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Blender suddenly not baking tangent space normals correctly
When trying to bake a normal map I would get very wrong results. I noticed dark areas and big discrepancies across UV seams. It wasn't like this last time I tried, a couple of days ago. After poking around I understood that the issue was with the tangent space.

Here's a test setup. The plane takes normals from the cube, and one UV island is rotated 45 degrees.

Here's how it looks when rendered. As you can see, the normals on the rotated island are off.
Furthermore, it seems that if I rotate the islands in increments of 90 degrees the normal map retains the exact same colors regardless of the UV islands rotation. This obviously becomes wrong when rendered as the tangent vector is different, but the colors don't change to reflect this.
With a complex unwrapped model the islands are at all kinds of rotations, and I get this:

Here is my render setup, I haven't touched any of the tangent space swizzles from their default.

I'm very surprised by this, as it just suddenly appeared, and seems to be consistent when restarting blender, opening a new project etc. I opened an old project where I had baked normals and tried to bake them again in there without changing any settings, the error remained. I'd be very thankful for any help, as normal baking is an important part of my workflow.
Cheers!

There are a few potential problems here, including some that are Blender's fault, but the first thing that sticks out to me is that your normal map is being read in sRGB.  With Blender's treatment, that's a strict no-go.  Bake and read your normal map image as non-color data.  However, that wouldn't explain "Furthermore, it seems that if I rotate the islands in increments of 90 degrees the normal map retains the exact same colors regardless of the UV islands rotation" which is a big problem, but not one that I've seen-- any kind of demo would be appreciated.

Thank you Nathan, it seems like that did it! The tricky part was that the color space option was grayed out as you can see in the screenshot, I had to save the texture externally in order to get access to it. Just out of curiosity, how do you bake as non-color data, I don't see any such option?

You can set the color space before you bake, on the image texture node, which the bake then follows.  I believe it's grayed out because the image texture node is duplicated.


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Spaceship exhaust light
So I'm trying to have my X-Wing and Tie fighter exhausts light up like the ones below.

Currently, they just look like this which isn't that nice. The material is just a red emission for the Tie fighter and a yellow emission for the X-Wing.

Anyone got any ideas on how to accomplish this effect, would it be something I would do later in After Effects. Also, how would I go about creating the laser beams like the ones in Image 1?, I was thinking of just using the saber plugin for After Effects but they never look that nice.
Thanks in Advance

3 things that you have to keep in mind:

You have to use the Filmic Color Management
The engine emission shader must be very bright and just a bit desaturated
You have to add a Glare node in "Node Editor" > "Compositing Nodes"

For the laser beam I've made this setup

The laser beam is just an elongated "drop" with a very bright green-yellow material. I've made the beam to move rapidly forward and i've enabled the motion blur option.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Sketchup to Blender: aligning multiple objects to a grid
After I import a Sketchup model to Blender, the object is not connected to the grid and is distant from the origin. How do I connect my model to the grid so they both work together?

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/26451/how-to-move-a-complex-object-to-the-origin-without-destroying-it and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/32116/when-i-import-files-they-spawn-too-far-away-from-the-origin

I don't use sketch up.  So don't bother reading this if you allready know how to center an object. But if you are brand new to Blender. I know that it can be impossible to learn the basic functions so here I wrote the instructions and give a link to a really good tutorial that will help with the basics on object manipulation; url is at the bottom.
Here are two different ways to go about moving your object to center:

Use the cntrl alt shift c, function. pressing these four buttons will bring up a menu titled "Set Origin". First select the option "origin to 3d cursor".  Next place your 3d cursor on your grid where you like ( the little red and white target symbol that goes wherever you click ). Press cntrl alt shift c again. This time select " geometry to origin". This way is useful for resetting your object geometry for use with modifiers such as mirror modifier, and may be just the thing for the problem at hand. Again I don't use sketch up so I hope I am not wasting your time here

Tips and Pointer for cntrl alt shift c:
*make sure you are in object mode
*make sure you have active object chosen in your outliner panel.

on your transform panel go to the bottom and manually center your 3d cursor by typing 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 into the three boxes for 3d cursor location x, y, and Z.

The more simple way might work ...

The other way is to use your transform toggle hot;key N. With your transform panel open there will be location data for your active object at the top. On the x, y and z axis. If you simply type 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 into each of these boxes x,y, and z. That should bring your object to center more easily.

tips and pointers:

You might try applying transform

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Fade/Doc:2.6/Manual/3D_interaction/Transform_Control/Reset_Object_Transformations
have you seen this stack exchange entry? a user named GM writes about converting files. You may have probably converted your skp to a blend file? in which case, my answer is probably enough allready.
Import SketchUp ".skp" files
here is the turorial I like for manipulating objects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmQKZydrYY8&feature=youtu.be

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


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Trying To Create Human Model For Android - Need Help Bake Texture -
I finished retopology (Shrinkwrap) but i didn't do it very good, Then I used Smart UV Project to unwrap and baked it with cycles render and the results is this

Any idea how i can fix the texture thats white ? or whats causing it?

You are in materials mode. try viewing in render mode. Is that any help?

Your Normal map is set to color data. Set it to non-color data.


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Why are model's textures not baked properly?
I have this 3d model of a plush that I made.In the left photo there's the model with all the materials on before baking it into one material.
As you can see in the second picture with the model with it's materials baked,the materials have a few bugs.
How can i fix this?

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


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Changing dimensions
I am new to Blender and just learning it.  I have experience with drafting programs and I am used to being able to change dimensions of objects easily.  So far with Blender I have been unable to find a way to do this.  I know about the measure tool and the measure overlay that shows dimensions but there doesn't seem to be a way to change them other than eyeballing it with a modeling tool.  I could do some math and use the transformation percentage to change a dimension but that seems a bit complex.  Is there a simple way to change a dimension? I feel I've looked everywhere.     Thank you.

This question is similar to: How to set object dimension. If you believe it’s different, please [edit] the question, make it clear how it’s different and/or how the answers on that question are not helpful for your problem.

This may also be something you are missing: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/292374/how-to-change-the-unit
Because by default Blender may not be functioning in real world units.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/87243/how-to-scale-dimensions-proportionally-to-a-specific-size

@common_goldfish Blender by default uses metric units. My answer which you linked to explains how to switch from metric to imperial... or did you mean, metric is not a real world unit? ;)

I stand corrected!  Metric or Imperial would be fine, but "none" could be the wrong option.

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


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Problem: Audio quality getting bad with fps rate changes to lower than 24 fps
total newbie here.
I am making a photo slideshow with an audio file.
I have around 23 photos set with 24 fps.
Suddenly, some of them change into lower than 24 fps, like 18.xx-22.xx fps and it seems like a warning sign, because the font colour changes into red.
When this happens, the audio quality is getting bad, it even appears to be slower.
The whole video is around 23 sec. long.
What can I do to improve the audio quality here?
I don't have the problems in the origional audio file.
I hope anyone could be of help.

Is this while watching it in playback while you're editing? Or is this when it's already exported as a video file?

Hello and thanks for your answer!
Well, unfortunately a slower video with a longer showing of the pictures is not what's suitable for the vibe of the slideshow. :(
If that is the reason, there won't be a solution for my problem.

It is while watching it in playback, I haven't it exported as a video file, good point! Thanks, I will try it out!

I think these links can help you out a bit: 1 2 3

Is there a reason you are using Blender to create a slide show?


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MB-Lab setup help
I am new to both blender and MB-Lab, I have installed MB-Lab as an add on to blender but cannot figure out for the life of me how to use it in blender.  The add ons section shows that I have it installed and a check next to it shows that it should be working, but I can't seem to figure out how to import a human model into blender from MB-Lab.  ChatGPT says it will be in the toolbar section by view, but it is not showing up on my computer.
Does anyone know how to fix this?  It woul dbe a huge help!

Hi. According to this page: https://blender-addons.org/mb-lab-add-on/ it is a character creation tool. It doesn't say anything about importing a model. I took a very quick look at the addon and didn't see any import option, but I could have missed something.

As @curious_1 said, it is for character creation. It is used to create characters directly in Blender, not necessarily to import them from somewhere else. But there is a "File Tools" section which has an "Import character" button. But ChatGPT is wrong, the toolbar is what you bring up with the T shortcut on the left side of the viewport, but it is on the right side panel , shortcut N, there it has an extra tab - most likely at the very bottom when it is installed at last.


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Modeling of bass/ treble volume knob
I have a model
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6504273
of a bass/ treble volume knob which I need to resize and modify.
The hollow d-shaped section in the middle is the part which connects the knob to the rest of the amplifier.
This hollow section in the middle encompasses only about one half of the cylinder's height and I would like to make it go deeper into it.
In addition, I would like to resize the outer circumference of the cylinder, without changing the width of the hollow d-section.
Thank you for any help you can offer.

is it not the same question as your previous one?

To move down the inner bottom, choose Face Select Mode, switch to transparency (AltZ), select the bottom with the Lasso tool (CtrlRMB), select the Move tool and move down the selection:

For the outer diameter, disable the transparency, select the outer faces with the Lasso and SShiftZ:

Thanks, but when I use the lasso tool,not only the bottom but also parts of the walls are included in the selection. How can I select only the bottom?

You need to be precise, the lasso contour needs to include the faces you want, don't make the selection too large or it will select the other faces


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Flickering animation in bl
I have interior scene in cycles render and it's flickering after rendering.
I denoised render with compositing nodes.
Rendered with Optix, GeForce RTX 2060, 200 samples, 24fps.
There is lighting (sun lamp 20W, portals, spotlights), plus hdri with strength of 15

See flickering animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqozCEtRvSE

It's likely caused by denoising. Try disabling it or increasing the number of samples

This flickering looks like the typical denoise smears (flickering). It can be that your denoising way too much/strong, so the smears of the denoise changes from frame to frame and are not consistent anymore because your raw output is too noisy.
You can try to set a denoise seed or you might need to render with more samples. You can also try to denoise the animation afterwards, in a other program.


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Blender is locking the texture file
After editing the existing texture in Photoshop cant save over it its is locked by blender, Found that by LockHUnter app.  Texture was Packed in in to the bledner file maybe thats what causing it being locked.  Any ideas ?

You can unpack the textures from File > External Data > Unpack Resources, but be warned that it will unpack all the textures if you have more than one.

it's not even packed anymore, but it is still locking the texture.  That WAS packed when I got that file

It should certainly be editable in an external app. This tutorial shows how to edit in Blender using an external editor.

So no one else experienced this problem? After you get packed scene with all the textures in, after you UNPAck, Photoshop gives an error it I try to edit the files that where packed; to be more specific, when I try to save them.


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Invisible Material?
All of my materials just became like this in Material & Rendered Preview. This affects all of my .blend file, even the newly created ones.
Texture in Solid Preview is still normal though.
I don't know how did I created this mess. Any suggestion ?


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Oscurart Add Ons
In Blender 4.0 there are no Oscurart add-ons, so any alternate tool for this?
Actually, I want to distribute equal features in Blender.
I hope I’ll get a positive response.

It looks from this post as if that addon was removed from Blender from version 3.2. The GitHub site where it was available was last updated over 2 years ago and I think from other earlier comments that the author has abandoned it. You could probably do what you want using Geometry nodes but you'll have to explain exactly what you want to do, preferably with images before anyone can help you.

Since not everybody is familiar with Oscurart addons, it might be helpful to explain what they were capable of to get any recommendation for an alternative.

@GordonBrinkmann I agree! I was about to post that it was a third-party addon that most folks would have never heard of and therefore off-topic until I looked it up online! The Blender Manual entry from version 3.0 is here in case anyone wants to see what it did although the descriptions there are somewhat incomplete!

@JohnEason I actually did not mention "third-party" because I realized from your comment that it was once in there - but since I never saw any tutorial on any topic no matter if texturing, sculpting, simulation, animation, geonodes etc. ever mentioning this addon, I suspected it was one of the lesser known and now that it's no longer in Blender for quite a few versions, it would require first of all people who still have this and secondly maybe not only have it but also be familiar with it. Just a few notes on what specific features he is missing might give quick solutions.

Just looked in the manual entry and found that some tools there can be achieved in other ways and many of them have "Todo" there, so nice list of tools but actually many of them no explanations available so who knows what they exactly did - I'm not even sure if "Todo" in these cases means the explanation is to do or the functionality itself...

@GordonBrinkmann He mentions "distribute equal feature" which is in the Blender manual and why I mentioned Geometry nodes as I imagine you could do that with them although I agree that there's not much detail in the manual.

@JohnEason There is Distribute Objects in the manual, I'm not sure if this is meant with "distribute equal features" or what this should mean anyway.

@GordonBrinkmann I left it to "those who do know" to work that one out... (I don't!)


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Weight Brush Does nothing on any setting
My weight brush does not add, subtract, or make any changes on any bone. I’ve read a bunch of forums. I’ve tried choosing all the vertices on edit mode by pressing ‘A’ before I weight paint.
I’ve tried add subtract blur gradient - auto-normalize - protected/not etc etc.
Any ideas? *this is a rigify rig"

If weight painting a vertex group in a mesh differently is not affecting how an armature deforms it, one of the following is probably true.

The vertex group has no bone with the same name to match with.
The armature modifier is disabled.
The armature modifier is set for “Bone envelopes” instead of “Vertex groups.”

Check for these. If not, make sure you were posing the correct bone.

Thank you.  The correct bone is selected as I can select different bones and get different weight values.  I'll check the rest in the morning.  Thank you so much, Zartul, the infamous Wizard in the tower!  Have a good night.

What? Infamous my foot! Unfamous maybe, but I doubt I am infamous.


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I cant choose the Saving Options
I started using blender couple of days ago but i think i have come a long way. I finished my first project. I did all the coloring, camera angels etc. When i finished my project i rendered it. But when it comes to saving, saving options not working. I can only save it as a .blender. I cant change it to jpeg or png. When i save it as a .blender and i open it up i cant see the image i rendered. I can only see the tiles like pictures u can see in microsoft excel. When rendering ends i pressed f3 to save it but i can only save it as a .blender and cant change it to any other form. I downloaded the Blender couple of days ago i think its the latest version. How can i solve this issue. TLDR: I cant save the finished project as i wanted to be.

When you save as .blend, you're saving the project, not the rendered image.
When you finish a render an image editor window pops up, showing the rendered image; in this window go to the image menu and choose save as, then you will choose if PNG, jpg, EXR, ...
Shortcut is Alt S.

The thing is when i choose save as i can only choose the place not the format. So i can only save as .blender. Thats my problem.

In the 3D window you can save .blend only, in an image editor window you can save images as png, jpg, exr, ....


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Custom Property in the Texture Node Editor
I'm trying to build a Custom Sculpting Mesh with advanced properties, which would ideally be changeable in either the Sculpting Window or the Texture Properties Panel.
I want these custom properties to change the value of a MixRGB node in the Texture Node Editor, but this editor doesn't seem to support using drivers.
Anyone have suggestions on how I could implement something like this?

Maybe this video helps: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=asGV_CuO2hc

The problem is that Drivers don't work in the Texture Node Editor


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Not able to pull off simple combination of volume scatter and volume absorbtion: cycles
I was following ben u's tutorial on Basic Volume Shading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ybk0qNFhqw
I was doing OK with "Volume Scatter", but as soon as I put in the "Add Node"
(3 min 46 seconds in tutorial) and then tried to add "Volume Absorption" shader, the cube turned black.

I tried this https://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=402469&d=1443634665 but, got the same result.
There must be something very basic that I'm missing but, I don't have a clue what it is.
Would greatly appreciate your help.
Thanks.

"There must be something very basic that I'm missing" You are using a Color Mix node to mix two shaders, instead of a Shader Add

Wrong Add node
The Math (Add) node you are using works with grayscale values (on the left in the image below).
You would like instead to Add a shading to another shading: you must use the Add Shader node you can find in the Shader nodes group (on the right in the following image).

The color of the input/output socket is always a guide for the correct connection.

That did it! Even though it was that elemental, I probably would never of figured it out.  Much Obliged!


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Baking normal maps from Cycles Render
How can I bake a normal map from Cycles material? I need to export model to another program, but in Cycles I can bake normal only from high poly model, from material I cant.
Thank you.

something like this ->> https://github.com/Secrop/ShaderNodesExtra/blob/master/Nodes/ShaderNodeNormalBake.py ??

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/90096/how-can-i-convert-a-node-made-material-into-an-image-texture


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Texture appears fine in texture/solid view but appears black in material view
I have a texture that I dragged and dropped onto the model, and it appears properly(texture corresponds to the area)

but black in material mode,
so when I export the model to pmx/obj no texture shows up.

No light/lamp in the scene?

Do you have a UV mapping in place? Is the texture appearing in the material texture slots? Do you have a lamp hidden? Can you set the material to Shadeless to check without a lamp?

@lemon i tried adding a light, still black

@Craig D Jones i dont have a uv map, is there a way to auto assign a UV map? because like I said i just dragged and dropped the texture and it assigned fine

I would assume you want to at least look at the Map tab there to see if there is a default UVMap to toggle on to make sure it uses that mapping on export...


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Legs twists after adding a pole target to IK
I just got finished adding IK to the leg bones of my model, but when I add a pole target the leg twists immediately,
I tried fixing this by rotating the pole angle but this results in the IK not following the pole target as it should,
I checked the axes of the bones to make sure everything was in order, and I could not find anything wrong
what should I do?
The following img shows the before and after of attaching the pole target

.blend download :

@JaroslavJerrynoNovotny I've already seen that post, it does not answer my question, unfortunately
I've found the correct pole angle (-79.628) to prevent the mesh from twisting, but then the IK chain does not follow to pole target correctly...

Then probably something else is broken, have a look at also this: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21379/how-to-ik-rig-legs maybe that could help. I can't look into your .blend now but later I will check what could be the problem..

I checked the link, it didn't help... but I do appreciate you looking at my .blend

The leg bone chain is straight, if you pre-bend the knee in edit mode (just a little bit), the IK solver starts behaving predictably again.

I didn't quite understand...?

Move the knee joint so the legs are bend a little bit. In edit mode. The problem is the legs are straight.


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How can I import a rigged model(Facial controls included) from SFM to blender?
Decompiling from Crowbar and using Source Tools, I got a the model into blender, and using nodes assigned the textures, but no matter what I try I get one of two outcomes,
-the model is imported with no bones
-the model is imported and the bones are visible, but they don't move the model when used.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Attached:List of files received after decompiling via crowbar

Blender Source Tools should allow you to import the format into Blender. for 2.79 prior you can find an older version on the site's "Release Archives".

Try exporting it from the external application into a format Blender supports such as:
.dae
.abc
.fbx
.bvh
.ply
.obj
.stl
.svg
.glb/.gltf
Then in Blender: Go to File, Import - select the matching format, locate & import the file.

Unfortunately, I can't do that, all I have is the decompiled .mdl file


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Keyframes of linked rig not getting saved
I have linked a rig into my scene where I want to pose it in.
I made a library override to the rig to make it posable.
So far I am able to pose the linked rig, I made keyframes and saved my file.
When I reopen my file the pose and the keyframes are gone and the rig is in default pose.
What am I missing?

My rig had some rests of animation/actions on it.
Deleting them solved the issue.


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How to edit autosave file location for (blend1, blend2, ...)
As a company we are used to save different versions of our files constantly, to be able to go back to previous steps in the process:
House_01_(blocking).blend
House_02_(roof).blend
House_03_(different_roof).blend

We need to have autosave on, in case users forget saving manually, but this totally clutters the folder with blend1, blend2,... files. of EVERY manual saved file.
House_01_(blocking).blend
House_01_(blocking).blend1
House_01_(blocking).blend2
House_02_(roof).blend
House_02_(roof).blend1
House_02_(roof).blend2
House_03_(different_roof).blend
House_03_(different_roof).blend1
House_03_(different_roof).blend2

This clutter cannot be inteded in my opinion. We cannot turn it off, as quit.blend files are stored in tmp folder, which gets wiped if the system crashes completely.
So blender developers are telling us we have to manually delete all these automatic blend1/2/3 files and are not giving us an option to change their location?
Is it possible anyone write a script or addon for this kind of problem?
Some Blender versions ago, I was able to edit the location, was this feature removed? Why?

A script in Blender should work. Here are a few examples: https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/237634/107598


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Why does my glitter material look worse when I bake it's map?
Why does my glitter material not look as shiny once I bake the maps?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRZXGbiXYHc
I used the above tutorial if that matters.
The maps I baked are diffuse, metallic, normal, and roughness.

Hello and welcome. While files, images, and external videos or links may be helpful additions they should not be the only way to obtain information about your issue. Don't make understanding your question rely on downloading a file, watching a video or visiting an external site. Use the builtin tools to upload images or gifs, along with thoroughly explaining the problem in written form so it can be indexed and searched for thus helping future visitors with similar issues.

As it stands this question is unanswerable and was put on hold for lack of essential details to understand the issue. Obviously only you have access to your scene, so unless you describe it thoroughly you alone know your exact setup, settings and what steps you took to arrive where your are now. Describe in detail what the issue is, supported by accompanying screenshots with the [edit] button above. Don't post comments or ask a new question, editing will automatically queue it for review so it can be reopened.


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How to set a transparent background in AO and other render passes?

Hi and apologies if this question is addressed elsewhere - I've been googling and haven't yet found a solution, only other artists complaining about the same problem!
Is there a way to configure all passes except the beauty pass to have a transparent background? I'm using Eevee to output several passes and save them in OpenEXR multilayer format, for compositing in Photoshop.
I've ticked the 'transparent' checkbox in the film options, and enabled alpha in the OpenEXR add-on I'm using in Photoshop, but right now only the beauty pass is displaying a transparent background in my Photoshop layer stack. The AO and Normal passes have a black background, and the Depth and Shadow passes have a white background. I'd like all to be transparent if possible.
Here's my node setup. I tried adding a SetAlpha node to AO but I don't think I'm using it correctly. Any suggestions are welcome!

By default, passes don't carry alpha, so you need to add it back from your render layer node.
What you need to do is, for each pass, add a Set alpha node just before file output's in socket.
In set alpha's image input, use whatever pass you need, and in its alpha you can use the render layer's alpha.
Then, to remove the alpha from the beauty pass, still use a Set alpha node, but in Replace Alpha mode and with the alpha input unplugged and set to 1.
It will look something like this:


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Blender is only rendering a composite of a movie clip that I made and not the full scene, which I want it to
I am trying to render a scene, but when I render I'm only rendering the keyed footage that I composited initially in the project. Please refer to this video link where I show my project and break down the issue more in-depth.
The gist is: I want to render a scene that has more objects and an HDRI added, but Blender is only rendering a composited video clip.

Hello and welcome, next time would be better if you show more info here in your post than using a link, the problem that you have  is that you don't have a Render Layer Node for the compositor to render your scene Here

Hello and welcome. Please provide some context and explanation by verbally describing your issue, don't just post, images, videos, files to download, or links to external sites. See What is the problem with posting an image or link and asking “How do I do this?”

This is  the expected behaviour: if in the post processing tab compositor and sequencer are checked, the output will be overwritten by what is resulting in the compositor and sequencer windows.
So, to solve, uncheck thoose options or create in the compositor a render layer input and plug it in the compositor output node.
Be sure that no video sequence is in the VSE window also (or it will overwrite the output if checked in the post processing tab).

your problem is the compositor un-check the "use nodes" inside compositing, or composite your scene instead of the tiff sequence man


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How do I put my 2d animation on top of another video?
I made a 2d animation that I want to put on top of another video. I can’t find a way to make the animation render with a transparent background. I tried setting the background as the video, but that did not render. Any tips/help?!

When I put my rendered video into the video editor, I can tell that it has a transparent background, but I can not see the video under it. Is there a way to enable the transparency/ make it so the gray square transparent background goes away?

Go to Render properties -> Film -> transaparent  -> check this checkbox so you will get a transparent background.
Then you have to render your 2D animation again and put it together in the video sequencer.


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Exporting to GLTF Causes Leg to Twist. How can this be prevented?
Whenever I export to GLTF, the character's right leg twists after the export is complete. This occurs across all actions. I'm using rigify. The leg is twisted in the export as well. What can cause such a thing?
When I paste the x-flipped version of the same pose, it fixes all animations, and I don't even have to make a new keyframe. But the problem reappears on export. Something is bugged, obviously. Any ideas?
This gif shows what it looks like before and after the export. Note that I'm not reimporting or anything. This is just what happens immediately after the export completes.

This looks like a bug — I'd recommend reporting it at https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-Blender-IO, with the .blend if you can share that.

@DonMcCurdy I've never done that before - do I do it through the issues tab?

@DonMcCurdy I figured out the reporting system and have since reported it here. https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-Blender-IO/issues/1386 I would still appreciate any advice at all though! I would not be surprised if I'm making other mistakes in how I'm approaching animation.

I’m voting to close this question because it's a bug of the GLTF exporter.

@brockmann I can't be sure that's the case. Have you been able to reproduce it?

Seems Don is one of the developers. If you properly filed a bug report they will take care of that issue.

@brockmann It is a bit of a blocker for me right now, so I'd prefer to keep it open in case someone else has seen it and found a work-around.

I voted to re-open the question @Nubsy


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API: Is there any faster way to add/link material nodes?
I'm looking at an importer addon that needs to create thousands of image texture nodes and links but with the nodes.new() and links.new() methods there are huge slowdowns; it's currently taking 20 seconds to create a couple thousand materials and close to 10 thousand nodes/links (it takes 5 minutes on the heaviest import which has over 5 thousand materials). I presume this is because of internal update functions and I'm wondering if there's a way to prevent them at least until the create/link operations are done.
All I could try up to this point was batching all the link operations together, unfortunately there was no change, unlike with scene linking.
Since the code and data involved are complex, here's a snippet that emulates the bottleneck but to a smaller degree (takes ~45 seconds to run here), I believe the importer itself is slower due to the added node tree complexity of the shaders, which are in node groups.
import time
import bpy

group = bpy.data.node_groups.new('dummy group', 'ShaderNodeTree')
for i in range(5):
    group.inputs.new('NodeSocketFloat', str(i))

start = time.time()
for mat in range(5000):
    mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name = str(mat))
    mat.use_nodes = True
    tree = mat.node_tree
    nodeGroup = tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeGroup')
    nodeGroup.node_tree = group
    for i in range(5):
        nodeTex = tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeTexImage')
        tree.links.new(nodeTex.outputs[0],nodeGroup.inputs[i])

print((time.time() - start))

Are you sure this is not an XY Problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem)? Perhaps what you really need is an efficient way to use multiple images in a single shader - by combining them to a single texture atlas? For example, here's a shader that uses a GIF converted to a vertical spritesheet of 12 frames: https://i.imgur.com/t751aiX.png

@MarkusvonBroady Well, while I agree there should be a better way to address the volume of data, it's beyond my scope; files already exist this way and I did not design the "pipeline" this is in. As for XY, I do not know. I've refactored the slowest parts of this addon to great speedups, except this one. In the large import, those 5 minutes setting up materials are more than parsing, instancing and linking the thousands of objects involved. I've timed bits of this code and while texture loading takes its fair time, 6/20s or 30/~300 on large, I'm p confident the bottlenecks are on the node tree

Make 1 material and copy it.
In as much as I agree with the comment of
@MarkusvonBroady in that investigating making a single material and passing an argument re which image to use, especially if texture image is the only  difference per material. eg akin to Is possible play video in reverse mode into Texture Image node? with a static input like Object.pass_index.
Can get some improvement in script above by making the material once and copying in N - 1 times.  (Note tested with 500, since life's too short for 5000 on my crap machine ATM)
import time
import bpy

group = bpy.data.node_groups.new('dummy group', 'ShaderNodeTree')
for i in range(5):
    group.inputs.new('NodeSocketFloat', str(i))

start = time.time()

mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="0")
mat.use_nodes = True
tree = mat.node_tree
nodeGroup = tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeGroup')
nodeGroup.node_tree = group
for i in range(5):
    nodeTex = tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeTexImage')
    tree.links.new(nodeTex.outputs[0],nodeGroup.inputs[i])

def cp(i):
    m = mat.copy()
    m.name = f"{i}"
    return m
# even quicker without renaming
# mats = [mat.copy() for i in range(1, 500)]
# or consider using generator.
mats = [cp(i) for i in range(1, 500)]
print((time.time() - start))

after running a few times this was 47x quicker than using question code. (with 500)

That works great! The snippet with 5000 took half a second here. A basic implementation on the addon is showing great promise. Thank you.


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Add Ponytails in avatar
I don't use blender so much and I need help.
I would like to create a ponytail like the image in the link, I don't know how to create the curve (shape) in the image. Can you help me?
I appreciate also YouTube tutorial.
Thanks!
https://cgcookie.com/posts/how-to-model-hair-in-blender

Please add an image to your question so that we don't have to go to an external site to see what you're talking about. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75491/how-to-upload-an-image-to-a-post

Hello and welcome. While files, images, and external videos or links may be helpful additions they should not be the only way to obtain information about your issue. Don't make understanding your question rely on downloading a file, watching a video or visiting an external site. Use the builtin tools to upload images or gifs, along with thoroughly explaining the problem in written form so it can be indexed and searched for thus helping future visitors with similar issues.

Asking for links to resources about X is considered off topic here, asking directly about X is encouraged though. If you can rephrase your question to focus on the specific difficulties you are encountering, rather that point you to some site, please [edit] your post so it can be reopened. As it stands it is not a good fit for this site.

To create hair, a method is to create a curve, and under Object Data > Geometry, click on Object, and choose your Object and your Taper object, which are 2 other curves that you need to edit the way you want to define the section profile and the length profile:


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How do I bevel a ridge around a ring?
I have made a ring lip around the top of a cylinder. I want to make each top face of the ring (the selected faces) be beveled to make a bumpy ridge around the ring.

I tried beveling (CTR + B) and it beveled the inside and outside edges of the ring as I wanted, but the inside edges WITHIN the ring are not beveling.

The effect I'm looking for is for all selected rectangles and triangles in the beveled image above to be "inversed" (pretty sure that isn't the right terminology...) to be indented into the ring.
This is a model that will be 3D printed when it's completed.

Seems normal to me. In order to have a bevel with an angle, there must be an angle break between the surfaces being beveled. If the angle is 180 degrees (flat surface) the bevel will also stay in the flat surface. I am not sure what you try to achieve, but if you want some kind of dents then you have to have some kind of angle break there.

Yes! That's what I want is dents where those 180 degree edges are. So the bevel tool is correct, I guess it's just not doing exactly what I want. So what do you mean by angle break? How can I add that on all those interior edges?

Use inset on individual faces instead. Ths is why there are different tools in the toolset, some are better suited for different purposes then other.

Ahh, yes the Inset tool is new to me, and it looks like that's exactly what I'm looking for.

This is a good job for the very underrated Inset tool:

Select the top row of faces.

Hit I to start insetting the faces, hit I again to inset them individually (if not already enabled). Do that until the inset is as far as you want it, but do not yet confirm the insetting with LMB or Return.

Now hold the Ctrl key to move the inset faces up (or down), which the tool refers to as Depth. Releasing the key lets you further adjust the inset size. When you like the result, confirm with LMB or Return.

Alternatively, you can simply just inset the faces individually (step 2) and confirm  it, then with the inset faces still selected just hit G, Z to move them up slightly. The Depth however also works in the normal direction of the faces no matter how the cylinder is rotated (eventually not aligned to any axis). Just insetting and moving up afterwards works better if you want to enter a value for the inset size, because tweaking will no longer work after entering a value. But after confirming the change you can always enter specific values in the tool options menu that appears on the bottom left (or which can be brought up with F9 as Robin pointed out).

Maybe I should delete mine..yours is more complete. But different enough.. let it go.

@RobinBetts I'd leave it there as well, doesn't matter. I'm sometimes even surprised about questioners preferring one of two different solutions over the other, when I would think the other is a better method or a more correct answer...

Awesome answer, thank you very much! That's exactly what I'm looking for, especially knowing all the keyboard shortcuts.

The I Inset tool may contain all the settings you need, in its  F9 'Adjust Last Operation' panel:

.. 'Individual','Thickness' and 'Depth'. But it's a one-shot.. you may wind up going back to radoo's method to tweak to exactly where you want to go.

Oh man, I'm again too slow... :D  I just explained how you can do that also "on the fly" without the options.

Sorry, @GordonBrinkmann ... hate it when that happens..  I get my fair share of those :)

Here is a possible solution:
If you want to modify the scale of individual faces you can do it by changing the pivot point of the transformation to individual origins.

Please let me know if this is what you wanted.

You mention the Inset tool in the comments under the question - but maybe it would be best for a proper answer to explain it here as well, instead of letting others with the same problem have to read all the comments. A download of a finished result also doesn't really tell anybody how to do something similar but maybe with a different shape than a cylinder. So maybe you could elaborate more on your answer?


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Is it possible to animate two objects in the same action?
Currently, I have a mage and a broom. When the mage is idle I wish the broom to disappear and when the mage is flying I want the broom to reappear. I have been using the insert keyframe shortcut for broom visibility and I have been struggling to have it in the same action as the mage's armature.
Is it even possible to animate an armature and object on the same action?
Note: This is for a game so I want those two to work with each other unless there is an easier way.

can you share some images?

A single action can animate a single armature, but an armature can animate as many objects as you want, so simply add some bones to control the broom with the armature of the mage.


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Model does not sculpt in one specific area
I purchased this model online (it is a game-ready model that is fully rigged) and when I try sculpting it, it applies the changes to both sides of the model instead of the specific area I want it to. Additionally, I had double checked to see if I had accidently applied the X, Y, Z axis to the sculpting procedure, but it performs the changes on both sides regardless if it is enabled or not.

Moreover, I had discovered that when bringing the entire model into edit mode there are only faces on the left side of the body instead of its entirety (So I guess that has something to do with the sculpting issue, but I'm not sure).

What can I do to fix this?
PS: I am new to blender so I am inexperienced.

Sounds like a mirror modifier is in use. If there is, you will need to apply it to make the mirrored geometry real. With the object selected, check your modifier stack in the Properties editor -> Modifiers tab.

Ok, look's like what you said worked, but now half of the model disappeared. Is there any way to copy that half, invert it, and merge it with the other half? See link of image:
https://scontent.fuio1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/296105202_3285985615020227_8415931798631877983_n.png?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=UyMA6PK-4egAX_aXIYW&_nc_ht=scontent.fuio1-2.fna&oh=03_AVKfV2AGupynjZths3FwCeAK33DU1SPL40ITDS5ACwr5JQ&oe=63321B98

@NicholasMinga That’s what applying the modifier should do. Did you apply it, or remove it?


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Add custom properties to objects before alembic export
I want to add custom properties on objects and export them with alembic, then read them from another software.
like in maya AbcExport -j .. - attr foo -attr bar ..

I write a function to do this:
    name = validate_name(name)

    class CustomProperty(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
        custom_property: bpy.props.StringProperty(name=name)

    mesh_data = mesh_obj.data

    mesh_data[name] = value
    bpy.utils.register_class(CustomProperty)
    bpy.types.Mesh.my_properties = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=CustomProperty)```

a reference file to useful blender functions [Djed][1]

  [1]: https://github.com/Michaelredaa/Djed


text:
Pack existing UV islands of a specific UV set using geometry nodes?
I'm trying to figure out how to use the Pack UV Islands node but I don't have a good enough understanding of geometry nodes to know how it's supposed to be used and my searches haven't shown many examples.
The reason I want to do this with geo nodes is that I'm masking geometry non-destructively using modifiers and would like to keep the modifiers while repacking the UVs that I have (in my second UV set) procedurally, so that whenever my mask is changed, the UVs change without requiring modifiers to be applied.

Here's my attempt, which isn't really doing anything helpful at the moment.
Any idea if and how I can accomplish this with geometry nodes?

Use "Store Named Attribute" instead. It's not better, it's just that then it's clearly visible if you:

set the attribute in the correct domain, which is face corner.
give the attribute a correct name, which I imagine is LightMapUV (to override the old attribute).

In your case you probably set it to a vertex domain instead - which you can see if you press N inside the node editor area:

Other than that, perhaps you don't know that the UV Map is originally stored using a legacy datablock, and it is converted to an attribute inside your geometry nodes. Unfortunately since Blender is undergoing a migration towards the attributes (hence the term "legacy"), the shaders still read from the old data-block; in order to read from an attribute, use the "Attribute" node in your shader. If for some reason you want to use the legacy data type for your UV Map, take a look here:
How to apply Geometry Nodes with UV maps?


text:
How to use shrink wrap to create vertex group?
I have shrink-wrapped an image onto a sculpted shape as seen here:

I want to select the black parts of the shrink-wrap on the shape as a vertex group so I can apply hair everywhere on the shape except for the black parts. Is this possible with shrinkwrap, or is there a better way to do this?
I'd rather not have to trace the shapes out manually.
Thanks in advance!

This looks like a place for the Vertex Weight Proximity modifier, aimed at the Shrinkwrapped features. Possibly followed up with a Vertex Weight Edit modifier, to fill holes, define edges.

Yeah, but only if polonium's SW target is that vert dense (and even then, did they ever get live particle density from VG working?)  Otherwise, I'd suspect that a texture bake might end up working better, but of course, that's not remotely live either.

That seems viable, thanks! I'll give it a try.


text:
Cube appearing around mesh in Object Mode, but not Edit Mode
I have this strange cube that doesn't appear while I'm in edit mode. The mesh has a mirror modifier attached to it, but even if I apply it the cube remains. What am I missing here?

CUBE

No CUBE

What happens if you hit ALT-H (unhide all) when you're in Edit mode, and can you select it when you're in Object mode? If you can select it (yellow outline), does it hilight as an extra object in the Outliner and can you delete it? If none of that works, you'll have to share the file so that someone can have a look. - https://blend-exchange.com/help

I feel like a fool, ALT-H did it. Guess I accidentally hid the default cube. Thanks for the help!

That may be why quite a few tutorials seem to start by deleting the default cube and immediately adding another one nowadays! Mind you, why you actually hid it when in Edit mode is a bit of a mystery! :^))

I think it's hidden, press Alt+H in edit mode and then delete the cube, that will solve the problem.


text:
Instances on points using collection info - give objects (indices) a defined probability to be chosen
probably the same issue was addressed somewhere, but I did not succeed in finding a solution.
I don't give a specific file/case because it is a pretty basic question and should work for any similar case.
Situation:
Say we have a collection including objects A, B, and C. Using GeoNodes, we distribute points on faces (say a subdivided plane) and then put instances on points with the collection info as input. We tick "pick instance" to let Blender choose one of the objects A, B, or C for each point.
So far, so good. Now we basically distributed all three objects randomly on the plane. If the number of distributed points is sufficiently high, each of the three objects is equally represented, i.e., object A makes up for 33.3% of all instances, object B for 33.3%, and object C also for 33.3%.
Problem:
Now we want to define that, for example, 80% of the instances should be object A, 10% object B, and 10% object C. How can you do that?
I was playing around a lot and couldn't figure it out. I tried to go for "Instance index" with a random value, i.e., I tried to tell the 'instance on points' node to use 80% index 0 and 20% index 1 and 2.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks for taking the time!

That can be this kind of setting:

Knowing the instances count, you can define thresholds comparing a random value (0 to 100) against 80, 90, or else.
Depending on these comparisons you can output 0, 1 or 2 (in this example with 3 instances).
If your case is different, because you are generating these instances, you can duplicate them with the proper proportion, so that the proportion reflects the probability to have this instance:

If you've many instances, you can also use this solution which may be less accurate but involves less nodes. It maps a random value to a curve and remaps it to 0 to n-1 values if n elements in the collection.

Thanks a lot! Using 6 objects, the second solution did the trick for me. (Using Object info with 'as instance' ticked instead of each "Geometry"+'Geometry to instance'). However, for my particular case, I had to use pretty large numbers in 'Duplicate Elements' and do 6x 'Object info'+'Duplicate Elements'.        So, I wonder if there is a "smoother" solution. I get the first solution for 3 objects. Could this be adjusted for more than 3 objects?

Using the first solution you can add/chain other "less than" nodes, for instance.

"...and remaps it to 0 to n-1 values if n elements..." or "...and remaps it to 0 to n values if n+1 elements..."

@GordonBrinkmann, yes you're right

Thank you very much, I really appreciate it!


text:
Create model based on UV projected texture
I'm not sure how to phrase the title...
Basically I'm working on a Spider-Man model to import into the new Marvel's Spiderman PC game,and I'm trying to create the raised webbing.
I have the model and a texture indicating where the webbing should be, what I need is a way to somehow create the webbing mesh around the model only where that texture is.

I tried vectorizing the texture, and importing it to then shrink-wrap it around the model, but that didn't work.
Now I'm trying to use geometry nodes to extrude the webbing, but I have to increase the poly count too much for that to work and since I intend to import the model into a game, increasinng the poly count that much wouldn't work

Isn't there a way to create a mesh from that texture that automatically wraps around the model.
Or does anybody have a suggestion to creating this webbing that doesn't imply manually modeling each thread by hand?

if you don't want to increase the face count, why don't you keep an image instead and use a bump map to fake the 3D relief?

I don't have a problem increasing the poly count, of course to add new geometry the poly count has to increase, but the methods I've used require me to drastically increase the poly count, in a way the game engine wouldn't be able to handle it. The model already has a normal map (not visible on these pictures) but I want to replace it for a 3d model of the webbing. I was hoping there was a way to "cut" the geometry on the edge between the black and white parts of the textures, then extrude only the black parts


text:
How can I assign multiple bones to one vertex group?
Although having almost a year of experience, I still suck at Blender.
I recently figured out that you can assign a bone to a vertex group by naming it the same name as the vertex group.
How could I assign multiple bones to one vertex group?
Thanks

It would be much more accurate to say that you assign vertices to bones, and that assignment is made via vertex groups, rather than that you assign bones to vertices or VGs.  "What owns what" is backwards from how you're thinking about it, and that makes this question hard to understand.  Could you maybe share info about your practical end goal and what it is you hope to accomplish by what you're asking about?

You can copy a vertex group (it will duplicate the selected group) and change its name so that it has the same as another bone:

You can use Geometry Nodes to copy vertex weights from one group to the other:

Loading from Named Attribute also works:

Using Store Named Attribute will not work, though, it will set all weights to 0.
Make sure your Geometry Nodes modifier is above the Armature modifier:


text:
Are vertex groups good for rigs?
Hi Blender Stack Exchange, I have a reasonably simple question to ask. Is using vertex groups a good option for rigging? I'm not very good at weight painting, and I've found that vertex groups are easy to use. Would this be a viable option?
Thanks!

Weight painting stores its values inside of vertex groups

I guess most of the time, if you want to rig a manufactured object like a box, robot, machine, etc, parent With Empty Groups. It will create a list of vertex groups that will have the same names as the bones except no vertex is assigned to any of these vertex groups for the moment, you need to select the vertices, go into the Object Data > Vertex Groups, select the vertex group you want your vertices to be part of and click on Assign:

For organic things like plants, animal, humans, etc, you should rather parent With Automatic Weights, it will automatically assign the vertices to a series of vertex groups that will have the same names as the bones. You may need to give some correction in Weight Paint mode though. Also, for the small details (like fingers) you may need to switch to the first method.


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Moving active rigidbodies with a passive one
is there any way to make one or more active rigidbodies with a single passive one? (Without animating the active ones) Hopefully this should explain what I'm trying to do:

If the top body is the active, just increase friction on both bodies, under "surface response" in physics.

Oh, and don't make it passive, make it active but "animated".

@Nathan Why make it Active? That's not necessary to interact with the other active object... but enabling Animated is crucial.

@GordonBrinkmann Oh, I guess you're right-- I'm just not in the habit of using "passive" for anything that's not static.

Edit: I forgot to read everything and was going to say it did need to be active, but yeah, it does just need to be animated. Thanks for the help!


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How do I model an object to split in half without having inconsistent normals?
I am modeling a tree branch that has a smaller branch forking away from it. Ideally, the smaller and larger branches are separate objects so that the smaller branch can be "cut away" from the larger branch. I did this by modeling both branches as one mesh and then separating the smaller branch via a loop cut, which is where the smaller branch separates.

Here is the topology of the branches (large, then small):

However, when I make both objects and create a face in the loop cut for each one (so there won't just be a hole on the inside of the branch), the cut between objects is visible. I am assuming this is an issue with the normals.

From my experimenting:

Recalculating the normals automatically does not fix the issue.
The problem is almost nonexistent when I delete the face in the loop cut (the brown face) on both objects. However, then there will be a hole in the object, which I do not want.
The objects have subsurf modifiers. Disabling them or increasing the number of subdivisions does not rectify the issue.

I would like the surface to look completely smooth. Is there an easy way to fix this? Has anyone encountered this before? I don't think this is an issue as much as a side effect of having opposite normals, but it would be great to have a workaround.

You should be able to transfer the split normals with the Data Transfer modifier > Face Corner Data > Custom Normals, and choose the best Mapping mode, but I've done some test and if I apply it brings back bad shading so I'm trying to find what I miss

actually it works if you apply the Subdivision Surface modifier before but you may don't want to...

@moonboots yeah I would rather not apply subsurf first. May mean it won’t work though. Is there another way objects are modeled to break into multiple pieces?

What is the final purpose? If it's for an animation you can unhide the original object and hide the 2 separate objects, then at a certain frame hide the original and unhide the 2 objects?

Ok it looks like Nathan has given the good solution   ;)

Fixing normals in the presence of subdivision modifiers:

Make the broken mesh.  Edge crease the vertices at the seam.  We can see the normals are still discontinuous:

Duplicate the broken meshes to a new object and merge by distance to create a "repaired" copy of the object.

Give your broken object a data transfer modifier, copying face-corner data, custom normals, on nearest face interpolated, targeting the repaired copy.  Enable autosmooth on the broken object to allow it to use custom normals.  On the subdivision modifier, under advanced settings, enable "use custom normals".  Separate the broken object into two objects, each containing one mesh.  We see the normals are now continuous across the break:

Apply the data transfer modifier on both objects.  Delete the repaired object.  Move the broken objects around as desired.

This works exactly as intended. Will mark as answer after 24 hours.


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How can I get the color in the middle of a face using Python?
Say I have a mesh and I have colored the vertices using vertex paint, how can I then get the average of the colors or rather the color in the middle of the face or the color under the normal (shown below) using blender python?

I'm sort of guessing here but I think that point can be obtained using some barycentric coordinates function.

The "middle" of the face might be vague. See wikipedia for the different definitions of midpoints. I think you refer to the median / centroid according to the site linked.

Btw there exists a function to deal with barycentric coordinates -> mathutils.geometry.barycentric_transform though this is not needed for the median

In the middle of a face is an average color of all the vertices. For triangle this means:
Col_RGB = ((R1+R2+R3)/3, (G1+G2+G3)/3, (B1+B2+B3)/3)
Where each vert has color in form of (Rn, Gn, Bn) for n in (1..3).

It's cheaper to add all vertex vectors and divide once by the number of vertices.


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Issue with vertex colors when importing an x3d file in 4.2 (works fine in 2.9)
I work with scientific visualizations and often export scenes as x3d from Paraview (the software I use for post-processing) into Blender (which I then use for rendering). It used to work out quite well. However, I recently moved onto the newer versions of Blender and the workflow can no longer reproduce vertex colors. After a long search on forums, I couldn't find any similar questions. So here we go:
I have this simple square which when exported as an image from within Paraview looks like this:

I export this as an x3d file, import it into Blender 2.9, and render it, boom, I get this:
 (as expected).
When I do the exact same procedure, using the same x3d file, but using 4.2 I get this:

I'm aware that "vertex color" is "color attribute" nowadays. I have tried to come up with a minimum viable example here but my bigger renders also run into the same issue. Their colors show up just fine in 2.9, but 4.2 always has this uniform blue color. The original color information seems "lost" inside 4.2.
Could anyone guide me toward a solution? I can provide more information about the setup if needed.
These are my material settings in 2.9 and 4.2 respectively:

Managed to solve it on my own. Funnily enough, after spending several days struggling with this the solution is that I wasn't doing anything wrong. It was the Web3D X3d/VRML2 Add-On version 2.3.5 that was bugged. They patched one single issue in 2.3.6 - the one in this post. (see https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/web3d-x3d-vrml2-format/versions/)
If someone is in a similar boat, try updating your x3d add-on.
Thanks to those devs. I can now finally upgrade to the new blender.


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Geometry Nodes - Minimum Volume Bounding Box
I am trying to understand how I can create a bounding box that occupies the minimum volume of a selected object. Using the bounding box node when an object has its rotation information returns the expected results (45, 0, 0) (Left), but how would I get this same result on an object with its rotation frozen (0, 0, 0) (Right)?
The geometry node below is just to visualize the example. :)

The simple answer is you cannot. The bounding box is the box spanning over the maximum extent of an object on all three axes of the local orientation. When you apply the rotation, this will be reset to global orientation. Now meshes can be very complex, how should Blender know when there are edges not aligned with the global axes that these are some which it should base the orientation of a bounding box on? If you would take a Convex Hull node, this would be closer to the mesh because it is independent of orientation, but of course it is something completely different than a Bounding Box.

I should have been a bit more specific. While I understand how the bounding box is functioning, and that it specifically could not get me the results I need, I'm trying to understand if geometry nodes has the support to replicate this effect independent of the transform rotation values of the object, and where a starting point to doing this might be. The reason I am looking to generate this as a box, and not a convex hull is to be able to turn this into UBX collision for exporting to Unreal. The following video is a good example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTZ2Hbnu7Tc

Would it be possible to find the longest length of an object or volume, and create the shape starting from there?

I think you are looking for Principal Component Analysis.

Well, we all know geometry nodes are magic, so here we go.
This answer is an approximation, it gets better the bigger the rotation_steps.
Warning!
This procedure is SLOW! And it may crash your blender. Use with care! (Better used once and applied)
Up to 40 steps work in my PC. Pretty sure there are ways to optimize these nodes, but this is a first naive attempt. (Ultimate goal is to use instances instead of repeat zones, but this requires bigger brains).
One way to optimize, for instance, is to make bigger rotation steps first, find a sweet rotation and then make smaller rotation steps only in a smaller range.
Main nodes

The purpose is:

Rotate the geometry many times in Z, Y, and X
Calculate the bounding box and its volume for each rotation
If lower than the previous, store as min box and min volume

Rotation setups
Rotate the position of the geometry in each axis. (The geometry input/output is only necessary in the last rotation, but it was kept for inspection with a viewer node if needed)
Z

Y

X - This one outputs the final used geometry

Calculate Box Setup

Creates the box for the rotated geometries
Calculates the volume of the boxes
If volume lower than the previous stored minimum

Store new minimum
Unrotate the box and store it as minimum box (the unrotate matches the box with the current position of the object, but you could skip the unrotate if you need)

File
Warning: this file contains 3 geometries using around 30 steps, it might be slow to open.

exactly my idea :D https://i.imgur.com/MvxuCVc.png  https://i.imgur.com/mDNtTJE.png But it is problematic, because the mesh may fall into a local minimum, so you may want to check multiple combinations first and "gradient descent" for them...

Well, as it is now, the answer doesn't fall into a local minimum (it is a full brute force sweep)

Ohhh, so with given resolution you test all possible rotations? I instead rotate randomly and discard rotations that don't decrease volume.

Yeah... (hence it's slow) I'm thinking of making a recursive node. You add the nodes with maybe 10 steps, then add another modifier with the same nodes again, more 10 steps and so on. You can reach a 1000 steps resolution within 30 iterations.

Interesting! I will have to explore this more. Do you think it would be possible to convert the mesh to a convex hull (for simplicity), scatter points across the mesh surface, and then compare those into two groups of points that are furthest from each other, and then find a center point in each group and connect them? I wonder if you could then use the the normal of the line to align the box to... I am not sure how you would find the radius to scale the other two axis though. I'll try and get an image to demonstrate this idea better.

"There must exist two neighbouring faces of the smallest-volume enclosing box which both contain an edge of the convex hull of the point set. This criterion is satisfied by a single convex hull edge collinear with an edge of the box, or by two distinct hull edges lying in adjacent box faces"

this is just some amateur idea, that came to my mind image: https://i.imgur.com/hd1Bh4b.gif file: https://blend-exchange.com/b/oPayQrDR Getting the median of the mesh and the longest face distance to it, then rotating the object to this vector.

another test, this could maybe help to eliminate some rotations for first answered method https://i.imgur.com/3cLN1nI.gif

Going to explore this option more! Thanks for the input everyone!

Other direction - principal components decomposition to build largest diagonals of the bounding box.

Since that is a statistical analysis, it would fail many times for meshes with outlying vertices.

I do not see why this would...


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Different Color for region of intersection
Is there a simple way to make a region or new object in order to change the material properties at the intersection of two or more objects?
For example:

Or this, where the intersection area of interest is shown in orange and is the intersection between 3 different objects
I have read a little about using the Boolean tool for Union, Intersection, and Difference between two objects, but when applied, it does not create a new region or object. It destroys part of the objects that are present and replaces it with the union, or whichever is chosen.
In addition, if the intersection is chosen, the resulting object is not the type of intersection shown below. The intersection given would be the plane with the bottom part of the cone sticking down for some reason.
Is there a better way to achieve the question above?

The "Boolean Modifier" doesn´t work as expected with non-manifold meshes. When you add a plane use the "Solidify Modifier" first, to give it a slight thickness (e.g. 0.0001).
Give the plane a "Boolean Modifier" afterwards and set the target to the cone. Set "Operation" to "Difference". Copy the plane with ShiftD and press Esc to avoid moving the copy. For the copy set the "Operation" of the "Boolean Modifier" to "Intersect".
Edit: The pictures show the Modifier Tab in the Properties Panel (click the wrench icon). Note that the order of the modifiers in the modifier stack is important.

You could also parent the two planes so they can be moved around together. Hold Shift and select both plane objects with RMB. Press CtrlP and select "Object".
Afterwards materials can be assigned on every object separatly.
You can then use Freestyle for line rendering.
The advantage of using modifiers is fast editing and your objects are easy to animate.

Great answer, thank you so much!  I noticed you mentioned that the area of intersection will update if the planes are under a parent.  I tried this but it didn't work quite like your gif. I ended up getting this: http://imgur.com/a2DHHqP . I'll keep trying on it.  Also, was the gif you prodivded made from the same blender model? Every time I try to get a translucent material, the objects behind it lose their coloring for some reason.

Yes this is raw blender output. The image you linked doesn´t show your setup. Can you provide the blend file or show some settings and the object hierarchy in the "Outliner"? Btw. I used blender 2.70 and loaded the default file before setting the scene up though it shouldn´t make much of a difference. Did you try to rebuild the scene or something else?

Also in the image you provided I see many horizontal lines that indicate extreme Z-fighting. Is thickness set to 0 or are there any overlapping copies?

I noticed that when i keep the thickness at the default ~0.01, it works OK, but when I tried changing it to ~0.00001 it gave the problem. Does that sound right or make sense?

It should work with both values actually.

To see what is going on I would need see the whole setup. There are many reasons why it could fail. Did you just add a cone and a plane or did you something fancy like scaling non-uniform in object mode etc?

This is the Blender file I am working with at the moment:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxdHiPHlGyRlTVVtSEphb09NWU0/edit?usp=sharing

Here some things i noticed: You applied the modifiers. That will practically freeze everything into your mesh (usually unwanted). The plane has still 0 thickness or the modifier was removed. The hierachy of the parenting went wrong. You need 2 planes in one place and parent one to another.

I made a quick screencast (no audio) link to video. This should roughly explain what I meant.

Awesome, I think I got it! That video is fantastic for beginners!


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making angle label - spin vertices with python script
I would like to make an simple angle label such as this:

using the python script to construct it.
The problem is trying to spin a MeshVertex, as the code looks for a Mesh object instead when using the bpy.ops.mesh.spin function.
The best method I have found to do this is to subdivide a small cylinder (vector) to get vertices, then select a vertice along the cylinder, then to spin it around the origin with some theta.
Here is the code I have so far, which does not work:
import bpy
import math
import os
import unicodedata

import bmesh
from bmesh.ops import spin

pi = math.pi

def lathe_geometry(bm, cent, axis, dvec, angle, steps, remove_doubles=True, dist=0.0001):
    geom = bm.verts[:] + bm.edges[:]

    # super verbose explanation.
    spin(
        bm,
        geom=geom,         # geometry to use for the spin
        cent=cent,         # center point of the spin world
        axis=axis,         # axis, a (x, y, z) spin axis
        dvec=dvec,         # offset for the center point
        angle=angle,       # how much of the unit circle to rotate around
        steps=steps,       # spin subdivision level
        use_duplicate=0)   # include existing geometry in returned content

    if remove_doubles:
        bmesh.ops.remove_doubles(bm, verts=bm.verts[:], dist=dist)

theta = pi/4

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add( \
    radius=0.01, \
    depth = 5,
    view_align=False, \
    location = (0,5,0), \
    rotation = (pi/2, pi/2, pi/2+theta))

c1 = bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.data.objects['Cylinder']
c1.select = True

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT', toggle=False)
bpy.ops.mesh.subdivide(number_cuts=10)

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)
c1.select = False

for el in c1.data.vertices:
       el.select = False

vert = c1.data.vertices[3]
vert.select = True

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(c1.data)

axis = (1,0,0)
dvec = (0,0,0)
angle = 2*math.pi
steps = 20
cent = c1.location

lathe_geometry(bm, cent, axis, dvec, angle, steps, remove_doubles=True, dist=0.0001)

bm.to_mesh(c1.data)
bm.free()

The api doc specifies the argument geom as

geom (list of (bmesh.types.BMVert, bmesh.types.BMEdge, bmesh.types.BMFace))

so
import bpy
import bmesh
from math import radians
from mathutils import Vector, Quaternion

mesh = bpy.data.meshes .new("Pie")
obj  = bpy.data.objects.new("Pie", mesh)

scene = bpy.context.scene
scene.objects.link(obj)

bm = bmesh.new()

A = bm.verts.new(Vector((0.0, 0.0, 0.0)))
B = bm.verts.new(Vector((1.0, 0.0, 0.0)))
base_line = bm.edges.new((A, B))

result = bmesh.ops.spin(
    bm,
    geom  = [B],
    cent  = A.co,
    axis  = Vector((0.0, 0.0, 1.0)),
    dvec  = Vector((0.0, 0.0, 0.0)),
    angle = radians(60.0),
    steps = 12,
    use_duplicate = 0
    )

C = result['geom_last'][0]
bm.edges.new((C, A))

bm.to_mesh(mesh)
bm.free()

works for me. You could also implement this yourself:
def create_arc(bm, start, center, axis, angle, steps):
    angle = angle / steps
    q = Quaternion(axis, angle)

    prev = start
    vec  = start.co - center

    for i in range(steps):
        vec.rotate(q)
        current = bm.verts.new(center + vec)
        bm.edges.new((prev, current))
        prev = current

    return current


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Zoom window magnification
What is the best method to get a magnification effect within an image.
More specifically, I am interested in getting a portion of the image zoomed in, with a boundary and the zoom lines annotated, such as is done in this image:

The best solution I have found is to use emulate a magnifying glass directly, like here:

However, I don't like that it adds distortion around the edges, and it doesn't zoom enough - which is why I added the images above.  It would be great if the images above the glasses could be in a frame which was indicating the region from which they were being zoomed into, so that you could easily see two scales in the image.
Is there a way to add a frame with zoom lines to a region which is being drawn with another camera like this?

Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/38139/how-do-i-create-a-magnified-glass-effect-in-cycles

You want it for a still render or animation?

At the moment, just a still. although having it for animations would likely be extraordinarily useful for the community

@PaulGonet As mentioned, I know how to do the magnifying glass trick since I made the above image.  I am asking if there is a better method, such that magnification can be seen on much smaller scales, and without distortion, as well as having a box indicating the area for which is magnified.  Much like the first image presented in the question

Is it a blender zero budget challenge or some specific reasons that you don't want to do it in post? For me it's like a 101 post editing thing if you do it in After Effects.

@SVAFnemesis It was for a figure that I am making for a publication, but I tend to have that type of 'zoom in' feature a lot - so I wanted to see if there was a way to do it in blender.  I assumed that it wouldn't be hugely difficult because I can see it has tons of use cases; such as a rendering of a camera or TV etc.  I figure there would be a way to plug the output from a camera to a plane or something and have it render both.  It just seems like a functionality that blender would have.  The answer below did a great job! Would be great to do it on a rendered scene rather than image plane.

@chase - updated my answer to work on the 3d scene rather than be restricted to a flat image plane. Hope this helps.

@RichSedman Thank you SO much! Your answer is fantastic and I learned an incredible amount from reading through it.  I love that you included the blender files, animations, and thorough description.  Your work is absolutely wonderful and I greatly appreciate it!

An alternative solution is to use a Refraction shader. Since this does not require changes to the geometry of the original "image" it can be very easily animated.

The key is to be able to control the bending of each ray hitting a surface (the zoom window) into a particular direction, irrespective of the incoming angle of the ray. This allows the camera rays to be directed towards a specific area of the distant image to visually 'lift' a section of the image closer to the camera (similar to Paul Gonet's excellent answer but without actually changing the geometry).
Normally the Refraction shader will bend the incoming ray based on the refractive index and the incoming light ray path. For rays 'entering' a denser material, the rays will typically bend towards the surface normal. For rays 'leaving' a denser material the rays will bend away from the surface normal - with the amount of bending based on the angle of the incoming ray (so rays along the Normal will not be bent but those at steeper angles will be progressively more bent).
A surface with an infinite refractive index would bend all incoming rays so that they exit along the surface normal. Similarly, a surface with a refractive index of zero will bend all 'outgoing' rays along the surface normal. Since we can control the direction of the surface normal we can use this to control the precise direction of any rays passing through the surface. Note that we can't actually enter a refractive index of infinity (the node doesn't allow it), but the same effect is achieved by flipping the normal (so rays hit the surface from the "back" and use an IOR of zero.
To start with, create a plane to act as the 'start' of the pipe (the 'zoom window'). Set its dimensions as desired and duplicate it (Shift-D) to create an exact copy to be the 'end'. Create the following material and assign it to the 'end' plane - this will be used to highlight the area of the image that is currently being zoomed :

Note that the material mixes between a pair of transparent shaders based on the Ray Depth, each with different colours. The plain white transparency is to ensure the material is invisible when viewed through the zoom window (we don't want that tinted), whereas the coloured transparency highlights the section of the original image being shown in the zoom window.
Create the following material and assign it to the 'start' plane :

Note the Refraction shader with IOR set to 0.000. Flip the normal of the plane (or rotate it around the X or Y axis by 180 degrees) so that the camera sees the back face of the plane. To direct the rays in a particular direction we now only need to feed the desired direction vector into the Normal of the Refraction shader. The nodes on the left-hand side of the material achieve this by calculating the difference in location (in world space) between the 'start' plane (the lower Texture Coordinate node) and the 'end' plane (the upper Texture Coordinate node - note the use of the Object field to indicate that the coordinate should be in relation to the 'end' plane).
The 'zoom lines' are added by way of a Cube that is 'hooked' at one end to the 'start' plane and the other end to the 'end' plane - so that it stretches between the two. I removed the top and bottom faces to avoid z-fighting with the start and end of the "light pipe", then selected each set of vertices in Edit mode and selected 'Hook to new object' - this creates a new empty that can be tied to each of the 'start' and 'end' planes using parenting or a Copy Location constraint. The cube is shaded with a material to hightlight the edges and fade out towards the 'end' :

Final result :

From here it's fairly simple to add decoration around the zoom window and/or change the appearance of the 'zoom lines' cube for the desired effect.
Blend file attached
One drawback of this is that the 'target' area (the shaded part of the target image) must be close to the surface of the flat image - otherwise the direction of the light path can affect the area visible in the zoom window. This can be be best illustrated with a diagram :

If the "light pipe" does not end close to the surface then the rays will hit a region to the side of the target - a second refraction surface can be used to 'correct' the path of the rays so that they are directed towards the surface.

The only issue remaining is that the rays emanating from the end of the 'pipe' are parallel. This works fine where the target is a simple plane but will lose any sense of perspective if the target is a more complicated scene. To fix this we can adjust the refraction plane used for the 'end' of the pipe to act like a lens. Adjusting the focal length of the 'lens' will affect the depth of the perspective.

The material for this is as follows :

(Edit : strictly speaking the Vector Transform at the bottom centre of the above image should be set to Normal mode so as to produce a correct Normal!)
Note that the 'lens' is an approximation since it is a plane rather than an actual curved surface (and the calculation is greatly simplified) - objects close to the lens can become distorted. Adjusting the 'Z' coordinate of the Combine XYZ node will adjust the focal length.

I like how creative people can be under bounty

This is very clever, I really like the update too.

Wow, amazing solution that deserves a bounty! Checked your profile lately btw. Man, you're a true nodes magican.

Thanks @PaulGonet :-). I must admit to having been inspired to the idea by your own answer -  to bring the 'image' off the "page".

Bending light like that reminds me of the Esper Photo Analysis scene in Blade Runner.

@3pointedit Haha I had the same thoughts. BTW Blade Runner is the best movie in history- a real masterpiece IMO.

Yes, yes it is. And Deckard is definitely a replicant.

I love that movie - one of my favourites of all time. Must watch it again soon. Perhaps the sequel will answer that one :-)

I know I'm not meant to leave comments like this.. but..this answer is a thing of deep beauty.

You may do it using the shape keys and a freestyle rendering engine, it demands some experimenting though.

Add a plane and texture it with your image (or use Images as Planes add on to do it). Add a camera. Subdivide a plane a few times with W.

Duplicate the plane with Shift+D, grab it with G and place it below the original one with a very small distance value (0.0001 e.g.). This'll allow you to prevent a Z-fighting issue and be helpul in the further steps.

Select the part/face you want to zoom in in Edit Mode, add a shape key (in Object Mode), extrude a face (E), then scale it a bit (S).

Select the extruded faces and give it a transparent material.

Go to Render header and check the Freestyle checkbox there.

Go to Render Layers header and set the color of the extruded edges in Freestyle Line Style panel.

Change the bookmark to Thickness and set the overall thickness of the line. Add a Distance Modifier. From now it's the matter of experimenting with the settings. I recommend you to click the Fill Range by Selection button first, then decrease the Range Min to 0.000 and adjust the Range Max finally. Value Min should stay at 0.000, so the freestyle won't take the edges of a plane into account. The bigger the value of Value Max the thicker the extruded edges will be. As I said before it's all the matter of preferences- you have to experiment with it.

FINAL NOTES: The first .gif uses a non-shadeless material so the shadows are visible for some amount of time. Use a shadeless material to make it look better.
I tried using the UV Project modifier to make it work for the animation, but I guess it's not working well in this case. I wanted to share the results with you though, maybe you'll use this idea somehow...

You've asked an interesting question. I'll try to update my answer if I find new solutions in future.

Heres a solution that uses a linked scene with a second camera for the closeup. This allows you to modify the closeup shot if required, to avoid occlusions from geometry or even alter the lighting of the close angle.

The master Scene contains the master geometry and close up camera. You can alter the camera and lighting (even animate the angle) while previewing in the active compositor.

The alternate Linked Scene has a duplicate of the master scene that repeats all (inked) changes and contains the wide camera angle. This scene also holds a UV unwrapped plane that has constraints to orient it toward the camera.


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How can I get a hard edge after using Subdivision without unnecessary edge loops?
I'm modeling this chair and there are parts with a hard edge that I'm unable to recreate after using subdivision surface. Is there any way to do it instead of creating unnecessary edge loops?
File: Chair file

I would do it the classical way, with support edge loops. I wouldn't call them unnecessary edge loops as they are necessary to sharpen the edges:

But first you need to delete this edge that is overlapping other ones:

In edit mode select the edge and use mean crease in the properties panel. A setting of nearly 1 or 1 will fix the edge straight without adding geometry


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My Material Viewport shading goes black
So this has been going for a while now and its becoming a real problem for me. Heres whats happening.
Material Preview:

Rendered Preview:

Solid Preview:

hello, how does your Viewport Shading panel look like?

ShaderPanel


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How to add Area lights to gltf?
I want to export my scene as gltf from blender and use it in my web app with three.js.
I checked "Include punctual lights" when exporting but I read that this only exports Point/Spot/Directional lights.
What about Area lights ? How do I achieve the effect of Area light in my web 3D scene ?

As of April 2021, area lights are only a proposal for the glTF format. Unless and until they become part of the format, you'd need to recreate the lights in three.js.
One workaround would be to put metadata about the lights onto empties in Blender, as Custom Properties. The custom properties can be exported with glTF "extras", and become available to three.js as object.userData, which you can use to construct new objects at runtime.


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I cant get my scene to render in its entirety it only shows a png image from the scenes files
When ever I try to render out the scene It seems to render out the png sequence rather then the scene in its entirety.
The first image is the scene I'm, currently trying to render
Second one is the result

And the rendered result

Is there anything in the VSE?

provide more screenshots and more explanation or even better: provide your blend file

as Hiserod suggests, there's probably something in the VSE, in that case in the Output panel > Output > Post ¨Processing you need to disable the Sequencer option

Thanks you guys so much!! It I had an mp4 file in the VSE, after removing it I was able to render without issue!!


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What is the FPS speed that the animation timeline runs at by default? Blender 2.9
I'm currently learning to animate 3D to export for videogames but I'm having trouble with identifying the FPS speed.
When I press PLAY, at which speed does the animation play in the timeline? Is there any way to customize it? I don't really want it to be in 24FPS if I want to export it at 60FPS or whatever speed suits the project.
I've looked in the timeline, dopesheet, render tab and can't find anything regarding the timeline's FPS
Thanks!

It's in the render output settings. You can also change the start/end point, the step interval and even re-map the time if you like:


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Use point index in geometry node distribution
I'm playing with geometry nodes here and I'm trying to create a way to kinda script the position of each point... for that i'm thinking of creating an attribute that would work as index, something that I could use later for a function based distribution...
As a simple example: I would like to take every point and add its index to its x position, while setting the y and z position to 0, just to create a straight line.
Is there any way I could do something like that ?

Hello, at the moment it's not possible, you can kind of emulate that if your input geometry is regularly spaced in 3D space, using their coordinates to assign an incremented index, but the actual vertex indices is not exposed. I'm sure it will be in a future version though

Have you tried this again using Blender 3.0 geometry nodes? Is this what you're looking for. It has problems with the edge connectivity in the resulting geometry, but might be a good starting point.

In the following way you can solve it starting from version 3.0:

The X-position is simply added to the index with the math node Add, packed into a new vector and with Set Position the individual points are repositioned accordingly.


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How to correct colours of image texture
I'm trying to use satellite imagery as an image texture for a 3D map. For some reason, the lakes are coming out grey. I'm trying to get them to look as close as possible to the source image.

In QGIS they are almost black:

I have tried:

using RGB colour ramp to adjust the colours. I can change the shade of the grey but nothing more
using Bright/Contrast. Again, can change the shade a bit but not fix it
Changing the colour of the illumination (sun) to something more yellow. This one gets the closest but I still can't get it looking like what I see in QGIS.

Any suggestions for what might be causing this/things to try?

Your material is reflective, this makes the colors look different of course, especially when the environment is just the default grey world as I suspect. Also the water just reflecting the plain grey "sky" back won't help with the appearance. Apart from that, if you didn't change the Color Management settings they are by default set to View Transform > Filmic, which already makes the colors seem a bit more washed out, and the Look is "None" by default, you should change that to "Medium High Contrast" or "High Contrast".

Thank you! That's got it looking much better. I'll still have to play around more to get it right but this is definitely working.

For the dark lakes: usually water is very mirror-like reflective when viewed from a shallow angle but less reflective when viewed perpendicular to its surface, like most objects (the keyword here is "Fresnel"). So when viewing them from above it's mostly the deep water getting less light which makes them appear dark.


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Why is there uneven smooth shading?
When creating this mug, some crazy shadows appear when connecting the mug's handle to the actual cup. Auto smooth with normals does not fix this.

Blend File:

One problem I can see from your image is that the handle has a higher level of subdivision than the cup - the result is the faces on the cup right next to where the handle joins are N-gon's (faces with more than 4 vertices). You can see there are 3 vetrs on one edge not connected to anything.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6425/keep-sharp-edges-when-using-subdivision-surface https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/734/how-to-smooth-shade-an-object-while-retaining-hard-edges/

there are 2 problems here: ngons and an angle of 90° that makes the shade smooth looks bad, get rid of your ngons (delete some edge loops) and give your object a Subdivision Surface modifier

Big changes in surface angle will cause this.
I would add a little more loops in these areas:


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How can I get my UV islands to not be scattered into so many pieces regardless of the unwrap method?
Please see the attached image. It becomes extremely difficult to paint textures having to deal with so many tiny islands. How can I fix this?

When I'm texture painting there is a lot of pixelation, so I'm not sure if this small-island-issue is the core cause of that. Please see the attached image:

Blend File:

(all of the images are referencing the shape titled "balcony")

Well, if you set the margin so high that there is so much between each of them, it is hard to get a lot of islands in the limited area of a UV map...  and maybe you want to set the interpolation mode in the Image Texture node to Closest instead of Linear so that the texture does not get blurred (below the image name in the node).

It's because of the terrible topology of your model which obviously wasn't created in Blender. You can improve matters slightly if you select All in Edit mode then use Mesh > Clean Up > Limited Dissolve, but you really need to clean it up manually, preferably by modelling it from scratch in Blender, then mark seams on the object and Unwrap it again. As @GordonBrinkmann says, the Island margin is set ridiculously high too! Unwrapping again with your settings also brings up a brief warning saying "Unwrap failed to solve 1 of 1 island(s) edge seams may need to be added".

@JohnEason Thanks for the input. I recently started modeling in Nomad (an app for the iPad) and I'd unwrap in Blender. I'm not sure if I should stick with this app though- what makes you say the topology of this model is terrible? Again, I'm new to modeling so I don't know a lot about these sorts of things.

It's a bit difficult to explain simply and here is not really the place, but if you look at the object close up in Edit mode, you'll see that the whole object is made up of triangles and lots of them appear to have their vertices in the middle of an edge. Normally you would model an object like that with all the faces as rectangles which makes the UV unwrapping much more straightforward. You should really follow one of the many online Blender tutorials to see how it should be done.


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Tree penetrating through terrain (geometry node)
I am trying out geometry nodes to populate trees on my terrain, but the trees are penetrating through the terrain. I've been searching for a couple of days on why this is happening, but I can't seem to get the answer.
Please advise on how to fix this.

Where is the origin located on the base tree mesh? Is it in the center? Try moving it to the base of the tree.

or add a transform node between the object info and the instance on points node, and tweak the translation part

The origin was located at the center of the mesh, moving the origin to the base of the tree did the trick :) can't believe it was this easy. Thank you guys so much!

Posting this in any case people don't know how to move the origin to the base of a mesh
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/207007/how-can-you-move-the-origin-at-the-base-of-object


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How can I add connection points along the length of bones?
I've been working on an armature which aims to provide realistic motion with ZERO SHAPEKEYS, and Through a combination of constraints and drivers I have come pretty close in most positions, but the more I refine those positions, the worse others become.
Just today I struck on the possibility of making a script that could alter a bone to include additional attachment points along the length of it, which I would then use for simulated 'muscle' and 'tendon' control bones, thus saving me the hassle of writing a script for each one and using dozens of Stretch-To constraints.
Trouble is I have no idea where to start. I'm reading through the API for constraints and values, and bendybones, but there's a lot in there that I don't understand. So any insights on the inner workings of the Armature system would be appreciated and help me figure out what I really need to look for.


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What's the difference between official builds and GraphicAll builds?
I want to get a lot of performance in rendering, but I also want stability and useful features that can be included in Blender builds.
GraphicAll builds seem to be geared towards a more specific set of features people might want, and they may include extra CUDA kernels (Blender reports that my card is 1.1, but the specifications don't say anything about it).
Should I stick to official builds from the Blender Foundation, or are GraphicAll builds more suited towards my needs? What's the difference, anyway?

I think GraphicALL builds often have extra patches or CUDA kernels not in master. Note that as of blender 2.7, only GPU's with a cuda compute ranking of 2.0 or greater are officially supported, but it is possible to get older GPUs working.

@gandalf3 I'm not seeing a solution there, but I've tried lots of GraphicAll builds and no luck. Thanks anyway.

You need to compile blender with the sm_13 kernel. However, It may not be worth the effort, depending on your GPU (it could be slower than your CPU, and many features are not supported on older GPUs).

@gandalf3 Found some supported builds at http://www.graphicall.org/bat3a and my GPU was 3x faster than my CPU in viewport renders. Don't know why people (not you specifically) think that older means slower 99% of the time.


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Dark spots at intersection of volumetric spotlights
I have a bunch of volumetric spotlights in my scene. These are Spot Lamps parented to cones with a Principled Volume material. When several of these lights shine at the same spot or when one light shines through the cone of another, I get these artifacts that flicker from frame to frame. It almost looks as if the lights are interfering with one another. What does this mean? My memory usage is way below capacity.

So, I figured out what was causing the issue. It was in fact the intersection of multiple volumetric objects. While I thought at first that using haze only on the actual spotlights would be more render-economical, turns out it creates issues and takes longer to render than if the entire scene is filled with a fog cube.


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Missing vertices while mesh visible, but still able to select them and edit
Don't know what I hit, but I know it is not "H" or Tab. I'm still in Edit mode and the mesh is still visible and I can select a general area and it will select the vertex of that area to be edited. Tried the 1, 2, and 3 keys, but none show on screen for me to select. Can anyone Explain this

Hello, could you please show a screenshot?

Shift + Alt + Z toggles Overlays, which includes the wireframe display in edit mode. There's a button for it in the top right of your viewport.