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background video for my camera has gone missing. help?
I have a video set as my camera background but for some reason its cutting out mid video. Does anyone have an idea how to get it back?

it plays the frame before this one

You seem to have moved the file to a different location... Move it back where it was or try to use the find missing files function.

Possible duplicate of How to re-link files which have paths that have become invalid (can't be found)?

Blender rendered part of my vid and replaced my background vid with this incomplete one.


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trying to add an image to the face of an object
I'm  modeling an indoor football field which is like a hockey arena.
I can not figure out how to get the image applied to the surface of the cube which I've positioned as the field.
I've created the field in Fireworks to the dimensions of the cube and I am unable to get it to render on the object face.
I've looked at over a half dozen tutorials and I'm still unable to get it work...
Can someone please simply explain the steps for me...
Thanks
Trey

Hum, right missed that. Wonder if it is intentional or just mistakenly tagged

Assuming the dimensions of the face match the dimensions of the image (to prevent stretching) and also assuming you're using cycles render, simply

With the cube selected, press tab to enter edit mode
Press "u" and select smart UV project. Make sure you have the faces selected.
(keep settings the same, just click "ok")
Head on over to the UV image editor
Make sure you're still in edit mode, and you will see the faces unwrapped
on the image editor like this:
Now add your image by clicking "open" at the bottom left and find your image
Rescale the face to fit the image by selecting it (yours will have an image):

In the materials tab, click "use nodes" and on the color, click the dot next to the color and select "image texture"
Open image
and you're done.
Here's an example :

Here is the material tab:

When you click the dot, select image texture:

If the UV unwrapping worked out, it should appear in rendered view
(note: it will not appear in solid viewport; switch to rendered or texture)

I followed the steps and saw no option to USE NODES-- where is that option or tab located..

All I am trying to do is add an image to the face of a cube which I've set to the dimensions of a hocky rink scaled of course... just one 1 face...

You are using cycles render, right? As for "just one face" you only need to select that face then. I'll upload a project for you to take a look.

Yes I am using cycles render and thanks....  its like I get to the final step and nothing happens so, I know I'm missing something, just can't put my finger on it.

Ok, so you've UV unwrapped and opened the image and scaled it to your liking? If that's the case, then go to the materials tab. If it says "diffuse bsdf" or just "diffuse, that means it is already using nodes. If not, then just click "use nodes." Then find where you select the color, and click the little dot next to it.

Thank You Very Much!!!  I figured I was missing something- didnt realize that I need to chose either render or text render- that worked!!!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Blender Skeletal Mesh into Unreal
I'm learning Blender and Unreal side by side.
I've made a mesh and would like to use as my main character's for the game I am building. The mesh looks alright, even comes into the game with all the materials looking the way I want them and everything.
My goal is to create a skeleton that would match the Unreal skeleton enough to be able to use the animations that come stock/are so cheep on on the Unreal market.
But it seems that whatever I try, though, I don't get the right effect(s)
Method 1:
Export a Unreal mannequin into Blender. I then move the skeletal mesh to be connected the way it should be. Removing IK bones and twist bones.
(described here: dhttps://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/animation/100864-tutorial-how-to-make-ue4-mannequin-in-blender)
I then have tried two versions:
A) I just parent the skeleton to the mesh and use weighted when asked.
This results in the mesh having all the bones, and I can move it all in the skeleton section of unreal. But the physics assets is a GIANT blob of blue 50x the character's size with so many volumes I don't even know where to start on trying to fix it.
And the blobs don't scale right. I can't get them to be much smaller and they just become slightly smaller spheres if I try to arrange them
B) select the skeleton, hit the create rig button and try to use that.
When I get it into Unreal, the skeleton doesn't move the mesh at all.
Method 2:
Using blender skeleton
https://youtu.be/jiXwDxCZtOc
Following this tutorial.
I do have a different skeleton than the person who made this does. When I create the human mesh, mine has a face and everything (no biggy, I figure, I've tried just not creating targets in unreal and I've tried removing those bones.)
My project looks different the moment I hit the rig button. I don't get the little floating orbs connected to bones.
I get one in front of the characters face. But I do have the arrows and the box around the center of gravity etc.
When I grab these and move them around The Mesh warps. Mostly.
Like grabbing the center the pants warps around but where they meet items I have joined (belt/shit) they seem completely unconnected.
(to begin with the created generated Rig is slightly larger than the original rig for some reason? If I scale from the root to .889 it's exact)
And things like the arms the bones just move through them.
Is there any help anyone can give on what I am doing wrong/how to fix this. I would appreciate it. I have no idea
(I kept getting errors when trying to post photos i have taken. I placed them in a folder on my drive here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1r0mUrY40fXo9rdhwz79BWVhpymxvyjCB)

Found an Answer that actually works just right:
Export The UE4 mannequin.
Remove anything you dont want to use including MESH, IK bones, Twist bones.
Turn on snap and set it to verticies.
Then grab ends of bones that are in the wrong positions. Move them using the axis arrows onto the correct bones.
Save it for next time as it's own file
Next bring in your mesh. Scale appropriately for unreal
In object mode, select the skeleton. Press shift+C so that you scale from origin. Scale it to your mesh.
Turn on the mirror x and move bones as needed.
In object mode, select the mesh and skeleton and press CTRL+P
set them by weight when asked.
Go into weight mode and fix all the crazy stuff it will do for whatever reason.
Export to unreal.
In unreal make sure you dont choose a skeletal mesh during import.
Open the UE4 skeleton. Get to the rigging options and set it to the humanoid rig
On your skeleton do the same thing.
Go find whatever animation you want, right click on it.
Select Animation re target asset, and in the process just choose your skeleton.

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


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How can I combine two colored textures so that the final image is blended to match a specific lighting setup
I have been working on using Cycles to bake textures for a game environment.  This works well for base lighting which can be rendered at low resolutions, then scaled-up and blurred but for high resolution/high frequency textures Cycles takes way to long to render.  Basically this takes about an hour per texture at 1024x1024 since I have to render at higher samples since the final texture cannot be blurred.  However this only takes a few minutes for the base diffuse texture rendered at 512x512 then blurred and scaled up.
To deal with this, I would like to just bake the diffuse shader result to a texture and then scale it up to match the high-res base texture and combine them both using the compositor but I really have no idea where to begin.  What nodes would I use and with what settings?
Here are some textures to help illustrate this point.
(i) a basic colored procedural texture baked with no lighting(Blender Internal), the original is 2048x2048.
(ii) a texture baked with Cycles_OSL diffuse lighting only.(512x512)
(iii) a texture baked with both of the above(this is what I'm hoping to avoid)
(iv) The final scene with textures applied and no lighting.

UPDATE: Well, the multiply node seems to be what I needed for this, thanks, here is a test that that uses more diverse colors.  The strip on the left is the Cycles bake output done the way things are normally done and the strip to the right uses the compositor node to combine the original colors with the diffuse shader node output.  Both look identical so this all works.(except for the weird margin problem but that's off-topic)
To the right is the scene, the center cube was baked.

Basic node trees would be like this:

Sample file
Note:

The Composite node will only output based on Scene size set in Render tab. If you want to output full-size composite result, you have to use File Output node.
Mask node is sort of a trick to apply the transform result without being limited by the original image size.

Leon, I don't see how to mark your answer as the solution that I was looking for.  Any thoughts on this?

@MarcClintDion Hmm, I'm gonna watch your updates again. Trying to understand what you really meant. Or we can chat here now.

I don't see much thing to do more with blender in your question. You were asking why something seemed wrong when multiplying layers in GIMP. Will you provide with a more clearer question? I really can't get your point fully from what you asked if this is not what you want.

@MarcClintDion Ah, OK. However, I just tried GIMP yesterday, B ut I still don't see the difference. And I really would like to help you to figure it out. Btw, there is a "√" on the left hand side to my answer, check it if you like. :)  And, I'm in that chat room, we can still chat there.

EDIT, in case anyone is wondering what Leon is talking about here.   There was a reference to GIMP in the original post that was a Copy and Paste error. Then we got on the topic in the comments but  I deleted all references to avoid further confusion.  Sorry.

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


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Blender 2.8 and 3DConnexion's 3D mice
It seems that the new blender 2.8 now takes its NDOF parameters from 3DConnexion's settings via their SDK,.. and no longer configurable through preferences>input>NDOF.  This is all good in that you can invert axes and control sensitivity and all via 3DConnexion,..  but unlike Maya/NX etc, you cannot select between object and camera mode.  And no permutation of setting's in Blenders preferences or inverting any combination of axes will get you to Object mode.  This is well explained in

https://buijs.pro/using-3d-mouse-blender-mac/ and 3DConnexion's response can be found in
Blender 3D Space mouse settings

...and here where 3DConnexion blames Blender...

https://www.3dconnexion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38146

I think the SDK was utilized in the new Blender 2.8+ but how do I get object mode?  I worry that because NDOF keymap is "Orbit and Zoom" (no pan), perhaps Blender devs knew it wasn't that straightforward to implement.  However, it worked back in 2.7 with a plug-in.  Question is, should I look out for object mode in the future or revert to and earlier version of Blender?

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


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Blender build for Raspberry Pi3?
Has anyone tried installing blender on a Raspberry Pi 3 or do you know which version of blender will be supported on Pi3? If I get just the 3d view running for modeling, that'll be great.

You know, blender is not an operating system... it runs on a few systems, but it also has some requirement that bust be considered: see https://www.blender.org/download/ and https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/

If you are running Ubuntu on your Pi, you should be able to install it directly from the archives. The package exists for armhf. sudo apt-get install blender should do the trick.

I was able to run blender 2.79b with kali arm build

updated my pi4 with 4 GB to the latest release and installed blender just with sudo -get install blender. first impressions: runs fine! Even with cycles the default cube renders quick and viewport is very responsive!! I wasn´t expecting this! You should be able to work on some basic stuff with it, give it a try!

Ok, internal blender render is of course much faster, but just for demonstration, the default cube has 2 subdivisions and was extruded on one side. Added a metallic principled bsdf and a sky texture to the background. Rendering in cycles with default settings: 00:56.04 ->

The biggest hurdle to getting Blender running on the Raspberry Pi is the fact that the Pi has an ARM processor rather than one that uses the x86 instruction set, which means software has to be specifically compiled for it. Currently the Blender Foundation does not provide these builds at the moment, but there are a number of builds floating around produced by 3rd parties that should work fine. Many of them mention use on the Pi since it is probably the most common normal linux ARM platform, the fact it runs full linux makes this much easier.
As you are relying on third party builds, many will be a bit out of date compared to the latest builds (certainly buildbot, and they may take a bit to catch up). That said on arch at least its up to date: https://archlinuxarm.org/packages?search=blender. However in the debian jesse repo, it is a fair bit out of date (https://packages.debian.org/jessie/blender). As fair as I'm aware the default Pi os (Raspbian) is based on jessie, so the blender you get there will be somewhat out of date. See @Zoots answer for more recent builds.
As Nathan Osman mentions in the comments, you should be able to install blender with: sudo apt-get install blender
For 2.8 and later, openGL 3.3 is required, making builds impossible. see https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/145057/26345

And I have the Blender source code, and wanna build targeting arm, how to?

I'm also interested in this, especially as the RPi team are now promoting blender

You can run blender 2.8 on the pi, period. Just not very fast.

As of June 16 2018, the current Blender version available for Raspian Stretch via apt-get is 2.78a. This is behind the current Blender 2.79c for other platforms.
You can install it with:
sudo apt-get install blender
It runs fine with full functionality, though it is slow. On a Pi 3 B+ it takes about one minute and 56 seconds to render the default scene (just the cube) in Cycles (using about 170MB of memory), so I wouldn't be planning to build a render-farm out of them lol.
It does use all four CPU cores while rendering in Cycles.

It's great news!
Thank you, I will try it in next few days.

has anyone tried it with the latte panda?

Outch! The default cube takes about 3 seconds to render on any normal (even weak laptop) System, so that means that you can't render anything worth a damn on the Pi. Which is obvious, as it was never made to be powerful, it has a very poor and slow ARM CPU. But for modelling it might work.

I’m running the latest Blender 2.83.4 on a Raspberry Pi 3 B using Archlinux ARM AArch64.
I’m only running it headless, so I don’t know the usability of it with the UI.
I’m able to render images with Cycles as well as with Eevee or Workbench renderer with the help of xvfb.
You can also run Blender 2.82 in the official Raspberry Pi OS (64 bits) beta. You will need to add the buster-backports to the apt sources.list and then do:
sudo apt-get -t buster-backports install blender


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Objects disappear when looking through camera
When I go to camera perspective, there are parts of my object that I can't see. I tried adding and deleting my camera a lot of times and positioning it so that the objects I would like to see on my camera view will be seen but to no avail, I still get the same problem.
What could be wrong with my camera set-up?

I guess this is a clipping distance issue. Select your Camera, go to the Camera Data tab and check the End value of your Clipping Range.
Blender 2.8x

Blender 2.7x

One possibility is that you are not rendering or viewing all of your layers. According the the posted image, the are several layers with images that aren't visible. Press the key above tab to view all layers.

Ah, thank you for editing the title.
The layers I made visible are the layers I want to see through my camera, isn't that how it works? (I'm new to Blender) As seen in the first picture, I'm supposed to see the second floor of the building but it's not appearing on camera view.


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How can I unlock the selected channels in the Dope Sheet?
I'm using the Dope Sheet. Could someone tell me if there is any way to lock and unlock many items at once, with one click?
I'm trying to select items with the Shift key.
1 see an example:

But when I click unlock or lock, it does not affect all selected items.
2 see an example.

Can someone tell me if this is possible, and if so, how?

Shift-select the channels on the left as you have been doing and then choose Channel> Toggle Channel Setting> Protect:

Disable Channel Setting and Enable Channel Setting also do this, disabling or enabling all the selected channels.

man thank you very much. I'll accept your answer but for now I can only vote up. while not pass the minimum time. Thanks for everything.

I accidentality kept locking my channels when animating by pressing  Tab, and just realized all these bone can be locked and unlocked by pressing The  Tab key.

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.


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Animation: create a rotation around the object z-axis instead of global z-axis
I'm creating an animation where I rotate an object, insert a LocRotScale keyframe (via the I key), select another frame, rotate the object again and insert a LocRotScale keyframe.
For example I use this:
Z, 190, Enter
Now I want to rotate the object around its own z-axis instead of the global z-axis.
I've found out if you press the [Z] two times you get the Local axis instead of Global.
For example I do this now:
ZZ, 190, Enter
The rotation is ok, but when I insert the LocRotScale keyframe it did the rotation, but not around the Normal axis, but it used the Global axis.
Any suggestion on what I'm doing wrong here?

Set  Rotation type to ZXY Euler, then the animation around the local axes works like a charm.

Here is an Example Blend File for inspection: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/31685

I've tried that already.
Looks like the same problem: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/12211/why-are-keyframes-in-global-coords-instead-of-local-coords-blender-2-70a (see the YouTube video in the post)
In the comments they suggest to create an empty. Where can this be found?

I added my example Blend file to my answer. Unless i misunderstood your issue completely it works as i described it.

It works indeed, but I had Local enabled instead of Global, which gave me another output. wish this was easier in Blender.

Funny that this is the simplest way in all of the google results and YouTube vids. Did you even have YouTube back in 2014? :P Most want to use a constraint or parent to empty. I couldn't figure those out. 2022 Rep'yo'city


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Mesh Part deforms without Weight painting being applied to it
After parenting an armature with my mesh (using automatic weight), a part of it deforms when an unrelated bone moves even though that part of the mesh is not weight painted (its completely blue).
What could be the reason for this?
I have successfully rigged many models created by other people with no problems so maybe something is wrong with my model.

If Weight Painting doesn't work, you can make some corrections with the Vertex Groups assignments

Possible duplicate of (Rigging) Why are some of my vertex groups affecting blue areas?

please next time use the question's editor image tool as it embeds images in a permanent way, thanks.

Maybe your forearm has these areas painted red and when you move your arm, your forearm moves those areas.

Select a vertex which has unwanted movement and check in the "N" properties panel which are its weights, then clear out the unwanted weights, even if they look "blue" in weight paint mode.


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Can't mirror in sculpt mode
I saw tutorials on sculpting that showed the use of mirroring your brush on one of the axis. It's supposed to be as easy as selecting an axis and although it worked on a test it isn't working on the mesh I want.
The mesh I want to work on: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iprs2h62j0tf2m3/ghdsjf.png?dl=0
The test object I tried it on with the model I want to work on in the background: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0ckohh8pun8thl/klhuyt.png?dl=0
I had the same default settings selected when I tried working on both meshes.
Since it worked on the test it probably has something to do with the mesh which I didn't make myself - I downloaded it.
It's really important that I get this to work because I need to add symmetrical details in the face but I don't want to use the mirror modifier because I already have made purposely uneven features in the nose.

Hi, please use the question editor's button to load images, if possible, so that 1) they're visible directly in this site and 2) they're permanent, helping future visitors to understand your issue, even if your dropbox link should expire or change...

Mate, your symmetry axis is set to Z it's the one from top to bottom (blue arrow) and it works on the test mesh, cause it's symmetrical on this axis. To sculpt on your final mesh you need to set Mirror to X axis (red arrow leading from left to right on your image)

i found out the problem was it wasnt working because i had to select the same axis for tiling and mirroring

@whydoiexistmate If you have an answer you should post it in the answer box.


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using IK constraint on a Motion capture Rig
I was wondering if there was any ways I could use IK constraints on a motion capture Rig to modify a bit the legs and arms movements without damaging too much the MoCap animation? (Or constraint a control rig with the motion capture skeleton)
Thanks for your help.


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Track to bone constraints lag behind animation/don't update correctly
I am trying to make an animation for a friend that involves a robots arms that move together and a third arm attached rotates with the arm on hinges:

The second arm copies the rotation of the first and the third is parented to the first. There is an empty parented to the second, and the third arm always points to the empty.
When rotating the arms or moving the armature at all the constraints lag behind and don't fix until updated.
This wouldn't be a problem if the issue were exclusive to the viewport, but when rendered, it fails to update the armature per frame and still lags behind.

Does anybody know a fix/solution to this issue, the project deadline is in a few days and I'd be very appreciative of any help.

Idk if I got your setup, but imho you can do something like that with 2 armatures:
A first one-bone armature, and an empty parented to it (tip of the bone)

then another 2-bones armature, where each bone has different constraints: the bottom bone copies rotation of first armature bone

and the horizontal bone tracks the empty

to show it working, I parented 3 cylinders each to its bone, and key framed rotation of first armature only
in viewport:

and rendered:

gif timing seems weird but I rendered to h264 avi and it works really well, no lagging
here the .blend


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I cant select only one active object in blender
Whenever I just select one object in object mode, and then go into edit mode, it has multiple active objects that i can edit, and then when i try to select one face, line, or vertex, it selects multiple, although in the bottom menu it says im only selecting one.

Your objects are probably linked to each other, so when you change one of them you change the others too

If you select one  of those objects you should see in the object data tab that near the mesh name there is a 2 or another number: that means that there are 2 (or more) objects that share that mesh.
To solve it, click on that "2" button or in the 3d viewport choose Object>Relations>Make Single User> Object and Data

Thanks! it worked :3


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Combine an animation with multiple motion capture (bvh) file
I have a model made with makehuman 1.1.1 and two motion capture bvh files (walk and run).
I want the run animation to start at the end of the walk.
I cannot figure out how to start the run animation at the last coordinates (x,y,z) of the walk animation.
Any help is welcome.

The best if you remove the rootmotion and move the whole armature object.

Indeed that works but i would like to preserve the motion capture and just add an offset to the initial location of the second action.


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How to focus the camera to rotate around spots in SCULPT mode?
I'm sculpting for the first time and instantly ran into a problem, that I faced before on Edit mode. When I navigate, zoom and rotate to different spots, the camera sometimes gets too far away from its origin/pivot point and turns too fast and uncontrollably around the place I'm working on.
I solved this problem on Edit mode, once I found out about the Num,/Del key, which focuses the camera on the active vertices to allow camera navigation around them. However this doesn't work on Sculpt mode.
So I'm in the need of a similar solution for the Sculpt mode. This problem is especially bad when using a drawing tablet.

The same key (numpad ./del) will focus on the last part your cursor touched. This does mean you need to click somewhere for it to work, but the only other way I know of is to lock your view to the cursor (in the view>view lock tab of the sidebar) which is a bit more finicky.

The first solution works well enough. Didn't knew about it, I thought the Del couldn't be used on Sculpt mode at all. Thanks for the help!

Then please mark this question answered.

Follow the steps and you will be able to navigate like ZBrush. I mean at the center of each place you select in the sculpt mode


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Can you Cut Copy and Paste like this in Blender?
I want to know if there's a quick and easy way to copy and paste faces or geo in general like I could in modo. I literally would press control C, Control v and paste or copy to my hearts content quickly. Is that possible in blender?

Yes you can.

Select an object while in object mode
Switch to edit mode Tab
Switch to face select (3 in 2.80)
Select faces that you want to duplicate. Use left click to select in Blender 2.80, right click in Blender 2.79b and earlier (hold SHIFT to select more than one face)
Duplicate selection SHIFT+D
(Optional) Separate the selection into a new object using P > Selection

In object mode you can also duplicate entire objects using SHIFT+D or copy and paste using CTRL+C and CTRL+V.

I'm in Blender 2.91 and I can't get this to work. I have a plane object in edit mode with its only face selected but ctrl + d doesn't seem to do anything. Ctrl + c does show a message saying I copied something, but i can't find any way to paste that. I'd like to keep the new plane with the original object.

@FedericoS It's SHIFT + d, not Ctrl.

Oh my god, I'm an idiot. x)  Thank you.


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Blender 2.8. Trying to join bezier curve with bezier curve made from spiral: "Cannot make segment" error
I created a spiral curve with the spiral curve tool. Then, I added a curve modifier to the spiral curve to make it follow a path. I applied the modifier and deleted the object curve so that the spiral curve remained following the modified path as seen in the image attached.
I am attempting to join the spiral curve to another curve. The first curve is a bezier curve. In Edit mode, I selected the end point of each curve and hit "F" to connect the curves. I got the "Cannot make segement" error.
In edit mode, just to be sure, I went into Curve> Set Spline Type for the spiral curve to bezier. I got the same error.
In the attached image showing the properties window for the objects, you can see that spiral curve is named Spiral.194 under the "num" column in the property chart. It's data type is listed as "Spiral.005". The other curve is named "DNA_Twist.001" and it's data type is listed as "BezierCurve.000.
I'm wondering if, even though I converted the spline type of the spiral curve to bezier, if it won't join the curves because the data types are different? I'm very new to Blender, so any help would be very much appreciated.

There is no way to join 2 curves in Blender. You could convert them both to mesh, join them, and convert back to curves.

Actually, I figured it out. In Edit mode, I went to Segments> Switch Direction. I switched directions of the first curve. Then I selected the all of the vertexes in both curves and hit "P". The first couple of times I tried, it joined the wrong ends of the curve segments together. After each failed try, I switched direction of one curve or the other. On my fourth of fifth try, it joined the curves together into one segment.

Correction: actually, I meant I hit "F", not "P" as stated above. Sorry. And to clarify, before any of the above, in Object mode, I joined the curves together using CTRL-J.

There are a few things I've found that make a "Cannot make segment" error.

The control points you are joining aren't compatible.
Set the handle type for the control points that are to be connected to Vector.
Documentation

The spline types aren't the same.
Toggle Edit Mode and Curve ‣ Set Spline Type ‣ Bezier.
Documentation

The curves haven't been joined.
Select both curves and press ⎈ CtrlJ
Documentation

Welcome to BSE and great first answer! Could you possibly reword or further explain "aren't compatible" from case no. 1?

Set handle type for the control points, only the ones to be connected, to Vector.
Then with both of the points to segment selected press  F

when you try to press 'f' to make a loop.you need to make sure that those two line should be composite into one object.otherwise you won't successfully make that loop


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Is color mismatch normal when using Texture Paint Quick Edit?
When I use Quick Edit to transfer a screen capture to PhotoShop, then edit the image, save it, and Apply it back in Blender, the image that is projected on is noticeably darker.  This causes lines to form all over the model where the borders of the projector are.  Here is an image.  Does anyone know how to work around this?

EDIT:  The image to the left is using Perspective View and the image to the right is using Orthographic View, There is a visible color bleed from the edges of other models that overlap for the projection.
I didn't add a .blend file since I restored Blender to the default settings before doing this.  Both images were made using 2048x2048 textures for both the Bake and for the External Edit settings.

When using Quick Edit feature, it's recommended that you turn on the Shadeless setting in Material tab, since it will affect the shade in the capture.

BTW, After r60783, it would be much easier to turn it on from Shading panel in the N panel of 3D view.

Well, using Shadeless did it for some of the errors that were occurring, thanks for the tip.  Unfortunately the problem of closer objects projecting through to what's behind is still happening.

I think that's because you didn't check Occlude option in the Project Paint menu before applying, which will avoid a "paint/project through" issue.

I had Occlude checked.  It's in by default,  I also tried turning Stencil on and I changed by sliders from their default values down to zero.  None of the settings above External Editing made any difference.

Would you mind to upload a simple .blend file to demostrate this issue? Seeing your settings may be helpful to tackle it.

I've updated the post with an additional image plus info.

I bet the three spheres are located in a single mesh, which is different from the spider case. If so, I'm afraid such issue is inevitable when using Quick Edit without any mask, because the screen capture can't save any Z data currently, and you are obviously editing an image with all pixels blended. To solve this, just use Mask tool on the header to limit the target area (the closer sphere, in this case) BEFORE applying it back. I'll make it as a more formal and detailed answer later if it can finally fix that.

Yes, you are correct that all the models are grouped as one mesh. Unfortunately, to work around this problem I've had to separate parts out to keep this issue from arising but it's not ideal since separating then reintegrating components into a single mesh can have adverse effects on modifiers. This is not the only problem that can turn up when this is done. Thanks for your help in this matter.

OK. So did you follow the suggestion of using mask instead of separating? Did it finally fix the problem?

ummm, no... I do not see any options for Masking like what are available in Sculpt, there is only Texture Mask but when I use this is has no masking effect.  Using Texture Mask, I can draw black areas on the object but this does not block painting the way it would in Sculpt. It just appears to be a way to draw black and white, painting over this "Mask" paints normally.  Any thoughts on this?

Hi, the Mask button can be found on the 3D View header when in Texture Paint mode, or press M to toggle on/off. FYI: http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=62765 Just toggle it, then select all the closer faces that you want to paint on, then paint, or apply back the Quick Edit result. It'll be more convenient for you to do selection easier in Edit mode, then switch back to Texture Paint mode. If you think this is the right direction to solve that, I'll try to make a demo video to show how to use it when necessary.

That is very useful to know, Thanks Leon.

Go to the Color Management tab in the Render Settings tab, and do what is in the image.

Make sure the viewport shading is like this:

You can also use the material preview but with scene word and scene lights off depending on how you use the lighting in your project it can also impact quick edit

Those seam artifacts above are caused by matrix mix-match, poor pixel-resize precision.  Sorry but you're eleven years late & the correct answer was & is: I got better, cleaner, more accurate results with Maxon's Body Paint in the early 2000's than I do with Blender's Texture Paint.   The only person who is capable of fixing this is Brecht Van Lommel himself. Campbell may have built it but he proved his failure in maintaning it.


text:
Is it possible to specify texture dimensions for Cycles nodes
I've been using the new Cycles Baking branch that Dalai Felinto is working on and have noticed that when adding textures to materials, the render time goes up substantially when the textures are very large such as 2048x2048 or higher.
So basically, for the object to render fast then the textures that are applied to the object must first be scaled down to something more reasonable like 1024x1024.
This breaks the workflow and makes managing textures difficult since having multiple copies of textures at various resolutions can be difficult.
Alright so to the point, I would like to be able to load in large textures but to have Cycles recognize them as smaller than they really are.
Ideally there would be a node that has various texture dimensions which can be specified and connected to the image Texture node but I do not see one.
I think the compositor has something like this but apparently, for now, not Cycles.  Does anyone know of a work around that can help with this?

You can specify the size of the texture mapping in cycles, but afaik you can't actually modify the image (e.g. change the number of pixels) with shader nodes.

This would be a great feature though

If you are baking, why don't you use a smaller texture to bake to?

The problem is that we are currently required to change the scale of a texture using an external texture editor once an image has been saved.  It requires a lot of back and forth between different programs and failing to properly re-sync the different programs can also cause problems.

No, there's not a way to modify the actual resolution of a texture with shader nodes.
The solution would be to bake to a lower resolution to begin with.


text:
Using the compositor to adjust an image that is displayed in the viewport on a mesh
Alright I will try to describe the scene setup that I like to use in order to clear up what I'd like to do here.
Normally once I've baked a texture I like to continue working on the model with the texture displayed while using the Solid Viewport Shading Mode combined with GLSL Textured Solid Shading.(I've circled them in the attached image).  Usually I drop and drag the image(from the HD) onto the UV coords to set texture in the display.
Now what I'd like to be able to do is adjust the image using compositor nodes while maintaining this display setup.
So far, I can only do this if I add a material and load the texture in through there.  This also requires that I set the display mode to Rendered.  This method is slow, and requires more setup time
In the attached image you can see that I've added several different Output Nodes to see if any would affect the texture displayed in the 3D Viewport, but none do.
Does anyone know how this can be done using the more efficient Viewport Shading modes?
(btw. the selected object in the image is shaded but normally it would be in Shadeless mode while this is being done, it was a quick test.)

Actually, this would be a nice feature. I think the best plan is to support using cached View Node image as a temporary displayed image on object. some idea may like this. (though it didn't work yet)

Thanks for the input Leon.  So it seems for now I will do it the hard way.

There is no existing internal solution for this.
However, there are still a few ways to try:
Plan A:
If you just want to adjust something like RGB Curve or Brightness/Satuation/Contrast and so on, you may consider using non-compositing adjustment directly from the Texture tab:

Plan B:
I think the closest way to serve such need is:

Use File Output node;
F12 to render(to output composite result);
Load that output image into UV/Image Editor, have it displayed on object (just for 3D View);
From now on, each time you want to update the composite result to 3D view, hit F12, after finishing render, hovering mouse cursor within UV/Image Editor, and press AltR to reload it (or access via Image > Reload Image).

Now, you can then see it displayed in solid/textured solid view, etc. I think this screenshot may demostrate all you need:

Tip: Delete the Render Layer node will ignore scene rendering, which will speed up the file output.
I'm sure the workflow above can be made to a single button or shortcut by scripting a bit. You just need someone that can help in trying this in coding way. (not me, yet :P) All in all, I believe anyone who knows scripts can provide a one-stop solution.

Thanks for the input Leon.  I guess this will have to attract the interest of a BF Dev.  It's pretty nice already that Compositor Nodes can be used as a substitute for Layers when working with baked textures even it's not really fully supported or well-polished.


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Only Emission shader is reflecting off glass, objects with Diffuse show up as black
So even though I am not planning on using a Glass shader for the ground, I noticed that only objects that have Emission shaders attached are reflecting off the ground even though the Diffuse lit objects have the same level of brightness.
Basically everything that has a Diffuse shader shows up completely black.  I've outlined these areas in the image that I've attached.
It does seem somewhat logical that an emission shader would show up brighter in reflections but since the brightness is the same as the Diffuse lit objects it also seems very strange.
So is there a way to get the Diffuse lit objects to show up in reflections just as the Emission lit objects do?

Here's the .blend ~1.5MB http://www.pasteall.org/blend/30054
I've checked the Ray Visibility and everything is activated.

Update
After checking your .blend, it appears this is because you have your bounces turned way down in Render settings > Light paths.
Increase the maximum allowed glossy bounces a bit (at least 1), and it works as expected:

Original answer
If it is ray visibility as GiantCowFilms suggested, I would think it's more likely to be disabled Glossy rays on the diffuse objects.
Because of the backwards nature of the way cycles traces rays, reflections on an object aren't directly influenced by that objects ray visibility.
For example, given a  simple scene like this:

If the glossy ground plane is invisible to diffuse rays, it still will render with reflections of diffuse objects. Removing the diffuse ray makes the diffuse object no longer affected by indirect lighting from the glossy plane (a very subtle change).

However if you make the diffuse object invisible to glossy rays, the ground plane will not reflect the diffuse object (in this case, it will reflect sky instead):

This does not appear to be the issue but it's still helpful

@MarcClintDion Updated

This is a forehead slap moment.  Doh!  I set it low since I mostly bake diffuse and the start-up file has those low values as default.  Thanks again.

Probable Cause:
Your ground plane has Incorrect ray visibility settings In order to check if this is the issue, select your ground plane and diffuse objects. and make sure all the settings look like this:

If they don't, change them.
Also note that a Light path node could be the culprit as well.

Did you mean the Light path node?

There is no lightPath node but thanks for the reminder to check the Ray Visibility when trying to diagnose problems.

@MarcClintDion, I was just trying to write every possible cause for your problem I could think of, since when I wrote it you hadn't uploaded your .blend.

no problem, I appreciate that you were trying to help.  If my response came across as anything other than this, then I apologize.

@MarcClintDion no worries!


text:
Which modules are guaranteed to be present in Blender's Python?
Which modules are guaranteed to be included in Blender's custom Python build?

Everything included in the Python standard library, except the modules tkinter, turtledemo, distutils, idlelib, lib2to3 and test.
Here's the rationale for why these modules were not included.

Running help('modules') could also prove useful..

Check: http://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/blender/source/creator/CMakeLists.txt - line 450, shows the data thats excluded.

Run from console to find out.
import sys
print(sys.path)

anything located in any of these directories. the standard python library stuff will be located in ...\\x.xx\\python\\lib, where x.xx is the release version, currently 2.67.


text:
Change the color of an empty?
I know what empties are for, but I'd like to change the colors of empties as a visual aid (for example, red for camera controls, green for object controls etc.) while animating. Is this possible?

They can be changed from User Preferences > Themes.

Edit:
As you commented, per object viewport color is unsupported officially. Such idea has been discussed before, and decision is to allow per type color via Themes setting (see above), instead. So the answer is no (or not yet).
However, you may consider to use another trick in case you have to:

Create a simple mesh object, assign material with specific Diffuse color (Viewport Color for Cycles);
Parent it to the empty (or other objects);
Toggle off the renderability (or CtrlH), and also selectbility in Outliner if necessary.

Then, objects like empties and cameras can be indentified as you expect (except in Wireframe or Bounding Box view though). It might be the only solution so far, if you really have to.
Edit 2:
A specific feature to set per-object vewport color is available in Gooseberry branch build, I believe it will be soon merged into master trunk.

Is there a way to change the color per empty (and not globally with a theme)?

I've updated the answer. :)

I've decided to just use meshes with properties; empties weren't flexible enough (but meshes are too flexible, so I depend on some properties I set instead of the type of empty). Thanks anyway!

some Idea about how to do this in blender 2.8?


text:
sculpt mode STILL glitchy
using blender 2.79
When i use sculpt tools like inflates/deflate some faces inflate like they should, and HALF of them just so wherever they want...
I've been having troubles for months, and been ALL OVER google and back, tried absolutely everything, and I STILL can't figure out why my sculpt mode keeps going in random directions.
The normal are in the right directions, there are NO modifiers on my mesh, I've tried deleting and replacing the faces, re-sizing, checked all my settings, and STILL nothing.
Maybe I'm missing something as I'm fairly new to blender and mostly self taught, and I'm not sure how much more I can describe this problem as I seem to be the only person having this problem, but I'm happy to answer to any request of further details.

Are the normals all correct?

yes, as i stated above, i've done everything i can

Could you show some screen shots that include the brush settings as well? Sometimes the simplest answer is a setting that is accidentally made...

I think i got all of them, not sure witch settings you mean so i got as many as i could, let me know if you need anything else, i've also learned that it's only for this ONE specific mesh (all the separate parts sculpts fine)
https://i.imgur.com/2adKqnP.png

Try applying scale in Object mode (Ctrl+A > Scale), then check if there any problems with mesh geometry. Normally this can happen if either normals are inconsistent (which you stated isn't the case) or if vertices are already moved so much that form distorted surface. Also mesh is quite lowpoly so I don't see what really to sculpt there. If you want someone to check your file upload it here https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

i said i've alreays tried scaling and it didn't work (i've tried all the solutions multiple times to see if i did it wrong the first time) sadly no success. and this head is very much unfinished o that's why it looks like crap (i just prefer to use sculpt tools even on small meshes with even lower poly) I'm not sure what else to do, i think i'm to shy to share my file, I just started over and remade the entire head so problem 'solved'?
thank you for trying to help though

wait you said OBJECT mode? there's my problem i was trying in edit mode, sorry i'm a little slow, again thank you for helping (i already remade the head) but if i have this problem again i know several ways to fix it.
Thanks bud


text:
Why is glass material increasing noise, and what to do about it?
I have a quite simple rendering in Cycles, containing some droplets with a standard glass material – only glass node, connected to surface of material node.
The problem is, the glass increases the noise enormously. First Picture with glass:

Second picture for comparison with plain white diffuse material instead of glass:

This is just an extremly simple scene, and it's just rendered with 32 samples for testing purposes.
Is there a way to reduce the noise added by glass material? Please keep in mind, this is not about the noise in glass itself, but about added noise everywhere else.

Render tab -> Sampling -> Clam Direct to 1 and Render Layer tab -> De noising tick (mark on). This 2 setting can give good result

Glass unlike diffuse materials bounces a lot of light, hence the noise. Low number of samples is the reason why the noise occurs. Denoising feature sometimes gives artifacts, especially on reflective surfaces such as metallic/glass/mirror. The best option would be to increase samples and remember that tweaking Denoising might be needed so I highly recommend doing it on another pass (Passes setting in Scene).
I wouldn't recommend clamping direct light because this way you're losing a lot of information and details on glass itself. Direct bouncing of light sometimes and denoising it can be painful, but I'm pretty sure that on higher samples (for example three digits) there is little or no noise.

Short version: glass shader is more complicated and needs more calculations to obtain a nice result. So either you set samples to higher values, either you use some trickeries in the shader or in the rendering settings in order to reduce the complexity (but at the cost of accuracy).
I invite you to read the Blender Manual about Glass BSDF, which explains this more precisely as well as giving you ways to reduce noise.

Try setting your samples on rendered to 256. It will probably look a lot better. You can use denoising as well - but yes, it could create artifacts.
Other thing - change your environment texture (whatever you are using). Could be a noisy thing, make it a smooth HDRI image.

Sure, I could increase the samples, but that's not the point. I have a far more complex animation, and with samples on 1024 it's still a bit grainy, but needs 45 mins per frame. This takes mostly so long because of some glass. I don't use an environment texture, just some lamps and plain white diffuse environment.

try changing your environment then to a background image - OR - use an emission shader, not a diffuse shader. A diffuse shader by it's nature "is" grainy.


text:
Finding an object's location/scale with values set to zero?
Is there a way to find the exact location, rotation, and scale of an object that has these values set to zero, possibly through clear object transformations?
I would like to set an object that's originally made for a child rig (location, scale), to the values of this adult female rig.

Unfortunately, the only values that are still there are the dimensions. This Blender file was extracted by a program that makes smaller and specific files from FullBuild.package game files.

This is also the case with the Blender file of the object I'm trying to convert to the adult female rig. Values are also set to zero.
I tried copying the dimensions of the adult female hairstyle to the (target) child hairstyle just to see what happens but that makes the mesh twice as big.
I've searched a lot here and elsewhere but did not find any info on 'unsetting' clear object transformations which probably means it's not possible. I just want to make sure this the case.
Is there another way to copy the scale, location to an object? Any help is highly appreciated!

If the location and rotation values of an object are set to 0, and scale values are set to 1, it means that it has its location, rotation and scale either set to default or applied (scale zero would make it compressed to a single point). As far as I know, there is no way to retrieve the original values (unless undo apply transformations immediately, without saving and closing).
There's a possibility to estimate the original location: applying location makes x = y = z = 0 but it means the object's pivot is at (0, 0, 0) - so you can temporarily use "set origin to geometry" to get its actual position, in a sense.
Here an example starting situation:

After using the command set origin to geometry:

You get its current position, e.g. Y-translated, in the example.
To get rotation and scale after applying them is impossible, as far as I know, unless you have a reference object, but that should have been planned in advance.

Thank you for your fast reply! I tried the commands you suggested but now the mesh start to float high above the head of the rig. I think it's going to get to game specific from this point on then. Hopefully These values can be located by the developers of the program that I use to excract the blender files from the fullbuild files.

I'm not sure to follow you properly, how how you get those objects into blender (format, importer, settings, etc) from what you start and what you need to get... maybe it's me, sorry.


text:
If I use "Rigify addon" , should I roll the bones axes ? even directions of them?
I would like to know if whenever I use an addon modifier called "rigify" should I always check the roll bones (rolls of the bones)? specially in the finger??
I know how to rig basics but manually, I have seen some tutorials of that addon, but people never touched the rolls bones or even some adjustment in the constraint, angles, rotation in chains... however I think the addon is powerful, but it is automatic...
I would like to know if some advanced 3d artist prefer the old method, or this ? even "mocap" is the best way, but I am able to use just the addon rigify and metarig.
What are your opinions guys, should I use the rigify addon ? and make sure to check in bones properties the rolling bones, the axes direction.  My question sounds more than an advice than a question, but consider it.

You should perhaps try to ask about issues or doubts you find with the rigify addon... when there are different methods, everyone will prefer one or the other... in the end only you can decide what fits best...

The finger part is really a duplicate of http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/42545/rigify-finger-controls-rotation-not-moving-correctly which I just answered, but since the answer is not upvoted I can't mark as dupe. The other aspects of this question are primarily opinion based.

Ok I ve read the thread you ve written in the past. Well I suppose I must roll for fingers too...not way to get the best even if it is automatic.


text:
Construct surface model from atomic force microscope data
I am trying to reproduce in blender the sample surface imaged by atomic force microscope (AFM). I found the link below but cannot get it to work yet. Here is what I did (in windows environment):

Convert the AFM images to ascii files in the same format as the example in the attachment in the link below.
Copied the 'io_import_mesh_afm_ascii' folder to addons folder.
Run the .py files by the text editor in blender.
Import -> ascii text option

Now I see the error 'init.py' line 61, "system error: parent module '' not loaded".
Any idea what the problem is? Also, is there alternative ways to do this?
Thanks in advance!
JT
http://blenderscripting.blogspot.com/2012/06/atomic-force-microscope-ascii-loader.html

The download link on that page is no longer available. If you place the addon into your addon folder then you can enable it in the preferences. It is possible that it was written for an older blender version and hasn't been updated for the current version, you could try an older version to match what it was written for. Look for bl_info in teh .py files for a blender version that was supported.

i've updated the blog post to link to a valid file and new instructions.

i wrote that add-on (4 years ago! - judging by the link times stamp).  The zip on the original blogpost is indeed no longer valid. The code is now stored elsewhere on the internet. Surprisingly it still works.
Installation goes as follows:

download this zip instead ..
this zip can be installed using 'install from file'.
open user preferences / testing tab and find "AFM"

Probably long time since this is done but here goes:
open your AFM data with Gwyddion.net, export as ascii txt file, use open SCAD to plot the data and export as STL file. Import STL file into blender or your 3D printer slicer (to get the gcode for example).
Gwyddion and openSCAD are python scryptable as far as I remember. Will work better on *ix systems than windows.


text:
.obj-export is too dark
I have a monkey had with a simple material:

I want to export this to a .obj-file.
But it looks like this (opened in g3dviewer):

Is there a way to lighten up the .obj-file?
Any help?

does that help simple materials in OBJ

As far as I know .obj files can't include lights, so you are left with manipulating the material. UV textures are supported though, so you could e.g. bake ambient occlusion or full lighting into a texture.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Bake

I think the problem here is that the light setup in Blender differs from the light setup in g3dviewer.
If you view your mesh in Solid display mode, Blender uses three directional (sun) lamps to illuminate the objects. You can find the settings of these lamps in the system tab of the user preferences:

The direction of these lamps is relative to your current view, so if you rotate your view around in the scene the lamps will rotate with you. This ensures a good illumination of all objects.
If you are in g3dviewer you have to replicate the light setup to get the same results.
If you are still in doubt about the exportet material have a look at the .mtl file that is written with the .obj. It contains the materials of the meshes.
Take this simple red material for example:

In the .mtl file it looks like this:
newmtl Material
Ns 96.078431
Ka 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Kd 0.640000 0.000000 0.000000
Ks 0.500000 0.500000 0.500000
Ni 1.000000
d 1.000000
illum 2

The line starting with Ns contains the specular exponent of the material. In Blender the range of the specular exponent (called Hardness here) is 0 to 511, while in .mtl the range is 0 to 1000. Exept for a rounding error '96/1000' is equal to '50/511'. This is how the specular exponent gets translated.
The next line Ka contains the ambient color. Blender does not have per-object ambient color. You can find the ambient color for all objects in the world settings. It is set to black by default, thus the red, green and blue component of the ambient color are zero.
The third line gets more interesting: Kd describes the diffuse color. But while in Blender you can set the color value and the intensity separately, they are multiplied in the .mtl file. If you have a look at the screenshot, the red value of the color and the intensity value both are 0.8. Thus the red value in the .mtl file is 0.8*0.8 = 0.64. Green and blue are 0 in blender, so they are also zero in the .mtl file.
Next is the specular color Ks. It works similarly to the diffuse color. The specular color in blender is white (1.0 in all channels) and the specular intensity in Blender is 0.5, so the resulting color in the .mtl file is 0.5 for red, green and blue.
The value Ni is the so-called 'Index of refraction' (IOR). It is set in the transparency settings of the Blender material and describes how strongly light is bent when it passes through the boundary between transparent materials (i.e. air and glass). Since I have not touched the transparency it contains the default value of 1.0.
d is short for dissolve. This value is called Alpha in Blender and represents the opacity of the object. A value of 1.0 means that the object is completely opaque, a value of 0.0 would mean that it is completely transparent.
The number after illum encodes the illumination model used for the current material. You can find a list of all illumination models and their corresponding numbers in the link at the end of my answer.
With this information you should be able to verify if Blender exports your materials correctly.
You can find a complete description of the .mtl format here.

So there isn't really such a thing called specular intensity in .mtl files? If my specular intensity is a, I will just multiply a with my specular color [1, 1, 1] to get [a, a, a].

@SibbsGambling Yes, for the Ks setting this is how it works. Note that you can also define the specularity using Ks spectral <file.rfl> <factor>, where <file.rfl> is a file containing the spectral curve of the reflectivity and <factor> is a scaling factor for the reflectivity, similar to specular intensity in blender. I have not found a documentation for the .rfl format, so I do not know what it looks like.


text:
Is it possible to create duplicates of a mesh, that can be deformed and used as blendshape targets?
As the title says, is it possible to create duplicates of a mesh, that can be deformed and used as blendshape targets in blender?
like this:

edit:
Here is a nifty little script to deform the base into the target shape...you can save it as a shape key then:
import bpy

target = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
obj = bpy.context.active_object

for i,vert in enumerate(obj.data.vertices):
    vert.co = target.data.vertices[i].co

But still it would be nice to have them as a live modifier...

I assume you're talking about the blendshapes like these available in Maya (example tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtfYPxhLO30). If so I'll show you how to do it in Blender on the same example.
Create a mesh, duplicate it 3 times and make some deformations on the duplicates.

Select all the deformed objects and then the base object. Then click on the down arrow in a Shapekeys panel and choose Join as Shapes option.

You have now all the deformed shapes applied to the base model.

Thanks, that's quite nice, although still no live operator (imagine the targets are deforming). There was a modifier, but development was dropped because the upcoming nodes (when??) would make it redundant (https://developer.blender.org/T34635)

The advantage of indirect blendshape is already mentioned so called sanity(it is very clear to understand the process) but the most important feature is the natural order of deformations.
First place in order( or vice versa - it depends on user’s angle of view) is nuant facial deformation running on “static” blendshape target permanently active. Local skeletal system just for the facial purpose with other deformers.
Second place is the common armature for global posing for body physiognomy.
And finally the deformation order: whenever you want you can turn off the indirect blendshape so it is not evaluated.
I am using this method in Maya for many years
And still I did not find better method. It would be very welcome to have this or principially similar method in the Blender aswell.
But I am very beginner with Blender( it is much better software then Maya API and performance wise) so maybe I do not know well what is possible.

You can use animation nodes to do this!
this case the driving shapes are added rather than mixed. Note that for each add, you must subtract a copy of your original from the result (see the vector math subtracts). Make sure use modifiers is checked and world space is unchecked.

In studios would often use blendshapes(shapekeys) in maya to do this as the targets stay live and are naturally additive. In this way you can isolate deformations and chain them together in a specific order feeding one last shape into your skinned mesh. Great way to keep things sane.

With blendshapes it is also added (not mixed), it works the same as here - the difference between shape and original is added (through some influence). "..chain them together in a specific order..": the order does not matter since the operation is additive. Breaking deformations into multiple meshes instead of leaving it inside one armature clutters the scene and imho is not sane at all. You also have to rely on extra addon in the scene. I would really like to see even one example, where this brings some benefit over having these deformations done with bones sorted on different bone layers.

Doing this you also end up with multiple actions when animating. The more I think about this the more reasons I find why not to do it.

OP was asking about keeping the shapekey sources live. The only sanity comes in isolating results of additive deformer combos. The scene does get larger and slower.


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How do I smooth a subdivided surface?
I do not know why it curl. What is happening is clearly visible in the photo. It's a simple thing, but I do not know a dream board.! I'd like to smoothly cut off.

You may select your surface in Edit Mode and hit W > smooth (not "shade smooth"), or you can do a complete retopology of the mesh in order to have it low-poly, which will give you more control on surfaces.

It looks like you subdivided the mesh in Edit mode which leaves the surface heavily faceted because there is no interpolation between the edges that are being filled in.  I find it works best to use a Subdivision modifier and then apply it.  That should give you a much smoother surface.

BTW:  This looks like an obvious case of Google Translate mangling the words used.  Google cannot handle colloquialism at all-> a figure of speech becomes literal and meaningless. (but I do not know a dream board) :)

I think the best way is to build this mesh again. Here is my solution on how to do it properly:

Add a low poly (8 vertices for example) cylinder and subdivide it as many times you like verticaly/ horizontaly.

Select single edge and press Shift+S--> Cursor to Selected.

Press Alt+Shift+S and move the cursor from left to right (or input a value 1). It will make the edge spherical.

Repeat the proces with other edge loops. Select the next one and press Shift+R. Make all of them spherical and then cut the holes.

Delete half of the cylinder and scale it in y axis using proportional editing. Now all look super smooth.


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Why does blender render a single image instead of the whole video?
I am trying to render an animation, and every time I go to render, it only renders one frame and stops. Please help.  I am stuck until I can fix this.
Thanks

What else you have tried? Do you clicked only "render" or "render animation" button?

Yes, I clicked animation in the render panel

Sounds like a frame range issue.?

Could you further explain please?

Please check Dimensions > Frame Range in the Scene tab.

Could you post the .blend, it is hard to guess what of many things is incorrectly done.

I will try to post the .blend

I'm not sure how to post the .blend

you can upload it here: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/

It is uploading now   it is uploading slowly

I can't post it because the file is 40,000 plus KB

Here are a few things to check:

The animation button in the render panel (or CtrlF12) is used for animation. The render button on the left (with a camera icon) will only render one frame.
Frame step. The default value is 1, meaning that it will render all of the frames in the specified range. Higher values will make the render/playbak skip frames. In any case it shouldn't be too high (it's too high in this screenshot, for example)
The Start and End frame determine the range of frames to be animated/rendered.

By the looks of your comments, these probably aren't your issue. However we might as well have them in an answer, since they're things that in general affect your symptoms.

Notice that I have commented before you. Please read: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/436/what-to-do-with-questions-which-have-been-answered-in-comments

I'm not sure what you're getting at.. If this isn't the solution for you, it might still be able to help other people. The question is vague enough that this answer definitely addresses it.


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Hide parent object without hiding the instanced children?
I have a cube, added a cone which I parented to the cube and instanced on the faces of the cube. Is it now possible to make the cube disappear?

Uncheck Display Instancer to hide the cube in the viewport and/or uncheck Render Instancer to hide the cube in the render.

Thanks, not sure how I could have missed that, it is even on my screenshot:)


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Customizing the new pie menus with commands?
I noticed blender recently got updated with maya style radial menus. When I checked it out there was only a few things you could do with them like view and rotate the model or something. Is there any way now to customize the radial menus and put whatever you want in them?
Like could I make a menu for common options that then go into sub menus for like extrude loop select bevel etc... Is there a way to add whatever I want into the radial menus and or create new ones, either through blender naturally now or is there a script to do this?

Yep, see http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/16039/599

Awewsome thanks! mark that as the answer and I'll accept it.


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How can I average two meshes together?
Is there already a way in Blender to combine two very similar but necessarily different meshes (with different topologies) such that the result is an average of the two? The process I imagine would be something like aligning the meshes on top of each other, measuring the distance between the surfaces, and creating a vertex at the center of that distance.
If there's not already a way, anybody got any ideas?
The ultimate goal would be to average several similar meshes (like 3D scans) to suppress noise and amplify correct data.

Not sure this is on-topic here, as it really doesn't have anything to do specifically with blender.

Well, the implied part of the question is that I want to do it in Blender. I'll edit.

Do you have 1-1 vertex correspondence? If so, with both meshes selected, you could try adding one mesh as a shape key on the other.:

Then, move the slider to apply the shape key at 50%:

If your meshes don't have the same number of vertices, you can use a use a shrinkwrap modifier to warp one mesh onto the other before the shape key. This will make it match the other as closely as possible (consider this 100%). Then, you can apply that shrinkwrap as a shape key and turn the shape key back to 0.5 (consider this %50). Rinse and repeat for additional versions of the mesh.

That's an excellent suggestion, I didn't know you could add an existing mesh as a shape key for another. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee 1:1 correlation. In fact, I can almost guarantee that I'll NEVER have a 1:1 correlation.

AH-HA!! That IS the answer, though! If I shrinkwrap one mesh to the other, they don't have to correlate! Then, I can apply that as a shape key and then set the shape key to 0.5! Thanks! Add that as an "if they don't correlate" and I can accept it ;-)

This assumes that your meshes have the same number of vertices though, right?

It might not matter for your application, but your average will be biased toward the target of the shrink modifier.

Not necessarily. You can shrinkwrap any mesh onto any other, whether they have the same number of verts or not, you just have to use Nearest Surface Point or Project instead of Nearest Vertex. Once I shrink wrap, it'll match the other mesh as closely as it can. Then I apply that shrinkwrap as a shape key and that gives me the chance to only shrinkwrap half-way (essentially) to the other mesh, instead of all the way to it. I just tried it with two copies of Suzanne ;-)

Even if it's biased, I can tune the shapekey back a little, if I need to. Your solution is the missing piece I needed ;-)

Hmm.. can you edit my answer as you like it? I don't follow how to get the correct number of vertices out or the shrinkwrap modifier

Basically, instead of going half-way between basis and whatever your key is, you're giving mesh #2 the same shape as mesh #1. With that new shape as a key, you can turn it back to 0.5 and you're halfway between the shape of #1 and the shape of #2.

Also, did you notice the convenient "apply as shape key" button the the deformation modifiers come with?

Yeah, that's exactly what I was talking about ;-)

Ohhh I think I see.. A + shrinkwrap-target-B => C, then you throw out mesh B and shapekey A with C?

Yeah, I guess that's the way it'd work if you wanted a third, separate mesh. I was just modifying A into the result.


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Basics of Cycles shading
I have been using Blender for few months on and off. I keep learning and forgetting how to do things. The problem is I don't have a solid understanding of few key things in blender especially about shaders, textures, and materials. I follow youtube tutorials to achieve my desired goal. There are people that will tell you what shader to use, but not why you should or should not use a different shader.
Could someone simply explain what basics I should have in mind when setting the material for objects in general? Or could you please recommend a book or some online material that covers the basics on how to use shaders (in cycles), for instance at an intermediate level?

the cycle encylopedia: https://store.blender.org/product/cycles-encyclopedia/

Here's my approach to creating materials in Cycles.  In my opinion, it helps a great deal to have a decent understanding of how Cycles works.  Knowing at least a little bit about the gears behind the rendering process can be a huge help in putting together a decent shader.
Cycles in a Nutshell

Cycles is a backwards ray tracing engine.  Ray (or path) tracing is the process of simulating light bouncing through a scene.  It is a backwards ray tracing engine because instead of emitting rays from each light source and tracing them through the scene to the camera, it shoots the rays from the camera "through" each pixel and traces their paths backwards through the scene to the light sources.  Once the ray reaches its final destination its pixel's color is calculated based on the path it took.

See this answer for a more detailed explanation.
What is a shader?

A shader is what tells Cycles how light interacts with a surface or volume.  When a ray hits the surface of an object, the shader assigned to that surface is invoked.  The shader tells Cycles two things, how the ray bounces off the surface, and how the surface affects the color of the ray.
The Fundamental Shaders

There are two basic types of surface shaders, reflective and transmissive.  Reflective shaders bounce light off the surface, transmissive shaders let light pass through the surface.  For each type there are two basic shaders, what I am calling scattering and sharp.
Diffuse - scattered reflection
When a ray hits a diffuse surface it will bounce off scattering in a random direction.  Since light reflects in all directions from a diffuse surface, the surface will look the same no matter what direction you are viewing from.   Diffuse is what most people would consider "flat" or "matte".

Glossy - sharp reflection
When a ray hits a pure glossy surface it will bounce off along the angle of incidence (specular angle).  Since incoming light from a given direction will always reflect in the same direction, glossy reflections change when viewed from different angles.

Glossy shaders also have another parameter, roughness.  Roughness introduces a small amount of randomness into the direction of the ray as it bounces off the surface.  The higher the roughness value the farther away from the specular angle the rays will scatter.

Translucency - scattered transmission
Translucency is the transmissive equivalent of diffuse.  When a ray hits a translucent surface it will pass through the surface and scatter randomly on the other side.

A variation of translucency is subsurface scattering (SSS).  Subsurface scattering simulates materials like skin where the light enters the surface, bounces around, and comes out again close to where it originally hit the surface.

Transparency - sharp transmission
Transparency is the transmissive equivalent of gloss.  When a ray hits a transparent surface it will pass through the surface and continue on its way on the other side without changing direction.  This doesn't necessarily make the surface invisible though since the color of the light is still changed based on the color of the transparent surface.

A variation of transparency is refraction.  When light hits a refractive surface it passes through but is bent slightly, according to Snell's Law.

There are a few more shaders than this available in Cycles, but they are essentialy all "fancy" versions of the above properties.
Combining Shaders

In real life surfaces really don't just exhibit one property, just about any surface is a mix of the properties described above.  So to produce realistic materials in Cycles you have to be able to combine various shaders.  There are two ways to combine two shaders, mixing and adding.
Mixing shaders
Mixing two shaders means the surface will partially behave like on shader and partially behave like the other shader.  In other words, if you mix a diffuse shader and a glossy shader with a mix factor of 0.3, the surface will be 70% diffuse and 30% glossy (the fac parameter determines the fraction of the second input).  Or more precisely, when a ray hits the surface, there is a 70% chance it will behave in a diffuse manner and a 30% chance it will behave in a glossy manner.
Adding shaders
Adding two shaders means the surface will be have like both shaders.  Meaning if you add a diffuse shader and a glossy shader, when a ray hits the surface it will bounce off in a random direction (diffuse) and along the specular angle, effectively creating 2 rays for every ray that hits the surface.  It is worth noting here that without carefully calculating the energy of the shaders being added, adding shaders is likely to produce non physically accurate results.
See this question for more on adding vs. mixing shaders.

Further explanations of glossy roughness, refractive transparency, and fresnel, along with some more graphics and renders coming.  Sometime...

Many thanks for this good explanation. One remark though: regarding the mixing shaders, isn't it the other way round, i.e. using using fac=0.3 the surface will be 30% diffuse (shader1) and 70% glossy (shader2)?

@hat  No, the factor determines the fraction of the second input that contributes to the output (same with the mix RGB node and the compositing mix node).

What you should really keep in mind about shaders, is that there are several kinds:
The basics are vertex and fragment shader:
The vertex shader is the entry point for the position, normal and texture coordinates of your mesh vertices. The pipeline is complex, but it will pass it to the fragment shader which will be coloring the geometry.
It's mostly the fragment shader that does effects such as reflections/refractions, ssao and real time shadows (so basically all the lighting stuff).
There are standard shaders defined for cycles that you should learn about if you want to work with Cycles.

authors: Алексей Сергеевич


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Not getting anything sensible from rotation_quaternion
Please forgive if this is something obvious (I've only started looking at bpy today), but I don't seem to get a valid quaternion from objects, it's always coming out as (1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0)
>> bpy.data.objects['Cube'].rotation_euler = (22.5,22.5,22.5)
>>> bpy.data.objects['Cube'].rotation_euler
Euler((22.5, 22.5, 22.5), 'XYZ')

>>> bpy.data.objects['Cube'].rotation_quaternion
Quaternion((1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0))

Also
>> Euler( bpy.data.objects['Cube'].rotation_euler ).to_quaternion()
Quaternion((-0.8905556797981262, -0.29705408215522766, 0.17443729937076569, -0.29705408215522766))

>>> Euler( bpy.data.objects['Cube'].rotation_euler ).to_quaternion().to_euler()
Euler((0.5088514089584351, -0.5088514685630798, 0.5088514685630798), 'XYZ')

I'm missing something pretty basic?
Cheers.

There are two problems with what you are doing:

Rotations are ambiguous:

For euler rotations there are the problems of gimbal lock and the order in which the rotations are applied.
Quaternions on the other hand will give the rotation which their corresponding normalized Quaternion would produce. This means that all scaled versions of a quaternion will result in the same rotation. The Blender Wiki gives a good overview about the meaning of the different rotation modes.

The values of the other rotation modes are only set when you switch to them. The value you are reading from rotation_quaternion is a default value.To switch to another rotation mode in python set bpy.data.objects['Cube'].rotation_mode to one of the following values:
'QUATERNION', 'XYZ', 'XZY', 'YXZ', 'YZX', 'ZXY', 'ZYX' or 'AXIS_ANGLE'

You might also see different rotation values than which you set using python when you look at the properties of the object. The values in the image below are displayed after executing bpy.data.objects['Cube'].rotation_euler = (22.5,22.5,22.5).

Thanks, looks like it's the rotation mode I was missing. I know gimbal lock, that's why I want quaternions :-)

I just spent the better part of a day wondering why my code wasn't working with the value from rotation_quaternion. Didn't know I needed to switch the rotation_mode first before it gave the correct value.


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Videos not uploading into video editor properly
I'm having a problem with the video editor where the "movies" I'm trying to upload into them aren't uploading into the video correctly. They do this

There is no way to move the clip past the 0 mark and it does not show up on the preview.
The problem started after I had initially uploaded the clip into a video sequence and my computer powered off without me saving this and several other clips I had previously used.
When I opened the file again and tried to upload the clips again, they all did this. I tried opening a fresh blender document and tried to open them into blender's video editor, they did the same thing.
I thought maybe the files were corrupted, but I had backups on my cloud, so I tried to delete the files off my computer to reload them, but couldn't, getting the error that the files are in active use, however, I can't find where, and it can only be in blender.
I've tried changing my properties and deleting what I have so far and still no fix. Does anyone know the fix to this problem?
Here is the file:
Thanks

Can you upload somewhere that video file?

Here's the link https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7HpNgItnMODSFA4TVVUd0RHMGc/view?usp=sharing

Sorry if I misunderstood your problem but if I just drag&drop the video to your video project, it just loads fine. Do you have any other issue I should try?

Perhaps it's my computer. I just opened a new file, downloaded this file under a new name, and dropped it into my video editor, and I'm still having the same problem.

did you try with a completely different video file or an image file?

Try resetting to factory default in Blender's User Prefs. There might be an issue with installation rather than Blender itself.

Okay, after working on this all night, I found the solution. It was rather simple too.
While working on my original project, I had created proxies for all my videos, however, I wasn't aware that by creating those proxies I had inadvertently created an additional folder where those proxy videos were stored. Somehow the proxies that I created corrupted any similar video files so they wouldn't drop correctly in blender video editor. I've deleted that proxy folder, and now the videos are loading correctly into blender.
Thanks, Jan Kanderabek and 3pointedit for your feedback.


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Rotate view around a vertex in object mode
I was used to rotate my view around certain vertex in edit mode (after hitting numpad ".") When I switched to object mode, this rotation was still applied.
After some time I was recommended to use "rotate around selection" option in preferences, which is great as in edit mode you don't need to press numpad "." anymore. But when I switch to object mode it starts to rotate around the whole object (which makes sense as now the whole object is selected) and not the vertex I have selected in edit mode.
Is there a way for Blender to keep rotating around that vertex automatically in object mode?

Nope, not when using "Rotate Around Selection." You can kind of get close with Auto Depth, but you have to watch the mouse location whenever you start to rotate the view.
I would recommend you try Auto Depth on, and Rotate Around Selection off for a bit. I personally don't like Auto Depth, but it can make it quicker to navigate when there are many objects. Just move the mouse over a object and it will rotate around that spot. Auto Depth does not have the same problem of using the object origin like Rotate Around Selection does.

With both Auto Depth and Rotate Around Selection off, the 3D view works in object mode like you desire, but you are back to manually centering the view.
There is even a warning on the linked manual page about the Rotate Around Selection setting in object mode (exactly what you are experiencing).

This may seem ideal behavior. However, it can become problematic with larger objects such as a terrain-mesh, where the center is not necessarily your point of interest.

The way I navigate in the 3D view is to go in to edit mode select a vertex, or a piece of a model; then press NumPad . to center the view around that part and head back to object mode.
You can rotate and zoom the view as much as you like and it will stay centered around the selection from edit mode.


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Should I restart my character mesh?
I've been working on my first character mesh that I am taking seriously and want to be high quality.
I plan to use it in Unreal Engine 4 and I think it looks okay (Definitely needs to be improved though), but I don't feel confident about the topology and I think there are way more tris than necessary. Without a subdivide it's at 18k tris and with subdivide it's at 77k tris.
I'm not sure if it is reasonable or not, but I really don't feel that good about it and I feel like maybe restarting from scratch might be a good move and try to fix the things I did wrong on this mesh.
I'm wondering if someone with experience with making character meshes designed for video games can give me any advice on if I should just restart from scratch or work with what I already have and how to improve on it technically in terms of topology and tri count, and also if possible aesthetically on how to make it look more realistic.
Also should I mostly be modeling in edit mode or sculpting? I feel like modeling can get me better shapes if I'm trying to have a low tri count and in order to sculpt I need a high tri count for it to even work as it should.
I hope I'm not asking too many questions. Any advice is appreciated. Here is a screenshot:

Todays game engine are able to support quite a lots of triangles. About 50k vertices for your main asset should be the extreme limit though. There is no need to reinvent anything topology-wise, it has been done many times before by experienced artists. A simple search shows many examples. Just research and copy if you are not as experienced.

Thanks very much for those reference images. I will study them thoroughly.

It's a good Idea to restart the character and try to optimize the edge flow
Use retopology to fix the problems with the mesh (here is a very good tutorial for setting up retopology:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hEHtKH55Us
Use the decimate-modifier and look if it gives you the results you want


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Problem with bézier curve changing to mesh
I tried to make a pawn from a reference image with the bézier curve and when I converted it to a mesh object and spun it, there is this unwanted edge running down the middle.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

1 - Why did you convert to mesh? 2 - How did you spin it? 3 - Did you weld the ends?

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos I'm guessing he made the profile, converted the curve to mesh, then spun it to make the piece.

I suppose so but how was it spun? Screw modifier on a mesh? Screw modifier on a curve? Spin operator in Edit Mode? Bevel object in a bezier circle? So many methods, so little answers... :)

Those likely are doubles which are vertices in the same place but having differently orienting normal vectors, hence difference in shading. If this is a mesh already try selecting all and removing doubles

When you spin 360°, start and end point do not get joined automatically. So what you have are two sets of vertices sitting pretty exactly on top of each other. That won't show with solid shading (without a subsurf), but as you see, with smooth shading, it does.
The left cylinder is clean and you can see the highlighted edges on both sides while the right cylinder shows problems by only having the right half of the edges selected.
The remedy is to select the doubled verts (or all of your mesh if there are no necessary doubles somewhere) and hit W4, remove doubles. All the verts that are closer than the tool's threshold will get merged into one.
On occasion it's also necessary to recalculate the normals by selecting everything and hitting CTRLN.