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How to change font for text objects?
Is there a way to select a typeface (I have 15,000 fonts) for a text object, or must I set type in AI and save as SVG, then import into Blender?

Do you mean how to add text at all, or just change the font of a text object?

I know how to add text, but it's always in Gill Sans. HOW do I find access to font list and change the face?

You can change the font used for a text object under the Object Data properties panel.

Here you can specify different fonts for standard, bold, and italics; as well as various other typesetting parameters.  You can also define a set of objects as a custom font by naming them something like fontName_a, fontName_b, etc. and use fontName_ as the Object Font.

In order to find fonts easily I have bookmarked my system's fonts folder (C:\Windows\Fonts\ on Windows, /Library/Fonts on macOS) in Blender's file browser so I can quickly add new fonts.  Note: as Chebhou explains in his answer you can also set the default directory for when browsing for fonts in the user preferences.

Note that as of Blender 2.76, you the file browser's thumbnail display mode now works for previewing fonts.

Yeah, I finally found a tutorial on YouTube. As a Blender noob, I'm spoiled by font management software on Mac (FontAgentPro). As Blender doesn't have system-level font access, I need to use FontAgentPro to find the fonts I want, locate them on the system drive, and manually load each one into Blender. It's tedious, but at least now I know it's possible. Thanks for the help.  :+)

@DrStrik9  No problem!  I guess macs handle fonts differently than Windows, on Windows it's pretty easy since they're all in one system folder.  (If this answer has sufficiently solved your problem you can mark it as accepted by clicking the checkmark under the voting buttons.)

@PGmath if you set the fonts directory you don't need to do that at all

@Chebhou  What do you mean?

see step 1 in my answer.  so when you browse for fonts it will automatically open that directory

Blender is a powerful tool and does a wonderful job of hiding obvious features behind layers of complexity. That's unfortunate, as that creates a huge barrier to the casual or beginning user.

@EricJ. I really don't see how Object Properties > Font is "hiding behind layers of complexity", it is after all a property of the font object.

And it's probably totally obvious to someone who uses Blender regularly because you're used to its UI paradigm. Blender is the only software I have ever come across where I have to routinely google to discover how to perform basic functions.

@EricJ. Have you every used any commercial CG software?  IMO Max is way worse than Blender in that respect.  And when you google how to do something in Max the only halfway decent quality instructions are part of a paid tutorial.  One one of the main reasons I switched from Max to Blender.  Also, this isn't the place to be arguing about this.  If you want to complain about Blender's UI go to reddit or blenderartists.

If you need all the fonts to be loaded automatically this can be done with a script ( or an addon ) :

first you have to set the fonts directory in blender user preferences.

install the addon and enable it ( or run load_fonts() when you need it ).

import os
import bpy

def load_fonts():
    font_dir = bpy.context.user_preferences.filepaths.font_directory
    for file in os.listdir(font_dir):
        if file.endswith(".ttf"):
           bpy.data.fonts.load(font_dir+file)

script as an addon

Script snippet still works with 2.83.

I've updated Chebhou's excellent reply for Blender 2.80+.
Simply run the following in the Scripting console:
import os
import bpy

font_dir = bpy.context.preferences.filepaths.font_directory
for file in os.listdir(font_dir):
    if file.endswith(".ttf"):
        bpy.data.fonts.load(font_dir+file)

You can load Opentype and TrueType fonts in Blender. Blender does not load in font families into the separate slots (Regular, Bold, Italic, etc), you have to do that manually.
On OSX, sometimes font files are contained in packages called a "font suitcase". Blender does not load these either.
If your fonts are PostScript fonts, there are many tools online line to convert them to OpenType.

Glad to hear this. I have MANY OpenType fonts. Typography is not mentioned in the Ref Manual at all. I have not been able to find access to font list anywhere in Blender. I still need to know HOW to do this. WHERE is font access located in Blender?

I finally found a tutorial on YouTube, As a long-time designer but Blender noob, I'm spoiled by font management software on Mac (FontAgentPro). Since Blender doesn't have system-level font access, I need to :

Set some text in Blender.
Use FontAgentPro to find the font I want.
Locate fonts on the system drive.
Manually load each one into Blender on a per-project basis.

It's tedious, but at least now I know it's possible!  :+)


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Make blender particles a specific shape?
I have just followed and completed a tutorial that made a woodchipping effect on the text. this is a link to it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFmN7eTNfNw
I would like a specific shape for the particles that come off, though. Is this possible? I am new to blender and stack exchange so please so your help would be much appreciated :)

In the render panel in the particle system options check "object" and select your object.

This was very helpful. I just need to convert my image now :)

Checkerboard with a particle system
Group specified under the Render Panel as shown in render panel.
Group contains two different shapes shown in outliner window.
Your group can contain more shapes for many wood chips
Groups are created by selecting multiple objects and pressing Control-G

You can use any mesh object or groups of meshes as shape for your particle systems.
Under the Properties Window > Particles > Render panel you can choose the type of particle to use, in your case either Object or Group.
Use object if you wish to use a single object as particle, or group to use all objects in a group as particles assigned randomly or by order.
You can then model your mesh(es) separately as desired, make sure you keep polygon counts in check so your render times don't explode to very high values.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How to change color of glossy highlights?
let's say, I have a texture with black background and yellow skulls everywhere on it.
I want the black background to have a white reflection color and the yellow skulls i want to have a black "reflection" when shine on. (I guess black reflection isnt possible, but i want them to turn black when shine on)
I already have several specular maps to achieve that but the only part missing is that i dont get to turn my skulls black when shine on. Is there any node setup which can achieve that? (something like "if reflection"->diffuse black) I just can't get it working.
Thanks for your help
EDIT:

Here is a screenshot. I need the skulls which are hit by light to turn black..if even possible
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/41884
.blend file

are you looking to really change the reflection, or just change the color of your skulls (and background) when if light or a object goes over them?

Easily said, i want to change the color of my skulls (not background) when light goes over it to black...if no light is hitting the skulls, i want them to stay yellow...basically just like the glossy shader but instead of white gloss,i want them to turn black

You will have to resort to some compositing tricks to achieve this effect.  Cycles can't really perform an "if [glossy] reflection" check like you describe since a glossy surface is always reflecting something.  You want it to change the surface's properties based on what is being reflected.  This is impossible due to the backwards ray-tracing nature of Cycles since changing the properties of the surface will affect what is being reflected, creating a circular dependency.

To create the effect you are looking for I created three render layers, the main layer (as you have now), a just glossy layer (to use the lamp's highlight as a mask), and a black diffuse layer (to be mixed in with the mask layer).
The only other change I had to make to your scene was swapping out the mesh light with a point lamp since using material overrides in the render layers also overrides the emission material.  However, it basically looks the same and renders a bit faster and with less noise to boot.
First create two more materials.  Create one material that is just the black diffuse shader you want the skulls to turn into.  The other material should look like this:

The color ramp is simply to map your texture to its extremes (i.e. skull = pure white, background = pure black).  It is then used in a mix shader to make the skulls glossy and give the background a holdout shader (i.e. not rendered, pure black and transparent if enabled).
Next add two more render layers, I called one "mask" and the other "diffuse".  Give each one an override material, the "mask" layer should use the glossy/holdout material and the "diffuse" layer should use the pure diffuse material.

Now you can render your scene and head over to the compositor.  For the compositing, just mix the main layer with the "diffuse" layer, using the "mask" layer as the mix factor.

Which yields the following:

If too much of the skull pattern is darkening for you just add a Brightness/Contrast or RGB Curves node between the mask layer and the mix node and use it to knock up the contrast of the mask.

Here is the .blend file:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/41881

You need a mask and a mix shader
Plug the mask texture into the "Fac input"
One shader is your normal shader (Glossy shader, in this case the Bliss wallpaper)
The other shader (represented by a red diffuse shader) can be your "black glossy shader
If you want an area to have no reflection, replace the red diffuse shader with a Glossy shader, set the color of the reflection to black and the roughness to 1

OK, thank you. Well, this isnt exactly what i was looking for. Is there any way to get the red-"ish" diffuse layer only going red"-ish" when shine on(glossy) and if not shine on showing the original bliss picture. Ill make a .blend file myself later on to show you exactly what I'm talking about

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/41885 - This should be what your want. If you really want complete black, you have to use a Holdout shader instead of the black diffuse shader (it punches a transparent hole in your render), export your render as a png (with an alpha channel) and then composite a solid black color behind your render (for example in Photoshop). But this is far more complex.

Thank you very much for trying to help. It's still not what i was looking for. I only want the skulls which are hit by light to be black...others should remain orange. After playing around for a few hours now I am not sure if there even is a way to solve it...i guess there must be but i cant seem to get it done

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


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Why is my object invisible in the game?
I'm testing my door and saw a problem. as you see on the image you see that my object is normal in edit mode/object mode

But when I press P a part of that object is invisible, how is this possible? Can someone help please

Pretty vague, could be an inverted normals problem, impossible to tell with such little info. Please edit your question and provide more information like screenshots and object settings

You should always tell what object you are missing (e.g. mark it in the image where it is present. It would help us to understand what you mean.

Ensure to disable transparency on opaque objects.

This does not only speed up render. It avoids sorting conflicts (that is what I think happens in your case).

Could you please add some more details to your answer.  Maybe some details and possibly a screenshot of how to do that.

added screenshoot


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Leather like texture using nodes
I don't know much of the intricacies of nodes and was wondering how I might go about creating a procedural dark red leathery textured skin for a model I am working on. I don't want to use a UV texture for it.
This is the look I'm going for the skin, I'm currently looking at some tutorials but most haven't had a great result

The problem I am having is that textures I've tried aren't showing up it just looks red even with increased factors, here is what I have from following a video.

Have you tried anything yet? If so, what have you gotten so far, and where are you having trouble? Are you using cycles or internal? It would also help to add an image that represents what you are trying to achieve.

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=vid&q=cycles+procedural+leather

@Timaroberts Yeah I'm in cycles, and I've tried quite a bit but nothings really looked remotely like what I want. I was gonna do a image but I figured since I haven't made any progress on it I wouldn't need one

@PhoenixCreations could you just add some image of what do you expect, some example?

@LukeD yeah I'll make an edit to my post

Here: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?278285-Yet-Another-Thread-about-Cycles-Materials&p=2307698&highlight=leather#post2307698 Check brown leather material.

@PhoenixCreations There is also link to Blend Swap with improved version.

Try this tutorial at step 3.  Or if you are a cgcookie citizen you can find a nice leather tutorial here

Possible duplicate of Purely Node Based Materials

Alright, this has been all sorted, thanks for the suggestions, I finally got the result I wanted. I'll do some modifications but I used a blend swap file and here is the result I've come up with so far.

Thanks for the help!!!


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Remove .001 from mesh name duplicates
I bake all my OCC/NRMs inside substance painter using _high _low suffix.  If I want to bake floaters, I must name said floaters with the same name as the object I want to bake them onto (E.G) MESH > Gun_handle_high FLOATER > Gun_handle_high
I cant do this inside blender.  When I try to name a mesh with a duplicate name I get .001 .002 .003 etc at the end of the mesh name.  How do I stop this from happening?
Thanks.

When ever you duplicate an object in blender it will generate a unique name.  If I'm understanding your question correctly just rename the object. delete the".001" and add your own suffix.

I have tried that, it immediately adds the .001 back.  I need 6 objects with the same name -> Bolt_high.  But blender renames them Bolt_high.001 .002 .003 etc etc.  If blender is not able to do something as simple as allowing duplicate names for those who bake using suffix, im done.

This is a bit like asking "how do I give two files the exact same name, and put them in the exact same folder on my computer?" Just like files, separate meshes must have unique names... otherwise, neither you nor Blender knows which mesh is which.

Firstly, lets define our terms. A "Mesh" is a collection of vertices. Meshes have to live inside an "Object." An "Object" is a container for vertices. An object can contain literally any arrangement of vertices; connected, unconnected, polygons, individual points, etc. All those vertices are considered one mesh when they are inside an object, even if they aren't connected to each other. You can think of vertices a little like letters. If vertices -> letters, then polygons -> words, text -> mesh, and object -> document. (It doesn't work perfectly because you don't name your text separately from the document it's in, but Blender does do this with meshes and objects).
Each object must have a unique name, and each mesh must have a unique name. Typically, a mesh gets its first name from the object it's created in, but it doesn't have to.

To answer your question, you have two options. You can use ctrlj to join the meshes in any selected objects into one object (Blender will put them in the "active" object, and then delete the empty ones). This takes all the separate collections of vertices and puts them in the same container. This also gives them all the same mesh name... because they are all one mesh. To continue our files analogy, this method would be like cutting the text from one document and pasting at the end of another other document, and deleting the empty document. You now only have one container, but you still have the text from both documents.
Your other option is to use some other method to give unique names. Maybe it makes sense for your meshes to be in separate objects. In that case, there's likely a descriptive way to name them that will also uniquely identify them.

Thanks for replying.  Unfortunately this doesn't help my situation - Like I said, I use a suffix to bake my OCC/NRMs which requires me to have duplicate names.  It's an essential part of my work flow.  It can be done is 3dsmax with no issues at all, I can't see why blender wont do it?

I think I'm confused... Which of these examples are you asking about? 1) How to name one object "Roof_OCC" and another object "Roof_NRM?" or 2) How to name two different objects both "Wall_OCC" and two other objects both "Wall_NRM"?

OK - Say I have 2 Objects in my scene.  One lowpoly box and the same box again, but only it's the highpoly version.  If I want to bake the highpoly detail of my box onto the lowpoly box I must name the low poly box - Box_low and the highpoly - Box_high.  If I want to bake extra detail onto my lowpoly box, say a few screws or greebles, I would have to name those Box_high also.  But I can't do this in blender without .001 being added to the object name.  Do you understand?  this is a suffix work-flow and probably one of the best baking methods, it eliminates hours from your workflow.

Yeah, that makes sense, but it sounds ill advised, to me. Regardless, there is no way to name things that way in Blender. Blender requires unique names. If you're trying to get meshes out of Blender in order to bake them in Substance Painter, you could probably write a python script that will systematically export each mesh, stripping the ".###" off the end of the name as it saves each mesh.

Matt, there has got to be a a way to do this without Python.  Thanks for trying to help me out :)

Lol... maybe there "has to be," but it doesn't exist. You might be able to put the names you want into a custom property on the object, but you'll still have to use python to extract them when you export, and use them for naming your exported objects.

For people still looking for this subject:
Right now there is no need to give floaters the same name as the high poly mesh if it comes to baking normals (from Blender) in Substance Painter.
I have just checked it and it is enough to join (Ctrl+J) all the floaters and the high poly mesh - looks like everything works well.


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How to model a box with a circular top?

I would like to create a cube with slightly rounded edges (less round than in the diagram above though) that morphs into a flat, cylindrical front with a gentle curve towards one end. (The diagram is not to scale at all.)

The bevel modifier will help you out: https://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/modifiers/generate/bevel.html#bevel-modifier

Start with a box and subdivide (W > Subdivide) it to give yourself more geometry to work with.  Then select the corner edges of the side you want to make circular and hit Alt+Shift+S (scale to sphere) and type 1 (to make it scale it 100% to a sphere).  You will then have to scale it in a little (with S) to whatever size you want.  Repeat the process with the lower edge loops and <100% amounts to get a nice smooth interpolation (do it more than I did in the below GIF to get a higher resolution curve).

To get the rounded edges you can use a Bevel modifier with the limit method set to Angle.  Play with the threshold angle and bevel amount to get the desired look you want.

Thanks, and how do I tidy up n-gons?

@Cyrinadia  This process shouldn't create any n-gons.  What do you mean?


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Material rendering fuzzy on some objects and not others
Whenever I try to render my scene part of the object remains very grainy and the texture doesn't seem to render all the way. Only parts of the petals seem to render correctly for some petals, but other petals with the same material render fine.  What is causing this?
I thought perhaps this was just fireflies or something to do with my lighting, but my teacher and I have tried multiple things and none of them have worked.

Welcome to Blender.se! May I ask to confirm if all the petals have the same material applied? Could you show its node setup? Is the light coming from the two planes and background only? What's their material's node setup?

It looks like you may have some duplicate overlapping faces on those petals.  It would help if you could add a .Blend for us to look at.

Yes, all petals have the same material and the light is coming from two planes. Here is a link to the blender file so you can see my setup. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzsrqYiEDoeVcDE1ZnZGYUktVTQ/view?usp=sharing

Yep, your problem is that you have a lot of duplicate petal meshes exactly on top of each other, causing massive z-fighting.  Working on an answer...

Your problem is that several of your petals are duplicated exactly on top of themselves.  Since the petals are super high poly the z-fighting is not quite as obvious as usual.
This probably happened because you pressed Shift(or Alt)+D and then exited the operator with a right click (or by pressing Esc).  This does not cancel the entire duplication operation, it just cancels the translation and drops the duplicate directly on top of the old one.
To fix this just select and delete all the unintentional duplicates.  I would do this by selecting each problematic petal and checking if it has a material assigned to it, if not delete it; if so right click it again to select its duplicate, then delete it.

That worked perfectly. Thank you so much for your help and detailed explanation! I really appreciate it!

@Kit Glad I could help!  If this has sufficiently answered your question you can mark it as accepted by clicking the checkmark under the voting buttons.


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Can multiple render systems be used?
I was watching a tutorial how to design an island in Blender,
which worked really great, but i didn't want to use the .png Trees the guy used there. So i watched another tutorial and created another kind of tree - without knowing that the object isn't just modeled in Cycles Render, it is also rendered in there.
My problem is either the (lets say "simple" textured) island (rendered in Blender render) or the tree is shown. Is there any way i can "convert" that cycles object (with its shaders) to Blender Render or the other way around? Or just render with two renders in one project? I haven't found something about that til now. If there is no universal solution for that, i could also put a link to my project in here.

Yes you can combine images created with two different renderer engines. These are optimistic scenarios.

Different Scenes can have different render Engines. Cycles or Blender Internal.
The [Compositor] can invoke and combine images from different Scenes.  The Render Layer Node names the scene and Render Layer.  In the nodes above the text [Blender] was rendered Blender Internal Render and the word [Cycles] was rendered with Cycles Render.  Note the transparent background for the Cycles render.
If your desired result can be composed in visual layers fine.  Only you can determine that.
Cycles has a different approach to Blender render so only you can determine what compromises you can tolerate for a coarse translation.  Just create a new material for the appropriate render engine and assign it to the faces and judge that result.
The VSE can also combine images with transparent backgrounds for the layered composition effect.

Is this also working on animating (doing a video)?

Yes.  The compositor transforms each frame of a animation.

So do i have to set all other textures in Cycles to transparent?


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Accidentally pressed F12, and lost rendered image. Is there way to recover it?
Is it only option to re-render whole scene again?

If you didn't use File Output node or didn't save image manually then I think answer is no. Change render slot in UV/Image Editor immediately after any render in future to make it render in empty slot.

You could use Auto Save Render as explained in related question

Pluck out the F12 button on the keyboard :), or control yourself ... Jokes aside.
I used to have mine set to always render out to a default cache using the File Output node and safe the file as a template, so everytime I start a blender new file ... it's default.
I also turned my overwrite off so it will prevent me from accidentally rendering over the already rendered frame, until I decide to overwrite. This was how I used to work when my finger didn't obey me, stopped doing that onces I got used to blender.
I must add if you have a good enough GPU using the viewport preview more would also prevent you from wanting to hit the F12 too much. Use that preview render functionality of blender and you would soon be cured! You could also mess with your motor memory by changing or disabling F12 button from the input tab on the user menu.
Trust me, in the earlier days where GPU viewport preview was not available, lots of 3d artist suffers from the "overly abuse render button" syndrome.

Thanks, I've tried to turn off Overwrite on default project and press F12 several times - it helps :)
To add - yeah, I'm using preview a lot, but in this case I was rendering final HD image, so lost like an hour of render due to mis-pressing F12 instead of F3.

I accidentally pressed F12 and it opened an image and I wanted to finish my work. So I found F11 gets you back to your work.

or the escape key.


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Is there a way to make a render animation take its information from texture mode?
I have created a scene in cycles render mode.  I have followed the instructions on how to bake all the objects, and everything looks great in texture mode.  I can smoothly move through the scene.  However, when I am starting to render it, it is taking the information from render mode, and not from texture mode.  This is very slow. Did I do something wrong? Is there a way to make the render animation take its information from texture mode?

Welcome to Blender.SE eitan!  Please don't type your posts in all caps though, it just makes it annoying to read.

You can trigger what is called an OpenGL Render in any of the Viewport Shading modes (solid, textured, wire, matcap,...). Switch to the mode you want first (in your case Textured Mode, make sure the output settings in the render panel are set correctly, and use the Render OpenGL Animation or Render OpenGL Image button from the 3D Viewport:

That should only take a few seconds to complete on short animations. If you need to tweak the quality, you can use the menu in the Info header bar:

You can set Anti-Aliasing and the background transparency directly from there.

Rendering, is the process of making something that looks most realistic.
All photons are calculated, reflections, materials glossiness etc.
Cycles has a lot of complex materials just look here
http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/cycles-shader-encyclopedia/
And the fun thing those can even be combined and become even more complex.
It can render life like animations, as if taken by a camcorder, in fact its even possible to combine video and rendering. (creating a life like walking dinosaur in your street that's possible).
Besides Cycles there is also Blender Internal (top of your screen) it has a different way of creating materials, and its slightly faster but less realistic.
As for a quick texture preview render option, you might go into the top of your screen when using cycles, top menu under render go for OPENGL render, its more texture a like, but by default you''l see some wires as well. It can be used to render a preview of your animation more quickly. for example if you want to do a fight scene and just make sure all movements are smooth, try that.
This does render the viewpannel, note that there are some extra options hidden in the normal 3d view, several options can be enabled for better openGL rendering, like options for shading and mesh display  (to have depth blur ), and to remove edge lines (which normally for edit mode you would like to see but not for a demo movie. Those options are on the right side of the 3d pannel itself, find the + symbol to expand it.

So how does the fact that i baked the scene helped to render the animation if the blender is still treating it as normal objects with textures?

Well I supose now that you've baked it you could use the resulting texture as a texture on those object, and do openGL rendering of the viewport with those textures (instead of their original textures)..


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Blender - apply image texture to specific parts of the object
I've been trying for so long to apply an image texture to a specific part of an object in Blender for a while and I really need an opinion of an expert here.
So, my object looks like below (front, side and back):

What I want is to apply an image texture only to these specific parts of the object. I've tried so far:

to do it by using nodes (Material properties) - didn't worked as it apply the image texture to the whole object;
importing the texture paint, select the specific parts (using "Texture Paint" as object interaction mode), selected as "Mask Mapping" the option "Stencil" and applied - it worked somehow, however the image texture applied it's not the same on both faces (has different axes positions). Also, the above part of the object (the middle part between front and back) it stays always black.

Is there any way of doing this?

What version of Blender are you using?  You have tagged your question with [tag:blender-internal-render-engine], however this tag indicates a specific render engine which is no longer present in the latest versions of Blender so I suspect you may not actually be understanding this tag correctly.  This is important as applying textures differs based on the render engine being used.

@PGmath - I'm using 2.92.0. About the tags, I wasn't able to find/identify one that was suggestive to my question.

You're probably using Eevee or Cycles.

A solution is that first you make two material slots. Give one slot any other texture you want and the other slot the image texture you want to apply to a specific part of mesh. Then go to edit mode, select the parts of your mesh you wan't your material to appear on and then press apply after selcting the right material.
Here are some tutuorials from youtube for beginners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms89wP8m4ZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXpbK2T1HJA

You lost me as I'm new to Blender. Could you provide any tutorial for it or post here an example? Thanks

Have a look here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/93024/107598 for pictures. Here an old video with Suzanne (the monkey): https://youtu.be/sXPscduUxbM but it still works the same. The render engine Cycles is on the right side where all the vertical icons (tabs) are. Choose the 2nd. There you can switch between Eevee and Cycles

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


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How does face snapping work?
I am new to blender and I was following this tutorial to make a donut.
But when it comes to the cream on top I cant deform the mesh on top to make it creamy so I end up with two ugly meshes.  I did like in the tutorial and enabled snap face, is there somthing am missing?

try select just the outer loop of vertexes and hide inside vertexes , when you do what you doing it tries snaping All of them to donat base mesh so it mess things up

Make sure to have more faces on the donut than on your icing.
You can do this by adding a subdivision subsurface, you don't have to apply it.
If this doesn't work as well, you can use the shrinkwrap modifier. Make sure this is below the subdivision subsurface modifier.
Go to the modifier tab and add a shrinkwrap modifier. You will also need more verts on the donut than on the icing while doing this.
Good luck with your donut!
Emiel

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


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How can I rig an asymmetrical mesh?
I´d like to know if it is possible to rig an asymmetrical mesh avoiding the tedious weight paint process.  I want to automatically weight my mesh.
I used the automatic weight option to a fairly symmetric mesh and it worked perfectly,the thing is that when I added some asymmetries the program didn't include those asymmetries so they remained in its place without being affected by the deformation.

Using automatic weights when assigning an armature to a mesh will assign weights to the existing mesh at that time, it will not automatically add weights to any modifications made after being applied.
By making changes to your mesh after rigging, you will need to manually weight paint the changes or redo the parenting with automatic weights to the new mesh. By reassigning the armature to the mesh you won't get duplicate armature modifiers or vertex groups, but you will most likely loose any manual adjustments you may have made to weight painting after doing automatic weights.

thaks a lot for your answer.Is there any way to find those vertices that cause "bone heating failed to find solution for one ore more bones"?


text:
Why is my textured material showing up as a solid color?

I'm trying to use a simple oak texture on this cube but it just shows up as a solid color.
I tried every option in the image texture (linear, cubic, flat, etc.) none of them worked in fact  I saw no difference between them.

Much more viable option is to unwrap the mesh first and use UV output socket from the Texture Coordinates node (though using any other coordinates may work depending on your needs). See also -http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/14239/why-is-my-texture-actilng-like-a-color, http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6827/texture-is-missing-in-cycles

Do you have Cycles render engine enabled?
If so, try adding a texture coordinate into the vector input to tell blender how to wrap the texture to a given object.


text:
Cycles renders slow
I have an animation with 500 frames at 1280x720 resolution.  It is a low-poly style scene with 108k.
The average time for one frame is 3 minutes at 50 samples.  I tried to enable GPU compute with a Macbook Pro (early 2015) but it failed.
How to speed up the rendering time?

You may wish to check out this question which seems to be similar to your question.  Another thing you can do is dump it to an online render farm (for instance, SheepIt), and have the render distributed.


text:
Does EdgeSplit modify geometry?
I'm making robot models exported from SolidWorks look better by smoothing the shading of the faces, here is my work-flow:

Import mesh
Remove double vertices
Smooth faces
Apply EdgeSplit
Export final model

This works great but I am not sure of one thing, from what I understand the EdgeSplit modifier only modifies the vertices normals on specific regions of the mesh (given the split angle).
When applying the work-flow above on some meshes (example), the poly count changes and I don't understand why:

Original file: 230 vertices
Removed doubles: 226 vertices
Smooth faces: 226 vertices
After EdgeSplit: 421 vertices

Why is the EdgeSplit affecting the poly-count in some cases and other not?

Yes, the Edge Split modifier does modify the geometry.
Edge Split works by actually splitting edges, i.e. making an edge two separate (overlapping) edges.  This is why your vertex count goes up after applying edge split, each vertex which is on an edge that got split is turned into two vertices.

Note how the vertex became three separate vertices after Edge Split.

Makes sense: we need different vertices normals at the same point for the different faces, so we duplicate vertices and affect different normal values to them.

I would have added a comment if I had the reputation.
As PGmath answered your question: Edge Split splits the mesh.
But here' more I think you'll find helpful:  I have a similar need, exporting from a similar program. (Inventor)
Edgesplit is destructive and not very flexible.  The newer bmesh abilities made it mostly obsolete.
Here's how I do it:

Import the mesh (I have to use STL.)
Spacebar, "Shade smooth" command.
In the Object data menu, click
"Auto Smooth" and lower the angle.
I often use 30. just make sure it
does not sharpen more than you need.  (You can fix the ones that
don't get sharpened later.)
Now you have the effect of Edge Split but without changing the mesh.  Perhaps you can stop here.
But if there still some that need to be hard edged:

Go into editmode.
With the edge select mode, (next to "global" at the bottom of the pane.) Select the edges you want to be sharp.
"Mark sharp" from the spacebar menu or from the left menu: Shading tab, Edge sharp.

Edit: But you did say you export it later, depending on the exporter and your needs, it may not keep those edges hard.  You can still export the split mesh and manually split more if needed.)  ...and you can undo split mesh with "remove doubles".


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Can't select edges after dissolving and using loop cut tool
I used the loop cut tool around the side of this model and then dissolved the edges because I thought it would save on file size and rendering and now I cannot select the area marked with the darker orange lines at all. Is this retrievable or will I have to start again?

Do you mean that those edges that appear orange cannot be selected? Or the faces that share those edges?

Sorry, just realized the question title says "faces"

It seems you should remove doubles in that mesh (with all selected W > Remove Doubles), try to switch Selection mode to Faces and select faces after that.

It looks like those dark orange edges may be a part of another object that was also selected when you went into edit mode.  You could also have inadvertently pressed [P] with that geometry selected.  Try exiting edit mode and hitting [Ctrl]+[J].

Those dark orange edges are on a separate object which is selected outside of edit mode.  Either you had both objects selected when you went into edit mode, or you Ctrl + xlicked it while in edit mode, or (more likely) you inadvertently disconnected it by hitting P with that geometry selected.
Either way, you can fix this by exiting edit mode and joining the two back together again with Ctrl+J (with both still selected).
If you need to reconnect the edges, select the vertices in pairs and merge them with Alt+M.  (Selecting all with A and hitting W > Remove Doubles may also work to reconnect at least some of the geometry.)

that worked! cheers mate

oo. when i say it worked I can select them again and they appear as nGon but when I select the subdiv surface it makes them into seperate pools with holes around the outside

@DaveGoateze  You can merge the vertices along the edge by selecting them in pairs and hitting [Alt]+[M].  Or try selecting all ([A]) and hitting [W] > Remove Doubles.

@DaveGoateze  Glad I could help!  To mark that this answer has solved your problem and take this off the unanswered list you can click the green checkmark under the voting buttons.

sorry I cant see a green checkmark or a voting button

@DaveGoateze It looks like this.

got it cheers mate

I have had a mesh become corrupted so that certain functions/actions cannot be performed on it.
If it seems your mesh is corrupted, which it may be, try various creative ways to trick the software, such as:

Export an .OBJ, and then open/import the file into a new blender project.
Use a mirror modifier or array modifier to create a pseudo-copy. Apply the modifier and then delete the original, leaving one of the copies. (Mirror back if needed).

If these don't work, you still don't need to start completely over. You can quickly rebuild it using the corrupt mesh as like a template that you can snap the points of the new mesh to the points on the old mesh.

Nice one cheers yeah it was totally corrupted after I dissolved the faces marked by the orange border. I did a loop cut to extrude the two pieces at the bottom and thought I should disolve what i didn't need to extrude.They are all totally untouchable now, I can't even delete them. I have already rebuilt what I have in the picture, thanks for your help i will be careful with the loop cut tool


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How to bend a tube with consistent thickness?
Modelling a Newton's cradle, but i can't seem to create the stand shape:

I have tried to use a path, and got this result:

It looks pretty good until you reach the top, where it is flat. The thickness is not consistent. So i am looking for an alternative way to make the stand. What are some ways to make this type of shape?

beveling a bezier curve path with  a bezier circle ?

Add a circle. Shift + A > Circle. The default has 32 vertices I change it to 16 vertices (You can decide however many you like).

Tab into Edit Mode and move it off center. Select all vertices press G to grab and the axis you want to move it on (in my case) X.
Extrude it up. Press E and the axis you want to extrude it (in my case) G.

Place the Cursor next to the top and press Alt + R to create the radius.

Add a Mirror Modifier and check off the Clipping box.

Extrude to the middle. Press E + X.

*This could also be accomplished with a Bezier Curve.

thanks a ton man! this was really important because i am putting it in an asset pack and it looked bad.

Bridging both edge loops will work however, make sure both objects are joined together prior to bridging the edge loops. If the pieces are not joined together using Ctrl +  J, it will not work.


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Import an FBX armature with weights into Blender
I'm having difficulty importing the armatures of FBX files into Blender.
The mesh is incorrectly scaled and rotated, and the armature is shot. I found a post (https://darisl.wordpress.com/about/importing-fbx-files-into-blender-with-full-armaturesweights/) about the BOS FBX importer. I followed the instructions but nothing happens (no warning, no import, no errors... nothing) when I try and import via BOS as opposed to Blender's FBX importer.
Here's a screenshot:

Checking the 'automatic bone orientation' option in the import FBX options has improved the situation for a FBX file that I didn't need to convert via autodesk's FBX converter. Still, some of the bones look out of place and seem to have no function, and the scale and rotation of the model is still wrong and I can't fix it by just messing with the mesh's position values:

You can try to enable Automatic Bone Orientation in the Armatures tab.

I edited the main question.


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How can I use a cycles material animated procedural texture to control hair particles?
As the question says, I want to distribute hair particles using animated procedural textures of a cycles material. The effect I want to achieve is something like that:

I can make a material to previsualize the areas the particles will cover, but I can't use the texture in the material node editor in the particles stack.
I try to use the texture node editor, but when movin the texture the particles just apear and disapear not making any grow o size variation.
Any help will be welcome! Thank You!!
PS: Sorry about any spalling error, not natural english user :)
EDIT:
Thanks for the comment Duarte Farrajota Ramos.
As I say in the comment, I'm trying with dynamic paint now. But the particles aren't taking the vertex group as a distributor at all.

I can't find the error yet, I did it once with that method but I was hopeing to get more control using textures, avoiding the Dinamyc Paint need to use an object to paint and another to erase the paint.

I don't think that is possible, you can't use cycles textures outside rendering, nor can you use node textures for particles

I did'n know that. I'm trying with dynamic paint now. But the particles aren't taking the vertex group as a distributor at all.


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What happened with materials in eevee when linking?
I have this problem with the material in the eyes of characters linked to a scene. The scene that contains the linked characters shows this way when rendered with Cycles:

When I change to eevee it is ok in viewport, but the materials disappear on the eyes: (on linked file)

I can't modify the materials when the characters are linked. So in the blend file of the character I set the material to use alpha. With eevee, it shows ok in viewport but not in render:

Cycles works good in this second case too.
Please someone help me with this issue!!

Please insert images into your Question via edit. External links are not allowed, they are not permanent and broken links brakes meaningful of your Questions. Keep in mind your Question is not just to be solved for you, but also knowledge base for others. Thank you keeping site useful.

Does issue appears also in original blend with Eevee or just when linked? Under material check Alpha blend mode type  https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/150785/2214

It is wierd it appears differently in both files... I'll put the images to the question

From your last comment, I don't think we can understand more. If you still have an issue please attach blend with eye. Thank you https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com


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Joining meshes makes weird things
I'm working on these trees and when I join the the two parts the do this:

Does someone knows why this happen or how to solve it?
Meshes haven't modifiers at all.
EDIT: I have noted, When I join the meshes it became a mesh with two materials. And faound this same problem when using more than one material in a mesh in other case.
Video SHowing the issue:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vkm1s97pM9xOuRF5J981CwfwyxQT-GTd
Thanks!!

Please don't upload photos taken with a smartphone camera. Every operation system in existence is capable of taking screenshots for at least 25 years now. https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/

I posted from my celphone because pc´s modem is not working.


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How I can distort image(movie clip) from rectangle to polar?
How I can distort image(movie clip) from rectangle coords to polar? Maybe I can do it in Node Editor or whatever?
I need to replace pixels from XY to Angle R. But how I can do it? Thank you.

Please at least upload an image to show what the "polar" means to be exact.

You can try using a texture node to perform a uv distort on the image by applying the blend texture radial.
otherwise you would have to distort the real uv unwrap or possibly use a modifier to distort a mapped mesh in 3d view.
EDIT:
So I imported this plane into Blender as Add > Mesh > Images As Planes
Then add an empty and clear the location of both "alt G"
Select the image plane and add 2 modifiers.
1. Subsurf, use simple, increase divisions to 6
2. Add a simple Deform modifier set to Bend.
3. Set Origin as Empty, then enter Deform Angle as 360 deg.
4. alter empty location if required.


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Blender 2.71 Cycles render preview graphic purple (no missing textures)
Some weeks ago I downloaded Blender 2.71 (Win64) from the official website. The version I was using before was the 2.69, which didn´t give me any problem. But the newest version wont let me use the render preview in cycles, showing me a purple screen instead. Firstly I thought the problem was on the version, but today I installed the program in some friend´s computer and works fine.
I have windows 7 (the same OS as my friends), Acer Aspire, and just formatted it. The blender render lets me use the render view though and I can render images (both with f12 and on the render options) in cycles. I have tried both win32 and win 64, as well as the portable and the installable versions. Any ideas?
Thank you in advance.
Edit: The scene of the image is the default one, with only the cube, the camera and the point lamp on display. The sky has no texture, just the default solid grey. The problem is that the whole viewport turns purple, which could mean that it´s not a missing textures issue. I think that the problem might lay on the graphic drivers, but I don´t know what to do. I really hope the next blender version or ATI actualization may fix the problem.

Would agree... It usally appears when textures are missing. Activate Amaranth toolset addon(in Testing category) to find out easyli wich is missing(scene debug panel)

Did the render was succesful? is only preview effected? (by the way between key and button is no difference)

But if the problem were the missing textures the objects should be the only ones affected, instead of having the entire viewport purple, shouldn´t them? This is the default scene, with only the cube on the 3D space. I have activated the Amaranth Addon, but I´m not sure what to do with it. The render in Cycles is successful, the only problem is the preview. Thank you for helping.

@AntonioGonzalezViegas If you have a missing sky texture, then the sky could be pink too.

I have an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500 Series. and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. I have not set any sky texture either, it´s the untouched default scene. I´m starting to think that the problem might lay on the graphic drivers. I am going to try reinstalling them, installing other versions and turning down the graphic hardware acceleration. Thank you very much for helping.

@cegaton cycles also works on cpu, so that shouldn't be the problem. Usually there is no gpu option for ati cards.

In the end I am working using f12 with low framing to preview my works. I will ensure that in the future my next computer has got a compatible graphic card. Thank you all for the help!


text:
Where does my Python output go when I start Blender with a script in Windows?
I'm starting Blender 2.79 with a --python flag to run a python script.
On a Mac, print() statements show up in the terminal window as expected. On Windows, when executing the same command in git bash, print() statements appear until the main Blender window opens and then output stops.
Where does console output go says on Windows output should go to the "Console Window," but when I select this menu option, the main Blender window loses focus and nothing else happens. (If I start Blender normally the Console Window appears as expected.)
Things that didn't work for me:

Writing to the console: How can I display what happens in the system console inside blender's console?
Starting blender.exe with the -con flag

Things that kind of worked:

Overriding print() as in Blender script run print to console works but only after I quit Blender. -_-
The redirect_stdout trick from How to redirect output from 'bpy.ops.*'? prints output if I capture it with stdout.seek(0); print(stdout.read()), but only after I quit Blender. -_-
os.system('echo test') works, but if it's possible to get regular python print statements working I'd like to know how.

I found a way to sort of do it by overriding print(), but it's not comprehensive: def print(*args): strings = [] for arg in args: strings.append(str(arg)) output = ' '.join(strings) os.system('echo '+output) This works as expected for everything I've tried except objects, eg: print(datetime) should return <module 'datetime' (built-in)> as it does in a standard python console, but in the context of my script it returns: >The syntax of the command is incorrect. Can anyone improve this?

I think that may be a flaw in the way the windows version works, it doesn't output to stdout, it creates it's own console for output which may be what prevents getting console output this way.

os.system('echo "%s"' % output)  will need to make sure any quotes in output are escaped.   Suggest never using print(str + str) can use formatting or print(str, str) often suffices.

This is a bad idea. 'output' can contain anything, and even simply putting it between quotes won't be enough to have a reliable way to print things. Any string passed to os.system() should be treated very, very carefully in order not to shoot yourself in the foot. Think of this command as "this potentially formats my harddisk/SSD".

Git Bash is different from regular terminals, as it tries to bridge the gap in behaviour between UNIX terminals and Windows' console (cmd.exe). Run winpty ./blender.exe to get more immediate output of your print() commands.
Note, however, that winpty seems to mangle filenames, so you have to resort to absolute paths in Windows notation to prevent this.

If you only want to see your scripts print output you can run your script in blenders python console. You can find an explanation here which also has a link to an addon I use to add a run script menu item in the console.
If you are using a python script to start blender, the subprocess methods such as run can give you a link to the subprocesses stdout so you can get the output. I don't have access to windows to test but I think that using -con would consume the output and not give your script access to the output.
For your attempt at overriding print(), you could instead use a log file, then instead of watching stdout you can read the contents of the log file. As python is still printing you will get the same info and formatting as you expect.
import builtins

logfile = open('blend_output.txt', 'w')

def print(*args):
    builtins.print(args, file=logfile)
    logfile.flush()

print('this goes to file for me to see')


text:
How can I open an image with a Python script in Windows?
In the script editor in Blender 2.79 on Windows, I can open an image with:
bpy.ops.image.open(filepath="C:\\path\\to\\image.png")
However, if I put this code in a .py file and open Blender from the command line (git bash, in this case), passing the .py file with a --python flag, Blender crashes:

Error: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION

What's up here?

Can you show exactly all what you run in that script which gives you that error? I tried on linux, and it seems to work.

Details are in the bug report: https://developer.blender.org/T53446

Looks like a bug, it works in Blender 2.78c – I've reported it here: https://developer.blender.org/T53446
Update: Fixed in 2.79a: https://developer.blender.org/rB5b3c15e3363aa7bea5d26c56191b7e8e74021868


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How to merge images into a single strip
I would like to merge a few images into a single strip with the images next to each other.
Using compositor didn't work out as I expected. Thinking a bit more about it, I would prefer not to use compositor.
And use python for this now I am wondering if the python part of blender could join images like that. Blender is not PIL, so I'm not sure if this is possible. The strip can be either horizontal or vertical.
* UPDATE *
  My alternative option, is to break open the pgn or jpg codec, read images as RGB data, and output a final RGB string basedupon multiple images. while possible i wonder if there are easier methods using Blender python API, can blender python do memory based like image manipulation, like addressing pixels directly to set their values ?

I understand what you wish to accomplish, but to be able to provide an answer I need to know the greater context and workflow. Where do the images come from, and what are you wanting as the larger final result of the process of which this is one of the steps?

@cegaton, I bet he's referring to the Python Imaging Library: http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

Yup, Pil stands for Pytohn Image Library, as library full of functions for creating and manipulating images.

Oh I see now, you want to do automation of this with python, Ill update my answer in the morning with some python coding..

You can create an empty texture of size of the resulting image strip and alpha over all of your images over it in compositor and translate them with translate node into positions and render it:
With python:

load in you image textures:
import bpy

def load_image(file_path):
    try:
        return bpy.data.images.load(filepath)
    except:
        raise NameError("Cannot load image %s" % filepath)

image_names = ['first.png', 'second.jpg', 'third.bmp']
images = []
for name in image_names:
    real_path = bpy.abspath('//' + name)
    images.append(load_image(real_path))

Get image dimension:
images[0].size[0]    # resolution x
images[0].size[1]    # resolution y

Create empty image of desired resolution for example 1024x256:
bg = bpy.ops.image.new(name="bg", width=1024, height=256, alpha=False)

How to create nodes in compositor and link them:
Controling compositor by python
Render:
render = bpy.context.scene.render
# set this
render.resolution_x = 1024
render.resolution_y = 256
# render image
render.render()
# use File_Output node or specify render.filepath to also save the result

Getting low level with manipulating image pixels:
# you get float values for each pixel like this:
# in png they are stored nicely in rgba order
image = bpy.data.images['SOME_NAME.PNG']
for i in range(0, len(image.pixels), 4):
    rgba = image.pixels[i:i+4]
    # this is also writable ofc

There are couple things to keep in mind though:

Blender uses opengl internally so the origin is in the lower left corner of the image (with the y-axis pointing upwards).
Some image programs might not save the transparency pixels
The image might have alpha premultiplied, but this shouldn't be a concern. In that case the values are in form of [r * a, g * a, b * a, a]

i understand this workflow, but it seams a bit how to say complex road, for just image manipulation, doesnt blender have some api for some straight image manipulation ?
(as i prefer not to change composer setups)

Ok I added some image pixel manipulation

yes i think something along that way.
for exampl img1 [r,g,b,a] + img2 [r,g,b,a] = new[r,g,b,a]
thinking about it, numpy is part of blender ? numpy should be ablee to do this

Yes numpy module is shipped with blender. from numpy import * will work

I had no idea numpy was in Blender. There are actually questions on this site of people asking how to install it. I'll try using numpy for image manipulation, because it should be possible, and it should be much much much faster.


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Rigify moving and posing, origin doesn't seem to move
When I Rigify a model, pose it in a scene and move it around etc.
The model seams to remember the "origin position", from when I created the character.
(mesh origin as in blender terms, this is a property of a mesh)
When I then want to edit the rig, or mesh.
I put it into "rest position".
Then it jumps back to that original position. This is a bit frustrating in large scenes. Apparently I moved or posed it wrong.
Or is this normal behavior?

An armature moves the mesh data of an object, not the object itself. If you make the armature the parent of the mesh object, the mesh object will move with the armature when you move it in object mode. You will also notice that adjusting the armature in pose mode will leave the origin of the armature at the start position.
The modifiers have some display options that can be turned on/off. Some modifiers only have two some three and some four, the armature modifier has all four. Enabling all four will prevent the mesh snapping back to it's original position in edit mode.

When i conected the bones to the mesh i used automatic weight painting, i asume that is like you describe parenting ?

Yes auto-weight painting is one of the parenting options under armature deform. In the outliner you will see the armature, expand it to see the mesh object.


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Unselectable edge? Help!
I don't know if anyone has asked this but I've encountered this problem numerous times on multiple files. When I'm trying to edit a mesh I get this edge that I can't select.

Here's a better picture of what's going on. It's part of the face, but the edge doesn't show up in the wireframe. I tried deleting the face and it put a hole in my mesh.

Daniel, Welcome to Blender.stackexchange. I had some difficulty viewing the screen shot you posted, and then when I managed to view the screen shot, I could not tell which edge you were having trouble selecting. Your mileage may vary, and I'm not sure how you're trying to select the edges that are giving you difficulty, but in my own modeling, many of the instances where I cannot select an edge become resolved when I select the vertices at where I think each end of the edge should be with the box or circle tool in wireframe mode, and apply the "remove doubles" tool. [Continued below]

[Continued from above] Or instead of the "remove doubles" tool, you can deactivate the "limit selection to visible" button in the header of the 3D viewport.

Thanks for the quick response. It's the two lines at the bottom right of the hilt(the two bluish triangles). They show up as edges but there's no black line connecting the vertices. The edges don't move either. If I pull the faces outward, they disappear, but If I push them inward, the edges reappear.

Looks like a non-planar face or two, possibly an ngon, but it's hard to tell in the screenshot. Is it possible you could upload the .blend?

I think Gandalf3 is probably right. What you might try is to switch to face select mode, wireframe view. I would expect here that you should see the activating square for the rectangle, and if select that face, and then delete "faces only", the problem should resolve itself.

It looks as though you have a non-planar face.  Since there is no such thing as a curved surface in computer graphics each face gets "triangulated" down to one or more tris (triangles).  So even though a face may only have four edges, it is really composed of two tris, separated by a hidden edge.  This can cause unpredictability when the face is not planar.
To put an editable edge there you can select the two vertices and hit J to join the two vertices.
Alternatively, you can make the face planar by going to Mesh menu > Clean up > Make Planar Faces.

That fixed it, thanks a ton! I didn't know about that.

I went in circles with this problem, only to realize the edge was a different object. Had separated it from main mesh I don't know how. So i just selected object mode, then selected the edge as an independent object


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DirectX Export Script for Blender v. 2.71
I recently downloaded the newest version of Blender(v 2.71). I immediately encountered a problem when exporting my models to DirectX format(.x). The new export script tries to minimize the file size( I assume this is the reason ) and in so doing has created the need to rewrite the X file importer for my application.
The file now has a single reference for each position, and a single reference for each normal. For a cube the file looks like this:
Mesh Cube { // Cube mesh
      8;
       1.000000; 1.000000;-1.000000;,
       1.000000;-1.000000;-1.000000;,
      -1.000000;-1.000000;-1.000000;,
      -1.000000; 1.000000;-1.000000;,
       1.000000; 0.999999; 1.000000;,
       0.999999;-1.000001; 1.000000;,
      -1.000000;-1.000000; 1.000000;,
      -1.000000; 1.000000; 1.000000;;
      12;
      3;1,2,3;,
      3;7,6,5;,
      3;0,4,5;,
      3;1,5,6;,
      3;6,7,3;,
      3;0,3,7;,
      3;0,1,3;,
      3;4,7,5;,
      3;1,0,5;,
      3;2,1,6;,
      3;2,6,3;,
      3;4,0,7;;
      MeshNormals { // Cube normals
        12;
         0.000000;-0.000000;-1.000000;,
         0.000000;-0.000000; 1.000000;,
         1.000000;-0.000001;-0.000000;,
        -0.000000;-1.000000;-0.000000;,
        -1.000000; 0.000000;-0.000000;,
         0.000000; 1.000000; 0.000000;,
         0.000000; 0.000000;-1.000000;,
        -0.000000;-0.000000; 1.000000;,
         1.000000; 0.000000; 0.000000;,
        -0.000000;-1.000000; 0.000000;,
        -1.000000; 0.000000;-0.000000;,
         0.000000; 1.000000; 0.000000;;
        12;
        3;0,0,0;,
        3;1,1,1;,
        3;2,2,2;,
        3;3,3,3;,
        3;4,4,4;,
        3;5,5,5;,
        3;6,6,6;,
        3;7,7,7;,
        3;8,8,8;,
        3;9,9,9;,
        3;10,10,10;,
        3;11,11,11;;
      } // End of Cube normals

Notice that the positions and normals are no longer in a 1-to-1 correspondence. This means that in my application I must map the normals to the appropriate positions...not difficult. The problem is that I must execute a vertex splitting algorithm for each mesh I import. There are only 8 vertices referenced for 12 faces and each face has a different normal...Vertices cannot be shared if their normals are different. My application expects 36 vertices;
3 per face(12 faces for a cube).
For a cube, the algorithm isn't too bad but for an entire scene a splitting algorithm can take quite some time. Furthermore, on occasion the entire scene may need to be reloaded upon events such as 'lost' device. This is undesirable behavior.
My question is this: Should an X file be formatted in this manner? It makes the file smaller but increases the load time of each mesh. The X files in the DirectX SDK all have 1:1 correspondence between positions and normals...
I can customize the script of course...I just want to know about the X file format...

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about DirectX, not Blender.

how is the question off topic when Blender is the author of the export script in question?

Because the problem is while importing.

The x file makes sense, it has a 1 to 1 correspondence of vertex to normals. If you use smooth shading, you should fix your rendering code.
The rendering code:
1. Upload vertices array , normals array and  UV's array.

Draw triangles using the vertex indexes provided

It's rather simple, look here:
http://www.songho.ca/opengl/gl_vertexarray.html

The file most definitely does not have a 1:1 correspondence of positions to normals. There are 8 positions and 12 normals. The file has a 1:1 correspondence of face to normals(the export script writes one normal per face). It isn't a problem to load a mesh formatted as is the one above...The question was whether or not the file SHOULD be formatted this way. The new export script is only 'unrolling' vertex data if uv coordinates exist and the option to export uvs is selected. If unrolled then the mesh would have 1:1 correspondance of positions to normals...

One normal per face is for flat shading, one normal per vertex is for smooth shading. Check if your cube is flat shaded or smooth shaded in blender.

I'm not concerned with the mapping of data within the file...It does indeed map correctly. My question is whether or not a file should be formatted this way. Files in the Microsoft DirectX SDK are not formatted this way. Their files are unrolled...

When files are unrolled, the opposite problem exists (a lot more vertices). In games most models need smooth shading, so thats how things are.


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Blender games on Amazon Fire Tv
I am interested in putting 3d blender games on the tv and I thought there might be a way to put it on Amazon Fire tv. I understand that fire tv takes mostly java games, but I like blender as a rendering and game engine, and I don't want to have to use another game engine. So my question is, is there a way to put blender games on the Amazon Fire tv?

I have made my question more clear. Thank you for the suggestion!


text:
Is there a way to fit the viewport to the current field of view?
Since there seems to be no direct way to get the camera's projection matrix, I'm hoping that it's possible to fit the viewport to the current field of view (the area encompassed by passepartout), because then the viewport projection matrix would in effect be the camera projection matrix, and that matrix can be retrieved via region_3d.perspective_matrix.
So, in pictures, I'm looking to do the following via Python:
Before:

After:

Is that possible?
I'm looking to export the projection matrix for an external application, so that my view there matches blender's camera view.
For that purpose, this is a roundabout way to ask, but my previous question was (in my view, incorrectly) marked as a duplicate.

Perhaps if you explained your technical goal in a little larger sense perhaps readers could give you some good ideas.  Is this a rendering need ?  A viewing need?

@atomicbezierslinger I think the OP wants to get the projection matrix of the camera in python

What do you want the projection matrix for? - worth including in the question.

If you want to "fill" the screen with the camera view while looking through a camera, this little nugget should do the trick:
import bpy
import mathutils

def viewFrom(screen):
    """
    :param screen:
    :return: the "first" area in the specified screen that is a 3D view.
    """
    for obj in screen.areas:
        if (obj.type == 'VIEW_3D'):
            return obj
    return None

def wonk(factor):
    return 50*(2*math.sqrt(factor) - math.sqrt(2))

#

v3d = viewFrom(bpy.context.screen)
r3d = v3d.spaces[0].region_3d

r3d.view_camera_offset = (0,0)
r3d.view_camera_zoom = 29.29 # (2-sqrt(2))*50

a1 = v3d.regions[4].width / v3d.regions[4].height
a2 = scn.render.resolution_x / scn.render.resolution_y

if a2<a1 :
    r3d.view_camera_zoom = wonk(a2/a1)

If you want to set your view point and angle to be the same as the camera while not looking through the camera, see my other example.

While trying to figure out how to manipulate bpy.context.screen.areas[5].spaces[0].region_3d.view_camera_zoom , I accidentally discovered that the Home key will make the camera bounds fill the viewport.  If you try 'View All' from the spacebar menu it doesn't work exactly like the Home key (could not be bothered to hunt down why).
While not exactly useful, the examples at http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/blender/python-cookbook/screenshot-sequence.html might get you a little closer to the solution.  Specifically
def viewMatrixFromCamera(cam):
    """
    :param cam: the camera whose point of view is of interest
    :return: the view matrix suitable for use in region_3d.view_matrix
    """
    m2 = cam.rotation_euler.to_matrix()
    m2.resize_4x4()
    m3 = mathutils.Matrix.Translation(cam.location)
    return (m3*m2).inverted()

def viewFrom(screen):
    """
    :param screen:
    :return: the "first" area in the specified screen that is a 3D view.
    """
    for obj in screen.areas:
        if (obj.type == 'VIEW_3D'):
            return obj
    return None

v3d = viewFrom(bpy.context.screen)
m1 = viewMatrixFromCamera(bpy.context.scene.camera)
print(m1)
v3d.spaces[0].region_3d.view_matrix = m1

Unfortunately this exact code is NOT what you need when you are actually looking through the camera.  It only works to set the view when you are NOT looking through the camera.
Another problem is that while the code does move your focal point to the camera position, and gives you the correct orientation, it is highly unlikely to match the focal length of the camera.  I have not been able to find any setting on the 3D view that allows you to adjust the focal length when you are not looking through the camera.  When you "zoom in" you really just move the 3d view's focal point closer to the center point.

Home does the same thing as @atomicbezierslinger's answer for me, which AFAICT doesn't seem to answer the OP's question of how to fit the view to the camera (including aspect ratio?).

If you want to adjust the aspect ratio, that's going to involve adjusting the size of the "area", and then you have to fight with toolbars.  I'm not saying it's impossible, but it will be difficult.  The biggest roadblock is that view_offset is opaque, and probably relevant to the position of the camera rectangle (in case you dragged it around).

Python has access to all the variables used to make the camera matrix, it shouldn't be so much work to check on the C code and get it working in Python, note that the camera frame may have shift applied, so a matrix alone wont give give you the camera bounds.
Check: BKE_camera_params_compute_matrix and BKE_camera_params_from_object

I found perspective_m4 in math_geom.c. That seems like it should work, but the arguments (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax) go through a very long and confusing pipeline (part of which can be seen in BKE_camera_params_compute_viewplane), which involves other hard to track values, and additional function calls. So, it doesn't really seem that easy to me.

re: BKE_camera_params_compute_viewplane - this takes width/height & aspect, Python has access to these.

Spacebar menu ..... view camera center.
bpy.ops.view3d.camera_to_view()

This fits the camera to the view, it doesn't fit the view to the camera like in the OP's example.

By my inspection, View Camera Center appears to be exactly what the OP's examples display.  The opposite would be Align Camera To View (C-A-Num0).


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Visualise texture based on direction a surface is pointing using Cycles
I would like to apply/blend a shader based on the direction a face is pointing. So basically, if the colors of the axes are used, a cube would look like this:

Ideally, also the negative and positive direction should be taken into account. That way the shader on the face pointing in the Z+ direction can be different from the one pointing in the Z- direction.

You can do something like this by plugging the "True Normal" output of the Geometry node into a Diffuse/Emission shader.
Although it is a vector output, it will give you a colour for each face depending upon its normal.

Thanks. Using an RGB split I can make it work. I'll post the solution as soon as I got it working as expected.

As it turns out you only have to make the normal direction absolute:


text:
Map a texture to a torus
In my latest render for Instagram I ran into a mapping problem. As a referece, this is the image:

The black and white striped bridge basically is half a torus with two cylinders attached to it. I couldn't immediately think of a way to unwrap it properly to get the procedural brick pattern flowing correctly. So what I did was create a cylinder, calculate the length of the bend, subdivided the part that should be bent and added a bend modifier to only those vertices.
But the transition from torus to cylinder on both sides is not completely smooth. So the next time I run into the same situation, I would like to use half a torus and extrude the ends on both sides. But how can I unwrap this shape properly so that the brick pattern is mapped just like in the render above? Or is there another way to approach this?

A more procedural workflow suggests the use of Splines to create the shape. Moreover, Spline UV maps can be used to create the pattern you are looking for. First, model the spline and give it a full depth as follows:

Then enable Use UV For Mapping and utilize the modulo operator to create the pattern you are after. The value nodes control the number of lines along the spline and radially while the less than values control the depth of the lines:

Thanks Omar, that’s exactly what I was looking for. More and better even, because my first go-to place was a bevelled spline, but I wasn’t aware of the UV mapping feature. So that’s a bonus. :) Thanks again!


text:
Selecting curve after importing svg using bpy
I'm importing an SVG file into my scene using bpy. But after importing, the curve is not selected nor active. Here is wat I am doing:
path = '/path/fo/file/'
file = 'contour.svg'

bpy.ops.import_curve.svg(filepath = path + file)

Can I just assume that the newly imported object is always the last one in the objects array? So that I can grab it like this:
active_object = bpy.context.scene.objects[-1]

Or is there a better way?

You can store the names of the objects before and after importing and find the difference to make sure you have the latest one:
import bpy
C = bpy.context

# Names of all objects before importing the SVG
names_pre_import = set([ o.name for o in C.scene.objects ])

# Import SVG as curve
fp = '/mylocalpath/svgcurve.svg'
bpy.ops.import_curve.svg(filepath = fp)

# Names of all objects after importing the SVG
names_post_import = set([ o.name for o in C.scene.objects ])

# Perform set difference to find the new name and store it
new_object_name = names_post_import.difference( names_pre_import ).pop()

# Reference new object
o = C.scene.objects[ new_object_name ]

# Set as selected and active in Blender 2.7x
o.select = True
C.scene.objects.active = o

# Set as selected and active in Blender 2.8
# o.select_set(True)
# C.view_layer.objects.active = o

Howdy 'Lousky.  Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/48281/15543  This is prob a better way, or patching the importer to make it follow a more default behaviour and return the curves selected. btw Having issues with this addon in 2.8 setting the diffuse color, working ok at your end?

Thanks @batFINGER. Are you having trouble with the import SVG as curve? I could change the color after importing.

My 2.8 build the importer is throwing an error when attempting to import blender.svg . Will check I've updated the addon repo correctly on next build.

You can also set an id attribute to each path in your svg file :
<!-- test.svg -->
<svg>
  <path id="R" d="M51.91962,15.36299c-2.08408,-0.41842 -4.74969..." />
  <path id="A" d="M96.07288,-0.33042c-0.27285,-1.06773 -0.52182..." />
</svg>

Then the curves will be named :

And so you can select them :
o = C.scene.objects[ 'A' ]
o.select_set(True)
C.view_layer.objects.active = o


text:
Problem with transparency when using two world images
In my setup I have two environment textures applied to my world. They are mixed using the factor of Is Camera Ray, like so:

The first environment node has a color grid, which is used for illumination. The second has a uv grid, which is shown to the camera.
So far, so good. If the scene is rendered with diffuse shaders this works perfectly. But when throwing transparency and reflections in the mix, things go south. Transparent objects will show the illuminating environment (color grid) rather than the one that is visible in the render (uv grid). Here's a quick render to illustrate the problem:

I can see why this is happening so probably I will need to look for an alternative route. Suggestions are very welcome!

Thanks for your quick reply. Basically what I'm after is only the illumination of the invisible environment (color grid). It shouldn't be visible anywhere else in the scene. Transparencies and reflections should show the uv grid.


text:
Selecting multiple edge loops in Blender 2.8
I used to be able to select and edge loop with AltRMB and then just continue with ShiftAltRMB. But this no longer works in Blender 2.80 and nightly builds of 2.79.
Is there another way to achieve the same?
UPDATE
It's not related to the nightly builds since I am also experiencing the same with the latest official release. Deleting Blender's user preferences doesn't change anything, nor does resetting the keymaps.
So it might be related to the Linux distro I am using (elementary OS), I'll have to look into that and follow up here as soon as I found something.
UPDATE 2
In the meantime, I switched back form elementary OS to Pop!_OS, which resolved the issue. It seems that somehow, elementary OS was blocking the ShiftAltRMB combination. The issue persisted with all versions of Blender, be it 2.79 official, 2.79 nightly or 2.80. Now, all is fine. Even 2.80 works as expected.
UPDATE 3
As of now, Blender 2.80 is using left-click by default for selecting. Selecting edge loops is done by double clicking, which is so much more convenient.

maybe you found the solution already but have you tried to double click on the edges or the loop you want to select ? It seems the shortcut changed to just double clicking =) cheers !

@Alcy thanks for the suggestion. In the meantime, I switched back form elementary OS to Pop!_OS, which resolved the issue. It seems that somehow, elementary OS was blocking the Shift + Alt + RMB combination. The issue persisted with all versions of Blender, be it 2.79 official, 2.79 nightly or 2.80. Now, all is fine. Even 2.80 works as expected (with a single click ;)

If selecting isn't working with alt-LMB, it's probably because you're using 3 button mouse emulation, in which case the old way of double clicking will work.
I'm still searching how to do edge rings though.

thanks this was exactly my problem in this case.

In some reason, OS can think, that you are want to switch keyboard layout and blocks your Alt+Shift combination.
To avoid this, I set "Toggle select" to Loop Select with Alt+RMB, to swap Alt+RMB and  Alt+Shift+RMB:

It may require additional deselection with A, but it's better then nothing.

Alt + Double Click with the LMB for me works only this way
UPDATE: no need of Alt
just two quick clicks with LMB

The functionality works fine in both newest builds: Windows 64 bit 2.79 from November 09 2018 02:16:07 and Windows 64 bit 2.8 from November 09 2018 01:37:42.
If it did not work, that would also be perfectly fine since they are experimental. It is your responsibility to experiment with experimental software if you choose to and it is also not very reasonable to ask for help if something does not work, since that is to be expected, because of it being experimental.
With that said, it does not seem that your problem is because of the specific builds you are using in this particular case. I would firstly suspect that something is changed in your keymaps, that can be restored from the User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+u in Blender 2.79), Input tab:

If that doesn't help, you can try to restore all the default settings and user preferences by deleting your user preferences folder, that is stored at %appdata%\Blender Foundation\Blender\[version number] on Windows. Obviously, you should make a backup before deleting them if you think there is something that you might not want to loose there. That should fix it.

Thank you for the lecture on experimental builds. Your cockiness is not appreciated. Many shortcut changes from 2.80 are also applied to the nightly builds of 2.79, so I see no reason why asking about it here would be out of place, as you suggest. Such a change might as well be intended.
That said, I updated my question to reflect your suggestions.

Nightly builds are experimental, 2.79 included. There are clear warnings on the download page. It is harder to help people if they are using software that is constantly changing, which I try to do despite my cockiness. Also the problems with nightly builds might be very temporary, so the answers might not be as useful to this community as good questions about intended Blender's functionality of official releases. Questions about bugs are also considered off topic(see: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/what-questions-should-be-definitely-off-topic/6#6).

I had the same Problem using Elementary OS.
The problem is that the combination Alt + Shift  is used to change the keyboard language.
To fix the problem you can go to System Settings -> Keyboard -> Layout Tab and change the Switch Layout option from Alt + Shift to something else.

This solution solved the shortcut conflict on my eOS Odin.

The current way to select edge loops is ALT+LMB and SHIFT+ALT+LMB to add to selection. It used to be double-click, which I think almost everyone liked better. It is unfortunate that it was removed from the beta.

I just downloaded the latest build and edge loop selecting is still done with double click. ALT + LMB does nothing with me. :)


text:
Creating a procedural worm texture
I'm exploring procedural textures and I am looking to get close to something like this:

How can I achieve this kind of worm texture?
The closest I got is with the musgrave texture:

I would like the (black) islands to be disconnected.
UPDATE:
To make things clearer, this is more like what I would like to achieve:

I have no idea if it is at all achievable, but it's an area worth exploring.

Maybe not exactly the same, but closer to what you're trying to achieve are the following two node setups. The basic idea in both cases is the same. Try to achieve a similar look with combinations of the default procedural textures, and then use either a colorRamp node or a math node set to 'GREATER THAN' to filter the texture.
Using the colorRamp node, the Musgrave Texture will already be enough as an input. Take a closer look at the ColorRamp node. I pulled the white and the black values very close together. What this means effectively is that all pixel values coming into this node, which are below something like 0.6, will be converted to pure black. everything above something like 0.7 will be converted to pure white. The rest becomes greyscales. Basically, this is a bit like an extreme brightness/contrast correction.

Greather than (this is an option in the math node) is only able to output values of 0 or 1, so black or white, nothing inbetween. For your example, this seems to work, but for others there might be too much aliasing in the image. The texture I tried to build using two distorted wave textures overlaid over each other. I just added it so it becomes more clear that you can also stack procedurals, combine them using pixel math, and then again filter the output. The result is less of what you wanted, but the idea might take you further from here:

authors: Василий Мартьянов


text:
Does something like a Join Modifier exist?
Lately I've been experimenting with procedural shapes, based on a very limited mesh. I found myself looking for a way to join two meshes using a modifier. The Boolean modifier doesn't do the trick. It just messes up the mesh in horrible ways.
Some way out (or hack) is to use the Start Cap and End Cap parameters on an Array modifier to join various meshes together. Given their joints are close to identical, this works great. When I set the Count to 1, uncheck both offsets and check Merge, it does what I want:

I can even build the end caps with modifiers (array, mirror, ...). That way, I can create meshes with very little source data, while having super complex end results that are editable and animateable with very little effort.
Now I am wondering if there is a better way to do this. Remember that I want to keep the original meshes editable and separate at all time. Is there a way to join/merge meshes using a modifier, other than my Array modifier hack?
UPDATE:
Using a Boolean modifier does not work because it's not really "aware" of the matching vertices. It just tries to merge two meshes together at whatever cost. Using the exact same meshes, the result is the following:

The Array modifier is much smarter in that respect. It tries to join the meshes at points where vertices are overlapping or in very close proximity to each other (Distance tolerance). It actually merges the vertices (removes doubles) so the end result is more or less the same as merging vertices of two separate meshes in edit mode. And that's what I am looking for.

What's wrong with Boolean > Union? Do you want to join overlaping meshes? From the screenshot you have posted I assume not and than Boolean is working just fine (don't forget to hide joined mesh).

I updated my question to include the reason why the Boolean modifier is not an option.

I saw your post in "blender.community".  Do you have any progress? I have to same problem to join >2 objects.  Result material is also wrong.

This answer comes from a post by the asker on a different forum.
By using the Array modifier with the count set to $1$ (and, optionally, each Offset option disabled), you can use the Caps field to join up to two additional objects.
You may need to fiddle with their positions in order to achieve the ideal effect. If you want to merge overlapping vertices, make sure that Merge is also checked.

As of 2.92, Blender's geometry nodes can create a "join modifier", which I think is pretty cool, even if it does require a little bit of nodes work:

The node group modifier is reusable, although that's not going to be of much use, since you can't specify an object input to the modifier.  (I hope that's in the works?)
If you want to merge vertices afterwards, like an array would, you can follow the geometry node modifier with a weld modifier.


text:
Creating thick, bright pink smoke [UPDATED]
Ok, I'm slowly going mental here. Yesterday evening I was playing around with smoke and managed to create this lovely thick, bright pink smoke cloud:

This one is perfect and exactly what I am looking for. It's basically a smoke emitting object inside a glass tube and a smoke collision object right above the tube to disperse the smoke column. Unfortunately I didn't bake the smoke and I've accidentally overwritten the file with the right settings.
Generally, smoke is quite dark. So I used a white absorption color and a negative smoke color to get the bright pink, something along those lines:

But whatever I do, I'm unable the match the same intensity in the initial image. Emission create white cubes around the smoke bubble, it does not actually intensify the color, so that's not it, either. It might even be a combination of the smoke settings and shader settings. Currently I tried various things, all very disappointing:

I even tried inserting light inside the smoke, but that's even farther from the desired effect.

Can anyone with more smoke expertise point me into the right direction?
UPDATE
In the meantime the issue resolved itself automatically. This seems to be a bug in Blender.
The image below was rendered this afternoon, which shows a lot of issues in the thick areas:

While far from perfect, the following image got rendered five minutes ago:

Same file, same settings, quite a different result. I'm not sure what caused these horrible results, which is kind of frustrating. I spent a day trying to get it right, while the settings are not dramatically different between the target image and the ones that have dark artifacts. Maybe a cache issue? I cleared cache between bakes, though.

Reminds me of my post https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/233575/unpinning-cloth-not-working where you'll see in the Answer how indeed sometimes blender is not clearing a bad cache.  Consider reporting a bug, as these problems do tend to burn significant amounts of our time (and hair being pulled?).

This reminded me to enter a bug report.  See https://developer.blender.org/T91034


text:
Constrain the movement of rigid bodies to two axes
Is there a way to have an object, a ball for example, fall down and bounce up, using rigid body dynamics, but with its movement locked to two axes? So basically that would make for a 2 dimensional simulation.
I tried using a generic rigid body constraint but that doesn't seem to do anything when I lock a single axis. Now I'm faking it by putting the ball between four planes, in a box basically. Although there should be a better way to achieve this.

Use a copy location constraint on the ball to some other objects x, y coordinate.

Ball locked to bounce on plane origin (0, 0, 0)


text:
Importing SVG as a string using bpy
I was wondering if there is a way to import a raw SVG string using bpy rather than importing a file. The reason is that I have the data available in a database. I could write a file and import it but I rather skip that step, if possible.
UPDATE:
What I would like to do in the end is use the SVG data to make an extruded object in Blender. The expected SVG elements will be shapes (rect, path, polygon, ...).

SVG is just xml. You could just parse it as you would an xml and put the data where you want it. Is that what you're trying to do?

I updated my question to clarify what I am aiming for. I could use SVG.js for example to pre-process the SVG data. With the toPath and toPoly plugins, all SVG elements can be converted to polygons so I could use the point data to build a mesh in Blender. Using the SVG data as is in Blender will be easier though :)


text:
How to make the rendering process less resource consuming
I am new to blender and I really love it. I have completed some tutorials from tutor4u on youtube. I have a HP Probook 4530s with a core i5 2430M CPU and the problem is that when rendering files the CPU temps reach about 99C or about 210F which It think is not good.I have tried limiting the threads to 1 but then one of the core heats up to 200F or 95C.
P.S. I am not sure if my computer has a graphics card. It does have Intel Integrated Graphics.

If your CPU is getting too hot (to the point it is damaged), it means you don't have sufficient cooling.

Another thing you can do is limit the number of threads blender can use. This  only applies to multi-core CPUs of course. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/15248/599

Modern CPUs throttle (reduce clock frequency) that means you loose performance, unmount the fan and remove any remaining heat paste. See this HowTo: http://www.wikihow.com/Apply-Thermal-Paste

I can't open my laptop. I don't know how and I don't want to risk it.


text:
Can't select or edit certain parts of my mesh during retopo
I was working on a retopo for a model when I suddenly noticed some vertices and faces could no longer be selected or edited. I can grab them in sculpt mode but not in edit mode. I've tried using H and Alt+H but it doesn't help. Even tried using P to separate and possibly reveal hidden points but that doesn't help either. I would just restart but I want to know where I went wrong in this process. I have a recording and the file here in G drive

Your problem here is that you have enabled Retopology under Mesh Edit Mode Overlays > Shading and set the Offset to 0 m (default is 0.2 m).
This way Blender cannot "see" obstructed vertices (even though you can see them because of the In Front viewport option, more about it further down). If you disable the high res mesh  "Cube.005" in the viewport you can easily select vertices on the retopo mesh.
But since I guess you want to keep it visible there are two options: either disable the Retopology overlay completely or set a value > 0 m, for example 0.1 m would be enough.

It is absolutely not necessary to set a very low value or even 0 m, because this does not mean that your vertices are offset that much from the surface - it is a Shading overlay, not a mesh displacement. And by the way, since you have In Front enabled in the Obejct Properties > Viewport Display, the Retopology shading is redundant - or to be more precise: the Retopology offset actually works against the In Front setting so that a too low value will prevent vertices from being selectable although they would be with the In Front option. So you only need it if the mesh is obstructed by something and you do not want to use In Front - but then a value of 0 m would not help anything.
In Front disabled and Retopology offset = 0 m (this is how Blender "sees" the vertices which is why you cannot select them although they are visible to you when In Front is enabled):

In Front disabled and Retopology offset = 0.1 m:

So when you are using In Front, you could do without the Retopology overlay, however this will always show the mesh through other objects, for example if you look at the head from behind. With Retopology this only happens with a high offset.
In Front enabled:

In Front disabled, Retopology offset = 0.1 m:

In Front disabled, Retopology offset = 0.4 m:


text:
Boolean intersect two 2d extruded bezier curves (non destructive)
I understand that the boolean modifier is not available for bezier curves that are 2d and have been extruded.
However, is there a way to apply a simple "conventional mesh" modifier to this curve and then stack on top of that a boolean modifier?
Basically, I want to boolean intersect two 3d object in Blender, these objects are both 2d bezier curves that have been extruded to give them a 3d shape.
EDIT: I really need to use non destructive actions on these objects.
EDIT 2: I am very surprised there are no modifiers in Blender that simulate alt-c, Mesh from Curve for these types of purposes.

You can convert them to a mesh with Alt C, but this is a destructive action (you can't convert them back to a curve)

Thanks, @gandalf3, I would prefer to not have to use any destuctive actions, I will most likely need to edit the curves after the boolean is applied.

You are not the first, I too have often wanted an Alt C modifier ;) Sounds like the kind of thing modifier nodes would do.. Anyway, you can join the curves and they will sort of auto boolean, but the filling algorithm sometimes has trouble with complex intersections..

The only trouble with joining the curves, is that the 3d extrude will the the same depth throughout. I need one of the curves to subtract only half the depth of the other. :( I'm thinking ALT-C, Mesh from Curve might be my only option.

Hm.. sounds that way :/ I often keep a copy of objects on another layer before applying some destructive action like this, so it's easy to go back if needed.

Indeed, that does sound like a possible solution for now, keep a copy.

My thought, if someone wanted to take on the challenge, would be to code a modifier (or panel, since I am not sure you can code a modifier) that took a parent object (a curve) and replaced the current object's mesh with the converted mesh of the parent object. Then, any time the parent object was updated, the mesh could be updated on the child object. I will take a look into seeing how hard this would be.

Well I found some time to try and code an add-on that will do what I think you are talking about. It is found here, or on this thread. To use:

Install

Add Curve, and Bevel

Add a mesh object like a cube

Go to the modifiers tab and select the curve's name under the Curve Conversion part

Click Update Mesh

What it does is automatically converts the curve to a mesh and replaces the current objects data. It will respect any materials or modifiers added before you press Update Mesh. The Respect Scale option copies the scale from the curve. So if you scale the curve up the mesh object does the same.
Let me know if this is what you were talking about.
EDIT: Check Blender Artist thread to get updated instructions as they come

Thanks! I'll give it a go when I get home, may I ask, will this work for two curve objects, not just one curve and one mesh?

It'd be great if you posted the script on BlenderArtists so that there's a place others can find it :)

@Joseph You just need one mesh object for every curve. You can have as many overall as you would like. You can also have multiple mesh objects for a curve.

@GregZaal I'll go head and do that!

@Joseph did this work for you?

@BlendingJake, Thanks, I really think they should add this into Blender core. :)

I do not know exactly what you are trying to accomplish, but I would recommend trying a curve modifier. Don't actually use a curve to apply the modifiers to, but apply the modifiers to a mesh, and then add a curve modifier to make the mesh follow the profile of whatever curve you select. Like so:

This is how it looks in the viewport, on the right is without the curve modifier, and on the left is the mesh with the curve modifier.

If I understand you correctly, this should be just what you are looking for. Feel free to drop a comment below if that is not the case or something is not clear.

Yup, that would be possible however you need to convert the curves to meshes first of all. This you can do by selecting the curve and pressing Alt+C and selecting Mesh from Curve. Then you can perform any mesh manipulation tool/modifier that you like.