesh, which works fine. However I cannot change any of the Add Circle settings. It is all grayed out, so I cannot change how many vertices there are in the circle with the sliders.
Is anybody else having this issue? Is there a way to fix it?

Oh, I found the answer! Go to File > User Preferences > Editing > Undo, and enable Global Undo. Problem solved! :)


text:
Undo Key Problem
I have noticed a problem occurring whenever I try to undo a transformation (E.G. undo rotations or placements of meshes and bones). When I press ctrl + z they do not undo. Extrusions, sculpting and such are fine, but rotations and scaling do not undo.
Is there something I am doing wrong or something I need to do? I am using Blender 2.78.

Check your key bindings. Did you mess with the controls lately, maybe updated lately? Does this happend on all your .blend files?

I will check them right away. It has been doing this since I updated, I believe.

I checked the keys and they seem to be fine. However I found out I can reset certain transformations. Alt + R = Reset Rotations.

What does your undo history show after you perform a rotation or placement? (Control+Alt+Z)

I actually didn't check. I suppose it doesn't matter too much.


text:
Unwrapping beveled cube
I don't unwrap my models very often so I decided I would give unwrapping this simple box-like shape a go. I beveled the edges and corners and tried my best to mark the seams (see below).

I then decided to unwrap the model on a 1024 x 1024 texture, but as you can see below some of the edges are a bit wonky looking (see below).

What should I do to prevent wonky edges? If anybody has any advice or tips I will be most grateful.

Select two vertices on the top edge of the inner face, scale them to 0, Hit "P" to pin them. Repeat for bottom edge. Do the same with vertical edges, scale with X to 0. then you can unwrap  again to fit the beveled faces or scale them the same way, whatever suits you better.

I selected the top edge of the inner face and did as you said but upon scaling them to 0 they both merge into the median point; was I supposed to scale it to 0 on the Y axis?

Yes, scale by the axis. Solution you've came up with is probably ok, but depending on situation it might be texture editing hell.

This could be caused by tiny long quads of the bevel which sometimes make Angle Based unwrapping fail. Related - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/35203/why-does-blender-warp-uv-pelt-when-unwrapping-tight-geometry.

@MrZak I see! Is there a way around that?

If you don't mean a workaround to be straightening UV map then it seems to be only using Conformal-based unwrapping method (which doesn't appear to be intended to be used instead of Angle-Based, rather than in some cases).

@MrZak Darn I wish I had thought of that sooner.

After a bit of thinking I decided to try something different. I performed a Smart UV project and made the most important area of the mesh the largest, since this model will be low poly. I could have managed my space a little better but I think it looks okay.

When making a UV map, it is desirable to have as few seams as possible, I don't think this is an ideal solution.

@veryRandomMe You're right, it does look a bit messy. I may give it another try soon.


text:
Future Updates - Handling High-Poly Sculpts Better?
(NOTE: I'm not sure if this is the place to ask; I couldn't seem to find an official Blender email address to contact regarding upcoming Blender updates.)
I recall reading that ZBrush has a method of rendering so many polygons on screen, so that models as high as 20 million triangles or higher don't slow down performance. However Blender starts to slow down when you're sculpting a model around 500,000 triangles, which is very frustrating to say the least.
Does anybody know if any future versions of Blender and/or planned updates will feature better high polygon count management, much like ZBrush?

This is not the right place to ask. Check the Contacting Developers page on the Blender Wiki.

Oh. I saw that it consists of a mailing list. Looks like too much hassle to deal with, honestly.


text:
Sudden Blender Lag
I have not used Blender 2.78 in about four days. The last time I used it, it ran smoothly but when I loaded up my startup file today, everything began to lag immensely. Despite having only a cube on my screen it takes about 5 seconds for an input to register.
The worst part is I don't know what is causing the problem. I tried changing the Window Draw Method to Overlap as a recommendation but it makes no difference. It's weird because every other application I have been using works fine. How can I reduce this unexpected lag?

Oooh, I was support to shut down Blender after changing the Window Draw Method to Overlap. Now it works fine! :)


text:
Freestyle On Images
I recently found out about Blender Render's Freestyle option to add stylized lines on a rendered model. It's really neat to see, but I was wondering if it's possible for these lines to affect PNG images (with transparent backgrounds).
For example, if I had an image of a sphere with a transparent background would a line follow the outer line of the PNG sphere and not the mesh the image was applied to?

As far as I know freestyle is a geometry based stroke rendering engine, that means it will only take actual blender mesh geometry into account, transparency and alpha maps are not supported as far as I know. Even face to face intersections don't generate any strokes if there is no explicit edge there.

Ah, that's a shame. No matter I suppose; I can do that sort of thing in GIMP instead.


text:
Using Ambient Occlusion Maps in Blender Render
I have tried searching for an answer but, surprisingly, there are none. Of course you can activate AO in the viewport for help with depth but unlike normal maps or specular maps I have not seen a way to use AO maps; I don't think there's even an influence slider for it. There is one called Ambient but it isn't making a difference to my model.

Does this help? http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/46287/adding-ambient-occlusion-to-material/46290#46290

Again, I tried Ambient but it doesn't seem to have an effect to the model's ambient occlusion.

No, it's not supposed to. Unless your light primarily comes from the "environment light", baked AO will make no difference, nor is it supposed to. Because all it is is shadows for the environment light. Reread my answer in that post, including the linked blog. That's how to "properly" use AO. Anything else is stylistically misusing it, in which case there's no right or wrong, just what looks good. Multiplying over diffuse is popular.


text:
Sculpting a Normal Map
I am aware that you can sculpt a high-poly mesh in Sculpt Mode, then make a low-poly version of that mesh and then bake normals from the high to the low. I am also aware that you can paint normal maps in Texture Paint, but the problem with painting them is that it doesn't always give you the normal results that you want and is generally more difficult than a bump map.
Is there a way to "sculpt" the normal map vectors onto a normal map texture? So when you brush heavily and smooth our certain areas of a normal map it would generate the colours accordingly?

Smoothing will work out-of-the-box and for the painting you need a brush with a texture - that you can get from baking: create a hill-like shape and bake it into a plane.


text:
Seam Painting Problem
I recently unwrapped a model and began painting over a seam but for some reason it still leaves this odd mark (highlighted in the red box). My Bleed is set to 8 pixels but it still gives me this odd look.

Where is the seam in that red rectangle? Is the the diagonal line crossing the black one? Or in the middle of the diagonal line? How does the uv map look like? Why do you need the seam in the middle of the flat surface? In general if those jaggies happen because of the low resolution then this seam isn't going to be easily fixable.

I probably should have visualized it better but it's near the center; you can kind of see the strokes cutting abruptly. I drew that extra squiggle right between them and, as you can see, it goes through but doesn't colour in the gap in that thicker line.

Most likely that's because black lines can't overpaint grey base texture color, Bleed doesn't always solve that. You can paint on texture in UV editor, or scale UV island after painting, or maybe painting from different points in viewport. All the ways have their disadvantages.

Ah okay. I'll have to do paint it manually on the texture via UV editor then.

Ensure that the UV islands are not touching. If the bleed is 8 then the island distance needs to be 16.


text:
Copying/Duplicating Sculpting Brushes
I am uncertain how to make a copy of an already existing sculpt brush; I have been looking around on Google for tutorials on how to do this but all that shows up is how to delete duplicates instead of making duplicates.
What should I do to make duplicates?

The '+' button below the brush image on top of the panel (same principle as for materials, for instance)

Thank you so much for informing me; greatly appreciated! :)


text:
Where are the default matcap files located?
Is there a directory or path that you need to follow to access the folder with all of Blender's default matcaps in? If so then is it possible throw in new matcaps?
I'm using Windows 10.

As for now, Blender's matcap feature is hard-coded, so it's not possible to add new matcaps or change the existing ones w/o digging through the code and recompiling it.

Still curious where those matcaps are looked (original question). Is there a directory in the source someplace?

You can't add matcaps in blender 2.79 or lower, as in the release notes of Blender 2.66
(March 6th, 2013) it read:

Currently a set of 24 (GPL licensed) Matcaps have been compiled into Blender.
[...]
Loading own matcap image files will be added later. That needs design and code work to get it stable and memory-friendly.

6 June 2018: This option has been added to the development version of Blender 2.8 as shown in this youtube preview by the Blender Developers


text:
Multires Normal Baking Not Baking Normal Data
I smart UV projected a model of the monkey head after subdividing it 5 times and lightly sculpting on it, then baked the normal data based on the multires, but all I get is a flat normal map texture with no directional normal data. How do I fix this?

Baking normal map from Multiresolution modifier data relies on the difference between the viewport number of Multires subdivisions and the highest level it was subdivided to:

The higher difference in these numbers is (Viewport vs. highest from Sculpt / Render), the stronger effect of the resulting normal map will be.
If your normal map is very light or flat then probably Preview level is set to the same one as Sculpt or Render is. Set it to lower number and choose how much of the normals change you want to bake.
Note that baked normal map should be applied to the low-poly mesh with the same amount of geometry as the mesh had with the chosen Preview level of the Multires modifier.

I changed the preview back to 0 and kept the sculpt and render values at 4, and it worked! Thank you!

@WKG Using blender 2.8. it seems sculpt options removed. Render and quality doesn't affect the result but preview. So is that okay to just focus preview number? I'm not sure render and quality are matter anymore in 2.8 when it comes to baking normal.


text:
Bevel Vertices on Plane
I'm just trying to make a simple door.
I started with a plane, scaled it. Then I wanted to bevel the 2 top corners, but I can only bevel in proportion to the plane. That means the bevel is not 45°. Is there any workaround for that? <3

To get expected result, you need to first select the object, then CtrlA > Scale, to apply the scale. (I'm not sure why, and it seems not being documented, but it works this way)


text:
Edit Mode Transparent Objects
I changed my Blender Units to Metric System, but when I'm building things, my meshes are transparent, i.e. I can see through faces like in wireframe even though my wireframe is turned off. All faces have a light white in non-wireframe mode, but I can still see through them.

How do I reverse this?
Another issue I get is this

Looks like clipping is not working properly.

http://imgur.com/W6bJU5h,KQKUrhZ#0 It's the top part of a door frame

Funny, when I reload the project it works, but after some edits or changes it somehow breaks.

Already tried. I also get this when using a simple cube. I mean not when I create, but when I do some edits, at some point I get this.

Related http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1385/shadows-along-edges-of-mesh-in-3d-view-viewport-clipping/1387#1387

1° Possible cause:
"Limit selection to visible" must be Enabled, if you don't want to see behind faces while in edit mode. You can find the icon in the 3D View bar.

2° Possible cause:
Those are artifacts caused by not appropriate settings of camera's clipping limits for your scene.

This is the "default scene", except from the clipping near limit.

Clipping plane determine the boundary of camera's frustum (which is the portion of space where computations are done). The bigger the boundary , the less precise calculations could be. As the calculation in this case are about visibility, here they comes the strange effects.
It may not seems that your frustum is so big, as in your scene clipping planes seem not to far away from the default settings...but you must consider that in that calculation also global scaling is involved...

The cube is 150mx150m, the near clipping plane is 1mm/0.01=10cm and the far clipping plane is 1000m/0.01=100'000m! The scale of the frustum is not optimal for your geometery. I suggest to lower the value of you far clipping plane.

So, when I'm using metric system, what should I use then? Whatever I try, it doesn't work. When I'm lowering "end" to 50m it looks more crisp now, but why is everyone telling me like... set your settings from 1cm to 1km??

Those you mention are the (almost) default settings, so they are expected to work for a wide range of situations...  maybe your scene has some particularities... If you post your blendfile (or a singificant portion of it) on http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ I'm sure we'll be able to give you further instructions

Does this means you always have to change these settings for every new project? I'm uploading the file now, looks like it takes some time

No, default setting usually works fine, so you don't have to change them. But sometime is needed (ex landscapes..). Your scene doesn't seem one of this cases, it has probably some problems with units scale. I'll be more precise after examinig the file

So, before we close this. Can I also just change the scale to 1 and before I import my mesh scale back to 0.01? (I wanted to import to Unreal Engine and these guys are saying they need the 0.01 scale)

Oh, well, I never tried to export for Unreal Engine, so I cannot be sure about all the implications of what you are proposing. But I'm certain that once you have the model, it will be just a matter of scaling... so I suggest you to work with the setting that let you see things properly. So YES, try that way.


text:
Cell fracture messes up texture UV, doesn't apply material to interior, doesn't take fracture count limit into account
Cell fracture messes up texture UV, doesn't apply material to interior, doesn't take fracture count limit into account. (makes 12-20 cells no matter what value I set)
I really need fracturing for my game and I've been struggling with this for the past two days.
Is there a version of blender where cell fracturing works properly? I have tried 5 of them.

There are lot of possible reason that could cause these problems.Could you provide a screenshot, or a blend file so we can try to better understand the situation? What is the point source generator? Own verts, child verts, own particles....?

I know this is a year late, but I literally made an account here so I can answer this question! I've been beating my head against a wall for the last 3 days and I finally got it to work.
So, I was using cell fracture in blender 2.77. It looked great, fractured wonderfully, and completely ruined my UVs.
I found out that Blender 2.64 was a working version of cell fracture, downloaded it and imported my .blend file (of the unshattered object) into it. When I shattered it, everything was perfect.
I don't know what you're doing with the cell fracture, but I imported it into Unity, and (warning in case that's what you're doing) I got very odd extra materials.
To fix this, I exported the shattered cube from 2.64 as an fbx, opened it in 2.77, re-exported it as an fbx, and when I put it into unity I had no extra materials.
This can not be the only way to make it work, but here's the convoluted path I took.
I really hope this helps you or you found another fix. I understand your frustration.

I had the same 'UV-mess-up' issue with the cell fracture addon (2.79). I tried other versions of Blender (2.64 and 2.74), but it gave the same problem. Then I learned that when you enable Debug Boolean in the cell fracture options, the UV's are totally fine!
Now the Debug Boolean option gives each separate chunk a boolean modifier. To apply the modifiers, simply select all the chunks, then Alt + C to convert to mesh.
The only problem is that some chunks don't show up, after applying the cell fracture. But to fix that, before you convert the chunks to a mesh, select the chunks that aren't showing, go to the boolean modifier, and where it says BMesh, click and select Carve, and they show up again.
With the other problems I have not much experience, all I can say is to try different Point Source methods (I find particles to be a useful way).

great! works perfect for me!

"the UV's are totally fine!" Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. At least in 3.5.1 they're getting messed up too even before the boolean modifier is applied.

I had the same issue (2.76b).  After fracturing a uv mapped object, the textures ended up low res on the fractured object.  I had to rejoin the fractured objects into a single object and unwrap the object again.  After unwrapping and tweaking the uv-s a bit, I selected the entire mesh and separated by loose parts.  Basically, you use cell fracture to "fracture" the original mesh, rejoin the shards and re-map the uvs, then make each loose part its own object again.

I had no luck with this (2.79). When separating by loose parts, many shards would not form correctly: Their back faces would become parts of their own and the front and all side (i.e., fracturing) faces another non-manifold object.


text:
Restrict dimensions of cables
I am creating an animated manual for a device that has an external cable connected to it. The cable has a length (1m) and a diameter.
When I bend the cable, I would like to ensure that the length always remains the same. That means, the total length of the cable should always be 1m.
I use a BezierCurve bevelled with a circle. So the length of the BezierCurve has to be limited.
Is there a way to apply such a constraint to a BezierCurve?
Thanks a lot for your help in advance

I think it would be better to use tesselated cylinder with Curve modifier, length of cylinder remains constant, just modify bezier shape.


text:
Adding particle system after explode modifier causes blender crash
I'm using Blender 2.74 and built the following scene:

Text_1 with explode modifier, dissolving in particle_system_1
Text_2 with build modifier and particle_system_2 with harmonic field interacting with particle_system_1
Object_1 with basic particle_system_3
Object_2 with basic particle_system_4

When playing animation (not rendering) Blender crashes. After removing particle_system_4, animation playback runs without crash. In Blender v2.63 it works fine also with particle_system_4.
I've found the following on the web according this issue:
https://developer.blender.org/T33112
How can I get the fixed version r51974 mentioned in the ticket?
Thank's a lot.

That was supposedly fixed in 2012. You need to post a new bug report and/or comment on the old report to say the issue is back.


text:
Procedural generation in Blender
I am hoping to create a blender game using procedural generation(to reduce file size). According to what I have read, procedural generation deals with generating models,texture,etc using a procedure/code. Easy by definition, But I have no idea where to start with. All I can guess is that it deals with blender's python scripting.If I am correct, please help me proceed. If not, help me understand the correct way.
Also, Does procedural generation reduce file size tremendously? If so, at what cost?

Procedural Generation is a broad area. You can use procedural generation to generate terrain, textures, models, growth-behaviour of plants, missions/quests and so on.
With my restricted knowledge about pg, I think that I can assure you that if you really want to generate everything procedurally it will be a long way.
I would suggest you read more into procedural generation and determine what you should start first (mesh generation for example?).
There is a textbook about that topic which gives a good and, what is more important, up-to-date overview. You can find it here http://pcgbook.com/.
My experience so far:
You can use Blender to generate the mesh of a object. I let blender create basic objects like a sphere or a cube. Then the algorithm manipulates the object (it's vertices, faces, size,...).
I also tried to generate textures for the object. I used the pillow-library (https://github.com/python-pillow/Pillow) for that. For my project we need about 3 or 4 textures which all have 2K Resolution. I noticed really fast that when I use python-modules, which weren't baked via C++, it gets tremendously slow (Pushing a button and need to wait for 20-30 seconds isn't great for a tool which should be used for game development). So I wrote a C++-Application, which communicates with Blender/Python and does the generation stuff.
And yes, I know that Blender is able to procedurally generate textures with different noises. But we need more control over the generation. And Blender's way wasn't what I wanted.
Regarding to your question about the file size:
It depents. If you are using procedural generation to generate the assets in realtime then you will have a reduces file size. Most of the time. But that does also mean that you need to write good (e.g. optimized) code. When for example your shaders are slow your game will be slow.
But you can also go the way to pre-generate some of your assets and deliver them directly with your game. This can be helpful for computationally intensive calculations or if the 'making it in realtime' is to complicated and the benefit isn't much.

I started to use blender as a tool to make art, so I have no experience at all with coding... although I'd really like to learn how to, so I can make procedural meshes.

I recommend researching vector displacement.