text:
Render not work like in the 3d viewport
So everything is working fine in viewport, the wheel attach with the car rigging in the viewport. But when i render animation by png single frame. The wheel come off the car start moving on it own but no its not like that in viewport. Can someone help me to fix this?
Thanks
P/s: sorry for my bad english
the link to the my file here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bLhawJBKrTjv6DNR-uWVc7UMC3eDHZVO?usp=drive_link

It might be helpful to people trying to help you if you uploaded an example blend file to the site https://blend-exchange.com and add that link in the question.

oh ok but i cant up load it to blend exchange cuz my blend file is 111mb so i upload it on my drive link here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bLhawJBKrTjv6DNR-uWVc7UMC3eDHZVO?usp=drive_link


text:
My blender 4.0.2 freezes while these errors show (charset_normalizer)
Sometimes when I open my blender 4.0.2 (usually after restart of the PC), it freezes for a few minutes while these errors show (charset_normalizer)
This does not happen when I force close it once and then open it. But it happens, Can you guys help me find the culprit addon or setting? I have tried updated all my addons and removing old ones.
I can see two errors the most, this "charset" one and an "Attribute Error - NoneType" one

Hello ! I suggest disabling blenderkit, it looks like it comes from this addon.

Blenderkit actually works fine under 4.02. The version should display as 3.9.0.231123 under Preferences > addons as of today.

Its not blenderkit, its even happening without it. Any suggestions? I can see two erros the most, this charset one and an Attribute Error - NoneType has no attribute. these happen on startup.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Detect if point is inside mesh not working properly (Geometry nodes)
Using this node setup:
find out if vertices are inside or outside of another mesh, using geometry nodes
I want to delete all points of a 3D grid (Size of the bounding box) that are outside the mesh.
In this particular case (Suzanne rotated x -20° & y 30° and applied rotation), there's some points on a line that are not properly detected.

Here's the nodetree:

The issue has to do with the raycast node since the lines have the same direction as the direction vector. (Using a different direction vector fixes the issue same as having a different rotation of the object)
Why does this artifact occur and how can it be avoided?
Is there a different approach for detecting if a point is inside a mesh?

Default Suzanne is not a manifold mesh.  Detection of inside/outside doesn't make a lot of sense for her.

(Using Blender 3.6.8)
The artefact comes from some outside points such that the associated ray is tangent to the surface and it is hitting an edge of the target geometry. If the normals to each face sharing this edge are very different, picking one face can triggered the test deleting outside nodes, but not the other one. So which face is picked first by the Raycast node is very sensitive. And the whole process is sensitive to numerical accuracy.
To illustrate that, the following case is using a cube of size 1 instead of Suzanne mesh. The two bottom points should have been deleted. The blue vector is the ray direction. If the bottom face with green normal had been hit, the dot product had been negative and the points deleted. But the right face is hit and the dot product is equal to 1 ( as (1,1,1).dot.(1,0,0)). As a consequence, the points are not deleted.
To improve the robustness of the process, it is mandatory to do at least two different tests, by slightly shifting the points position or by changing the ray direction. Points positive to at least one of those tests should be deleted. Inside points should be negative to both tests.

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


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Vector math effect not displaying on my model?
I'm trying to achieve a similar effect to this
However, my nodes look identical to the one in the youtube video yet I see no effect happening? I've also attached my nodes here

What do you mean by "no effect happening" ? No colour ? No bump ? No displacement ? Could you provide your Blender file using https://blend-exchange.com/ ?

And this is the youtube video (timestamp 2:30) I am trying to follow, I'm wondering if maybe he has something on the uv map? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIa45V86X3Y

There’s a lone Fraction node with no linked output in your setup. Are you sure that’s correct?

I'm not sure, I am trying to copy the shader that is shown in the youtube video and he didn't connect it at that point I don't believe. I'm just trying to get that striped effect that is shown on the video linked. My knowledge of shaders is quite small, i'm sorry.


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instance scaling based on another curve
I have an instance on points based on spline A. How could I make the instances scale on the Z axis to curve B (each instance height reach B spline height) ?

Hope this helps:
ensure both curves have the same direction (reverse curve) and resample/subdivide them to the same amount of the points.

Thank you so much !


text:
How can I make text look like a digital message board with geometry nodes?
Here is what I am aiming for:

Here is what I currently have:

As you can see i've tried using a basic distribute points of faces node setup to turn my text into “pixels” but i don’t know how to make it follow a sort of grid like distrbution

Hello and welcome. Please use a title that matches the content of the post. It should read like a question, be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the problem so that anyone searching for similar issues is likely to find this. Remove anything superfluous, avoid using words like "this", "help with", "issue" or "question about", instead describe what "it" is. Remember, your title is the first thing visitors see, answers you get depend heavily on it. See What is the problem of asking “How do I do this?"

(Using Blender 3.6.12)
The proposed approach assumes that the text is in the (X,Y) plane. It builds an uniform grid, then it selects only faces from this grid that are overlapping the text, to instance cubes.

1. The upper part of the graph is generating a square Grid centred on the text.
2. The lower part of the graph is based on a Raycast node to select only the faces of the grid that are "hitting" the mesh of the text.
NB: To model a full digital LED message board, it might be more convenient to create a stand-alone object for the grid, then to input it to the GeometryNodes modifier attached to the text.
Resources:

Thank you so much!

Oh yeah my bad, I was wondering where I could accept the answer


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Random instance position in repeat zone
I have a group of 5 stars whose position is randomly generated.
I want to create a repeat zone that for each iteration generates a new group of 5 stars with a random position that overlaps with the previous ones. What nodes should I insert in the repeat zone to get the desired result? Thanks!

If you want to repeat the pattern, you don't need a repeat zone, just a new "instance on points":

If you want to multiply stars without copying the pattern, just add more stars:

If you really need a repeat zone for another reason, you need a different seed or ID for each random position (here I used a number taken from the repeat zone, and add 1 in each iteration)

If you need a repeat zone with different patterns, just put everything inside:

PS: The "geometry to instance" node is optional, but you might want that:

With the node: 4 instances, each instance containing 5 instances
Without the node: 20 instances

Thank you Daniel. I need the repeat zone method, and your last solution works well.  But I need a different star combination for every new instance, not the same pattern. Even if there are simpler solutions, I need to know if it is conceptually possible to solve this problem using repeat zones.

@Sergio, updated answer.

Thank you very much, Daniel. That's exactly what I was looking for.


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Particle emission from a verts fixed locations over time
I have created a particle system that spawns from an object over time.

Here is the .blend file http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?352210-3Pointedit-Sketchbook&p=2827061&viewfull=1#post2827061
But to spawn cubes from vertices over time I have to use a gradient texture on an object that is UV unwrapped. Which means that i have to use a plane as the particle emitter. This creates problems when I emit from another particle system to create the red balls. I end up emitting from both of the vertices at that location, creating 2 red balls in one spot (to fix this I reduce the balls but there aren't enough to fill the emitter length).
Can I apply a texture to a mesh that has no faces (thus eliminating extra verts I don't want)?
Are there any other ways to emit a particle system over time?
I want to keep the system simple and attached to one emitter object, so that it can scale easily.

So your animation looks the way you want but you want to make it more flexible, to be able to expand it to more points? What if used a python script to create the animation from a list of points?

Infact it doesn't work correctly, because I must use a second particle system to generate the red balls I end up with to many red balls at the vertices points. To get close to the correct number I actually have to use (number of vets) - 1, which results in not enough red balls. For example. I was wondering if I could use the Animation Nodes addon to generate this setup, but theres not great docs with its rapid development.

Starting with a copy of your sample file, delete all but the Sphere and Cube that you have setup, then paste this script into a text block and run it. Is it close to the animation you want?

OMG, thank you so much! I appreciate the commenting in the script very much. I guess the "mainpoints" are fixed but could be variables based on user placement? I wonder if I can create a UI for a setup (place "mainpoints") and refinement (alter particle variables etc)?

If you need help adjusting any of it just ask. most of the particle system options you can just 'copy the data path' and paste it after the pset. to set it.

You gave me an idea - place empties in the sccene and name them like data-1-8 where 1 is the keyframe to show and 8 is the number of particles to emit, then run the new revision of the script Only the start of the script changed, instead of a fixed list it finds empties named correctly.

Instead of trying to get one particle system to emit in the right places you can add a new red sphere in the place and animate the visibility of it. The particle system on each sphere can also be set to emit at a specific frame. You can then add one curve object with a hook to animate the line linking each node together.
You can automate this task with a python script, with a list of data setup at the start you can easily adjust where the points are created. The script I created is a bit longer than expected so I will leave the whole thing available on gist.github.
The key points in the script are starting with a list of data for each point
mainpoints = [
    [  1,  8, (-2.605,  0.796,  2.531)],
    [ 29, 10, (-1.228, -1.007, -0.235)],
    [ 58,  8, ( 1.917,  0.060,  1.495)],
    [ 75,  8, ( 3.430, -2.621,  1.495)],
    [ 92, 10, ( 1.296, -6.226,  2.644)],
    [110,  8, (-2.013, -4.600,  0.311)],
]

Each line is an array containing the frame, number of particles and location of each red sphere you want to generate. This can easily be altered or expanded for each project you do.
Next we setup a few variables that define what object gets replicated at each point and used for particles, then some particles options that you may want to adjust each time.
The rest of the script simply loops through each item in the mainpoints array and creates each item and adds the particle systems for each one. Then it creates a curve and animates the hook to travel to the next location. Along the way locations are keyframed so things are in the right position when they need to be.
Any settings for the particle system can be added to the script and some variables can be set at the top of the script as I have done for easy adjustment.
Edit:
I just revised the script. In revision 3 the script scans objects with a name starting with 'data-' and then takes two numbers from the name, the first is the frame to show and the second is the number of particles to emit. This replaces the rigid list of data and allows a visual placement of each point. The earlier revision can be accessed at the above link if it is desired.

Whoa thank you again. I really appreciate the rewrite, It's really flexible now. i see that you added the additional particle systems for trailing lines too. I was considering how to add a second tier of node spawning. Instead of looping inside the current script I will just regenerate another instance... I hope that I wont conflict with items generated the first time?

I've just realized that the empties, or 'data' array inputs, will get confused when I add a second tier won't they... hmmm. I guess I can delete the first ones as they won't be reused.

If you put the 'data points' and original items on another layer it makes it easy to select everything else and delete them to rerun the script. They are all generated so no harm deleting to rerun the script.

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


text:
I want to mix Cycles shaders based on self shadow
I have a sphere (world) that I want to reveal the night lights on. I can use a normal node and manually rotate the DOT product, then I use this as a factor mix between Day time shader and Night time shader.
But I want an interactive version so I only have to move the light in 3D view.
I guessed that maybe I could take the Lamp's position as a driver value and modify the position normal of my sphere. See screeny:

But I can't figure the math to take all angles into account.

I have a similar setup in my .blend here, but based on the rotation of a sun lamp rather than position.. At the very least you could use a track to constraint or something to convert the position to a rotation, in case it's not possible to do the necessary maths in the driver itself

Yeah thanks for the tip, I just tried a rotating sun lamp but couldn't express  an opposite value for some reason (being innumerate I guess)

This question has two good answers. One of them should be marked as correct.

I'm not sure that I can choose one, as they both approach the problem from different directions. One is driver based, the other node based. Both are important to understand. I would choose the smaller one but the driver answer is probably more important to understand.

A further answer was provided by Viktor Mukayev https://twitter.com/vitos1k who suggested using the texture co-ordinates node to produce a Dot Product:

Turns out this is pretty easy to do. "Easy" as in "you're deprived of doing all the fun math manually" ;)

Add three Value nodes (or a single Combine XYZ node) into which drivers can be added. I prefer the three value node approach in case you want to access individual axes later on.
Add drivers to each of the value nodes by right clicking on each and selecting Add Driver.
In the Graph Editor and switch to Drivers mode in the header (1).

Ensure that both the object using the material and the value nodes are selected, then repeat the following until all the drivers are set up:

Select the next driver in the driver list on the left of the graph editor
Select the driver target, in this case the point lamp (you can press E while hovering over this field, then click on the lamp in the 3D view for a speedier selection workflow)
Set the transform type to X, Y, or Z Location, making sure to pick the right one for each driver
Set the driver type to Sum Values. We don't need any fancy scripted python stuff, and avoiding the Scripted Expression setting will prevent the drivers from being disabled for security reasons.

If you put the drivers on value nodes, connect them to a Combine XYZ node.
Add a Vector Math node set to Normalize and connect the Combine XYZ node. This will ensure the values from the driver are scaled down to the 0..1 range.
Note that only the first input of the normalize node is used, so I've hidden the extraneous sockets with ⎈ CtrlH.
Take the Dot Product of the normalized location and the object's normals (obtained from either a Texture Coordinate or Geometry node) via another Vector Math node.
Adjust the scalar result of the dot product to suit our needs better with some math nodes and a colorramp:

The resulting gradient should update in real time:

Thank you so much, seems like the sort of thing an addon would be good at setting up. Really glad that I asked now.

Turns out that in Blender 2.8 Eevee, currently Texture (alt) Object Position is not available so this is the working solution for Eevee ;-)

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


text:
How do I build instances on a grid with Geo Nodes?
I am using geometry nodes to make a grid of icons. I have instanced the icon object over a Grid node. How can I make the instances of the icon appear as if the grid is building from the bottom left to right then row after row?
If I have to animate a material to make them appear then I was hoping to use the list of icons to alter properties like color or size as well as.

I don't know geonodes, but looking at your screenshot alone, you could probably achieve it with two grids, first grid having Vertices X=6, Vertices Y=#floor(frame/7), and another grid having **Vertices X**=#frame % 7`, but you would also need to position the second grid above the first so they seem like one grid.

Since Version 3.0 one can access the index of vertices created by the Grid node.
Here's the setup :

Instantiate a grid
Rotate it so the indices start filling from bottom-left to top-right
Delete points which index is inferior to a given input value
Instance your desired mesh on the points

Result:

nice one Gorgious! ;)

Any chance to update this to Blender 3? I tried myself but don't know enough yet

@MladenMihajlovic done !

you can do this with this node setup:

Result:

for color you can use something like this (since you didn't specify your color...i took kind of random)

Video tutorial with step by step explanation:
https://youtu.be/IbuA-JinG4c

Thank you for this. I was hoping it would be a little more straightforward but I will accept your answer ;-)

I was half way through my answer, but looks like we had the same idea ^^ oh, well..!

I think I will change the accepted answer to reward additional explanation tho :D

does this mean, you will change to mine again, if i would explain it more? :D

Hey that color addition is very helpful! I think that in the spirit of StackEx I would have to award the most detailed earliest answer sorry. I probably should have waited a day to award the token. Thank you so much for helping me. I see that there is much interest here too. I have many more simple questions for Geo Nodes so there will be more opportunities for detailed answers ;-)


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Python: BVH Find Index?
I'm experimenting with the bvhtree python module and am confused about the index attribute that's returned by find(). Assumption is that it's the vertex index but could be mistaken.
https://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_current/mathutils.bvhtree.html?highlight=bvhtree#module-mathutils.bvhtree
Also note that the documentation shows find_nearest() but the method is find() at the time of this writing
In the console with mathvis addon enabled, here's an example to test:
bv = bvhtree.BVHTree.FromObject(C.object, C.scene)
hit = bv.find(C.scene.cursor_location)[0]
index = C.active_object.data.vertices[bv.find(C.scene.cursor_location)[2]].co

but the hit and index don't match up as expected (would expect the vertex to be a little off but not across the shape). This is with a mesh object, no scale, no modifiers.
Supporting info is appreciated! Ideally I'd be able to get the vertex closest to a point with low overhead and easy syntax :)

For reference,  I reported the discrepancy between find and find_nearest and the api has been corrected to match the documentation. From 2.77 BVHTree.find_nearest will need to be used.

It's the polygon (face) index.
It works like object/closest point on mesh . Not like kdtree, that gives vertex (vectors, points) relation


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How to access basic type information of Custom Properties?
I'd like to access user-defined custom properties (those that can be created by clicking the "+ New" button in the Custom Properties panel) and their type information in Python.
So if I create a custom property in the UI called my_property as a float on the Scene, I can then access the value with bpy.context.scene['my_property']. I can get some subtype information about that property by calling bpy.context.scene.id_properties_ui('my_property').as_dict() which will return this:
{"subtype": "NONE", "description": "Description goes here.", "min": 0.0, "max": 1.0, "soft_min": 0.0, "soft_max": 1.0, "step": 0.10000000149011612, "precision": 3, "default": 1.0}

The problem is that the id_properties_ui method only returns information about the subtype of the property, not the main type. It can be one of Float, Float Array, Integer, Integer Array, Boolean, Boolean Array, String, Data Block, or Python. How do I determine the main type in Python? Where is this stored?

type(bpy.context.scene['my_property']) will get you the plain old python ones but it will be more complicated for arrays and python expression types


text:
Blender units vs metric
I just started getting into 3d printing. At first I scaled my models down to a few cm tall in blender, but found them nearly microscopic at print time. After some fiddling with netfab, it seems like 1m/1bu = 1mm in print world. Is it common practice to keep the model in bu and let the printer software scale the object? Could this be an .stl export setting I missed? Is there a way to match the two environments consistently? Thanks!

I would keep it as-is rather than making a near microscopic model in Blender, as decimal rounding may make your model less accurate than it would be if you made it larger in Blender.

Inside Blender, 1 Blender Unit equals 1 meter, however, when importing, the software you are using could perceive arbitrary units as being equal to something other than 1 meter.
There are a couple of ways to solve this problem:
1. Change the Scene's scale factor
To do so, go to the Properties panel, then under the Scene tab, find the Units subsection and change the Scale field.

When set to 1, 1BU = 1m, but if set to 10, 1BU = 10m; Pretty straight forward.
2. Change the exporter's scale factor
To do this, when exporting to .stl, before hitting Export, you can change the scale field, located on the bottom left corner.

3. Scale the object up in Blender
Hit S and the enter your scale factor/ratio, for instance 10, and the object will be 10 times bigger.
4. Scale the object up in the printing software
You figure that out.

On the right, "Scene" menu (icon has a cylinder, a sphere and a lamp) go to "units" / "unit represents" and choose your units of measure.  I usually work in "millimeters".  Cura slices it and scales it the way I want.


text:
Set dimensions of a mesh
I've set "Meters" as the unit I want to use, with a 1.0000 scale, which means that every square on the grid is 1 meter, right?
Now, I want to set a cube to be exactly 1.5m tall (for example), how do I do that?
I tried to set the scale in the "scale" section in the object tab, but there's a problem.
This is with scale set to 1 on every direction:

You see, it takes up 2 squares on the grid for each side. I mean, look at the top side, it takes up 2 squares. If every square is 1 meter, it means that the top side is 2 meters long, right?
If I want it to be 1 meter long I have to se the scale to 0.5, like this:

The point is... I've set the scale to 1.0000, as I said, so 1 should be 1 meter...
Did I miss something or this is right?

Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/68678/28015

That's correct.
The scale is an arbitrary number which is used to offset the size of the mesh from it's original state. It doesn't refer to the actual size of the mesh, just how much bigger or smaller it is.
I think you are looking for the dimensions values in the properties region:

Setting the dimensions will set the scale values to the appropriate value to make the mesh a certain size, e.g. 2.5m tall:

I didn't notice that section because I was looking at that menu in Edit mode, I switched to Object mode and I found it. Thank you.

I did not found this option (Dimensions) in v2.77.

@DanielSantos It's still there. Are you sure you have the right object selected?

these are all very good but an accurate adjustment of say an extruded part, is not available..

@DanielSantos Select object -> Choose "Object Mode" -> Press "n" -> In appearing window expand "Transform" tab

Has this moved in 2.8? Whether in view or in edit mode, I can't seem to find this dimensions section anywhere underneath the scale one.

@TomášHübelbauer it's there in Blender 2.81 for me

If you're having trouble finding Dimensions under the Scale section, you're probably looking in Object Properties (I had the same problem). Instead, press N while in object mode in the 3d viewport and a panel will open that has Dimensions (but is otherwise similar to the Transform section of Object Properties). See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/135215/where-did-object-dimensions-go-in-2-8.


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Keep mesh volume during deformation based on rotation
I'm working on a project which includes a book opening and turning pages. Right now I'm trying to rig the book. Since I can't animate every page individually, I've thought about having a few more detailed individual pages for close ups and "bulk pages" for filling up the rest.
The bulk pages are a single blender object with many planes.
I'm working on deforming the bulk pages. I have a decent system that doesn't rely on keyframing bones, I parented the pages to the spine of the book and by rotating the spine, the pages follow, based on a weight painting (a simple gradient). It's really simple. I also have other controls for shearing the pages and bending the other side that's not bound to the spine. On a single page it gives a really nice result. On the bulk ones I have an issue:

The problems is pretty obvious, there is some bad pinching/loss of volume when the spine turns. I'm not sure how to solve this. I tried adding more geometry for the base mesh, but it doesn't really change the result.
Any suggestions? I'm using modifiers and not geometry nodes if that's important.

Nobody has any idea?

This used a curve modifier on a simple cube representing the bulk pages and binding. (Blend file below)

The cube/book is originally laid flat and it's origin point (OP) set to it's binding end at left.
The cube's edges (not the binding area) are generously subdivided so it can be deformed smoothly by the curve modifier.

A curve is added at that same location, but it's OP is moved to it's leftmost ctl-point. (left end)
That is then moved to the book's OP so both the curve and book share the same location.
(SH-S)
The book is then given a Curve Modifier and should not move when this is done.
The book's OP is also used to add a master handle (circle empty - a parent) for both the curve and book.
(The handle isn't essential but it's handy when the book, curve, and other associated items are to be relocated or realigned)
With the curve and book parented to the handle, the handle was then rotated to the vertical so the binding (& curve) sits upright.
.
In Edit mode, the curve's 1st two ctl-points (at bottom) are subdivided 3 times so we have 4 ctl-points down there which are  --> Never to be used <--

When the other (higher) ctl-points are moved to bend the pages, the binding is pretty much left alone and remains vertical.
.
To emulate how the rightmost page edges would shrink back when opened, a single hook is used to bring the upper edge back.  Note the location of this hook and it's settings in the attached Blend file. (select the book to see them)
To further insulate the binding the hook's influence is connected to the page vertices only, not the binding's.  (See the vertice group in the Blend file)
I imagine you could do the same thing in reverse for the book's left side.


text:
How to create splash of a ball falling on water?
I have a ball with a rigidbody and it has fluid with a type obstacle. But when it falls in the water I don't get a splash or anything. What I want to happen would be the ball to fall in the water, splash and also maybe the ball float a bit. How would I do this?

Do you need the RigidBody?

@someonewithpc I'm trying to make a splash effect so I guess yes I do

You don't... You just need to Fluid obstacle, I think...

@someonewithpc no it doesn't fall unless it has a rigidbody

Oh, for that.. You could animate it

@someonewithpc okay I will try that at some point

To have the rigid body affect the fluid, simply go to the fluid obstacle settings and check Export animated mesh. However, while the rigid body will affect the fluid, the converse is not true, so the fluid will not slow down the rigid body in any way.
Keyframed animation is the way to go in this case.


text:
Reversing and resetting rigidbodies?
I want it so that I can make rigidbodies fall then make them go in reverse back to their original places without doing any video editing. So I'll be able to see them fall back into place from different angles. Is there also a way of just animating a rigidbody reset. What I mean by that is so something falls and then X frames later they'll teleport back to where they were so I can do something different with them. Is reversing and resetting during the animation possible?
Thanks!

One option is to press ShiftAltA to play the animation in reverse, but I think you mean the following (this works for relatively short and simple simulations, else it would take to much time):

Bake the simulation to keyframes

Open graph editor and make sure every keyframe is selected

ShiftD to duplicate keyframes and then X to shift the keyframes horizontally

Click Left Mousebutton to confirm and then S, X then -1, to invert the keyframes

Change the simulation end frames

Thanks it works. Although I think instead of just doing s then -1 you need to do s then x then -1 or you'll just get really weird results


text:
Making hair go straight up instead of following the shape?
So I'm making trees on a hill. But from what I know, trees grow straight up, and not at an angle. So how would you make the hair particles go straight up and not at an angle. Here's an example of the problem I'm having.

I would like the trees instead of going outwards, to go upwards.
How could you do this?

Note that trees don't always go straight upwards, though it is of course by far the most usual configuration.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit Thanks! I'll try to find some reference to see the angle for the trees

Enable Advanced and Rotation, then set the Initial Orientation to Global Z:

Note that you'll have to rotate your objects so they are facing either the +X or +Y direction instead of the +Z direction. See Why are the objects in my hair particle system not sitting on top of the ground?.
By using this technique the orientation of the particles is kept independent of their size, and you can add some random rotations via the Particle settings > Rotation > Random settings:

Adding such randomizations will help make repeated use of the same models less noticeable.

This solution is more correct and clean. That's the way it was meant to achieve that goal. It deserves more upvotes and to be mark as accepted.

I'm unsure whether to mark this one or the other one. Since the other has more upvotes I'll stick with it but if everyone prefers this question I'll mark it as correct

@Chickenator The answer you mark as accepted is entirely up to you. The question isn't which answer other people prefer, it's what answer you prefer. Votes are there to show what the majority prefer, but you don't have to follow them ;)

Well since your answer also showed random rotation and better ways to do it I'll mark it.

By enabling Advanced settings checkbox in the Hair partices system...

...you'll be able to see the Velocity panel, where the Hair emission vector's components can be defined.
By default hairs are emitted toward the face's normal.

Set the Normal value to 0 and increase the value of the wanted emitted vector axis, in your case Z.


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Best way to animate a robot/turret?
So I made this:
Every object is seperate objects (each leg, the main body, the neck, the torso, the head...) and I was wondering if it would be better to rig or to move each piece or something else?

Copy rotation constraint and a bone

@NoviceInDisguise I'm kinda new to animating, can you expand?

I would just parent the mesh to bones. see this post.

No prob. anything for a fellow chicken.

You could also use IK-Constraints to control the legs.
Add a plane as Targets for each leg so the legs can be moved around with them.   To control the rotation, empties are used as Pole Targets
The Legs are parented to the body.

Demo .blend

This is brilliant, but what about the turret, like the OP asked?

@NoviceInDisguise The turret could be another object parented to the 'body', when only rotaion is needed it would not even require another bone. Just keyfamed as is. Perhaps keyframe the intensity of the red 'eye'.

That makes sense

There are several ways you can do this, but here is how I would do it.

First, add an empty:

Now parent all of the objects to it by selecting them, and then selecting the empty and pressing Ctrl/kbd>+P > Object.

Now when you move the empty, you should see that your robot follows it. Also there will be lines from the origin of each object to the Empty.

Now make an armature for each object on your robot:

Now you can select the mesh and add a Copy Rotation constraint:

And finally select the armature you want to use:

Now when you move the empty, your robot moves, and when you rotate the armature, the object copies that rotation.


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Change stamp font?
Is there a way/a script to change the font of the stamp you can put on your renders (the thing that displays render times ect.) because I don't really like the default font.
Thanks

There is no way built into Blender to do this, the best you can do is change the font size.
As for scripts, I don't see why it could not be done, but I would need a much better understanding of both Python and the Blender source code to give a definite answer, or write a script.

Just had a spelunk into the source and found that the code for generating the VSE Text effect and the Stamp are the same and all the references to the font are hard coded. The developer even marked the lines with // XXX which appears to be a flag for janky code. Look for "do_text_effect" in "source/blender/blenkernel/intern/seqeffects.c" Maybe it will be fixed in 2.8

Man that sucks, I hope they do change it for 2.8+


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How to get rid of freestyle faces?
So here's whats happening. I marked all of my faces as freestyle. If I press 'clear freestyle face' the annoying green line over everything stays. Is there something I'm doing wrong or is it something different to freestyle?
Image:

Is everything selected (A) when you click clear freestyle?

@gandalf3 yes, I just unselected everything so you could see the lines

That should make the green highlights go away.. Is it possible you could upload a .blend?

It seems to me you marked freestyle edges, not faces. The green lines are the edge marks.
To clear the marks go to Edit Mode, press A to select everything, then Ctrl+E to bring up the Edges menu and select Clear Freestyle Edge.


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Cannot Open Or Start AVI Movie File?
There seem to be a few people encountering this problem since I've found no answers online. I just rendered an animation but I need to render it again as the keyframes didn't match up properly because of the lag. I haven't changed any settings or anything since my last render (I think). Has anyone else encountered this problem/know the solution?
Thanks!

I was really stumped when I switched operating systems, reinstalled Blender and suddenly my animations would no longer render. Turns out my Output path wasn't writeable in the new operating system. Perhaps it's unlikely your issue ends up being so simple, but since I stumped me for a bit, I thought I'd post my solution here and hope it helps someone else.

Probably you just left your rendered avi open. I had the same problem, then I realized I didn't close avi file. I closed it and it works fine as it should.

In my case, the problem was the output file that was aiming to a folder doesnt exists. When I put a folder that exists Blender started to render.


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Is there a start deactivated for particles as well as rigidbodies?
So I'm using the explode modifier and I would like it if the explode particles only fell when hit with an object with collision. Is there an option for start deactivated or a way you can keep particles still until hit?
Thanks in advance!

Not that I would be aware of. What I would do would be to set the particle simulation's starting frame to the frame when your object gets hit.


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Added object's properties greyed out?
Here's an image of what's happening:

I can't change any of the things. Restarting Blender does nothing. This has never happened to me before and I'm unsure to why this is happening now. I saw other people with this problem but they just said that restarting would help but it didn't.
Anyone experienced this problem before or knows how to fix it?
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE:
Also tried re-installing which didn't help. Tried deleting all addons which also didn't help. Also found out that when I try move something to another layer I can't use the numbers on my keyboard which is another thing which randomly changed recently.
UPDATE 2:
Turns out there was an answer. Just had to search other terms into google. If anyone else is having the problem then go User Preferences, Editing and then enable global undo. Don't remember disabling it but I must of at some point. Here's the question where I found the answer. Sorry for wasting anyone's time if they were writing an answer :/

Please do not edit your question and add "answered." For future questions, you could add an answer to your own question, by using the "Answer Your Question" button at the bottom.


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How can I animate an opaque material to being fully transparent in Cycles?
I'm working on an animation with Cyscles where I'd like to make a simple face animate between being opaque and completely transparent. How can I do this?

You could use a transparency shader and a mix shader with an animated factor

@gandalf3 easy as pie, thank you that's the answer. You might post that answer with a screen shot so people who are newer to Blender than me can get it.

Yep sorry, I didn't have time at the moment.. Now it looks like @G.Rassovsky answered anyways :)

You can do something like in the image below.

Here I have added a simple glass shader to an object and mixed it with a transparent BSDF. Then I simply animate the factor of the mix shader
(0.0 - 100% Glass / 0% Transparent ; 1.0 - 0% Glass / 100% Transparent).


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Can I make a smoke emission only be affected by a specific force field?
I'd like to animate a scene where two different smoke emissions are in the same vicinity but are affected by different force fields. Can this be done?
Right now both emitters are in the same smoke domain, in case that's important.

Yes, this can be done, but only if you use separate smoke domains

@gandalf3 can the two domains overlap?

Yes, but smoke in the domains won't interact. Also emitters will emit in any domain that they intersect, so you'll have to make sure that the emitters stay in the correct domain.

@gandalf3 that can be done. You should put this information into an answer. It solved my problem. Once you pointed out the domains being separate, I realized where to look (Others might, however, appreciate being shown that part).

You can specify a group of force fields which can affect the domain.

So by putting each force field in a separate group (⎈ CtrlG), you can have them influence some domains but not others:


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Is it possible, without knowing Python, to animate between orthographic and perspective camera view?
I want to animate between perspective and orthographic camera views. How can this be done?
I found where people talk about successfully animating between orthographic and perspective camera views in Unity with code, so fundamentally this must be possible. But I don't know Python, so I wouldn't be able to figure it out manually with code in Blender.

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/9187/599

To achieve a smooth transition from a Perspective camera to Ortho (and back), @someonewithpc's answer gets you part of the way there. However, that solution just jumps between Perspective and Ortho; the transition is not smooth. Use the following steps:

Set a keyframe for your camera's location (I -> Location)
In Camera Properties, set a keyframe for your camera object's Focal Length (it's in the Lens panel) by either RMB the value and choosing Insert Keyframe or hovering your mouse over the value and pressing I. (Note: this assumes that your camera is in Perspective view to start.)
Move forward in time to where you intend to have your transition to Ortho complete.
Increase the Focal Length to a very high value (The soft limit is 5000mm, but you can manually enter higher numbers. Typically, however, around 1000mm should be sufficient.) You should notice right now that everything feels zoomed in very close. Don't worry about that just yet.
Insert a keyframe for your new Focal Length (hover -> I or RMB -> Insert Keyframe).
Grab (translate/move) your camera along its local Z-axis... you will need to move it very far. Try moving it by 100 units to start (G -> Z -> 100 -> Enter). You will also probably need to adjust your camera's clip range... both the Start value (to remove artifacts) and the End Value (to ensure visibility). Keep grabbing your camera and moving it along it's local Z-axis until it looks very similar to the Orthographic camera (you can quickly switch between Perspective and Ortho in the Lens panel of Camera Properties to check).
When you're happy that your perspective view closely matches the ortho view, insert a keyframe for your camera's location (I -> Location).
Make sure your camera is set to Perspective view in the Lens panel of Camera Properties and insert a keyframe on the Perspective/Ortho/Panoramic buttons as described in @someonewithpc's answer (hover over buttons and press I or RMB -> Insert Keyframe).
Step forward one frame right arrow.
Change the camera view mode from Perspective to Ortho from the Lens panel of Camera Properties.
Insert a keyframe for the camera's viewmode as described in #8 and @someonwithpc's post.

That should do it. This should get you a smooth transition from Perspective to Ortho. I know it looks like a lot of steps, but I was just overly thorough with my description. It's pretty easy to do.

Hitchcock would be proud of this solution ;-)

It is possible!
First you need to select your Camera, then go to the Properties panel, and under the Camera tab, Lens subsection, you can choose your lens type;

However, a perhaps little know feature, is you can animate almost everything, so just press I or right click it (RMB ) and select Insert Keyframe. Make sure the lens type you want to transit from is selected, that the current frame is one before when you want your transition to happen.

Then just select the other one move to the next frame and repeat the process for the Orthographic lens.

Small note, you can also hover and press I.

@gandalf3 Indeed, but I seem to have forgotten...

However, this will not be a smooth transition; it's a hard jump. To do a more smooth transition from perspective to ortho, you're going to need to animate the focal length of the perspective camera. A very high focal length (maximum, I think is 5000mm in Blender) is roughly the same as orthographic. And in order to get that working, you'll also need to animate the local z-location of the camera as you increase the focal length. Once you're at "near-ortho equivalent" in perspective view, then you can keyframe from Perspective to Ortho to get a smooth transition

@Fweeb True; add that as another answer.

@fweeb I just noticed this. The answer should include this info, because without this it isn't really an animation, is it?

@jt0dd, true, though upon re-reading the question, it specifically asks about how to do this in Python rather than the interface.

@Fweeb no it doesn't... re-read it, please. It says without knowing Python.

@Fweeb I don't think there is a maximum focal length, 5000 is just a soft limit. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/2832/599

@Fweeb getting this right will be great, but I'm trying now and your recipe isn't quite working yet, because animating to focal length 5000 zooms me in like 100 times further than the orthographic view shows the scene. I could perhaps play with that number for hours, but it would be great to know how to get it right every time.

Edit to my previous comment: I didn't follow all of the steps shown in his comment, it does work ^_^ It should be posted as the answer

My apologies for misreading. I've created an example .blend file. I'll upload it and post an answer.


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How can I transform my solid mesh into fine dust (smoke) smoothly half-way through an animation?
I've created a mesh logo which has to be solid for a period of time in an animation. At a certain point in my animation, though, I would like it to dissolve into dust.
The problem is the transition between a solid object and smoke. I got the idea looking at a video that showed objects being destroyed, but that was done with the geometry of the object.
If I were to make my object smoke to begin with, it wouldn't look / behave / as it's meant to for the first part of the animation. On the other hand, if I were to break the object as many tutorials show, via a particle system, I don't know that it's possible to achieve the feel of smoke instead of the chunk particles that most tutorials show.
How can I transform my solid mesh into fine dust (smoke) smoothly half-way through an animation?

Under Smoke Cache, set the start frame to be whatever you want

@someonewithpc but the mesh will still exist. I can animate it's material to be invisible, but it seems that that will look corny and obvious; the text will be shown becoming invisible while replaced with smoke. Correct?

If you keyframe the material, and in the next frame keyframe it transparent, you won't see the object 'becoming invisible'. it will just disappear. Another way, is to animate image sets of the object as you want it to be. Then animate the smoke as you want it to be. (either as a duplicate object, or in a second file.) Then, create your final anim in the compositor, transitioning from solid to smoke however you like.


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Object in different scene gets renamed without any warning
I'm using Blender for creating game assets. "Empty" objects are used as placeholders for various things related to game logic like sockets, ports, etc. "Empty" is always child of mesh to which belongs.
Empty objects are named as "SocketFront", "SocketBack" etc. Suffices like ".001" are fine.
What is not fine is when I add new socket and name it "SocketFront", other object in different scene named "SocketFront" gets renamed to "SocketFront.001", without any WARNING! These "accidental" renames are big problem, because game stores these names in data files and suddenly cannot find "SocketFront" on that model it used to be.
Is there any way to prevent Blender behaving in such way?
I'd be okay with:

Changing the name of current object automatically (ideal)
Showing warning to me that such object already exists
Automatically naming all child objects with parent object name as prefix

Hello Ondřej :), you can also make a design proposal for Blender 2.8 to reference not by names so they don't need to be unique or to implement some better naming conventions. But I am sure they know about it, just there are other priorities and not many developers:(

As a workaround you could use default Blender behaviour so instead of adding empty "SocketFront" duplicate one already exhisting. This won't work if you don't know whether you should check its exhistance though.

No, this is how blender operates and also one of it's design flaws and known limitations. The software is not very forgiving, you either need to know what you are doing or learn by mistakes - it doesn't warn the user much, every button is basically a nuclear missile launcher (though recently a prompt to quit was added).
What you can do as a workaround is to have a watcher running on background (effectively slowing your blender) to notify you when a name is changed:
Execute a python function whenever the user interacts with the program
You can alter that script to check anything you want (even all the scenes for changes), as it is now it prints name changes of one hadrcoded object into the system console.


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Removing artifacts from transparent textures
Im trying to map a texture with transparent but it appears that it has some artifacts around the texture...

i dont have anything black in my uv:

Could some one explain to me what is happening ?

So the artifacts are the black outlines?

Please add extra information to your question such as what renderer you are using and what viewport mode the 'artifacts' appear.

Yes they are the black outlines, The render is blender render

the artifcats appear in any view

In the textures tab you should check the box that sais Alpha and drag it al the way to the right to make the Alpha of the texture 100%. Then go to the material that uses that texture and set the transparancy to 0 so that the material isn't shown but the texture is.


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Blender Game Engine: do something when an actuator happens
I've made a shooting scene in the blender game engine and I want a property of the gun to show how many shots have been fired. This is how the shooting works:

There's an integer property on the gun called "shots_fired" and I want this property to increase by 1 every time the shoot animation is played.
I've tried to have true-level triggering with different skip amounts but it's not working properly

Ironically, we have an "Actuator" sensor. weird right?
all you have to do is set up one of these and it will send a positive pulse every time the specified actuator changes.

or (recommended) you can simply hook the property actuator to the exact same sensor that your fire animation uses.

Okay I think the first one will work but with the second method it's difficult to get the right freq. to make it happen at the right time

Check this out. It works for me cause I activated tap. Also in the actuator's column add your action-animation actuator and connect it with the and controller.

I don't want to activate tap, is there a way to do this without using tap? @Lev

You do not need TAP. It makes no sense in this situation. - The basic idea is to count and fire at the same time. This way the number of counts and the number of fire calls should be equal. This means you can add the controller and the actuator to the sensor from your question

authors: сергей бойко


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Changing camera axis
I'm making a game in blender but as you know when I rotate a camera the Y axis becomes the vertical and the Z becomes the forward/back. Is there a way to rotate it but keep the axis like Z is vertical and Y is forward/back?

If you can't apply rotation, can you parent it to an empty with proper rotation and work with that?

One way you could do this is by constraining it's location to an unrotated empty

Are constraining and parenting different, or just the same solution? @NoviceInDisguise

Pretty much the same thing, but you can animate the strength of a constraint

@NoviceInDisguise Won't parenting copy the rotation too? (Not that it matters in this case, as long as you avoid rotating the empty)

I've solved it - as @NoviceInDisguise said, I simply parented the camera to an empty and it worked.

What you can do is parent the rotated camera to an unrotated empty using Ctrl+P. Now you can animate or manipulate the empty and the camera will follow it exactly, while retaining it's rotation.


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RuntimeError: internal error setting the array
I'm trying to write a function to create an object made just out of vertices which is a spiral, kind of like these:

Here's my code:
def spiral(iterations=2,segs=20):
    verts = []
    faces = []
    z=0
    position = bpy.context.scene.cursor_location
    print(bpy.context.scene.cursor_location)
    deg2rad = math.pi / 180
    gap = 360 / segs
    for i in range(iterations):
        for i in range(0, segs + 1):
            deg = i * gap
            rad = deg * deg2rad
            x, y = math.cos(rad) * 5, math.sin(rad) * 5
            verts.append((x,y))
    for i in range(iterations):
        faces.append((i, i+1))
    mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("Spiral")
    object = bpy.data.objects.new("Spiral", mesh)

    object.location = bpy.context.scene.cursor_location
    bpy.context.scene.objects.link(object)
    mesh.from_pydata(verts,[],faces)
    mesh.update(calc_edges=True)

But for some reason it returns this in the Terminal:
<Vector (0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)>
Error: Array length mismatch (expected 126, got 84)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/jacobgarby/Documents/Blender Things/Blender      Files/python_meshes.blend/Text", line 48, in <module>
  File "/Users/jacobgarby/Documents/Blender Things/Blender   Files/python_meshes.blend/Text", line 45, in spiral
  File "/Users/jacobgarby/Downloads/blender-  2/2.76.app/Contents/MacOS/../Resources/2.76/scripts/modules/bpy_types.py",    line 414, in from_pydata
    self.vertices.foreach_set("co", vertices_flat)
RuntimeError: internal error setting the array
Error: Python script fail, look in the console for now...

Vertices need an x, y and z coordinate.  z was  set to zero and not used. Then there was faces in mesh.from_pydata(...) instead of edges, of which only  a couple were added as you were iterating through iterations.  On top of that you were using i as an iterator in both your inner and outer loop.
To convert between degrees and radians you can use math.degress(rad) or math.radians(deg)
Here is some code I put together a while back to arrange objects into spirals, edited with yours to create a spiral mesh.
Also look into the addon add_curve_extra_objects and in particular add_curve_spirals.py
import bpy
from math import sin, cos, pi
def spiral(segs=30):
    verts = []
    edges = []
    z=0
    n = 3
    position = bpy.context.scene.cursor_location
    print(bpy.context.scene.cursor_location)
    a = 0.5
    for i in range(segs):
        t = n * 2 * pi * (i)/ segs
        # parametric eqn of a helix
        x, y, z = (a * sin(t), a  * cos(t),  a * t / n)

        verts.append((x,y,z))

    for i in range(len(verts) - 1):
        edges.append((i, i+1))
    mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("Spiral")
    object = bpy.data.objects.new("Spiral", mesh)
    print(verts, edges)
    object.location = bpy.context.scene.cursor_location
    bpy.context.scene.objects.link(object)
    mesh.from_pydata(verts,edges, [])
    mesh.update(calc_edges=True)

spiral()


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Random distribution of objects over a plane
I'm making a game which involves the player walking around a forest, and so I need to randomly distribute trees from the sapling tree generator all over it. The plane is huge so I can't simply place them manually.
It would also be ideal to change the seed of the tree for each tree created. I'm familiar with python so a script would be acceptable.
Thanks!

Particles are what you're looking for, I think

@GiantCowFilms how would I use this to do it?

I'm not entirely sure, since I don't work in the game engine much

@GiantCowFilms Okay, well I'll see if it works

@GiantCowFilms oh it seems I can't use particles in the game engine

@GiantCowFilms actually the particles worked eventually so if you put that solution as an answer I'll make it the accepted answer

Another way to do it is with particles. The particle system would duplicate a specific tree object and distribute it. There is a button in the modifiers tab (if a particle system is present for the object) that makes all the particles into individual oobjects. I won't provide specific step by step instructions on how to set up the particle system, but I hope that works.
However, on most cases Python script would be preferable for what you want. You'll probably to distribute multiple tree models to provide variations, and you'd need a Python script for that.
EDIT: well now I see the comments under the question. This is probably useless. XD

Actually it's still useful, the modifiers tab part helps @TheMinecraftMan757

Use Python. Get the list of verts in the terrain then iterate through them and randomly assign each coordinate as covered or empty. Covered ones get a tree or bush object or the like. I built exactly this a while back. Let me know if you'd like an example script.

I'd recommend the Asset Sketcher commercial addon on CG Cookie Market. Perhaps you can modify it to randomize the Sapling seed value.


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Using the face edit mode as a texture in bge
In the blender game engine, is it possible to make it look like this when you actually play the game?

Obviously, this was screenshotted outside of the game player while in edit mode, so maybe it's possible to bake this texture to an actual texture which I can apply to a material?
This is very likely impossible though, so maybe theres a script someone made to generate the texture for each face? (so for each face just a simple light grey texture with dark grey outlines?)

I have arrived at an imperfect approximation. It will create the effect, but has some flaws:

Edge lines will be inconsistently thick.
Center point may not be exactly centered.

However, the result is definitely passable:

To create this, you need a few steps:

UV unwrap it. You U>UV unwrap
Reset the UV's U>Reset
Add an image texture, I used this image:

Set the UV map

TADA! You have your result!
See the .blend for any confusing details:

I was going to do this method, but I did not add my answer because it does not work on non-rectangular faces.

@X-27 That is a drawback, but I figured this is better then nothing...


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How to procedurally generate an infinite terrain using perlin noise
For a game I'm making in the blender game engine, I need to generate an infinite terrain - preferably in chunks and unloading when they get too far away.
Perlin noise would probably be a good way to do it (I think) but I'd need to have it split into chunks and also not only infinitely generate but unload itself.

By infinite terrain, do just mean a repeating texture? A mesh object cannot be infinite in size, but it can appear that way if you fade it out towards the horizon.

Could I use this repeating texture as a heightmap? @ToddMcIntosh

Of course, you would want something with a fractal perlin noise probably.

What's a fractal perlin noise? and how would I make the repeating texture?@ToddMcIntosh

Sorry, the fractal options are in Musgrave texture type. For broader details, you could just use the Cloud texture. All of these are procedural textures which tile infinitely.

@ToddMcIntosh I am afraid procedural textures does not tile. So they don't tile infinitely but rather go infinitely.

Okay but normally the infinite pattern of the procedural texture is a good thing. You want the same pattern on every tile then?

Rather than dynamically load and unload chunks of terrain just move displacement mapping of a fixed static subdivided plane.
The displacement should be made from mix of blender procedural textures (if you mix multiple clouds and musgrave textures you can get mountains, rivers, etc.)
The plane should be big enough so you can't see its borders.
And the character, camera and ground will be obviously static except of some local animations. The movement would be done with rotating and offsetting (the order is important) the displacement and texture of ground.
The resolution of the ground plane should be detailed around character and less divided to the borders. If the ground will be too low res you will see the geometry "float" over the displacement. You can see how that looks here.
If you know how normal mapping works you can generate procedural normal maps to accompany the procedural displacement and procedural textures of the terrain. This would minimize the floating.
So the ground is sorted.
Any objects the character would encounter on it's journey must be instanced and moved around. The height of such objects (to sit on terrain properly) can be rigged the similar way as a box floats on an ocean.
You could also make the displacement mapping use world coordinates and move the plane under a character, but if you will walk huge distances I would rather keep everything close to the scene origin.

Here is done dynamic loading and unloading of terrain tiles, but it uses heavy scripting and is totally out of scope of this site.

You might want to use a different engine than BGE for this kind of application. I would use BGE only for some basic arcade platformer, not for an open world project..

Do the sections once added need to be the same if they get re-entered again. That is, if an entity goes from chunk a to chunk c, then to chunk f, then to e, then to b, and back to c, does c need to be the same when the character re-enters as it was the first time?
If I were going to generate the terrain, I'd determine the chunk size, and create the chunks by adding plane primitives of that size, and subdividing them to an extent which gives a reasonable vertex density. Then I'd apply a displace modifier to the mesh choosing a suitable noise texture with the parameters you wish. The part up to here seems simple. The difficult part would seem to me to be if you want to have the mesh of chunk c be the same if you re-enter it again from the same direction, or different ones from the previous time. Then you'll need to keep track of the parameters for each chunk so they can be used to regenerate that chunk of terrain if needed.


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Is it possible to have a variable increase using the game logic editor?
For a game I'm making, I need the speed an object moves increase until it reaches a set amount. If this can be achieved just by using the logic editor that would be brilliant but I know a bit of the Python bge so that would be fine.
Also just out of interest, is it possible to do this on, for example, the camera's orthographic scale (or other properties)?
Also, I might have explained this badly, so let me rephrase: when the game is started, I want an object to gradually speed up until it reaches a certain speed. At this point, I want the object to keep moving at the same speed.
Thanks! :)

Speed is an attribute of an object rather than a variable. A property is more acting like a variable. Unfortunately what you want to do in your example requires some Python knowledge. But you might be happy by looking at the Physics tab/Physics panel. There are two Velocity parameters: Minimum and Maximum. You can set the maximum and apply any force you like = speed is capped. It caps any speed of that object. (Do not ask me why there is a minimum.)

@Monster would you like to put that last part down as an answer? also, nice to see you here at SE.

You might be happy by looking at the Physics tab/Physics panel.
There are two Velocity parameters: Minimum and Maximum. You can set the maximum and apply any force you like = speed is capped. It caps any speed of that object.

(Do not ask me why there is a minimum.)
The downside is, this counts for all motions.


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Blender Game Engine: While mouse button is pressed
I'm making a first person shooter game and I want to make it so when the right mouse button is being held down the, the player looks down the sights, and when the right button is released it returns to the normal view.
So this is the normal view from the camera:

And this is what I want it to look like when the player is holding the right mouse button (The gun moved to the left an backwards a bit:)

Another problem I encountered while trying to do this was that I already have a shoot animation, so how do I have different actions on one object?

It is actually rather easy to do this.
First, you need a cool gun, You already have on of those, so then next step is to make it my favorite color blue - 1BC8F7.
You can skip that step if you want, but the gun looks so much nicer blue :-)
I assume you are giving the gun recoil with logic like this.

To make your gun be able to aim from the sights, parent the gun to an empty.

The empty should be parented to the camera.

Now, if we move the camera, everything should move with it.

This is good. Now, your recoil animation can play on the gun, but it will not move into place yet.

We can fix this by animating the empty to move into place when the mouse is clicked, and then move back out of place when the mouse is released.

Believe it or not, we can do this with one animation.  I am going to be using the right mouse button to aim the gun to the center, because it makes funner gameplay, however, it is just a simple to do it with the left mouse..

This is using the right mouse to aim the gun into place.

It works- Yay!
Now for the left mouse.
You only need to change a few things to your existing logic on the empty, to get this setup.

I added a simply ground plane to see the gun's movement better.

Now we need to add a Mouse Look actuator

Now, we can test it.

I'm not happy with that quite yet, so I'm going to add a slow parent to the empty.

Now we can test it.

That looks much better! You could, of course, tweak the settings to make it exactly how you want your gun. I think bullets and muzzle flashes would seriously help - but they have nothing to do with this answer :-(

This works, thanks! But, maybe I've done something wrong, right click toggles aiming down the iron sight. Is there a way so that it's looking down the iron sight when I'm holding right mouse button then when I release the button it goes back to hip-fire? @X-27

If I'm reading your question correctly, try using the second method (the one using left click to aim down the sights) - then change the mouse sensor from left click to right click.

Another classic X-27 overkill answer :D +1

I sound like this guy! (no it's excitement not overkill)


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Inverse Kinematics leg/arm rig bending the wrong way
I have a character who is rigged using 'Rigify'. I've put inverse kinematics on his two forearms and his two shins, and this problem is mainly a problem on his shins. I want his legs to be able to bend only like following:

But it can also bend this way, which I want to make impossible.

So basically - is there a way for an inverse kinematics rig to allow only bending in a certain direction?

You didn't generate the Rigify rig.. you only used the guide rig. Select the Guide rig and in Armature tab under Rigify hit Generate. Now you will get a rigify rig.

I am 4 years too late, but still.
You need to create another bone outside the leg and it should not be parented to any other. Now open the bone constraints(where you created the inverse kinematics) and you will see "Pole Target", select your Armature and below will appear "Bone" and select the bone you created.
After that the bones will only bend in the direction of this pole target bone, so you should put it in front of the model.

In Edit Mode move the ball between the upper and lower leg bone a little more to the direction you want it to bend to.

You must also create inverse kinematics for your upper leg and upper arms, the chain length for your lower legs and arms should be 2 and the chain length for your upper arm and legs should be one. The follow blog will be very helpful!
http://blog.digitaltutors.com/how-to-create-your-first-character-rig-in-blender-part-1/

That tutorial is wrong on so many levels. I advise not to rig like that - 2 IK constrains in arm or leg cause incorrect rotations, the correct way is to use PoleTargets. Also the constraints targets setup in that rig brings more work for an animator that could be avoided.

@Jerryno Wow how exactly do you set up 'Poletargets' because i began getting annoyed with the few errows from two IK when i was animating. Are there any tutorials you can refer me to? if so that would be great!

There is this for pole targets: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/19755/7777. BlenderCookie.com has some nice rigging tutorials. You can also reverse-engineer the rigify rig. That's about all I can recommend, sadly there ere not enough good resources out there about rigging.


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Parenting objects in bge makes them apparently changes normals?
I'm making a tank game in the blender game engine and the barrel of the tank looks fine until I parent it to the swivelling part, which seems to change the normals, which means I can see through the visible faces to the faces behind it.

This is the tank without the gun being parented:

As you can see - the gun looks okay, now this is the tank when the gun is parented.

Why does this happen? Surely parenting an object shouldn't affect it's normals.

Another thing I noticed is that when I parent the gun to the turning part, the turning part has different shadows

are there any keyframes on the gun , swivel part or barrel?

It might be you apply a negative scale (on one or three axis) e.g. via the parent.

Unfortunately you posted an image of the blender preview and one of the game engine render. This is not really a before/after combination.

@Monster ok - but in the game engine before I parent it, it looks fine

I would need a demo file to see what happens


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Blender Game Engine: Do something when an 'action' animation happens
For a game I'm making, I need to make a sensor be positive every time an 'action' animation runs.
This is my shooting setup:

So how do I check what frame an action is at? Because if this is possible I can make a python script so that when the animation is at frame 1 it does something.

You can add a property (float or int) and enter it into the Frame Property field (right lower corner of your image). Then you can check the property with a property sensor.
Be aware that frames are float. Therefore it is better to check against a range e.g. 0.5 ... 1.5 (Interval mode) rather than a concrete value, as it is not likely to match it.

It works! I also find it works better if I make the frame property an integer


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Blender game engine seeing through gun
I've looked at the other questions similar to mine but they all talk about the normals. After displaying the normals, it seems my normals are fine - yet my object still can be seen through.

Here is the blend file:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36891

You have connected a lot of vertices with some vertices where I guess you shouldn't. If you grab the plane(from the side of the camera) that seems transparent towards the y -axis you are gonna see at least 3 of them. Also did you tweak any normals somehow manualy? I see an edge normal that appears strange. Plus you have 10 double vertices. If you clean the above I think it will be fixed. I would just delete that box and remake it. That blue-ish color is death for the eyes btw.

Normals are pointing inwards
Solution: flip them.
But: They do look right at your picture.
Transparency enabled.
Solution: disable transparency in the material tab. As your model does not need any transparency this should be no issue.
Mirrored the object. That makes the normals point towards the opposite direction (see the first option). This can happen on negative scale on one or three axis (scale by -1). It is possible you have an according modifier mirroring your mesh.
Solution: Mirror again, scale back, flip normals and/or review your modifiers.

I checked your file. It is: Transparency enabled.


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Holding left mouse to loop sound file
For a shooting game, I need to make it so when the left mouse button is held down a sound file repeats. If it can be done just using the logic editor that would be good, but use of python would be fine.
I don't think it's necessary to supply the .blend file, but if you need it then ask.

I worked out how to do it now. You just have to attack a left mouse sensor to an and controller then loop end the sound file.


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BGE Consistent character speed
In my game, I have this logic:

(The top actuator is the mouse looking thing, and the two hidden actuators are the same as Motion and Motion.001, just with different axis).
When I'm facing forwards, it's fine - it moves at a uniform speed constantly, but when I face downwards, it stops moving all together, and if I look down slightly, it slows down. I know why this happens: It moves on the local axis so when I'm looking downwards, it tries to move into the floor but can't.
Is there a way (preferably without scripting - but if scripting is needed it's fine) to make it even when looking straight downwards to move at a constant speed forwards?
Here is my 3D view, if it helps:

I think you should separate the logic for movement+rotZ and mouselooking+rotX into two different objects, and then parent the second one to the first one. With such setup, the object moved by keyboard is always facing parallel to the ground, not trying to dig into it. The example of this would be camera and cuboid. The camera is rotated only in X axis (relating to your orientation from screen) with mouse and it's parented to cuboid. The cuboid is rotated in Z axis with mouse and also is moved with keyboard. You can check the blend file below to see how it's done (Blender 2.74 or the latest build). Note the camera from my example can be replaced with your object of choice, and cuboid can be set to invisible so it can't be seen ingame. I hope this can help solve your problem. If you have additional questions, please consider providing a .blend file for more accurate feedback.


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'Rigify' with automatic weights makes my mesh disappear
I'm making a human character. I'm trying to rig it with rigify - but I don't think I'm doing it correctly, as when I press ctrl+p > with automatic weights it makes the mesh disappear.
The blend file is here: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36983
Also, a video and gif are on my Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7tsr5dv25253gv8/rigging.gif?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bv65dd1kzxkwwg1/rigging.mov?dl=0

Same Problem: if ... -> Bendybones -> Segments [above 1] (tell me if it solved for you, too)

Make sure you have checked AUTO RUN PYTHON SCRIPTS in the User Preferences
Just go to File/User Preferences/File
and then check the box
☑ 'Auto Run Python Scripts'

omg, I wasted so much time on this. Thank you for the clue!


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Animating model instances
I model a digger assembled of multiple parts, place several instances of it into the scene and animate each instance's bucket individually within the rotation constraints specified by the model.
This is the task to be performed. An everday's task and a core requirement for an animation software.
Or, construct a car and put some of this same brand and model into the scene. One should steer to the left, another one to the right, the next one's window is open and another one's trunk is open. They are all instances of the same model, just with movable parts to be animated within the limits as specified with the model.
My problem is that it's not doable in an acceptable way:

Copying the objects the digger is made of would mean that any future change to the model would have to be done numerous times with every instance. Copies are not instances.
The parts of group instances are frozen. The group's objects, like the bucket, are not rotatable individually.

After 15 years of trying to work with Blender, stumbling across this again and again, I'd really like to know this now.
Thanks

Hooks work for instanced meshes or objects, you can press Ctrl+H > Hook to new object. If I understand you correctly, this should work. Let me know if it does or does not.

Novice,
I'm sorry, I do not understand the relation to the question. I know the hook modifier. Ctrl+H sets the "restrict render" option. To which part of the digger should the hook be attached? The wheels? The bucket?
First I need to know how to place several instances of my digger into the scene.

Whatever you want to animate. In Edit mode, select a set of vertices, and do it. To create an instance of an object, use Alt+D.

I do not want to animate vertices, consequently I do not need to go into edit mode. All vertices will stay at their positions. Thanks anyway.

What are you animating? Bones? You can do it for them too

I think the question was pretty clear. The model is made of several objects. One of them is the bucket. Others can be the wheels or whatever other parts the digger is made of. Objects can be animated by moving and rotating them. Taking the digger example, the bucket can be raised or lowered, maybe by rotating an arm it is attached to (parented).

You mean how to make a keyframe? Use I and select rotation, location, scale, or any combination

I know how to make keyframes. My question is: how can I create a model consisting of several objects and place multiple instances of this model into the scene, then animate each instance separately (e.g. by rotating parts of the model as described before). Copying the model is not an option as every future change of the model would have to be done multiple times. Group instances are not an option, too, as the objects of group instances are not animatable individually. (Sorry, unable to move this to a chat due to "insufficient reputation")

Yeah, I'm not quite understanding the issue I don't think. Using Alt+D, you can make an instance, and it is fully animatable completely separately. I won't be available much this morning (if any), but when I get back I can open a chat room and we can post images to show what we mean :/

If not, I've uploaded a blend file here: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=9264561bd157a867!214&authkey=!AAYkuhxvlLbvdJ4&ithint=file%2cblend  I've added two group instances. Of course, the buckets can not be raised/lowered individually. You can pres Ctrl+Right to switch to the other scene containing the group objects. Doing w/o groups, we could copy (alt+d) all parts of the digger. Copies are bad, e.g. if you decide to lower the distance of the pillars you'd have to do it with every copy. thanks.

How did you make those objects?! Did you link them from another file? I can't see how you got the mesh and the empty to be included in one object.

We can extend this discussion in this chat room: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/24779/animating-model-instances-question-discussion

I'm sorry, chatting doesn't work. It tells me to login but I am already. I've already checked browser settings (java script, cookies). Anyway, as I said, these are group instances. You can't edit group instances. As I also said, switch to the next screen layout (Ctrl+Right) to see the group objects.

Did you try refreshing the page? Also you may not have enough rep. This is the test file I made: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36542

I'v downloaded it meanwhile. Thx. You've joined the objects into one. My situation is different as my digger is made of multiple objects. I do not want to join anything as wheels and other parts are separate meshes.

If they are seperate, simply parent them to empties (select mesh, then the empty, and press Ctrl+P). The same principle applies

Yeah, the bucket is already parented to an empty which is used to rotate the pillars and the bucket. I didn't find out how hooks can help here because my question would still have been how to create a digger model made of several parts, place multiple instances of the model into the scene, being able to animate parts of the model seperately, and every change of the model is reflected within all instances, but as I'm starting at the beginning again, I consider this closed for my part. Thanks anyway.

You need to use Alt+D, that will make all changes to one object be copied to all other instances. You should be able to animate such objects separately without any special parts. This is kind of common knowledge so I assumed you knew that. Just out of curiosity, what blender version are you using? THat could make a huge difference. I am using 2.74

It sounds like you need to add an armature and rig it to your mesh.  The various armatures can be posed and animated independently although they share a single armature datablock.  The same with the objects instantiating the mesh.
I found a couple of rigging tutorials by searching for  blender armature rigging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9iL1hmJXrI
http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/introduction-to-rigging/

And the Humane Rigging series is somewhat legendary

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE211C8C41F1AFBAB

It is entirely possible to place multiple independent meshes under control of a single armature by giving each mesh an armature modifier pointing at the controlling armature.  This still requires assignment of vertex groups, but you would have to do that in a single-mesh situation anyway.
An even simpler system is to give each mesh a "child of" constraint and make it the child of a single bone in the armature.  This is only appropriate if each mesh is a single rigid element, but if your objects are constructed in this way, you do not have to assign vertex groups.
I am not sure what problem you are solving with proxies.  When I am linking assets from external files, I often end clicking Make Local on the Object datablock (storing positions, constraints, modifiers, etc) and the Mesh datablock is still a link to the source .blend.  Changes to the mesh will be reflected in the linking .blend upon next load.  The drawback is that changes to the modifiers and object position would not be.
My suspicion is that blender can accomplish the vast majority of what you want to do, but some of the workflow steps are not covered by the tutorials you have read yet.

I know how to rig one mesh. A digger is not one single mesh because it's an assembly of several separate parts. If you joined all parts to one big mesh, you would create copies and redundant vertex definitions. Copying is bad because every change of a certain part has to be done multiple times, so don't do this. But this is basic modeling knowledge. If we disagree here, it's pointless for me to continue regarding this subject. Thanks anyway.

I'll add some more to my answer to explain.

Some final words in a plain-text file uploaded to avoid a lengthy discussion here:
http://1drv.ms/1QwUkKx

Ok, I fail to understand. Maybe a solution based on my simple digger example makes sense. It should show

a digger model assembled by several objects
some instances of the digger model
raising/lowering the bucket of every instance individually (there is already a rotatable empty for this purpose)
changes to the model must be reflected within all instances of the model. For example, changing the distance between the pillars of the digger model must automatically be reflected with all instances. No copying, scripts, drivers should be required.

continued...

I do not necessarily need group instances, armatures, etc. for this, just the most simple approach. Sorry, my formatting is gone in the previous comment. Edit: I see it's not possible in a comment.


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Is it possible to animate textures?
How can I animate a texture?
I don't want to animate an object with a texture on it, but instead, animate the texture itself and have the UV move. If the UV moves, the texture will change live. This is what I am going for.

@brasshat Maybe you should explain that a bit better? It seems like you tried linking to something and it didn't show up.

You're right, Tardis, I was in a hurry again, but I didn't try linking in the comment. Nomar, first, welcome to the site. Next, in Neil Hirsig's Blender course at <gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html>, the eighth video tutorial in lesson 8 covers the displacement modifier. 1' 13" seconds into the tutorial, Neil advocates, and shows how to, attach a texture to an empty Blender object for use with the displacement modifier. I believe you could also attach the animated texture to an empty object in the same manner.

Almost any value in blender can be animated. Most of the values that can't be animated are global to the scene like render resolution that make no sense to animate.
With the cursor over a value press I to add a keyframe or right click  RMB and choose Insert Keyframe, even values in the node editor and colours can be animated.

Animating mapping node for some reason does not produce any updates in the viewport though...

One way this can be done, is by animating the offset sliders in the Textures Panel. Simply hover with cursor over X,Y,Z values (see the image below) and press I to insert a keyframe:

Related answer, that uses Mutant Bob's method: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/40085/how-to-animate-texture-change-in-blender-internal and

Just a comment, this is the fastest way to achieve some translation of the texture inside a mesh, the fact is that it wont show on the viewport this translation (using BI) I don´t know how it works now on Eevee.

You can use the UV Warp modifier to offset UVs:

It takes 2 objects (or also bones) to define the transformation. You can easily:

rotate
translate
scale the UV

and also set the center point of transformation.
It allows you to also input vertex map to limit the influence of modifier.

Cool answer. Especially due to the fact that the modifier can be tied to a rig, which would need a lot more work to do, using material nodes afaik.

You may use the AnimAll add on to do it. Go to User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U) and activate it.

Here are some examples how to use it:

How do you animate image texture materials in blender cycles with keyframes?
Animating eye texture in a head mesh
How to create Motion Trail in Cycles

Alternative procedural way is to get time value with attribute nodes and calculate uv location from that. This is more complicated, but useful for example to making reusable animator node groups.


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Highlights with hair
Well the question is simple in blender there's hair particle tools and there's a lot of videos on how to work with it. But I haven't seen videos on coloring, painting or dyeing hair in blender.
So I want to ask If I have my blender hair completely red can I give it some small black red highlights and a big yellow highlight?
If I can how?

You can use a texture to determine the hair color using from dupli texture coordinates.

Related answer: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/18970/how-to-change-hair-color-along-length-of-strand

If you use Cycles, there is a node called Hair Info. You can use the intercept value (Gives a gradient where the root of the hair is black and tip is white) from it to achieve a gradient along the length of the hair. You could for example run it through a ColorRamp. (For more info on hair rendering, see the Wiki here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:UK/2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Hair_Rendering). There is also an excellent video on hair rendering by Andrew Price, see here: http://youtu.be/jEnCsvcvX8k.

The colour of the hair is defined by the material chosen in the render settings for the particle system. By default this is the same material used for the surface of the emitter but you can select a different material if you want.

To get parts of the hair a different colour you can either use a noise texture to mix between colours or you can paint an image texture to control where the colour changes.

What you probably need to do, is duplicate your emitter object. Essentially you have 3 separate hair systems. 1 for each color.
I think most of the answers above relate to coloring different colours along the strand, but if you want multiple patches or sections, I think you have to separate the hair systems.

Actually, you can use a texture to do this, the strand will take the colour of that texture at the position it is emitted.


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Updating the blender simulation by scripts
I was looking around and saw that blender has the python bpy module which can basically touch or do anything within blender.
If I setup a simulation in blender then control it from blender scripts using a python script?
If so is there some sample code to do this?

When you say control do you mean the entire simulation? or to alter settings? You can change any setting easily, while the simulation must be run based on settings. Blenders api reference describes all the data in blender, which simulation do you want to run?


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Merge duplicate edges and vertices
I have a model imported from SMD file, and all the faces of the mesh seem independent. When I move a single face, the faces around it do not warp (a hole appear in the mesh).
I wonder how I could make a unified mesh from all the independent faces ?
Thanks

Use W > Remove_Doubles


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How can I use the Corner pin node interactively?
The corner pin node is used to distort an image in the compositor, but I don't like typing vector offsets manually. Can I do this with a GUI instead? In other words, can I drag around corner points on a screen, without having to re-render UV coordinates from the render engine?

You can use the Movie Clip Editor 'tracking tools' to provide the vectors.

Open an MCE window and import your clip. Check the dimensions in the
properties panel by pressing the N-key. You should see the image's
Dim x and Dim y value as "Size"
Add four trackers ctrl-click from top left clockwise to bottom left.
Open the Compositor and add to your image a Corner Pin node.
Then add a Track Position node / Map Range node (x2) / Combine RGB
node.
Set the Map range node for the track position x value to Dim x (from
the tracker properties panel), with 0 as the minimum.
Set the Map range node for the track position y value to Dim y, with
0 as the minimum.
Send the Map range node 'results for x' to the RED input of the
Combine RGB node
Send the Map range node 'results for y' to the GREEN input of the
Combine RGB node

Repeat for all four corners, or duplicate the group of 4 nodes 4 times.

This solution is scene dimension dependent


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How do I do a video glitch with wrap around edges?
I want to make a horizontal video glitch that shifts the image across but wraps around on itself. The Translate node can do this to the whole image but won't allow me to do per pixel distortion.

You can achieve this effect with the Displace node (for distortion) and the Translate node (for wrap around).
Create a texture for the desired skew or offset effect, then send this to the X value of the Displace Node.

Use a Combine RGB node to send a large Value to the Red or Vector X input. The Combine RGB node doesn't allow you to enter a value over 1 unless you type it in. I have added a Value node (the Green node) to make this easier. You animate the amount of distortion with this node.
The Red curve node allows you to modify the nature of the distortion, by modifying the contrast of the texture you can make a pointy effect or a rounded effect.

In this image you can see that the right edge the image is wrapping around to fill the gap left by the distortion. I have piped the Value node into the x axis of a translate node, then combined it with an Alpha Over onto the distorted offset image.
If I invert the texture then the distortion will affect less of the image.


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How can I make video black and white in the VSE
I have strips of video in the VSE but I want to remove the color from them. How can I do this and get a pleasing result, and can I re-use the effect on other strips?

Sure you can use modifiers, but there is a Saturation value in every strip's properties.

But it doesn't allow you to use a nice balance of colour components, to do that you need to add a Hue modifier. I choose to use an Adjustment Effect Strip so that I can duplicate it and re-use it elsewhere in the VSE timeline. Set it to S for saturation then drag down all of the hue nodes. You can do a selective colour effect at this time by leaving one of the values at its original position

But this just looks like the original desaturation effect. So we need to add a Curve modifier above it, then modify the relative contribution of each colour channel. We simply alter the curves so that they represent greater contrast for each colour.

Now don't be fooled by this last image, I am only using one Curve modifier, but I have displayed it so that you can see what I did to each channel.


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How can I Make a Cycles material with gradual gradient fill?
I would like to use a material to create a blending effect from the edge of geometry to the mid point like I can with the Erode Node in the compositor. I don't know how to get edge to edge distances, but I feel like it could be hiding in pointyness attribute? I don't want to paint it or preprocess it (otherwise I'd stay with compositor)
See image:

You are right that using pointiness will do what you want. Take a look at the following node setup. Changing the subsurf modifier divisions changes the amount of blending (as well as adjusting the color ramp)
In short, pointiness is connected to the factor of a color ramp and that to the diffuse shader's color.

In the future, please crop screenshots so as to only include the relevant parts. This helps make it clear which part of the screen you're referring to and to be able to more clearly see its contents.

I included the alternative so that it was clear what was happening to the image. Perhaps I could have been more clear.

I have tried the pointyness on concave shapes like letters and it doesn't take them into account sadly.

@someonewithpc The whole screenshot is relevant, the node setup, as well as the modifier setup. The only thing I could have left out would be the top bar.

@3pointedit try with converting to mesh first

I was actually using a simple mesh to represent a letter (instead of a curve). It seems that pointyness requires outward facing points.

@3pointedit this worked for me, for text, albeit non-perfectly: Add text, set extrude to some value, convert to mesh then remove doubles.

I wanted to update the answer given by @qwazix, I have converted to mesh and added depth modifier as well as a remesh modifier at high subdivisions.

I couldn't use a text object as there were too many triangle faces, and dissolved faces exhibited the same problem.

As a fan of good typography I find your solution very hard to look at. (The default font is a typographical disaster anyways, no need to make it even worse). The Remesh modifier rounds off all angles and introduces stepping in round elements.

I agree its terrible but the point was to get a shader value for cycles materials not really to make the font look... better?


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How can I use a mask in World Textures
I have a cycles world setup with 2 textures rendering out as equilateral (for 360 deg video). I would like to use either a mask shape or an object from the filed of view as a mask between the 2 textures.

I can use the dot product of a Normal node but its to hard to handle in multiples to create a square or other shape.