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FBX Exporter Animation Artefacts
I am using the FBX Exporter to export animations from Blender but I see strange animation artefacts when playing back the FBX with Autodesk's FBX Review
At first I thought it might be FBX Review, but then on importing the FBX back into Blender those artefacts are also clearly visible in Blender.
Below are gif versions of the Blender and FBX Review for a simple rig.
In the Blender version the feet do not move at all.  In the FBX version, the feet are continuously moving and you can see a jitter at the beginning, middle and end of the animation.

I am using Blender 2.78a with FBX Exporter that comes with it.
Has anyone seen this problem or could shed some light on a possible solution?
Thanks for any help.

I do not know what causes the problem, but I fixed it by restarting from scratch.  I appended just the mesh from the original blend file into a new one then I rebuilt the armatures.  The resulting exported fbx then did not suffer from the jitter problem.
Not a great answer, but I found the following which could be the reasons for not working in the first place:

Make sure scale is applied to everything before you start building the armatures.
It seems that the fbx exporter does not handle scaling in the animations well, so don't have any scaling in your animations.
The fbx exporter seems to ignore the objects' origins and uses the "world" origin instead.  To avoid any problems, set all the objects' origins to the "world" origin.

You may be able to get away with just applying these steps without having to rebuild the armature.
I have since then always followed these steps on new projects and it has worked every time.
I would like to hear from others if this works for them.

I have the same problem as you going from Blender 2.79b to Unity 2017.1 using FBX 7.4.
I create two armatures to avoid many problems and have a performance control on parenting and hierarchies. One armature is for animation and the othe is deform and to export. The second follows the first one using Transform Constraint.
Have you solved the problem? Do you find something about this problem?


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Object not centering
Have a problem with centering my object for sculpt mode. I have modeled my character with a mirror modifier and i have him centered at the Z axis. Now if i select my char and click cursor to selected and then set origin to 3d cursor, the center point is a bit to the right of the characters center. I had to fix this by manually placing the 3d cursor in the center of the grid to make sculpting possible. Does anybody know what has gone wrong here?

When you select a model and tell it to place the cursor at its center, the cursor does not take into account any modifiers (such as your mirror modifier), and therefore it goes to the center of the vertices you have selected, as seen here:

Then, if you place your origin at the cursor, your mirror modifier will use the origin as your axis point:

So, if your mirror modifier uses the origin as its mirror axis, then all you need to do is place the origin at the point you want to mirror from. This can be done several ways, but the most precise would be to select a single vertex where you want your mirror to occur, and set the cursor to that point (Set cursor to selected):

Then set this point as your origin, the same way as per usual, and your mirror modifier will then use it as the mirror axis:

It is a simple mistake to make, and thankfully an easy one to fix.
Hopefully that helps explain the issue you faced.

Yes and no. I forgot to mention the mirror modifier had been applied already when I started sculpting so the center should have been in the center of the object, right? I am suspecting that I might have moved the complete object a bit to the left when modelling. Could that result in that the center point is a bit to the right?

I think the center is still reliant on the origin point... could you upload a .blend file for us to experiment with?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How to dissolve faces using geo nodes?
Is this currently possible using geo nodes?

Unfortunately, there is no node in Geometry Nodes that is comparable to the function "Dissolve Faces".
You can only delete single vertices, edges or faces via a selection.
You can do this either by selecting by index, or by using a vertex group.
As it looks on your picture, you prefer a selection via a vertex group.
This way you can easily remove the desired faces or edges. But deleting the edges always removes the faces.
Therefore it is a bit more complex to build "Dissolve Faces" in Geometry Nodes:

Here I first split the mesh into two parts. One part contains the selected faces.
I convert these into curves, because this makes them available as separate splines.
At the same time I create a new curve, which I multiply according to the number of splines.
These curves are then divided according to the number of points of the original splines and closed with Fill Curve. This gives me new faces whose points along the outer edge correspond to the previously selected faces.
Finally I just move the points of this mesh to the original position of the removed faces and close the mesh again with Merge by Distance.

One disadvantage of creating new geometry and then merging that in (Merge by distance) is that Vertex Group values are 1/2 the original values for merged verticies (unfortunately there is also no "max" Mode for the Vertex group interpolation for Merge by dist./Weld)

@Patter Unfortunately, this is correct. However, you could transfer the required attributes to the newly created geometry with Sample Nearest (or Transfer Attributes) beforehand. This way no interpolation of the values would take place.

Using that nice approach for a mesh with many holes to fill, I realized how painfully slow Fill Curve especially in N-gons mode is. For whatever reason it also consumes crazy amounts of memory. So I pimped your node group a bit by directly creating filled triangles and squares (Mesh Circle with Fill Type=N-gon) for the special cases of holes with 3 and 4 corners (which I'm mostly interested in). This turns out to be orders of magnitude faster and doesn't consume much memory.

Thanks for the tip! For holes with a known number of points, this is of course a good option. But if the holes have a variable number of points, I'm afraid there's no way around Fill Curve.

True. My special version still works for arbitrary numbers of vertices but it first separates curves with 3 and then 4 points before falling back to the Fill Curve node for the remaining curves. In my case I tried with ~6200 4-corner holes and that was running for several minutes before I terminated Blender because it filled up my memory (was already >>64GB). With the pimped version it took about 10ms and I did not see any significantly increased memory consumption. So I think the Fill Curve node has some room for optimizations ;-)

Hello, I tried tweaking this setup so it dissolves faces not by vertex group but by edge angle, so I plugged Edge Angle to math node, set angle threshold and plugged to Separate Geometry node instead of Capture Attribute, but only the middle faces got dissolved, not the rim faces. I suppose it's because it's looking for faces that meet the angle criteria with all their edges, so like, it considers faces as whole, not the individual edges like I wished for. It there a way to dissolve ALL edges that meet the angle criteria?

Another possible optimization is to either use a repeat zone, or create mesh circles with a maximum resolution, move excess verts to a single point, and merge by distance. You may want to separate the process into triangles, quads and ngons, so that you don't spawn 10k 128-gons, just because you have 10k triangles and one cone of resolution 128...  @michalpe ask a new question if you still have the problem.

if you know the indices, you can do it like this:

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


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Cannot find toolbar in header - blender 2.8

Hi,
I cannot find the toolbar in my blender and when I search toolbar it shows like this in the second image

Click (RMB) on any button in 3D-view header and in menu find Show Tool Settings

OMG YOU JUST SAVED MY LIFE! THANK YOU SIR!

oh, by the way, in recent builds this option also located in View menu. And don't forget to accept the answers https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/someone-answers

To retrieve the header, you just have to click and drag down the square with an arrow that is seen in the upper right part of the viewport, where I have indicated it in the image, and the headers will appear.
You can see the image here:

Hi, could you possibly not use random image services and instead use the tools that are built into Blender Stackexchange? Random image/file services won't keep those images for long and your answer would be useless without it.

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


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Blender resets restricted rendering settings upon frame change
I am using CellBlender for particle simulations and now want to extract a series of pictures using the render feature. The issue now is that my simulations contain many different particle species, but there are only a few that are interesting for illustrating purposes. Once I turned them all of for rendering, render a picture, and go to the next frame I have to turn them off again, because these settings are not being saved.
How can I prevent them from being reset, s.t. I can browse between frames without having to change the settings again?
Also, is there some form of batch rendering? Instead of rendering an animation, I just need every frame by itself.

I have been able to come up with a workaround for both my questions.
It is possible to remove desired particle species for all frames of the render by setting their radius ('scale factor') to 0 in the 'Molecule' section of the Cellblender add-on. They will therefore still be turned on for the render, but invisible due to zero volume.
This enables to not just render one or multiple images, but also an whole animation. Then it is possible to extract all single frames of that animation either from the temporary directory by hand or by choosing 'save all images' of the render window.


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Compute density fluctuations of particle distribution of a surface of 3D geometry
I am using Cellblender to model bio molecular reactions within a 3D geometry that I created, but I am still a novice in Blender. As part of these simulations a fixed number of particles (my case N=60, here red and green dots on surface) is being placed randomly on the surface of a part of that geometry.

Now I want to quantify and understand that random placement, i.e. compute the density fluctuations (the density itself is constant and given by rho = N/A = 60/ < surface area >) or ask questions like: what is the minimal distance of those particles on the surface? How far away are the particles apart on average on that surface? or create some bar plots for each particle on the surface with the minimal distance to the next particle. Or project the surface onto a flat plane and put the particle positions on that flat projection (distance loyal), etc - any kind of statistics or visualization would be appreciated.
Is there someway to do statistics of particles on surfaces in Blender? Computing distances on surfaces of 3D geometries is surely not a trivial thing, but since I am new to Blender I can not judge if its possible or not.  Or maybe there is some way to export the 3D data (geometry, particles positions) and then analyze it with another tool?
Thanks a lot!

Possible? Yes, probably Easy? I don't think so. As far as I know, I'm not aware of any builtin or native tools to preform this, but it might be possible through some unknown amount of Python scripting


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Additional information on Ocean Modifier
I'm currently doing research on ocean waves at a University and using Blender Ocean Modifier to test a method developed for estimating parameters of the ocean from video. I'm using real video and the simulated one to test.
I am obligated to be familiar with the internal mechanisms of how the ocean is rendered in Ocean Modifier, meaning is a specific ocean energy spectrum, such as the Phillips spectrum, used in order to get the simulation.
Also, if there is any additional documentation apart from the user manual, something a bit more detailed about the ocean modifier.
Just a sentence of which algorithms, spectrum are used is enough for my purpose.
Thank you.

The integration of the Ocean modifier was done by Matt Ebb, maybe he can help you further with this. See https://archive.blender.org/wiki/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modifiers/Simulation/Ocean/ for history, parameters and reference.

Hi aliasguru, thank you for your answer. You helped me track the information, which is that the rendering of deep ocean waves in the Hudini toolkit uses the algorithms of Jerry Tessendorf described in the SIGGRAPH 2004 course notes. That is, the Phillips energy spectrum is used for the creation of the ocean waves.


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combine RB physics with animation during the simulation
Just for making the problem simple to understand ( in reality I want to simulate a robot ), I want to make a rigid body wheel and animate its spinning then start simulation and see how it rolls forward, but the object can only be animated or simulated I don't see an option to combine both at the same time. Is it possible to do it in blender?

Shall it spin forward or backwards?

I found a solution after trying all methods of joining geometry inside a rigid body , making the object and animating it inside GEO NODES works with physics at the same time but it is not reliable nor predictable enough to simulate machinery or a robot
this is a small test I did BLENDER GEOMETRY NODES RIGID BODY

You made my day. Not reliable and not predictable - but you propose this as an answer? Sorry, can’t stop laughing  but I love your humor! +1 for making me laugh

hahaha I'm glad I made you laugh lol XD , but I thought it could be useful for some people (motion graphics stuff or explosions)  just not for for me cause I want so simulate a machine and changing the geometry I can not simulate a rotatory friction against the ground , the problem is the wheels rotate but they don't move forward they just bounce

No. You can do either do physics or animated an object.
The only thing you can do it change this behaviour every frame (if you want to). It is the "animated" checkbox in the rigid body settings. If it is unchecked, gravity works, if it is checked, gravity and all forces are "off" and you can keyframe your animation.

Well, "change this behaviour every frame" doesn't really work. Because if you disabled Animated and let the physics simulation take over, you cannot switch back to animation. I mean, you can, but it will make the object snap back to where it was before the simulation started and I'm not sure if this is the desired effect... because the simulation doesn't change location or rotation of the object.

@GordonBrinkmann: maybe i didn't make it clear enough: i didn't meant "change it every frame to solve it" but it is possible to change it every frame - as a general possibility.

Of course, everything that can be keyframed can also be keyframed each frame ;)

You can actually animate the state of the checkbox.
So in the beginning, when you're hand animating the wheel, keep it as "animated". When you're done, set a keyframe of the checkbox by hovering over it and hitting "I". Then go to the next frame, uncheck the box, and hover over it and hit "I" again to set another keyframe.
You may have to play with the animation to make sure the physics are doing what you want but it is possible. Usually the physics takes into account the speed of the object during the manual animation.

thank you for your answer , I think Blender might not be the tool I need for this

Using Rigid body constraints seems the way to go, adding motor and slide forces to the parts of the robot, so dumb I didn't see it before ...


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Cycles renders but no lights in scene
I've been experimenting with lights in Blender 2.8, and I came across a curious situation. When working and rendering with Eevee, adding or subtracting lights responds accordingly (i.e. no lights, dark render. add lights, lit objects render appropriately depending upon placement and number of lights).
If however, I switch over to cycles for a comparison render, every object seems to be lit up whether there are lights in the scene or not. Renders the same way. Adding or subtracting lights makes no difference. It's almost as if the objects were 'emissing' their own light, but this makes no sense as plain objects I add to the scene without texturing or materials do the same thing.
Is there a setting I am missing when I switch between the two? I've been through most of the settings, but it just doesn't seem to make sense. Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks...

Hello and welcome to the site! Could you maybe add some images to further illustrate your problem? What do both renders look like?

could you also provide the file so we can look into it?

Sure. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Cc93Y3sKDDzOnvgD9MZV6n6tBw2UQHsc

Check the last two points in the answer to the duplicate question: "they are illuminated by the world (background shader)", "ambient occlusion is activated".

That was the answer. Unchecking Ambient occlusion and completely blacking out the background shader solved the issue. Thanks for the prompt replies.


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What is causing splotching on rendered image?
I have been trying to troubleshoot this for some time now. Whenever I use an HDRI to light my scene, I get the following effect on my objects after rendering in cycles. A patchiness that I cannot seem to get rid of. This doesn't occur when I use standard lighting in my scene. Only when I light my scene with an HDRI. I am using the most recent 2.8 (at least as of this writing).
There is nothing fancy about the HDRI setup, nor is there anything unusual about the textures on the floor. The walls have a principled shader on them with nothing else applied. I am perplexed at what is causing this and would very much like to eliminate this.
Thanks ahead of time.

This kind of noise is usually caused by denoising. Lighting scenes with HDRI requires more computing and renders tend to be noisier for longer. What we see here is likely denoiser failing to cope with increased amount of noise. You should increase sample count and use light portals to combat this issue.

I will start experimenting and see how it goes. Any suggestion as to possible sample count level?

Increase it until noise and spots disappear. You can test render small patches selecting a render region in camera view with ctrl+b(ctrl+alt+b to remove region selection) in the most noisy areas that receive the least direct light. It can be anything between around 1000 to 25000 for complex interior scenes.


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Adding objects to new .blend files using python
I want to save a number of objects of my project file to a new external .blend file using python.
 filepath = bpy.context.scene.custompath
 data_blocks = set(bpy.data.collections)

 # write collection to new blend file
 bpy.data.libraries.write(filepath, data_blocks)

The above code works fine when running the full script for the first time. Repeating it with a second or third object, seems to overwrite the existing content.
When opening the created file, Blender tells me that some libraries were not loaded.

The outliner of the file that the collections where saved to looks like this:

It displays only the last collection which was written into the file. The first two collections are missing library paths (I don't understand why, it looks like the file is linking to itself).
So my question is:
Is there a way to tell Blender to add the collections - one at a time - to the existing ones in the created file when using bpy.data.libraries.write?


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How to fix blurry texture on side of mesh? I'm following Blender Guru's couch tutorial
I tried unwrapping it again, to make sure that I actually unwrapped it and didn't forget. There was still this issue. Any solutions?

have you tried just rotating that part of the UV map?  I have followed his tutorial in the past, and I encountered a very similar problem, but rotating the UV fixed it for me.

Yeah, I tried that. I still looks the same.

please pack your images and share your file: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/


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Python - Check all objects have material assigned before export?
Is there a way to check (or warning the user) if all objects in the scene have a material assigned, before exporting?
Or any other solution I could use?
Thanks!!

Hi and welcome! Sure. What do you want to export? File format? Do you mind adding the current state of your code? Please read: https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask

@brockmann Thanks in advance. I'm exporting meshes on .FBX format. I know how to check if It has material or not assigned, but I don't know how to warning the user BEFORE the export. Something like: "You're exporting materials without material assigned. Do you want to proceed?"
Is it possible?
Thanks again!

Yep: How to call a confirmation dialog box? I recommend edit your question accordingly...

@brockmann Thanks. And how do I call this dialog box before the export. I mean, press the File-> Export -> .fbx  and in this moment call my script (before showing the export window)
Is it possible?

You would have to create your own custom operator like: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/169820/31447 and add an invoke method (as described in the answer above). Don't think that's worth it TBH


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Why does my render not show my light source?
I have a sun that lights up my scene perfectly fine in my object view, but when I render it is completely dark.

There is nothing between my sun and the camera. I've moved it all around the scene but no luck.
Here is my blender file.

You have a sphere that is hidden in viewport but that will be rendered, as we see in the Outliner. Note that even if you move your sun inside it won't light your scene, the location of the sun is not taken into account, so you need to either hide your sphere in render or find another solution:

I'm so stupid! Thank you! I will accept your answer as soon as the timeout is complete.


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Unable to match bevel curve to reference photo
The problem
I'm sculpting an iphone. The project started with a plane. Then, to reproduced the outer curves bevel modifier was added. The problem is that after trying to match the curve angle, nothing is working.

The troubleshooting
After trying to change offset, profile and segment values the problem persisted.
How to solve it?
Thanks in advance.

In Object mode, clear the scale with ALT-S before adding the bevel modifier and see if that gives you a clean bevel curve.

Hello maybe share your file it will help to understand: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

I think your best bet is to make the bevel manually (without a modifier). You can use a custom bevel profile when you first create the bevel (this option is present in the modifier as well, but is much harder to work with, and doesn't always give the best results). You can then chose whatever shape you want by modifying the curve. You can do multiple edges/verts simultaneously this way as well (not shown):

Christopher, thank you for the help. For some reason the dots from the bevel are only showing in the 2d curve window. How did you get them to show in the plane as well?

The dots are just the vertices. I beveled the vertex first (Ctrl + Shift + B), and added a few extra verts by scrolling the mousewheel to make a general curved corner, then took further control by manipulating the curve in the Bevel Operator panel. If you can't see the verts, make sure you're in vertex selection mode.

got it! Thanks again!


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Some part of the cloth can't be sewed together
The shoulder part of the vest can't be sewed together, and the sewing line in the body seems to be not tight enough. I've tried to tune the size and other numbers, but it didn't work. Where does it go wrong? Thanks ahead!

This is the file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EB9nuuoJOHKWz6a27SW1I0yktLlQjfV-/view?usp=sharing


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Removing untextured faces from UV mapping
Newbie to Blender In blender 2.91.0 I am making simple buildings and covering with texture using uv-mapping. Many of the faces are internal and will never be seen and have no texture applied to them. (The textures with the red letters in the attached picture)
Is there some way to select and delete the unwanted faces from the UV map? and hopefully rearrange the UV map using Smart UV project function or something similar to use all remaining space.[Image of my layout]
Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere

Reason to not remove unseen internal faces from the mesh itself?

You can't really remove the useless faces from the UV map but for example you can select them in the 3D view, Unwrap > Reset, which will stack them, and put them out of the UV Editor grid:

Then select the rest of the mesh (Ctrli) and unwrap with the Smart UV Project option. Now the selected part occupy the whole grid, as expected (but it means that you'll need an image that will match the new unwrap):

If we select both the useful and useless part, as you see, the useless part keeps its location. You can put it over the second UV unwrap but it's more convenient to separate the 2 parts if you ever need to select one or the other. Note that the useless will inherit of the texture that will be underneath (an image texture is always infinitely repeated in the UV Editor) but you said that this part won't be seen so you don't have to care. If you want this part to be alpha 0% you need to put it over a part of your image that will be alpha 0%:


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Boolean Difference function adding new face unexpectedly
In Blender 2.91.0 I am trying to make a cube recess in another cube by using the 'boolean - Difference' function.
For some reason blender doesn't take the second cube away cleanly from the first cube. It adds a new face to the front of the remaining cube (see attached pic).
I use 'snap to' vertex to ensure the vertices are all aligned- but same problem occurred.
I made the cube used to apply the difference a little larger to ensure it was outside the flat plane of the first cube, but same problem.
I tried using new cubes, but problem still remains.
I then tried a second cube bigger than the entire face of the first cube and applied 'difference' again, but the extra edge remained.
I want to apply texture to the front surface but the extra face will make alignment difficult. Besides as far as I can see this shouldn't happen.
Any suggestions?

You can't create a face within a face without edges that connect this inner face to the outer face, thus the edges you're showing, otherwise the outer face will overlap the inner face, meaning the inner face couldn't exist, or it could exist but it wouldn't be part of the same mesh. As for your texture question, I don't see in what way it will cause any issue, just select the front faces and unwrap.

Yes okay that makes sense. I was using the 'difference' function and this connect wasn't there but I realised it was because the face was reaching the outside already.  As for the texture problem. Maybe its the way the building is built but half of the texture map is not used because the uv map has put the inner faces as well. Thanks for the help


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How do I create uvmap in order to apply texture to bezier curve
I have created a bezier curve to represent a fuel bowser hose. I would like to apply a texture to the hose  and export it as a part of my project but for some reason I am unable to generate a uvmap so I can create a texture for it.
I do know how to generate and apply uv texture maps for other objects such as cubes/cylinders etc.
I am also having the same issue generating a uvmap for a chain-link fence I created (from youtube video) so I am summizing that I must have to convert the bezier curves into something else before generating the uvmap. Obviously I am missing something!
Any help is greatly appreciated.!
Aus67

Curve objects create their own UV map.  These are polar-ish coords, where the V axis describes something roughly like angle from the curve and the U axis describes length along the curve.  While export functions have their own individual rules, any export function is likely to export a curve object as a bunch of mesh verts, edges, faces with the same UV as is used by Blender.  To access this UV in Blender, just make use a texture coordinate node and use the UV output.
If you want to edit this UV, it's necessary to convert the curve object to a mesh object, which can be done with a "convert to"-> mesh operation (alt c in object mode for me.)
For cases of export, where I don't know of any engine that's going to use Blender's curve objects, there's really no reason not to convert to mesh.  Your export functions are just going to be converting the curves to mesh in the end anyways.


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HDRI appears black in both render and viewport
I added a HDRI, but the background is completely black. I tried turning the strength up and down, checked if the thing is equirectangular and properly configured. I also tried to disconnect the compositing nodes and instead just render the original combined image. This came out to still have a black background. Any ideas?

Did you enable scene Light and Scene World for the viewport? https://i.sstatic.net/jnwNZ.png

yeah I have. Sorry I can't really upload the .blend file, it's 400 MB and my internet isn't exactly great.

You don't need to upload anything, but explain and show images that show the context and settings. All of your images are so tightly cropped that no one else but you knows what we're looking at.

you could delete most of the objects to make the file light, and then share it?

Did you check View > Perspective/Orthographic?

In case someone is struggling with this issue, I recommend to doublecheck, if the Viewport Shading option is set correctly to Combined.
In the screenshots above it looks like the current Viewport Shading mode was Glossy Indirect.

I know this was probably figured out a while ago but I just ran across this problem too. For me it was an issue under color management in the render properties. I had somehow set my gamma amount to zero. Hope this helps for people with this problem in the future.


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AMD GPU on Mac not showing up?
I installed Blender 3.0 Cycles X using a.dmg file. I've tried 2.93 but that doesn't work either. The GPU is AMD Radeon R9 M370X, and I've checked Blender's website and it should work (OpenGL is 4.1) according to support.apple.com/en-us/HT202823, and the Mac is a Retina 5K, 27-inch, Mid 2015. What's happening and how do I fix it?
Here's a screenshot of what happens when I pull up the system preferences:

i guess they dropped support for opengl, it is written on website https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Cycles

Go to addon's and search for Cycles and see what comes up. The original cycles renderer is technically considered an addon - maybe you have to enable it:


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Using Image Sequence as Environment Texture
I wanted to use the image sequence as Environment Texture, during the animation the environment changes, but its effect on the materials in the scene does not change. If you switch frame by frame, there is a change.
Is it possible to implement this through Evee? If you render through Cycles, everything works correctly.
By the link you can see problem on Video:
https://i.sstatic.net/EaNG5.jpg


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How to approach texture painting images such as faces?
I am trying to figure out the best way to texture paint complex images on models. For example, I am trying to texture paint a face on a cartoon character, but I've realised there's pretty much only a brush (and line) option. I can't seem to easily paint shapes as you could in photoshop (e.g. draw a 'perfect' circle). I've looked into simply making the texture in photoshop and then importing it back into blender, but doing that means I won't be able to actively see the changes I'm making on the 3D model, which is too difficult for me as a beginner.

Hello, you can draw a perfect circle in Blender, but of course Blender will never be as convenient as Photoshop or other image editors for editing images and painting

Awesome, how can I do this? Is there a draw circle tool? If there is it's very hidden...

I would put a circular alpha in the Texture Mask section of the painting tools tab. Then I'd change the fall of until I had the look i was going for.

Thanks for your reply. Could you outline how I'd go about creating a circular alpha? I'm fairly new to blender and I'm finding it hard to pick things up even using tutorials and things. @ZackBowen

No problem! An alpha is just a black and white image. You can make them in Blender , but is easier to do in any image editor like Photoshop or even Paint. Just make the shape your looking for in white with either a black or transparent background. Then save that as a PNG, and there you have your alpha! Alternatively you could google free circular alpha textures and download one.

For painting, Blender will never be as good as an image editor like Photoshop, Gimp or Krita, a solution would be to use imported textures, but for example for a perfect circle you just need to edit the Falloff profile:


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Glass not see through around corners of mesh in eevee

I cant see through parts of the window in eevee and I have enabled screen space refraction.

In the material, under Settings, there's a Refraction Depth value, what does it give if you play with it?

That's done it, just had to increase the refraction depth slightly.

In the Material panel, under Settings, increase the Refraction Depth value.


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Border around render in eevee
Is there a way to fix the blue-ish border around the render. I think it has something to do with glass and refraction.

I believe it is because of Screen Space Reflections.
If my guess is correct, I think there is a refractive mesh covering the camera. The way that SSR works is faking the reflections and refractions by using already rendered objects and transforming them over the surface to imitate the reflection and refraction.
If an object is not rendered, the object does not appear on the reflection or refraction (on these renderers, on path tracing ones like Cycles it does not happen).
There is no way to fix it outside changing renderers, baking the reflection in reflections cubemaps, or removing the mesh on the camera.


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Why is there a flat plane when I bevel an object?
There is a plane that seems to appear just on this face.
In edit mode this "flat plane" doesn't show up, however when I go into object mode it appears.
I have added a boolean modifier for the top part (as seen in the photo). There are no creases or bevel weights, and I have "merged by distance" if this helps.

Thanks for the help, turns out I had previously duplicated the top face then hidden it in edit mode and forgot about it. This is why is only showed up in object mode. Very simple mistake. To resolve this all I did was unhide this duplicated face and deleted it.

I initially assumed it was a normals issue, likely caused by a hidden face or pinched edges, but we can see the outline of the face sticking out of the profile while in object mode, so I'd assume its not a hidden face or normals issue.
But just to fully rule that out, go into edit mode, edge select mode, and deselect everything, then go to Select > Select all by trait > Non Manifold. and ...> Interior faces, if anything selects then you have some interior geo.
So next assumption, I'd assume it's caused by the boolean modifier, if you turn off the boolean modifier does the extra face go away?
If so could be caused by a calculation glitch with something on the boolean object, so common things to try are to simplify your boolean object (ie apply on any modifiers so its less things to calculate at once), or could be from the boolean objects normals being to closely aligned to your main objects normals, so make sure your boolean object is a little larger then the hole its making needs to be (ie give it some overhang on the sides and top, where the hole its creating needs to be).
Also you mentioned you did a "merge by distance", I assume that was on your main object, I'd suggest doing that to your boolean object as well, so try and rule out it being an issue with the boolean geo.
Hopefully this is of some help.


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Why cant I see my object behind glass in eevee?
I can't see the back of the oven in eevee, ive tried in cycles and this works but dont want to render in cycles.
Im pretty new to blender but dont know whats going on here. Ive turned on screen space refraction in both render settings and material settings.

Please provide blend file

There are two possible reasons:

Backface is disabled. In this case you can see only one side of the face, the outer one (backface) is hidden.

The material of oven is transparent or also marked as refractive. This makes this material excluded from base layer and rendered with glass. So then the opacity applied on top of the base layer, you don't see the object because the base layer is empty.

Here is material settings for oven (Not for the glass). Note that Backface Culling is off, Blend Mode is Opaque, Screen Space Refraction is off:


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Object Scale & Dimensions updates correctly in 3dview, but bpy.context.object.dimensions does not?
Could someone explain this to me?
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=2)
obj = bpy.context.object
obj.location = (1, 2, 3)
obj.dimensions = (1, 2, 3)
print(obj.dimensions) # => <Vector (2.0000, 2.0000, 2.0000)>

I have a longer script but basically does the same thing. I'm trying to grab the obj.dimensions.z of a current obj, bpy.context.object, after I change it. But it keeps giving me the original value before it was changed. Even though the scale is applied. Am I missing something really obvious?? Thanks all. I am losing my mind.

bpy dimensions are for the unscaled object.  You need to apply scale in object mode if you want them to match or you need to multiply by the object's world matrix.

I'm confused, what do you mean 'for the unscaled object'?? Applying the scale would give me the correct dimensions?

You're confused because I was confused.  Ignore my comment.  Sorry.

Well, dude I applied the scale and it came out correctly... bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=False, scale=True)
print(obj.dimensions) # => <Vector (1.0000, 2.0000, 3.0000)>

So I don't like this answer because I feel like in earlier versions you could just grab the dimensions of an object as it stood in that moment... But apparently you need to "apply the scale". Thanks Marty, even though you were confused the suggestion worked. So,
        obj.dimensions.z = height_block
        bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=False, scale=True)

        ##### OBJ PROPERTIES ########
        #############################
        x_dimension, y_dimension, z_dimension = obj.dimensions
        print(z_dimensions) # => 3

If anyone can explain this better for me I'd love to understand it more in depth.


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Parts of Mesh are missing when importing .blend object to unity
I've made a 3d object and tried importing it into unity for use. It seems just fine in blender but after import this happens:

This is what it looks like in blender

Does anyone know how to fix this? Been stuck on this for a while. Tried converting to .fbx and other formats and importing too but in vain.

Try recalculating your normals?

@RonJensen I tried recalculating the normals (using recalculate normals outside). Did not seem to work. Also I had dissolved a few vertices while trying to create the 3d object above- not sure if it might have made a mess.

I'm not up on Unity, but I've seen things like this when moving meshes from 2 sided engines to single sided engines, some normals are reversed so faces "disappear". Looked like there might be shading issues in that area, too.

Oh. Do you have any tips on how to troubleshoot this?


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How to create Composite Object?
I'm fairly new to blender (2.8), been using it for just about a month now.
How do you combine a bunch of different objects (e.g. light, mesh, etc) to act as one object? That is so I can easily duplicate and edit the resulting composite object.
I've already checked collections, appears to be not I need. Already did some googling but I guess I'm in the wrong rabbit hole.
Thanks!

You can't make objects of different types into a single object, but you can make a group of "siblings" (children of an Empty) and duplicate them all together. This method doesn't create instances but whole new objects: they will still be editable individually (at the cost of being all simultaneously in memory).

Add an Empty

Select all the objects and then Shift+Select the Empty. Do CtrlP and Set Parent to Object

Duplicate the bunch (ShiftD) and Move (or rotate, or scale) the new Empty. Indeed, the duplication is smart enough to transfer the "Parent" relation to the new Empty

You can select a group (for example if you need to delete it or duplicate further) by selecting the Empty, then doing Select > Select More/Less > Extend Child or just Shift]

Nicola Sap proposed a solution (parent all your object to an empty), note that if you use altD instead of shiftD, your object copies will be linked, meaning if you change one object it will affect its copies.
Another solution could be Collection Instance:
Put your objects in the same collection (let say Collection1), then create an instance of this collection with ShiftA > Collection Instance > Collection1. You can move, rotate or scale the instance, but only the original objects will be editable.

Collection Instance does solve my current problem. So thanks.
To expand the solution, the instance/Duplicate can be made into real objects if you so desire by ctrl A > Make Duplicates Real


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Can't disolve edge and faces
I am very new to blender and I have a problem where I can't dissolve these two faces and I don't know why. Can someone help me ?
Link to the blender file if anyone need it : https://mega.nz/#!BxBkVA5b!Xz0vgBDgfhW32xzLA_DX5Xp-r9dFMtxl2wbwyY0Km5U

please, at least next time, could you use http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ service to upload .blend files, since it's the preferred way here? Thanks

I think you can't dissolve. Because dissolve will lower the geometry, and if you do it here, the wall will overlap the windows

A face is a polygon. A polygon is an array of vertices.
The way it is interpreted is:

Make a first triangular part with vertices 1, 2, 3
Then make another one with 2, 3, 4
Then 3, 4, 5
Etc.

This does not allow to have holes in it except if there is only 1 hole, or in some special cases for example if the holes are triangular themselves (at least, I think, this is surely a complex topology problem...).
So, my though is that you can dissolve only if there is a path of triangles "calculable" all along this polygon. And I don't think this is the case here due to the 3 square holes. Or if you dissolve, the polygon will cover/overlap the windows.

Alright, so right now it's the best I can achieve if I understood correctly ?

I think the question is "why do you need to do that ?". And yes, you cannot lower the amount of faces here. But after a look at your file, some vertices can be removed.

Mainly for UVs, I like it when things are 100% clean, but I guess I will have to do with it. Thansk for the help !

@ARealSnake it's most likely that you won't get everything clean when having Ngon like that, UVs don't like such distortion. Go with quads or tris if low-poly and unwrap.

Thanks for the info again, it will greatly help me in the future !

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


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How can I catch Rigid Bodies using a Cloth in Blender 2.83?
The Problem
So far I have not been able to perform a Rigid Body simulation on one object and a Cloth simulation on the other and have them interact with each other simultaneously.
The effect I want to that of several objects falling into a net in a realistic way.
Successful Simulations:

Drop a subdivided plane with Cloth enabled onto another mesh with collision enabled.
Animate a Rigid Body with "Passive" and "Animated" enabled into a Cloth plane with the corners pinned.

Other Methods Tried:

What is the easiest way to simulate trampoline?
How to make cloth 'catch' a falling object, slowing its fall?
Creating a Soft Body Surface that Responds to Different Masses of a Rigid Body Object

Is it Possible?
I would've thought that this was quite a common use case, however, the fact that I have been unable thus far, to find an exact guide on how to approach this problem, I'm beginning to think that it may not be possible to simulate the two entities together.

It's not natively built into Blender.

Did you get a solution to this? I am trying to put a torus on a "cloth" string and i cant get them to interact

Apparently no way: Physics cross-simulation interactions?: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/1030/111042


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Unable to parent bones (not getting the 'keep offset' option)
Here Im trying to parent the hand bone and the shoulder bone to the root bone. But every time I try to parent them the only option i get is "Connected" but i need the the "keep offset" option. If I try to parent it from the object mode using the pipette THIS happens. What am i supposed to do here? I've been trying to follow this tutorial but Im stuck at 2:09 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjAJHrLGvBE)

Okay, I got it. I just had to select the armature and the root bone and press Ctrl +  J in Object Mode. Then go to Edit Mode and select the bones accordingly.


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Why does grabbing mishandle my shape?
I am currently making Blender Guru's Beginner Tutorial where he creates a Donut. I want to move the glaze more towards the base of the donut but it doesn't work (see images).
Hopefully, you can help me out and tell me what I did wrong.
Thanks in advance,
Tobi

because you must have enabled the snap to face option, it makes the whole selection snap to the face of the other object

Hello and welcome. While there are many possibilities, @moonboots may already have seen something like it before and got it right. I would though recommend to include the user interface of the viewport in screenshots, as there are many icons, especially at the top of the viewport, that can give clues about a setting and the situation. This would allowing others to easier conclude why something might not work. You can always edit your question and add more information for others to have it easier figuring out what went wrong.


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How can I loop a 2D grease pencil animation within a longer animation?
My goal is to create an animation of a boids particle system. Each boid should be an instance of a 2d grease pencil animation. The problem is that the grease pencil animation stops before the boid animation is done. For regular animations, I know it is possible to make them loop within a longer animation by applying a cycles modifier in the graph editor, but I can't get my grease pencil animation to show up there.
blend file

you want to use a time offset modifier on the gp object

I figured it out thanks to wilks' comment above.
It can be done by adding a time offset modifier to the grease pencil object,
enabling custom range and setting end frame to the length of the grease pencil animation.

Only problem now is that all the boids loop in unnatural unison, but I guess I'll open another question for that.


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How to add an image onto an object
I want to put a 2D image onto a 3D object. I have downloaded the image, and just can't find out how to add it onto the object. Thanks! (v2.80.75)

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/46424/add-a-transparent-image-on-top-of-a-material/46447#46447

For basic questions you can use the search box at the top. There is a lot of information on this site. Feel free to go get it.

You should read this guide. It is thorough (read: long), but important. You only need to know the sections about Image textures and UV mapping for now, but I would recommend reading the whole thing anyway to get a good understanding of how textures work in blender (and other 3D software for that matter). - https://artisticrender.com/how-to-add-a-texture-to-an-object-in-blender/

Let's say, you want to add an image to Cube. Select Texture Tab -> Base Color -> Image Texture

Now select Open an Image required. Image will apply to Object.


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How come my shaded smooth model looks sharp?

My model is shaded smooth, and autosmoothed. But some edges/faces look sharp. How come? And how do I fix it?

it may be the artefact called Terminator Effect, since 2.9 you can easily fix it, just tweak the Shadow Terminator Offset value in the Properties panel > Object > Shading

Oh I see, so it brings the shadow line closer to the light source so the shadow covers the artifact and smooth shading is applied or something like that?

I don't think it works this way but I can't tell exactly   ;)


text:
How come my exported (fbx) files are weird and transparent?
After exporting an fbx file, and reimporting it, the models all look weird and look transparent, and I think it has to do with the material.

The blend mode for the materials, under materials tab>settings changed & become wrong after being exported. Try the different options to fix it. This is a bug of Blender version 2.92. Download the previous version without the bug here: https://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.91/

I appreciate this note, but where did you find that it was a bug? Is there a bug tracker entry for it?

I think there's a bug report system. I'm not that integrated with the Blender community so I'm not sure how Blender bug report cataloging works. I'm assuming it's a bug since it's wrong, shouldn't be wrong, and it isn't present in the previous version.


text:
Does anyone know a good resource that gives a full tutorial on UV unwrapping?
I'm currently amateur-ok at UV unwrapping, but I want to learn how I can straighten UV islands and be able to organize them better, but I haven't found any good resources.
Does anyone know a good one?

Here are some helpful UV Unwrapping tutorials from Blender Guru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeBUfMKKZDo | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scPSP_U858k


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Exported gltf Looks Like Plastic
I am a newbie to blender. I am trying to learn to build 3D buildings for the new Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. I have the I have the MSFSToolkit extension installed and I am using Blender 2.91.
MSFS suggests exporting to gltf, bin, and xml, so that is what I am doing.
For now, I am just trying to export a simple cube that has a stucco material applied to it. The material was created with nodes.

As Rendered in Blender

After Cycles Baking

Material Node Setup

As Rendered in Game

As Rendered by Windows 3D Viewer
I would imagine that I am missing one or more important steps.
Does anyone know of a good video tutorial that covers what I am trying to do, or can you see right off the bat what I am doing wrong?

The BumpStucco node isn't connected to anything. The exporter will also ignore the bump/noise nodes.

@scurest, thank you. What do you suggest that I connect the BumpStucco node to? Also, if the exporter ignores bump/noise nodes, will my cube still render in the game in the same way that it does in blender? If not, how do I get around that?

The Base Color I guess? No, it won't render the same. If you want to connect something to the Normal socket, it has to be normal map (see the manual).


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Geometry nodes - Sample Index vs Store Named Attribute
I'm trying to restore position values of a curve after it was flattened by the set Fill Curve based on Fill Curve flattens the curve , however in 3.4.1 where attribute is no more, hence my initial attempt used a Named attribute and failed miserably as all the values were zet to zero:

I tried using a capture attribute, but as the documentation mentiones it is doign the same as the Named Attribute, so the result was the same, bunch of points at zero.
I also tried the Sample Index and to my surprise it seems to be doing what I needed, however I don't understand why:

I went through the docs for both nodes but couldn't figure out why it behaves this way; I'd expect the Named Attribute node manage to handle the type change from curve to mesh.
Could someone explain the difference between the Store Named Attribute/Named attribute pair versus using a Sample Index node that causes this behaviour?

Hello and welcome to Blender.SE! Unfortunately, the Fill Curve node discards all the attributes previously assigned to the curve because it recreates the curve and creates a new mesh. The only way to restore them is to transfer the attributes from the original curve using the positions (with Sample Nearest and Sample Index, or Transfer Attribute if you are using version 3.3 or below).

Thanks for the explanation, I've been reading your answers on other posts learning a lot from them!


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How do you add seams to a UV map without reunwrapping the entire thing?
I've UV unwrapped and organized all the UV islands manually, but then I realized I want to add a new seam to one part of the mesh. However, after adding seams, it automatically UV unwraps again, ruining all my manual organization.
How can I mark seam but only UV unwrap one part of the mesh?

Do you have "live unwrap" enabled?  Check the UV menu of your UV editor viewport.

No. What does it do? I enabled it but marking seams still automatically unwraps the whole mesh

"after adding seams" does it reunwrap everything after you mark seams on the mesh or after you hit U > Unwrap to update it? Live Unwrap was mentioned as it provides behaviour of auto-unwrapping, should be disabled. It's not quite clear what happens in your case. Try also to pin those islands you want to stay on UV map.

It reunwraps everything right after I mark seams. This happens both when I have Live unwrap on and off.

It looks like you need to disable Live Unwrap in that window where you work, e.g if you have UV editor and viewport, disable Live Unwrap in viewport if you mark seams there. Also did you try to pin islands you don't want to move? (uv editor > pin islands). That could allow to work even with constant reunwrapping. Other than that if you have latest Blender, maybe report that behaviour on bug tracker

Yea I think it's a bug, currently the only solution is to separate objects and mark the seams in the separate objects so that when it auto unwraps, it only unwraps the specific part.


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What does the term "support loop" specifically mean?
I want to enter a 3d modelling contest of a game for the skin of a character and one of the guideline was to "Remember to keep support loops for joints in the same place."
What does that mean exactly? I've been searching & searching and I can't find the answer, it just seems like some sort of unexplained jargon.
Any explanation for the "support loop" term would be greatly appreciated. (Is it just a special type of loop cut?)
An explanation in the context of my contest's guidelines would be even better.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6425/keep-sharp-edges-when-using-subdivision-surface

The other answers explain well what a support loop does on a static mesh, but there is another thing that support loops do on an animated mesh: they help define how the joint deforms as it moves.
Since this is a skinning competition, you are creating a new mesh which needs to work with an existing armature which has existing animations. If the location of the joints and the supporting geometry is different on your mesh, then it will deform differently and unpredictably when animated.
Keeping the key areas of deformation in the same place helps to maintain the best compatibility with the existing armature and animations.
This video has a very good explanation of how the topology surrounding a joint affects the deformation of the joint.

Thank you Wossname, that was the answer I was looking for!
I recently consulted a more professional person who also participated in the competition just 2 days ago, and he said near exactly what you said.
Wherever there was a joint, there were "support loops" above & below it which helped the joint stretch smoother when the limbs move. That's what it meant by support loops.
And keeping it in the same place, as you said, helps keep the rigging consistent.
Also thanks for the video!

Basically, support loops mainly apply when using a Subdivision Surface modifier. Loosely put, the modifier acts to take an "average" of the angle between two faces, and then creates a curve to smoothly transition between the normal vectors of the two faces. See the images below:

By adding loop cuts or "support loops", you can control the size (area) of the faces that are being averaged (in one direction only if necessary) which in turn affects the degree of the averaging.

By adding more loops, or changing their position, you can change the "roundness" of your object. This is often used as a method to sharpen the corners of objects with a Subdivision Surface modifier applied. If you look at the effect of the two loops near the "corner", you can see that this is similar to how the Bevel Modifier works (by default) to sharpen edges.

The same principle can be applied to armature deformation as well, joints can appear to collapse if there is not enough geometry around them to define the shape different poses/ allow for an appropriate transition between weights.

I guess "support loop" means adding an edge loop close to an existing one, when for example you want to sharp an angle.
You can add an edge loop with CtrlR then slide it close to the existing one with GG.
You can also create an additional edge loop if you select the exising one, put your mouse cursor on the side you want and press AltV then G to slide.
If you select the existing edge and press CtrlShiftR it will create 2 additional edge loops, one on each side.


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How do you move the vertices of one UV island without moving the same vertices part of the other one?
When UV unwrapping, the some UV islands will share vertices with other islands. So when I select a vertex in one island that is shared with another island, both vertexes will be selected.
How do you move one UV island without moving the vertices of another island at the same time?

Switch to face mode in the UV editor, or make sure that UV Sync Selection is disabled, then switch to island mode or set sticky selection mode to Disabled.  All are options on buttons in the menu bar of a UV editor window.

Yes it works, tysm! But what is sticky selection mode? I can't find it.

All are buttons on the menu bar.  Look at the tooltips.


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Import multiple video in blender vse
When i try to import multi footage to VSE via Add->Movie. The result is shown in the picture. is there any efficient way to add multiple footage without this problem?

It's doing this because the length of the audio doesn't match that of the video. If you change Blender's framerate to match the vids it should work fine

You can use MediaInfo to get the framerate of the source materiale: https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo and set the project framerate in Blender accordingly.


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What is the quickest way to fill the gap between two circumferences instead of filling both circumferences
I have this shape:

I want to fill in the two inner circles vertically instead of horizontally to make this shape:

What is the quickest way to do this?
If I use F to fill, it will fill the circels horizontally and it looks like a coin instead of a ring. Grid fill didn't work either.
Currently I have to select the edges of each small segment individually and fill those gaps, but it is quite time consuming to do that for every segment.

Found the answer here. https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/46342/104051 I didn't know bridge edge loops was a feature

Or a circle. Inset in Edit mode, select all and extrude on Z axis. Then SHIFT-N to reset the normals.

I left out the extruding in those instructions: Add a circle, then in Edit mode Select All, E S then A to select all again then E Z.

@john sorry your answer was correct, I  just misread @Cathal`s question, my mistake forgive me :)

No problem but I missed a couple of things out anyway so posted it again.


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New install of Blender; extremely slow when panning a video
I have read a lot of posts here and on other forums about Blender being painfully slow, to the extent it closes in on being unusable. Here is my scenario:

I have a 11 second 4K video (30 MB file) that I import into Blender "Video editing"
I drag the video onto the timeline/sequencer
When I drag the time-marker, it is super laggy, updating maybe once every second
When pressing SPACE to play the recoding, the framerate is around 5

Hardware:

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12C on base clock 3800 Mhz (on GIGABYTE X570 AORUS ELITE)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, 1605 Mhz, 8 GB memory
32 GB DDR4 RAM
Samsung NVMe SSD (4x 8.0 GT/s)

Software:

Windows 10 x64
Blender 2.91.0 (latest, installed from Steam due to this post)
Blender is set to use "CUDA" under Preference --> System; my graphics card is selected
Win, Blender and the video file are all placed on the same NVMe SSD drive
Nothing else is running except the basics; CPU and GPU is idle, plenty of RAM available, as well as space on drive

I suspected something weird with the video file itself, so I took a look at it in MediaInfo. This info doesn't tell me much:

Anyways, I thought that maybe the video file is bad somehow, so I imported it into Adobe Premiere (latest version), and the video works fine there, no lagging, smooth time-scrolling and playback.
Here is a video of the Blender lag: https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cYlO6c878q

Note that I am click-and-dragging the time-marker, so I am holding it all the time
Both drag and playback is extremely laggy as you can see
Note that it is not the Blender UI that is slow; it isnt, its snappy and fast

Here is a video of the same video file imported into Premiere: http://somup.com/cYlO6e27hY

As you can see, its smooth and fast

The above leads me to conclude that it is not the specs of the computer, the hardware, OS or the video file; this seems to be a Blender-specific issue.
Questions:

Is this lag in normal / expected behaviour in Blender?
I read some "hacks" around it, to use some lowe-resolution hacks, but I am not after hacks, I wanna know if this is normal, or if I am missing something?

The answer is in your first paragraph Blender being painfully slow, almost unusable.
Blender is a wonderful app to create 3d content, but is the video editing aspect is not adequate for today's needs.
But the real problem lies in the way the video is encoded.
Yes, the media info on the question shows a non standard frame rate (29.252). Most likely the video file is using a variable frame rate scheme to compress the video (some phones and screen recorders will do that to save disk space). Blender cannot handle such files without converting them to a fixed frame rate first.
With the hardware you are using, any other dedicated video editing app out there should work just fine for 4k content. There should be no need to downgrade/transcode/or create proxies of your original video.

Thanks for that input. I was actually following this YouTube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymtATx1QXw&t=205s and on that time (205s), he converts the video into a series of JPG files, as he claims its better to work with in Blender. I do this, and then start a new project and re-import but this time the JPGs. And still, it lags incredibly bad...

Is it an outdated editing app? I heard it was the most modern and the one that was up-n-coming, but my info is bad? What is a good tool for adding CGI / animated characters to a video clip?

Acually, i tested it again, by first exporting as a JPG sequence  (90% quality), and then starting a new project, going to Movie Clip Editor, importing all the images. When I now press play, it is way more managable (but not perfect). EDIT: Seems the image sequence now is full HD, not 4K anymore... Maybe thats why.

Blender is a wonderful 3D app, but a lousy video editing one... It is just silly that you have to transcode to work in blender... Any decent video app can do 4k with no hiccups with the hardware you have.

Unfortunately, I believe this is 'normal'. It's 4k video, so it takes a lot to edit and needs a lot of optimization that is just not there yet.
Make sure you update your video drivers because if they are not up to date that might cause issues, but I think it will lag some in any case. I would not consider using lower resolution preview a hack since that is what is done in many video editing aplications in situations like this, it is a pretty standard thing to do. Video editing in Blender is being very actively improved at the moment so you can also try the experimental nightly builds, however be aware that they are in development and might be unstable so maybe save your work more often and save a backup file from the stable Blender version.

Alright, thanks for the answer. And maybe I mis-wrote a little; I just want to avoid having to pre-process or otherwise make settings everytime I add a 4K video; I would want to have that "out of the box", like it works in Premiere for example. I will now test with HD mterial, see if that lags.


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How to add round rim around object?
I found a 12 sided object that I really like, but I have no idea how to make the rim that is on there, and I am wondering if anyone could show how to achieve that same result of the rounded rim in the screenshot (doesn't need to have 6 even segments around it), so that I could add additional rims around the object (for example, if I wanted to add another rim above or below the original?)
Thank you in advance for your help and your time.

Did you try spin tool?

Start with a loop cut around your object:

Give the loop some thickness by beveling it with Ctrl+B. Select the new faces around the edge (but not on the existing extrusion), and "extrude faces along normals".

Select the top and bottom edges of the new extrusion:

Then use Ctrl+B to bevel again, this time scrolling the mouse wheel to add more segments. Move the mouse to adjust the bevel until it looks right.

If you're concerned about clean topology, you may need to add some new cuts into the extrusion that was there before the loop, and remove the new overlapping face created by the extrusion, but otherwise it should be fine.


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How to create similar video in Blender with particle systems
I want to create a similar video in Blender but I don't have much knowledge in Blender.
Thanks.

enter link description here

It looks like small white dots moving on the surface of transparent spheres, a simple way to recreate that could be to mix an Emission with a Transparent node, with a Voronoi Texture node as factor. To make them move, just use the Rotation values of the Mapping node. As you have dots going in different directions, you could simply duplicate the sphere, leave the duplication at the same place, rotate it a bit (RR), duplicate its material, change the Mapping values a bit, you'll have a group of new dots moving differently.


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How to get rid of Jagged Lines around shadows in Evee Render
I'm extremely new to blender and I've come across a minor irritating thing.
While I'm trying to change the light around in Evee the shadows formed have these annoying jagged lines around them - Image 1. In Maya (IIRC) there was an option in the viewport settings to switch on Anti-Aliasing and this would be resolved. I have checked around Stack Exchange and even messed around with the Film setting but all it does is give the objects a blur.
This is my Render Setting - Image 2.
Is this something common with Evee that i have to get used to? Apart from  Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: I'm using blender v2.81a

Look under "Shadows" settings (Image 2) - Make sure "high bitdepth" is checked, see if you want soft shadows or not, and if things are still problematic, increase the shadow cubemap size.

@ChristopherBennett thank you. Increasing my cube and cascade size to 4096 solved the issue. I didn't have to check High Bitdepth. I'm a bit curious is this a part of a standard workflow?

Generally you want to keep the cube and cascade size as small as possible to have less performance impact. It's one of those "only increase if/when it's needed" kind of things. If you have a large scene with lots of shadows, you'll see the impact.

Hi. Please use the built-in uploader when adding images. See: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75491/how-to-upload-an-image-to-a-post . Thanks.


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Reposition toolbox to right side in blender 2.9?
Is there any way to re-position the toolbar on the left of the screen to the right?
(Sorry I don't know the official name, it looks like attached image)
It seems it's possible in 2.83 according to this Moving the Properties Shelf to the right of the UI,
but in 2.9 I can't find the "flip region" command.
Any ideas?

Still works in B2.9x beta. Place the cursor over the toolbar, press F3 and type flip region... https://i.sstatic.net/OD469.png (flipped to the right already)

Thanks for replying ,for some reason this option is missing in my copy of blender 2.9 beta :https://imgur.com/a/V4IBwbS.


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Blender 2.83.4 Eevee viewport color and rendered color are different with transparency
Having an issue with rendering png, movie files or any render with transparency.  What I want from the Eevee display viewport render and actually rendering the animation or screen render give me vastly different results. The picture attached will show the color on the left around the model is green (left) and correct blue (right).
If I disable the transparency from the render properties panel under film I get what I'm looking for. The Blender Render is wrong.

Can you upload your file and add a link in the question?

display viewport render is OK

If I disable the transparency from the render properties panel under film I get what I'm looking for.

The viewer for the render image is broken and has been broken for a long time.It cannot display luminous pixels that are transparent at the same time.
PNG is a format that can't do that either. It cannot do associated alpha channel correctly.
If you look at the rendered image as color (not color+A)

Or add a black backround and use alpha over to composite you the image over it and you should see if the render is correct.
As for saving the image, save as EXR and everything should be fine.
More info:
Rendering fire animations with transparent background
Render semi-transparent volume with cycles
and
How do I get the Glare node to output transparent instead of Black background

Thank you for an answer.  I clicked a couple of the links.  Tried that and also re-rendered using EXR (same results).  So you are saying that Transparency doesn't work correctly at all??   I can't seem to get what I'm looking for out in a render.

Transparency works, but the viewer has problems displaying emissive and transparent pixels. PNG also cannot store those pixels either .

Wow...Thank you for the reply.  I guess I don't need to report that bug eh?  Yes, I can get the transparency to render but color and even the alpha is not correct.  Wow...huge bug.  Game changer for me for this project.  Any other ideas on how I can get this to render correctly?  Thanks again for responding!!

Please edit your question and add a link to your file so that others can inspect it and help out.

If I render a 16bit .Tiff, EXR Full Float, Multi EXR full float, I get a proper render.  Everything else with a alpha, (movie, png, or .tga etc) will not render correctly.  I have to go to the saved file on the hard drive to actually see it there.  The render window always displays it wrong.

EXR supports associated alpha. Formats that use unassociated alpha will not  represent those luminous and transparent pixels correctly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_compositing#:~:text=If%20an%20alpha%20channel%20is,or%20pixel%2C%20disregarding%20its%20opacity. If you are rendering with the intent of further processing or compositing, EXR is the right format to use.


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UV map breaks in "Object mode"
I am a complete beginner using Blender, and I am following this tutorial from CG Fast Track. It all works as expected up until the tutorial goes into the Shading chapter at 1h33m. The problem is this:
The UV texture on the object looks decent (I think) when I am in "Edit mode" like this:

but if I switch to "Object mode", it is messed up:

I have tried looking around as to why this happens, but it is beyond me at this point.
I dont think its doable to explain every setting and every number in the blender file that I have currently. Maybe someone knows what this might be, or, if someone finds the time and energy, here is the blender file and the texture images:
https://ufile.io/30nziz0m
Thanks!

Oh, just after I posted this, I came to think of one thing the tutorial pointed out:
The order of the modifiers.
So, I tested to move the "Subdivision" modified up, so it is above "Bevel":

and after that, it looks OK in Object mode:


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Generating, Selecting, and Unwrapping an Item Added to an Existing Mesh (Python Script)
I've got a script that draws a bunch of individual items onto the same object, and I need to generate a UV map for each item right after it's drawn before moving on to the next one.
My current code seems to me like it should work, because the individual instructions work great when I run them via the console, but when I run them as a script, three of the instructions (bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT'), bpy.ops.mesh.select_linked(), and bpy.ops.uv.unwrap()) don't seem to do anything.
Can anyone help point out what I am overlooking? Thanks in advance!
Here is a simplified script that can be run on the default cube that basically illustrates what I'm trying to do (it draws a separate plane and tries to unwrap it):
import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.object
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(obj.data)

mesh_verts  = bm.verts
mesh_faces  = bm.faces

v1    = mesh_verts.new((2,1,1))
v2    = mesh_verts.new((3,1,1))
v4    = mesh_verts.new((2,2,2))
v3    = mesh_verts.new((3,2,2))

face = mesh_faces.new((v1, v2, v3, v4))

v1    = v4
v2    = v3
v4    = mesh_verts.new((2,3,3))
v3    = mesh_verts.new((3,3,3))

face = mesh_faces.new((v1, v2, v3, v4))

v1    = v4
v2    = v3
v4    = mesh_verts.new((2,4,4))
v3    = mesh_verts.new((3,4,4))

face = mesh_faces.new((v1, v2, v3, v4))

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(type='VERT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')
v4.select_set(True)
bm.select_history.add(v4)
bpy.ops.mesh.select_linked()
bpy.ops.uv.unwrap()
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

bm.to_mesh(obj.data)

Added geometry to a bmesh is not known by bpy.ops until the call to bm.to_mesh(obj.data).
import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.object
# Deselect all first
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

# Your code...
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(obj.data)

mesh_verts  = bm.verts
mesh_faces  = bm.faces

v1    = mesh_verts.new((2,1,1))
v2    = mesh_verts.new((3,1,1))
v4    = mesh_verts.new((2,2,2))
v3    = mesh_verts.new((3,2,2))

face = mesh_faces.new((v1, v2, v3, v4))

v1    = v4
v2    = v3
v4    = mesh_verts.new((2,3,3))
v3    = mesh_verts.new((3,3,3))

face = mesh_faces.new((v1, v2, v3, v4))

v1    = v4
v2    = v3
v4    = mesh_verts.new((2,4,4))
v3    = mesh_verts.new((3,4,4))

face = mesh_faces.new((v1, v2, v3, v4))
# ... your code

# Select v4
v4.select_set(True)
# Set back bmesh to the mesh
bm.to_mesh(obj.data)

# Unwrap
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(type='VERT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_linked()
bpy.ops.uv.unwrap()
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

Thank you! That did it.


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I can't get shadows to get into a CG project
I  am having trouble with getting the shadows to show up on the plane and be in the final image, or I have the shadows and I can't have anything in the background. I have tried moving the plane around the collections. I have deleted the background collection to see if that will work. I have tried both EEVEE and cycles.
This is what ended up being my result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_PSszoV3_I
What way should I do to get the shadows without that plane?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1COFoLx5YzsNYIfw5tjFddOif4pJAHo6F/view?usp=sharing

There are some custom python properties assigned to the plane (Object Properties > Custom Properties). Are you using any add-on to set it up? I'd suggest create a new plane and simply render the shadow as separate pass: https://i.sstatic.net/RClUL.png

I got it to work, I changed my render engine to cycles. I went and deleted the background layer and collection. That meant everything was on the foreground and then had this node setup. Movie clip into the top of the alpha over and render layers in the bottom. The fac was one, the premiul was zero. I did not have the checkbox selected. Then that went into the composite node. Then I went to the scene tab and went down to film Selected the plane and then pressed transparent.

Glad you found the issue. I suggest, add that as an answer and accept it for future visitors... How this site works: https://blender.stackexchange.com/tour and https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer


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How can I simulate cloth between one static object and one moving object?
I'm trying to replicate stretchy canvas between two ribs for an architecture project, and I need to animate the movement of one of the ribs - so the canvas would stretch as it moves. I've tried pinning vertex groups in the cloth sim but it either a) only moves the edge vertices, or b) moves the entire group.
I basically just want one rib moving, one rib static, and the cloth sim between them.
Here's the effect I want to achieve (from Rhino 6), but with cloth sim panels instead:

Here's the problems I'm running into in Blender:

You can do it this way:

Create your sail and a create a bone that you call Bone1:

Give your sail a vertex group that will be the cloth pin (call this group Pin), it must be all around the border:

Give your sail a vertex group for the bone control (call this group Bone1) that must have a decreasing influence:

Give your sail a Cloth physic simulation. In the Cloth panel > Shape, choose the group you've created as Pin Group, enable Self Collisions. Select the vail, shift select the bone, switch it to Pose mode, and press CtrlP > Set Parent To > Armature Deform so that the bone will control the vertex group that has its name. Create the rest of the object, give it Collision physic if it is supposed to interact with the vail:


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How do I make those rhombic indents in this water bottle? Image in description
I'm relatively new. I know how to make a water bottle starting with a circle and extruding upwards while using a combo of extrude and scaling to make indents, but how would I do something like this? Thanks for your help!

To make the shape, use the Mirror, Array and Simple Deform (Bend mode) modifiers:
Create a plane, rotate it, apply the rotation, subdivie, mirror:

Array it 6 times, make it bend with a Simple Deform modifier (Bend mode)

Change its shape, extrude inwards:

Give it a Subdivision Surface modifier, add edge loops to sharp the edges:

As the medium part is divided by 4 and not 6, you're going to make it apart. Draw the curve with some extrusion, delete the faces to only keep the edges:

Create another plane, subdivide it so that it has the same number of edge loops as the bottom part (18 faces), use the previous shape to cut it with the Knife Project tool:

Now again, mirror, array and bend with a Simple Deform modifier:

Extrude inwards, add edge loops:

Merge with the bottom:

Correct the shape etc:

You probably need half the edges, you can simplify whenever you want:

Thank you very much


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How can I bend/warp this as a whole mesh?
I'm not the most experienced with blender and I've come along this problem while working on a roof of a building. I'm trying to bend the corners up slightly as Japanese Pagoda's would do, yet my whole mesh will not bend, rather only pieces. Even when I've combined all the layers, it will not work in unison (the screenshots do not portray the layers being combined together). To summarize, I need to bend the corners up slightly with everything moving together and without clipping. The second picture shows me grabbing the main layer and moving it, yet it does the same thing when everything is combined into one singular layer. Thanks in advance.

What method do you use? the Surface Deform modifier?

Edges don't bend. You need more subdivisions to create curvature. To bend you might want to try using a lattice modifier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUcPXLI9ATk

See also: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21448/how-to-avoid-objects-intersecting-eachother/21492#21492


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How can I prevent mesh clipping?
I'm trying to bend this mesh from every corner upwards slightly using the lattice modifier. I'm thinking I should try a different tool as this one has the mesh "clipping" or going through each other, even though they're one layer. Any ideas?

Please consider an armature. Bones. Mesh Modifier is available. Or Bend the for tubes that meet in the middle ... sooner.

Add additional geometry on the faces of the roof (not the tiles) If there are not enough edges for the faces to bend, it will have to protrude like this. Please post a screnshot in wireframe mode :)


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set the context to run dissolve_degenerate from the python shell
I've downloaded some 3d models of a city with a ton of topologic errors. I am trying to fix some iterating through the objects and running dissolve_degenerate. But when calling the function I get a Runtime error : RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.mesh.dissolve_degenerate.poll() failed, context is incorrect. I see this a fairly common problem for Blender neophites like me, but despite looking to several examples of "context incorrect" I can't figure out how fix this problem. Can somebody tell me how to set the right context to call dissolve_degenerate from the python shell?
# deselect all objects
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

for i,o in enumerate(bpy.data.objects):

    if o.type == 'MESH':

        o.select_set(True)
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()

        dim_min = min(o.dimensions)
        # the following line throws an error
        bpy.ops.mesh.dissolve_degenerate(threshold=dim_min/100)
        o.select_set(False)
        print(o.name)
    if i>10:
        break

one solution is to put twice editmode_toggle in the loop, otherwise it every alternative iteration is going into object mode, which is incompatible with dissolve_degenerate
# deselect all objects
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

for i,o in enumerate(bpy.data.objects):

    if o.type == 'MESH':

        o.select_set(True)
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()

        dim_min = min(o.dimensions)
        bpy.ops.mesh.dissolve_degenerate(threshold=dim_min/100)

        o.select_set(False)
        bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()

With bmesh
Started out as a comment on answer, ended up as another answer.

Can do the above with bmesh without any need to select or switch
mode.
Loop over all objects in scene, find all the unique meshes, and list
their objects.
For each mesh, run the degenerate dissolve bmesh operator. The mesh
dimension is gained from its bounding box (local coordinates), not
its dimension which is object coordinates and involves scale.  (Else
if scale  > 100 will remove all geo)

Test script, run in object mode.
import bpy
from collections import defaultdict
from mathutils import Vector

import bmesh
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

# meshes in scene
def mesh_dim(ob):
    bbox = [Vector(b) for b in ob.bound_box]
    return (
        bbox[6] - bbox[0]
        )

meshes = defaultdict(list)
for o in scene.objects:
    if o.type != 'MESH':
        continue
    meshes[o.data].append(o)

bm = bmesh.new()
for m, obs in meshes.items():
    bm.from_mesh(m)
    bmesh.ops.dissolve_degenerate(
            bm,
            dist=min(mesh_dim(obs[0])) / 100,
            edges=bm.edges,
            )
    bm.to_mesh(m)
    m.update()
    bm.clear()


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missing Non-Color option for color space in Image Texture Node
I am attending a course for Blender that covers version 2.80. I have 2.93.3 (running on Xubuntu 21.10).
When I place an image texture node I would expect to find "non-Color", "Raw", etc. in the "Color Space" dropdown, as described here.
instead I only found these two entries:

Where have these settings been moved to in newer versions? Or is it just me doing something wrong?

Starting in 2.9 the available options in that field depend on what, if anything, is in the image field, but for a jpg file, you should be seeing a non color as an option. does "Rove...jpg" actually exist?

also, there were some bugs in 2.93.3, related to image textures, so maybe upgrade to 2.93.6.

...or 2.93.7 which is the latest LTS version.

@MartyFouts Yes the file exists, and upgrading to 2.93.7 problem is solved


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artefacts by applying textures on cylinder with subdivision surfacing
For educational purposes I am trying to unwrap a part of a cylinder (using blender 2.93.7), and I have the following problem:
I have this cylinder (I marked the seams to make other tests but we will not need)

I unwrapped it with cylinder projection like this:

then I apply a subdivision surface to the cylinder and on the seam I get artifacts like this:

I can't figure out what the reason is, also because all the faces in that set should be quads. What do I need to do to fix this?
I attach the project with the texture

In your Subdivision Surface advanced settings, choose UV Smooth > Keep Corners:


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cube does not follow the course of the armature during the animation
I am new to Blender and try to script a primitive snake.
I spawned and constructed the Bones.
I spawned the mesh and connected it with this code:
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location = (4.5,1,1), scale = (3.5,0.25,0.25))
obj = bpy.context.active_object
obj.parent = ArmObj
obj.select_set(True)
ArmObj.select_set(True)
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = ArmObj
bpy.ops.object.parent_set(type='ARMATURE_AUTO', keep_transform = True)

The Problem:
When I start the Animation I scripted this happens:

The Animation works fine and also the mesh is connected to the armature through the first (root) bone and the last bone but doesnt follow the course of the bones.
My Question:
What do I have to change in the code above that the mesh follows the course of the bones during animation.

The primitive cube has only 4 faces - no cuts. I would subdivide the cube something like this before parenting to armature: 1. bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location = (4.5,1,1), scale = (3.5,0.25,0.25), enter_editmode=True) 2. bpy.ops.mesh.subdivide(number_cuts= len(ArmObj.data.bones)) 3. bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')


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World color is a weird pink color in viewport shader, disabling ‘scene world’ fixes it but still shows up in render. It is not a missing texture

It is not a missing texture. Here’s an image of my world shader. Even if I change the image or remove it entirely, everything is still pink. It’s like it’s one big lighting somewhere shining pink, even on new imported objects or just creating new objects. How do I fix this? And again, it’s not a missing texture, I made sure of that

You have an error in your Image Texture:

You should change "Non-Color" to "sRGB".


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cloth and rigid body collision sim, center of mass not updating properly
one of the cylinders is rigid body, another is cloth, I've made them interact with each other and also the cloth sheet and ground underneath, but the center of mass is not updating properly which causes the three active objects react too quickly ,here is the blend file, how to make the center of mass update properly?

Apparently not: Physics cross-simulation interactions?: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/1030/111042


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How to export my .fbx file as an .mp4 file
I have created a 3D animated character in Mixamo and uploaded the .fbx file into Blender. What steps do I need to take to export it as an .mp4 file (Maybe there is a tutorial I could watch?)
I'm new to 3D animation and Blender so any help would be much appreciated :)

Hi there : ) .mp4 is a video file format while .fbx is a 3d file format . As far as I know, u can 't convert a 3d file format to movie file like mp4 you. However u can change it to other 3d formats like .obj , .max etc.

Thank you Nxdhin2005 I will try converting my .fbx file to .obj

What you are looking for it's called rendering. You have to add a camera and probably a light source and render a video.

+1, @FFeller , that's right , you can change your animation into whichever video format you like. But not the 3d object

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15142/how-to-render-an-animation-as-video-in-blender

Hi All, I think what I am looking for is 'How to render animation to individual frames'. My understanding is the individual frames can then be used to create a video within Blender or uploaded to Premiere Pro.


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Automatic weight rigging problem
I've been here for 6 hours now trying to find out what's wrong, this hand doesnt rig properly, all other objects I try work, so I have no idea whats wrong. I have redone the rig 6 times, and I'm new to blender so I don't have much knowledge.

Is your sceletion in the rest pose, when you assign the automatic weights? (You can see the rest pose in the armature's Edit Mode).

generally parent with automatic weight doesn't work for complex part of the mesh like hands, you need to give correction in weight paint mode and reassign the vertices to their group

Your bone axis may be misaligned that would throw off rotations and cause other problems.


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Moving object in only one axis
I am a near total newb with a frustrating issue. Doing Blender Guru's tutorial making a donut and cup, I am trying to move the saucer in line with the cup/mug. It seems totally easy. I align it properly on the X&Y axes then proceed to move it on the Z using (G)(Z). Confusingly, it also moves forward on the X. I tried not touching the mouse and also hit the two keys at the same time thinking that I am nudging it. Time and again, it moves on multiple axes.

You've got to know which Z you're constraining to. (Global, Local, Normal, etc) That space is changed in the  Transform Orientation drop-down in the header. Tapping Z twice should always put you in Global coordinates.

Make sure your using the global axis which is located at the top of your screen in the middle

Is there a way to set the axis you want, and then using the arrow keys the users can nudge along the selected axis?

This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker. - From Review

Thank you for the information on checking that I'm using Global. The problem persisted regardless. It appears that the issue was that I had 'Snap to' on. With the peek into the fact that there are multiple constraints, I'm working my way through the Udemy Blender Encyclopedia course to see the super basic stuff that I missed by jumping into online tutorials.


text:
Object with emission shows up in Viewport but not when rendered
In an animation I did where the camera flys around a fishing shack, there is a ball in the sky with white emission that shows up on in the Viewport but doesn't when rendered. Initially I thought it had to do with a cube in front of a spot off to the side of the frame, put there to create a light stream, that blocks the view of the "moon". But, when I turned it off, it still cannot be seen.

The camera has a view of 2000m, which I believe is sufficient.
Interestingly, when I had Concierge Render crank out the whole film, this is what this frame looked like (before I made alterations to render settings.

You're showing the result, but nothing about the settings. Could you show what is the moon settings (rendering parts). Or upload your file using http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ and paste the obtained link here (editing your question or in comments)

Here you are.

Cube 112 is disabled from viewport visibility but not from rendering in Outliner.If you want to use this cube for its volume effect, lower Density like 0.001 BTW next time it is better to simplified scenne before upload, fle is lighter, for us easier to orientate and sometimes you can discover issue just by deleting parts of a scene :) Thank you

Thanks, Vklidu.
How do I disable for viewport AND render.... or disable for render but not viewport. Basically.. I didn't know that there are two disable switches.
As for deleting scenes, I started with 34MB and deleted some. Sorry for the heavy file. I know now to lighten even more when asking for help.


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Rigged figure in one Blender file - when append to another Blender file, it shows Armature but cannot animate
First off, I have appended a number of other rigged objects via 'Collections' to Blender files before and they worked as expected. I fact, this human figure was appended before. But, during the course of editing it in project appended into, I made a mess in a variety of ways, including not being about to unhide the armature. So deleted it and appended the figure again. Basically, I am in the same situation as before in that I see in the Outliner the armature, but cannot select it.

Are you certain you appended it and didn't link it?

I am sure. I did try linking and had a similar result.

I see now that two other figures that I appended to this project file, these though had their cyclic animation done previous to appending, also don't allow me to see/select the bones.
I opened an old version of the project file and appended the figure with no problems.
It appears that it's a project file issue/setting and not the figure itself or the process of appending it.
Any ideas what setting is causing this global elimination of access to bones?

In the end, it was simply that the Bones box wasn't checked in the Viewport Overlay.
At least it wasn't something truly disastrous... just a simple oversight.


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How to bend into a circle a series of columns rotated at 45 degrees
I am trying to create a frame of poles for a circular body and cannot figure out how to use Simple Deform to bend them into a 360 body. My guess is that my problem lies with where/how I have my vertices but I don't know how better to have them so that, when I put the modifier on, it bends how I want.

I created one column, rotated to 45, Arrayed it out 10+ times, applied, tried the Simple Deform. I tried joining the pieces so it's deforming a "single" object. Anyway, I'm stumped after trying a variety of things. This image represents the other side as well. In a last ditch attempt, I tried Joining both thinking that that would create oppositional forces on the bend.
The end product should be a straight wall of lattice pipes in a circle as if it, itself, is a column.

If I understand correctly, your difficulty is in finding the correct axis and origin point for the bend deformation.
If that's the case, I would create an empty and use it as the origin of the simple deform modifier:

Then you can just move and rotate the empty until you find the correct position for the deformation you want.

That worked perfectly. Thank you, Alexandre.


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Mirror not working properly on a circle
I am doing a 3D Anime Character for Blender 2.78c, but when I try to use the mirror on the eye, here is the result:
Could anyone please help?

I see the blue Z axis line in the middle, so it seems well mirrored around X or Y axis (you are not showing which). please show more of the scene setup, possibly with mirror modifier settings

The issue here is the fact that you didnt move the origin of your object at the center of the face, the mirror modifier is according to the symmetry axe ( It's the line set by X, Y or Z in the modifier panel, cutting the origin of your object). So, in object mode, put the origin of your object at the center of the face, set up your modifier, and then, move your object's vectices in Edit mode according to your background picture. I hope that will help you ;).

OK, I see where I went wrong. Thanks for the help.


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Is the grid visible in an animation?
I saw a bunch of question talking about the grid object type. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the "web" that can not be selected.

Now that we have that out of the way, here is my question.
I'm trying to make a 2d desktop animation, and it is working out pretty well so far, but I'm worried that the "grid" will be visible in the final product. Do I have to worry about this?

No the grid is a visual guide, part of the viewport and won't show up anywhere else except the OpenGL rendering.
Unless you are planning on doing some simplistic OpenGL based rendering this should never be a problem.
If you do use the Render OpenGL viewport and it does show up, remember to tick the option Render Only in the 3DView Properties Shelf, under the Shading tab.


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How to get more points on a mesh (edit mode)?
I am trying to stretch the sides of an circle to get a very specific shape. I know about the control+r methode but I just don't feel like to spam that over and over again, there must be another way.

@DuaneDibbley is there a way to do it with the whole circle at once?

@DuaneDibbley it is the deafult one in the currently newest version

Probably, you want to subdivide all (or selected) parts of the circle: select them, then hit W and choose 'subdivide' (the amount of subdivisions can be changed in the toolshelf)

@DuaneDibbley the subdivide thing worked you can post that as an answer mate!

@DuaneDibbley, no problem


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I can't add nodes in node editor

the add options are greyed out (in all tabs) I can't use them. Any help?
BLENDER VERSION: 2.78

Check Use Nodes at the bottom of the Node Editor.

Enable Use Nodes as Scott said if you want to add material nodes.
Switch to Compositor nodes which would have a separate Use Nodes button by clicking the second item in the enum.
You probably want to switch to Cycles at the top to have the "normal" nodes :-)