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Normals not baking properly
Im trying to bake normal maps of my character however it doesn't work at all, it just looks as if low poly mesh is baking onto itself, and I can't find a solution to that :/

hello maybe share your file? https://pasteall.org/blend/

Increase the ray distance a tiny bit and make sure the normals are correct.


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question about shading and topology of the mesh
I have a question about bad shading on a mesh.
I was following this dude's tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOiVIeOxrMU
then as always something happened to me that did not happen in the video

so there is a slim cut mark running through the mesh which is not intended.

Since it is caused by the edge, if i dissolve this edge, it looks like this

My question is why does this mesh have that subtle white mark all of sudden,
and is there a way to get rid of it?
thanks,

please share your object: https://pasteall.org/blend/

Josh drops bevel modifiers on everything so I'm assuming you have one here. He also has MANY tutorials on how to fix this exact issue.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How to find the distance from a face of one object to the surface of another object, along the face's normal
I feel like this has probably been answered, but I searched and couldn't find an exact solution.
What I want is a quick way to take a selected set of faces on an object (or the vertices that make up the faces), typically ones that are connected along a particular side of a rectangular-shaped object, and move each of them along the face normal until they're a fixed distance away from the surface of whatever object is in that particular direction.
I found an addon that moves faces along the face normal, so I was hoping to add a little bit of code to create a modified addon that would do the job.  OR, maybe there's an easy way to do this already in the Blender interface, and I'm overlooking it.
I created an addon for Blender several years ago, but I'm a little rusty now.  Seems like this should be easy to do, yet my searches have come up empty so far.
Thanks for the help!
-Mike

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


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Smart UV Project Island Margins do nothing
I'm unwrapping the whole scene using Smart UV Project and I want all UV islands to be slightly separated, but no matter what Island Margin value I choose, all island are tightly packed to each other. I'm observing this behavior in Edit Mode with Draw Other Objects option on.
What's wrong here?

Try set island margin to 0.001.

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

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


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I'm trying to rig a helmet to the shoulders of the rig
I'm trying to rig a helmet (this particluar one is not mine, it's from an OSP). The only problem is that I want it to rig to the shoulders as well, and not just to the head.
How do I do this?

What? I have no idea what you just asked.

The term you need to search for is "Weight Painting": https://blender-manual-i18n.readthedocs.io/ja/latest/modeling/meshes/vertex_groups/weight_paint.html


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Can you transfer weights partially in blender?
I'm trying to transfer weights from one mesh to another, but I don't want to transform all of the weights, just one in a specific area. Is there any way to do this, or will I manually have to replicate it?

You can copy the vertex group (the weights) to the selected object from the active, if they have the same geometry, then you can remove the unwanted weights easily, by selecting them and click on remove in the Vertex Groups tab.


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Split Object moves independently but renders as one object?
I have a part that I have split into"loose parts".
When I try to animate it into individual elements it looks like its working, I set the timeline up and lock the location.
When I check the render, all parts move with it to the new keyframe?
How do I get a single item to move independently once rendered?
Note: I do not have proportional editing selected.
Images separated

via Loose parts

I am setting new keyframes, the part has roughly 30 individual parts, I moved them all into a line (like a exploded view) but when I roll the animation, all parts move to the same point as the first part that I set a keyframe for.

While rendering objects will use animated position, if you move object which have keyframes and don't keyframe new position old one will be rendered instead

Does my answer on this question help? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/30318/keyframing-problem-adds-keyframes-on-all-objects-instead-of-the-one-that-i-sele/30861#30861


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Why is the middle dot of the face outside the face itself?
The middle dot of the mesh is outside the mesh itself as you can see in the shot below. Please let me know if I can recenter it or is there a workaround for this?

The ‘dot’ representing the face is positioned at the “centre” of all the vertices of that face - calculated as the average over all vertices. In your case you have a large ngon with many more than 4 vertices and the ‘average’ happens to be outside your mesh (drawn away due to all the vertices along the curve).
It isn’t a problem that the ‘centre’ of the face is outside the face itself but it might be a problem that the face is an ngon (more than 4 vertices) as it can cause problems further down the line (eg, when trying to animate or subdivide the mesh). It would be best to delete the face (X, Faces Only) and re-create it with better geometry (quads/tris).

Thanks bro, I added some quads at the bottom there by dividing the large chunk manually. I extruded the vertices from the end of the curve to the bottom, seems much better now and when I Alt click on the meshes they follow an orange highlighted flow that lets me know if its a good mesh. Thanks once again. @RichSedman

If you press space and type "triangulate faces" you won't have this issue. + you don't have to recreate the geometry, or extrude verts.

The dot on a face simply shows the center of the face. Since your face is shaped in such a way that there is empty space at the center of the face, the dot appears outside the bounds of the face. This isn't a problem as it won't affect anything other than how the face is displayed in edit mode, and there is no way to move the dot. If it is an issue for you, the only way to get rid of it is to split the large face into smaller faces.


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Emission 'Aura' Effect (2.79b Cycles)
I have a scene set up with some objects with really nice shaders I mixed up in the Node Editor, and they look really good. However, I am trying to create a light blooming effect on the emission effect applied to one of my shaders. I have ramped up the strength of the emission effect, but while it makes it brighter, it doesn't give it the 'aura' look that I am seeking. Any advice on how to create the effect I am looking for?

Okay... sorry for my confusion, but as I just started using Blender, I am not familiar. So I need to go back to 2.8 and use something called the compositor to add a glare node?

@MikeGraves No, the compositor has been there for a while. There is no "glare" or "aura" effect by default in Cycles (although you could use volumetrics to achieve something similar). I don't know about Eevee, but it might have another feature. Bottom line, just follow the linked answer in any relatively recent version of Blender (not 2.8).

Sorry that was a confusing comment. JakeD is correct. Just follow the link that JtheNinja posted. I just mentioned in the new version of Blender coming out at the end of the year, will have and easier way to do this. Just fyi

I see! So the problem is that the effect I am looking for doesn't exist in the renderer I am using. Darn... all the rest of my effects were made using the Node Editor in Cycles; when I switch to Blender Render, literally everything in my scene vanishes (I habitually keep my view set to Render Mode right now, since I am still learning, and it helps me to see the effects of things as I am doing them). I suppose I should learn about volumetrics, then. Thanks a lot, everyone!

You're sort of correct. Maybe this will clear it up a little. You do NOT need to switch to Blender Render. Think of the compositor as a separate  program like Photoshop or After Effects. Once you are done with Cycles you switch to the Compositor and add any little tweaks likes streaks and blur and make some slight color adjustments. Maybe check out one of these videos https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=compositor+blender

Ah... so I need to learn about the compositor. I don't see it as an option anywhere in my interface, but I am sure that I will be able to get there using a video tutorial. Thanks again, that really helps!

Good luck, Blender is technically 4 programs in one, 3D program, Compositor (similar to after effects and photoshop), video editor (like premiere and final cut) and you can make video games (like unity and unreal (although they are taking this out at the end of the year)). So if you dont know the other programs like PS etc.. I would suggest learning the built in programs in Blender.

@icYou520 For correctness, Blender is sort of like multiple programs, but if you want to put it that way, it is way more than 4. For example, we have a camera/object tracker, a text editor, Python environment, and full-fledged animation tools as well.


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Align viewport to camera in Python (inverse of align camera to view)
I have 1000+ cameras and I want to unwrap my mesh UV using project from view from all of them (so creating a UV layer from each camera's project from view) so I can add a UV_PROJECT modifier for each one to texture my mesh. However, Blender's project from view uses the current 3d view as its source. Therefore, I want to align my viewport to a selected camera before performing the project from view using Python.
How can I do this? On Blender's Aligning page, it provides "Align Active Camera to View" but not the inverse I need. I am new to Blender's API and workflow.

Have you tried bpy.ops.view3d.view_camera()?

It worked! Right now, the background image does not match up with the UV unwrap perfectly (scaling is off) but I am pretty sure it is because I am not projecting with bounds. @Psyonic if you want you can submit an answer so I can confirm it.

This will iterate through all objects in your .blend
If the object is of type CAMERA it gets set as the active scene camera, then the viewport is set to look through it
for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    if ob.type == 'CAMERA':
        bpy.context.scene.camera = ob
        bpy.ops.view3d.view_camera()
        # - YOUR CODE HERE -

Thank you! The code is helpful.


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Object making everything else in viewport transparent
I have an object that makes everything else transparent in viewport. Here's what it should look like:

And here's what it looks like in solid mode:

Anyone know how to fix this?

In the Object panel > Viewport Display, maybe you've enabled the In Front option?

I don't remember ever touching it, but you're right, it was enabled. Thanks so much!

Go into the Object panel > Viewport Display, disable the In Front option.


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Guru donut tutorial icing selection mesh error

I made the icing just like what he said in the video(Selected half of the donut with alt+z mode > shift+B > ESC > P), but my icing doesn't fully cover top of the donut. I think it intersects with donut object below. At first, I ignored and kept go on but when I tried to make thickness of it, It makes the thing worse. I don't know what to do.

could you please share your file? https://pasteall.org/blend/

There are a few things that might have happened, however...., and I have given this recommendation before - when doing the donut tutorial, if things go wrong, it's never a bad idea to close the whole project and start again. The repetition will make you much more acquainted with blender's systems (object mode, edit mode, hotkeys, etc...) and will make you much more comfortable using the program and much faster as a whole. As you progress, you will learn what causes what "error", but I think it's better up front to simply get familiar with using blender and it's general workflow.

and in addition to Christopher's comment i would recommend NOT to do it EVER in another way than the tutorial describes it (if you are a bloody beginner). I did this several times because i thought "whatever, i can move it with G -> X - i have no idea why he goes in edit mode for that - that's waste of time to go in edit mode and move it and then leave edit mode again". This LOOKS like the same (position of the object is the same) but this makes a HUGE difference because the origin point is totally different, which will cause different results if you rotate, scale...etc. afterwards


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No Bone or Alpha Animations in .glb
Why won't my exported .glb keep the bone keyframe animation and alpha keyframe animation? Yet, I translated an object and that carried over to the .glb animation

I used the "Location, Rotation, and Scale" keyframes for the bones. Also, I translated some objects that used alpha, but they don't appear in the .glb (probably cause they start at zero alpha. They probably translate, but are still invisible even though they should appear).

Don't know why your bone animation doesn't work, but glTF doesn't support animation of material properties like alpha. Only object/bone LocRotScale, and shapekey values.


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Is there a problem in blender 2.92 to change active camera?
I have the default camera with several key frames set for a video and had no problems.
Then I have added a new camera.001 and set it as active (I checked answers from "How can I make a camera the active one?" to make sure I did not forget anything stupid, and it is set as the active camera, I even added markers), but still whatever I do, the image rendered is still from the default camera. I did it in the past and never had this problem, so I'm wondering if this is a bug?

There's no known bug.  Please add your blend file to your post so we can check it and see if we notice anything you missed. (Grab the URL of the question.
Go to https://blend-exchange.com/.
Select the blend file.
Add the url of the question.
Grab the url that results.
Go back to the question and edit it.
Add the new url to the bottom of the post.)

You probably Bind Ctrl+B Camera to Marker M in Timeline ... ?

More about How swap views between multiple cameras?

If the answer solved your issue consider mark as Accepted so system is not pocking Question and others can see it from main list https://blender.stackexchange.com/tour Thank you keep site organised.

Sorry, I found my mistake. After I rendered my image sequence, I then added the image sequence in the video sequencer to render the animation. I left that image sequence there so the same image was always rendered. I removed the image sequence from the video sequencer and everything worked fine. Thanks for your help and sorry for the waste of time.


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Blender Cloud addon won't open
I am trying to use the Blender Cloud addon, but whenever I try to open it (via "Image>Get image from Blender Cloud", or via the shortcut "Shift+Ctrl+Alt+A") I get the following error message:
Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\blgri\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.93\scripts\addons\blender_cloud\texture_browser\__init__.py", line 106, in invoke
self._draw_handle = context.space_data.draw_handler_add(
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'draw_handler_add'

location: <unknown location>:-1

I have reset Blender to default (factory) settings, and the only two non-default addons I have enabled are:

"System: Blender Cloud" (downloaded from https://cloud.blender.org/services, and installed without extracting from the .zip)
"System: Blender ID authentication" (required for using the Blender Cloud addon)

Any help or direction where to look for help would be greatly appreciated
A screenshot of the addons:

A screenshot of the error:

I'm seeing exactly the same error in version 2.93.1. The addon installed from the same zip file works fine in Blender 2.83.

I was having this problem myself. I just installed 2.93.2 which was released yesterday and it now seems to work as expected.


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Scan other files where a collection is linked
Good Morning,
I have a file "ej. windows.blend" where there are several collections "Window A, Window B, etc."
And I have another files that are buildings "Building 1.blend, Building 2.blend, etc."
Every building has a windows collection Linked.
From the file "Windows.blend", is it possible to know in which buildings is linked a collection ej. "Window A", instead of opening each building and check which window collection is linked?
Thanks a lot,


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Animation of a torus using exterior/interior radius
I want to animate a torus with a fixed exterior radius and moving interior radius.
I've already  tried : to modelize using major/minor radius with bezier curves but it doesn't help me to solve the problem.
I've also tried to seek informations about using bezier to make a controlled torus with exterior/ interior circle parameters

I want to make continuous transformation from the first to the last have you an idea of how I could do this,
Thank you very much !

with shapekeys and you scale it a bit so that the outer radius stays the same?

Could you please develop my friend ?

You can use Shape Keys: Create a torus, create 2 shape keys, select the second one, in Edit mode fatten it (AltS), and scale down the whole torus until the outer radius matches its previous length, use the 3D cursor as a reference:

Another idea, inspired by Lemon: Create a circle, make it rotate around with a Screw modifier in order to create a torus, create 2 shape keys, select the second, scale up to thickens the torus (use the 3D cursor as Pivot Point):

Also you can do it with a curve's bevel object (Properties panel > Object Data > Geometry > Bevel), just put the bevel object's origin on one of its vertices, and scale:

Thank you but i don't know how to make appears the Shape Keys

waht do you mean by "maje appers"?

I mistape modified make appears

go in the Properties panel > Object Data > Shape Keys, create 2 shape keys with the "+" button, select the second shape key, go in Edit mode, scale, switch back to Object mode, play with the Value

Thanks how do you do to change only interior radius in edit mode ?

you must first fatten (Alt S), it will change the outer radius, then scale down the whole torus until it goes back to the good outer radius, use the 3D cursor as a reference

I would go with the Curves, that way you can keep it all procedural.. at least that's how I would have done it. And just by moving the origin of the Bevel object you can switch between keeping outer diameter, keeping inner diameter, growing upwards, growing downwards....

Just a slight variation on @moonboots' "A" answer..

Create 2 Tori, using the 'Exterior / Interior' creation settiings, varying the 'Interior' radius.
Decide one of them is your master torus, select both, with the master active.

In the master's Data tab, Shape Keys panel, using the dropdown menu from the down-chevron on the right of the panel, hit 'Join as Shapes'

Now, with the shape-key selected in the panel,  by sliding the newly created 'Value' field below the panel, you can animate between the inner radii.


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Location for mapping node in percentage
friends.
Is there any way to change the location of a gradient texture with "mapping node" using distance in percentage instead of distance in meters?
For example, I need the gradient texture to be always in the center of the object (x and y coordinates). Even when the array modifier is applied to the object. And this material is used by several objects of different sizes.
Something like on this picture:
NOW

MUST BE

Additional info:

Eevee
NOT as a postprocessing effect.

Have you tried the Generated coordinates ?

yes :) I tried many other things

Maybe if you used geometry nodes instead of an array modifier, and then you could use a python driver to control the material…

There are flaws with my method, I'll try again.

I find that this is possible given certain constraints.
If you are not using the Array Modifier to scale the object.
AND
If your object's coordinates do not intersect each other over the axis you're wanting to use.
For example, in my test scene I have an array of 5 cubes that do not share any space on any axis of the coordinate grid.

This way we can make it repeat without overwriting a portion of the previous object.  You only need to clear the object on the axis you want to use for the shader.
I found a pretty robust way to do this is to use an Object Offset for the Array Modifier.

We can start with two Texture Coordinate nodes to reference both the Cube and the Empty, and Subtract their Object Coordinates.  We then need to Vector Math -> Divide this result by 2 in theory, but in practice it's better to divide by some value slightly larger than 2. I used 2.0001 which is truncated to 2.000 in the UI, but it's important to know because it solves some floating point precision stuff that can pop up.

And it generates this intense white color, which is at first glance not very useful to us, but now we can use either the Vector Math -> Modulo OR Wrap node to make the Cube's Generated Coordinates repeat over the distance between the Cube and the Empty on each axis.  Maybe someone with an advanced math degree can take this even further.

SO... to answer the actual question, finally, it's all of that, and then your subtract operation.

Different sizes is a different beast.


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Geometry nodes - separate collection objects by length
I want the objects in the collection to be distributed according to their length along one of the axes. Is there any way to get this information (y-axis length) about the objects in the collection?
Something like this:

Currently the "Collection" instancing is a bit limited, you can't control the relative weight of each member of the collection so it's next to impossible to reliably instance every member of a collection at least once, nor exactly once before the other ones repeat. You also can't extract how many objects there is in a given collection to set the number of point instancers accordingly. In the meantime this would be achieved somewhat easily in Animation Nodes if you're open to that

@Gorgious: I think it is possible...i have an idea....i try ;)

@Chris I would be glad to be wrong :)

ah damn...bounding box is just for whole geometry, not for point instance :( my idea has been blown away...

can we get the height/length somehow by gn?

or maximum of any axis from attribute (one number)?

One would need to access an instanced object's properties after it has been instanced, which is not possible in GN right now afaik.

if you are open for AN solution, let us know...then we can help ;)


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Snack package seals animation with hooks
I have the following model

What I'm trying to do is to make an animation where the top seal opens from one side to another, like when you open a snack package.
What I've tried so far is with hooks, I've added one hook from one side but when I move the hook it doesn't move the seal like a curve.

Any ideas? Also Is this the best way of achieving that animation with hooks? Thank you

hello, you could use bendy bones, the hard part will rather be how will you make the rip effect

@moonboots Thank you for the comment. I never used bendy bones, I've tried to do the curve with SimpleDeform but it doesn't look much realistic https://i.imgur.com/spoiZWW.gif

put some bones all along and segment them so that when you animate you'll have something rather round?

could you please show what are the different steps of the tearing? it will help to find the best rigging solution

@moonboots the following animation resembles exactly of what I'm trying to achieve https://i.imgur.com/vUT2mvW.mp4. Thank you.

You could use bendy bones:
Create your armature, parent the package With Empty Groups, then assign the vertices to the groups they are supposed to be part of:

Display your armature as bendy bones, CtrlAltS to shrink the bone thickness in Edit mode:

Select each bone in Edit mode and segment them:

Animate:


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Can't UV unwrap a simple bag
Hi I'm new to blender world. I have the following model which I'm trying to UV Unwrapping with Cylinder Protection.

I think I've placed my seems correctly but I get following UV Image.

Thanks!

You will need a seam running the length of it vertically somewhere (I suggest one of the sides)

Christopher is right. Also I would suggest you use the 'unwrap' instead of the cylinder projection. Since the bag seems kinda 'flattened' and not very cylindrical, the cylinder projection will end up creating more distortion.

@ChristopherBennett Thanks for the reply. I've included a seem on one of the sides. Here the UV Image https://i.imgur.com/DUytxog.png What do you think?

It looks a lot better, but those diagonals should probably be dealt with. If you need to find "offending faces" you can enable UV Sync Selection (button is in top left of UV editor - looks like 2 arrows pointing in opposite directions on an angle) - when you are in face select mode, you can select a face on the UV map and see where it corresponds on your mesh. It can make seam placement easier to visualize in many situations.

You don't need all the horizontal seams you created. Just to one seam on the top and one on the bottom, and a vertical one on the side, then press U and "unwrap". it will open the bag neatly and in only one UV island.

@AlexandreMarcati Thanks for the reply. To be honest I don't know what I'm doing wrong. UV Image with 3 seems https://i.imgur.com/t6Xcs3v.png

Mark seams on top and bottom and a vertical seam on the side:

Then go to UV editing and select all faces, then press U and "Unwrap". Result:

You can also use the cylinder projection, it results in straighter edges in the UVs, but it also distorts the proportions of the faces in relation to each other (the side faces end up wider and front and back faces end up narrower in relation to each other). Just make sure to be in front orthographic view when you do the cylinder projection.

I think I've done with cylinder projection it https://i.imgur.com/xwSnyv8.png. For some reason it doesn't work with "Unwrap". Thank you so much!

Looks great. Glad to help!


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How to add creases to flow wrapped package
I have the following model:

I want to add some creases to the mesh to make it look like metallic flow wrapped package like the following

What is the best way to achieve that look? I've tried cloth simulation but it creates too many creases. I want some creases on some areas.
Thank you

have you tried a bit of sculpt?

@moonboots Thank you for the reply. Yes but it doesn't look natural. I'm not sure If I'm doing it right. Which brush should I try ?

the default one (Draw)? and Ctrl to invert its effect. Also the Crease one

You can also try turning up the cloth settings so it’s closer to metal.

You could try in Sculpt mode with the Cloth brush (not easy to handle imho).
You could also use the Cloth > Pressure feature, first create a vertex group that you'll pin:

Then give your object a CLoth simulation with Pressure (more than 0), play the animation, it's going to inflate except where you've pinned:

At the end you can use the Cloth Filter brush > Pinch option to get that:

You could also project a aluminium-like image texture on your pack:

Then subdivide your object and give it a bit of volume with the sculpt Draw brush for example (also Draw Sharp and Crease), Ctrl to invert the effect, Shift to smooth:

Thank you for the solution. I've tried it today but it didn't work. Here is my result: https://i.imgur.com/jU5SFhV.png. What settings did you used on the example above?

maybe increase the pressure? If it still doesn't work please share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/

Thank you for the prompt reply. It breaks after increasing slightly the pressure. https://pasteall.org/blend/99c5facc9b1d4e1fb338613f071e1100

try this: Add a Subdivision Surface above the Cloh modifier (Level 2), Put the Field Weights > Gravity at 0, Increase the Pressure value, choose the group you’ve created under Shape > Pin Group, choose another setup like for example Cotton (top dropdown menu of the Cloth panel). Also maybe apply the scale.


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Problem with subdivision modifier
So im was modeling a car front, but then i noticed that there is some smooth edge what i dont want. How to fix it?

Add 2 edge loops in order to sharpen:

You can either add support edges like the other person suggested, or you can use edge creases. Select those two corner edges, go to edge > edge crease and ramp it up to the maximum.
Edit: I've just noticed the car part has thickness. If you smooth the mesh after the extrusion into 3d, you need to crease all 5 corner edges, just a heads up. And if you crease before extrusion into 3d you actually need to crease the two edges inside the mesh pointing into the corner, not the external edges.

to fix your problem you can simply add an edge loop to sharpen the smooth edges please follow these instruction
like this
the image shown is a n example of a hard surface model being smoothened with a subdivision surface modifier
Notice how the edges are so circular?

so you should add an edge loop by pressing control+R on your keyboard.Then you would find an extra edge on your mesh the push it down to your edge which is soft and circular.

something like this

in your case you should add the edge loops here
Hope this helped


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Blender 2.93 start error 87
Downloaded and installed Blender 2.93. Rebooted and tried to start Blender but was given the message, "LoadLibrary failed with error 87: the parameter is incorrect. Blender launch failed. Any solutions?

Try updating your graphics drivers - I'm 90% sure this will fix it.

drivers are current and latest.

Strange... I believe you - still, everything I can find related to that error message, not only with blender, but other softwares as well (such as AutoCAD and 3DBuilder) all describe the problem being related to an incorrect driver.  https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/AutoCAD-startup-error-load-liabrary-failed-with-error-87.html - AND - https://blenderartists.org/t/startup-problem/1241284/5

I know. That was what my online search found also. I'm at a loss at this point.

Apparently the error is Windows generated, and not blender generated, if that helps narrow it down at all - Although probably not :(

2.93 updated the version of python used by blender.  given that it's not a driver issue, I would take a look at the python install to see if something is wrong there.

I have no idea how to see if the python install was at fault. And if it was, i have no idea how to fix that other than to uninstall and then reinstall.

If reinstalling doesn't help and you can't fix the cause of the issue on Windows side, I would suggest you try the portable version (*.zip) https://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.93/


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Is pooling vram with Nvidia NV-Link actually possible?
I'm trying to find out if pooling VRAM between multiple cards is actually possible--I've received conflicting information.
In a recent chat with NVidia tech support about my Quadro RTX 5000, I was told there is no way for me to pool vram with multiple cards.
However the Blender 2.9 User Guide says this:

Distribute Memory Across Devices
Allocates resources across multiple GPUs rather than duplicating data,
effectively freeing up space for larger scenes. Note that in order for
this option to be available, the GPUs must be connected together with
a high bandwidth communication protocol. Currently only NVLink on
Nvidia GPUs is supported.

Specifically, I'd love to pool VRAM while using Optix GPU rendering with Cycles. I would consider purchasing another Quadro RTX if I know for sure that it works.
Does anyone have definitive information on this?

This differential for this feature is D7426. You may want to ask Patrick Mours or Brecht van Lommel on Blender Chat or DevTalk if it would work for your intended use case.

TLDR: it is possible; Blender team should know better, as well as tech people at Nvidia.
The ability to pool memory depends on the implementation of the software using it for Geforce cards, and I understood that it can be automatic (I understand managed by the driver) with profesionnal display cards ie., Quadro (generations before Ampere), and later RTX A6000. For the non display professional/enterprise cards (A100, in DGX Station A100, DGX A100), it happens with a multiway nvlink.
Cards however must be of the same generation, The NVlink is updated from generation to generation and is not backward/forward compatible.
Test with Turing generation Geforce
Memory pooling works with Turing generation Geforce cards (2080, 2080Ti, Titan RTX), in GNU/Linux and Windows 10.
reference: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/NVLink-on-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2080-2080-Ti-in-Windows-10-1253/
Comments on cuda 11.2 and pooled memory: Stream-ordered memory allocator
One of the highlights of CUDA 11.2 is the new stream-ordered CUDA memory allocator. This feature enables applications to order memory allocation and deallocation with other work launched into a CUDA stream such as kernel launches and asynchronous copies. This improves application performance by taking advantage of stream-ordering semantics to reuse memory allocations, using and managing memory pools to avoid expensive calls into the OS. The new asynchronous memory allocation and free API actions allow you to manage memory use as part of your application’s CUDA workflow. For many applications, this reduces the need for custom memory management abstractions, and makes it easier to create high-performance custom memory management for applications that need it. Moreover, this feature makes it easier to share memory pools across entities within an application.
cudaMallocAsync(&ptr, size, stream); // Allocates physical memory
kernel<<<...,stream>>>(ptr);
cudaFreeAsync(ptr, stream);          // releases memory back into a pool
cudaMallocAsync(&ptr, size, stream); // Reuses previously freed pointer
kernel<<<...,stream>>>(ptr);
cudaFreeAsync(ptr, stream);          // releases memory back into a pool
....                                 // Executes other work in the stream

As shown in this example, CUDA 11.2 introduces new stream-ordered versions of cudaMalloc and cudaFree—called cudaMallocAsync and cudaFreeAsync—which take a stream as an additional argument. The first call to cudaMallocAsync in the example allocates memory from the OS, but the subsequent call to cudaFreeAsync does not free it back to the OS. Instead, the memory is stored in a pool maintained by the CUDA driver, which allows the second call to cudaMallocAsync to reuse the memory previously freed, if it is of sufficient size.
reference: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/enhancing-memory-allocation-with-new-cuda-11-2-features/


text:
Make two objects out of two pieces separated by boolean difference modifier, in python script
How can I have two separate parts of a cut object with Boolean difference modifier in python code script?
My simple code
import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

name1="face-1"
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location = (0, 0, 1))
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(4, 4, 0.1))
face1 = bpy.context.object

face1.name = name1

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location = (0, 0, 0))
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(2, 2, 2))
cube1 = bpy.context.object
solidname='Solid-0'
cube1.name = solidname

mod1 = cube1.modifiers.new("One1", type='BOOLEAN')
mod1.operation = 'DIFFERENCE'

mod1.object = face1
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA', modifier=mod1.name)

scene.update()
cube1.data = cube1.to_mesh(scene, True, 'PREVIEW')

scene.update()

Have a look here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5508/how-can-i-separate-a-single-object-file-into-multiple-objects-based-on-closed-ge or here https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/75332/how-to-find-the-number-of-loose-parts-with-blenders-python-api/75384#75384 for some other calculation about 'loose parts'.

Thank you very much Lemon.


text:
Custom splash screen
I want to create a custom splash screen in Blender 3.1.
I have created an application template in the Blender.app contents, where all the other templates go. I can access the template in Blender, but what I would like to do is make it load by default.
Is this even possible on a Mac?

The question referenced in the "duplicate" question is for blender 2.67, all the links are dead, and the suggestions don't work. I am using blender 3.0 and 3.1 on a PC, and there is no "splash.png" in my datafiles folder, or anywhere in the blender folder for that matter (even with hidden files enabled). Please re-open so we can get an answer. Suggestions are unclear if building a custom version of blender from scratch is necessary, or how to do it with newer versions.

There is no official support for changing a splash screen, although there is a feature request on Right-CLick Select.
You can't simply replace the splash screen but you can create an Application Template that has a custom splash screen.  These steps are taken from this tutorial on YouTube:

Create a new folder in PATH_TO_BLENDER_INSTALLATION/version/scripts/startup/bl_app_template_system

copy your startup files from your startup area (on Windows AppData/Roaming/Blender Foundation/Blender/VERSION/config; someone else will have to verify OSX) to the folder you just created.

add the two png files that you want for your splash screen (splash.png and splash_2x.png) to the template folder you created in the first step.

setup a shortcut (windows) or alias (your favorite shell) to start blender using the application template you just created.  The command is blender --log --app-template TEMPLATE_NAME

Anytime you use the shortcut (or alias) you'll have a setup with your new splash screen.
NOTE: "splash.png" must be spelled that way and must be a 1000x500 png file.

Very helpful! Thank you.

@ChristopherBennett  You're welcome.  Thanks for getting the question reopened.


text:
Double layered shrinkwrap onto a sphere

I want to have this character's eyes shrink-wrapped to their head, and for the pupils to be shrink-wrapped onto the eyes, however, every time I try this, the pupils end up looking like this image.

Does anyone know what I can do to make the pupils keep their circular shape while being able to move them around?

Keeping the existing circular shape, on what you have?  Change your shrinkwrap modifier from Nearest Surface Point to Project, enable both negative and positive directions, change snap to Outside Surface or Above Surface, and set the axis to Y (assuming local axes for the object that agree with world axes.)  Further problems, people would want a file to troubleshoot.

Thanks so much!


text:
Forward Ray Tracing in Blender?
In regards to accurate ray tracing in Blender, I want to find (ideally open source) software that can accurately simulate reflection of focused laser light from a metallic surface, using forward ray tracing, as part of my research. In particular, I would like to accurately simulate caustics. Is this possible in Blender using Cycles? Or do I have to use a different rendering engine?
Thanks in advance

The simple answer is: no, it's not the best for simulating what you have in mind, and it uses backward ray tracing, not forward ray tracing.

See https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/91223/29586 and related answers. The linked one is using OSL to produce a render based on the reflective caustics. However, the 'accepted' answer is using Luxrender and could provide useful information.

Check out https://luxcorerender.org/
It's much better suited than Cycles when it comes to caustics and realistic light behavior. Also, it's open source and has got a rather neat blender exporter, so you should be able to use it without too much hassle!


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Plotting multiple, separate, closed Bezier objects from dataset of xyz coordinates
I am new to blender and am using python within blender to do the following:

Read in list of coordinate data for bezier curve objects - DONE
For each unique object within the dataset, take that objects multiple xyz coordinates and plot a connected closed bezier curve from it. - NOT DONE

My Code for Point 2 is shown below:
for i in unique_plotables:
# Creating CurveData
    curveData = bpy.data.curves.new('Slice Object %s' %(i), type='CURVE')
    curveData.dimensions = '3D'
    curveData.resolution_u = 20
# Subsetting my dataset of xyz coords to only coords belonging to desired object
# When the blender_id variable in my dataset = the unique_plotable value the loop is on
    df_object = object3_df[object3_df['blender_id']==i]
# Dropping variables not needed from dataset
    df_object = df_object.drop(['blender_id'], axis = 1)
# Remaining variables left in dataset include x_coord, y_coord, z_coord
# Convert this to a array
    coords = df_object.to_numpy()
# Create new spline for CurveData of Bezier type
    bez = curveData.splines.new('BEZIER')
# Add a number of bezier_points equal to the number of coordinates we have
    count = len(coords)
# Add this many points to the Bez spline
    bez.bezier_points.add(count-1)
    bezier_points_range = range(count)
    bez_points = bez.bezier_points
# For each point in the bezier points, make the .co for the point be equal to the vectorized version of coordinates when the index of coordinates is equal to the bezier point number.
    for j in bezier_points_range:
        bez_point = bez_points[j]
        coord = coords[j]
        bez_point.co = Vector(coord)
# Create the object and link it to the scene
    od = bpy.data.objects.new('Slice Object %s' %(i), curveData)
    od.location=(0,0,0)
    od.data.resolution_u=20
    od.data.bevel_resolution=20
    #od.data.fill_mode = 'FULL'
    od.data.bevel_depth=0.1
    bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(od)

In my test data, there are 4 variables: x_coord, y_coord, z_coord, and blender_id.  There is one blender_id thus one unique plotable object with 406 rows of x,y,z coordinates. So imagine this loop firing once and making one object with 406 points
When I run this code, it executes fine, but the resulting image in my active screen appears to show each point of the bezier spline not connecting to the previous or next, but rather, leading in a straight line back to 0,0,0
What I would like: Each point to connect to the next and prior point, not extending back to the 0,0,0.
Example image:

I have hand drawn in the red line indicating what I am trying to have done, and you can hopefully see that instead of this, each point is separate and alone and extending back to 0,0,0
Resources I have checked with include the python blender API documentation,
this other post: Poly / Bezier curve from a list of coordinates and Creating curves in Python as well as this medium article https://behreajj.medium.com/scripting-curves-in-blender-with-python-c487097efd13 particularly this persons code snippets when they discuss closed bezier curves from data.
I am unfortunately unable to figure out what is wrong with my code and would appreciate assistance. If I am lacking in any required info please let me know and I apologize.

I found a fix to this I believe, credited to rfabbri on another post here (First link in my question)
Comment:
"For Bezier, the default (0,0,0) handles won't be adequate, you may want to set them to the points as well: .bezier_points[i].handle_left = .bezier_points[i].handle_right = .bezier_points[i].co"
So I added the last line you see here:
 for j in bezier_points_range:
        bez_point = bez_points[j]
        coord = coords[j]
        bez_point.co = Vector(coord)
        bez_point.handle_left=bez_point.handle_right = bez_point.co

And the resulting image appears to be what I am aiming for.


text:
import positions and orientation into a camera
hello I have a list of positions and orientations in the form of x y z, and rotX, rotY,rotZ
I have a script in my game that saves the position of my camera each frame and I need to play that back in a blender camera so I can do a render.
Also one thing, my game engine uses Y as height and I know blender doesn't.

What's your list format ? csv ?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/61605/import-a-csv-animation-path-using-animation-nodes https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/34018/python-script-that-reads-text-file-containing-coordinates-and-creates-a-path-cur/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/76535/create-model-from-xyz-data-points/76612 https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71458/how-to-read-a-csv-file-and-use-the-values-as-x-and-y-points-in-blender


text:
How to set multiple edge lengths to one measurement
I have a project im working on and every edge length is random. I would like to be able to enter a numerical value to set every edge to the same length. All edges are connected to vertices.
I tried using the "set edge length" tool but said it was not allowed on edges shared with vertices.
Blender 2.9

Hello, could you add a bit more info about your setup ? a screenshot would help too

Hi, I'm sorry I don't even know the "set edge length" tool. The only thing I can imagine is, when you set an edge length it gets scaled with its center as pivot point - which means, to make it longer the vertices move further apart or come closer to each other to make the edge shorter. But if you have to edges sharing one vertex, this one vertex had to move in opposite directions for scaling both edges, which is not possible. Or the tool must have an option to define the shared vertex as pivot point.


text:
Gopro footage 4:3 to 16:9 "smart stretch"
I have some gopro videos I would like to convert from 4:3 to 16:9.
Stretching uniformly or cropping is not a problem...but I would like to apply a non-linear stretch, with the lateral parts of the video more stretched than the center.
That's exaclty what is described in this video
https://youtu.be/e74d2nHBhyI?t=59
The "Hor Dyn" control applies the distortion only horizontally and allows for getting better results in the center of the videos.
I tried the lens distortion k1-k2-k3 parameters in VFX but they distort also in the vertical direction. Same as using a lens distortion node.
So I'm stuck.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Many thanks!
Matt

My first idea would be, if you can't do it in the Video Editor, maybe get the clip with "Images as Planes" import. If you then subdivide the plane you have to scale the UVs on the X axis with proportional editing, so that the outer parts get scaled more than the inner parts...

Elaborating on Gordon Brinkmann's suggestion, you can put your video as an image texture on a plane and then modify the coordinates e.g. using Vector Curves. Below, I've put two points on {0; 0}, {1; 1}, because those are the limits (beginning and end) of the UV coordinates, then a point on {0.5; 0.5}, as the middle isn't supposed to change, then two points between a middle and either of the limits: {0.25; 0.25}, {0.75; 0.75} and then adjust the Y value of those 2 last points to get stretching:

The animation is there to show changing Fac value is not equivalent to moving the points.
An alternative that's easier to adjust if you don't need the freedom of a curve, is to use to use the object coordinate -1..1, apply some mathematics (e.g. raise it to some power) and convert to the UV coordinate in the end:

It could work...I'll play a bit with it. Thanks a lot! :)

Yes, the second option was what I had in mind, only switched (the center stretched less than the lateral areas).

Negative exponent will do that: https://i.imgur.com/CQQItVH.gif

I can't manage to get the object coordinates to be -1, 1 and get a symmetric stretch. It should be something rather simple but I'm stuck...

@MattBrown you can use a setup like this to easily check the coordinates: https://i.imgur.com/YxmPZSn.gif if your coordinates are wider/shorter, e.g. -0.7...0.7 then just divide it by that number to convert to -1...1 range.


text:
How do I get an emission effect with a transparent BSDF material?
I have the following circle with rings which I've successfully made transparent for the gaps. However, I'm having trouble getting the blue parts to have an emission effect. I'm completely lost and have tried mixing the Transparent BSDF with an emission node but it's not working as expected

I've figured it out:

I've got to get the Color Ramp as a Fac to the Mix Shader
The emission and the transparent BSDF have to be both shaders

or like this as well, the colorramp going into emission is basically useless in my answer but I left it there anyway... it will have same result if you left it out

I'm not sure if you did this deliberately (since it seems you're quite new to this because this is a very basic material setup, no offense), but using the Color Ramp with blue and white color instead of black and white is not necessary (because the Emission shader is blue) and maybe even not what you want. Because the Fac input converts the color from the ramp into greyscale, which means your blue is some light grey with a value of something like 0.233, so the emissive part is almost 77% transparent (which isn't so obvious because of the high strength). If that's what you wanted, fine.

This is all you need:

Just use the same color ramp twice, use math node to control the emission strength and mix it in mixshader

I would eliminate the Color Ramp for the Emission shader because: first of all it's not necessary and for beginners it might give the impression it is needed for this to work properly. Secondly, if by accident the sliders are changed a little on one of the ramps this might e.g. result in an unwanted black opaque area where it's supposed to be transparent or emissive. Thirdly, but this is a minor negligible issue in this case: the more nodes are contributing to a material, the more time it needs to be rendered. But of course this makes no noticeable difference in this case.

The reason for that color ramp is due to me making it based on his question and I included it there even though it is not needed at all as I stated in the comment of his answer

Yeah, I read that - but even he figured out he doesn't need two color ramps. Maybe that's just me, I'm trying to give answers that teach how to do it simpler or better if there is a way to do it more efficient. Sorry, don't mean to be rude, I just don't understand why not point into a better direction instead of taking a detour only to keep the original.


text:
How do I create a reusable node geometry?
I'm primarily coming from Adobe After Effects and very commonly make animations with these infinitely repeating dashed lines that need to anchor to moving objects like in the video below:
https://youtu.be/qAUo089vdhc
I've created all the necessary models, however, I'm a bit lost as to the best way to create the animating lines. I think node geometries are my best bet. However, I'm curious, is there some sort of way to create a node geometry and save it for frequent reuse?

I think there are a lot of solutions possible.
Very simple one:

The instance is just a straight beveled curve.
Blender node trees have a 'group' feature. It allows graph code to be self contained and reused, much like functions and methods. The different trees you can select near the top of the panel all ac as node groups that can be called in an other tree.
Here we have the above example 'called' or used in its function form:

result:

simple animation:

This is brilliant!!

It is not …but thank you very much!!!

@Chris - I don't understand what I'm looking at here. In the second picture, I see a node named "NodeGroup". I don't see that name in the first picture. Assuming the group in the first picture was given that name, what then? Is it exported and saved somewhere in a library file, or is it accessed from whatever blend file it was created in? Is it then accessed using "File > Link" or "File > Append"? Even if it's being accessed from within the same file where it was created, how does one refer to it? Does it become an object listed in the Outliner?

@NewSites: you can make node groups out of selected nodes by e.g. menu "node -> make group". That's all i did for the nodes in the first image. You could "imagine" that it is a node group of the first image because of the same input and output names. So if you are a bit experienced in GN it should be clear.

@Chris - I'm a newbie, so sorry if I asked dumb questions. I was hoping from the title of the question to learn about how to make reusable nodes and how to reuse them. But I guess the question was actually about something more advanced and assumes I already know how to do that.

@NewSites: you don't have to apologize for being a newbie. But please ask "official" question - don't ask in comments because other people can't learn from your questions if you ask in comments. You may open as many questions as you like. You should also mention that you are a beginner in Blender so normally people will answer in more detail.


text:
How do I get particles to "grow" on or follow a surface (ex. below)
What's a good way to have particles grow and shape a surface like below?
https://vimeo.com/203757114
I imagine this was done in MAX or C4D.
Possibly with animation nodes? I have no idea here.
To me, seems like the emitter is the object and then use a Charge with the particles having a self effect of Force.
But that doesn't seem right. I guess my goals would be:

Learn how to get objects to stick to an object.
Learn how to get particles to "push" each other out of the way along said surface.
Change particle color over age (probably)

Molecular add-on. There are some tutorials and questions here.

Self Effect is the way to go I think. Charge is also a good idea but I don't think is will work correctly. Rather use a force field with strength falloff over distance. Then you could also use the force field on the mesh with the mesh affector option checked. Particles didn't change color over time, but rather had different colors depending on their birth time.

You could also try particle fluids instead of self effect. I think performance will be better.


text:
Traceback Error when i try to use Texture Atlas for a group of objects
In my current Model, I already have 4 texture pages and I am currently packing for the 5th one. I found some errors in the modelling. I had deleted some instances and tried to continue packing using texture atlas.
I forgot to delete the old group and create a new one instead because i had deleted some objects. So whenever I try to hit 'Start Manual Unwrap'. I get the following Error for the Texture Atlas Add-on.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Programs\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\uv_texture_atlas.py", line 224, in execute
    group_name=group.name, resolutionX=resX, resolutionY=resY)
  File "D:\Programs\Blender\2.79\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 189, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Error: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Programs\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\uv_texture_atlas.py", line 575, in execute
    tex.name = self.group_name
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'name'

location: D:\Programs\Blender\2.79\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py:189

location: <unknown location>:-1

I don't know how to fix the error, I have even tried appending objects in a new file. But it shoes the same error. I am using Blender 2.9.
Looking forward to your answers

The trace shows something like a "history" of what went wrong. Python uses "None" to describe nonexistent/null/empty things. The last line indicates that the program tried to read the "name" attribute of an object, but failed because it was a "None" object (which has no "name" because it contains no data). Looking on the previous line, "tex.name = ..." attempts to write data into the "name" portion of "tex". From the error we got, this indicates the variable "tex" has no data.

To fix the problem, you might need to create a texture that the script can find or use. If you are using Blender Render, it could be your objects are don't have textures assigned to them (I'm not too familiar with that engine though).


text:
Non-Metallic Surfaces are not receiving Roughness value
Its my first time using the Eevee render engine. I want to learn how to render some game ready 3d models in Eevee.
My issue is that if the surface has 0% metallic value it will have 100% roughness in blender.
This is my intended result from Marmoset Toolbag 3:

But this is the result I am getting in the LookDev mode in Blender 2.8:

This is my shader setup. Its pretty basic using the Principled BSDF:

And finally this is my export setting in Substance Painter:

I greatly appreciate any reply.
Thank You.

Your specularity is set to zero which means it will be a completely diffuse material. Adjusting that value should give you the desired look, unless there is something wrong with the textures.
Specularity set to zero:

Specularity set to one:

thnx, this seems to be the solution


text:
Point instances lose material after applying Geometry Node Modifier

I use geometry nodes (blender 2.93) to distribute cylinders on the cube (Point distribute, Point instance nodes are used)

I define materials if Materials Properties for cube (red color) and cylinder (blue color). On this stage everything is OK: red cube is covered with blue cylinders.

After it I create a sphere (green color) and define particle system for the sphere (render as object, object - Cube). I expect, that green sphere is covered with red cubes, which are covered with blue cylinders. But in reality green sphere is covered with red cubes. No cylinders.

The reasonable solution seems to me to apply geometry nodes modifier for cube. After it I see green sphere is covered with red cubes, red cubes are covered with red (not blue) cylinders.

So point instances lose their material after applying modifier.

Is this situation is expected?
How to keep material of point instances when using the object (cube) as particle?

I would be grateful for the answer :)

Applying the modifier loses information for two reasons :

Your cube doesn't have cylinder_mat (or whatever the blue material is called) in its material slots.
You cylinder object's material slots aren't setup in the right order.

Explanation :
When making the GN "real", it's all converted to one mesh. Every face has a material_index attribute which tells the object and renderer how to display it. If your cylinder object only has 1 material, all its faces will have a material index of 0 (first element). It will then naturally point to the first material slot in the cube object, which is cube_mat (red).
In order to keep the materials, you have to :

Add an empty slot in the cylinder material, and add the actual material as the 2nd slot. Make sure to apply the correct material to all faces.

Add this material to the 2nd slot of the cube.

Applying the modifier keeps the correct materials :

You should do this for every subsequent object / material you are adding. As long as the material slot(s) in the base object are the same as in the instancer object, the materials will be the same.
However on my build I didn't have trouble instancing the (Cube + Cylinders) object on another object, without applying the GN modifier. Make sure you are using the latest stable version, the behaviour might have changed recently.

Note :

This setup will destroy UVs. It's only good for materials that don't rely on them.
If you are to use a modifier or somehow modify the geometry after instancing, all links to materials will be lost. In that case the end of this answer might help : https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/231024/86891

It works. Thank you very much :)


text:
Simple bevel between two vertex, vertex not connected?
I am very new to blender, what i am trying to do is nice bevel on each corner (i menage to do only one side with glitch on the other)

What i noticed the corner on the right side looks like it is connected to the bottom

But the left one looks diffrent on selection (not connected to bottom vertex?):

I would appreciate an explanation what happens here, and how to fix it to make bevel on both sides.

are you sure that you don't have 2 overlapping vertices?

Since the edge is going up to the vertex, there obviously must be another vertex in the same location which connects to it. Hit A to select all, then M > Merge > By Distance and the two vertices should be merged into one.

@GordonBrinkmann it indeed solve the problem, thank you very much! Would you like to make it as separate answer so i can accept it?

Sure, you're welcome :)

Since the edge is going up to the vertex, there obviously must be another vertex in the same location which connects to it. Hit A to select all, then M > Merge > By Distance and the two vertices should be merged into one.


text:
Fluid go through container when it's moving
I'm having a problem. As you can see on the pictures, my liquid simulation passes through the glass when the glass is moving.
I tried to invert normals, to increase the surface thickness of the glass, which is 1.7 right now. I tried to increase the resolution but my slow computer crashes when th resolution is over 150.
Here is the link of the project : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SJrqjgY-hx5VYZCWBFuPyjOPrvSl9rqg/view?usp=sharing
I don't know why and I didn't find any answers on YouTube or here so if someone has any tips I would really appreciate ;)

I noticed your time scale is changed, but that may not have any effect here. I think your best shot maybe to increase substeps.

maybe free your data and bake again?
I baked your animation just with resolution 50 (and no other change) and i got:

Just changing a property is often not enough for the simulation to update. Often you have to bake the whole simulation again to see the change.

Hey ! thx a lot for your answer. That's weird last time I tried the simulation would not start with a low res number but yes that's working but the glass is filling up slowly I didn't know that the res number had an influence on the quantity of liquid baked. Thx a lot btw ;)

You are welcome. The higher the number the better the quality. I just put it down because I am impatient and it took too long….

oops sorry its my first time on the forum ;)

No problem. Thanks!!


text:
GLTF Export: All my objects are getting an animation after export
I am trying to export my model into a gltf file. It includes a simple walk cycle animation. My issue is that each and every object of my model gets a seperate animation track after export.
BEFORE EXPORT

AFTER EXPORT

Outliner to Show Heirarchy

Export Settings

How do I prevent the export from giving every object a seperate animation?
Thank you.

After a lack of response here, I posted the question to the Blender GLTF I/O github. So Julien Duroure, the lead maintainer of the addon had given me the solution.
The issue is that, in the export options. I set is as 'Limited to Selected Objects'. This causes all objects to have a baked animation.
So Julien had given me two solutions.

Don't use limits to selection
Use "Optimize Animation Size", that will remove animations that are constant (this was the case for my meshes)

In my case the 2nd option has worked fine. Cheers.


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How do I emit light from car backlight?
I have been following a tutorial for blender.I am using a 3d model I just download from the internet. However, I cannot seem to emit lights from my car backlight.
But the tutorial I am following has a nice light emission from the car.

How can I tweek a red light from my car? Can anyone guide me where I am missing out?

Mix an Emission shader with whatever you want, if you want a bit of glow, use the Bloom option, and if you need it to emit on its environment you need to add a Light > Point for example

It depends on what material the lights are set for. If it’s a Principled BSDF, your work is done. Just turn on the shaders emission strength, and/or change the emission color to red.

noob me here. Finally found where I went wrong. My render engine was Eevee so I switched it back to cycles.
So that's, Render Properties -> Render Engine -> Cycles
lights should be popping out now!


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How to properly use Cycles Light Groups?
Recently in Blender's new 3.2 updates, we got Light Groups, however, they are rather hard to use them without knowing what to do.
How do the new Cycles Light Groups work, and how to use them?

Note that Light Groups are only available for Cycles at the moment.
The 3.2 Cycles Release notes describe Light Groups thusly:

a type of pass that only contains lighting from a subset of light sources.
This can be used in order to e.g. modify the color and/or intensity of light sources in the compositor without re-rendering.

Here is one of many video tutorials, currently all about 3.2 alpha, but the release version isn't very different.
In summary:

There is a new property in the View Layer tab called Light Groups. Create new light groups there.

Lights have a new Object Property under Shading called Light Group.  You assign each light that you want in a light group to the new light group here.  You can bypass the first step by clicking the '+' button to create a new lightgroup, but there's a bug and the light isn't automatically assigned, so you have to assign it anyway.

Effectively, each light group is a Render Layer pass, that contains the lighting from the specified group. You use it in the compositor to modify the lighting. The easy example is changing color.

Here's a contrived example.  Suzanne is lit from

front with a blue area light, the sole light in the front group
back with a red area light, the sole light in the back group
sides two green area lights, both in the side group:

Here's a render:

Here's the compositor, showing only the side lighting:

One could mix the three lighting groups in the compositor, adjusting the color balance of each separately, for instance:

That is, the color group passes can be used in the compositor the same way any other pass could be.

Thanks a lot for the explanation!

@YousufChaudhry you're very welcome.  I suspect light groups are going to become very popular.


text:
How to make some Cotton Candy?
I want to make cotton candies like the reference image attached below. Since I need multiple cotton candies I also want the colour to vary as I duplicate them (just like the reference image, sometimes more green sometimes pinker) I want to achieve the same shape as the candies in the image, the same texture, and the same level of detail. Is this possible in Blender?
I've been searching tutorials and websites, but no luck. It's always either cotton or clouds. No realistic-looking cotton candy tutorials. The shape, the materials, and the textures are a little complex, so I don't understand them.
Also, I want the colour gradient to vary as I duplicate the object as shown in the multiple cotton candies in the image.

Hello, do you have a bigger picture of the same material?

I thinks yes let me post it

@moonboots I edited it to be bigger

The prior closed question is at https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/263728/15795

@ChaudhryYousuf Check out https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions in case you have another closed question down the road.

Maybe put the Specular at 0, give a grainy color with a Noise Texture, mix a pink area with a blue area, also a bit of Subsurface Scattering, and some bumps:

And also use a Displace modifier in order to give real bumps to your cotton:

If you use a particle system to make hair, you need to remove the Subsurface Scattering from the material or choose another material for the hair.
If you want to duplicate your object but want to make sure that the material will appear slightly different on each instance, create an empty and select it at the bottom of the Texture Coordinate node, now it's the empty that will determine the location, rotation and scale of the material:

Shouldn't it have some strands like in the image?

Should the strands be added using particles?

And also, using this material node setup, the size/location of the gradient doesn't vary when I duplicate it, how should I do that (like in the image)

it was not clear if there was hair but yes you can create a particle system

And how should I randomize the gradient as the object duplicates?

At the bottom of the Texture Coordinate, you can choose an empty that will determine the location of the textures you'll use, so that each object will have a different texture

@moonboots Thanks a lot!

@Chris I actually just wanted to know how to duplicate the candy in the image and how to make the gradient vary as stated in the question... I got an answer so I guess that's it...:) And the problem making it was that I don't know how to make it ;)

@Chris the comment section is for clarification of a given answer, to express problems with a given answer or discuss techniques used in that answer. From the docs: 'Use comments to ask for more information or clarify a question or answer.' Its explicitly stated not to use the comment section just to thank for an answer.

i know the comments are not for politeness and most of the people here aren't polite. But i don't care about some rules because - this is just my opinion - this is why a lot of people are struggling with this kind of forum here. Just my opinion. But i am for sure not the only one who is not fan of the rules here....but thank you very much for repeating the rules here! I am so happy you know the rules!

Hopefully you're not looking to simulate the process of actually making cotton candy from scratch in the spinning machine - that would be some advanced stuff.  I have some ideas floating around for how you'd pull it off (some kind of cloth simulation maybe?), but it would be a lot more work...

@Chris as time goes on, your politeness is getting more and more aggressive

I know - that’s why i am not so active here anymore and I think this forum will die anyway - because of the annoying people here and the unfair moderators. But then it‘s not my problem anymore…♂there are a few nice one here -but unfortunately the annoying people will be saved by moderators. They can write wrong things, comment everything and annoy everyone. Nothing happens. But yeah…that’s life. There are much better forums than this is…fortunately.

And thankfulness isn’t wanted here…I know. But know-it-Alls are loved here.

@MarkusvonBroady check here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&filter=all every third isn't active anymore....and this has reasons, i am sure!

i am just waiting now for my next punishment by the "great" moderators....now they can lock me for 3 month for saying the truth! :D and i don't even care....


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how to modify driver value using python? in compositor
I want to change sunbeam position according to calculated camera transform, sun location. Because my scene is animated, I want to make sunbeam position to according to that information.
In driver, I noticed that's impossible. because there's no driver function like vector calculation; So, I decided to calculate inside of Python.
But I'm not familiar with scripting, I don't know how to connect with drivers and calculate those information.

Hi. This question was put on hold because as it stands it is not answerable for lack of essential details to understand the issue. Remember only you have access to your scene, so unless you describe it thoroughly only you know your exact setup, settings and what steps you took to arrive where your are now. Please describe in detail what your issue is, possibly supported by some accompanying screenshots with the [edit] button above. Don't post a comment or ask a new question, editing will automatically put it up for review so it can be reopened.


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blender UI locking up
I am using blender 2.93.107.0 to model a chess set and board.  I added a panel to use as a board and applied materials.  Now, it locks up almost immediately after opening the blend file.  I have noticed that:

it doesn't lock up until I try to "do something".  Like if I rotate an object it will start to rotate it but then freeze.

it seems the issue could be with the panel and, perhaps more specifically, the material as it wasn't doing it before.

Why this is happening or how I can troubleshoot?
I deleted the plane and created a new one without a material.  It hasn't crashed yet.
Blend file

2.93 LTS is on version 7 now (2.93.7) so it might be worth updating before going any further, but you can upload your file here: https://pasteall.org/blend/ . Don't forget to edit your question and add the link to the file.

I was actually using version 3 but when it had this error I downloaded 2.93 just to see if it would happen there as well.  So, yes, it is happening in both environments.

Your downloaded file is fine here both in 2.93 and 3.0 although it doesn't have the checkerboard material for the board of course so I've no idea what caused that.


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Why are some of my wheels bugging out in rendered view?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-pPjlI2Z0z9pbouFgKwVyVrHNFtBp-np/view?usp=sharing
This is what I'm getting on 3/4 wheels on my model in rendered view.

This is what its supposed to look like in viewport shading

I don't know where I've gone wrong with this.

don't know why my pic descriptions didn't post. The top pic is rendered view (cycles) and the bottom is viewport shading and how it was origianlly textured

I managed to figure it out. I re-done the problem face of the wheel and found overlapping geometry, so presume that was the problem as all fixed now!


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The circle for proportional editing shows up around the cursor instead of the vertices I'm selecting. Any ideas as to what could be happening?
So something happened to the file I'm working on where the circle for proportional editing is snapped to the cursor rather than the selection. It's only specific to this file as well and I'm not familiar enough to know if I accidentally hit some key to make this happen. Does anyone know of a possible accident on my part or is there something wrong with the file itself?

You've chosen the 3D cursor as Transform Pivot Point, so you probably need to choose another option like Median Point:


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I am getting incomplete loops with broken faces/vertices
I am trying to Alt + RMB select a couple of loops but certain faces or their vertices don't get selected for some reason so the loop is left incomplete. Clicking Alt + RMB on them also does nothing. I tried deleting the faces and creating new ones but that didn't fix the problem. I'm new to Blender so there might be something I'm missing. Thanks in advance!

The face you're showing is an ngon, it has more than 4 vertices, so Blender doesn't know what edge it is supposed to cut or select next:

You can make it a quad this way (for example):


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Bevel (edge) only considering one surface

While beveling the first and third edges from the left, only one surface is being considered. Tried applying scale using ctrl+a, still not working

hello could you please share this part of your object so that we can give a try? https://pasteall.org/blend/

It looks as if there are disconnected/overlapping faces near the top of that image, but as moonboots says we need to see the blend file to be sure.


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OpenGL 3D ViewPort frame capture with transparency (no checkered pattern)
I attempt to use Blender 2.82 (currently I cannot change version), to render a robot hand holding an object, so that the hand creates an occlusion on the object, but the hand itself should not be visible in the final image, only the object. See attached screenshot.
From the resulting OpenGL/Eevee render in a 2nd Blender window with a 3D viewport, I capture depth and color information of the object, and I need the alpha channel to be saved as well (where there is background or the occlusions).
Side note not relevant to the question: the hand is animated live using an update via a python script reading ROS information, and the OpenGL captured render is sent back to ROS (similar to what the past Morse did with BGE).
I achieved almost all my goals (although slow at 10 Hz) and the scripts are available there for those interested.
However, I cannot get the alpha channel to be captured in the script. What happens is that the background is transparent in the viewport, one sees the checkered pattern, but the glReadPixels always captures alpha = 255 (or 1 in Blender terms) while the color are the color of the checkered pattern (which is confusing as the image in ROS looked to have transparent when in fact it has just the Blender checkered pattern instead).
data: [51, 51, 51, 255, 52, 52, 52, 255, 52, 52, 52, 255, 52, 52, 52, 255, 52, 52, 52, 255, (...) ]

instead of being at least this way
data: [51, 51, 51, 0, 52, 52, 52, 0, 52, 52, 52, 0, 52, 52, 52, 0, 52, 52, 52, 0, (...) ]

If I save the Viewport Render Image to png, I get the alpha channel saved and no checkered pattern.
To prepare these scripts I followed several useful threads and ended with this one from which I extracted what I needed and not doing GPU Rendering as it was slower (double rendering the scene) or had issues with my update of the posture.
Workbench render did not permit to do the same transparency result, and Cycles was way too slow for my needs.
I searched several threads regarding the checkered pattern and the closest I found tried to do an homogeneous checkered pattern which won't help me (unless I make it a chroma-key green or something to later retrieve the alpha from chromakey, but this is hacky)
All other alpha/transparency threads are related to getting it to work at all in the viewport, which I already have.
I also tried several options on which buffer to read from bgl.glReadBuffer GL_BACK or GL_FRAMEBUFFER, etc... or to which to attach to using  bgl.glBindBuffer
I tried to use a hold_out shader for the World surface, which did not help.
I tried look for all possible things related to transparency and alpha that I could find (button/options/menus) but in the end it seems OpenGL captures the viewport final render (with checkered pattern) and not the rendered image before display.
I would be glad to get some ideas where to look at, if this is possible at all from bpy and bgl without going to saving a png from bpy as this would be even slower than 10 Hz I achieve now (for depth and color).
thanks
Here is the screenshot of what I managed to get, image is seen in an external display (ROS) but the checkered pattern IS color info, NOT the external display showing where there is alpha using its own checkered pattern.

For people facing this issue, I should say it is solved since 2.83, version that is also okay for my scripts.
I found that out while trying a chroma-key hacky work-around and realizing the green was not a uniform rgb(0,255,0) but some rgb(1,255,1).
It turns out user dither settings in post-processing was not considered for OpenGL live rendering in the viewport (always set to 1.0 in 2.82 see this ) and only set to user settings for png image saving.
Then I found that starting from 2.83lts the user dither setting was taken into account in OpenGL live rendering and also the alpha values were now captured by glReadPixels.
So I fell on an old bug that was uncovered before but solved inbetween by some other commit.

I should add that although glReadPixels captures the alpha channel properly in 2.83lts when using GL_RGBA, the depth capture GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT is not working (all zero) in 2.83 and was also reported to not work in 2.92  https://devtalk.blender.org/t/suggestions-feedback-on-the-extensions-for-the-gpu-module/17706/3


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Is there a way to enter a 12 digit number into a Shader node without Blender changing the value?
Whenever I enter the 11/12 digit number that I need for one of my projects into the value input of any (shader) node, Blender lowers the number.
For example, I've tried to input the number '12345678910', an 11 digit number and gotten '12345678848' instead. I know that Blender often rounds and hides the displayed numbers sometimes, but given that the number is completely different, I'm not sure that's the case.
If it is a bug, then it's been there for a while. I checked and it was present in Blender 2.81 as well. I've also replicated the issue on Mac and Windows systems. You can replicate it by inputting a 10 or higher digit number into a value node (in the Shader Editor).
I want to figure out what's going on and how to fix it. Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks!

Yep it's only possible to ensure 8 digits of precision in the floating point values. Maybe you can try to achieve it by other means, it seems like an oddly high and yet precise number to work with. What were you trying to do ?

Thanks for the great answers @Gorgious and Gordon Brinkmann! Knowing that there's no way to get around this, I'll just stick to my current method.
I'm making a barcode shader, and instead of someone inputting 12 digits of values (https://imgur.com/a/X00oY78) in different inputs, I wanted them to just put be able to put it all in 1 input.
I then had the issue described above and adapted to a system where they could input the first and last 6 digits instead, and that's what I think I'll keep using. (https://imgur.com/a/tvnTNs1)
Thanks, everyone!

As far as I know, it is not a bug and thanks to @Gordon's comment, I dig up a bit more in the subject and figured out that it's actually more complicated that what I thought it was.
What is happening here is, as @Gordon and @Gorgeous said, a Floating point precision problem.
Float numbers are stored as bits with 3 parts : the sign bit, the exponent bits and the mantissa bits. The mantissa bits (sometimes it can be called a sinificand) are the ones that give the actual precision to the number while the exponent bits tell how big the number is. Basically, the bigger the exponent is the lower the precision is going to be.
It's explained by this chart

which I took from this page.
The second column indicates the range of the represented number and the 4th column gives the amount of precision you'll get if you represent that number as a float, if the difference between two numbers is less than the number in that column then they will be considered to be the same.
You can have an exact precision for whole numbers up to $16777216$ (which is $2^{24}$) but if you go beyond that, whole numbers will not be represented accurately anymore. You can try typing 16777217 for example and you'll see that it'll get "round down" to 16777216.
And contrarily to the previous answer I wrote 12345678910 is not the larger number Blender can handle, it can go as far as 340282346638528859811704183484516925440 (it will be considered as inf) but as explained earlier, accuracy will suffer a lot at that range.

Well, although I think your answer goes into the right direction, it is simply not correct that 12345678848 is the maximum it can handle. If I enter 99999999999 (11 times 9) it gives 99999997952 for example, which is a lot larger than 12345678848. Or enter 12 times 9, it gives you 999999995904.

You're right, my bad. My answer is misleading in this case, I will edit it to be more accurate. Sorry.

I think it's as @Gorgious and I said in the comments below the question, it's more a matter of floating point precision or something like that. Whereas the frame range limit to 1048574 seems to be an actual maximum that cannot be exceeded.

Yes it's a floating point precision problem. I'm reading an article on it right at the moment. It's actually pretty interesting.

It is, but my Computer Science studies are many many years ago and I don't remember everything without looking it up ;)

Well, thank you for the precision. It was very informative.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


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Cube going through thin part of mesh in rigid body simulation
I'm trying to drop two "ice cubes" into a cup, so I set everything to rigid body and let gravity do the rest. However, the cubes are going through part (the thin part) of the mesh, yet colliding with the other.
Any ideas? Here's the file

Changing Source type to Base in the cup fixes the issue

So the cubes kept going through for me when I changed it to be so I ended up just reducing the height from which they fell and using base and that seemed to fix it


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Why is OptiX using so much CPU instead of GPU?
I'm rendering an animation & chose OptiX since I have an RTX 2060 for my GPU. I also clicked on my CPU since I thought "Hybrid rendering is allowed so it must be faster" (I'm new to Blender).
However, when rendering, I notice that Blender is using a lot more of my CPU than GPU, even though my impression would be that using the GPU is faster.
Any clues as to why this could be? Is it a feature?
Thank you!

Task manager reports gpu 3d rasterization engine usage instead of CUDA or RT core usage by default

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/116486/110840


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Mesh requirements for Mantaflow effector?
I'm having trouble being able to make a mesh to use as an effector with a fluid simulation. No matter the shape I make (cylinder, cube or sphere with the top off and a solidify modifier applied to it), the fluid seems to, in one way or another, go through it.
All transformations were applied and normals were recalculated so, I'm wondering: what are the requirements for a mesh that will act as a receptacle (like a cup or a bucket), in order for it to actually act as an effector?
Does it need to maybe have a certain thickness (maybe in relation to the voxel size?), do its faces all need to be quads, or is there something I'm missing here?

Maybe you "just" added the effector object. But Mantaflow does not recalculate your simulation because of this. To force a recalculation, just change e.g. your resolution by 1. This should help. If this doesn't help, please provide a simple example blend file and we will check it out.

That only works in Replay mode.  In Modular, or All, you need to free the bake and redo it.

you are right. Just for replay. But because of his "trouble" i assumed he is a beginner and didn't change that.

Hey @Chris, I made a quick blender file example - I'm facing the same issue here, where the fluid will simply go through my closed mesh.
Thanks so much :)


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Fluid causing ripples against smooth glass surface
I'm trying to achieve a "smooth" pour of liquid into this glass. However, after a while of tinkering (I'm a beginner), the fluid just won't be smooth against the glass: it keeps showing these odd ripples, even though the mesh is technically smooth.
You can see a final render here
I'll also attach the blender file - maybe somebody understands the science of this better than I do.
P.S. I've tried solving it by using a boolean operation but this results in weird artifacts coming up that don't look too good.

did you try to increase the resolution?

I've taken it as high as 128 @Chris


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How to write a script to add a button to the header of the 3D View?
I am trying to learn how to script in blender and also the basics of creating addons. Most beginner tutorials show how to make menus in the N panel. But I really want to know how to make menus in the header of the 3D View.

I tried to write something myself but it doesnt work at all.
import bpy

class Custom(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_label= "Custom Menu"
    bl_idname = "PT_Custom"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'HEADER'

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text= "Add an object", icon= 'CUBE')
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add", icon= 'CUBE')
        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add", icon= 'SPHERE')
        row.operator("object.text_add")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(Custom)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(Custom)

if __name__ == "__main__":
   register()

Looking forwards to your replies.

Cloud you refer Text Editor > Templates > ui_menu.py. However use VIEW3D_MT_editor_menus instead of INFO_HT_header.

Thanks mate this is what I was exactly what i was looking for. You can post this as an answer. Now i gonna try and find out to change the appearance of the menu button


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What is the order of importance of the pc components to be able to sculpt with really many polygons in blender?
I refer to RAM, GPU, CPU, I want to know which is the most important component to invest more in that than in the rest, I want to sculpt fluidly since that's more fun.

CPU(most important to frequency) and RAM(not that relative).
Yet, Blender is open source application, and it might not be a really good one to do specialize job like sculpting.
The things you referred are not the most important thing in fluidly sculpting. Most of the time, a good algorithm and code structure will make a huge difference. And those good thing is not likely include in Blender since there is too many aspect Blender need to care about, and there is not that much resources Blender Foundation can use to develop it.
If you really need and want to have a good experiences in sculpting, try some specialized application, e.g. ZBrush

People are paid to develop blender, where do you think blender foundation donations go? Blender can't afford many developers though as they are reliant on donations/sponsorship. However you are right in that the most cost effective way to get really high poly sculpting is to buy zbrush.

@Sazerac My bad, didn't think when I type the word down. Thanks for the correction.


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What What happened to the mesh display panel in blender 2.8?
Although I was looking for the "Mesh display" panel in blender 2.8 and I can't find it anywhere, I don't know if they moved it or they still don't put it or even if they put it, help

It's now called Viewport Overlays and located next to the viewport shading options.

Thank you very much


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How i can select opposite part of object in blender
I have a question. How i can select opposite part of object in blender. Like if i want to make object with symmetric parts. I Hope you understood it.

Try using a Mirror Modifier instead

The quickest and most comfortable way to do this is with a Mirror Modifier. See the images below for reference.
Where to find the modifier:
you can find it in the properties panel, just click in the little blue wrench symbol, then click on "Add Modifier" and select it from the list that appears

Properties:
now you have to make sure you select the correct axis in which you want to mirror the object (you can select more than one if you need to), In the image below the Y axis is selected so the object is mirrored alongside that (the green one just to be clear). Another important property you want to select is clipping which prevents part of the object to go "through the mirror" and therefore intersect its mirrored half. In the example below the right part is the original object and the left part is the mirrored one; each vertex of the original one can never go on a position with a negative value for Y because clipping is enabled.

Mirror Plane
Another important thing to keep in mind is the so called Mirror Plane: it is a plane perpendicular to the axis you select to mirror the object (hence, it is formed by the other two axes) and it is located in the same spot where the object origin is. So you have to make sure that the origin is placed where you want the mirroring to happen. As an example, in the image below the two object are mirrored alongside the same axis but the origin (= the yellow dot) is placed in different places (and so is the mirror plane), risulting in different kinds of mirroring.

Every modification is automatically mirrored on the other side!

Final advice:
remember to apply your modifier only after you are done modeling your object, as clicking on Apply will add the mirrored part to the mesh data of the object. In that case if you want to keep modeling symmetrically you'd have to delete half of your object and use another mirror modifier.
Remember also that you must be in object mode in order to apply a modifier.

Important to point out that you don't have to apply the mirror modifier if you don't have a reason to.

Yes that's right, I forgot to point that out because I'm used to apply it anyway once I'm done, thanks!


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can messages be passed between states
I've set up some directional movements for my main character;
Right, left, up, down, up left, up right, down left, down right.
This works ok and I also want to use this information to trigger the movement of  other objects within their own states. However, if I send a message 'ultrue' (upper left key has been pressed), then inside other objects' states that message is not recognised.
Is this even possible or should I use a property? If so, how?
Thanks,
Ian

States define what logic is currently active. Inactive logic will not do anything. This means when your message sensor is not connected to a controller of an active state it will not sense anything.
If you really need you either:

connect the message sensor to a controller at each state
add another state that is always active (yes, you can activate multiple states at the same time) and move the message processing to that state


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Object expanding on rotation
I am making a model with a hierarchy of different parts, with their origins connected to another piece in the model. I am trying to animate with this model, and a piece is expanding upward as it rotates around the origin. How do I prevent this?

Probably this piece has inhomogeneous scale. Apply scale on it with Ctrl+A


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Imported object being lit from wrong direction
I've got a problem where some imported objects are lit from the wrong direction.
See center object below.
Normals are ok.
I assume there's some sort of transform linked to the object, but I can't see how or where to reset it.
Any tips much appreciated.

Try https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/76513/strange-black-shading-cannot-fully-light-mesh-cycles

Fixed: Face and vertex normals were okay.
However, Blender tries to auto generate vertex-per-face normals and get all mixed up.
Once you turn this off, all works just fine.
Thanks to this post for the solution: How to unify face and vertex normals


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Bump is invisible in 3d view or EEVEE render but visible in preview of material
I use EEVEE and bump is invisible in 3d view or render but visible in preview of material.
I am trying to make some cool bump muscle textures from a lesson but my bump doesn't look good.
In the preview of material it's looking cool but not in render.

hello could you please share your file? (upload and share the URL it will generate) https://pasteall.org/blend/

https://pasteall.org/blend/c891a3087ba240b69855a636cc398101

it's not visible in Material Preview either, because the Distance value of the Normal Map is too low imho

Hello :). @moonboots is right. The sphere is 4.5 meters high, and bump height is set to just 10 milimeters

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.

Thanks a lot!!!

It's not visible in Material Preview either, because the Distance value of the Normal Map is too low

authors: Андрей Громницкий


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Tracking Problem with floor and wall and other things
I'm try to track a video with a garage.
I tracked the garage and the solve error is 0.11 because there is no movement, and now I want to model a sci-fi door that will be placed instead of the garage door.
The problem is when I set origin, the wall and floor and the other things like X and Y axis the placed content that will be made when I click on setup tracking scene is not in the right place.
When I click setup tracking scene a floor for the shadows and a cube will generated, and this floor should be on the ground of the garage video to catch shadows from the later modeled things, but I can't align it right.
How can I make it? I know I can rotate the camera self but I can't get it good.
And the second thing is  I want to make a sci-fi door and normally the set origin should be for the this. I tried it with tripod and then solve, then without it and set other scale but nothing helps.
Here is the file with the tracking, you only need to solve it:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s0noe8i3mqa52ar/garage%20tracking%20june.blend1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/upt6gb516549mcr/garage%20tracking%20june.blend
Here is the file of the door:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g29m6aw7x0tnwpy/dooranimationneu.rar


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Blender Materials (Shader) into Unity
I would like to have that Materials in unity as well, but they are grayed out in there, what should I do?

Blender's shaders and Unity's shaders are not interchangeable. What you should be able to do is recreate the shader node setup you have in Blender, but in Unity. If it's a simple material that it's just maps plugged into the various sockets, then it's trivial, just plug the maps into the same sockets in Unity (both Blender and Unity are phisically based renderers and largely use the same inputs for the shaders). If you are doing something more complicated, you'll have to figure out how to replicated that in Unity.


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LookDev only one object shows material rendering
I am using Blender 2.8 and viewing this ink bottle object I made in LookDev shading mode but the rendering materials wont show up.
The circular plane shows the rendering and has the same materials as the bottle.

does https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/41230/how-to-keep-one-object-on-certain-view-mode?rq=1 help? It is possible that the maximum draw type of the bottle has been set to solid.