text:
Rigging Blender
I've recently started getting into rigging, and I aim to achieve realistic deformations, inspired by Chris Jones. Right now, all my practice is focused on rigging a hand with realistic deformation. I've also sculpted a hand and added veins, but I'm not entirely satisfied with the result. Unfortunately, there isn't much information available about rigging at this level.
I'm adding morphs and linking them to drivers. I was thinking about this and came to the conclusion that veins probably don't need to be sculpted and rigged. It seems like they should be baked and then extruded onto the texture using a Normal map. Could you advise me on how to realistically represent veins?
Additionally, I’m restricting finger movement using IK: when the finger is extended, it can rotate along the X and Z axes, but when it curls into a fist, I use a driver to limit movement along the X axis. When the IK targets the fist position, only Z-axis movement remains, as I aim for maximum deformation. How often do high-level riggers use this approach
I’m also using a multiresolution modifier to enhance the model’s quality, but I feel like this might not be the right approach as it unnecessarily increases the mesh load. I’m considering optimizing this process right away.
If you have experience in detailing, could you help me figure out the best approach? I’d really appreciate it if you could share your expertise. Thank you!

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

Here is some info: https://studio.blender.org/training/realistic-human-research/


text:
Dashed Red Noodle after Compare Node
As can be seen from the attached image, I'm getting a red noodle immediately after using a Compare node.  This isn't entirely surprising, as I'm obviously trying to connect a diamond with a circle at that spot.  However, as can be seen, I'm using a Sample Index immediately prior to that, which I thought was the way to obtain the specific attribute value that I need to use in the Compare node.  As such, I'm now very confused about what's actually going on here and what I need to do to fix it.  So, any suggestions?  I'm using v3.4.
Thanks in advance.

I think you want to plug a single value node in the Sample Index's Index input

I can see that this would make the red noodle go away, but I don't think the nodes, as a whole, would work as intended then.  I want to evaluate an attribute on each of the point features, to decide whether they're going to be output or not.  So, I surely need the index for that?  Maybe the Switch node isn't as versatile as I need it to be.  I'm not sure what the alternative to that is, though.  It's hard to know what to look for.

As long as you feed the node Sample Index with a field, you will always get a red line. Switch requires a single value for a geometry. You can force this by feeding the Sample Index node with a single value at the Index input. Read more here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/274557

It depends on what the switch node is linked to. You may want to populate a boolean field with True / False and use that as a selection mask on a instance on points node for instance ?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Joining objects in v4.0 - temp_override?
In one of my scripts, which worked fine before v4.0, I join several objects together.  The original code segment looked like this:
for thisObjectType in obs:
    ctx = bpy.context.copy()
    thisObjList = obs[thisObjectType]
    ctx['active_object'] = thisObjList[0]
    ctx['selected_editable_objects'] = thisObjList
    bpy.ops.object.join(ctx)

However, since v4.0, the code now fails with a "ValueError: 1-2 args execution context is supported", which I believe relates to the subsequent update regarding bpy.context.temp_override().  As such, in line with what I've understood from the documentation, I've now tried changing that last line to:
with bpy.context.temp_override(**ctx):
    bpy.ops.object.join()

However, it now fails with "TypeError: Area not found in screen" at the same point in the code, which seems to suggest that it's somehow looking in the wrong place.  If that's the case, I don't really understand what it's now expecting instead.  So, does anyone have any suggestions for a solution?
Regards,
Guy Heathcote

Not to worry, I think I've now solved it.   Along with the code change I showed in my original post, the line 'ctx = bpy.context.copy()' also seemingly needs to be changed to 'ctx = bpy.context.scene.copy()'.
I don't really understand why this is now additionally required...I was just trying some random options until something worked.

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


text:
Why won't my model unwrap in blender 2.9?

My mesh won't unwrap. It doesn't matter what unwrap option I choose.

Any more details about how you actually tried it? Did you just press U and Unwrap? or Smart UV unwrap? I don't see any seams on your object. Can you share more info?

On the left you've opened the Image Editor, not the UV Editor. As far as I know, in the Image Editor, you'll only see your UV if you switch it to the Paint mode, not View mode:


text:
How can I connect these dots?
First of all , I'm very new to Blender . I'm making some changes on a blend. I want them connect to each other like magnet . How can I connect these two dots without any gaps between them like the those next to it ?

There are multiple ways to do it, one the easiest is:

in edit mode, select the 2 dots (called vertex in 3d)
(you need to be in vertex select mode: press 1 to be sure to be in
this mode)
press F3 (to search for a command) and write "merge"
choose this option:  Mesh > Merge (M) >  At center

If you want to skip the F3 thing, you can select the 2 dots and press M and then select the option you prefer (at center should be the best in your scenario).

You can activate the Snap option (or press Ctrl when you move your vertex) in Vertex mode, and activate also the Auto Merge option:

Or select your vertices and M > Merge, and choose the option your want:

Alt-M ? on my blender it's just M

I never know, the weird thing is that I sometimes here people say M but in my Preferences it seems to be Alt M... I'm going to edit though...

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/editing/mesh/merge.html

So I may have changed the shortcut, but why don't I have the Reset arrow in my Preferences? https://zupimages.net/up/21/30/ouhi.jpg

this is my setting --> https://pasteboard.co/KdVDa1N.png,
if i change it adding the ALT, this is the ui --> https://pasteboard.co/KdVDz5g.png

Yes, strange, I think that for all the custom shortcuts that I've created I also have the Restore button, so what's happening here? I've already noticed that people use M

It's just M on my Mac

ok, if anyone knows how this is possible that I don't have a Restore button, I'm interested

@moonboots open your own questions :) (maybe it's just a version problem of your blender or customization you don't know)

Ok I will....  ;)


text:
How to assign texture from the "texture properties" tab (Eevee)?
How can I assign a texture from the "Texture properties" tab to a material? This used to be simple in 2.79 but now all my textures are unlinked and I don't know how to assign them again. Thank you :)

hello, maybe this answer will help (basically you can't use these textures, you need to use the texture nodes that are available in the Shader Editor): https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/222519/i-dont-know-when-i-should-use-texture-properties-tab

So there is no longer a way to use a material colour and then modify it by using a texture?

you have texture nodes available in the Shader Editor: Shift A > Texture > Noise Texture for example, but they are not the same as the textures in the Texture tab (that are used for the Displace modifier for example)


text:
Blender states I'm "Out of memory" when trying to render, but I have tons of unused memory?
I'm having a recurring problem where Blender is refusing to render an image, stating I am out of memory, when I clearly have a huge amount of excess memory available. I'm attempting to render in cycles, optix, no denoising.
The scene is about 1.8 million polies, and a handful of 4k textures (less than 10). In the viewport it states it's using 4 GB of memory, and 6 GB of VRAM. While this sounds like a lot, I am running an RTX 3090 (24GB VRAM) and have 48 GB of system RAM. Is this a matter of Blender not supporting the card, or something else? I rendered much more complex scenes before getting the 3090 with zero issues.

I should also add that "peak" memory at fail, when trying to render, always says about 3800 MB. Nothing else significant is running on the PC.

Have you monitored the GPU memory to see if that's the culprit?

I have monitored while trying to render, and the GPU ram maxes out at about 9-10 GB during the render (which leaves another 14). And load maxes out at about 30%

Did you set a memory limit for textures or something like that?

No, I haven't changed any memory settings from default, is there somewhere I can raise that limit?

Does this answer your question? Why is Blender just using 54% of my CPU when rendering in cycles?

This may be a duplicate, but I don't believe that question is the one.


text:
Is it possible to get orthographic effect for 1 mesh while whole scene is in perspective mode?
I want to be able to make 1 or several meshes at once use the effect of being orthographic in perspective view. For example, a cube looks orthographicaly flat or even while other cubes can look as if they are in perspective. I have not found any way as blender is just basic perspective or orthographic view for the whole scene. Any means, even using nodes of some kind to create this effect would be nice. Another point would be to have an intensity driver and you can blend or morph the mesh invidually between a perspective and orthographic view effect. Also if this is to be done, would the mesh having this effect act weirdly if it is a child or the parent of another mesh or if it has shape keys applied to it. Again, I don't think this effect is in blender natively, which is why I want to ask is there a way to fake it (either with nodes or some code, but I do not know coding as of the moment).

Maybe this is useful? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/111133/assign-camera-to-renderlayer

Thank you! This is a start. So, a way to do it is to create separate scenes and blend them in the compositer. I also wanted an intensity/ morphing driver between a mesh being orthographic and in perspective. I'm not sure how to go about that....

Not sure if that's possible. Afaik see, there is no option to set a custom projection matrix of a camera.

How about some sort of morphing node that mimic the effect while in perspective view, sort of warping the mesh to fake that orthographic look. I recon there would be some math involved, especially to make it look orthographic no matter the camera angle....

Had the same thought. Have a look at Shape Keys https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/shape_keys/introduction.html#workflow which let you morph meshes. Given the base shape key for perspective view, you would need to calculate the vertices' orthographic positions from the current camera view and save that in a relative shape key. But well, i think this will be tough.

Thank you, I will look into it. It does look like a lot of work as you said.

I found this article on wiki. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_projection
I don’t  know how to set the camera like this in blender though…..If I could get the effect like the gif shown with the cube and do the separate scenes thing, this problem would be solved.

That's nice! It would be way simpler than calculating fake orthographic morph vertices.

Yes, much more simple. But can blender to the infinity focal length with zero degree angle (whatever that is)?

I crafted an answer, hope it helps. And well, most programs don't like real infinities due to numerical limits but getting close should be enough.

To combine orthographic and perspective shots, see here Assign camera to renderlayer.
For the part asking for an morph between perspective and orthographic view, you can animate some properties based on your finding from your comments. Sorry for the lazy screenshot, but it should show all necessary things. The values are handmade until it looked convincing, surely one can derive formulas for this. You need to animate (from red to green):

the Focal length of the camera (to fake infinite focal length)
the camera's position (to fake infinite distance)
the near (Clip Start) and far (End) plane of the camera's frustum (to keep the z-fighting problems away)

The above setup gives me this result, after frame 50 i can see barely any differences anymore:

Thank you so much for this, it's exactly what I am looking for.

@taiyo is this basically the dolly zoom effect?

@HarryMcKenzie yea, look like it! It didn't realize that :)

I've actually heard and seen it used in film, but the effect was different looking than this. Maybe this is just a more extreme version.


text:
How to select and separate faces on a plane facing 1 direction in geometry nodes?
I have a plane facing upward z direction. I want to separate the faces on the plane that are sitting on the edge of the plane but also have edges facing the —y direction (I say —y because if you were to plot the edges on a 2D grid, the faces I want to separate would look like they are facing the —y direction). I was thinking of finding a way to rearrange the indices so the lowest values are the faces I want to separate, but the number of indices changes with every seed, so I can't do that.

The easiest way I thought was to use raycast:

For each edge position (center of the edge)
Casts a ray going negative Y
Checks if this ray hits a volumetric version of the mesh
If it doesn't hit, it means it's a free edge facing Y down

A few explanations:

The ray tries to hit an extruded geometry because it needs a volume to hit
The extruded geometry is scaled in X just a little, to avoid floating point imprecision and make sure that the vertical edges will hit something
The extruded geometry is moved down by half its height, also to avoid floating point imprecision and make sure that no ray skips below or above the geometry (considering Z = 0 for the original mesh)
The source position of the ray is offset a little down on Y, we don't want the ray from an edge to hit the edge itself
The result of the selection must be used on a node that works on "face" domain (set your "separate geometry" to face, the "set material" used in this example is also on face domain)
The logic behind the domains:

The selection used on a "face" domain is asking for (as you can see in the last node) "evaluate on edge domain".
This means the "face" result will be an interpolation of the "edge results". So, the raycast is happening "from edge positions", if it's a free edge, edge value is 1
When the edge results are interpolated to face, an average of the edge results is taken for the face, if the average is greater than 0 (at least one edge is free), selection is true.

Possible improvements:

Instead of scaling the volume in X, you could filter out the vertical edges and use only horizontal edges
If the "evaluate on domain" gets weird during these improvements, the edge values could be stored by a "store named attribute" on edge domain (this would make the understanding easier) and use the attribute instead

Thank you, it worked really well. All I had to do was change the scale (on scale elements) to a value of 1.201 so only the -y faces are completely selected. There is a lot to learn about raycasting and using domains, as i've only used raycast once before.

What do you mean by -y faces? Aren't all faces +z? That scale value will create failures in some cases.

I think I mispoke. It's the faces you have selected or the ones I circled in the question (I originally said if I were to put the mesh on a 2d graph (like in plotting points math graphs), the edges of the faces I want to select would look the closest to -y). So I don't mean it literally (all of the faces are pointing to Z in 3d, so that was a way I thought to differenciate the faces I wanted).


text:
Corkscrew shape with a rectangle
Trying to create a corkscrew shape but with a rectangle instead of circular bevel shape. Kind of like a Rectangular section cylindrical helical compression spring or this cross-section. I found this great corkscrew tutorial, but using a rectangle bevel object results in it being tilted by 45 degrees. I manually corrected it with the Tilt tool, but it looks like below. Here is a video example of the problem. This Blender StackExchange post seems like a promising solution, but has no thickness.
I want to have a spiral with the short rectangle edge leading towards the tip.

assuming you want this:

you can use geometry nodes for that. It has a very simple node setup:

The big advantage of the procedural geometry nodes solution is, that you can change everything "afterwards" to your needs, because it is procedural.

For the simplest version, I guess we shouldn't forget the good ol' Screw modifier:

.. if only to point up how much more Geometry Nodes offers, now.

Folks do all kinds of spectacular and complicated stuff with GN. But IMO it shines, in simpler modelling tasks.

+1 niiiiiice!!!

Or you just use both: Geometry Nodes in the style of the good old Screw Modifier https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/272351/145249

@quellenform  Should have linked out! I'd forgotten all about that Sooo thorough.. great piece of work.

In Edit -> Preferences, enable "Add Curve: Extra Objects" then go to "Add-> Curve -> Curve Spirals -> Archemedian. Give it your desired specifications. The downside to this answer is that once the spiral is added, there's no going back to alter it. You would have to start over for the spiral editing.

Next, add a plane mesh and convert it to a curve. I renamed the plane as "Rectangle". Set this rectangle as the spirals bevel object. I like to fill in the caps

Once this is done, maybe move the rectangle off to the side in object mode. Altering this rectangle in edit mode (scale/rotation) should give you freedom to make your corkskrew how you want. Scaling can be done in object mode too.

By "short rectangle leading towards the tip" and because in your provided image, there is shrinkage towards the tip, it seems you may also want a taper. To add a taper, you can add a bezier curve as the taper object of the spiral. Play with the shape of the bezier curve in edit mode, generally higher towards one end and lower towards the other. I also set the "Taper Radius" to "Add"

Thanks, this is what I have been trying to fix. Your last image shows the issue with this technic. The bottom spiral's bottom edge is parallel to the "ground" but once it spirals once higher up it is no longer parallel.

@BrooksB With the bottom edge fixed in place, does scaling the height of the spiral fix this for you? That is one way to make the top edge parallel. If you need the height to be fixed, I think if the bevel itself is shaped kind of like a drill bit, this can also rotate the top edge without affecting the height of the spiral


text:
Custom hair objects
Hello i create to custom hair object. But custom strand doesn't affected root object color. How can i do that?

i want to blend custom object color and hair base color.

Dont look shape orientation. i need to mix color.

object random > color ramp works. But i need base object exact color. (Light blue area, light blue multiplied object, dark blue area dark blue multiplied object)
https://i.ibb.co/TRkCLgK/exact-color.jpg

Might this help? https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/38211/35559

Thank you robin. This is very usefull. i use this setup.


text:
move transform gizmo to selected vertex in edit mode
I am having the hardest time just moving one vertex.
The transform gizmo is where the cursor is not the vertex I want to move.
Please help me make it so the gizmo is at the selected point.
Thank you,
J

If you hit Shift + S in Edit Mode, you can "snap (the crosshairs 3D) cursor to selected". Then change the center of your rotation to "3D Cursor" using the little figure eight-like icon near the magnet towards the top of your screen. (You can also reach "snap cursor" via Object > Snap > "Cursor to Selected" in Object Mode.) If that doesn't put the gizmo in the middle of all your selected vertices, then you can try Object > Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor in Object Mode.
Incidentally, it looks like you have a mass of vertices selected. Try zooming in really close to select just one vertex.

Select Individual origins in the list here, this will make the gizmo show at your selected vertex.

You might have a vertex off screen and selected. Try ALT+A to deselect everything then select a vertex to see if the gizmo goes where you want.
If the yellow dot is still yellow after pressing ALT+A it's the origin not a vertex.


text:
Audio missing after rendering video
Every time I render my video's, the audio goes missing. I don't hear any audio during editing or post render. I've put Audio Codec to 'ACC' or 'MP3', so I don't understand why this is an issue.
Thanks.

if you don't hear audio during editing you won't hear it after render either. could your audio strips be hidden? (alt-H to unhide)

I pressed alt-H, although I'm not sure what I'm meant to be looking for. Thanks.

I'm under 'compositing' to remove green screen. This may be the reason why I can't hear audio?

oh okay, well I only know how to add audio to the video sequencer (VSE). Not sure how to, or even if you can, add audio to the compositor tbh

Okay, I'll keep looking - thanks a lot for your help:D

I was having the same problem. The solution comes from Richard Antalik,developer.blender org
'Enable Sequencer in Output Properties > Post Processing panel.'
In case you are not familiar with things. (in Blender 3.0 at least) The Output Properties (tab) is where you define the size of your output, where to output your file to, encoding for video and audio, etc. You will also find in the same tab the Post Processing panel with compositing and sequencer check boxes. Put a Check on the sequencer
Good luck.


text:
How do I render video with rotoscope mask?
When rendering my video, the background image with rotoscope doesn't show. What am I doing wrong?
What I'm trying to achieve:

How it renders (imagine no mask lines):

and I notice that also, the mask lines keep shifting. Is there a way of locking them in place?

I can see you're coming to grips with this. As for your mask changing shape, even slightly, that may be because the mask's vertices are being stored as shapekeys which are relative to each other. Adjust one and those following it in the database can be affected also. I'd wager it to be why professionals recommend using a series of smaller masks - less vertices to worry about each time. My personal preference is to go for non-shapekeyed masks Their vertices are like any other object's - stay locked unless edited. They don't need keyframing either.

Using more than one mask will give you a more flexible way to deal with moving parts. Note also that some parts of the mask need to be sharp but others need feathering (see the bottom of the right arm, where motion blur will create problems if treated as a sharp shape). As for the hair... that is the nightmare for every special effects maker... as there is no one-size-fits-all kind of solution.

The Viewer and  Composite nodes are different outputs, The Composite node is the one that is rendered out and saved to a file. The viewer is just to preview the result. Connect the composite so that it follows the same node path as the viewer, otherwise the images get processed following different transformations.

Thank you, I'll try this.

The render now shows the image in the background which is what I wanted - thanks a lot for that! Although some parts have the image coming through. I made sure to check the masking and it was fine. Not sure why it is inconsistent.

you need to create holes in the mask, so that the elements between the arms and the head show the next layer.

Apologies Susu. I dropped a comment here instead of above.  Have moved it. :)

I will do. But I meant that the image sometimes show over his face. I went to masking to check if I missed any mask lines and there was nothing wrong.


text:
How to key out an object in a video?
I've keyed out the green screen in my video although I have an object in the background (circled in red) that I would like to 'key out' also. How do I achieve this? I want to add a background to the video without the furniture in the way.
I've looked at other similar questions here but I don't understand how the nodes work due to a mixture of it not being up to date with the current blender and also my lack of understanding.
--I'm using the Composition workspace.

Rotoscoping would certainly do it.
Make the alpha layered video of what you have so far lossless, then make a mask for each frame if the camera is moving, or perhaps adjust a single mask where necessary if it's not.  Blender is remarkably accurate for this sort of thing.

Further to the above...  As you only need to worry about one edge of the furniture - where it meets the other item, a single mask should be enough. If necessary, just move it to suit any frame by frame 'edge shimmer'.

Thanks so much for your help!

Glad I could help!  :)  I don't know if you've been into masking.  This link is getting a little dated now but it should give you an idea what it's about - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/117572/how-to-put-a-mask-into-3d-space/117941#117941

Well I'm trying to figure this all out. Actually, with your mention of "Rotoscoping", you've helped me with another post that I had which, I feel didn't provide me with the answer I needed to solve the issue. Rotoscoping is what I need, although the issue I have is I require (hopefully) an up-to-date step-by-step video/link for-- blender.stackexchange.com/questions/193982/how-to-use-masks-on-video-so-that-some-elements-appear-in-the-foreground-and-oth             I want to add a tracker and rotoscope on an overlay to a video. Please help if you can because this has been driving me nuts. Thanks

I'm going off to dwell on this.  Your current project would be a simple matter to achieve, but like most things in Blender, can soak up time in the process.  Tell me, is the camera in the pic above moving or stationary?

This video helped me with rotoscoping:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hppbUi2i74

please don't post links as answers, if the link changes or disappears, then the answer will make no sense. Try to make a summary of the main  ideas in the video so that the answer stands on its own. Use the video only as support, not as the core of an answer. To post links only use comments instead of answers.

How do I delete my answer? I applied the wrong answer as it was meant for a different post.


text:
How do I get the Texture/Material to be attached to the model when exporting the file as fbx?
How do I get the Texture to be attached to the object when exporting the file as fbx? I tried searching many ways on YouTube but couldn't find any solution. If anyone knows please help me. Thanks.
My file  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SQ4WrI0WVhHqKR3JvOqOIt4VZbuXi4XD/view?usp=drive_link

I use this method where some objects can have textures or materials attached to them, but the object I'm working on currently can't. When I import file fbx the result is that my object does not have a Texture
Or when I save an image, but it doesn't show the entire texture or material.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures  In any case the link you've provided requires you to grant access so the file is only available to you at the moment.

sorry I forgot, now everyone has access.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SQ4WrI0WVhHqKR3JvOqOIt4VZbuXi4XD/view?usp=drive_link

As suspected, your material contains more nodes than just the Principled BSDF shader which can't be exported from Blender. You don't say what you're importing your fbx file into, but read the "How to solve it then?" section at the bottom of the question I pointed you at to see how you can get round the problem.

How to fix it? sir

You can't "fix it" because the fbx file format simply doesn't support the use of Blender's texture nodes apart from just the Principled BSDF node on its own.  As I said in my last comment, read the "How to solve it" section at the end of https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures.


text:
How to remove triangles on this surface
Is there a way to remove the triangles on this surface?
I am new to blender and want to make some modifications to this model for 3d printing.
As a alternative modification I wanted to close the hole on this surface completely. I managed to create a new surface to close the hole, but then I wanted to extrude the new surface to fill the complete wall depth and it did not add depth to it but only moved it around.
How can I fill the hole?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/48954/eliminating-edges-connecting-islands

You can select the edges and then hit X > Dissolve Edges in Edge Select mode or in Face Select mode select the faces and press F so they get merged. However, a hole always needs to be surrounded by at least two faces - a face cannot have a hole inside in Blender, so you have to keep two edges. See this answer for more information: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/210059/is-there-any-way-to-remove-edges-causing-a-loop/210105#210105


text:
Having an Issue while exporting character with rig into gltf
I've recently delved into learning animation in Blender over the past few months. With some guidance from a friend who works in the industry, I've been able to work with a base character that's already rigged. I've become relatively comfortable working with the rig, but I've encountered an issue when attempting to export it as a glTF file. I have tried to export othe model that I made, and it works fine (mostly solid object without any armature or rig)
When I try export the rigged model, I'm confronted with a error message that starts with "Python traceback (most recent call last)" and contains the error statement "ValueError: zero-size array to reduction operation maximum which has no identity."

here is the blend file that I mentioned (I use dropbox because blend exchange only to limited to 30mb) https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2j2nf7op7e2y3xo46khad/Mpuu.blend?rlkey=9xymzi9yqrg3sgqxhwp0b801h&dl=0
I am fairly new to the scene and I have trouble to know what caused the error. should I re-rig the Character, or is there any solution I should try?
Thank you in advance

First I do have some advices for performance and avoiding other potential issues down the road:

Apply your modeling modifiers like Mirror and Solidify on your meshes. When you animate a model, you want as few things to evaluate as possible, it's slow and can lead to issues. While doing that, also probably should put your armature modifier before subdivision modifier.

Subdivision modifiers can't use your GPU when you use autosmooth, plus autosmooth is also very slow to evaluate on deforming meshes. So, I highly advise you to disable it on all your character's meshes ( RMB > Shade Smooth).

Select all your character's meshes and hit ⎈ CtrlA > Apply Scale. Uneven scale can lead to unwanted transformations and might not be supported or correctly interpreted in other softwares.

After all that, following this other answer, I removed all materials from your objects, and I was able to export. So there's probably at least one of your materials with some issue.

Hi, Thank you for the suggestion, I realize some of the texture is missing and may contribute to the export failure. thank you for the answer


text:
Texture Painting - make it look more 3D / realistic and change it's settings
I've made a ceramic plate and wanted to have "left over ketchup smears" on it. So i made the PBR for white ceramics then combined that with an image texture using a mix shader.
I then found an image of ketchup and painted on the ketchup. Still experimenting at this time but the main issue i have is that the ketchup itself looks too "painted on" and i'd quite like to bring it to life and sort of 3D.

I thought about using sculpt and inflate brush but that doesn't really look very good (at least the way i did it).
I tried to make a new mesh for the ketchup only which i could add onto the plate but then it's quite hard to get that accurate irregular shape.
I thought there should maybe be a way to create some geometry or bump based on how dark the red colour is?
Any ideas on how to change the settings of the texture paint to make it pop or indeed better ways of achiveing this look?
Many thanks

Feed the texture color into a Vector Bump or Vector Displace node? Maybe use a SeparateRGB node to get the red channel and/or a Converter Color Ramp to adjust the levels.


text:
Introduction to rigging and animating
Hopefully a very simple question.
I'm setting myself a blender challenge a month. This month I'm trying to model and animate a toy dog my children have as seen below
It's very simple with one bone for spine, a bone per leg, bone for tail and bone for neck.
I would like to animate it walking (and then other animations later) but i've found it surprisingly hard to look right and found it hard to find clear videos on the animation part of things:
Any hints on teh following would be great -

how to co-ordinate the legs moving in sync that would look like walking
how to best then get the whole body to move in time wiht the legs walking
are there ways to "short cut": e.g. if i move front right leg forward, the right front leg automatically goes back the same rate?

I'm sorry if all this seems basic or vague, but any ideas on how to easily animate would be gratefully received.
Many thanks
Richard

You'll be the one who will create coordination, you need to create some keyframes in Pose mode 2) You have 2 methods: a "static" walk cycle (like a treadmill walk) and you'll move the armature forward in Object mode, you'll need a root bone by the way, or a "dynamic" walk and the bones will move forward in Pose mode. 3) You can give a Copy Rotation constraint to a bone but I'm not sure it will work well, it's a bit like your question 1, no? Maybe you should follow some tutorials on walk animations, I think Darrin Lille and Sebastian Lague have made good ones.

Thanks - I'll have a look for those videos. surprisingly the videos i've found so far haven't been super useful.
As for animation, i didn't want to be laboriously changing angles of legs each time and dragging body etc without realising there was a simpler method. It seems like there could be a way to maybe grab spine bone and it automatically rotates legs at a set tempo/angle? e.g if i grab spine in x direction 2 metres, then i can program it to automatically do 4 leg swings?

I'm not sure that automatizing with some constraints would be the easiest way to do it, but you'll see after several tutorials that it's no so complicated, maybe the most tricky part is the 'static' walk cycle, I've made a tutorial on this but it's in french: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YTUHC2szcQ


text:
Area light rectangle can be seen in window reflection - cycles
I have little problem. My light source (area light) can be seen in window reflection
Is there any fix for it. I want to keep light, reflections and everything but without that ugly thing in window

Try increasing the Roughness of the glass material.  You have Roughness of Glass BDSF set to '0'.

There can be many formulations for glass.  I'm attaching a blend file with an alternative:

that adds roughness to the glass to soften/blur reflections

you can disable any reflection by changing the second Mix Shader to factor=0.
I left a variation on your material as "Adrian Glass Edited" that you can switch in
Although, in my opinion, glass generally is reflective of light!

This is inherent. Try using some other form of light source instead, such as emissive material or an array of point lights.

the simplest method to remove the light reflection is unchecking
the multiple importance button,

I'm not sure if unchecking multiple importance will cause other problems,
but in my experience, it never happens.


text:
Inset Faces Giving Weird Results
When I select the front face on this object and use the Inset Faces features, I get very weird results in the corners (see second image)

Things I have tried:

Applying all transforms
Merging vertices by distance
Recalculating normals
Manually checking for any weird/duplicate vertices around the areas that are causing problems

Nothing seems to help, but as I'm very new to Blender I assume I'm just doing something wrong (although from googling it and following other tutorials I can't see what). Any suggestions?
Thanks

hello, maybe share your file so that we can give a try? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

all the edges go in in their direction so as you can see they all go in the right direction, if you do not want this do E and then right click and then while the face is still selected Resize it with S and that will do the trick usually.
Side note, if you are using clipping on your mirror node it will not inset normally.

oh ok thanks, that seems a lot better. I guess I misunderstood what the inset faces option is meant to do (and now I don't really see the point of it existing if this other method works better)

it has it's uses

I solved it by turning of the Outset in the Inset options, which you can do by pressing O while insetting a face.
You can see if it's toggled on or off by looking at the top of your screen, where originally your Orientation and Drag happens to be.


text:
Blender 2D move the view
I try to find shortcout to moving view in my 2D project. Actualy I use virtual button on interface,
and i tried use shift+MMB but it doesnt works. Where in preferences can I select this shortcut? In 2D animation there is no move the view options

Should be the same for all views. Under Preferences > Keymaps > Name search, type 'image.view_pan' (without the quotes).

In the keymap edition, it's called Pan View ⇧ Shift + Middle Mouse Button is the standard shortcut. You should consider mapping middle mouse button to one of your pen tablet button.
If it doesn't work it could be that you're using a track pad. In that case, in the Blender Preferences, go to Input tab and activate Emulate 3 Button Mouse. By doing this you'll be able to use Alt + Shift Left Mouse Button to pan.
When you're using greasing pencil you're in 3d view not 2d view

adrien There's no mention of Grease pencil in the original question.


text:
Blender console when clicking on UI elements in python console
I am working on a blender addon. After working with the addon enabled in the blender window. I start seeing the following bug in the console.
RuntimeError: class CONSOLE_OT_banner, function execute: incompatible return value , , Function.result expected a set, not a NoneType
Error: Python: RuntimeError: class CONSOLE_OT_banner, function execute: incompatible return value , , Function.result expected a set, not a NoneType

The error goes away if I delete the userpref.blend file and restart blender.
Has anybody else faced this issue or have any suggestions to debug?

For more complicated issues, it will be helpful to post the code so others can point at the exact location of the problem.

Without looking at the full code I will make an educated guess. Don't forget to add return{'FINISHED'} at the bottom of your execute(self, context) function, like this:
def execute(self, context):
    # do something

    return {'FINISHED'}

When you don't specify a return value for a function, Python returns None by default, so I believe that to be the problem here. Don't forget to check out the Python templates that Blender offers in the Script Editor.

I am aware of return type and did check  my code after your post. I always return {"FINISHED"} at the end of execute function.
I am wondering what happens if my code in the execute fails. Would blender automatically return {"CANCELLED"} or other valid return value? Or I need to do error checking and return a valid value?

Well, the error above says specifically that None is being returned instead of a Set (like {'FINISHED'} OR {'CANCELLED'}. Using curly braces {} is how you define a Set in Python, so for some reason you never reach the correct return value.


text:
How do I put one shader on top of another in cycles? Mix Shader doesn't work
I have two shaders:

I need to put the second material on top of first material

use it as a mask (as factor) in a Mix Shader, if it doesn't work please share your file

how to use it as mask, sorry

could you please pack your images (File > External Data > Pack Resources) and share your file? Use https://blend-exchange.com/ or a platform like workupload

here it is

Plug the Color output of the first node group into the Factor of the Mix Shader:

Thank you! It worked


text:
How to make instances around the grid?
I want to make walls go around the grid

Here is my final node tree:
First half of the node tree creates mesh out of grid edges, then it converts mesh to curve, after that places points on curve with distance between points set to 1 meter, and finally places walls on points.
Result:

This might be even better for you: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/305435/get-perimeter-of-a-plane-geometry-nodes

Your question isn't detailed but here is my guess about the answer. I am assuming you want to put different wall shapes around the edges of your room.
You can select and duplicate the boundary around your grid, and then instance your "building blocks" or modular walls on the boundary.
Here are the steps

select and create the boundary.

If the edges have only 1 face, they will be duplicated and made into the curve.  A simple way to get walls is just to extrude that curve up, but instead we will pull the building blocks from a collection.

Calculate how the instances will be rotated.

This is important because otherwise your walls will not be at right angles.  In order to do this, capture the curve tangents of the curve you have just created from the boundary.

Instance your building blocks

You must connect the calculations to the rotate instances node.

Here is the whole tree completed.

Now you can create a grid and your walls will instanced around the boundary, randomly, as long as they are in a collection.  You can delete squares of the grid and get a different floor plan.
This is the result:

A couple answers that are related:
How to select the outer edges of a plane in Geometry Nodes?
ways to attach objects to other objects in certain places
Here is my blend file:

Hi! Thank you, but something is not working:
Images

Ok, it works now, but walls doesnt rotate and if i will use a grid node, in one of the corners there will be no instance: Image

@ThunderFound, after the mesh to curve you can use set spine cyclic node and set the resample to 2, it will close the curve, so there won't be a box missing on the corners.

Obviously, the solution I have for the rotation isn't going to work, so- that is going to take more work.

Oh my god, I made it after two days, Thank you SOOOO MUCH! FINAL IMAGE

@ThunderFound, you can add your own answer, and accept the result, it may help others.  Congratulations on solving it, I know how difficult it can be to find these solutions.


text:
Baking AO: Certain region is black
When baking AO to this piece, a certain region is black. I tried using the "select non-manifold", "merge by distance" and Recalculate options but nothing resulted. Any idea of what could possibly be causing this issue?

First of all see and show tab UV map. Which one did you use? Second, did you checked normal faces?

First of all see and show tab UV map. Sometimes we use not exactly UV map that we bake. Often when you use from Blender Kit new material, it makes new UV map named "automap". And Blender have baked selected UV map. But apply baked textures in new material you should change to selected UV map.
Second one. Chek normal faces. Probably incorrect side of normal can make some problem.


text:
how do i get this object to follow a specific bone?
I am trying to get this model to follow a specific bone on the character's hand (the "weapon" bone) and it becomes really big when I give it an object constraint.

how do I fix this? I plan on using it for animation.
https://mega.nz/file/v0dBAYAQ#6CIfjRybHtoOcapTpVaYge_V9BgqhSPiEPEjnuhHSbU
fairly new to asking pros about small problems so tell me if I need to give more info.

Your uploaded blend file doesn't have the object constraint as shown in the screen shot, so I'm not sure what you did. Try using the child of constraint for your weapon.

in the first image, look at the bottom right area to see the object constraint i added to the gun. also i cont figure out what the child of the constraint is.

just figured out what you mean by child of constraint. i had to move it around a little but it ended up working in the end. thanks

ok i was told by the person who commented that I needed to add the "child of" constraint instead of copy transforms


text:
how can i make an image texture invisible and another one visible with keyframes
I'm trying to make an image texture become invisible and another one become visible at a specific point in time for an animation. here's the thing though... I cant use a mix shader because you cant plug a mix shader into a color input (in this case principle BSDF)

blend file: https://mega.nz/file/2pUyHZ4A#nCIns33IlpGmRoMlzMoj26Gf3zuIpmoGfgVY_8Xvazo

You can do this by mixing the images with a MixRGB Node, and using a Greater Than (Math) Node in combination with the frame number provided by a Value Node with #frame written as the input. The example below switches the images at frame 50:

If you want it to switch back (as indicated in your comment), you can use the Node arrangement below which uses both a Lesser Than and a Greater Than to give further control. I think the setup below is correct, but I can't test because you didn't pack any images - if it's wrong, fixing it should only be a matter of switching input positions.

that works but since i need to make the original image reappear 1 or 2 frames after (like blinking which is something I should have included in the post). i don't see a way to make it appear right after

I added another example to my answer.

yeah sorry about that. i thought blender packed the textures. tried a bunch or rearrangements but still couldn't get it to work. so here are the textures https://mega.nz/folder/PxEBXArJ#fCcxtvQZsB_ns3t6xVInBQ

The 2 images you posted (m_eyelid_alb.0, and m_eyelid_alb.3) are identical (aside from resolution), could this be the root of your problem?

yeah it was an issue with that. so I assume to make more blinking later I would just add more math and mixRGB nodes?


text:
why does my model look like this
I don't know how to really explain this problem besides that my model looks weird in every mode besides workbench and Eevee

the final one is Eevee i just forgot to add text
here is the file download https://mega.nz/file/m81n2aYD#MFy4hopOJopsAM_tQdplgJVLKKQSLsyi-Wfvjt4Fm8Q

You wrote "my model looks weird in every mode besides workbench and Eevee" but you mean it looks weird in Eevee and material preview because there is no face, and it looks ok in Cycles and Workbench?

Hello and welcome. Please use a title that reflects the content of the question. It should be succinct, unique and identifying, and summarize what the issue is so that users can at a glance broadly understand what your post is about before opening it. Use the [edit] link below your post and avoid any emojis salutations or extraneous text not essential to the question. Remember, your title is the first thing potential visitors will see, and will weight heavily on their decision to open your question, which will directly affect the number of answers you might get.

The model looks weird in Eevee and Material Preview (which is similar to Eevee) because the materials have transparency enabled (Blend Mode is set to Blend) and Show Backface is enabled.

Select render engine Eevee to see the related material settings.
Select a mesh part, go to the Material Settings and untick Show Backface. Repeat this for all mesh parts/materials:

Random downvotes?


text:
How to I remove the white box around my object in edit mode?
When I enter edit mode, I see a editable transparent white box around my mesh/object. How do I remove this box and be able to edit it directly? I'll attach screenshots of the problem.

This is what I want as the solution.

Some modifers give you the option of presenting the unmodified mesh to edit, or, let you 'Adjust the edit cage to the modifier result' using the leftmost of the little icons along the top of the top of the panel:

The problem has been solved.

@CringeWorth This site is not a regular forum, the answer section is reserved exclusively for answering the OP question. Please don't reply "Thanks" as an answer or comment, instead upvote the post that helped you. If you feel it completely solved your issue consider marking it as accepted.

Looks like you're using a Mirror modifier and a Subdivision Surface.
You can use this menu to apply either modifier and make their changes permanent to the mesh.  Be aware you can only apply a modifier from Object Mode.

In my experience whenever I am using a subsurface modifier this happens. It is important to add geometry. More specifically though, the reason the box appears this way is because you have not applied the modifiers... Therefore, it is showing you two things

What you mesh looks like whilst you have the modifier set but not applied.
The original mesh points which can be seen because you haven't yet applied the modifier.

All you need to do is tab into object mode, select the modifier and apply them. You can do this by clicking Ctrl +  A. Once the modifier is applied you will be able to edit directly on the mesh.


text:
Domain created a separate mesh
Attempted to apply a quick smoke and fire effect to the default cube in blender but instead of setting the cube on fire the domain created a separate mesh and ran the simulation on that. After searching around online I have no idea why this happened or how to fix it.

Thanks for the screenshot, Devin.  From what I see, it did add the Domain "cube" as you call it.  That is not a mesh, it is a 3d Domain boundary within which the simulation will take effect, and ignore anything outside the boundary.   If you visit your Cube and look at the Physics Properties, you'll see that the Quick Smoke added a Fluid -> Flow -> Smoke property so that it will be the initial Geometry, which you can change to Inflow if you want it to continuously emit smoke.   Fluid Physics manual covers all of this https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.93/physics/fluid/index.html

Also, be sure to search for "blender smoke tutorial" in your favorite search engine.


text:
Joining branches to leaves shows only one UV map at a time. How to get both to show?
I have followed a tutorial and made a tree. But when I join the branches and the leaves only one of the UV maps will show at a time.
I have tried everything I can think of but I simply cant find the problem.

A bit more detail is required for us to have any hope of answering.  How did you make the tree, what tutorial, how did you uv unwrap?  Etc.  But, IF you happened to use the sapling generator, check the UV Maps section under the "Data" tab of the Properties window, you may find two separate UV maps are there, each of which can be viewed/used as needed.

I did use the sapling generator. There are 2 uv maps. the Tutorial was CG Geek how to create a forest in Blender. I unwrapped the tree branches with smart uv project. But the leaves were not unwrapped they are stacked together over the leaf. When I select the camera icon beside the uv maps in object data. It shows the one selected. But the other will not show. If I select the other the opposite happens.

So How do I get both uv maps to show at the same time?

If UV maps for different objects are called the same after joining they will be converted into one UV map with all UV islands there. If UV maps for the objects are called in a different way they will be added as different maps to the joined object. That's all

Since you indicated you used the Sapling generator and there are two UV maps: to view the complete UV maps you are going to need to make sure that all of your vertices are selected (type A once or twice until everything is orange).  The camera icon under "UV Maps" is important, it shows which UV map is "active" for display and editing, but it does not control which UV map you are viewing.  To view a particular UV map, make sure it is highlighted (i.e. click on the name of the UV Map or the little ball icon to the left of it, use the arrow keys, etc.).
It's beyond the scope of your question (and this answer), but you may well wish to set up separate materials for your leaves and branches, and also separate vertex groups to facilitate selecting/deselecting them.  I will however share a trick, if you did not create the vertex groups before you joined the meshes: If you have the Leaf UV map active, and you click the "Keep uv and edit mode selection in sync" button in the toolbar of the UVImage Editor window, and you deselect all, and then you box select the leaf UV faces in the UVImage Editor window (type B then drag to select), that should select just the leaves.  You can then assign them to a vertex group, then invert the selection to create a trunk/branch vertex group.
Once you have separate vertex groups, that will make it easier to assign each group to a separate material if you wish.  That is starting to get into tutorial territory however.
Regarding your followup query, you might wish to have a single material and UV map for the leaves and trunk/branches if, for example, you're going to use the tree as a game asset, but for other usage cases it may be easier and more convenient to keep the two UV maps separate.  That way you do not have to manage the UV islands and texture space.  Creating the combined UV map is not hard, if you have the branch/trunk UV map active, and you select all the leaves using the leaf vertex group you created, and unwrap them, they will be unwrapped to the active UV map.  Indeed you might find that they are unwrapped there already.  But then you'll need to arrange them in the UV map to an area that doesn't overlap the trunk/branch faces, and that is definitely beyond the scope of this answer.

Thanks for your answer. The separate uv images would be fine for my use. I am not getting any results tonight. I will try again in the morning. I think I may start new. Make the vertex groups assigned to materials.

Good luck!  There's a lot to take in at first and I think I've seen the tutorial you're talking about, it breezes over a few concepts.  You'll get there however.

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


text:
I use Rhubarb lip sync with blender. But they are changing the pose library. Will there be support for Rhubarb in the new Blender?
The new changes to the pose library have left the old library listed as legacy. I am thinking they may delete this. But it is necessary for the operation of Rhubarb.
Does anyone know if there will be support for Rhubarb? Maybe there is a work around I am not familiar with?

yes, the old pose library is subject to be removed in Blender 3.3. But in my 3.3 beta, it's still there with the reminder note. For an update of the addon it's better to ask here: https://github.com/scaredyfish/blender-rhubarb-lipsync/issues/45

Thanks for the comment. I see they are well aware of the problem. Hopefully a solution will be in the near future.


text:
Material not rendering properly
I'm quite new to Blender (I'm using 2.79), and I've been using the Principled BSDF (with Cycles). What I want is to use a mask (the image is temporary) to paint a motif on the side of the cup.
In the image below, I have 2 3D View, one with Rendered, the other with Material. Material is what I want, but why isn't it the same for the Rendered?
The Rendered one seems to be using the old version of the material, that I used before modifying the nodes to add the mask, which is also displayed in the Material preview on the right side.
The cup only has one Material, assigned to all its faces.
What is going on? How do I fix it?

See: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/95830/principled-bsdf-image-texture-isnt-appearing/95834#95834 and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/33915/what-is-the-meaning-of-the-color-of-the-node-sockets-in-the-node-editor/33919#33919

So I should not be using Mix Shader there, but what can I use instead to get the result I want?

Shader output (green output socket) should go into shader input (green input socket). In simple words either connect Mix shader to Material Output or Principled to Material Output with that texture you used as roughness (you may need to adjust / invert it depending on workflow)

Alright, I fixed it. Thanks Ray Mairlot for sending me related posts.
Instead of a Mix Shaders with Diffuse BSDF, I am now using a MixRGB, and it works perfectly.

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


text:
Sun imitating partially cloudy sky
My scene is an exterior shot of a couple of industrial buildings.
Is there a way to light my scene that implies the sky is partially cloudy? I don't need to show any cloud, just tweak the "Sun" so that it looks like there are clouds in the sky.
I was thinking of using a Noise texture in some way so the sun's intensity isn't always the same (thus imitating a non constant cloud cover), but nothing I've tried so far makes any changes. Maybe there's a really easy way that I'm not seeing?

To give the impression of a partially cloudy sky you could place a plane above your scene and use a Mix node to vary between Diffuse and Transparent shader using a Texture such as Musgrave or Noise as shown :

With the plane high above your scene it won’t be visible to the camera but will still affect the parallel rays of the sun lamp. Alternatively, if it would be visible to the camera due to the camera angle you could use a Light Path ‘Is Camera Ray’ node to make it fully transparent to the camera while still casting shadows.

Thank you Rich Sedman. A simple solution that works well.


text:
Square Geometry with uneven formed Mesh
Is there a standardization method that helps adding geometry in form of an even wireframe with same-sized squares on to a mesh like the ones in this pictures:

The left geometry I had to add all manually and it's taking a lot of time.
I need even squares in order to UV-unwrap them and have undistorted displacement and texturing. Eventually these will be hedges like a boxwood.

Thanks in Regards,
F.Sterzik

I'm pretty sure that no matter how you unwrap it, there are going to be at least some seams. Why don't you build it in a more intuitive and easy way? I really don't see the advantage.

If I understand what you want to do, you shouldn't need to make squares. I think that placing seams appropriately and then just doing a simple unwrap will place your mesh properly.

But when I dont add geometry, I don't have the displacement, that empathizes the leafy structure. And its not about the place of the mesh @MartyFouts its abouzt the displacement map that gets distorted, when I have rectangles instead of squares.

I'm working with speheres now. They got a curve-mod and the displacement direction is not problematic. Rebuilding it in a more clever way sure did the trick :D


text:
Collision Problems
Currently I'm working on a cloth simulated shirt, and everything seems to be colliding fine with the upper body, but the when I added collision to the pants, the shirt started getting sucked into the pants in all of my renders and bakes. I've fiddled around with the settings, but I can't get it to work right. Does anyone know what's causing it or how to fix? Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
JLK9kid

Hi, first of all, i think you have much too much geometry for your cloth simulation. So i would reduce that. Also there is a weird "edge" [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/zVTdy.png in your cloth, i would remove that. I would uncheck "single side" from your collision object, then it looks already better

Hi, thanks for your help! I’ll look into the changes you suggested. However, the weird edge you found is supposed to be where the triangle is, which is pretty important to design of the character. I don’t know if that’s the best way to do it, but I found that it was working for me.

I just tried it, and unchecking single-sided seems to have done the trick. Thanks for the help!


text:
How to specify length/direction with a BMesh operator
Using bmesh.ops.extrude_edge_only(bm, edges=[], use_normal_flip=False, use_select_history=False) (https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bmesh.ops.html#bmesh.ops.extrude_edge_only), how do I specify how far and in what direction to extrude?

The operator returns the geometry created by the extrusion, as a dictionary with a single key named geom. The extrusion is done in place, rather counter-intuitively. It contains all the new faces, edges and verts so you can pick and choose which ones you want, here you want the vertices. You can then simply transform it as you want using the vertices coordinates.
You can use a wrapper if you want to simplify calling this operator and transform the verts in the same function.
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector

def extrude_verts(mesh, direction):
    if bpy.context.mode == "EDIT_MESH":  # You access the bmesh differently in edit mode
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(mesh)
    else:
        bm = bmesh.new()
        bm.from_mesh(mesh)
    for geom in bmesh.ops.extrude_edge_only(bm, edges=bm.edges)["geom"]:
        if isinstance(geom, bmesh.types.BMVert):
            geom.co += direction  # Here you transform the vertices
    bmesh.ops.recalc_face_normals(bm, faces=bm.faces)  # Force calculating normals for the new faces

    if bpy.context.mode == "EDIT_MESH":  # You update the mesh differently in edit mode
        bmesh.update_edit_mesh(mesh)
    else:
        bm.to_mesh(mesh)
    bm.free()  # Not mandatory, bm is supposed to be garbage collected at the end of script

    [a.tag_redraw() for a in bpy.context.screen.areas]  # Not mandatory, but it updates the 3D viewport

if __name__ == "__main__":
    extrude_verts(bpy.context.active_object.data, Vector((0, 0, 2)))


text:
Random movement on bones that have no keyframes
When trying to clean up the motion capture on my character, I've selected a few keyframes to basically use as a base, and have deleted all the frames in between on all the bones in my character's rig. However, between these keyframes, the upper arms on my character are still.. wiggling. They're rotating slightly, even though there are no keyframes in place there. Even when setting the interpolation on everything to constant, the arms are still rotating completely on their own even as the rest of the character is perfectly still. I've tried redoing the motion capture in a separate file on the same rig, thinking that maybe something just glitched, but the same thing is happening with the same bones. What is going on??

how shall we know if you didn't provide all necessary informations? So you can either a) provide a blend file so we can check it out or b) watch some rigging tutorials to find a solution or c) hope that someone wants to "guess" what the reason could be. For me personally i don't do c) anymore because it's a waste of time (because often i got the answer "no didn't help" which is for both sides frustrating)

Hello please share the armature? https://blend-exchange.com/

.. Hi, Nelson.. it does look as if a share is needed here... stripped down to isolate the problem, but with enough stuff to let us try reproducing it

I never worked with Motion Capture, but I often hear how messy the data is. What I could guess, is that there is a bone with animation further up the hierarchy that is rotating the arm?
You just gotta look deeper into it, create a test file so your not afraid to mess something up and pick the animation apart.
Otherwise, does the rotation stop or at least change, if you set a new keyframe with other rotation than the one before and after?

I have all the bones in the rig selected, none of them have any animation on them other than the keyframes I've set. The rotation does change when I add more keyframes, but not in any way that makes sense...? It seems like it's almost reacting to physics, but I haven't put any kind of physics on the rig anywhere.

I think there are keyframes or other means of animation hidden somewhere.
What may help, if you deactivate the option "Only Keyframes from Selected Channels" under "View" on the timeline. Maybe there you will see other problematic keyframes.
Other than that I can just suggest to watch tutorials to clean up motion capture date, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLdLwbi6OVE


text:
Problem using FKey in v 3.6
In 2.8 I could connect two vertices using the F Key.  This doesn't work in 3.6.  How is this accomplished in 3.6?  I have the same add-ons as in 2.8.

Welcome. Please use a title that matches the content of the question. It should be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the issue in such way that anyone searching for a similar problem may easily find it. Use the [edit] link above, remove anything superfluous, avoid words like "this","issue with" or "question about". Remember, your title is the first thing potential visitors will see, answers you get depend heavily on how inviting it is. See "What is the problem of asking “How do I do this?""

It certainly does work in Blender 3.6! See my answer in this recent posting: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/296676/edge-over-ngon-not-working-as-expected-face-not-selectable/296690#296690

Would you mind showing at least one screenshot of the mesh and which vertices you want to connect there? Because F definitely works in 3.6.0

It turned out that my  "problem" was located above my shoulders.  There was a stupid modeling error.  Version 3.6 is fine.  Thank you for your help.


text:
Has anyone else encountered the issue with the Limit Rotation bone constraint?
I'm having an issue with my transform constraints. It seems that when I apply a Limit Rotation constraint, the bone completely ignores it.
The Issue
https://youtu.be/LohLP-KnWrY
Attempted solutions:

Restarting Blender
Reloading the file
Restarting computer
Looking online for similar issues (None relative to the issue found.)

If you have any solution or work-around it would be much appreciated.
Thanks.

You're adding an object constraint in your video, not a bone constraint.  Bone constraints are a different tab.

Nevermind, I found out the issue, I was listing the constraint under "Object Constraints" instead of "Bone Constraints".


text:
Control specific UVs on a texture map (Reference Vertex Group in Material Nodes)?
I want to do something like setting up a driver on a bone's local rotation to control a UV island's translation on a texture map, I'm having trouble trying to use multiple drivers on multiple UV islands on the same texture map being shared with other stuff that don't move at all.
Here's a video demonstration of what I'm essentially after: https://youtu.be/rxZbH8xeUt8
Is there a method to reference something like a vertex group in a driver expression or material node setup or such? My current node setup for the affected area looks like this:

I'm hoping to avoid having to create several duplicate materials specifically for each segment, though I'm beginning to question which one would be more optimal. If there's a simpler alternative involving 1 dedicated material, that'll be fine.

in my simple example i took a cube, add a vertex group:

left: uv editing
right: cube
Add two empties and a UV warp modifier to your object:

use these settings with your modifier:

if you are moving now your empties, your texture should already react.
Now just add a driver to your bone, so that the bone rotation influences the movement of one empty:
i added this driver to my x-location of one empty:

you might have to adapt this to your settings. Since you didn't provide your blend file, i don't know your settings and you have to check which axis/rotation is right for you.
my shader is pretty simple:

result:


text:
Does anyone know why some parts of my model have this smoky like texture?
I have no clue as to why this is happening but it may be because im using an older model on a newer version of blender. does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks!

hello, hard to say, what part is smokey? maybe share your file?

maybe put the Specular of the Principal BSDF at 0?


text:
How to change Local Axis of bone
I am new to rigging, and was wondering what the best way to change the local axis of a bone is.
I have a character, and their main body bone is at an angle like in the picture. This is a problem for when I animate because I will need to be animating multiple curves to go straight up or to the side. I would like for the Z to be straight up, and the x and y to be to their respective sides.
The bone above this is perfectly vertical so I can't change the position of the tail otherwise I will mess up the bone above.
What is the correct way to address this issue? Add another bone? Or can I change the axis for this body bone.
Thanks

if you want the small bone to be vertical, and don't want to move the big bone above, and don't want the 2 bones to be disconnected, you need to move its head until it's aligned with the tail

The problem is, I need the head to be in the center of the model where it currently is so that the legs don't move when I rotate the body.
Is it a problem if I disconnect them? Like is that a rigging no-no?
I suppose I could have the big bone above not be perfectly up and down since it will just be rotated only. I was just curious if there was another way to achieve both bones having true local axis. I could also through in a dummy bone I suppose that I just don't use.

I'm not sure to understand but if you want to disconnect press Alt P > Disconnect Bone?


text:
Strange Artifacts on Geo
During the process of editing this geo, it has become very faceted and has strange shadows. The normals appear to be fine, but no matter how much I try to re-topo it, it still looks strange. Any thoughts?

1 - You have "non-quad" faces // 2 - you have disconnected faces (or split edges), you could try to merge by distance // 3 - you have more than 2 faces coming out of some edges (faces hidden inside the volume)


text:
How can I add forearms to an imported stl of these hands. I cant select the edges
Can anyone advise how I can add forearms to these imported stl hands?

You've already asked this question before and it was closed due to lack of details: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/327219/joining-an-imported-stl-to-a-model. At least add an image in Edit mode so that we can see the mesh and preferably share your Blend file too.  You can share it via https://blend-exchange.com/ following the instructions there to copy the full link on that page. Then edit your question here and paste the link into it.


text:
How can i keep/merge the faces of the bool object that has intersected trough the original mesh?
Maya has a boolean operation called difference A-B.i want to recreate this in blender basically what i want to happen in blender is like the pic bellow. One thought that came to mind is using a mesh boolean Union and then somehow delete the bool faces that are outside the mesh but i lack the experience to do so
so far i have only been able to do this. but what i want is to carve out the building as if it was solid and not just a plane

this is what the result i am looking for

Are your meshes manifold ? It is a requirement for boolean operations, otherwise you can get unexpected behaviors. Blender's difference should be similar to Maya's difference.

You want the plane (not a volume, but a surface) with a hole "cut out" by the sphere (a manifold volume) ?

not cut out but more like dug in like in picture 2, i could use boolean union on the object and then delete the part that i dont want but that would  take much more time if i have to repeat it on multiple objects

Geometry nodes for a plane
Here, extrude the plane to a size that is enough, transform it into a big prism and it's done:

The original object and plane:

Result 1 (without "invert plane")

Result 2 (With "invert plane")

Simple alternative: the boolean modifier
Use the "boolean" modifier. Union, intersection or difference.

After you "apply" the modifier, the result is this:

And there are material options:

thanks for the answer but i'd like to do it on a plane. basically digging out the plane without having to add any thickness to it

Updated answer. @PhilipBretschneider

that worked! Although the mesh i wanted to do it on is a bit too complex so i'll have to do some more cleanup work on the mesh itself thanks for the help

(Using Blender 4.2.4)

Figure 1: (top) Face Orientation - (left) Original objects to intersect, (right) Result from differences and union ; (bottom) GeometryNodes graph.
(Blender 4.2.4+)
Analysis
Let $S$ be a manifold object (a Sphere for the demonstration) and $P$ be a non manifold object (a Plane for the demonstration). The sought non manifold object is the union of two objects, $S-P$ and $P-S$ where $\bullet-\bullet$ is the boolean Difference operation. Besides, only the skin of $S$ is kept. From the documentation of the Mesh Boolean node, $M_1 - M_2$ is keeping everything of $M_1$ that is outside of $M_2$. It is to notice from Fig.(1)
that the "inside" of $P$ is the half 3D space below. From the faces orientation displayed Fig.(1):

$S-P$ is the skin of $S$ that is inside $P$.
$P-S$ is the part of $P$ that is outside $S$.

GeometryNodes modifier
The GeometryNodes modifier is attached to the default Cube for the demonstration to offset the result, using two Object Info nodes to recover geometries. It could be attached to any of the two objects, using a single Object Info node to recover the other geometry.
Dark pink nodes: Computation of $S-P$
1. The faces orientation of $P$ is flipped before the Mesh Boolean node such that the skin of $S$ to keep is outside of flipped $P$.
2. The original faces of $S$ are tagged with a True boolean value which is captured as an attribute in Face domain under the label "Kept". For new faces generated by the Mesh Boolean node, this attribute is initialized at False. Consequently, those are conveniently removed with a Delete Geometry node.
3. Eventually, the faces orientation of the kept part of $S$ is flipped to be consistent with the orientation of $P$.
Dark blue nodes: Computation of $P-S$
4. Because the part of $P$ to keep is already outside of $S$, no face orientation manipulation is required before the Mesh Boolean node.
Dark green nodes: Computation of $(S-P)+(P-S)$
5. The meshes union is achieved with a sequence of Join Geometry and Merge by Distance nodes.


text:
Blender using my GPU in the viewport but not while rendering
I am using blender 4.3 but the problem existed in older versions aswell. I have a RTX 4060, I tried selecting CUDA and OptiX with both GPU and CPU and updated my driver. The problem is while beeing in the viewport in rendered mode the task manager shows GPU 100% and it's way faster than rendering. But if I render the animation, then task manager shows CPU 100% and GPU almmost nothing. I looked at other posts here but I couldn't find any solution to the problem. I want it to use the GPU for rendering aswell. I don't even understand why it's using GPU only in the viewport.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html

Not all parts of rendering use the GPU, there are some preliminary processes that use the CPU

Task Manager may report GPU usage incorrectly. Also note that you can track activity of different aspects of GPU load:

Consider using some other software to check GPU load if you care about it.
There are also separate settings for render and viewport render to trade quality for speed when previewing rendering in the viewport and you may have lower resolution in the viewport so it's entirely plausible that viewport rendering is faster for you.


text:
How to get rna full path from context menu without using “bpy.ops.ui.copy_data_path_button()”?
I want to get the full path of a specific property (such as bone_target in the driver panel or parent of an edit bone) but it is grayed out and unusable, is there another way to get the data path?
Calling the operator from a grayed out context only returned Operator bpy.ops.ui.copy_data_path_button.poll() failed, context is incorrect.
Also, I tried context.property but could only get (bpy.data.objects['ObjectName'], 'bone_target', -1).
import bpy

class OperatorSomething(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.operator_something"
    bl_label = "Operator Something"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        # I want the full path of the data here, just like bpy.ops.ui.copy_data_path_button()
        return {'FINISHED'}

def draw_menu(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    layout.operator(OperatorSomething.bl_idname,
                    text="")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(OperatorSomething)
    bpy.types.UI_MT_button_context_menu.append(draw_menu)

# version blender 4.2

import bpy
from bpy.utils import escape_identifier

blendData_to_class = {
    "actions":          "Action",
    "armatures":        "Armature",
    "brushes":          "Brush",
    "cache_files":      "CacheFile",
    "cameras":          "Camera",
    "collections":      "Collection",
    "curves":           "Curve",
    "fonts":            "VectorFont",
    "grease_pencils":   "GreasePencil",
    "hair_curves":      "Curves",
    "images":           "Image",
    "lattices":         "Lattice",
    "libraries":        "Library",
    "lightprobes":      "LightProbe",
    "lights":           "Light",
    "linestyles":       "FreestyleLineStyle",
    "masks":            "Mask",
    "materials":        "Material",
    "meshes":           "Mesh",
    "metaballs":        "MetaBall",
    "movieclips":       "MovieClip",
    "node_groups":      "NodeTree",
    "objects":          "Object",
    "paint_curves":     "PaintCurve",
    "palettes":         "Palette",
    "particles":        "ParticleSettings",
    "pointclouds":      "PointCloud",
    "scenes":           "Scene",
    "screens":          "Screen",
    "shape_keys":       "Key",
    "sounds":           "Sound",
    "speakers":         "Speaker",
    "texts":            "Text",
    "textures":         "Texture",
    "volumes":          "Volume",
    "window_managers":  "WindowManager",
    "workspaces":       "WorkSpace",
    "worlds":           "World"}
class_to_blendData = {v: k for k, v in blendData_to_class.items()}

def get_ob_dp(obj):
    try:
        if hasattr(obj, "library") and obj.library:
            return f'bpy.data.{class_to_blendData[obj.rna_type.identifier]}["{escape_identifier(obj.name)}", "{escape_identifier(obj.library.filepath)}"]'
        else:
            return f'bpy.data.{class_to_blendData[obj.rna_type.identifier]}["{escape_identifier(obj.name)}"]'
    except:
        return ""

def get_full_dp(base_object, attrs):
    dp = get_ob_dp(base_object)
    if dp:
        if not attrs:
            return dp
        if attrs.startswith('["'):
            return f'{dp}{attrs}'
        return f'{dp}.{attrs}'
    return ""

Get bone datapath
ob = bpy.data.armatures[0]
bone = ob.bones[0]
dp = get_full_dp(ob, f'bones["{escape_identifier(bone.name)}"].bbone_segments')
print(dp)

# >>>> bpy.data.armatures["Armature"].bones["Bone"].bbone_segments

Custom properties
ob = bpy.context.object
dp = get_full_dp(ob, '["prop"]')
print(dp)

# >>>> bpy.data.objects["Armature"]["prop"]

Linked Data-block
ob = bpy.context.object
dp = get_full_dp(ob, "")
print(dp)

# >>>> bpy.data.objects["Cube", "D:\\OneDrive\\Blender\\test.blend"]

escape_identifier
s = escape_identifier('\n"abc中"')
print(s)

# >>>> \n\"abc中\"

Tips and hints
Avoid using single quotes in blender datapath
# Wrong way:
import bpy

ob = bpy.context.object
dp = "modifiers['Boolean'].show_render"
fc = ob.animation_data.action.fcurves.find(dp)

print(fc) # It get None when the datapath has keyframes

# Correct Way:
dp = 'modifiers["Boolean"].show_render'
# and don't forget to check if animation_data exists and is None

Get All Object Keys

# Wrong way:
import bpy

kys = bpy.data.objects.keys()
print(kys)

# >>>> ['Cube', 'Cube']

# Correct way:
def get_key(ob):
    if hasattr(ob, "library") and ob.library:
        return ob.name, ob.library.filepath
    return ob.name

kys = [get_key(ob) for ob in bpy.data.objects]
print(kys)

# >>>> ['Cube', ('Cube', 'D:\\OneDrive\\test.blend')]

Hello, isn't get_ob_dp(obj) the same as repr(obj) ?

@Gorgious No, repr is wrong on linked object.

and repr is usually wrong because it displays single quotes instead of double quotes.

Ok thank you for the explanation. I'm not well versed in animation shenanigans so this is helpful. Cheers


text:
my auto rig addon pro froze
I been having this problem for 3 days now of my addon, the auto rig is bugging, all I want to do is animate & to move the body. However, my file works but the addon isn't.

This site is about helping with the tools and addons that come with Blender. For paid third-party addons please contact the developers for support.


text:
Cycles Render Floor Rendering Black
So I am creating this field scene in Blender. Everything was going well and it looked great in the viewport render but in the final render, the ground is rendering black. I don't know what could be causing this. I went through the forums but couldn't find anything to help. I can answer any questions and I wish I could upload the file but it's over 30MB.
Thank you for any help!
ViewPort Render

Final Render

Node Stack for Ground

Render Settings

pls provide blend file, thx

Have you checked if there are no overlapping faces (Z-Fighting)?

@moonboots there was a duplicate of the grid i used causing that issue! After deleting it everything was fine


text:
Making a bottle brick wall using geonodes
We will be building a bottle brick wall in our community, and I'm battling Youtube tutorials and geometry nodes trying to figure out how to model it. After a couple of hours, it is time to ask for help!

We will make physical bottle bricks by cutting two similar bottles in half and then taping them together to make a cylinder. The final physical build will introduce some variation in positioning, and bottle bricks will also vary a bit in diameter. But for now I want something simple that works.
So that keeps modelling simple. We just need to do a grid of 3cm radius cylinders, 20cm long cutting a wall (5.5m long, 2.0m high, 20cm thick), with the grid spacing at 10cm (grid 55x20)
And then colour those bottle bricks according to a simple image of the same resolution (55x20).

As I look at the image, I realise a hex grid would be better. So bonus points for that?
Community members will be painting up a page each for selecting the final design, so hex grids will work for that too.

I didn't use your measurements, but I made it so that you could change the number and dimensions. You can get more variations in diameter of the bottles with a collection.
I downloaded a wine bottle from blender kit to simplify the modelling task.
If you are trying to create a hex grid wall with circular shapes in it, duplicate elements is a key node here. This has one material that allows you to randomize all the colours.:

The materials are like this:

My finished result, essentially:

edit: If you wish to limit the numbers of colors with a ColorRamp node, it will work like this:

Thanks. It looks great. I went back to my safe space and "faked" it which looks ok for a first pass.
I'll give this a crack tomorrow. Rather than random colour, it will be picking up colour from an actual image (selected from those drawn by community members).
Any tips on how to tie the material colour for each bottle to an image?
There are only like 6 or 8 colours in total (mostly shades of green and brown, plus "flint" and blue)

My bet is that you can find a solution with putting your 8 custom colours on a color ramp.


text:
Animation Nodes: Loop - get value from previous iteration (ie, rotation of previous object in the list)
I have a list of objects going into a loop.
Inside the loop, I am modifying each object's location. Each object has rotation keyframes, which is driving my AN.
However, I would like to modify its location based on the rotation of the previous object in the list. That is to say, the previous iteration.
Is this possible? If so, what's the best way forward?
Thanks!

Hi,
I thought ID Key: Index would be the answer, but sadly I can't find a way to select objects from the scene based on ID Key.
Is there a node I can use within a loop to pick an object based on its ID Key?
ie, I have 10 cubes, with ID keys set, ranging from 0-9.
I'd like to grab the Transform date from the object with ID Key Index that is one lower than the current index of the loop - in an attempt to reference the previous object in the loop.

Can u show your node tree or upload blend file, may be there is easier way to do this

Does this answer your question? How to store particle locations in a list?


text:
Exported FBX is Mapped Incorrectly
so I've imported this coffee shop that I've created in blender in exported it as fbx with embedded textures , but the mapping of those textures is completely missed up , I'm using an Object Vector map instead of a UV one , whats the solution ?

You said it: you need to use UV. Object vector is very software specific and may not be supported in other softwares. Don’t worry, UV unwrapping is actually rather simple, especially with a simple square mesh like this.

THNX , I'll try it :D


text:
FBX Imported Mesh Looks Glossy when viewed from different angles
so I've imported this hands model i found on sketchfab and it look glossy when viewed from certain angles to the point where the material can't be seen , I've tried to remove the material and replace it with one of mine , still the same , so I'm assuming that it doesn't have something todo with the materials , wich left me confused , any idea how can i remove this effect from the mesh

hello, maybe try Object Data > Geometry Data > Clear Custom Split Normals Data? Or please share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/

thanks a lot !, it worked .

Go into Object Data > Geometry Data > and click on Clear Custom Split Normals Data. Some imported FBX files have split normals (normals that are used for shading) not correctly set.


text:
Move multiple objects without parenting?
I create an scene with 10.000 objects.
Now showing an big problem.
I have to move the scene to an settled point.
As example:
choose 1 of the 10.000 objects as reference object. This object located at x=0, y=0, z=0.
Now i need the reference object at (example) x=250.000,00, y=500.000,00 z=399,00
tested already parenting the 9.999 objects with the reference object. Moving to new position works but my scene become glitchy through this process.
Lookin for an way to get the objects to new location without parenting.
Is this possible?
hope, somebody can help me.

I don't think parenting is the problem. It might add some overhead, but your main problem is moving a lot of objects at once. You can just select multiple objects and move them without parenting, but likely this will result with a similar lag.

You could just select all "A", "G" to move and type in the desired ofset for which you want to move it in the Move pop-up:

It may get laggy as well. One way around would be to hide part of the scene and move it separately.

Same problem unfortunaly, moving works but the models will be glitchy .. very strange. If i select all objects and move them via "hand" a few hundret meter everything is fine and not glitchy. But i cant move the whole scene via hand 250.000 meter. Dont know, whats the problem at this case :/

What exactly do you mean with models being glitchy? Your Blender gets slow? If that's the case, hiding / disabling some objects in the objects list and moving few at a time doesn't solve the problem?

no, blender will get not slow. The objects flickers after moving. I guess the problem is the high position value of x and y .. I have tried an new scene with only 1 cube and move it to 250000m, 150000m and its flickers too .. I guess blender cant handle these positions ..

Got it, check this https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/26955/what-is-the-max-size-of-a-scene-in-blender


text:
How can I replace a model that has an armature with another nearly identical object?
I have an armature that is not subdivide or solidify-friendly (the faces have some inconsistencies) so i would like to import the parts of the model (sandals, legs, jacket etc.) and import them as separate objects into an online STL repair website to fix them (In their T pose rest positions), and then import the fixed model parts back into blender to replace the old model parts. I would like them to attach to the armature the same way to old model did.
Ive tried just parenting the object to the bone but the object gets a weird stretch in the wrong places. I'm looking for a more exact replacement method.
Picture of the model part i want to replace (in Blue) next to the fixed (also thickened) object in green:
So is there a way to perfectly replace an object attached to an armature with another object, keeping the same armature functions?
I have an armature that is not subdivide or solidify-friendly (the faces have some inconsistencies) so i imported separated parts of the model into an online STL repair website to fix them (In their T pose rest positions), and i would like to then import the fixed model parts back into blender to use them to replace the old model parts. I would like them to attach to the armature the same way to old model did.
Ive tried just parenting the object to the bone with automatic weights but the object gets a weird stretch in the wrong places. I’m looking for a more exact replacement method.
Issue pictured below:

￼
The original pose:

Picture of the model i want to replace next to the newly fixed (also thickened) model:

So is there a way to perfectly replace an object attached to an armature with another object(s), keeping the same armature functions?

maybe look into the Data Transfer modifier and apply it?


text:
How to put animated background to keyed video?
I keyed out a video because it had grass and put in an animated background. How do I get the keying to work?
Before background with keying:

Now with animated background:

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

It  looks like the keying node is not generating a properly associated alpha channel. Try enabling "convert to premultiply" https://i.sstatic.net/hidAQ.png

Thanks so much. It worked!

Please write an answer to your own question, so that others with similar issues can learn form you.

This has been fixed on blender version 2.92
You no longer need to set the alpha to premultiply.
As explained here: https://developer.blender.org/rBf68c3d557aa

Compositor: Ensure keying node result is pre-multiplied

Historically the result of the keying node was violating alpha
pre-multiplication rules in Blender: it was simply overriding
the alpha channel of input.

This change makes it so keying node mixes alpha into the input,
which solves the following issues:

The result is properly pre-multiplied, no need in separate alpha-convert node anymore.
Allows to more easily stack keying nodes. This usecase was never really investigated, but since previously alpha is always overwritten it was never possible to easily stack nodes. Now it is at something to be tried.
Unfortunately, this breaks compatibility with existing files, where
alpha-convert node is to be manually removed.

Enable "convert to premultiply" to show the top video/image over video/image.


text:
Crop Node doesn't work
Compositor Workspace:
The crop node doesn't work, as even when I put the numbers to the highest value, the movie clip still doesn't appear.
Please help.
Thanks.

Hi,  please [edit] your question and add images that show your compositing nodes and result. If you wish, you may also share a simplified version of your file via Blend-Exchange.Thanks :)

Did you press F12?


text:
Import and export in one python script for FBX to IFC in Blender
I have many .fbx files that I need convert to .ifc files by using the BlenderBIM addon.
I am trying to do this as part of a regular workflow which is initiated from a .bat file. (the bat file will do other things before and afterwards but that part is not included)
"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.90\blender.exe" --background "C:\Users\Joshua\Documents\_BatchProcessing\ProcessTemplate.blend" --python "C:\Users\Joshua\Documents\_BatchProcessing\FBXimportScript.py"

Which calls the python script
import bpy
import os
import glob

directory_im = 'C:/Users/Joshua/Documents/_BatchProcessing/max/fbx/test/'
files = glob.glob(directory_im + "*.fbx")
for f in files:
    head, tail = os.path.split(f)
    bpy.ops.import_scene.fbx(filepath=f)
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
    bpy.ops.object.parent_clear(type='CLEAR_KEEP_TRANSFORM')
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
    bpy.ops.export_ifc.bim(
    filepath=directory_im + tail.replace('.fbx', '') + '.ifc')

I have 2 FBX files to test which different geometry in each which can be seen by the different file size. the above python script exports 2 files with correct names however the same geometry is being exported to each file.

If someone could point me in the right direction it would be very much appreciated!!!

Not sure I understand, but each export will have all the previous FBXs included in the scene. Did you want to clear the scene at the beginning of the loop?

what happens is that the same geometry is in all the exported .ifc files. i thought if i added bpy.ops.scene.new(type='EMPTY') after the file export in the same For loop it would clear the scene and move onto the next fbx file this didn't work.

Try bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT') ; bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False) to clear the scene. But it might be better to do the loop in the .bat file and pass just one file to be converted to the .py script at a time.

I’ll give that a go. however i’m curious to know how to do the loop in the bat file, how might that work?

Nope that didn't work. I'm not sure i was clear enough before. The script exports the 'test1' file twice, test1.ifc and test2.ifc are identical when opened.

You can look up how to loop over files in a .bat on SO. You would pass the file to blender by adding -- path\to\file.fbx to the cmdline args, and in the .py script you'd get it with sys.argv[sys.argv.index("--")+1].

Ok, i'll look into that

CMD Loop was the answer!

A heads up for those reading this in 2021 that the BlenderBIM Add-on has since been completely rewritten and this script no longer applies. IFC is not a geometry format like FBX and so it isn't simply a matter of converting from one format to another. IFC instead requires a lot of semantic data, including a hierarchy of spaces, semantic classification of objects (e.g. not just a cube, but a "wall"), and more. As a result, you may be interested in looking at some of the operators available in the bpy.ops.bim.* namespace, or if you're looking for a geometry converter, I would instead recommend using more fundamental code seen in the ifcopenshell.api.* namespace.


text:
Where is the Bake button in blender 2.9 (Fluid simulation)
Wheres the Bake button in Blender 2.9
I cant find it since theres no tutorials in 2.9 and the manual has no pictures.

Set the cache type from "Replay" to "Modular". Replay will simulate the fluid when you play the animation so it's good for previews, Modular will actually bake it onto the disk.

The bake button does not appear when you change to Modular.  For me it only appears when I change it to All


text:
Need help with prepping a 3d model for printing

I am very new to blender and I am trying to print some models using creality ender 5 plus.
The model looks like the picture on the left, and when exported to STL, it looks like a block of cheese.
The problem seems to be due to the particle systems. This was initially only going to be used as a figure for a science exhibit, but things have changed and a real printed model seems like a good option.
I think I have been able to fix this by making the particle systems instances real, however, it made me realize the inside is filled with thousands and thousands of balls.
As a first time 3d print-er and blender-er, I need some guidance, What do I need to do to prep such a model?

Hello do you have a reference image of what it is supposed to look like?

The easiest way is to use the Voxel Remesher, but before that you need to make all instances real and merge all objects into one. While in Object Mode, you can find the Voxel Remesher under the Remesh panel in the Data Properties tab as shown in the screenshot.

Depending on the size of your object, the Voxel size will need to be adjusted. Basically, you want to decrease this value as much as possible without crashing your PC. This will result in a very dense mesh which is necessary to preserve as much of the shape as possible. You can try tweaking Adaptivity which will reduce the polygon count without sacrificing form. You can also try the other settings, mainly Fix Poles and Preserve Volume.
Basically, you will run the remesher by clicking the Voxel Remesh button, take a screenshot, undo, change the settings (decreasing the Voxel size), then run the remesher again. You will compare consecutive runs till you see no noticeable gains. That's a good reason to stop tweaking the settings. Another reason is noticing your PC taking a long time to remesh which means your reaching your hardware's limits.