text:
How to move a soft body object in the scene towards a "goal position" while physics is active?
I have a couple of soft body objects in a scene sitting on a plane. My goal is to smoothly move one of these soft body objects towards a goal position smoothly while still having its 'base' anchored to the same spot (a kind of controllable soft body tentacle). Note that I want the soft body physics still do its job while the object is moving towards the goal position. This means that the object might collide with other objects. I wonder how can this be done?

You can apply a force to a soft body by adjusting the Soft Body Goal settings and moving the original mesh after the simulation has been started. The Stiffness and Damping can be keyframed which should allow you to achieve what you require (low stiffness relaxes the 'pull' to the mesh while high stiffness draws it in tighter). I can put together an example later - do you have any images or extra description for what you're trying to achieve so I can make it as relevant as possible?

@RichSedman An example would be great! You can use the .blend file that I have uploaded here as an example. My goal is to somehow make sure I have something like two fingers that are attached to a piece of bone. So moving one would move the other one as well. However, I want to create a shape (say an sphere with collision enabled) at the center and move both of the soft body meshes towards it --> (0, 0, 0). It would be great if you can show how I can do this with one of the meshes.

@RichSedman The closest thing I've found is this. I'm trying to see if a similar approach would work for my problem. The problem with the rigging/armature setup seems to to be that I possibly cannot move the object to a goal/target point in space since gravity affects the mesh. So I'm trying to see how I can pin my object first before applying such a setup to it. Let me know if you have a better solution in mind

Ah. From your example it appears that you want them to be pinned at one place and yet free to move and be dragged by the 'force' for the rest of the mesh. Unfortunately, the method I suggested uses the same Goal settings to achieve the result - so it's not possible to achieve a solid pinning (which requires high goal strength and stiffness on a specific set of vertices) while also pulling the remaining vertices out of their natural locations (by using a much smaller goal strength and stiffness and moving the vertices out of place). I'll let you know if I come up with another solution.

@RichSedman I was thinking of moving the objects using a curve path. What do you think? (see here)

You can achieve such an effect using the Vertex Group in the Soft Body Goal settings to affect how much each vertex is affected by the soft body and a hook. The mesh geometry will affect the 'at rest' position of the 'arm' - this can be manipulated by Shape Keys if you want multiple 'at rest' positions - and a hook to pull the end point to the desired location with the rest of the 'arm' bending to reach. Setup is a bit complicated but I'll see if I can put together a detailed answer over the next day or two.

The Soft Body Goal can be used to manipulate the soft body by also manipulating the original mesh to apply forces to shape the soft body. Different weights applied to different vertices allow some control over how those forces are applied.
Create your mesh to use as a soft body - in my case I'll use a simple string of vertices and add a Skin modifier later.

In Edit mode (Tab), add a new Vertex Group and name it something appropriate (eg, 'Pin'). Select the two vertices at the 'base' (the point where it is to be anchored) and click Assign to the Vectex Group with a weight of 1.0. These will be effectively unmoveable and 'pinned' to the mesh vertices.

In order to have the soft body retain its generate shape we need to also assign the rest of the vertices to the vertex group - but with a lower weight. This will give them a force towards the goal while still allowing them to be pulled out of position. While the 'base' vertices are still selected, invert the selection (Ctrl+I). Change the weight to 0.5 and click Assign (different weights will affect how tightly the body tries to return to its 'at-rest' position).

In order to control the location of the 'tip' of the arm we need to assign a higher weight - almost but not quite 1.0 (1.0 would fix it directly to the control point - we only want to draw it strongly towards the control point). Therefore, select the vertex at the tip, set the weight to 0.999, click Assign.

To control the tip we can use a Hook modifier - while the 'tip' vertex is still selected (and still in Edit mode) press Ctrl+H and 'Hook to New Object'. This will create an Empty linked to the selected vertex. Moving the empty will drag the vertex. You can now return to 'Object' mode (Tab).
Add Soft Body physics and set the Goal to the newly created Vertex Group ('Pin'). Assign the Goal to strength 1.0 and you should find that the Base is now pinned to the base and the tip drawn to the location of the 'hooked' vertex. Ensure the Hook modifier is above the Soft Body modifier in the modifier stack.

Increase the Edge spring strengths to the desired soft body settings. Switch off Gravity in the field weights and perhaps set some Friction in the main Soft Body settings so as to dampen the simulation. Also, adjusting the Soft Body Goal Stiffness can affect how strongly the arm is tied to the goal. Now, moving the hook should drag the arm.
You can set up different shape keys for different 'at rest' positions of the arm - but ensure each shape retains the position of the 'tip' - otherwise the hook will be offset from the target empty. The Strength setting on the hook modifier allows the influence to be switched on (1.0) or off (0.0) and this can also be used to have multiple 'hooks' (switching each on/off in turn to affect which empty has the influence - this can be used where multiple shape keys result in different starting hook positions). It's a good idea to start the simulation with the hook strength initially set off, and switch on over a number frames to let the soft body adjust to the new shape (otherwise it can jump to the new location and take a while to settle down).
Once enabled, simply move the Empty to where you want the arm to reach. Any collision objects in the way will deflect the arm.

Note that I used a Skin modifier for the skin of the arm. The rotation of the generated geometry is dependent on which vertex in the chain is designated as 'root'. To avoid twisting ensure the 'base' of the arm is the root.
An alternative is to model the whole arm as soft body (rather than a string of vertices with a Skin modifier). Use self-collision to give the soft body volume to prevent it folding together when it encounters obstacles.
Blend file included


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Sewing clothes using a cloth modifier and a collision object
I am trying to model clothes in Blender. I've looked at several tutorials, but the sewing option in Blender doesn't give the desired result. I've been trying it over and over again, but it doesn't seem to work. If anybody could be so kind to check what I am doing wrong, that would be greatly appreciated!

I have tried to upload the blend file using https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/120752/sewing-clothes-using-a-cloth-modifier-and-a-collision-object, but it doesn't turn up in my post as I thought it would. Can anyone explain how to upload the blend file please.

I've located the file on blend-exchange and added it to the question. For future reference, once it's uploaded in blend-exchange you'll be provided with a link that you can paste into your question - you then need to edit your question, paste the link and save the changes for it to appear in your stackexchange question.

There seem to be a number of issues causing you problems here.
The most important one seems to be simply that the garment is too small for the model - it is quite literally coming apart at the seams :

To resolve this you need to scale the dress so as to give it more fabric to fit around the body.
The above issue is made worse as the collision bounds are such that the cloth isn't actually getting close enough to the surface of the body - the Outer collision setting on the model is currently set to 0.1 meaning that there is a significant gap between the skin and the dress - which further compounds the issue of insufficient cloth to fit! Try changing that to, say, 0.02 for a better fit.
Another issue is the strength of the sewing - currently you have the sewing springs set to 10 right from the start of the animation. This means that the full force is being applied from the first frame, pulling the cloth violently together. Once this overcomes the collision bounds the cloth is below the surface of the body and cannot escape, resulting in fighting between the vertices until the cloth is eventually torn through the model - it's better to apply the forces gradually to gently bring the edges together. This allows the cloth to settle into place rather than being forced together quickly.
The trick is to set keyframes to control the forces more carefully, starting at zero and increasing over a number of frames. One problem with this is that the cloth will naturally fall under the force of gravity before it is pulled together but, again, keyframing gravity to gradually increase can avoid this. In fact, it's useful to start with a weak reverse gravity (eg, weight of 0.5) to that the cloth initially floats gently up, before increasing back to full gravity after 10 or so frames after it has settled.
After this, it should just be a matter of a little bit of fine tuning - such as giving slightly more space around the arm holes and moving it up slightly so that the arm holes can close up around the arms without colliding, changing the collision bounds slightly (reducing Cloth collision settings to 0.5 seems to give be. You could also increase the cloth Quality steps and also collision Quality.
Here's the result :

There still seems to be a bit of overlapping vertices on the shoulders - I think this is due to the arm fabric intersecting with the shoulder. Adding slightly more cloth should do the trick. You could also subdivide the cloth to add more detail for a more realistic fit - although this will slow down the simulation.
Here's the amended Blend

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Cloth blowing around by itself?
I'm trying to animate a scene of my character in bed but my cloth keeps blowing around for no reason. There is no wind force or anything that should be causing this. I can't just apply the cloth modifier because I need the cloth to move around while the character moves. What am I missing? Thanks.
Example (https://youtu.be/cFSYUOeiEeQ)

Blend file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-99fwbKE0bFlTjav9pPB-VLcm53cgE2X/view?usp=sharing

Have you tried increasing the Cloth 'Quality' Steps (currently you have it set to 5) or the Cloth Collision Quality? Also, your 'base' mesh is very coarse - you could try sub-dividing it to see if a higher quality cloth mesh produced better quality collisions.

No luck. :( I doubled the quality and collision steps and subdivided the cloth mesh (once). It blows around a little less. I'm worried if I increase these settings any more my dumb little laptop won't be able to handle it though.

I've downloaded your file and the problem appears to be twofold.
Firstly, there is a very large difference in mesh detail between the 'matress' and the 'quilt' meshes - due to the 'subdivision surface' modifier on the matress before the 'collision' modifier. This seems to be causing a lot of 'noise' in the interaction between the surfaces. The Cloth simulation is quite dependent on the scale of the subdivisions of both the cloth and the collision surface. The matress contains a large number of vertices around the edges and the subdivision surface modifier (set to 3) is exacerbating the problem.
The other issue (and possibly the most significant one) appears to be that the meshes are starting off intersecting. This means that the cloth solver is struggling to determine how to properly repel the cloth - and it therefore moves erratically until it can find a stable situation (which it never can since due to the intersection).
To resolve this I firstly moved the Collision on the matress object to be able the Subdivision Surface modifier in the modifier stack and moved the 'quilt' mesh above the surface so that it could fall down onto the matress at the start of the animation (you can suppress that part from your final animation) and found its own point of rest.
There is a further issue with the geometry of the folded over top edge of the duvet - some of the faces intersect with other faces in the mesh. This results in a similar problem with the self-collision - where faces are intersecting with faces and the cloth simulation is unable to determine how to move them apart so they continue to self-intersect and repel each other. You need to review the geometry and move apart the intersecting parts so it is a consistent cloth at the start.
Once the collision and intersection is resolved the cloth simulation should have more of a chance of settling down to a stable simulation.

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


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How to save (persist) bpy.ops.ptcache.bake_all() results?
How to bake all rigid body dynamics via CLI? There are methods described over internet to bake fluid or soft bodies, but for rigid bodies I didn't find
UPD
I've figured out that this can be done with such simple script:
import bpy
bpy.ops.ptcache.free_bake_all()
bpy.ops.ptcache.bake_all()

then run:
$ blender --background render_scene4.blend --python bake.py

And it seems to work because each frame baking time is similar to simulation time in blender GUI
BUT
After baking is finished (it reports bake: done!) I open the file in Blender.. And no bake data there. How to persist baking results?

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


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Weight paint maps in/out of Blender to allow editing in Photoshop or other
I have seen this thread: How can I use an image texture as a guide for weight painting?
and it allows me to use textures as a guide for weight painting... but is it possible to get weight paint maps in and out of Blender, so they could be edited with a more sophisticated image editor?

I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Weight maps are not images.

I think that is my understanding, and that link is the best option I have found... but it would be nice if there were some way...

And my particular need is in relation to particle systems... especially when I have a need for multiple hair systems on a body, for example: long, short, add more here, omit here... I could do this in 10 minutes in Painter, but even with hairs turned off, the model is just crushing my machine... and you just don;t get a ton of precision.

This script will convert weight to vertex color and vertex color to weight :

the script create new groups if they don't exist and overwrite old groups with the same names
the script use two methods for conversions grayscale<-->weight and RGB<-->weight
the conversion works in two ways  weight--> color   and color-->weight

HOW TO USE:

run the script once "it will be registered"
in 3D view select the object
hit space and type weight&color
choose the settings and conversion hit OK
new groups or vertex color maps will be created with the appropriate values "the viewport will change to show the result"

import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator
from bpy.props import EnumProperty
from mathutils import Color

bl_info = {
    'name': 'Convert Vertex Color to Weights',
    'author': 'Chebhou on StackExchange, refactor by aliasguru',
    'version': (0, 1, 0),
    'blender': (2, 7, 5),
    'location': '3D View > Spacebar Menu > weight & color',
    'description': 'converts Vertex colors to weights and vice versa',
    'tracker_url': '',
    'wiki_url': 'http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/26467/weight-paint-maps-in-out-of-blender-to-allow-editing-in-photoshop-or-other',
    'support': 'COMMUNITY',
    'category': '3D View'}

color = 'HSV' #'HSV'    method used for conversion

def convert(value, method):
    if method == 'BW2W':
        return  (value.r + value.g+ value.b)/3
    elif method == 'W2BW':
        col = Color((value, value, value))
        return col
    elif method == 'HSV2W':
        return  1-(value.h / 0.66)
    elif method == 'W2HSV':
        col = Color()
        col.hsv = (0.66*(1-value), 1, 1)
        return  col

def vert_col2weight(context, color):
    color_maps = context.object.data.vertex_colors
    for color_map in color_maps :
        group_name = color_map.name

        #check for existing group with the same name
        if None == context.object.vertex_groups.get(group_name):
            context.object.vertex_groups.new( name = group_name)

        group_ind = context.object.vertex_groups[group_name].index

        for poly in context.object.data.polygons:
                    for loop_ind in poly.loop_indices:
                        vert_ind =context.object.data.loops[loop_ind].vertex_index
                        col = color_map.data[loop_ind].color
                        if color == 'BW':
                            weight = convert(col, 'BW2W')
                        else :
                            weight = convert(col, 'HSV2W')
                        context.object.vertex_groups[group_ind].add([vert_ind], weight,'REPLACE')

def weight2vert_col(context, color):
    vert_groups = context.object.vertex_groups
    col = Color()
    for vert_g in vert_groups:
        group_name = vert_g.name

        #check for existing group with the same name
        if None == context.object.data.vertex_colors.get(group_name):
            context.object.data.vertex_colors.new(name=group_name)

        color_map =  context.object.data.vertex_colors[group_name]

        for poly in context.object.data.polygons:
                    for loop_ind in poly.loop_indices:
                        vert_ind =context.object.data.loops[loop_ind].vertex_index

                        #check if the vertex belong to the group
                        weight = 0
                        for g in context.object.data.vertices[vert_ind].groups:
                            if g.group == vert_groups[group_name].index:
                                weight = vert_groups[group_name].weight(vert_ind)

                        #convert weight to vert_col
                        if color == 'BW':
                            col = convert(weight, 'W2BW')
                        else :
                            col = convert(weight, 'W2HSV')
                        #assign to the color map
                        color_map.data[loop_ind].color = col

class   weight_color(Operator):

    """weight from&to vert_color"""
    bl_idname = "object.weight_color"
    bl_label = "weight & color"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}    #should remove undo ?

    #parameters and variables
    convert = EnumProperty(
                name="Convert",
                description="Choose conversion",
                items=(('W2C', "Weight to vertex color", "convert weight to vertex color"),
                       ('C2W', "Vertex color to weight", "convert vertex color to weight")),
                default='W2C',
                )
    color = EnumProperty(
                name="Color type",
                description="Choose a color system",
                items=(('BW', "Gray scale", "map weight to grayscale"),
                       ('HSV', "RGB color", "map weight to rgb colors")),
                default='HSV',
                )
    #main function
    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'OBJECT')
        if self.convert == 'W2C':
            weight2vert_col(context, self.color)
            bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'VERTEX_PAINT')
        else:
            vert_col2weight(context, self.color)
            bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'WEIGHT_PAINT')

        context.active_object.data.update()
        self.report({'INFO'},"Conversion is Done")
        return {'FINISHED'}
    #get inputs
    def invoke(self, context, event):
            wm = context.window_manager
            return wm.invoke_props_dialog(self)

def addObject(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(
    weight_color.bl_idname,
    text = weight_color.__doc__,
    icon = 'VPAINT_HLT')

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(weight_color)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object.append(addObject)

def unregister():
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object.remove(addObject)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(weight_color)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

any feedback is welcome
example :

I am probably not implementing this properly... but I get an error message to see the Py console, but no message there...

@rcgauer you should have your object selected in object mode ;also the to see the console go to 'Window->Toggle_system_console' ; I'm still working on it to add weight to vert_col so any feedback is welcome

HOLY COW!  This is outstanding.... I do not have any comments yet, as I am working with it on a basic model. Let me go mess with my high-res mesh... but this is FANTASTIC!

@rcgauer your feedback will certainly  help to improve it

@Chebhou refactored code to be compatible with restriced context of current Blender versions

blender 2.8  error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "\bitmapweight", line 116, in execute
File "\bitmapweight", line 87, in weight2vert_col
ValueError: bpy_struct: item.attr = val: sequences of dimension 0 should contain 4 items, not 3
location: :-1

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


text:
Legacy file in BI: Background image does not change as camera pans
I am working on an older file with a background image. In the animation, the camera moves and pans relative to two objects in the scene. But the background image behind the camera and behind the objects looks the same at every point: The background image is not effected by the move/pan.
I know this solution for Cycles:
Add a panoramic background to scene in Cycles
and it performs (in cycles) as I expect: the background image changes as the camera moves/pans... I am unable to recreate this in BI... and clearly I have forgotten something.
All input welcome.

There is mapping option in the world texture setting change it from View to what suits your needs :

Thank you.... and in fact I had been working with that setting, but did not get any results. In each setting, the camera pan delivers the same background image... I am going to rebuild this file in cycles.... I have tried the background in cycles using the Environmental Texture and mapping nodes.... I wonder if this file is so old it does not work with 2.7x?  Anyway... thanks, and I will move it into Cycles...


text:
Snow fall on grass: Cause emitted particle to stick to hair particle system, ideally unconverted
I have a plane with a snow emitter system, and two cubes. The cubes are set as collision objects with lots of stickiness.
One of the two cubes is bare, the other has a hair system. The hairs are rendered from one simple blade of grass, which I also set as a collision object... rightly or wrongly.
The rendered scene has falling snow landing on both cubes more or less as expected... but I would like the snow to stick to hairs/grass blades on the second cube. Instead, it seems to fall onto the cube surface, where it is hidden by the blades.
Can this be done to an unconverted hair system?

Unfortunately, the short answer is "no, hair systems only interact with colliders, not other particle systems."
The slightly longer answer is that you might be able to make it LOOK like the particles are interacting with the hair if you set up a collision object that's within the hair. The particles could land on this invisible collision surface. Model the surface of your collision object to have some high-frequency bumps and you might be able to convince your viewer that the particles are landing in the hair.


text:
Transition from one background to another as object moves in front of camera
I have a mesh object passing in front of a camera; the camera is locked in a fixed upward view.
The background to the scene is a sky full of moving procedural clouds. I believe the node setup is Andrew Price's.  As the scene progresses, the clouds constantly change shape and position, as suggested below:

I am creating a video which must loop... which is a pain against a background of moving clouds.
I would like to use the object passing in front of the camera as a wiper to transition from the current frame's clouds to an earlier frame, creating the loop. Here's a suggestion of the transition need:

The mesh is traveling from bottom to top. The portion below the mesh object reflects the earlier cloud position. Above the mesh is the current frame's clouds position.
I am open to compositor solutions or render-pass solutions, but have been unable to figure one out that uses the mesh as a key to a transition. Also, the use of Z-depth and mist makes artifacting a problem with foreground images rendered transparent and then composited onto the sky.
All that said, I would welcome recommendations. Although the wiper mesh object does go edge-to-edge, I cannot have it scaled so large as to be large enough to completely fill the frame, which would hide all of the clouds for a frame or two.
Imagine the mesh as an airplane: The wings -- which are irregularly shaped -- move across the scene, but at most points you can see quite a bit of cloud cover above and below the wing.
Compositor, render pass, Object ID.... I've fiddled with all and would welcome so best practices.
All ideas welcome!
EDIT: And, more generally, I went with this 'wiper' approach because it seemed to offer the most potential. There are seconds of the video during which nothing but clouds are visible -- but doing a fade between one series of clouds and another did not seem very elegant... As the opacity levels changed in the VSE between the 'new' clouds and 'old' clouds, it left a muddle of clouds that did not make for a pretty loop... but I am open to different approaches altogether.

The main thing is that the plane wing does not provide the full mask alpha that you require to do the transition. You need to create a second mask (either with an actual mask object in the compositor, or by rendering a second object on a separate render layer) that you can add to the alpha from the plane wing.
Please note I've made the "wing" object more irregular shaped so that the effect is more obvious.

Thanks....  this is great and something I can adapt to other needs, too....

And I have been on the road.... sorry for delay in responding.

No problem, glad I could help. Is this enough to get your sequence looping? You may have to render two loops of the wing and then splice in the middle.

Todd,that's what I am working thru now....  I have a lot of flexibility ion how long and how to overlap, so I am just fiddling with stuff now. I may post a final video if I get one...

The trick to getting an animation that loops cleanly is to have the first frame identical to the frame after the last frame. To get this result you start at the first frame and add keyframes to the values you want to animate, then go to the frame after the last and keyframe the same values. In between these two keyframes you keyframe the same properties to have different values.
To get a procedural texture moving nicely can be tricky, one way is to animate the location, rotation and scale values in a vector mapping node, for a more consistent one way motion you may find animating the rotation to be the easiest, when the centre of the rotation is clearly visible this doesn't look good so use the uv's to move the centre of rotation away from view or you could use another object for the texture input. When animating the rotation you set the last keyframe to 360 degrees not 0.
The origin of the uv's is the bottom left corner, so you move the uv's away from that. The further away from the centre you go the faster the movement will be so you need to find a nice balance.


text:
How do I split viewport and place a different empty image in each one?
How do I split viewport and place a different empty image in each one? As of now, when I place the empty in one view it appears in the other.

Usually, you use different images for different views. For example, if you look from the front,  you will not see images that's rotated 90 deg to the view. If you don't want to see the image from back, you can toggle visibility from back in image settings.

here is what I did step by step, 1) split the view screen  2) dragged image (empty) into the left side ----- at that point, the image was placed into the right side also. My question is why?  And thanks for the response.

reference images now are presented as objects in the scene.

first step is to to place each of your ref images into different collections and your objects into a seperate collection

Now press 'N' on your keypad and go to the 'View panel'

go to the collection section and check the 'local collections' option

Now just repeat the same steps in the other section of your splitted viewport

Just follow this GIF step by step.
Hope this Helps
By the way please remeber to place each of your ref images into different collections and your objects into a seperate collection and you can view the panel by pressing N on your keypad

No, that is not what I am looking for. I will do a screen record. I think that will show what I mean much better than I can explain in words.

oh ok sorry for that

made a video, without sound, for now, too much noise here right now.... hopefully, you can understand what I mean. If not I will do another with audio. Here is the link, https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1C-fZ5c9wqcHaRgZF8nFg-BiJhkNLaOyq

crf, you need to give access to everyone so they can view the video because you have provided us with a google drive link.Right now I am unable to play the video

right click on it and select preview

should  work now, first time .... sorry

ok.... but it still doesn`t work

just clicked on your notification and changed to everyone with link, try it now.

Now I have access to watch the video,thanks

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


text:
How to bulge out a face?
Hi I have the following shape:

and would like to bulge out the top face like the side of a pill. I've tried inset faces with proportional editing, but the faces can only become so small before the vertices overlap and it goes crazy.
When I'm done I'd like a shape similar to one of these:

Any help would be great.

Hello and welcome to Blender SE. Please share your file https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ so others can take a look. Also, could you provide another image illustrating what you're trying to achieve? It will make it easier for others to help you.

Maybe you can try extruding up once more and then beveling the edge?

Thanks, I've added the stuff you asked for

Thanks Bert VdB, but I can't seem to get a smooth curve doing that?

Here comes a very simple way to do it:
1) Base
Add a circle with 32 vertices and a triangle fan.
Rotate it by 360/64 degrees along Z axis. This will get you nice flat sides.

2) Rim
Inset faces a bit to make a rim. All pills have a rim.
Then delete the triangle fan.

3) Fill the circle
Select 16 opposite vertices (exactly half).
Go to Face->Grid Fill.

Cool, right? Job done.
4) The bulge
Raise the middle polygon and enable proportional editing with falloff set to Sphere.
Play with the settings to your liking.

5) Create the bottom part.
Select all vertices Select->All, duplicate Mesh->Duplicate to make the bottom part.
You can use the mirror modifier for this, if you want.

6) Connect both parts.
Select those two edge loops and bridge them.
Edge->Bridge edge loops.

7) Add Subdivision modifier to smooth it out.
2 levels is enough.
Also set a smooth shading.

8) Change the shape to your liking
You can still change the shape and height in edit mode.
Just grab and move the vertices.

Example of final mesh.

Result:

Additional notes:
 - You can do this faster by using mirror modifier
 - Apply rotation, so modifiers work properly
 - There are many ways to do this, don't get hung up on this approach
 - Yeah... some pills have a groove in the middle.
 - Try it with different number of vertices, some will work better than others.
Uff.

Okay, here is the same pill with a groove in the middle.
It just felt so wrong without it I couldn't sleep.

nice... but how did you make it? :)

@RobinBetts This happens when I desperately want to show my ultimate modelling skills and forget I'm supposed to be helping others :)


text:
Copy Rotation Constraint with Offset doesn't work like expected
Trying to constraint deform armature with bad bone rotations to a copied but fixed armature with proper bone rotations for animation. Some kind of puppetering. (I can't change position or hierarchy of a deform armature, because of my reasons)
The problem is when i try to copy rotation:

The Bone I copy rotation to, snaps to exact same rotation as it's parent (but want it to stay in the original place), Rotation behaviour is fine, like if it was direct parented
Tried fixing it with Local Space - Local Space. Bone snapped to it's original rotation, but... When i try to rotate the parent, child goes to opposite rotation, depending on the axis of the parent i rotate. Totally not what i want. I rotate parent up, child goes left and down or something like that. Tried all possible combinations of invert XZY axies, mixes, target-owner, Legacy Offset. Nothing works.
Tried Child-Of, it works, but double transformation ruins it for my pipeline.

What i expected:
I wanted to parent one bone to another, but with COPY ROTATION Constraint (with child keeping it's original rotation). Its so easy to do in maya. You just tick the Offset option.

https://youtu.be/zX9vLTbFnB0

Hello, could you please reproduce the case on a simple armature, show pictures and share the armature so that we can test? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

@moonboots I added .Blend + video example

maybe you should draw what you want to achieve, with several drawings, perhaps it will make it clearer (at least for me)

@moonboots https://puu.sh/GyKfj/baeee1aad7.mp4
I want left armature to move like this new i created. (but i need to do this with Constraints only)

@moonboots https://puu.sh/GyKon/8a0e500b4d.mp4 Colored to be more clear.
Orange - Separate Armature (bad bone orients) that deforms the mesh.
Green - Separate Fixed Armature (good bone rotations) that should control bad armature. (For animation)

If I understand correctly, you should first make sure that the bones have the same orientation: display the axis of the armature, select each bone of the controlled armature and ctrl R to rotate 180°, also rotate a bit the controller bones so that they are correctly aligned... Tell me if that was your problem...

here is what it gives if bones are aligned: https://zupimages.net/up/20/40/v0ia.gif

@moonboots I cannot change anything in original armature ( bone rotations, bone hierarchy) I must keep original skeleton as it is and Animate it. And since i cannot put IK controllers on it and so on (because how badly bones rotations are), i decided to make a copy of this armature, fix rotation of all bones and then parent each bone of an original to a new. So i can animate Good armature and it will transfer animation to original armature.
If i fix bone rotations on original armature, then all animations produced by this rig will be crooked when i import them in my unreal engine scene.


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Prevent shadow on object/material A, allow for object/material B
I would like to have the default cube cast its shadow on the orange plane, but not the purple:

Is this best done with render layer? Can it only be done with render layers?

Unfortunately, I am pretty sure this is impossible to do in Cycles material nodes.  You will have to do this in the compositor.
First place the object which you do not wish to receive shadows on a separate layer.  Then create two render layers, the second of which excludes all layers except the one where you just put the object.

Everything is on layer 1, except the plane which should not be receiving shadows which is on layer 2.  So I am excluding layer 1 from the second render layer.
Now give the shadowless object a pass index under Object Properties > Relations rollout.

And make sure you have the Object Index pass enabled for the main render layer.

Now head over to the compositor and use the object index pass to mix the second render layer onto the first one.

Here is the final result:

Sure.... what I am wondering is if render layers are the only way to accomplish this.... but thanks... this is useful and will be a good source.

@rcgauer  Unfortunately I think this is the only way of doing this, due to the nature of how Cycles works ATM.

Any updates on if this is possible using Cycles material nodes?

Cycles 3.0.2
There's some easy trick which works good for background planes with images. In mat editor remove Principal BSDF and replace it with Emission nod. Ofc it's just some fast solution for simple tasks.


text:
Can I scale an object based on the relative distance to another object?
I have a series of empties (let's call them scale_empties) that scale separate portions of a mesh. I would like to use a separate "master_empty" (or other object) to travel over the scale_empties and, as it does, scale the underlying scale_empties based on how close the master_empty is... Sorta like this...
Start position:

As the master_empty travels, it scales the scale_empties:

Anyway... the goal is to allow one or more master objects to travel along a series and scale as they go....  Possible?

Driver Based Approach
Image below shows driver added to x scale of Empty.002.  The driver variable var is of Distance type and returns the distance between itself (Empty.002) and the master empty (Empty.001).
The expression 4 - var if var < 2 else 1 is set up such that if the empties are within 2 bu of each other the scale value is (4 - var) and if outside that range the scale is 1.  Change the numbers to suit.
Use the interface to copy this driver and paste into other scale fields.
When pasting into other empties scale fields, change the target of non master empty to match.

Thanks. For those following in my tenuous footsteps, batFinger's approach works exactly as shown, but the object you are driving (scale in my case) cannot be keyframed for some other existing action -- at least as I understand it. But my need works perfectly!


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Blender very slow to start up - some network problem
I'm trying to figure out why Blender is so slow to start on my Windows machine. I'm using version 4.0.1, but it was similar with previous versions too. The problem seems to be somehow network-dependent because when I switch off my wifi, it loads up in ~5 seconds. With the connection, it takes ~28 seconds. I suspect I have a problem similar to this one: blender file viewer takes very long to load files and folders, except for me it's happening on every Blender startup, not when opening files, and I have deleted all the network folder shortcuts I could find (yes, I had some in the past). I also tried running Blender with --factory-startup but that wasn't any faster, so it's not a problem with any of the addons.
I suspect Blender is checking something on the network, but I have no idea what and why. Any ideas how to debug this?

Turns out I still had some network locations pinned in the Windows "Quick Access" menu. Here's a page from Microsoft on how to remove such items. After that, Blender starts in 5 seconds! yay!


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How do I bend a square horizontal bar like in the picture?
I want to bend a square bar with a hollow inside.
What should I do to bend it into the shape as shown in the reference pictures?
If possible, I would like to know how the square bar bends in Blender using physics.
I'd like to make a video where the square bars are bent and crushed.

There are so many ways and approach to this : you can model it by hand, sclupt or even use physics or what not. What have you tried already?

I've just started blender, and I'm still researching how to do it on the web.

If possible, I would like to know how the square bar bends on the blender using physics.

I'd like to make a video where the square bars are bent and crushed

Maybe this tutorial could lead you to the right direction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzfhjgn1oVw&pp=ygUZYmxlbmRlciBzb2Z0IGJvZHkgcGh5c2ljcw%3D%3D ?

I will try it after watching the video.
Thank you very much

Playing around with a cloth simulation, I managed to get that far:

Adding subdivisions before the cloth simulation will increase the foldiness, though that also depends on cloth resistances:

I started with the default cube, resized it on $z$ axis, ✲ CtrlR added loopcuts to make it roughly square-quads based again, but then decided to add much more loopcuts in the bending area:

Probably many of those sparse loopcuts away from bending can be removed, and the dense loopcuts shifted up, as I wrongly predicted where I'll bend…
The bending animation is done using this modifier stack:

bevel to add holding loops for Subdivision Surface
Subdivision Surface to give it the final base profile and geometry density
Simple Deform to bend by 90°
The magic of cloth sim
Smooth the bends so faces don't overlap on themselves
Another Subdivision Surface to further smooth the output by adding vertices

Proper Weight Painting is crucial, and so by improving it you will get better results than me:

Cloth settings are extremely important as well, but I left most settings to defaults and just pinned the weights from above and added just a touch of pressure from inside to direct the bends outside:

What a beauty! I wonder whether  a blurred GN-generated tension-map would stand any chance of doing your weight-painting for you.

@RobinBetts nice idea, I was thinking of something similar: after first pass, convert it to shape keys, then weight-paint the areas based on how much you want them to change. Could even weight-paint individual frames differently using this, then replay simulation, rinse, repeat until happy with the result…


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How to quickly/temporarily display output of a material node?
Does anyone know how to display the output of a single node from the material editor in the viewport?
I've seen a few artists using it in tutorials, but cannot find any link to the shortcut.

ctrl+shift+click with the node wrangler enabled?

you are my hero

Please don't edit the title with the word "SOLVED" if you have an answer. This is not a regular forum, but a question and answer website. If you find a solution, provide it as an answer even if it's to your own question. That is the format of Stack Exchange websites. This way it will be convenient for people looking for the answer to find it in fraction of a second, if they are used to Stack Exchange format.

im just looking for an answer mate. correct as much spelling and formatting as you like

It's also for anyone who finds this in the future.

Ctrl+Shift + click quickly previews clicked node, if you have Node Wrangler add-on enabled in the  preferences(Edit->Preferences), add-ons tab:


text:
Does Blender has any shader node that same as ddx() in HLSL?
I'm using Blender4.0 and try convert some unity shader code to blender shader nodes,and there are some code like:
half d = ddx(input.normalWorldSpace.x);

An explanation of HLSL ddx()
After researching, I couldn't find any similar node in Blender. So, I'm wondering if there is a method to implement ddx() in Blender.
I'm appreciate for any reply.

Blender supports(sort of) OSL (which personally I have absolutely no knowledge about) Might it be it has something similar to what you are after?

Thanks but my project is using EEVEE cause of its faster render speed, the OSL is only supported on CYCLES as I know

You should really provide all this relevant information and context in the question in general as people may waste a lot of their time on a long and detailed answer without knowing your requirements. I don't think it's a high risk in this case though, because it seems there is no solution for this. But I might be wrong. It's still a good idea to provide as much info and context about your problem as possible.

I tagged EEVEE. As far as I know that's not possible and no functionality for this exists, but hopefully somebody knows more than I do and may be able to help.


text:
How can I get geometry nodes group node-tree name?
How can I get geometry nodes group node-tree name?
With this code I can get the name of node, but I need get name of node-tree assigning to this node group instead.
parent_group = bpy.data.node_groups['MY NODE GROUP PARENT']
    for nod in parent_group.nodes:
        if nod.type == 'GROUP':
            my_node_grp = nod

    # Try to get name of group I need name of node tree not node name or label
    print(my_node_grp.name)

If you are interested in why I need this, I actually want to write a script for searching my groups in node graphs

You do need to somehow identify the group node in the parent group. Let's say you know the name of the node that is "Group" as in your screenshot. That node called "Group" has data linked to it. That data is a node tree called "I NEED THIS NAME", so:
import bpy

parent_group = bpy.data.node_groups['MY NODE GROUP PARENT']
try:
    node = [n for n in parent_group.nodes if n.name == "Group"][0]
    name = node.node_tree.name
    print(name)
except:
    print('Failed to find "Group"')

Great! ".node_tree.name" instead ".name" works fine! Thanks Martynas!


text:
How can values transferred to Blender be changed to float type?
I transferred data from Matlab to Blender. The data is stored in the variables prop0-prop5 (6 variables in total)
The values I transferred are decimal, and when transferring the data to Blender I see that the numbers received in Blender are the correct numbers.
But why when I run the simulation\print the values, the numbers become int type?
Suppose the number I transferred is 7.239494, after printing I get 7
I would really appreciate the help! I'm really stuck on this.

how do you define/set the custom properties?

Blender stores values as 32 bit floats with no problems and they don't  just get randomly converted to integers unless you do that yourself. The issue must be in the way you transfer the values or the way you create the properties.

% MATLAB script - this is my matlab code:
a = [7.53535,5.422,8.999,10,322.333,6.77865];
% Set up a TCP/IP socket
host = 'localhost';
port =   12345;
tcp_client = tcpclient(host, port);
for k=1:length(a)
% Create example data
example_data = a(k); % Send 6 variables to blender
% Convert the example data to JSON format
json_data = struct('custom_properties', example_data);
json_string = jsonencode(json_data);

% Send the JSON-formatted data to Blender
write(tcp_client, json_string);
pause(0.1)

end
% clear tcp_client;

Someone know how to solve it?


text:
How can I rig separate parts of an object to move but keep it as one object?
I am a beginner in 3D modelling and wanted to create a mod for the game "City Bus manager". I know the basics of Blender but I ran into a problem.
I need to model an animated double swing doors but as one object.
Building the swing doors as two separate objects is not an option since the game deletes one of them no matter what. It has to be one single entity to work.
Another modder gave me the instructions to do so but I failed to make the doors move separately.

"Create two objects, parent them, join and then split them. It creates a hole, it is still one object, but as it is split all the way, each bones can manipulate it's own part while it stay as one object."

Join the 2 parts in one object, and parent each part to its own bone?

I tried this but it didn't worked. When the two objects joins, they don't split and move as one.

You need to correctly parent the meshes to the bones, see my answer here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/294015/animating-with-bend/294020?noredirect=1#comment506485_294020

i managed to animate half of the door to one bone but  the other half and the second bone remain disconnected and move separatly from each other.

please share your file: https://blend-exchange.com/

Select the armature called Left door, shift select the armature called Right door, press CtrlJ. Select the cube object, shift select the armature, press CtrlP (Parent) > With Empty Groups. In Edit mode, select the cube that is supposed to be controlled by Bone.001, click on the Assign button, it should work, create a parent bone if necessary:


text:
Problem making a cloth
I am trying to make a cloth and they do not sew completely

So the armpit area is not fully sewed as you can see.
The cloth is made by just sewing two planes.

Above is modifier (left) & physics (right) tabs of the cloth highlighted in yellow in the first pic.

Also above is the physics tab of the black body.
What I want to happen are :

make them fully stitch to each other without those gaps
Currently they have sharp edges and I want them to have smooth edge

What am I doing wrong here?
Thank you all beforehand and let me know if you need any other information

Try making the cloth bigger or stretchier. I suspect it simply isn’t big enough to fit your model.

Please try to find a descriptive title for your question, thanks.

Please can you share the .blend file. I need to inspect the file to give an answer. Thing is, with stuff like cloth and other simulations, you can't get an answer without inspecting and experimenting. Also please share which version of blender you are using.

Hi Thanks for helping me, above is the link to file

Essentially, your cloth is too small to fit your model. This could be due to your Collision settings being set to have too large an Outer limit (0.1).
Either reduce Outer, increase the size of your garment or reduce the Shrinking Factor to make it slightly larger (it can be negative to indicate it should 'grow' instead of 'shrink').
Once you have the garment fitting, you can apply the cloth and join the vertices so that you can avoid the slight remaining gap (due to the force of the collision as it rests on the surface) and avoid the sharp edge/crease of the join.


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Cloth Simulation - Sleeves keep sliding off arms

I've done a cloth simulation however everything manages to stay on the mesh except the sleeves. Why is this?

It's difficult to tell without seeing it animated or seeing more settings... however, this is likely an issue with the Collision settings on the model mesh.
Firstly, ensure you have 'Applied Scale' on all of your meshes - this is good practice anyway but if you haven't done this it can cause strange effects with your simulation.
Next check the Collision 'Cloth and Soft Body' settings. Reduce the 'Inner' and try the simulation again (free and re-bake) to see if that helps.
The 'Inner' boundary needs to be less than half the thinnest part of your mesh that's involved in the collision - otherwise the collision bound can "leak" out of the back face of your mesh and upset the collision.

After reviewing the uploaded Blend file, the issue was actually just that the Modifier stack was in the incorrect order :

In the original file the Collision modifier was above the Armature modifier. This meant that the collision was working correctly but was on the unposed model - which was obviously in a different position to the 'base' model.
Simply swapping the Collision to be after the Armature modifier resolves the problem and the collision is on the posed mesh.

Thank you for replying. I've applied scale and played around with 'inner setting' however it doesn't seem to be working. Would I be able to upload my file and you can have a look at it please?

Sure - upload it to https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ and then edit your question and paste the link from blend-exchange into your question.

Thank you. https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/SEdO7ZG1

The arms originally were lower down so I moved the arms of the body higher up so it’s in line with the sleeves. But I applied all transforms. Could this also be part of the reason?

Moving them using the armature doesn't actually affect the base mesh. To properly apply them you'd need to click the Apply button of the Armature modifier - although this then makes it unposable unless you re-rig your mesh, so you wouldn't normally do that. Just swapping the modifiers is fine - the Collision would be expected to be the last (or nearly last) one in the stack anyway (since then it works on the final state of the mesh).

It works!!! Thank you so much!


text:
I am unable to extrude this plane along z-axis.Why?

I saw in youtube video a guy extruded a plane along the z-axis but I couldnt do it.

Extrude may work here. But maybe you don't see it if you are in top ortho view. Try again placing yourself in front view (numpad1). If this is still not working upload your file using this link : http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

I did but it just tranforms the plane in xy axis

do you hit any other key except E ?

I tried E > esc > G > Z > -4 this and it did not work but then I made a new file and it did

probably you have unfortunately changed some short cut in the previous file ? Is all ok now ?

yeah, have to do it all again now and thx

Going from what you already have selected, all you have to do is press E. Blender will automatically start the transformation locked to the face normal, which in your case is along the global Z axis.
As lemon pointed out in the comments, from the view in your screen shot (orthographic view) you will not be able to perceive any change in height.


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What do the parameters of the Cycles Noise Texture do?
I am a bit confused by the parameters of the Noise Texture node in Cycles.  The Blender manual does not really shed much light on the topic.
Specifically:
1) What does the distort parameter do?
2) What is the range and distribution of the noise in the three color channels?
I have tried adjusting the noise output "by eye" with color ramps, but I would really like to have a more mathematical way to do it.  I am trying to use the noise texture to generate bump maps, so it is hard for me to visualize exactly how the pastel looking texture will translate.
I am familiar with Perlin noise in general.  The scale parameter seems fairly intuitive.  I assume that it sets the fundamental spacing of the lattice or simplex points.  My experiments in adjusting scale seem to confirm this, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn there is something more going on here.  I assume the detail parameter is related to amount of higher frequency noise that is added.  The usual parameters for this are octaves, persistence, lacunarity, etc.  I'd like to understand what "detail" actually means.  Playing around seems to confirm the general concept, but it always has less contrast than I am used to for Perlin noise.  I expected the output value fac to be normally distributed between 0 and 1, but it doesn't seem to be close to that.  It looks more like a normal distribution between about 0.7 and 0.9.  When I render colored noise and look at the RGB channels, each channel seems to have a similar distribution.
Here is a histogram from the GIMP showing noise with default parameters:

Is it possible that my rendering setup is causing this?  I have the noise texture pluggen directly into an emission shader as shown below.  I have no lights, the camera is 1 meter away from the plane, and the camera is pointed directly at a plane with this material applied:

I apologize in advance if I am mixing up two completely different questions with the noise texture and the emission shader.  I am still new to Blender, so it is difficult for me to separate some of these things.
As for the distortion parameter, I have played around with it a bit.  Obviously, it is distorting the noise and adding a lot of detail in the process, but there is no reference anywhere to the math involved.  I assume that the Blender devs are implementing some known algorithm.  I animated distortion from 0 to 10 to see the effects.  Interestingly, from 0.0 to 1.0, the noise just seems to translate, then the distortion builds from about 1.0 to 9.0.  From 9.0 to 10.0, there is not much going on.

GIF animation->
link to higher quality avi animation

I don't think having a math formula will help much in getting the visual effect you want. But if you are really into understanding the math implemented in blender, I think your best chance is looking into the code. The relevant files are /intern/cycles/kernel/shaders/node_noise_texture.osl and /intern/cycles/kernel/shaders/node_texture.h.
I am not familiar with Perlin noise, but looking into the code, "detail" seems to refer to the number of octaves. It is hard for me to understand what "distortion" does, but noise is generated not at original point, but at a point shifted by random (and strange) amount proportional to the distortion.
Since you are more familiar with the stuff I think you'll be able to get more out of it (and maybe post it as an answer).

Thanks for the recommendation.  I hadn't considered looking into the OSL source because I thought it would be opening a can of worms, but at first glance it does seem approachable.  The distort portion is broken out easily.  I'll also try to add a bit to my question regarding why this is relevant.  It's not just for idle curiosity.  A lot of techniques start with coherent noise (Perlin/Simplex) and use Fractal Brownian Motion (fBM).  The Cycles noise texture is usable, but it has some "extra" treatment after the normal noise generation algorithm.

Concerning Distorsion, I successfully changed this value to randomize seed. I use 3 noise textures to create a starfield. One is for white stars, others for blue and red ones.
Unfortunately, red and blue stars appeared exactly at the same place than white ones. Adding some distorsion fixed this. I guess this value was designed for other purpose or it would be called "Randomize" or "Seed", but it worked pretty well !


text:
How do I make black (dark) spots in a specific part of an object to prevent the player or viewer to see unnecessary spots?
to describe my question in the title even more, let's say I have a corrugated metal texture, whether displaced or not, at the bottom of the texture, I want to add darkness so  the viewer nor the player can see what's below, just like having to remove a screw there will be a dark spot that will not let you see what's inside
Or if I have a gun barrel, I don't want the inside of my gun visible, I just want pitch black hole

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

You're going to have to describe to us what the 'bottom' is, geometrically, if you don't just want to fade an image to black in the appropriate dimension and use that as a UV texture?

Quick/Easy:
A trick I use a lot of the time is just to assign NO SHADER (no light response) to these areas.

Ideally, your scene composition and lighting should provide you with the effect you want with minimal changes.  In your gun barrel example, the gun is lit from the outside so you should have very little light inside the barrel.  There will be some, though, due to bounced lighting, so you can compensate for that by adjusting the exposure either in the compositor or in the Color Management pane in Render Settings.

In this very simple example I just brought the low tones down closer to 0.

thank you so much


text:
How to align view to uneven/irregular face to maintain straight/horizontal orientation? (without the need of rolling/rotating view afterwards)
I want to align view to uneven face with angled edges and maintain straight orientation of the view as well.

When I align view to active face it doesn't stay straight and rolls/rotates to the side. It seems like it aligns to the angled edge for some reason. Any solution for this?

Conclusion:
When aligning to uneven face Blender uses some kind of average, which results in arbitrary view orientation. Aligning to the specific edge allows to control view orientation.
The reason Blender rotates the view when aligning to an uneven face is that it uses the average normal of the face, leading to arbitrary orientation. By selecting a specific edge, you gain more control and can achieve a straight alignment more easily without needing to adjust the view later.
This method gives you more precision and avoids the need for additional steps to roll or rotate the view after alignment.

Not sure that I understand what you want, but have you tried selecting the face and then Shift->Numpad 7? If you want to align it to an edge, select the edge and use the same keys. I tried this on a plane I hacked up to, I think, somewhat resemble your object.

Yes. I did use Shift Numpad 7 to align view to face. This is what last image shows.
I don't want to align view to edge, but doing so actually results in desire effect and aligns view with face in straight position, so your comment is best solution at the moment. Thanks.

With the caveat that this suggestion comes only from experience, (it isn't documented, and I haven't hunted down the code,) the active edge will be aligned to View Y.
So you can select any 2 edges to ShiftNumpad 7 align your view to the implied plane, with the active edge vertical:

Thanks to Markus von Broady:
✲ CtrlShiftNumpad 7 will align from the opposite side (on the GIF below alternating with and without ✲ Ctrl):

And afterwards you can press ⬆ ShiftNumpad 4 12 times to rotate 180°:

Afterwards you can press shift + numpad 4 until you rotated 180°

@MarkusvonBroady Of course. I forget this one because I have Ctrl-Shift-Mousewheel set to roll the camera...( which is why it doesn't work for me?) If you're confident this is the default, feel free to edit. I can't check, easily.

@RobinBetts Aligning view to active edge results in aligning view to face. Although it have to be specific edge to achieve straight orientation of face.
Seems like there is no need to select additional edge for alignment and doing so requires additional steps to roll/rotate view to fix face orientation.
So aligning view to specific edge seems like the best solution at the moment to achieve straight position/orientation of face view alignment.  Thanks.

@healthyfat True ... for an un-shared edge? I think I (and possibly Markus) were trying to as be as general as possible. But for the case you show, sure, that's quicker. Plus, I reckon a modeller should always have 'Create Orientation' in their quick menu. Any 2 points will make an edge, or 3 points a plane, to orient transforms, (Y is along an edge)


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How can I save Geometry Nodes group?
I want to be able to apply different Geometry Nodes Groups to my design.
Is there a  way to store them and switch between them as needed?
EDIT:
I noticed that Node Tree dropdown list (or menu, or whatever this thing is called) can store multiple presets/collections of Nodes Groups, although it seems like it can save only one preset and the other ones disappear after closing Blender.

Not really. I would make each variation a group and apply some switch nodes to choose which configuration to use...

@healthyfat, what exactly do you mean? What do you mean by "configurations"? Is it different node trees for different functions, or something like group input value presets you are talking about? Could you provide some more context and possibly an example of how and for what you would want to use these "configurations"?

Does this answer your question? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/249624/how-to-make-an-asset-library-for-node-groups/268548#268548

@MartynasŽiemys By configuration I mean Node Tree or one group of Nodes.
I guess Node Tree browser may be what I am looking for, although it saves only one preset.

There is no such thing as Node Tree Browser in Blender. Maybe you meant Asset Browser?

@MartynasŽiemys: What is the name of that browser on the picture I included above? It is located in Geo Nodes panel and it allows to browse Node Trees.

It's Geometry Node Editor. See the solutions quellenform links to in the comments above.

No. Its is not Geometry Node Editor. It is inside that panel, but it looks and behave like a browser.
"See the solutions quellenform links to in the comments above."
I already did.

What you see here in the dropdown are the node groups currently used in your open blend file. The asset browser and the node presets are completely different things. These allow you to reuse previously saved node groups from other files or locations. Please try to clarify what you are asking about in this question.

"The asset browser and the node presets are completely different things."
Thank you for insight, although I know what asset browser is and I don't talk about it nowhere here. I did mention Node Tree browser in reference to dropdown list with node groups in Geometry Nodes panel, because I don't know proper name and the Blender tooltip shows "Browse Node Tree" so I refer to it as Node Tree Browser, which I was obviously wrong about and I apologise for the confusion. As for my question I want to switch between different Node Groups and be able to save those Groups in separate presets or files.

Ah, sorry, now I understand what you mean. In this case the answer below already fits (somehow). You would need to use Fake User here, so that the node group in your file is preserved when saving, without them being explicitly in use.

There are a couple of ways to save Geometry Node groups.
As you can see in the answers linked in the comments already, you can use Asset Browser for it. You should look into how the Asset Browser works in general first. Short version is: you mark Blender's data blocks as assets, and save them to some files in some folder that you set up as your asset library in Blender's preferences and then Blender loads those assets from those files in the folder as your asset library in the Asset Browser. This works for all sorts of stuff in Blender, node trees/groups including. This is probably the best way to do it and you should look into that.
I wanted to mention another way for very specific situation. If you want to save some things that you use all the time in pretty much all kinds of projects you do, you can save Blender's [data blocks](data blocks are objects, meshes, materials, textures, particle systems, material/compositing/GN node groups and pretty much all and any kind of data Blender saves in a file) to the default startup file, so they are available when you open Blender with the default scene. In order to do so, you need to open Blender with it's default startup scene and append everything you want from other files or make it there and make sure all the stuff that is not yet used has "Fake User". It's usually the shield icon and you can find it all over the UI, but in case of Geometry Nodes it's here:

There are other ways of setting Fake User like in the Outliner:

Once you have everything you want in the file and also everything you don't want removed you can save it as default Startup file:

Keep in mind that everything is saved even things like UI and tool settings and you will always have that file loaded when you start Blender so it makes sense to make it convenient for what you do with Blender.


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How to change default scale of the added objects?
I noticed that when I add new object it is very tiny compared to existing objects. In the example on the photo it is 10 times smaller.
Viewport scale is 0.001
What is the problem?

does this happen ina certain scene?
Or in  every scene you create?

I am not sure what you mean by every scene I create? I don't create any scenes.

The default Viewport Scale in Blender is and should be 1 (not 0.001). Reasons follow.
There are legitimate reasons to reset the Viewport Scale to something much larger or smaller, but unless you don't have or know these reasons, it should not be altered, otherwise you might experience some serious strange behaviour.
Understanding Viewport Scale
In Blender, the default unit of the standard cube is 1 meter.
Since the default cube has an extent of 1 meter in all directions, positive and negative, the edge length of the default cube is 2 meters.
If you want to create scenes in Blender whose scales are significantly larger or smaller than in the normal world, then it is recommended to adjust the Viewort Scale.  This is because this scale is used as a reference for many aspects of the Blender environment, including physics simulations, rendering settings, camera phsysics (i.e. optics), and real-world scale modeling. Again, having "things" in the wrong scale may cause problems, or otherwise: If you try to scale your micro-world into the standard 1-meter world, you will have to account for a whole bunch of other things to "get right", which could resolve quite easily if you instead had chosen the correct scale of your world.
This Viewport Scale is by default 1.
When you import or add objects into Blender with a "strange" Viewport Scale, they may appear much smaller or larger because they are typically created with real-world measurements in mind.
Fix
Problem in a certain .blend file
Your problem may be a problem in one certain scene - you or someone accidentally  or intentional changed the Viewport Scale (for what reason ever). If this intention is valid, then stay with it - the benefits may be worth the mentioned sideeffects.
If it's unintentional - go change it back to normal!
If this behavior occurs even in new scenes, then you might unintentionally have changed the default scene of Blender.
Problem occurs in all new created .blend files
You have accidentially changed the default settings in the startup file.
You have two choices:

In File => Defaults you can select Load Factory Settings. This will reset all your default settings, you may loose settings th tyou changed intentionally.
Or you go to File => New => General (= loading your customized Default scene), change the Viewport Scalevalue back to 1, then got to
File => Defaults => Save Startup File, which will write your customized settings with the standard Viewport Scale into your startup File.

Thanks for the explanation, but it doesn't solve my problem. I still don't know how to make new objects to match the size of existing object by default. I have to scale them every time.


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How to reproduce this effect of Voronoi cells made from custom points?
I am trying to copy effect from below video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i192IQ5KTA&ab_channel=HadrienBrissaud
Unfortunately video doesn't provide important information. For example, what is the input geometry.
File with my progress:
Screenshot of the effect

link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i192IQ5KTA

hello, so isn't the youtube video supposed to explain how to do it?

@moonboots It doesn't. It only shows the result.

Can you convert this texture to mesh?

@saded I don't know. I was not able to reproduce the result yet.

@healthyfat The video shows all the nodes that are used to create this. But if you do not want to go through it and recreate it step by step, do you expect us to do this for you?

@GordonBrinkmann Of course not. Don't be silly. I did copy the node tree, but I am missing some critical information, which video doesn't provide and this where I need help to figure out. For example I don't know what is the input geometry. There is 2 objects in collection. One is the grid obviously, but what is the other.
I can provide file if necessary.

Well, that sounds like we could help... just saying you want to recreate it but do not know how is something different than having built the node tree and maybe just missing one thing which does not work. Your file could be helpful, otherwise we would have to build all by ourselves from the video and still have no idea where your node tree is missing something...

File with my progress included.

@healthyfat Looks to me like the inputs objects are a flat plane at the top, that displays the texture. A 12x12 grid created with the geo nodes set up, that is modified with noise to be random. And a random group of vertices from the Object node, that you can move around in edit mode and add vertices to. He's switching between the two with the Switch node, I don't think that random collection of vertices and the grid interact with each other.

Maybe you can add a plane, then add Cell fracture with geometry nodes!.

Your .blend file is also missing a shader using attributes from the GN.
The input object is effectively a flat plane subdivided several times. The subdivision is mandatory to see the Voronoi effect.

If you read the comments under the youtube video, you will see that @hadriscus provides a link with the .blend file. (slightly different from the video, but with everything you need)


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(Cycles) Transparent object casting shadow issue
I'm trying to make an animation of a fade in, but when using transparent shader, glass with 1 IOR, Alpha, anything casts shadow.
I just wanted to make the object disapear from the scene, and smothly apear in order.
Here is the evidence.

transparent causes this issue, and holdout don't work with mixer, it makes the object invisible for good regardless of the factor.... But thanks, i didnt't know the holdout.

You can see in the image that the sole is casting shadow on the ground, I'll try to make 2 keys, 1 of render e another with the factor, to see if combined they work.

Is that transparent part intersect with the shoes itself? Maybe an wireframe screen shot can help to resolve the problem

That is the sole from inside the shoe, and the shader I was trying to apply changing the factor.

There will be two or more surface been saw from camera angle. This is not allow to use any surface transparent without some darken overlay. And you mesh is complicate also. I would probably render 2 frame and interpolate them directly rather than using a transparent material.

Well, now I know the reason, it's because of a AO node input in every material, I changed to world's AO, and it's fixed to some extend, when I have the full answer I'll share with you

Ok, know I get it.
What I was seeing was the texture AO and not a shadow, sorry guys.
What I did was:
1 - removed the AO + color ramp from my textures.
2 - changed the world configuration adding AO with the same AO configuration from my textures.
3 - 1 frame before the fade effect, I changed the object render from disable to enable, then it's lighter to process the scene.
Now it's working.
Thank you guys!
Just a test, I need to polish more, change some times and orders, and only then, render in Cycles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1nfQLAX064

+1 for figuring it out ... it's not always such a quick process

Two possibility in my mind:
Object → Visibility → Ray visibility → Shadow in the object properties panel. (set to unchecked)

Material → Setting → surface → Transparent Shadow in the object properties panel. (set to checked)

Thanks, but withou any shadow, the final fade-in will not work. And the transparent shadow is already checked.


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Rigged model deforms on one side and doesent on the other
like in the title i've rigged a model with X-Axis mirror so i thought it would be fine, but when i pose the model, it works diffrent on both sides
Here's what i mean:

Also if it helps, i've used the Human(Meta-rig) armature and adjusted it
There's the file:

Could you please share your file? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

There it is!:

it's just a basic weight problem, select your armature in Object mode, then your mesh, then switch to Weight Paint mode, select its right arm or forearm, you can see that the influence of each bone is bad, so put the Weight at zero, disable the Front Faces Only option and enable 2D Falloff and paint

Thank you very much, it works! c:

Switch to Solid mode. Select your armature and in the Properties panel > Object > Viewport Visibility, enable In Front. Select your mesh and in the Properties panel > Modifiers, choose the metarig as Object of the Armature modifier. Select the armature in Object mode, then shift select the mesh, switch to Weight Paint mode. Select the right upper arm bone, you can see that it influences the forearm mesh, same thing for the forearm bone which affects the upperarm mesh, they should not. So in the 3D View N panel > Tool tab > Brush, choose a Weight of zero or a Blend > Subtract, in the Options disable Front Faces Only and enable 2D Falloff, begin to paint until it looks like the left arm.


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Textures don't show in 3d view after loading them into node via python. Blender 2.66
Textures don't shows in 3d view after loading them into node via python. I can see them in render mode, but not in edit. Also after selecting image texture node they show-up in 3d view, but I can't do that from script.
Script works with preloaded (with another script) images
import bpy
import os
import os.path
os.system('cls')

bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'

tex_name_list = []
mat_names = []
for ob in bpy.data.objects:
   print(ob.name)
   for mat_slot in ob.material_slots:
      for mtex_slot in mat_slot.material.texture_slots:
         if mtex_slot:
            if hasattr(mtex_slot.texture , 'image'):
               mat_name = "{}".format(mtex_slot.name)
               for img in bpy.data.images:
                  #print(img.name)
                  mat = mat_slot.material
                  if img.name == (mat_name):
                     if not mat.use_nodes:
                        print("{} - {}".format(img.name, mat_name))
                        mat.use_nodes = True
                        tex_node = mat.node_tree.nodes.new('TEX_IMAGE')
                        mixShad_node = mat.node_tree.nodes.new('MIX_SHADER')
                        trns_node = mat.node_tree.nodes.new('BSDF_TRANSPARENT')
                        diff_node = mat.node_tree.nodes['Diffuse BSDF']
                        matOut_node = mat.node_tree.nodes['Material Output']
                        mat.node_tree.links.new(tex_node.outputs['Color'], diff_node.inputs['Color'])
                        mat.node_tree.links.new(tex_node.outputs['Alpha'], mixShad_node.inputs['Fac'])
                        mat.node_tree.links.new(diff_node.outputs['BSDF'], mixShad_node.inputs[2])
                        mat.node_tree.links.new(trns_node.outputs['BSDF'], mixShad_node.inputs['Shader'])
                        mat.node_tree.links.new(mixShad_node.outputs['Shader'], matOut_node.inputs['Surface'])
                        tex_node.image = img

Often a tag redraw or view layer update  (or some update) is required to redraw the viewport.  Can you elaborate re code?  Eg  In this recent a: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/159001/15543 if you remove the tag redraw, the outliner doesn't refresh until you mouse over it.

Update doesn't work

@batFINGER Maybe it's about unlinked textures in uv?

@batFINGER You know maybe how to select node by script? Because that works in blender for me, but I don't how to do it with python.

Ok got it finally.
You need set active Image Texture node:
mat = bpy.data.materials['<Your material name>']
mat.node_tree.nodes.active = mat.node_tree.nodes.new('TEX_IMAGE')


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Bake Texture from procedural Shader to multiple Objects from Array
Here's my problem (2nd attempt at explaining it btw :D)
I got a wooden panel thingy. I selected two array modifiers (x and y axis). Those are not applied yet.
I did build a shader (see below), and did adjust it, so that it makes for a reasonable wood texture. I.e.: I did tweak the parameters to achieve just the kind of texture I want across the whole array. The Shader is using procedural Textures and Object Mapping.
The Problem:
I need to apply the Array modifier to be able to modify individual objects.
When I apply the Array modifier though, the whole texture is messed up (scale and distribution among different objects)
The kind of Solution I hope for: Any way to bake the whole thing "as is": I want just the stuff I got on my screen in preview to be applied as image textures to the individual objects after applying the array modifier.
Any directions on how to solve this? Thanks!
Edit: Here's a screenshot of the Shader and the multiple wooden panels still with an unapplied array modifier.

Hello :). Please consider adding some images to your post, so it's easier to imagine your situation. You can also share your .blend file,

Sounds like a texture coordinate issue but I concur with @ᴊᴀᴄʜʏᴍᴍɪᴄʜᴀʟ, adding a .blend file or screenshot of the shadine nodes would greatly help...

@ᴊᴀᴄʜʏᴍᴍɪᴄʜᴀʟ here's a screenshot of what I did. Sorry for the somewhat complicated description of my problem

I'm afraid the Array modifier needs to be applied before any texture baking.
Or it will only bake the original tile - which is not what you want.
Another solution:
Use Object or UV coordinates for both your textures

the Noise Texture uses Generated coordinates, when it's not
connected to anything
but Generated coordinates change when you apply the Array modifier
use Object coordinates instead, for both textures, and they will stay the same

This would be the other way around though: I do want the objects to have different textures. But as soon as I apply the array modifier, even with Object Coordinates, they all look the same.

I'm not sure I understand your desired outcome. Would you mind rephrasing your original question so it's more clear? :).

Alright, I just did in the opening post. Tried to rephrase it in a more comprehensible way. :D


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Is there a way to keep menus from closing?
Is there a way to keep menus from closing when my cursor isn't on it? I use screen magnification and I often inevitably "fall off" menus. So frustrating.
I'm a newbie, by the way.

This is not usually a problem for most users. Could you provide more context about why you use magnification and how? Is it possible to make a gif or record the screen with the problem happening? It is usual to first select something in Blender and then use some operation that does something to the selection, so there is usually no reason to move the mouse away from menus or look around with magnification when you are choosing something from a menu. It might help to set(or use existing) hotkeys for menus you use often, or add stuff to quick favourites menu...

To answer the question: No, there is no way to keep menus from closing when you move the mouse away. This is not exposed in the user preferences in any way:

These are all the settings available for menus. If you described your use case in more detail it may be possible to find some workaround to make it more convenient though.
Blender is famous for its keyboard hotkeys. There are a lot of them. And you can also set them for most things like the menus. If you use hotkeys like Ctrl + V, Ctrl + E, Ctrl + F for Vertex, Edge, Face menus while modelling in Edit Mode, those menus appear at the mouse position in 3d viewport:

You can set hotkeys for menus, but that's a bit tricky, because you have to create the hotkeys manually(as opposed to just right-clicking and choosing "Assign Shortcut" for operators). If that's something that may be helpful to you, just ask a new question about setting hotkeys for a menu.

The reason i use screen magnification is because I'm VI--visually impaired. My eyes are a foot or less away from my screen and using magnification means i can only see about 1/4 of the screen at a time. Windows's built-in is similar to what i use. Set it to 600% and you have the equivalent of my screen.
i know, it's not very common for VI people to do digital arts, but i have for the past decade or so. i just haven't invested much time in Blender because of the issue with the menus. it's like the only program i know that auto-closes menus when your cursor isn't on it.

"Set it to 600% and you have the equivalent of my screen." What's the size and resolution of your screen?

27" screen at 1920 x 1200 resolution

I still fail to replicate the issue with menus to be honest. When I try to see them, the mouse is on them so they don't disappear, when I try to see something else, I don't need the menus.

I just ran into this myself. Blender's menu implementation differs from macOS menu bars (and I think also Windows). Normally, moving the cursor away from a standard menu does not close it. Your cursor can move anywhere on screen and the menu will remain open. It will only close if you click. I don't see any advantage to this design, it seems to be a mistake.

No mistake. The menus disappear when the cursor is certain distance away. Blender's UI philosophy is for it to be non-blocking. This is in line with it. That's why it's all one window and no floating child windows. It works as intended to reduce distractions and need to manage things that hide other things. ...in most cases. A bigger monitor would probably help, or some other system of magnification maybe... I am not sure I understand how this issue works. I seem to be able to use the menus with magnification fine as I don't see any need to move the mouse away while navigating menus...


text:
How to Map Range on a Curve
I am using OSC data streams from game pad analog sticks to control transforms of objects in the viewport. Specifically, the X and Y stick axes are driving X and Z axis rotation of a mesh object. It works well enough. The OSC input range is from 0 to 1, which I am using a Map Range node to scale +/- 90 degree rotations on either axis.
The motion is currently linear. What I would like to do is adjust the scaling disproportionately, to have more fine movement around the central point (0.5) and then broader movement closer to the extremes (approaching 0 or 1). For example, from 0 to 0.25 would be mapped from -90 to -22 degrees, 0.25 to 0.75 would be mapped from -22 to +22 degrees, and 0.75 to 1.00 would map from +22 to +90 degrees.
I thought this could be accomplished with a Curve Interpolation node, but I haven't had any success with this. I expected the x axis of the graph would represent scale input values from min to max and the y axis would represent the redistribution of those value from min to max, but from my testing, this does not appear to be the case.
This seems like it would be pretty straightforward, but I can't seem to find the correct application of nodes to achieve a non-linear range mapping. How can I do this?

I figured it out. It turns out that the Curve Interpolation node was behaving as I expected it to in the question above. It wasn't apparent enough for some reason until I connected it to an Evaluate Interpolation node, and then connecting the outflow into the Interpolation port of the Map Range node. This seems to have the same effect as plugging the outflow of the Curve Interpolation directly into the Interpolation port of the Map Range node, and enabling the Interpolate switch on Map Range - as I had done originally - so I don't know why it works now when it didn't before.
Expanding the Node tab to the right of the Node Tree window and editing the graph in the Properties drop-down provides a lot more control for drawing and editing the graph. I can now fine tune dead zone muting on the analog sticks as well!

Hi @greg!  Glad it's fixed. When the time has elapsed, it would be good if you could mark your own answer as accepted (with the tick).

An extra tip here. The Float Curve node is much better for situations like this. It works on any value remapped to a 0-1 range and doesn't need an additional node to do the evaluations.
I'd be interested to see the outcome of this project!

Hello @Callmepro! Please excuse my ignorance, but I do not see a Float Curve Node when searching the Add node menu. I am using v2.3.0 of Animation Nodes. I am very interested to try your suggestion, though!

My mistake, i thought you were using geometry nodes. I don't know the equivalent for Animation nodes


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Cuda error while rendering using 2 gpus
I am having a cuda error saying “failed to create cuda context illegal adress” I am using 4070 super and 3070 ti for rendering in cycles, it renders fine if i try to use single gpu, the error is displayed only when i use multiple gpu, the drivers for both the cards are upto date, this is the first time i am trying rendering using multiple gpu, please help

Are you overclocking either GPU?

Nope, neither of the gpu is overclocked, both are at default settings

This happens when scenes don't fit into GPU memory as well. Does your scene fit into the memory of each GPU? VRAM does not combine. Each GPU needs to have a copy of the scene.

Yes as i mentioned, it gets rendered fine when i try to render them with a single gpu, the scene is heavy, memory usage goes upto 10 gb, the 3070 ti only have 8gb of memory but when i try to render it with 3070, its renders fine and takes 7 minutes per frame, i am assuming extra 2 gb is used from system memory here, on the other hand, the 4070 super is 12 gb, takes 2 minutes to render each frame

With two RTX cards you should be using Optix


text:
Can you bake part of a normal map?
I'm just now learning about baking different maps from an online course but I came across an instance where a new part was added to an avatar but that part didn't have a normal map.
Can you bake a normal map for only part of an object? Or does the whole object have to be rebaked?

Yes you can bake only a part of normal map if you have space for it on the image. You would need to only have a UV map for that part you want to bake, so you can duplicate your existing UV map, select all UVs other the the ones you made for the new part and scale them to 0 (it would probably be better to move that point somewhere where you have free space on your image so it doesn't produce any artifacts, snap to cursor located at (0,0) maybe?..)

You will obviously need the UVs in the original UV map match the place of the ones you use for backing so you should create UVs for the new part on the original UV map first and only then duplicate it.
You should then make sure you have the Clear Image checkbox unset:

Also you have to make sure the image you are baking to uses the correct UV map:

This will obviously override the pixels covered by the new UVs in the image and some area around them depending on your Margin Size settings:

You can delete the no longer needed second UV map later.

That is good to know! Thank you so much, I appreciate it!


text:
How do I delete these verts that were extruded instead being connected with the rest of the model?
The problem is the verts sticking out and they aren't possible to delete for whatever reasons.

what doesn't work? Pressing X doesn't give you an option to delete vertices or it doesn't open at all or what exactly is happening?

press Alt Z to toggle the x-ray, this way you'll be able to select the vertices behind, maybe this is your problem here?


text:
How do I texture an oval connected to a square plane?
Needs to seamlessly be joined together as I need to add a tile texture, I'm wondering if this is even possible. I know I can just connect a cylinder and square plane and join them to make one merged plane, but adding textures in shading is difficult since they don't perfectly align, are different thicknesses, etc.

I know how to make the plane, sorry for the lack of clarity. I'm having an issue when it comes to adding shading textures.

Hello, what object are you trying to achieve exactly?

@moonboots a plane if possible

do you have a picture of the object? If you want a 3D object it would help

for the texture, it looks like you need to unwrap again

Add a circle.
Add a plane.
Move the circle( G ) and scale it appropriately( S ). Snapping functionality might be useful to scale it in a precise way. For example, you could place the 3d cursor at one point( Shift  +  S ), then select all geometry with one vert selected last so it's active and then when you scale it constrained to some axis, you can snap that vert to a corner of the plane so the circle stretches from the 3d cursor to the active vert that snaps to the corner of the plane. You would use 3d Cursor as transform pivot and set snapping settings to use Active as Snap Base:

Join the plane with the circle(now an oval) with  Ctrl  +  J  in object mode

Select the geometry you want to make a face out of and hit  F  to make a face between the part of the oval and the plane.  Ctrl +clicking to select shortest path might be useful to select needed verts of the oval.

Fill the oval by selecting all its verts and hitting  F  as well.

This is pretty basic modelling so I would highly recommend finding some course of video tutorials for modelling on YouTube or elsewhere online. It would answer a lot of questions all at once.
Edit:
There is nothing unusual about texturing it. It can be done multiple ways including:

UV mapping. Select the geometry in edit mode and Unwrap UV's( U ) using any of appropriate algorithms.

They will all work almost identically with such a simple geometry. The aim is to make a UV map:

You can then shade it the same way as you would anything else:

Using other coordinates like Object, or Generated for the texture:


text:
image texture on plane leaves average color of image in 3d-view
When I place an image on to a plane ( lets say it's a striped black and white pattern ) all I see in the rendered viewport is a GREY! color.  As if the colors of the image are mixed.
When I place an image texture of a blue sky and green field I see a blue-ish / green-ish color in mij Cycles rendered viewport.
I don't understand how to add a screenshot of my Blender scene to this message, but I have one if you need more information.  Just mail me:  eluttger@gmail.com
Thanks for the help, Emil

Use the image icon upper left of the text box (create or edit question/answer) to upload an image. And if you don't want spam, delete youe Email adress!

use this site pasteall to upload the scene

When using an Image Texture you need to UV unwrap your mesh.
To do this, go into edit mode, select all vertices, and press U > Unwrap.

What is happening, is Blender has no coordinates to map the texture to, so it takes the average image color and uses that as the texture. When you UV unwrap the mesh, you are telling Blender what vertices go where in relation to the texture, and Blender can then project the texture onto the mesh.
If you now go to the UV/Image Editor you can see and edit how your mesh has been unwrapped:

Thanks!  And then?... What do I do? ( In the Image Editor ), do I "SaveImage"or "Pack Image"or Ëxport UV layout"?...

Just edit the UV's, don't save the image, it already exists :)

@Emil Did this solve your issue? If so, please accept the question.


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Fire makes whole scene pixelated
I've been working on my own Pokémon animated movie for a month now. Everything works great except for the elements. I'm going to be using fire a lot in my movie, but whenever I render a scene with fire in it, the render turns out like the following. Any idea why this happens? I noticed that when I change the smoke domain from volume to any of the other options, that the pixelated area goes away, but then there is no fire and it only shows the UV sphere that is my emitter. There has been no help on any other help forums and I'm dying to finish my project; this is my only setback.

Can you upload a blend that shows this problem?

still a little new, how do I do that?

http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com

sorry one moment

Whatever you changed just turned everything purple . . .

authors: Александр Воскресенский


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Bevel Modifier + smooth shading produces black artefacts at high angle
I have recognized a strange reflection behavior which I can't fix properly
At high camera angle the bevel modifier (and also beveling corners via the modeling tools) produces artefacts in combination with a reflective material and the smooth shading. (In the picture at the top corner and on the left corner)
It does not depends on the material (with or without Layer Weight, changing the fresnel values) or the use of the objects Auto Smooth settings. The world background is completely white and there is no other object which would be reflected.
At the second picture you can see both variants:
Top row = Cube with Bevel Modifier (settings on the right), activated smooth shading and Auto Smooth
Bottom row = Cube with modeled beveling (Ctrl+B), same settings as above.
I barely solved it by increasing the segments. (Its always there but very small)
Does anyone have a tip to fix it in a better way?
Thank you in advance & regards!

did you enable Auto Smooth under Mesh Data?

@Noidea It doesn't matter if I switch Auto Smooth on or off. By turning the smooth Angle down it disappears but then it looks like flat shading again.

Well, I can only tell what helped me in similar situation. I added "Edge Split" modifier. But your problem does look a bit different.

What are the settings of the Bevel modifier and what is the topology of the base cube.. I couldn't achieve that with default cube and clamp checked for modifier.

@MrZak I added a second picture, with the settings and both variants, modifier and  modeled bevel.

Now it's more clear how to get that. That's because of smooth shading which makes the center big face kind of convex. If you add loopcuts and slide them to the corner (almost, just not ruining the bevel) that will mitigate the problem because making the big central face flat (loopcuts will do that).


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Check box to enable add-ons in blender is missing
Hello everyone I am on version 2.77a of Blender.  I am trying to enable a few add-ons but I am having difficulty doing do as I can't seem to find the check box to click in order to enable them.  This is what I am looking at from the User Preferences window in the add-ons tab.  Dos anyone know how to get that check mark there?  Thank you.