text:
Geometry Nodes - How does the Offset Scale parameter on the Extrude Mesh node work?
I'm trying to make various diamond-shaped panels with exact real-world dimensions.  I'm using Imperial dimensions in inches in my scene.  As an example, I start by adding a standard 24" x 24" x 24" cube and add a geometry node modifier.  In the geometry node editor, I use a Quadralateral node using the kite shape to get the outline, then using a Convex Hull to turn the edges into faces.  This creates two faces, one on the top and one on the bottom, but the object has zero thickness.  I then use Extrude Mesh with an Index node going into the Selection input of the Extrude Mesh node to only extrude the top face.

Here's my problem.  I want the extruded object to be exactly 0.5" thick.  How can I calculate the proper Offset Scale to use?  I added a reference cube (the unselected wireframe in the screenshot) that is scaled down to 0.5" thick and then I manually adjusted the Offset Scale until the extruded object was 0.5" thick.  The value I need happens to be 0.0064.  But what is this value in relation to?  If I use 1.000 the extrusion is very long, way more than 0.5".  I'm guessing it's a ratio of some sort, but I cannot figure out what it is relating to.
So...how does the numeric value in Offset Scale work?

The (unit-less) "Blender units" are translated 1:1 when (by default) using metric units, so 1 Blender unit equals 1 m. And this is what the Offset Scale uses as well, an offset of 1.000 is 1 m when you are using metric units.
However, a 2 × 2 × 2 m default cube becomes a cube with side lengths of 78.7402" when you switch from Metric to Imperial with Inches, it is not changed into 2 × 2 × 2 inches or 2 × 2 × 2 feet or something. So it's
$$\frac{2\;m}{0.0254\frac{m}{in}}\approx78.7402\;in$$
And the Extrude Mesh node is still calculating with Blender units, so an Offset Scale of 1.000 is still 1 m, which means from Offset Scale to inches you have a factor of
$$\frac{1}{0.0254}\approx39.3701$$
so you can convert the value in inch by dividing with $39.3701$ to get the desired offset value or even simpler, multiply by $0.0254$:

For half an inch you get $0.5\cdot0.0254=0.0127$, actually I do not know how you got a value of $0.0064$. Is the scale on your object applied? It seems as if your object scale is 2, not 1. The Geometry Nodes internal values get scaled by the external factor which your object has in Object Mode.

Thanks Gordon for this explanation! Since I only use metric units, I never noticed this before, but I wonder why the nodes do not take over the set units of measure ...?

@quellenform I have no idea. Actually a slight change is there, the default cube is 2 m on each side and simply becomes 78.74 inches when you switch the units. However, if you add mesh primitives after switching to Imperial, then a newly added cube has sides of 24" (= 2') length each.

@quellenform One idea: first of all just for convenience 1 Blender unit = 1 meter, because it is the easiest conversion and since Blender was created by people using metric units and they are easier to calculate to float since the sub-units are simple powers of ten. I guess internally it works with Blender units, and they are not converted 1:1 to Imperial to make it easier for example to append objects from one file to another and keeping relative proportions if they are modeled in real-life dimensions. Not that you append a 1 foot cube into a scene and it's the same size as a 1 meter cube.

Some correction from me: The Offset Scale doesn't use units at all, as it is a multiplier. ◆ Offset vector can be interpreted as having an implicit meter unit. By default, the ◆ Offset is the Normal field, and normals are normalized (duh), therefore they always have a length of $1$; here your explanation comes in, this 'unit-less' normal can be interpreted as described in meters (I would explain it differently, Blender calculates everything in units, when you enable metric system it just slaps a meter on every value, and imperial system applies a ratio)

So then this ◆ Offset is multiplied (the same as Vector Math: Scale) by the Offset Scale. $1$ means no change. It's a convenience input that could easily be replaced by the Vector Math: Scale node (though then you couldn't use the implicit "Normal" and would need to add that node as well). I guess you can think of it as ◆ Offset describing the direction, and Offset Scale describing the length, but it will only work if the ◆ Offset is normalized…

@MarkusvonBroady Feel free to add that in, I'm a bit busy right now. Sure, of course the scale is unit-less. Since he did not use the Offset input and still wanted to know which relation his value had to the outcome I was oversimplifying to give him the ratio he was looking for.

Thanks @GordonBrinkmann. I'm just getting started with Geometry Nodes, so I'm still trying to get my head fully around your answer, but I'll fiddle around some more tonight after work.
One follow up - Your solution uses the original cube geometry to do a transform.  The node tree I posted actually ignores the added cube and generates geometry from scratch.  (The original cube is only used there as a reference.). Does that matter at all, i.e. needing to apply scale, etc.?

Some additional background, I'm using Geometry Nodes to generate a shape similar to a geodesic dome.  I added a cube to start, then added the GN modifier and ignored the input geometry completely.  I had the whole dome modeled and then went to add a person model to visualize the size, and I realized my dome was HUGE since my scale was messed up.  It was supposed to be about 20 feet in diameter but when I was hacking my way through GN I was creating reference circles with diameters of 2400" and it didn't occur to me at the time how wrong that was...

@fussylizard 2400" is definitely wrong, since 20' are only 240" no matter what Blender is doing when converting metric to Imperial units...

@GordonBrinkmann I'm working from some real-world plans, so I started by generating a panel to match the plan that I thought was the correct size (since I gave the size in inches as inputs to the Quadrilateral), then I fit everything else based on that.  Then later I realized the panel was way too big due to the scaling issues I'm trying to figure out.

Thanks @MarkusvonBroady your comments helped clarify things.

One final issue I ran into while fixing things.  I had Value nodes feeding the inputs to a Quadrilateral, and apparently that is also in "Blender Units" which becomes meters.  So what I thought was 73" became 73 meters.  I had to multiple those values by 0.0254 before going into the quadrilateral to fix it.  But now my scaling issues are fixed.  Thanks all!


text:
How to make a triangular plane with edges of arbitrary sizes?
I want to make a triangular plane with arbitrary lengths.  I've seen lots of tutorials explaining how to make right triangles, isosceles triangles, etc., but I could not find anything for triangles with specific lengths that are not "special cases".
In FreeCAD I'd use constraints to do this, but the constraints system in Blender doesn't look like it supports doing things like setting distances between two vertices in a plane.
I could do a bunch of math to calculate the X, Y, Z positions of each vertex in 3D space and set the coordinates directly, but that is super tedious.  Is there an easier way?
So as an example, how would I create a triangular plane in Blender with edge lengths of 80mm, 95mm, and 110mm?  TIA

If you turn on the edge length display and set the Pivot Point to Active you can deform a triangle to fit those dimensions. First set one side, then the other from one of the 2 first vertices and then rotate the second edge until the third fits in length. I think if you have the coordinates it'd be more precise to just copy them tbh

Another way would be to use a triangle angle calculator like this one:
https://www.calculator.net/triangle-calculator.html?vc=&vx=95&vy=80&va=&vz=110&vb=&angleunits=d&x=80&y=25

You can start with a single vertex and then extrude it 110 to make c, and extrude the same vertex 95 to make b, then just rotate it 45.207.

Interesting, will have to try these, thanks.  I'm still hoping for an easier method though!  Maybe this should be a Blender extension...

Yea, it's odd how blender is missing such basic tools for mildly precise modeling. I guess it wasn't meant to be CAD to begin with but it's still pretty frustrating how round about it is to make something basic like a non-equilateral triangle... I'm sure this in particular is super easy to do with python or geometry nodes but it should come stock

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to boolean subtract multiple overlapping instances from each other with geometry nodes?
I have this object I've created via geometry nodes:

Now I want to do a boolean subtraction on each side of the object, so that when I'm done each side has angled edges that don't overlap with the other sides.  (Note in the supplied image each side overlaps into the adjacent ones which is not what I want.)
I'm rather new to geometry nodes and I've tried a bunch of ideas but have not been able to figure it out yet.  I can use Separate Geometry to pick a side, and then feed the selection and inverted selection (all the other sides) into a Mesh Boolean subtraction, but that leaves me with only noe side properly cut, but I need to do it for all sides.
I'm aware there are other ways to make this sort of shape, but this is a simplified version of my project and I really think I need to be able to do a boolean operation like I'm describing to get the results I'm looking for.

Mesh Boolean has an option to intersect with self, allowing to do do the Union operation in one pass:

If this doesn't work for you for some reason, this is an equivalent using a repeat zone (Blender 4.0) - you could put some additional logic for each step there:

Thanks!  I tried it but I must be doing something wrong.  I still get the same result where the edges overlap.  Lemme post a pic of me trying to copy what you did.

It looks like the mesh boolean doesn't do anything for me.
I'm on Blender 3.6.2.  https://imgur.com/a/UH8TJhS

Oh I should also note that I need each side to remain a separate object at the end (I think that means I can just exclude the Merge by Distance that you included?).

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


text:
Cannot scale or move objects in Object mode
I cannot scale or move an object while in Object mode. Instead it seems that I am moving the pivot point. Any ideas about how to stop this behavior?
In the screenshot here below, I have added a sphere. When I try to move the sphere using the G key, the pivot point seems to be moved. When I try to resize it, the dimensions stay the same and the scale values change instead.
Any ideas about why is this happening? Also why the XYZ axis are appearing?

You activated the Affect Only option in Sidebar > Tool.

That setting is also available from the little 'Options' dropdown in the top right corner of the 3D viewport.


text:
Texture appearing IN front of other textures

These leafs are appearing infront of the other leafs even though it is under them. While the others work fine.

have you enabled their In Front option (in the Object panel > Viewport Display)? have you tried a render?

Hi (nice theme btw), while we do see the issue, I think there isn't enough information to be able to give a precise answer without it being lucky guesses. I advise you to add more details, and even share your file with us so that we can check what's going on.

@L0Lock i just imported it as a image as a plane but for some reason this image act different, was painted in photoshop

@Cyborg Primate As Lolock says please share your file, it's hard to guess what you've done in the original picture and hard to guess what you mean that it acts different   ;)


text:
Joining bones disappear

I tried too Ctrl+J these bones too my rig but when i do they just disappear

Probably your destination rig has bone layer n. 00 off, so they are there but they are hidden to the view.
Another possibility is that the two rigs had different scale, so that as they are joined the new bones change their scale: always apply all transform (Ctrl A) before joining.
Another possibility is that the joined rig was parented to something with a transform on it, so when it gets joined it looses the transform and it changes loc and/or rot and/or scale (Alt P keep transform before joining).
Check the outliner for clear understanding of where the joined bones went.


text:
Scale Bezier curve

I want too pinch this curve by scaling it but when i try that it does nothing

Don't confuse the scale of the vertex with its radius: Scale will affect the handle size, radius will affect the bevel profile size.
You can change the radius, either in the N panel > Transform > Item > Radius, or with the AltS shortcut, or right click > Set Curve Radius.


text:
Individual segmentation mask for instances (blender 3.0)
I am working on an application where I want to create segmentation masks of individual instances in a scene. I've created these instances by using the 'instance on points' node in geometry nodes. The collection of objects that I use contains up to 100 individual objects and the number of vertices varies between objects.

What I would like to achieve is an individual segmentation image for every single image (see example below). However I can't seem to figure out how to isolate one single instance. Hopefully someone has an idea about how to achieve this, thanks in advance guys!

your text is quite complicated to read...did i understood you right, you just want to see one instance per frame? is that what you want?

Thanks for your reply. I want to render one image with all instances + one mask image per instance. Does that make it more clear?

Unfortunately no. What do you mean by mask image? I just know mask from compositor of mask modifier. And your examples just show one image. How does your „mask image“ look like?

Ok, mask image might be a confusing choice of words for Blender.
For every scene, I want to render:
(a) one image with all objects; this is the top image in my examples. and (b) one image per instance in black and white, where white indicates the instance. (that's what I meant with 'mask image'); these are the bottom three images in my examples.

@Chris I think the screenshots clearly show what a mask image per instance could be...

you can show "single" instances like this:

result:

for a "cheap" mask image you could e.g. use emission material with strength 3

then use the material in your GN tree:

+1 I guess this is quite close to what @teun_Q wants... if the Color Management would be set to Standard instead of Filmic, an Emission Strength of 1 should be sufficient. Maybe an Override Material with emission set for the scene (so that each object can keep it's own material) together with animating the Index (i.e. the "Equal to" value) with #frame-1 to cycle through all objects. Then it's possible to render an image sequence with one instance visible per frame.

Thanks for the elaborate suggestions! I'll try this method!


text:
Sculpt tool not working with head
I'm currently trying to sculpt out a head, but I can't sculpt the head itself. It lets me sculpt the neck, but anything else is unable to be sculpted.
The part circled in yellow can't be sculpted, but the part in red can. How do I make it so every part can be sculpted?

if they are 2 separate objects you can press Alt Q to switch from one to the other

Have you activated the mask? (the head looks a bit darker) Try the menu Mask > Clear Mask to remove it. Masked mesh is protected and can not be modified.


text:
Animate time series data from .csv file using Geometry nodes
Using geometry nodes I want to animate time-series data stored inside a .csv file. In animation nodes, something like this is possible as python API calls can be directly evaluated.
As there is currently no scripting node for geometry nodes I am looking for a workaround. My first idea was to store the data in an attribute, which can be accessed using geometry nodes. However, I do not know how to animate or change the attribute over time.

I don’t know what kind of data you have because you provided no information at all about it, but let me assume you have time + coordinate, so you could write that information via animation nodes to a cube and use this cube‘s animated data (coordinates +time) in geometry nodes. Hint: a small example how your csv looks like would help. A concrete example what you want to make would help. The more concrete your question is, the better will be the answers.

You can use Application Handlers to update values on frame change
https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.app.handlers.html
import bpy

def my_handler(scene):
    print("Frame Change", scene.frame_current)
    # update attributes here

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(my_handler)


text:
How to hook to an object without bending the mesh in the wrong direction?
I have a question about trying to hook object ends. The idea is to link an air hose to the valve of a dive tank on one end, and have it link to the mouthpiece on the other end. Both work fine when tilting an armature in one direction, however the end that attaches to the tank valve stretches in both directions so if I move the neck to right the hose moves correctly, but if I move the neck to the left it bends the hose at the hook point which is very unrealistic behavior. The mouthpiece is already locked to the applicable bone as is the dive vest on which the tank is mounted as part of the overall object for that. Is there any way to anchor the end of the hose that connects to the tank valve so that it doesn't bend in the wrong direction when the armature's neck moves?

Can you provide more details including some images if possible. It would also be useful if you could share your Blend file via https://blend-exchange.com/ following the instructions there to copy the link to your question into the field on that page and it will then appear in your question.

Here you go.

Might I suggest that you use a Bezier curve for the hose instead? because the hose in your blend seems to be a regular mesh.

You can create a Bezier curve (Add > Curve > Bezier) that consists of preferably two points to make it easy. You can hook those two points to the two separate objects/bones/vertexes you want to connect. (in this case, the two objects would be the Valve and the Mount Piece)

This way, the hose will bend, deform and rotate properly.
If you have more points, you ultimately have more control. For example, adding a third point somewhere in the middle of the two points and hooking that to a new object allows you to control the middle area of the house separately.
I've experimented with it and the results I got seem like what you're looking for after checking out the blend you've provided. see below
v Resting (not rotated or moved) v

v Rotated and moved it v

v EXAMPLE: New point added and hooked to another new object v

The two points stay in their position and rotate accordingly. Hope this helped :)
Here's the file for you to play around with:

That's certainly the conventional way. I usually put an empty where I want each end of the hose to be attached, parent the emptys to the objects with Keep Transform, and then hook each end of the Bezier Curve to the emptys. Not sure why you want the hooked empty in the centre unless you need to control the position of the hose exactly.

@JohnEason The hooked centre is just an example if you want more points or control. Apologies if my answer is confusing and please do edit my answer if needed

Fair enough. You can also keyframe it to stop it intersecting objects if necessary.


text:
Context problem when running script from command line
The script below will run fine when executed from within Blender 3 (text panel), but if I try to run it through the command line, it fails on line 25 with bad context (on rotation).
Any hint will be greatly appreciated!
Thx!
import os
import sys
import bpy
import glob

convert_dir = "c:/tmp/2convert"

for file in os.listdir(convert_dir):
    if file.endswith(".svg"):
        fullpath = convert_dir + "/" + file

for col in bpy.data.collections:
    if ("svg" in col.name):
        for oldobj in col.all_objects:
            bpy.data.objects.remove(oldobj)
        bpy.data.collections.remove(col)

fulloutputpath = os.path.splitext(fullpath)[0]+".svf"
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False, confirm=False)
bpy.ops.import_curve.svg (filepath=fullpath)
for obj in bpy.data.collections[os.path.basename(fullpath)].all_objects:
    obj.select_set(True)
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
    bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH')
    bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=1.5708, orient_axis='X', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(True, False, False), mirror=False, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)
    if ("Bleedline" in obj.name):
        bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(0, 0.0005, 0), orient_axis_ortho='X', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(False, True, False), mirror=False, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)
    obj.select_set(False)

bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx (filepath=fulloutputpath)
os.remove(fullpath)
```

figured it out...
instead of doing the transformation with this:
 bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=1.5708, orient_axis='X', orient_type='GLOBAL', orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', constraint_axis=(True, False, False), mirror=False, use_proportional_edit=False, proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)
I did it at the object level:
eul = mathutils.Euler((math.radians(90), 0.0, 0.0), 'XYZ')
obj.rotation_euler = eul

Which seems to do the job


text:
Random spikes with the Antique Roman font
So I noticed a very niche problem when using an Antique Roman font that causes random spike to jut out of letters when using a round bevel of any depth. Is there any way to get around this (I'm trying to outline letters)
It happens with more letters than just the M, H, E, and M, but you get the point.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/47217/extrude-and-bevel-an-imported-svg-curve

Bevel geometry doesn't work great with fonts that have jagged edges such as the one you're using. I suggest that you use a different font. This problem has been discussed before here. I experimented with the same font and got the same result. However, I did find that changing the Resolution Preview amount, under the Shape drop-down in the Data tab, helps with reducing the spikes but, not 100%.
If you look closely at the font in wireframe view, you can see points where the edges make loops and it is at those points that the spikes jut out of as well as any really sharp corners. So, maybe cleaning up the geometry after converting it to a regular mesh could help.


text:
F (Fill Faces) Doesnt work in Blender
The F key doesnt work for some faces I try to fill. In the middle part i can fill the face.
But if i try to fill the back it doesnt work.

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

sometimes normals can mess up the fill function, try resetting and reallocating outside.
If that doesn't work and its only 2 problem areas, you can just extrude an edge and merge its extrusion to the vertices on the edge of the mirror.

To fill a face, select all vertices building the face. Keep in mind it means at least 3 vertices (a triangle). If you select less vertices, the operator might still succeed by guessing which additional vertices you want but were lazy enough not to select them. "Might" is the key word here, it depends on the topology of the surrounding geometry (I don't know the exact algorithm).

Okay that works but the next problem is that when i press Ctrl + R and try to do a cut it doesnt select the one back i mentioned in the last picture.


text:
Non linear animation makes my keyframes edit very difficult
So i have multiple nla layers, i can't edit any of animations without my rig to be in a messed up position during the editing of keyframes.
Another problem is that I can't add other animation on the same bone on wich i already have an non liniar animation.

To edit an action you neef to select a NLA strip and press Tab, the action will appear in the Dope Sheet, is it what you're doing?

Yes i hit tab in nla to edit it. but it changes the rig position when i edit it and for some reason after i hit tab back again it comes back to normal.... The idea is i somehow managed to make it work but from 10 non linear animations they no longer work when i edit one of them or i cant add more keyframes becouse one of those nla actions will refuse to work till i delete the new made keyframes...

Have you pinned the strip (the pin icon in the left panel)?

Yes they are pinned.

Maybe show some screenshots or share your file (at least a part of it)


text:
I want to bake a UV texture that the UV is out of bounds
So I have a model where the UV map exceeds the bounds of the image, the reason why is because i need it to repeat around in a circle.

But when baked it looks like this

When pluging the baked texture it doesn't work. How would I make it so I can tile in a circle and bake it out because it is for a game engine as a texture. I already tried just uv unwrapping it normally and changing the image node setting from flat to sphere but I couldn't get it to work properly with size and stretching since I also have another one with many bricks.

You have to create an additional UV Map that fits the baking and export needs, see this related question: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/323354/how-to-bake-material-with-image-to-one-texture-properly/323369?noredirect=1#comment564271_323369

Why do you have to bake it in the first place? Does your game engine not allow UVs outside the 0-1 space or something? The UVs I see in the first image are totally fine for an environment asset like this.

Can you move the UV map slightly so that the faces perfectly land on the map, and then move faces that are out of bounds to be in-bounds on the wrapped location?

I'm so confused. You baked it. It looks fine. And then when you use the baked texture the UVs change? Can you share your blend file?


text:
How is a normal computed for a non-coplanar quad?
Simple question, if I have a quad with four vertices that are not coplanar how is the normal for the face calculated? I know that there are two distinct ways that the quad can be split into tris, but these two ways of splitting have different topology. How does blender choose which way to partition the quad into tris when rendering and what normal does it use?


text:
Hanging an object from a string with physics
I'm working on a project where I'm creating a Christmas ornament and it would be great if it could be as physically accurate as possible. It only has two elements, a disc with a small hole in the top, and a ribbon that goes through that hole.
What would be great in an ideal world is that the knot in the ribbon stays put, the disc hangs of the ribbon and the ribbon tightens as the disc falls. Then all of it was able to used with a rigid body set up so it could swing and spin.
Problem number one might be that the ribbon is too complex, it might be better off being being a simple strip of faces, with the knot as a separate piece.
I've tried with both cloth and rigid body though I don't know enough about rigid body to be able to make it work.
Does anyone have any ideas how it could be done?

This question seems similar: Object Hanging from String. You can use this YouTube video for assistance


text:
Reading animation into BMesh and output to png sequence not working - animation looks weird
I am new to Blender scripting, and am trying to animate a flag blowing in the wind, read the vertex positions etc. per frame into memory using BMesh, write the BMesh object back into the mesh, and save the resulting animation to png files on the disk. This is so I can modify the vertex positions/velocities mid-animation in future.
I have done the following:

Make a flag using a plane and some pinned vertices using a make_new_flag() method, and set up Wind etc.
(Code below) Simulate the animated frames and save them to a list of BMesh objects, one per frame of the animation:

simulation_frames = []
for f in range(scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end, scene.frame_step):
    print("Setting frame to: ", f)
    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(f)
    # define new bmesh object:
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.verts.ensure_lookup_table()
    # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70282889/to-mesh-in-blender-3
    dg = bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()
    obj = original_plane.evaluated_get(dg)
    mesh = obj.to_mesh(preserve_all_data_layers=True, depsgraph=dg)
    # read the evaluated mesh data into the bmesh   object:
    bm.from_mesh(mesh)
    simulation_frames.append(bm)
render_bmesh_to_png(simulation_frames)

Read back from the list of BMesh objects and save the animated frames to disk as PNG file:

def render_bmesh_to_png(meshes: list[BMesh]):
    num_images_to_render = len(mixed_mesh)
    scene = bpy.context.scene
    scene.render.image_settings.file_format = 'PNG'

    for frame_number in range(num_images_to_render):
        print("Rendering frame ", frame_number, " of ", num_images_to_render)

        # Reset the plane object
        plane_name = make_new_flag()
        plane = bpy.context.scene.objects.get(plane_name)

        # Update not happening properly here?
        meshes[frame_number].to_mesh(plane.data)
        plane.data.update()

        # TODO Removing these lines results in a static mesh with no animation
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")

        bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)

However, I am getting weird animation, as shown in frames 2 and 3 of the output:

I have searched and not found anything useful unfortunately.
Any help in pointing out issues in the code would be appreciated!

is a python solution necessary for you? because it can be done totally without python...

Thank you for the comment! Unfortunately, I would like to try some stuff that involves mesh manipulation for large scenes several times, and it would seem very difficult to do without any scripting...

BMesh is not defined in your code. please provide a minimally "working" script.


text:
How can I edit the speed of a single part of an animation?
I would like to speed up one part of my animation, without changing the overall speed. How can I do this?

you could do it with some keyframe scaling, you could also do it in the video sequencer. You can't use the Time Stretching as it would affect the whole animation

.. "one part of anim" you mean specific object in a scene ... or to change speed of rendered result in time? Probably duplication ... https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/164328/ or here https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1053

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

As my previous speakers said, "one part of my animation" is very vague... is a part some object(s) in the scene or do you mean a certain frame range of the complete animation? Also people refer to a simulation as animation as well since you can get an animated result, or otherwise it could be a keyframed animation. Or both. So to tell you how you can achieve your goal it would be really helpful if you could specify what you are trying to do.


text:
Bones stuck in default pose even after I change the pose
I can only move the wrists, feet fingers bones and etc.
Any 'mid' bone such as the elbow I can move but it doesn't change anything on the model.
How can I fix this?

hello, please share your file (or at least the armature if this is what you want to be checked): https://pasteall.org/blend/

In short, those bones are not linked to the mesh in any way. Assuming they are in the same armature as the bones that do work:

The non-functioning bones do not have matching vertex groups, or have linked vertex groups that are empty, and possibly
The non-functioning were not supposed to move anything directly, but they were supposed to move child bones that would affect the mesh, and that parent-child relationship is broken.

If the second is true, it’s pretty easy to fix: parent the correct child to the correct parent bone. If only the first is true, check that the vertex group each bone is supposed to move actually has the same name, and that there is not also a vertex group with the correct name but no weights on its vertices (although you can’t name two groups the same thing, you may find the empty correct name group and think “oh, here it is” when the correct group actually has an incorrect name). One easy way to do this check is to select a vertex that the bone should definitely move, and check what groups it is part of via the 3D view “N” panel.


text:
How to make transparent borders to cut or cover objects with transparent blocks (EEVEE)
I want to be able to use transparent borders that can cover objects from the camera and match the transparent background, Similar to images where there is a layout of boxes and every object can be scaled and moved freely inside and areas that leave the box are cut out

Here is my scene, I've used monkey's in place of the actual characters I plan to use, I want to know what methods I can use to simply cut or cover any areas that leave the boxes

I've tried to use several transparent cubes and Boolean modifiers but they are not always accurate or efficient, since the Boolean object need to be smaller than the mesh in order to cut from it, and using it with a rigged humanoid mesh bring worse results.

This looks like something to do by compositing multiple render layers together.

use Chris' solution, just shift each head on the Y axis and use several holdout objects

You can do this kind of thing with "holdout".
You can set this check here:

If you model frames like this (blue) - maybe solidify modifier can help you - and give it a "track to" object constraint to the camera.

Then you will get:


text:
Rigify To Unity weird bend

Hi guys,
I tried the Rigify to Unity add-on and the hand started to bend in a weird way like this.
I checked all the weights and it seems correct. Do you know what's going on here? Is it a IK issue?
Thanks a lot!

Could you add a minimal blend file so it can be looked at?

how to add blend file here?

You can't upload it directly to this site, but you can provide a url to any provider you choose: Google Drive, Dropbox, wherever.

A Blend file would be nice. However, this looks like the normals on your mesh are inverted. Unparent the character from the rig, go to edit mode, select all geometry, and press shift+N. The parent the rig again.


text:
Geometry node : issue? using capture position attribute to set a Mesline starting points
I want to draw curve between 2 vertices of a mesh.
For that I try to Use Attribute Capture with Position, and use for set start and end position of a mesh line... but it doesn't work as shown in the images below. Any help welcome.

something like the diagram below...  a related question : how to control the start en end position of a bezier segment? do I have to use instance on point with a bezier segment as instance?

Nodes spawning meshes require constant values - their sockets are circular. What you're connecting, are fields - their sockets are in diamond shape.
If you have some programming skills, passing a field into a circular socket is as correct as passing a function, where a value is expected instead...
I see what you're going for by deleting geometry twice, rather than just once with Compare to 0.5, Epsillon 0.6 or Equal 0 OR Equal 1. This way you have two geometries, each with just a single point - so the nodes could just pass a single value rather than a field (and maybe it will work this way in the future, who knows).
Instead of Capture Attribute, you can use an Attribute Statistic node:

And since it allows you to select stuff, you don't need to delete geometry:

Or You can use Set Position node to set the correct positions after the Mesh Line is spawned. It accepts fields, so you can use Transfer Attribute node in Index mode - and you don't even need to translate indices in your case:

Thank you very much Markus for your time  and the 3 solutions that help me a lot... It's not very obvious to well understand the geom node from documentation. Do you know where I could find more detailed doc about geo node? Cheers

@NetCob Robin Betts' answers tagged geonodes, or Official Manual also there's many new nodes available in 3.1, e.g. Edge Neighbors Node, there's a Blender Discord Server which has a channel #help-geonodes, and many youtube tutorials. More educational content than you can ever consume

Hello again, If you want, can you help for this use case : I want to start with a geometry, for instance like an UV Sphere, and I want to pick randomly couple of its vertice to create bezier segment for each couple...


text:
Asset library struggles with high poly meshes
I have problems with adding objects/collections into Blender Asset Library:
High Poly Objects: When you have a collection of multiple high-poly objects (in my case 2-4 objects with a total of over 1 million faces), applying "Mark as Asset" to the collection causes Blender to become unresponsive. However, if you join these objects into a single object, the "Mark as Asset" function works without issues.
Geometry Nodes Modifier: If you apply a Geometry Nodes modifier to an object that creates a large number of instances, Blender also struggles to add this object to the asset library. The solution is to apply "Realize instances" node, but what does it happens at all, why should I apply the node?

It's either a bug or a limitation. If you think it's a bug, you should report it. Either way, I don't really see what can be done about it in a Blender Stack Exchange answer. You should at least provide more detail about the assets, share a .blend file or describe exact steps to reproduce the issue if you wanted someone to take a closer look into it and have a possibility to come up with a workaround or solution.

Blender generates previews when you mark something as asset. The fact that it takes longer for high poly or high instance objects seems expected. Realize instances increases poly count and memory consumption, and destroys any operations that require instances.


text:
How to change color along spline?
Would like this spline to have a repeating pattern of red, white and blue along the length. Right now I'm stuck with just one red, one blue and one white along the length.


text:
How to apply this material to text?
I did this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvxcy8ISsHE
and would like to apply the material to some text, this is what happened when I tried.

did you UV unwrap the mesh?  Could you show the uv?

I didn't, doh! That did the trick, thanks!

no problem, glad that helped!


text:
Remap spacebar to last action/command?
Coming from an Autocad layout, it's so convenient to repeat the last command/action by hitting the spacebar, anyway to do that in Blender?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21078/is-there-a-shortcut-to-repeat-the-last-operation-in-blender (I don't know if you can remap it to the space bar or not, but this might be helpful anyways).

Repeat Last (Shift+R) should do the trick:

You might want to try deleting the space bar's default "play animation" setting and then try doing it.


text:
UV mapped texture is distorted after extruding
I've got this character I built in Adobe Fuse/Mixamo imported into Blender. I wanted to put a hood on the character so I just extruded the jacket mesh up and over the head and changed out the clothing texture for this pattern, however, as you can see, the hood that I extruded is distorted, any ideas why?

Because you "just extruded the jacket mesh up and over the head" and never unwrapped the new parts of the mesh, nor gave it proper texture coordinates.


text:
2.8 crashes when choosing "quick explode"
I was wandering if anyone has the same issue and can it be fixed. In the drop down objects box choosing Quick effects then quick explode it is closing the blender down. However I have checked all other quick effects with no problems. Can anyone share any light please?

yes it crashes every time but not on fur smoke or fluid! when i choose explode it just shuts down.


text:
Optimizing Crystal Render Times in Cycles: Blender 2.8
I don't know if i get an answer here but I have an optimization question.
I made a crystal in blender (star wars kyber crystal). The way i did it is 3 parts.  A small crystal on the inside that has a ton of spec and reflectivity so the color can come through. A translucent semi transparent outside krystal with slight scratch displacement on the outside of that. And then another bigger and rougher crystal with stronger displacement on the outside of that but covering only half.
I am using cycles and the renders take up to 8 minutes per frame. This is only 1 object rendering in 25560x1440 resolution. Is a rendertime like this normal? I am seeing full scenes with houses and grass in blender that take 5 minutes.
What should I be optimizing in order to get a faster render but also have a clear render without noise?
I am having a 1080Ti card with 32gb of ram

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/76149/why-are-my-render-times-30-minutes-but-other-peoples-are-3-minutes/76151#76151

i will be sharing my scene here as soon as i go home. Just posted it for now so i wont forget later:)


text:
Paste Pose Flipped Completely Moves Character
So I'm trying to start a walk cycle but every time I do Paste Pose Flipped it just moves the character away from his starting position instead of just flipping it. I've tried seeing if keyframes affect the results, I've messed around with the transform panel on the right hand side to see if it'd stop but none of it has. There's two pictures below showing what I'm talking about.

hello please share your file (the armature only): https://blend-exchange.com/

You need to select the right bones to make a proper pose flip. Blender has no way to know what is your character's local space, it only knows the armature space and the individual bones' spaces. If you flip the entire armature, it will be done from the armature space, hence the current result.
If your rig is made with this kind of problematics in mind (which is a standard), it should at least have a root bone on the ground, parent of the entire rig. Maybe even an extra offset bone between the root and the rest. And only below these in the hierarchy should there be the beginning of your spine and all the rest of your bones:

If so, you should be able to select the bones of your characters without the root (and offset) and flip the pose on only that:

It works because the bones taking care of the character's position in the scene are either the root or offset bones, which you left untouched when flipping the pose, so the pose gets flipped relative to their space.
If you don't have any of these root/offset bones, then you need to flip from the space of whatever bone does your rig's position in the scene. I.E in this situation:

Select the bones of your characters without whatever is the positioning bone of your hierarchy (spine in my case), and flip on that selection:

It's not perfect because you do miss part of the pose from the spine bone, so you will have to flip it another way.
One of which is the Copy Global Transforms addon shipped with Blender.
Enable it under Edit menu > Preferences > Addons.
In the sidebar, set your armature name and the bone child of your positioning bone, select the positioning bone, hit Copy, then Mirrored.

If you do have a root/offset bone but didn't use it for positioning, you can fix this with the same addon. Remove all objects of the Mirror Options sub-panel, copy the global pose of all but root/offset bones with that same addon, reset the spine bone location with ⎇ AltG, use the root/offset bone to position, and select all but root/offset bones and hit the Paste button.


text:
How do I export multiple objects with animations in one FBX?
The following problem: I have made a granule simulation and then converted the simulation to keyframes. So now each granule piece has its own animation. Now I want to export all granule pieces including their animations as one FBX and then import them into Keyshot.
Is it possible to export all granules as 1 FBX without losing the animations?
I tried this with a few granule pieces and then imported the FBX back into Blender and unfortunately all the granule pieces are stuck together (Screenshot). If I use "Copy" for Path Mode, then I can export the animation from one granule piece correctly. But if I export multiple objects using "Copy" then unfortunately the same thing happens as before.
Does anyone know a solution for this problem? If so, please send it to me :D
Thanks

Hello and welcome to BSE! Have you tried exporting as Alembic (.abc)?

Wow, thank you very much, that works without problems and is also extremely fast. Is it always best to use .abc for animations?

I'm no expert with these formats. The fbx and abc formats are both popular choices for exporting animation and have their advantages and disadvantages. I would consult google for their differences and when to decide when to use which format.


text:
Is there a way to change a vertex color and it updates the color on all the objects vertices connected to it?
I am beginner in blender and still learning. And I want to make a city with different colors and shape of buildings. Shape is possible through geomtery nodes. Colors is also possible by changes the hues and saturation. But I would like to edit colors of the already assigned vertex colors for some buildings, and I also know the manual way to selecting vertices by the materials assigned to them and changing it manually. But that would take ton of my time. I just wanna know if there is any kind of modular way to it? or a faster or any kind of addon you would suggest?


text:
CTRL J on my mirrored object is creating a duplicate
For some reason, when i use CTRL + J on my model selecting first the helmet (which is mirrored) and then the rest of the other parts of my model (which some of them are mirrored too), the result is my model being together yes, but also having a duplicate inside of it as well as the images below show. The first is before CTRL + J, the second is the result.

When you join objects, the modifiers on the active object (the last selected before joining) are kept as is, and the modifiers of all the other objects are ignored. If your joined all your character's parts into the one object with a mirror modifier, then the final object will still have the mirror modifier and will therefore mirror the whole object.
To avoid duplicated mesh, either delete half of your character before joining so that the mirror does what you intend, or apply the mirror modifier before joining the object.


text:
Super simple question about solidify of two planes that form a corner
So, I have two planes

moving them to form a corner
joining them into one object(with ctrl + j)

3)now applying solidify modifer on them, to make this object thicker, but it applys only to one side(one previous plane) and I need to apply it to both at same time, what am I doing wrong?

ps don't look at vertex group, it's empty
pps ticking Even Thickness seems helping, but other plane start to get thicker only after first is x 1000000000 times thicker

I suspect that you need to apply scale.  Select object in object mode, ctrl-a -> scale.

@Nathan wowo, can You plz post it as answer? So can confirm it as right one, it helped, thx you bro , you are my hero of the day!!! Best wishes)

Sorry, I'm not posting as an answer, because this is stuff that is basically duplicated a thousand-fold all over the site.  I don't care about the points-- I want you to get the result you want, and I want BSE to have focused questions and answers without a bunch of duplicates, so that's why I'm answering in comments here.  But if you want to post as answer and mark it solved, go for it!

Also, last time I posted that as an answer, it got deleted because it was so short that it triggered user review, and then it gets deleted, and then I get irritated.  I don't want to get irritated, so I say stuff in comments instead sometimes.

@Nathan got it, no it's Your knowledge and experience, I don't have right for this, sorry for duplicate, couldn't find it with google for some reasone, yeah, now can go and print this for my fresh tesseract, thank you again, sir!

"couldn't find it with google for some reason" I know, I wasn't saying it's your fault or anything.  When you're starting out, it's like, how do you know what to search for when you don't know what the problem is?  If I could figure out a good question, that beginners could find, for which the answer was, "Apply scale," then I'd make that question myself.  But I can't figure out what question that would be.  People that needed to know would never find it.


text:
Resize vs mirror
A question from a beginner. I want to move 2 selected edges by the same distance.

In the first case, I perform a resize on the X-axis.

And in the second case, I divide the part in half, and then add the mirror modifier and apply this modifier.

Is there a difference for geometry between these two actions?

When you "divide the part in half" (I guess by creating a loopcut? or knife..), the new edge belongs to the original face. If you have an existing couple of edges and scale on X, you are creating a fold in the original face surface. Have you tried to switch off the subsurf modifier and compare the two methods?

It's probably worth clarifying that I divide the part in half by highlighting the two edges of the left part of the detail, and then remove the vertices. In the right part, I just move the second edge using the g key, and then use the mirror modifier. With the subsurf modifier disabled, I looked and don't see much difference...


text:
When I go into the "solid" viewport shading option everything turns into a glitchy fuzz on my screen ( I think reshade is messing it up)
When I go into the "solid" viewport shading mode it  goes very pixely, like the glitch pixels. I don't think this has happened to anyone else and I don't know but reshade might have something to do with. I've tryed every single way of deleting it, even deleting all my blender files and reinstalling it a hundred times but the reshade splash screen won't go away and it crashes instantly. Someone please help or I don't think i can keep using blender.

I don't know anything about Reshade. But what about this error message in red on top of the screen? "Unable to save current preset. Make sure you have write permissions to C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.0\ReShadePreset.ini."

It's the reshade splash screen. Even if I delete all the files, even in the app directory it won't disappear


text:
Tangent node calculations
How does the tangent node calculate it's tangents for UV and radial tangents?
Does it use the shading normals (with smooth shading, bump map, normal maps etc.) or the true normals?


text:
What is the parent inverse?
When parenting a object to another object, that does not have standard transforms (loc 0,0,0 rot 0,0,0 and scale 1,1,1) Blender apparently applies something called a parent inverse matrix between the transforms of the parent and the child object.
Isn't that just like an invisible parent between the parent and the child with transforms of the the parent inverse matrix? What makes this worse is that for some reason the parent inverse matrix is completely hidden, but is there a way to expose the parent inverse matrix (without python)?
When using the parent without inverse option the child object usually changes loc,rot,scale to match what it looks like in the parents coordinate space without any calcuations between the parents and the childs coordinate spaces. Is there a way to avoid the changes in the child object (something like parent without inverse(keep transform)?

The "Parent Inverse Matrix" section of the manual seems to do a pretty good job of explaining this:

Blender can assign a parent without moving the child object. This is achieved via a hidden matrix called the Parent Inverse matrix, which sits between the transform of the parent and the child.
When objects are parented with Ctrl-P, Parent Inverse matrix is updated. Depending on the choice in the Set Parent menu, the object’s local location, rotation, and scale are also updated. For more details, see Object Parent.

There is an example, complete with a blend file with details in the manual.

"Blender can assign a parent without moving the child object." <- Is there an example usage? When and Why

I've used this when the child object is already in the right place, so you don't want to move it again after parenting


text:
Trying to output a video using python script
I'm trying to run this open source script which renders a scene
https://github.com/leios/simuleios/blob/master/visualization/fourth_dimension/fourth_dimension.py
and then output it to an mp4 file but when I run it I get this error

the script is trying to ouput out.mp4 does it have permissions to do so? Have you got a file of that name already.

I'm not sure about permissions. No, I didn't get any files


text:
UV Mapping object with too many vertices
I am following the pluralsight course on modeling and UV mapping a drone. At the section where he is unwrapping objects, he has significantly less vertices than my same object after smoothing everything. If anyone has taken the course or knows a faster more accurate way to mark seams, any tip would be appreciated.

Maybe you applied some modifier that he didnt? For seam selection you can use shortest path select between two vertices while holding ctrl...

Thank you, I will probably go back and see if there is something I did wrong or missed but thank you for the suggestion i'll give it a shot.


text:
How to leave identical ammount of space between each CTRL+R Cut? AND why can I only do 1 cut?

When you've cut something with ctrl + r, but not every cut leaves the same ammount of room inbetween each of the cuts, how do you fix that? (see picture with half assed arrow drawings)

And

Why am I only offered one cut on the top instead of a full line (see picture and marked blue spots and red circle)

Scrolling doesn't fix it, as it only adds more cuts on the vertical face, instead of continuing a horizontal cut:

When you use Alt R to make a loop cut you get that purple loop of edges - then you click once and there will be an actual cut where the purple guides were. If you move the mouse you'll slide that loop and it will stay where it is once you click again.
If you want several evenly spaced loops you need to hold the mouse still between the two clicks, then change the number where it says Number of Cuts in the tool panel near the bottom.

Edit 2:
Remove edge loops by being in Edit mode, Edges, and right click, while holding down Alt, on an edge that runs in the direction of your edge loop - that will select the loop. Then press Delete and choose Dissolve Edges.
Vertices are points in space with XYZ coordinates - for example, in the middle of the world the vertex would be 0,0,0. There is a vertex at both ends of an Edge-  they define where the edge starts and ends.  There are many things you can accidentally do that will duplicate Edges and Vertices - there are lots of shortcuts that you can accidentally press which do all sorts of things.
To find these double edges or vertices, press A until nothing is selected, then you can use Border select - press B and drag a square around the suspected edge or vertex. Right up the top of the screen it shows details about the geometry including how many edges or vertices are selected - if you only see one, but it says at the top that 2 are selected, you know you have a double one (or triple one).  Reading the manual from the beginning helps get an understanding of all this.
About the last question, if you make one Alt R cut it will make it exactly in the middle between the other loops UNLESS you move the mouse between two clicks, in which case it will slide. If you finish that action and make a new loop it will again be half way between two loops. If you want to evenly divide a face with many cuts, delete the ones that are there and start again - click twice so you don't slide, then immediately enter a number in the Number of Cuts field.

Doesn't "number of cuts" just imply that it'll do the same as if I scrolled to get more cuts?

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by "scrolling to get more cuts" - what do you do to scroll?  Anyway, try it - if it does the same thing, then I don't know how to answer this without seeing your file.

Yes it's the same as scrolling the middle mouse button. It didn't fix my problem :( I  don't understand why I can't add more horizontal cuts or aka a full cut (see 2nd picture)

Check for double edges or double vertices that could be causing non-quad geometry. A cut will stop when it meets a "non-quad" face.

I clicked remove doubles and it fixed it, it removed 2 vertices. BUT please help me understand this like the idiot I am because I have no idea what was happening. What are vertices and nonquad geometry? how can there be a double "edge"?  And most of all how do I (in future) myself locate those problems? I mean I had no idea that I had these "2 vertices" causing the problem? how do I see them? and how do I identify them myself on any object? Also another question was after I added cuts how do I make sure that theres the same length inbetween each cut (see 1st pic) and how do I remove them?


text:
Does it matter if I change from Blender render to Cycles and back?
I'm watching this tutorial series and can't figure out why the author always keeps it on cycles render instead of blender render.
What's the reason?
And what if I have blender render selected and make a change then switch to cycles and make a change then back to blender. While he always say has it on cycles? does that matter or?

Please use complete and descriptive titles

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5820/how-is-cycles-different-from-blender-internal/5821 https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/364/how-do-i-convert-materials-from-blender-internal-to-cycles https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6831/shader-nodes-are-missing/6832 https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/261/what-are-the-differences-between-lamps-in-cycles-and-blender-internal/500


text:
Symmetry and Alignment
I'm creating a snowman while watching a tutorial
so I got these 2 eyeballs on him
how do I make sure that they are on symetrical spots on the huge snowball of the head, and how do I make sure that all three body parts (big snow balls) are aligned properly, (none of them has to be a lil left or a lil right, or a lil more up, or a lil more down), you get what I mean?

You can always position things by typing in there exact coordinates numeric input. Also snapping to an axis or the grid can help you align things. For symetry the mirror modifier is often the goto thing.
More precision tools

I literary did not understand a thing on that numeric input page, I'm a total newbie, there's too much useless info for me (useless because I stick to basic lessons first). For the snapping thing I'm not sure how that exactly helps with symetry and alignment? And while mirror modifier would probably help, there's a bunch of info on the site that I just get lost reading it. I don't understand... Man, every year I come back to this program full of willpower and always loose the passion quickly because I'm bombarded by professional terminology and information :(

I guess getting into the brode topic of CG is a hard thing... for me it worked following tutorials step by step ... mostly without understanding wat i was dooing... and later on pice by pice it came together. And it mattert less and less which button i exactly had to press but more about understanding the process behind it. Dont be so hard with yourself. Throw stuff away if you are stuck and dont let it frustrate you to mutch ... youst make shour start with a new small thing new the next day :) and eventually you will have folders and folders of wierd and funny things to loock back on ;)

Where are you getting stuck on using the mirror modifier? Understand that the mirroring operation will use the pivot center of your object to define the plane for mirroring, unless you have specified it to be something else, such as the 3D cursor. Practice creating a UV sphere in an empty scene. Do not move it once created, and instead, go into Edit Mode, cut it exactly in half and delete either half. Go into Object Mode and put a mirror modifier on the remaining half and see if you can make it back into a sphere again. Let us know if it works, and if not, let us know what went wrong and when.


text:
How would I isolate the scale on my ball so it does not affect the tail?
I am animating a ball with tail and when I scale the ball down for squash and stretch it affects the tail mesh with it. How would I put it so when I squash the ball with the bone, the tail will still follow the ball without the tail also squashing with it?

Hello Gavin, do you know about proportional editing?  if you are using a mouse with a middle wheel, you select your vertex, turn it on (its in  tiny button in the top bar, no way you would know about it unless you look up where it is in the UI) and then use the middle wheel to scroll in or out for the radius that the grab effect is going to use to squash the ball.

Hello maybe share your file so that we understand how you've organized the object?

@WhisperingShiba He is squashing the ball with an armature bone - Proportional Editing cannot be used here.

Yes so he should create another bone for the tail

I have created an armature for the ball and tail but when i squash the ball it still scales the tail along with it when I parent the tail to the ball or join the meshes. Is the only option to animate the ball and tail separately or is there a way around this?

For the tail bone, in the Bone panel > Relations > Inherit Scale, choose None, when you'll scale the parent, the child won't be deformed:

That works if i need to scale the tail, but I need to squash and stretch the ball bone while the tail mesh stays attached to the ball and stays the same scale

It would help if you showed some pictures or even shared your file


text:
Faces appearing behind In 'Edit Mode'

I'm Using Blender 3.6
In edit mode. When looking at certain angles, or getting closer. Faces (in white) and edges appear through the front faces semi transparently. I can click on them sometimes and its really making working in blender messy and harder. It happens exclusively in 'Edit Mode' What is doing this and how can I disable it?
Image shows in 1. What it looks like 2. What it looks like when I move slightly closer.
In 'Viewport Overlays' settings I can hide the (white) faces at least by unticking 'Faces' under 'Mesh Edit Mode' but that doesn't hide the edges and also makes seeing which faces I have selected harder.
The semi transparent faces fade in as I get closer.
I've tried backface culling options but those do nothing for this problem.
It happens in all shading modes.
X-ray is turned off.
I imagine it's some sort of 'only show front faces' type setting but I can't find anything.
I'm newer to blender so sorry if I'm just being really dumb. It's a tricky problem to describe for me too.

Hello maybe check the Clip Start and End in the N panel?

No, unfortunately the clip settings in the N panel clip everything, it does clip the 'behind faces' I'm seeing but along with everything else at the same time, thanks though.

I did a complete fresh reinstall. This has fixed the problem. I went from 3.6.0 to version 3.6.2 so perhaps this was a bug fixed in an update. I cannot say myself.
I did ensure to delete any Blender files from my \AppData\Roaming folder too.


text:
Alpha Clip not working in Blender 4.2
I'm following the tutorial how on to make a plant from textures.com and during the process I stumbled on this part where I must turn on the "Alpha clip" option into the material settings.

My problem is that when I turn on the "Alpha Clip" it simply won't work and stay at "Alpha Hashed" whatever I do.

Render engines : Cycles

Alpha Clip is an Eevee settings, I have no idea how you did get access to it with Cycles. It shouldn't happen.

When I switch to Eevee, the above-mentionned panel containing the Alpha Clip and other options simply disappears : https://i.postimg.cc/fTkyCksn/alpha-clip-not-here.png

That's not Eevee settings you are showing, these are Cycles settings.

the very link I just posted is after I turned on the Eevee

Nevermind I may be wrong (see Crantisz answer), it may well be Eevee but with the new 4.2 setting.

In Cycles, the Viewport Display section shows Eevee settings. In 4.2, it incorrectly still showed the old Eevee options, see this bug report. It will be fixed in the next Blender version.

Check out last changes in EEVEE:

Material Blend Mode was replaced by Render Method. To reproduce the
same behavior as the former Alpha Clip or Opaque, materials need be
modified by adding a Greater Than Math mode.

So to reproduce the same effect in 4.2, add a Math node between texture and opacity socket, and set the mode to Greater Than


text:
When an object is added, why does it fall through the grid?
I thought the grid is the surface of where everything takes place and stands on.

The grid is a visual guide, nothing more. It has no physical presence in your scene

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos  I understand that it's not physical but since it is a guide, the logical thing is to use it as an illusion of physical ground and place objects accordingly. I don't know why by default objects spawn at the centre of the 3d space but I want uhm the bottom of whatever object I create to be touching the grid with it's tip. You know what I mean? How do I do that with every object? and how do I make that a default coordinate for spawning objects?

The center of your object is added at the cursor's position. If you haven't changed it, it's set to (0, 0, 0). So parts of your object are above 0, some are below (for the z axis, but it's the same with x and y).
And the center (called origin) is by default set to the geometry center, not what you would probably call the "bottom" of your object.

I understand that it's not physical but since it is a guide, the logical thing is to use it as an illusion of physical ground and place objects accordingly. I don't know why by default objects spawn at the centre of the 3d space but I want uhm the bottom of whatever object I create to be touching the grid with it's tip. You know what I mean? How do I do that with every object? and how do I make that a default coordinate for spawning objects?

Well it has to create them somewhere :)


text:
Can we freely switch back and forth between cycles and Blender Render?
If we switch between Blender Render and Cycles Render, do we "obscure" our project?
Or can we freely switch back and forth?

You can switch however you like, but nodes from cycles won't work in internal at all... but you can switch it back to cycles and it will work as before

thanks but what are nodes? also while I'm here, can you tell me what the button is to show a kind of wire like view of our object?

@Pf22 Nodes are something you use in Cycles to create materials. If you press Z in viewport it should ask you what rendering mode you want. Those are pretty starter questions, check some tutorials


text:
How does the dimension value of the musgrave texture affect the output?
The official blender documentation for the musgrave texture states:
Dimension:
The difference between the magnitude of each two consecutive octaves. Larger values corresponds to smaller magnitudes for higher octaves.
But how is the magnitude calculated using the dimension input? One reasonable guess would be 1/dimension but that doesn't seem to be the case.

EDIT: Replacing my original answer because of an off-by-one error.
It turns out that the Musgrave texture mapping includes a hidden input.  If you enumerate the inputs you get:
0 Vector
1 W
2 Scale
3 Detail
4 Dimension
5 Lacunarity
6 Offset
7 Gain

So my original assumptions were off. Let's carefully track down the "dimension" input.

In properties_texture.py it is defined, not as "dimension, but as dimension_max

In rna_texture.c it is given the internal RNA mg_H

In texture_procedural.c in various places it is used as the 4th argument to the indirect function mgravefunc, for example in this call.

mgravefunc depends on the Musgrave type.  In the previous step it might be BLI_noise_mg_multi_fractal or BLI_noise_mg_fbm.

The various noise functions are defined in blender/source/blender/blenlib/intern/noise.c  The 4th argument is always called H

Oddly enough this does bring us to the code I cited in the incorrect version of the answer, only we need to look at the variable H:
  float value = 0.0, pwr = 1.0, pwHL = powf(lacunarity, -H);

It is used as an exponent of lacunarity.

I don't think that this code snippit actually covers the dimension value. It rather looks like the code for generating the perlin noise iterartivelyusing octaves, which however refers to the detail value in the musgrave node not the dimension.

After reading the code, I couldn't find where the dimension value turns into the octaves variable. The only thing I found is: "//``octaves''  is the number of frequencies in the fBm". WHich considering the nature of perlin noise (blender for some reason calls it musgrave) would be exactly what the detail input would be.

I followed the code, but no matter how I look at it I can't see how the octaves variables could correspond to a input parameter other than 'detail'.

@tempdevnova thanks for keeping me honest.  Right code fragment wrong variable. I think the answer is right now.

Yes, H seems to be the dimension value, great! So as I understand the code, it does the following with the musgrave dimension value: First it uses the powf function to return a value to a variable called pwHL. The pwHL then multiplies the pwr variable every loop iteration, which then drives the values of the individual noise layers in line 1344. The only question now is where the powf function is specified.

powf is a standard C function from the math library.  To quote from a manual "The pow(), powf(), and powl() functions compute x raised to the power of y."

Now everything makes sense, thanks! Just curious since I'm not acquainted with the standart C function library but what is the difference between pow(), powf(), and powl()?

The return value's size.  pow returns a double precision float, powf returns a 'float' which can default to various sizes and powl returns a quad precision (long double) float. pow has details


text:
UV map U direction refering to X or Y?
As for as my knowledge goes the UV in UV map is basically the same as X and Y direction.
So my question is does the U in UV refer to the X direction in the UV editor or the Y direction?

I presume U is for X and V is for Y but anyway I don't think you ever meet the need to press U or V, in the UV Editor you press X and Y to move the island on the horizontal and vertical axis

It's important because the tangent node uses the U directionof the UV map and having the directions incorrect obviously switches things.

oh ok I didn't notice that

According to the manual, in the UV editor “ . . . U is the left-right direction, and V is the up-down direction . . . We use U and V to refer to these ‘texture-space coordinates’ instead of the normal X and Y . . . ”
However, in any official documentation that (and similar) is how it's always referred to.  If they've ever flat-out, unequivocally said “U is X and V is Y” then I'm not spotting it.


text:
How to use the diffuse roughness value?
In What does the Roughness setting on a diffuse shader do? Ibalaszs states that he divides the glossy roughness by 3 to get the diffuse roughness. He then states that this is also just a thumb rule he somehow eyeballed, but also makes sense as most materials have a diffuse roughness of up to 0.5 while most are topping of at 0.3. So apart from that does anyone know how to actually use the diffuse roughness value and do you even use it at all?
I did some render test with suzanne at different diffuse roughness level:
Diffuse roughness=0

Diffuse roughness=0.5

Diffuse roughness=1

One thing I noticed that with high diffuse roughness values the shader almost starts to look like velvet.

It says so right in the docs - blender uses Lambertian Reflection Shading (equally bright from all viewing angles) by default, but increasing the Diffuse Roughness value (in cycles only), shifts it to an Oren-Nayar Shading system (basically Lambertian with extra features to handle surface roughness more accurately - viewing angle can affect surface appearance):

An additional note on shading systems - Though there are exceptions, a general rule of thumb is to use (if available):
Blinn/Phong      - Plastics
Cook-Torrence    - Metallic surfaces
Lambert          - Smooth non-reflective surfaces
Oren-Nayer       - Rough non-reflective surfaces
Ward-Anisotropic - Brushed/Warped metals
Minnaert         - Large "Planetary" objects

And yes, Oren-Nayar is commonly used for both velvet and skin .


text:
Version 2.83 normals not working
i'm using V2.83.
when i turn on normals in Overlays, all the normals are pointing X axis and pink.
face orientation is on.

It's the split normals, they have been changed for some reason, go into the Object Data panel > Geometry Data > click on  Clear Custom Split Normals Data?

It's the split normals, they have been changed for some reason, go into the Object Data panel > Geometry Data > click on Clear Custom Split Normals Data.

thanks so much!!


text:
how to import correctly model and texture
I downloaded this model and idk how to import textures and model together as seen on the site.
Just starting don't blast me pls

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures

What format does it download in? Does it have textures with the package?

Use the blender sketchfab plugin
https://github.com/sketchfab/blender-plugin


text:
Fitting a object on other object's surface
I attempted to get the object in second picture applied on a female body in third picture by using Shrinkwrap mode but it didn't work well and the object didn't fit well.
What should I do?

Align the two meshes in orthographic view , delete one side of the first mesh (the wireframe), add a mirror modifier, enter Edit Mode, enable Proportional Editing, and grab the chest part and other parts you wanna change and fit, apply the modifier, select both meshes, Ctrl + J.
Since its a female and a male objects , you may need some light sculpting as well.


text:
How to apply remesh to a limited part of mesh
I'd like to apply remesh to a limited part of mesh to erase a slit caused by merging with two different object.

How should I do?
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmmqKHEN8ib3hH0AKRr96psu0yZW?e=IhXZhO

I guess it's still the same problem as your previous question, maybe you should simply use the face and smooth the top in order to have the same effect as the top you're showing right now, merging 2 parts can work if the mesh are closed but it's not the case here, I've tried a remesh operation but with no good success

Select your mesh , enter edit mode , select the part you wanna apply the modifier to , hit P , Separate : Selection , exit edit mode .
Now you have a separate portion of the mesh as an individual object , then apply whatever you want to .
Hope it helps .

And how is one supposed to merge the separate part with the rest of the existing mesh after remeshing? Instead of the old split that should be removed there will be new slits that need to be merged.

Joining the two meshes again into one object ?

But the separate remeshed part then has vertices that do no longer fit the mesh where it was taken from and it's back to start - wanting to remesh the area where the two joined meshes meet.

yeah i see your point , depending on the result he wanna achieve , if the re-meshed part changes dramatically i think my solution wont work , but if he just wants a retouch or a slight remesh a little bit or sculpting and filling edges might help i guess

The transition from one object to the other should be merged smoothly. Maybe you could elaborate a bit with screenshots how this is achieved, otherwise this is less of a solution than just food for thought. Because it looks like in the end you would have to stitch the different parts together manually which you can already do without separating it.

It depends on the result he wanna achieve , the human model is already smooth and if he remesh it whats the point of remeshing only a part of it , he could work on the whole object , my solution works for me in previous cases where i needed to treat parts of an object separately then joinin them again , if he can share the blend file and the result or the operations he wants to do specifically i can give it a try


text:
Schlick's approximation in Blender?
Is it just me or is there really no Schlick's approximation in Blender?
I know that building such a node with the available vector math nodes isn't terribly difficult, but there is no way that Blender only has the standard fresnel node with the ior available right?
What makes me ask this question is this piece of code: https://github.com/blender/blender/blob/594f47ecd2d5367ca936cf6fc6ec8168c2b360d0/intern/cycles/kernel/closure/bsdf_util.h#L130
which hints a at a function that might be Schlick's approximation in line 130.

That function is called from the Principled Shader during sheen and diffuse calculations.  But it's not exposed as a separate function or in a node.  This search returns all of the references.

That function is called from the Principled Shader during sheen and diffuse calculations. But it's not exposed as a separate function or in a node. This search returns all of the references to the function in the source.
There's no other Schlick calculation as far as I can tell.

So does this mean that the Principled bsdf uses the Schlick approximation?

It does, but only for sheen and diffuse.  I didn't look to see what it does for the other places it uses Fresnel.

Ok that is indeed very strange

Have you read the original Disney paper?  There's a lot of ad-hoc magic under the covers.  They weren't really looking for accurate physics so much as good-enough easy-to-use approximation.

Well to my knowledge disney exclusively used the schlick approximation as it is both cheap to compute, fairly accurate and artist friendly. Now it doesn't really make such a big difference whether you use the schlick approximation or the original fresnel equations, except that the latter is much more expensive to compute and requires a understanding of the complex refractive index. However using one for the specular reflection and another for the diffuse reflection means that the specular tradeoff would not add up to one, which phyiscally speaking wouldn't make any sense.

Well, I may have misspoken.  I meant to say I know it does so for sheen and diffuse but I don't know what it does otherwise because I didn't look.  I didn't mean to say that I know it doesn't otherwise.  And I just reread the Fresnel bits of the Disney paper and they do use Schlick everywhere.

Ok so the principled probably also does that.

Well further testing has concluded: the fresnel calculations of the Principled BSDF are more intricate than meets the eye. First: for specular reflection testing has concluded that it probably actually uses the original Fresnel equations with an constant IOR value of 1.5 if the specular value is set to 0.5. Second: The specular value influences the Fresnel equations for both metals and dielectrics. I think that at least for specular reflection it is the specular value, which can be converted to an IOR value, that drives the Fresnel equations and not the base colors as is the case for schlick's

approximation, but if the metal parameter is 1, it somehow remaps the reflectivity curses so that F(0) does match the base color. Do you have further information on this topic?


text:
How does the strength value influence the normal map
So after finding out how tangent space and normal map values roughly work, I have a question:
The normal map node has a strength input. I know that increasing the strength will make the normal map have a "stronger" influence but how does that input work mathematically?

Did you see the link I posted yesterday? Code. It lerps between the original and new normal.

It's
  if (Strength != 1.0)
    Normal = normalize(NormalIn + (Normal - NormalIn) * max(Strength, 0.0));

In other words, draw a line from the tip of the original normal to the tip of the new one. Strength controls how far you move along this line. Strength=0 means you stay at the original normal. Strength=1 means you go to the new normal. Strength=0.5 means you go halfway etc.

The result is normalized afterwards.

So does the strength input of the normal map do exactly the same as the one in the bump node?

Wouldn't Normalin just be the same as the vector 0,0,1 as everything is done in tangent space?

This is actually done after transforming to world space (it's done the same way for all modes of the Normal Map node so we are not necessarily using tangent space), although most of the time I wouldn't expect it to make much difference which space you use. It's the same for the bump node (although in that case it does it before transforming to world space).


text:
HDRI for material preview
There are a lot of HDRI's out there, but some are better to preview materials, as they for example make surface features more pronounced, or are less colored, therefore not tinting the surface color.
So what are your suggestions for free HDRI's to preview materials?

Anything considered "studio lighting" is often good as the colors are pretty neutral most of the time. Try some of these - https://polyhaven.com/hdris/studio

I like the look of seventh HDRI called "sunrise", would you consider that one to be neutral?

Was that supposed to be to my answer?  No, I wouldn't consider that neutral -- beautiful, my fave, but the strong slanting sunlight and bold surrounding colors would have an impact on any material previewed with it.

The best way to preview materials is with the lighting you're going to use in the final render because lighting makes a huge difference to how materials appear.  If your final render is going to use an HDRI, use that HDRI in material preview and enable world and lighting. This only works for Cycles because of the way EEVEE does lighting.

Thought of an answer while writing a comment - something you can try is to pick ANY HDRI you like (lighting wise), and then desaturate the colors (either fully or completely) by placing  a Hue/Saturation/Value Node before the Background input of the World Shader (you can change the hue too if needed):
Note - you mentioned some HDRI's being better for showing surface details - there is no real formula, but I tend to avoid ones with "flat" lighting. Basically avoid things like large overcast skies or dull, evenly lit interiors.

I also just thought of that ;-) What i found to be most optimal is to use an HDRI with a strong directional light like sunrise in combination with the HSV node.

And the HDRI should also cast hard shadows to best reveal cavities and normal mapping etc.

Blender comes with eight CC0 HDRIs included (Windows installation in the \datafiles\studiolights\world folder).  One of them, studio.exr, is a near grayscale studio lighting setup that sounds like what you're asking for.  If you want higher resolution versions they can be found (also free CC0) at https://polyhaven.com/a/studio_small_01 .
But for even all-round lighting, instead of an HDRI, you might want to change the Color in the Background node (in the World Shader) to FFFFFF white and adjust the Strength:

Another useful method is to remove all lighting (Background node in the World Shader to 000000 black, Strength 0.0) and use an Emission node in your material -- this allows you to render your material as-is, without any lighting issues:

Use some hdri that gives flat light and not too much shadows and highlight.
I like to use hdri that comes with Substance Painter and Designer. You can download it for free from https://hdrmaps.com/industrial-room/


text:
Does internally reflected rays count as refraction rays?
When using shders like the Glass BSDF or the Principled BSDf with transmission=1 there are rays which are reflected inside the mesh, for example in the case of total internal reflection. Are those rays then counted as reflected rays or refracted rays?

They are actually Glossy rays for total internal reflection.
Here is a relevant talk from one of the Blender conferences.

Of course it makes sense for internal REFLECTION to be counted as glossy rays... By the way I looked at the video you linked and it was really good, do you have any other great sources (can be about anything modeling, shading, etc.) that you would recommend?

one thing that came to mind was this TU Wien online course on rendering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjc1QAI6zS0&list=PLujxSBD-JXgnGmsn7gEyN28P1DnRZG7qi - otherwise this stackexchange has been incredibly helpful to me


text:
How are tangent and bitangent calculated?
In tangent space there is the normal of the geometry which represents the Z axis in tangent space, and the tangent and bitangent.
My first question is does the tangent represent the X or Y axis in tangent space? (Bitangent would then just be the other axis)
My second question is about how the tangent and bitangent is determined. The Z axis is just the geometry normal, but how are the tangent and bitangent determined, as there are an infinite amount of possible tangents to a given normal.
Or formulated a little differently: If I were to put the X and Y axis of tangent space into the global coordinate system, how would they be oriented tangent to the normal?

For normal mapping, (tangent, bitangent, normal) is (X, Y, Z).
The tangent and bitangent are computed from a UV map (that's why you need one to get tangents). The idea is they're picked so they point along the U and V axes in the map. Or put differently, if you draw lines on the texture in the U and V directions, the tangent and bitangent go in the direction of the lines.

That's the basic theory anyway, the precise computation is very involved with many problems involving order and topology to consider. I believe Blender uses the standard MikkTSpace algorithm but I couldn't tell you any details.

The tangent and bitangent are computed from a UV map (that's why you need one to get tangents) But what if my mesh doesn't have any UV maps? There have been cases where I used a procedural noise as input for the normal map node and it worked perfectly fine, although the mesh didn't have any UV maps available.

If I have multiple Textures with UV maps will, which I can access through the UV node, will Blender be smart enough to take the correct UV map for each texture each time or does it always only take the active UV map?

I believe it uses the tangents from the UV map you set on the Normal Map node. I don't know what it does if there isn't a UV map. In Python, it won't let you calc tangents if there isn't one.

A tangent is simply a unit vector perpendicular to the normal, of which there are infinitely many (consider any rotation of an existing tangent around the normal vector is also a tangent). For most uses of tangents and tangent spaces you will want a consistent direction to to the tangent.
For tangent normal mapping this direction is defined using UV coordinates as defined in scurest's answer, however there are other uses of tangents where UV coordinates may not be available, so another convention may be used.
For example Blender's Corrective Smooth modifier preserves detail by recording vertex offsets in tangent space for the base, smoothed mesh and then reprojecting them in the tangent space of the deformed, smoothed mesh. For this to work the spaces in each case need to be consistent. In order to make this consistent a direction for the tangent is defined using the vertex order triangles that the vertex is a member of (I can't remember the exact details of this, but its in the code somewhere).
As far as the mesh tangents provided in the material node editor are calculated, I'm not sure, but I suspect without UVs they would use a similar trick to the corrective smooth modifier.


text:
Viewport zoom vs dolly
What is the difference between zooming in the viewport using the wheel on the mouse and dollying using shift ctrl mmb?

TL;DNR: Dolly-Zoom is exactly the same as Zoom In-Out but allows you to move the view point.
It has nothing to do with the photographic use of zoom and dolly
Zoom shortcuts call view3d.zoom and dolly shortcuts call view3d.dolly, but the documentation is next to useless.
The actual difference can be found by examining Zoom In-Out and Dolly Zoom in the Navigation section of the manual:

In most cases its sufficient to zoom the view to get a closer look at something, however, you may notice that at a certain point you cannot zoom any closer.
This is because Blender stores a view-point that is used for orbiting and zooming. It works well in many cases, but sometimes you want to move the view-point to a different place. This is what Dolly supports, allowing you to transport the view from one place to another. [emphasis mine.]

According to the wikipedia "camera dolly" entry :

A camera dolly is a wheeled cart or similar device used in filmmaking
and television production to create smooth horizontal camera movements

(emphasis mine)
So you can consider the mouse wheel "zoom" as a dolly with fixed, discrete, locations, and a clear cut maximal distance it can travel from the origin point before needing to be reset. But it's not technically a zoom since the viewport camera focal length doesn't change at any point.
Both do the same thing. But the "dolly" zoom controls more smoothly, and you need to hold down 3 buttons at the same time and move the mouse which is not very user-friendly (arguably).

As far as I can tell both zoom and dolly are equally smooth

Maybe there is a misunderstanding on the term then, because when you use just the mouse wheel, the viewport camera "jumps" forward a bit, contrary to when using the CTRL SHIFT MMB one where it moves forward quasi-seamlessly

You can also use ctrl mmb which zooms in and out as smoothly as using ctrl shift mmb to dolly

Oh, right, I didn't notice that. In that case I really don't know what's the difference at first glance

The reason why one zooms smoothly and the other doesn't is that the shortcuts for one have delta set but the shortcut for the other doesn't.  The commands themselves are identical with respect to smoothness.


text:
What is a surface tangent?
The geometry node(shader node) has a tangent output, which to my understanding is the same as the tangent node output set to Z.
My question is now: what is a surface tangent? I know what a tangent is, but to my understanding a surface has an infinite amount of tangents, which is also why a plane is also sometimes described as all vectors that are perpendicular to a given normal.

The tangent is a unit vector perpendicular to the normal (i.e. pointing along the surface) at each point on the surface. Anisotropic shaders have a tangent input that allows the user to specify ONE of the infinite possible values so that the shader knows which direction to emphasise specular highlights in.
The default direction in blender is the U direction if there is a UV map or a vector that wraps clockwise round the object's Z axis otherwise. More options are available via the Tangent node.
The shaders also allow adjustment of the direction in which they emphasise the highlight with an additional anisotropic rotation input, inconsistently using crazy units. See the blender manual!


text:
Does the size of the cone of a spot lamp have a meaning?
So the spot lamp has a cone which ends after a distance. Does the size of the cone hold any meaning? I tried scaling the spot lamp, which changes the size of the cone but doesn't seem to change the final render at all.
Additonally both the spot lamp and the area lamp have a line which indicates in which direction the lamps are facing. This lamp also ends after a certain distance and unlike the cone doesn't change it's size when scaling the lamps. Does the length of this cone hold any meaning?

EDIT: comment indicates that the question was about the length of the cone.  That's entirely and only so you can visualize where the spotlight's light falls. It has no impact on the intensity of the light.
Old answer, for the size of the spot.
Here's a scene lit entirely by a spotlight.  We start with the "Spot Size", which is the size of the cone at 3.5 degrees:

10.5 degrees:

31.5 degrees:

As you can see, the size of the cone effects where the light shines.
Here are the same three settings, but in Solid shading mode and with Show Cone enabled:

making it more obvious what's going on.
You can read more about the Spot Lamp in the manual.

It seems my question wasn't very clear. What I meant was the length of the cone not the angle.

@tempdevnova  No. The scale only helps you envision the conde.  It doesn't affect the light in any way.

Yes. The smaller the lamp size, the sharper the shadows it casts. The bigger, the more blurred of a shadow.

OP is asking about the cone from a spotlight; not the lamp itself.

Oh. Didn't catch that.


text:
Unable to insert keyframes with color ramp
When I try to insert keyframes on the color ramp in the shading tabenter image description here (hovering over the position and pressing I, and right clicking it and pressing insert keyframe) no keyframes are created. when i try to do it again it gives me the option to delete keyframes but they were not there in the first place, its like a sort of "ghost keyframe" that blender think exists but it doesnt. I've tried playing the animation but it does not play.

Make sure that the object that has the material is selected (or disable the Only Show Selected option in the Dope Sheet if it is activated), and also that the ColorRamp node is selected.


text:
Use Imported FBX on Rigged character?

Recently I wanted to try out motion capture. Right now I am trying to figure out how I can apply an FBX model to a rigged character. Is there a way I can try and combine the motion file (FBX file) with yhe chosen rigged mesh?

I think you need to be a lot more precise, if you are hoping for answers. What's an FBX model and what's a rigged character in your case?
If you import the armature from a motion capture, you need to make the character fit the armature.

Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/281059/animating-a-character-with-actions-from-several-armatures/281060#281060


text:
Is it possible to make Blender remember the names of authors or tags and suggest them if you fill in the Asset Browser?
I'm looking for a way to store the authors / tags I'm using when I fill up those fields in the Asset Browser. It really takes a lot of time to type in the same name or put the same tag.
It would be much easier to choose from a list, for example.
Is there a script I can use? ... something?
Thank you in advance.

Not really an answer to your problem but you can check out my addon that has features to batch-assign authors, tags and descriptions to assets. https://github.com/Gorgious56/asset_browser_utilities/releases your need seems like a QOL feature that will be implemented natively in the future. I've added an entry to see if I can add a feature in my addon regarding this need which is reasonable. https://github.com/Gorgious56/asset_browser_utilities/issues/105

Wow! Thank you,Gorgious56! I've asked for a cookie and I get a full cake. :) Great job!


text:
Models are exported without texture
#Context:
I am trying to export a few objects with textures. These models will be used in CLO3D (CLO is Marvelous Designer's bigger sister, used in the fashion industry instead of the movie/game industry).
#Summary of the problem:
When I add the models to CLO3D their textures are missing, even though the diffuse map shows up in CLO3D's UI but not in the viewport. I've tried OBJ, FBX, and GLB.
What I’ve tried:

Packing external data:
Baking all textures:
Export settings for FBX:
Export settings for OBJ:

I've been informed that the issue might not be on Blender's (settings) end, but on CLO's end, and while that may be true I am too tired and ignorant to know this for sure.
I will post this question on CLO3D and Marvelous Designer forums as well and once the problem is resolved, I will update this thread with the solution for others to find it.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures

Retrieve the image path
The image path must exist.
Otherwise, it does not seem to pack well into FBX data.
It may be a blender bug, but you may need to try once to see if the image path is correct.
Also, if the image is packed or if you are a faux user, the software may not be able to open the image.
In this case, you might try connecting the image directly to the shader by dragging and dropping it from your browser once. This method should solve most of the problems.
It may also be resolved by backing and unpacking once and then re-exporting the image.
If there is a bug in the image
The bug also seems to depend on how the image is purified.
I have solved this problem by re-saving the image once baked with a different image software.

It turned out that ONE of the materials worked (mysteriously) and I really tried to figure out what set that one apart from others that didn't work. I looked and looked so hard I literally had to take a nap in between examinations because I couldn't find ANY difference.
Then, what I did was deleted all the materials that didn't export, duplicated the one that did, and replaced its maps (diffuse, roughness, and normal) with the maps I baked previously for the materials that failed to export.
From that point forward all models exported fine with textures.
So the problem was solved, but I haven't a single clue what the takeaway or lesson is.