text:
Make mesh follow other meshes movement like fluid/jelly
I am creating sort of a mechanical joint (not the weed one ;P) in blender with 4 components and I wanted one of the components to follow the sort of frames of the joint when I move it. The build can be seen in the picture.
(Maybe) important to know:
The both frames above and below are only extrudes circles, so when go to net view with Z I only see few circles.
Second the jellyish part fits exactly inside the two frames and when I do it as in the picture I have first the problem of mesh inside mesh and second the jellyish mesh is going a bit through the frame: The joint will only be able to move up to this angle but on every side.
I hope somebody has a good idea for this and can help. :)
Thanks for the attention.

Could you specify what kind of answer you are expecting? I was thinking about a rig for an animation from the title, but I don't see any tags about it. Could you also better describe the needed movement and the behaviour of the jellish part? Only squeezed when compressed and stretched when put in traction?

Since I am pretty new to blender and didn't do anything in matter of rigging I didn't have it in mind so I didn't put it to the tags, sorry about that. I expect that when it comes to rigging any day that when I move this joint as seen in the middle, because that's simply the only way this joint can move, that the mesh which is around the sphere moving with it and not breaking through at as seen in the picture.

Start with a few simple rigging tutorials. Bones deform meshes in a way suitable for your example.


text:
Extremely stretched faces after extruded in sculpting
I am new to sculpting and I am having a mesh here which I decided to make bigger to create sort of a body out of it, so I locked the upper part of the mesh with B and used the standard brush to extrude the mesh down and now, as seen in the picture the mesh is pretty stretched at one part and not usable for further sculpting.
I'd appreciate if somebody could tell me how to avoid or fix this.
Thanks a lot for the attention and help.

29 mln faces? Em.. That's the first reason for the sculpting not going further. Do not subdivide that much that fast, add subdivisions along with adding details. It's hard to tell from the screenshot how is that extrude is made, what is seen is that starting from the detailed part of the bust and down to the bottom faces are heavily stretched, maybe by grabbing with Grab bursh. I'd suggest starting this sculpt from scratch.

Oh yeah, so much faces could be one reason xD okay, got it, I should approach that much differently xD trying to save what I got but if nothing works I guess I have no choice, thanks :)

There's a way to retopologize the copy of the mesh while retrieving details back on the copy, but you still have to model retopo copy.

I don't really understand what you mean, to be honest. Would you explain further?

There are shown meshes you will have in the end in the video, probably you want to learn what is retopology and when it's needed, also https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/36525/1245. Generally - you have a sculpted mesh which for some reason can't be left as is (messed up topology, too much of geometry etc.) You create its copy atop of existing sculpt (retopo). There's outlined a way to save details from the original sculpt to the copy using Shrinkwrap using 2 mesh copies; but you have to create that mesh copy first.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Trying to create fire - Settings disappear
I am trying to create my first fire following a tutorial, as to be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-zK7Bu8cAI&t=?
And now I want to click on the right side to change from domain to flow but for any reason when I do that all settings disappear together with my fire and I would have to restart all over if I wouldn't be able to hit ctrl+Z to get everything back again.
Anybody got a solution?
Thanks for the attention.

What do you mean by "to change from domain to flow"? When you have fire simulation there are 2 objects, domain (a cube) and flow (one which emits fire). Settings in the Properties editor are shown only for active object, so as domain is active on your screenshot its options are shown.  So please clarify what settings disappear and when.

You see in the right menu these 4 buttons, none, domain, flow, collision. When I click on flow all marked settings disappear, smoke adaptive domain and everything inside, smoke high resolution and there is no fire to animate.

You aren't expected to press on Flow settings with domain selected. Domain must be remaining domain for the fire sim, flow object must be set to Flow. As above, there should be 2 objects, one domain and one flow object, flow emits fire, domain contains it. If you change these settings for only one object there won't be any simulation obviously

Yep, I got it, credits to me for not finding out myself. Thanks for the sip of reality and fresh look onto the work. And on we go. xD

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


text:
Strange pattern in sculpt mode
I was just sculpting my way through a mesh like I often did by now and while doing just normal stuff some strange pattern appeared when changing back to sculpt mode after repositioning another mesh. Any idea what that is, how it appeared and how to get rid of it?
Thanks for the attention.

Ah, alright thanks. Now that that’s out of the way xD never had something like that before, thanks :)


text:
Image on Plane disappears at specific position
I'm having a very strange situation here. I have an Image imported as a plane in 2.8, separated it and it's working fine, but the second I am getting the images close to where I want them to be they disappear and I am left with blank planes.
At first I thought it was due to the light, but using a light point outside of the model doesn't make this mess.
From image 2 to 3 I haven't changed anything at all, but the position of the planes on the X-axis and as long as I am not doing this inside of the corridor I have made this doesn't influent the texture at all, it really just happens in that corridor. Absolutely no clue, I am thankful for any thoughts on this one.

Have you tried using cycles?

Works fine in Cycles, but not in Eevee.

Hi was having a similar problem. I resolved my issue by: material properties > settings > blend mode then changing the blend mode to alpha clip
Hope this helps!

That fixed it for me, thank you.

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


text:
Easy way to create inset letters
I am at a new project, in which I will have stone walls with with text on them. Is there any easy way to get the writing look somewhat like this, without having to model every single letter like this?
I don't care for the font, but I do care for the triangular inset shape.

Any ideas on that would be more than welcome.
Thanks for reading.

Same question: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/100117/modeling-v-engraved-chiseled-text?rq=1, links to https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/58457/how-to-make-a-bevel-on-text

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


text:
Bezier Curve: Bevel Object is creating a flat surface
I'm using a bezier curve and want to create a specific bevel edge shape to it in 3D.
The shape I want the bezier circle to be along its length is attached below. I created it by converting the edge of a mesh into a curve and turning it into a Bezier Curve (called Cube). I then created a Bezier curve circle and added the Cube curve from above to the Bevel Object.
The result was a perfectly flat circle when I want it to be the 3D shape of the Cube Curve I created from the mesh.
How do I get the Bezier Circle to bevel in the shape of the Cube Curve in 3D not flat?
Note: When I added another smaller bezier circle to the original bezier circle path with the Bevel Object function it created a cylinder, so I assume it has something to do with the mesh conversion but I don't know what.
I have selected all points and tried Alt-T with now luck, and scaling the curves.

This was the result:

Modify the Depth and extrude values in the panel under geometry.

Furthermore, if you had previously scaled the curve down to zero in the Z-direction as a seemingly benign modification, that modification will stay with the curve and effect your results.

Please rotate the shape named [Cube]  in
[Edit Mode]
90 degrees on some axis. The results should be interactive.

Thank you. I just rotated it in all planes in both Edit & Object modes. No success. I tried adding the extra Geometry factors in on each rotation change but it still stays flat.

@aussie777 The profile shape should be facing Local Z

The face is currently facing to "Y". How do I rotate it to "Z"? I did a quick Google search but couldn't figure it out. Thank you for your help.

Your "Cube" curve should be a 2D Curve object, when you convert it to 2D it should maintain it's shape. If it doesn't it means the curve is not facing the correct direction and mus be rotated 90 degrees. In edit mode select all vertex and rotate in 90 degrees in the X axis by pressing R > X > 90

Excellent. That worked. Thank you for your help.

The shape you want to extrude along the curve must be in the local XY plane of the bevel object. This is because before extrusion takes place, the contents of the bevel object are projected to the XY plane of the bevel object. It is the same as if you had switched the Shape of the bevel object to 2D.
If your extruded shape is on the local XZ or YZ plane of the bevel object, then it will be reduced to a line when projected to the XY plane, and this line will be extruded along the curve, resulting in a flat extrusion.
The Blender 2.90 documentation will include the above explanation.


text:
Unfamiliar Structure of Sphere Mesh
I was poking around in a cycles material test scene which I donwloaded, and when I looked at the mesh for the sphere, it looked like this:

This looks nothing like either the UV sphere or the ICO sphere, so what function would transform the mesh into something like this?

There's no function to create meshes except for pre-made ones (primitives like what's in Shift+A menu, etc.) You should add a primitive and know how to edit it in order to get result you'd like to.

This is a subdivided icosphere, generated from a basic icosphere via a subdivision surface modifier.

Of course the blender logo was then carved out of it via a boolean modifier.

Aha, I feel like an idiot for not noticing that earlier.

Happens to me all the time :)


text:
Delay in showing menus, tooltips, 3D cursor: Actually, delay in showing everything
So, where do I start.  When I click on a menu, what I expect to happen is to see the menu expand so I can see all the options.  You know, like every other program out there?  Instead, nothing happens - until I move the mouse over the area where the menu was supposed to be, and then the menu appears the way it's supposed to.
Tool tips have the same issue.  When I hover over a button or something, nothing happens.  Unless I move the mouse and it happens to move to the same spot that the tooltip was supposed to appear in.  Then I see the tooltip appear (usually very briefly).
One more example: I'll left-click to reposition the 3D cursor.  Nothing will happen.  If I sit there and wait, the 3D cursor will appear to remain exactly where it was before I moved it.  Unless I, for example, rotate the viewport or do some other action, and then the 3D cursor will magically appear in the new location (where I left-clicked earlier).
I'm using Windows 7, and this has happened to me in both 2.76b and in 2.77.  I tried both the 64-bit version and the 32-bit version.  I don't have a clue what's happening.
Anyone?  I'm just starting to get into Blender, and this is an increasingly major obstacle as I'm trying to learn some of the basics.

this sounds awefull, does it raise any error in the console when you start blender ?

If the problem were only with menus I'd think you have Open on MouseOver option checked in the User Preferences > Interface. However taking into account delay in everything this seems your CPU is in high overload and you're just waiting for its response. Check its load, e,g. with default task manager. And "tried both the 64-bit version and the 32-bit version" - this sounds pretty strange. The versions are supposed to be used on adjacent opeational systems; they won't work for both.

Yvain: Back when I was running 2.76b, I remember some error on startup that went away pretty quickly before I could memorize it.  Something about expected 44100 KHz but got 48000 KHz?  Anyhow, after opening and closing Blender a few times I never saw it again.

Mr. Zak: I don't have a dedicated graphics card, just the built-in Intel HD with Core i3.  But I ran a test with an OpenGL utility (OpenGL Extensions Viewer 4.3.6) and apparently it passed.  Besides, it can't be a CPU slowdown, because everything else is lickety-split - rotating objects and scenery, extruding faces, no delay at all.

But I'm starting to notice other issues.  When I use the menu to switch from Object to Edit mode, or when I use the adjacent menu to switch viewport shading, the screen doesn't update unless I click somewhere else. Oh - you know what else I've discovered which makes the screen update?  Moving the mouse out of the viewport window.  Weird.

But in any of these cases, it makes no difference whether I wait two seconds or ten minutes.  It's like the computer has done all the necessary calculations to draw the menu or reposition the cursor or what have you, but has decided not to do so until I do some other action.  Adding to the mystery, I just tried installing the same version of Blender on a different Win7 machine and it has no hiccups at all.

I think your problem may not be Blender related. How many processes are running when you start Blender, and what are the system specs, especially installed memory?

Intel Core i3 @ 2.4GHz, 4 GB memory, and I usually have other applications open but they don't seem to affect the other features of Blender. Besides, you'd think displaying a menu would be one of the least system-resource-intensive processes there is. And how come the delay lasts the exact amount of time between when I click the menu and when I move the mouse, whether it's two seconds or 15 minutes (I tested it earlier today)? By the way, I want to thank everyone for their patience - I realize this isn't a typical problem.

Okay, one more clue.  Usually it doesn't give me an error message when I exit, but the last time I closed it I got: "AL lib: (EE) ALCmmdevPlayback_mixerProc: WaitForSingleObjectEx error: 0x102"

I guess one more comment - I don't really want people to spend much more time on this unless they're incredibly curious or adventurous.  I can just use Blender on my other computer for the time being.  But I found an OpenGL diagnostic utility that I used to export some information about the graphics system in my computer.  I've posted the XML files at http://tinyurl.com/jpc6krx and whoever feels like looking at them, maybe that'll give some clues.  I also posted XML files from running the OpenGL utility on my 2nd computer (the one on which Blender is actually fully functional).

(continued) Not sure what else to try in terms of investigating.  I'll leave it to the real hardcore types after this point.  Of course, you can ask me about whatever other details you think could be helpful - I'll check back on this thread every so often.  Thanks!

This sounds like a graphical issue, either from your GPU or graphics drivers; for this sort of problem you should always post what your graphics card is so it helps solving your problem.
You mention having no dedicated graphics processing unit, only an Intel integrated one, which are largely regarded as low end and known to often cause problems with blender, so that is most likely the origin of your problem.
Not exactly sure how to solve your graphical glitch, try upgrading your drivers to the latest version.
After that you could open blender, go to the User Preferences > System Tab > Window Drawing Method and play around with the options in the dropdown menu, see if any other besides the default one work better for your particular machine. Make sure you save settings and restart Blender in between changes.
Also try turning off any multi sample if it s turned on, in the menu right after the previous one.


text:
Freestyle, render some objects with dashed lines and others with solid lines?
I have two objects in my scene.  I'm using Freestyle.  I can't figure out how to make it so that Object 1 renders with a dashed (or dotted) outline, while Object 2 simultaneously renders with a solid outline.  I tried a lot of different settings - unfortunately, every time I select an object and change the Freestyle Line Set or Freestyle Line Style settings for it, it seems to apply the change to both objects.
(FWIW, when I change the Material for one object, it only changes the Material for that object.)
Any ideas?

Use Groups
Freestyle has an option to apply the Line Set to a previusly created group. You just habe to enable it in the Selection by section and pick Groups. An empty fields will appear below where you can choose what groups will be affected by the linestyle options.

In the image above each cube belongs to a different group (you can see them in the outliner), and each of the two Line Set is targeting one of them.
You can group the selected objects by pressing Ctrl+G and select all the objects with the same material (or something else) with Select linked

What I presented is probably the most versatile way, but you can probably get a similar result by taking advantage of one of the other ways in which you can restrict the Line Style influence (e.g. you can hide your dotted object and use the Visibilty options...).


text:
Hole pattern in model when moving in sculpt mode
this is not the first time this is occuring to me and I wonder if it might lead to problems further down the road. I created a metaball as I mostly do when starting to sculpt and as soon as I am moving the view in the viewport I get this pattern, as to be seen in the picture. But it disappears the second as I let go the MMB.
Any idea why this happens and if this could be a problem?
Thanks for reading.

2.8b still has a lot of draw issues, it probably won't affect your mesh. You can report bugs here https://developer.blender.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/1/


text:
Sculpt deformation fix
I am at my very first sculpting attemppt and having some deformations, as to be seen in the picture. If anyone can explain how this comes up, how to get rid of it and how to avoid it in the first place, I would be really thankful!

That looks like unconnected geometry - either another mesh of the same object or another object popping up after sculpted surface is moved down or errors in geometry of the sculpted mesh like non-manifold geometry sitting inside. All of these might be hidden in Edit mode but visible when sculpting

But there is nothing else, no doubles, nothing. The base mesh is a very simply extruded cylinder.


text:
Curve- and Array Modifier won't align with the curve
I am a bit desparate with one problem. I am having a bezier curve, which I want to add some meshes to with the array modifier, in combination with the array modifier. Problem is, no matter which axis I use, or where I put the origin of either the curve, or the arrayed object, it is far from aligned with each other. In the picture I put in the origin of both is at the very beginning of the bezier curve, I also had both in the mass center of the curve, with similar result. Also, I tried  to copy the curve and tried it with the other curve, with no success.
Thanks for the attention and I look forward to hear some fresh thoughts to this matter.

could you please share the object + curve?

thanks @DuarteFarrajotaRamos I actually didn't find this particular thread before! It helped a lot and everything works fine now. :)

@moonboots do you still want object and curve? If so, how do I share those? Never done that before.

yes please do it on https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/


text:
Can't see through BSDF principled/glass 2.8
High risk this question was asked a billion times and I am just too stupid to find the correct answer, so apologiez.
I am trying to create a drinking glass, the inside faces are colored red to simulate a sort of fluid, now how come that I cannot see it through the glass. Not in cycles, nor eevee in dev, or rendered view. Not by using principled, nor glass BSDF and I made sure that Screen Space Refraction is enabled. Any further suggestions are more than welcome.
The image you see is made in dev view and colored faces behind the glass do color the glass itself, but not what happens to be inside of it.

I was able to create a transparent glass that you can see through by only changing a few options in the material and in the render (I'm using Eeve, not sure if it applies to cycle as well):
First enable reflections and refractions in the render:

And in my material I took a simple Glass BSDF, and you must also set Blend mode=Alpha blend and enable Screen Space Refraction:

I do it by using a Glass BSDF and a Transparent BSDF. Then I mix both using the Mix Shader before attaching to the Material Output.

This solution does not work. Please show how your materials become transparent by placing objects behind them.

You can't see through any shader that was opaque.

The BSDF shader work on Surface Only, as Blender is a surface mesh 3D tool.
If you assign a opaque color to inner surface, the glass BSDF will become useless since you are literally painting the inner glass with that color.
A better approach will be adding a surface on the liquid surface, and change that surface color. Also blend shader with Glass or other transparent shader to make better.


text:
Render dark Scene with high samples
just quick question,
I am having a rather dark scene, trying to do a prerender but even at 10.000 Samples the picture still isn't really any good looking and it's hard to say how it will look at the final render. Is that normal that you need quadrillion samples for a dark picture? The layer samples are set to 0, just if anyone would bother to ask.
Thanks for your attention.

General rule of thumb with Cycles is that "hard to find" light sources are prone to noisy renders. That means small lamps, hidden away light sources, indirect light, and poorly lit ambiences, which include dark/night scenes.


text:
Making a rigable robot
I am a complete Newbie in regards of rigging and animating, trying to create a Robot, which I will try to rig and move afterwards.
I have two questions while I am at the beginning to avoid double work in the long run.
Question 1:
Right now I have every part as a separate object, should I combine them to one sinle object for the whole Character? Because then I ask myself how the movement of the jaw you see in the picture should look like.

Question 2:
I want to make the neck, and probably arms and legs as you can see in the following link:
Make Bezier Curve look like Torus Array
I ask myself if I should use a torus array for this or rather a cylinder and try to achieve a similar look and avoid any problems of being unable to move the parts without any sort of unwanted deformation.
Thank you all a lot. :)

Unless you have good reasons to keep some meshes separate (like a modifier that must not affect the other meshes), it would be simpler to join them.
For the second question, it really depends on what you want, it will deform but it won't necessarily be a problem so you should try this solution, on this topic you can follow this very simple tutorial by AgenZasBrothers that explains how to create robot limbs with Array and Curve modifiers, maybe at the end parent the vertices to bones so that you can always come back to a Rest pose.
Also maybe this answer I gave on how to rig a cartoon-like limb may interest you.


text:
Inset creating strange, bulky result
please excuse my rather vague title, I have no idea how else to describe what I am having here, I hope with the screenshot and maybe further questions from your side there can be a solution found to this.
Now to the matter: I am following a tutorial, here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yxrke72isQ
In this tutorial that guy just used the inset tool to make this roundish edge of that object in question and when he does it it is a smooth line, while when I do it I get separated bulky things which I do not understand, since I was following every step thoroughly.
I hope you guys know this issue and can share your knowledge with me.
Thanks for the attention.

You must unckeck Individual.
See the image below with the Individual checked:

Thanks mate, I didn't see, helped a lot! :D


text:
Delete 30k+ objects
while trying to create some trees together with particles I somehow managed to create 30-50.000 singular objects, of which I have deleted 5000 in the last hour, but I am still wondering if there is a quicker way, especially since Blender is understandably extremely slow right now, every click takes a minute or two before being applied.
Right now I use the outlined to select via mouse click and shift multiple objects, but it takes a little eternity to scroll down a few thousand objects for selection.
Any ideas are highly welcome.

Your question can be more clearly posed with a small amount of your effort. Your question would be clearer with a screen capture showing the outliner.  Python Scripts can delete objects by name.  Thus you can loop through all object names and delete names with a particular pattern.  Maker sure you create a backup of your valuable work.

Instead of deleting you can try to Append necessary objects to a new blend-file

If these objects have a common parent you can select the parent.  Then select the children by the menu choice (not multiple clicks).  Then delete.  The outliner it select can filter objects by name and then you can delete.  No Script perhaps.

You can also just start  a new file or portion and recreate your work with perhaps zero mistakes since you are more practiced now in this area.  Your have mentioned your computer is slow.  You can stop the on screen render of objects in the outliner.  If Blender is displaying close to zero objects it will be faster. Then just turn on a few critical ones to view and choose a form of deletion or new creation.

In the Outliner header there is a "search" filter box, There type in the  base name of the objects you want to delete, Tree for example. This will find and display in the outliner all and Only objects with Tree in their name. Left click in the Outliner then hit the A key to select them All. All the Trees will be selected in the 3D worlspace. Mouse over the 3D workspace and X key to Delete all those Trees.

Appending didn't work completely, but after some fiddling selecting all with A finally worked and deleting everything at once took Blender like an hour or something, but it worked, thanks a lot for all the suggestions! :)


text:
Blender 2.81 missing pie menu
Yesterday I switched to 2.81 stable and now all Pie menus appear as usual except when I press Tab, then it only switches from edit to object mode and back, as if there is no pie menu add on installed.
If anyone has a solution to this I'd love to hear it.
Thanks!

You have to check "Tab for Pie Menu" box in Preferences>Keymap

Thank you a lot! Though this does not apply for 2.7X controls.


text:
Sculpting Distortion 2.8
After a long time I try myself in sculpting again, using 2.8 and having a problem sculpting on cylinders. As you can see in the picture the faces sort of... splitter off, I would say?
If anyone could push me into the direction on what I am doing wrong with the meshes it would be highly appreciated.

This is probably an issue with the patterning of the vertices in the base mesh. Can you try enabling dynamic topology in sculpting and see if the problem persists?

Hey,you were right, I could fix it by giving it more geometry through subdivisions beforehand. Thanks a lot! :)


text:
Mapping Driver not applying changes
I am following CGMatters Tutorial on procedural crystals but the added drivers to the mapping node are not making any changes when scaling the object in question. I'll add in an image, if anyone has an idea as to why this is happening I'd highly appreciate it.
Thanks and stay healthy everyone!
enter link description here

Replace 1 by varin the expression

Thanks for the reply. Still no improvement though


text:
Blender destroys sculpt whenever saving
I've been working on this sculpt for over two hours now and all I am doing right now is I have disabled DynTopo to move the mouth a bit more inwards. It works like a charm. After that I hit ctrl+S to save. Then it suddenly reverts to the state before I have moved the mouth inwards and when I hit ctrl+Z that abomination happens you see in the second screenshot. A bit help in that would be highly appreciated, I would hate to loose the work. If I Ctrl-Z further the artifacts just keep getting worse.

Go to edit > preferences.
on interface tab find and enable "developer extras"
now go to experimental tab and enable undo legacy

your undoes will become slower but more accurate.
consider sending a bug report.
Here is how:
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Process/Bug_Reports


text:
Blender: Exporting a large 3D map into a 2D image
I have designed a 3D Map in Blender. I wish to export a 2D image where I can place it inside an HTML5 canvas. The user would then be able to pan across the canvas to see the whole map.
My question is, how do I export the whole blender map into a 2D image? I can fit the whole map into the camera view port but it would be too small. I can even export the 3D map into small segments, but I am not sure how to do that either.
I am still new to blender and don't know all its features.
Thanks

In addition to rcgauer's answer, in the camera's settings you'll likely want to change its lens from perspective to orthographic if you want it to be a flat 2d view from above.

Blender's ability to render large images is pretty robust: We do images 10Kx10K and larger all the time, so your viewport view is not a limiting factor.
Set up your camera to view the entire map, either overhead or however you wish to see the map inside your final 2D image. Set Blender's render dimensions to something large enough to accomplish your readability goals. This could easily be many thousands of pixels in either or both dimensions. Hit render.

You may want to experiment with camera settings to get the best image possible. Also, remember that if you are using an image texture within the 3D map (say, a 1024 x 1024 image as a ground texture), Blender cannot magically render it 20K x 20K without pixelization.  We use 4K skins and higher when we are working on big images... If procedural textures accomplish what you need, you'll have no problems.
Hope this helps... big images are a real strength of Blender, and shout if I can assist.

Thanks for your help. I was looking at this the wrong way. Once again thank you.

If you are willing to put up with learning a little bit of blender version 249b there exists an add-on called "really big render" that allows you to create a huge image. Granted it is exported in six separate photographic files but you can combine all into one by importing all 6 into Gimp or Photoshop, lining them up, and merging all layers into one, or flattening the image which is of high quality. Warning: I was only able to make it work once. This add-on crashed and never worked again. I don't know why. But i was able to create a high quality poster artwork using it. Just try the add-on on a different computer that has 249 installed on it. Do some research. You'll. Find the add-on somewhere.

DVed because it is not a helpful answer. Rendering huge images is not an issue, nor do you need a special addon.


text:
How to use the Alt + Right click in edit mode in Linux
I am trying to use the Alt+Right Click to select edge loops in Linux Mint but this shortcut doesn't work it is already used for Linux to reduce a window. I have checked the keyboard shortcut but it doesn't appear.

The idea that an Operating System would override an application keyboard shortcut when there has been a key specifically for operating system shortcuts since 1994... blows my mind.

Some of these operating system shortcuts trace their lineage back to the late 80s.  I'm specifically thinking of bindings for twm, the window manager commonly used with the MIT X11 distribution.

On Ubuntu with Blender 2.76b Alt + Shift + click worked for me instead of Alt + click without changing any other shortcuts.


text:
How to quickly create a cable easily editable?
How can i quickly create a cable that i can edit easily to position it, deform it and add gravity?

related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/64887/cable-bump-how-would-you-do-it/64901

Use a curve, add one by doing Shift + A then Curve > Bezier. Place and orient the controll points of your cable, to deform it and add gravity select both points and press W > Subdivide. From V menu set the intermediate cuts to Automatic to keep a smooth curve, then position it. If you add multiple cuts spread them to get some space to keep a smooth line.
To make that curve have some volume set the Fill mode to Full. In the Geometry rollout under the "Bevel" adjust the Depth for the width of the cable and the resolution for the amount of sides.

Also adding some details is possible by using Bevel object which should be another curve and which can have desired form of the cable.

Yes and also this allows to edit the radius of the cables of all at once.


text:
How to create an image with transparency
I have a script to create an image but i want it to be created with transparency:
import bpy

bpy.data.images.new("albedo", width=1024, height=1024)

It depends on what you are actually asking:

If you need ot create an RGBA image, so an image that also has the Alpha Channel. (So a RGBA type instead of the normal RGB). Just Check ALPHA when you create it via UI or in code:
bpy.data.images.new("albedo", width=1024, height=1024, alpha = True)
If you want the default color to be instead of black any other color so even one with some transparency, this is the fastest way I found:

im = bpy.data.images.new("albedo", width=1024, height=1024, alpha = True)
im.generated_color = (1,0,0,0.5)

This code actually generates a Red image half transparent.


text:
How to create sci-fi panels using modifiers?
I want to create sci-fi panels using modifiers so i can keep the original mesh.

You know that i have answered myself to give an explanation with one picture after seeing that they were only youtube videos ?

Ah yes apologies, missed that, comment removed. Had already upvoted answer

Mark the sharp edges where you want to apply the separation, then add an Edge Split modifier, a Solidify and a Bevel modifiers.


text:
How to bake a position map in Blender
How can I bake a position map with Blender, I don't have the option in Cycles baking.

what is a position map?

Position maps are useful on software like Substance Designer that do not allow to paint directly on the model to add for example gradient dirt and grunge with more at the bottom of the model. Alternatively a vertical gradient map can mask in the same way.

To bake a position map you need to create an emissive shader and bake in emit mode.
For the node setup use for the input an Input > Texture Coordinate. You will need to use the generated output of the node, by default the axis in Blender aren't the same as most 3D software so you will need to change the RGB channels. For that connect the Generated output to a Converter > Separate RGB and add a Converter > Combine RGB node, here are the connections:

R > R
G inverted > B
B > G

Then add a Color > Gamma and set it at 2.2 to convert the color in Linear, by default it's in sRGB and doesn't work in other software. Then on the Emissive node.
Here is the result and the complete node setup:


text:
Where are located custom themes?
I am making a new theme and have clicked on the + button in the Theme tab in User Preferences and named it but when i go in "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\presets\interface_theme" i don't see my custom theme.
Where is my custom theme located in Windows?

Thank you! Add your message as answer so i can toggle the solved button. ;)

Windows's Blender preferences, scripts, and themes are located at:
C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\<version number: ex. 2.78>\

The theme folder is located at:
C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\<version number: ex. 2.78>\scripts\presets\interface_theme

For example,
C:\Users\user1\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\presets\interface_theme

The customs presets are under presets tab. click on the presets and a drop down will appear click on the any preset them. Select any them and never forget to save user settings below.


text:
How to get a clean Ambient Occlusion map with Cycles with low samples?
I want to get a clean ambient occlusion without having to increase the samples, is there a way to hide the noise and maybe to fake Anti-Aliasing?

You can use a normal map to blur the images without touching the edges to keep sharp details.
For that use a bilateral blur attach your ambient occlusion map and the normal map in the slot Determinator. You can play with the settings, i suggest you to lower the "Sigma" setting which is too high by default by something like 1.
You can also apply a small blur at the normal map to avoid getting edges too aliased and be closer to an anti-aliasing filter.


text:
How can i bake a lightmap and use it in Blender Game engine
I want to bake a lightmap and create a second UV channel between all my game assets without combining them then i want to use it in Blender Game Engine.

UV Mapping
Unfold your meshes that will generate your first UV Channel, it will be used for your texture and normal map. Make sure that the seams aren't facing the player too much. You can see your UV Map in the Data tab in the property menu represented by a face with three vertices.
You will need to create a second UV Channel that contains the UVs of every meshes for the lighting information but be careful make sure to apply any mirror modifiers.
To create the second UV Channel enable the Addon called "Texture Atlas", select every assets, in the Render tab scroll to the bottom you will see Texture Atlas, click on the "+" icon and name it this will be the name of the second UV Channel. The resolution option isn't needed you will set it with the image you will create.
Then choose the type of Unfold between Smart_UV and Lightmap:
_ The Smart_UV splits the UV based of their angle of orientation.
_ The Lightmap split every faces for the highest texel density (cover as much space/pixel as possible) but could create visible seams.
Then click on Auto Unwrap, at the right you can set the margin (space between UVs) by default 0.01 is too low, the seams will be visible, use 0.1 instead.
If you select an asset and hasn't renamed anything you will see in two UV map, the first called UVMap and the second TextureAtlas.

Baking
Use Blender Cycles, prepare your lighting, apply a material, use Ctrl + L to link it to all your asset. Do not use a texture use the default white diffuse with RGB at 0.8 each. A tip is to use a create several diffuse called for example: wood, stone, grass, etc. with the same color, change the color to see them then reapply the 0.8 color. This will allow later to directly import your textures on them and have the materials split. You can use some emissive material if you want to create area lights in your scene.
You will need to create an image to bake your lightmap, open the UV/Image Editor, create a new image, name it for example "lightmap" and set your image with a 2048 or 4096 image, if you want to work with Filmic color management you will need a 32 bit Float image, see this post: How can i use Filmic with Blender Cycles bake
In the node editor add an image texture node with the image you have just created and do not connected it to anything to use the image for baking. Use the same image for your emissive materials.
With all your assets selected go in Samples and adjust the render value, an higher value reduce the noise but increases the speed. You can set a low value like 10 to test if the baking works correctly.
Then go in the bake menu, for the bake type use Diffuse and enable Direct and Indirect you don't need color (to make the baking slightly faster). Adjust the margin, to know what value to use divide the resolution by 256, for example for 4096 we need 16 px.
Click on bake, to see the result switch in texture mode in the 3d view and in the "n" menu use Shadeless in Shading and Only Render in Display. Don't forget to save your lightmap.
Note: if you get a weird baking that mean that the bug haven't been fixed yet, you will need to duplicate and join all your assets to bake the lighting because the bakes overlaps each other.
Using the lightmap
Duplicate and move your assets to another layer, the duplicated assets will use Blender Render materials.
Switch to Blender Render or Blender Game mode. In the "n" menu of the viewport use GLSL and the Textured mode.
For each material uncheck the button Use Node (the icon represent two node attached) near the name an check Shadless in the settings.
In the texture tab import the lightmap in the second slot and use the second UV channel in the Mapping menu.
Here is what my scene looks like:

For the blend type use Overlay.
Then import your texture in the first slot and use the first UV channel, you can adjust the position and size by scaling and rotating the UVs of the first UV Channel.
To use multiple textures create a new material, select faces in edit mode and click Assign, use another texture and your lightmap for the second UV Channel.
Note: all your textures must use a middle value to have consistent lighting, you can fix that in GIMP by moving the Color > Curve to an high point in the histogram in the middle line:

Here i have applied multiple materials:

For your emissive shader just use a shadeless shader with a color, pick the color used in Cycles and apply it for the Blender Render/Game material, you wont need any texture.
You can bake a skybox switch to Blender Cycles, in the World tab in the property panel click on "Use Nodes", click on the dot on the right of Color and select Sky Texture then orient the sky. Create a sphere, invert his normal with w > Flip Normals in Edit Mode, use a Lightmap UV Unfold to cover the maximum UV space, apply a material and texture and bake in Environment bake type. You will need to bake your assets each time you change the environment to match the sky.

I suggest to not use lightmap unwrap : due to mipmapping of lightmaps in 3D realtime engine, this can generate artefacts (example).Smart UV or classic unwrap with seams marked on tactical places help to hide this.


text:
What is the Python script to set the current frame
I have made a script to generate a game asset in one click ( http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?383624-Dark-Blender-(Official-Thread)-optimized-for-sculpting-and-game-asset-creation ). My script save the textures by doing a render and import them with the .0001 number meaning frame 1. If the frame is changed my script is unable to find the texture.0001 so i want to set at the beginning of my Python script the frame to 1.

(For Blender 2.83+) In order to advance to the next frame, get the frame you're on currently and add one to it. Set that using frame_set:
currentFrame = bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].frame_current
bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].frame_set(currentFrame + 1)

Otherwise replace currentFrame + 1 with the frame number you want:
bpy.data.scenes['Scene'].frame_set(10)

This assumes you're in the default scene, 'Scene'. In 2.83...
bpy.context.scene.frame_set(10)

...still works for whatever scene you happen to be in.

Thanks for the answer. Could you explain what this does and add more details to your question. Don't just post some random code snippet, explain what it does.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos thanks, edited to add clarity and context

A simple solution that's easy to understand
C.scene.frame_set(C.scene.frame_current+1)


text:
Link Keyframes to Markers
Is it possible to link Keyframes to Markers?
I'm at the point of creating more complicated animations and have created a number of Markers at key points in the timeline. It would seem logical to me to be able to link keyframes to markers so that moving a marker would automatically move the associated keyframes relative to the associated markers - for example, if one keyframe was 25% of the way between two associated markers then moving one of the marks could rescale the associated keyframes so that they remain at 25% of the way between the new positions of the markers. Is this possible?
I know I can select the keyframes in the dopesheet and move/scale them from there but moving markers and having them move/scale automatically would seem somehow more logical. Or is there a better way?

Did you try NLA Editor to edit animations?

@Jerryno I've not really used the NLA Editor much - it (and actions) always confused me so I've never really got around to playing around with it much. In my mind Marker would be able to be 'hooked' to keyframes to scale them just by moving the markers - but now I guess they are only really useful as labels though...?

They are only labels, yes. An action is just a holder for keyframes, and in NLA editor you can layer and scale and adjust those actions into animations. So instead of having one action with markers labeling sections of the whole animation have multiple actions each representing every animation section. Then layer and time those actions in NLA editor into the final animation. You can edit an NLA strip by hitting TAB - it will show in Dopesheet.

At this stage - no. A marker can be linked to a camera as a way to change the active camera during an animation but there is no link between markers and keyframes, it is not possible to move both markers and keyframes at the same time.
It would be possible to create an addon that would allow you to move markers and keyframes at the same time.

Seems that this addon is doing exactly that: https://blendermarket.com/products/key-to-marker


text:
Multiple objects following the same path at different rates
I'm trying to set up multiple objects to follow the same Path. To achieve this I have created a NurbsPath and manipulated it into the desired shape and added multiple objects (spheres) with Follow Path object constraints with Target set to the NurbsPath.

For a single object to follow the path I would simply set the NurbsPath Path Animation properties and keyframe the Evaluation Time to vary between 0 and the value of Frames. This would animate the object along the path (in this case it's 52/100th of the way along the path).

Animating multiple objects along the same path at the same rate is not a problem as each object's Follow Path constraint can be set with a different Offset to offset the animation by the required amount.

The problems comes with changing the rate of the animation. Since the Frames and Evaluation Time are properties of the Path I don't see how this can be achieved - other than Duplicating the path and changing the duplicate path to have different Path Animation settings to set a different rate. This seems messy - especially if the path needs to be adjusted as both paths would need to be kept in-step.

(the above animation was achieved by having 3 paths, each with different Path animation settings)
Is there a better way of achieving this? ie, without needing multiple duplicate Paths.

This is one of the best-redacted questions I have ever read on any stack exchange page.

With just a follow path constraint, with fixed position set to True, an offset of 0 is start, 1 is end of curve. The offset can be keyframed / driven.

Sample file, 3 cubes, All at 0 offset at frame 1.  Two are keyframed, one traverses path in 50 frames the other 80 with an offset value of 1 at those frames respectively.
The other is driven by the frame number
(frame - 1) / 100

which will be at 0 at frame 1 and 1 offset at frame 101 and above.

Thanks - that works like a dream. Didn't realise that Fixed Position worked like that (seems a misleading name for it so I never thought to mess with it).

Instead of keyframing the path "Evaluation time" property, you can add keyframes to the "Offset" value in the constraint panel.
So every sphere has its own constraint, with its own Offset value!

Thanks - that does seem to work - although the Offset needs to be manipulated backwards (so, say, -10 would be a tenth of the way along a path that was 100 "frames" long.

Yes... I saw it. Maybe this can be solved reversing something (the path direction, or something else... Don't know).


text:
"Fade out" with Blender internal engine?
I'm doing a small project for someone, it's just text and a plane object. A total of 17 objects including the lamps. I want to achieve the same effect as the transparency node in cycles to fade out, but rendering at 350 samples for over 24 hours only rendered 250 frames. I am stuck with CPU rendering, and using a laptop, but that's what I have for now. If I can do this with the internal engine then that would be ideal. The finished project will be around 1440 to 2160 frames at minimum. If it makes a difference for guidance in the most efficient way to do this, the vertices count is around 2,000,000 on the .blend file, and I will be adding a glossy to the materials, and the world setting will be a texture. Just have to remember how to set that up, I haven't done that for quite some time in BI. Thanks in advance everyone!

So you would like to know how to animate the transparency of a material in Blender Render?

Correct. I know in cycles I can add a keyframe to the transparency node and the selected objects will go from fully visible to transparent over the course of the set amount of frames. If it's possible to do the same in the internal engine, I would prefer to do that for the sake of time.

Certenly is possible, but you have to consider that Blender Render and Cycles handle transparecy in a different way, so you'll probably have to make a few adjustment to your scene to get similar results.
You can animate the alpha factor directly from the Material's menu

Or the alpha output factor in the node editor (if you are going for node based material).

Don't froget to enable Z Transparecy or Raytrace option for transparency calculation method (for node based material you can find it under Render Pipeline Options).


text:
How to rename all text objects by individual text content?
I have about 70 text objects in a scene that I neglected to rename as they were created, thus quickly making a disorganized mess in my outliner.

Is there some script or some other trick that will efficiently speed up renaming all text objects by the content of the text?
For example, if the content of the text object is "Blender" the object name should be Blender (or TXT_Blender if prefix is used). Although it would be useful for further organization, I am not too concerned with adding a prefix to the object names at the moment.
I know that I could copy/ paste each text to rename, but an automated solution would save a tremendous amount of time, considering the number of objects at this point.

import bpy

for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    if ob.type == 'FONT':
        ob.name = ob.data.body[:10]


text:
Python- Adding menu button to add duplicate of active object at 3D cursor
I'm attempting to learn Python, and figured the easiest way to learn would be by studying code snippets, and expanding from there. So to start with, I want to slightly modify the "ui_panel_simple" template so that instead of adding a primitive object at the 3D cursor, it will add a duplicate of the active object at the 3D cursor.
The full code is as follows:
import bpy

class HelloWorldPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Object properties window"""
    bl_label = "Add object duplicate"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_hello"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "object"

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

        obj = context.object

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Add duplicate", icon='OBJECT_DATA')

        row = layout.row()
        row.label(text="Active object is: " + obj.name)
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(obj, "name")

        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add")

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

If I change row.operator("mesh.primitive_cube_add") to row.operator(bpy.ops.object.duplicate(), then I lose the newly added button in the custom panel. I can freely change 'cube" to any primitive object and all works as expected. What am I missing?

For UI layout layout.operator you only need the names after bpy.ops, in your case
        row.operator("object.duplicate")

Always check the system console for error messages if something isn't working
row.operator(bpy.ops.object.duplicate())

will write to system console
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/Text", line 32, in draw
 File "/home/batfinger/src/BlenderGIT/qtcreator_build/bin/2.77/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py", line 189, in __call__
 ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Calling operator "bpy.ops.object.duplicate" error, can't modify blend data in this state (drawing/rendering)

If you don't want the panel to show when there is no active_object add a poll method
    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.active_object is not None

or not as the operator will display as disabled when there is no active object.

authors: Артем Бобров


text:
How to avoid intersections in an interlocking model?
I have been trying to model an "interlocking" object similar to the  following references:

My last attempt turned out like this:

To model the object, I have done roughly the following:

Start with a regular solid (dodecahedron or icosahedron in most attempts).
Bevel the entire object slightly,  and delete large faces, and subdivide edges.
Duplicate the object and rotate
Scale and rotate along normals with proportional edit and
individual origin as pivot point until the object is in place
Add a solidify and subsurf modifier

The problem I am having, is that there are several intersections (some are circled in yellow) throughout the model.
It seems that the intersections are caused by duplicating and rotating the object as well as the solidify modifier.
Where might I be going wrong in my approach that I could avoid these intersections and achieve an object like the ones shown in the reference images?

I tried to achive that effect as well and I did stick to the modifier workflow. I added some array modifiers with merging enabled to make that shape and then i just modelled a path. I also added a solidify modifier and voilà. Got it.


text:
How to add six PNG Images to a cube in a Python Script
How can i add six different PNG Images as textures to a cube with a Python Script?
I have a cube and i want to apply an image to each of the six sides.
For example if i would like to render a dice, then i would Need six different textures with 1 dot up to 6 dots.
Thanks for your help!

May I ask why Python Script and not UV map? I'm really curious about such method.
And something raleted: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/34930/how-do-place-an-image-to-the-side-of-a-cube-using-the-python-api

What have you got so far?


text:
Extrude diagonally between X and Y axis without any movement on Z axis
I'm learning to use Blender and still getting to grips with the basics. I've tried searching for an answer to this, but can't find one. Maybe I'm just not using the correct terms etc in my search.
I'm trying to extrude the 4 selected faces (see pic below) outwards diagonally between the X and Y axis by 0.8 units while keeping it's position on the Z axis at 0.

I've tried using a top down view (Num Pad 7) which seems to keep the Z axis at 0, but then I can't use the keyboard to enter 0.8 because as soon as I do it applies it to the X axis and extrudes in the wrong direction (I haven't locked or selected an axis). I've also tried changing the transformation orientation from Global to local/normal, etc.
I also thought of extruding the faces directly on one axis and then rotating the entire object, but thought this may not be easy to do with more complex models in future. When I did this however I encountered another problem. The extruded edges don't continue in the same direction as the originals. If you look at the picture below, what I mean is I want the left and right edges of the extruded section to be where I've drawn the red lines (I.e. keeping the triangular shape)

Hope all this makes sense.

Thanks. I've been using the E key when I want to extrude anything, which according to the tools panel extrudes along normals. So I think I'm doing that part right already. I've also tried applying transformations as suggested but it didn't seem to make any difference. I was actually able to create what I wanted by holding CTRL and Shift while extruding to help get the right measurement and then scaling the faces to line up with the red lines in my 2nd picture. Problem is I don't know if the lines are 100% straight. So I'm wondering if there is a way to extrude and scale at the same time?


text:
Align edges and join/merge vertices without adding additional faces etc
I'm new to blender and still trying to get to grips with some of the basics.
I've duplicated a section from one corner of my model and I'm now trying to attach a copy to the other 3 corners. The problem is I'm struggling to line up the edges perfectly and merge them. I don't want to use bridge or anything which adds additional faces/edges etc, I just want to merge the two existing edges into one to keep it the same dimensions as the original part I duplicated.
Is there an easy way to align these edges, move them together and merge/remove duplicate vertices?

this can be want you want : http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/58022/snap-during-transform-can-not-snap-to-what-i-want/58097#58097

Thanks, that's great. My main problem is not knowing what to search for. Now that I know to search for snapping I found videos etc in seconds. I was searching for aligning and merging.

The trick is using the empty !

I'm not sure what you mean.

The empty allows to choose which vertex will be moved to which target... but if you don't need it, never mind !

You can use the snap to vertex functions, with the mode set to 'active', like this:

The first button marked with a red arrow activates snapping (however, you can use the Ctrl key as a much faster alternative. The second one allows you to set the snapping target, in this case vertices. The third one tells Blender to try to snap the selection based on the last selected vertex, the so-called active vertex (red circle). You can identify it by its color, in my theme white as opposed to orange.
Now, activate grab and move G and move the selection towards the target point. When you're somewhat close, the mesh should snap there entirely. Use 'remove doubles' from the 'Tools' Panel to eliminate overlapping vertices.


text:
Blender automatic weights
During adding automatic weights to my model something went wrong and I don't know what. I'm stucked in 10:16 of this tutorial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGvalWG8HBU

What do you mean by "wrong" ? The vertex on the right shoulder ?


text:
Center a movie clip in the Blender VSE
I'm making a video with resolution 1920 x 1080 in the 16:9 ratio.
I have a recorded a clip from my phone screen in portrait.
I am using my version of the default Video Editor screen layout. My edit simply has an extra window for a File Explorer.
The clip isn't 16:9 so I first tick Image Offset to stop Blender from stretching the clip, and then make the Blend field Alpha Over in the dropdown list so I can add a background that is 16:9.
The problem I'm having is that the clip is not centered, but anchored to the left. I can change the X Offset value but I can't be certain of what value is exactly centered.
Any help is much appreciated.

did my answer help you?

Just do some math in the X offset field directly. Look at the Original Dimension of your Clip where you will find out its width x height. Then type into the X offset "1920/2-width/2" (replacing width with the actual one from its Dimensions) and hit Enter. Do the same with Y, typing "1080/2-height/2"...
Or with an Editor/View of the type Python Console opened and the Clip selected in the VSE you should be able to just run this line of code to center your Clip/ImageSequence:
seq = bpy.context.selected_editable_sequences[0]; seq.use_translation = True; seq.transform.offset_x = bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_x/2 - seq.strip_elem_from_frame(bpy.context.scene.frame_current).orig_width/2; seq.transform.offset_y = bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_y/2 - seq.strip_elem_from_frame(bpy.context.scene.frame_current).orig_height/2


text:
How to get random color variation on a single mesh?
I am trying to get color variation and to bake it in a single mesh but the Object Info Random only works if i separate the meshes. Is there an alternative way to get the same result with the meshes combined, they aren't attached between them.

I don't know of any way to currently do this in Cycles, though I would also like to know if anyone has figured out any way to achieve this effect.

Following the several comments, I've thought an addon can be useful to do that and may have a general interest.

What does it do:

Identify loose parts of the object (or all selected objects)
Generate a random color for each loose part
Follow the mesh loops to assign the vertex colors

(can be installed as an addon)
The code is commented below (please comment if needed):
bl_info = {
    "name": "Assign random vertex color to each loose part of a mesh",
    "author": "lemon",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 78, 0),
    "location": "Properties Editor > Object data",
    "description": "",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Mesh"}

import bpy
import time
import random
from mathutils import Color

def LoosePartsMakeVertPaths( verts, edges ):
    #Initialize the path with all vertices indexes
    result = {v.index: set() for v in verts}
    #Add the possible paths via edges
    for e in edges:
        result[e.vertices[0]].add(e.vertices[1])
        result[e.vertices[1]].add(e.vertices[0])
    return result

def LoosePartsFollowEdges( startingIndex, paths ):
    current = [startingIndex]
    result = set( current )

    follow = True
    while follow:
        #Get indexes that are still in the paths
        eligible = set( [ind for ind in current if ind in paths] )
        if len( eligible ) == 0:
            follow = False #Stops is no more
        else:
            #Get the corresponding links
            next = [paths.pop( i ) for i in eligible]
            #Get the new links as new inputs
            current = set( [ind for sub in next for ind in sub] )
            result = result.union( current )

    return result

def LoosePartsCountIslands( obj ):
    #Prepare the paths/links from each vertex to others
    paths = LoosePartsMakeVertPaths( obj.data.vertices, obj.data.edges )
    found = True
    n = 0
    while found:
        try:
            #Get one input as long there is one
            startingIndex = next( iter( paths.keys() ) )
            n = n + 1
            #Deplete the paths dictionary following this starting index
            LoosePartsFollowEdges( startingIndex, paths )
        except:
            found = False
    return n

def LoosePartGetIslands( obj ):
    paths = LoosePartsMakeVertPaths( obj.data.vertices, obj.data.edges )

    result = []

    found = True
    while found:
        try:
            #Get one input as long there is one
            startingIndex = next( iter( paths.keys() ) )
            #Deplete the paths dictionary following this starting index and append the result
            result.append( LoosePartsFollowEdges( startingIndex, paths ) )
        except:
            found = False

    return result

def RandomColor( rnd ):
    return Color( (rnd.random(), rnd.random(), rnd.random()) )

def RandomColors( rnd, count ):
    return [RandomColor( rnd ) for i in range( count )]

def ColorFromVertexIndex( vertexIndex, looseParts, colors ):
    for c, lp in zip( colors, looseParts ):
        if vertexIndex in lp:
            return c
    return Color()

def RandomVertexColorsByLooseParts( obj, vcolName, useSeed, seed ):

    rnd = random.Random()
    if useSeed:
        rnd.seed( seed )

    mesh = obj.data

    #Create vertex colors if it does not already exist
    if vcolName not in mesh.vertex_colors:
        mesh.vertex_colors.new( vcolName )
    #Update it so that it is available below
    mesh.vertex_colors.update()
    #Get the vertex colors
    vertexColors = mesh.vertex_colors[vcolName]

    #Get loose parts
    looseParts = LoosePartGetIslands( obj )
    #Generate random colors
    colors = RandomColors( rnd, len(looseParts) )

    mesh.loops.update()

    #Follow the loops
    for i, vertexIndex in enumerate( [loop.vertex_index for loop in mesh.loops] ):
        #Assign vertex colors from loop index and vertex index
        vertexColors.data[i].color = ColorFromVertexIndex( vertexIndex, looseParts, colors )

def InitProperties():
    bpy.types.Scene.VertexColorsName = bpy.props.StringProperty( name = "Vertex colors", description = "Vertex colors to use or create", default = "Col" )
    bpy.types.Scene.VertexColorsUseSeed = bpy.props.BoolProperty( name = "Use seed", description = "Use fixed seed to generate random values" )
    bpy.types.Scene.VertexColorsSeed = bpy.props.IntProperty( name = "Seed", description = "Seed for random values" )
    bpy.types.Scene.VertexColorsAllSelected = bpy.props.BoolProperty( name = "All selected objects", description = "Apply to all selected object or only active one" )

class RndVColToLoosePartsPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Random vcol to loose parts"
    bl_space_type = "PROPERTIES";
    bl_region_type = "WINDOW";
    bl_context = ""

    @classmethod
    def poll(self, context):
        return context.object and context.scene

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

        layout.prop( scn, 'VertexColorsName', icon='GROUP_VCOL' )
        layout.prop( scn, 'VertexColorsUseSeed' )
        layout.prop( scn, 'VertexColorsSeed' )
        layout.operator( "rndvcoltolooseparts.ope")
        layout.prop( scn, 'VertexColorsAllSelected' )

class RndVColToLooseParts(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname="rndvcoltolooseparts.ope"
    bl_label="Generate random vcol to each loose parts"

    def execute(self, context):

        scene = context.scene
        obj = context.object

        if scene and obj and obj.type == 'MESH':

            prevMode = obj.mode
            bpy.ops.object.mode_set( mode='OBJECT', toggle=False )

            if scene.VertexColorsAllSelected:
                for obj in [obj for obj in context.selected_objects if obj.type == 'MESH']:
                    RandomVertexColorsByLooseParts( obj, scene.VertexColorsName, scene.VertexColorsUseSeed, scene.VertexColorsSeed )
            else:
                RandomVertexColorsByLooseParts( obj, scene.VertexColorsName, scene.VertexColorsUseSeed, scene.VertexColorsSeed )

            bpy.ops.object.mode_set( mode=prevMode, toggle=False )

        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    InitProperties()
    bpy.utils.register_class(RndVColToLooseParts)
    bpy.utils.register_class(RndVColToLoosePartsPanel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(RndVColToLooseParts)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(RndVColToLoosePartsPanel)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

2.80 Version.

Creates a random grey-scale color and assigns to vertex color for each
mesh loose part.  Each component of the rgba vector is the same. Can be plugged into factor sockets individually.
Sets the face material color of each part to the active material
index.
Example material used in image above, for the greyscale plug the color attribute node directly into shader.

Addon script.
bl_info = {
    "name": "Mesh Islands Random Vertex Color",
    "author": "batFINGER",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "F3 Search",
    "description": "Assign random greyscale vertex color to mesh islands",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Mesh"}

import bpy
import bmesh
from random import random
from bpy.props import StringProperty, BoolProperty
from mathutils import Vector

def walk_island(vert):
    ''' walk all un-tagged linked verts '''
    vert.tag = True
    yield (vert)
    linked_verts = [
        e.other_vert(vert) for e in vert.link_edges
        if not e.other_vert(vert).tag
    ]
    for v in linked_verts:
        if v.tag:
            continue
        yield from walk_island(v)

def get_islands(bm, verts=[]):
    def tag(verts, switch):
        for v in verts:
            v.tag = switch

    tag(bm.verts, True)
    tag(verts, False)
    ret = {"islands": []}
    verts = set(verts)
    while verts:
        v = verts.pop()
        verts.add(v)
        island = set(walk_island(v))
        faces = set(
            f for x in island for f in x.link_faces
            if all(v.tag for v in f.verts))
        edges = set(
            e for x in island for e in x.link_edges
            if all(v.tag for v in e.verts))
        ret["islands"].append(island.union(edges).union(faces))
        tag(island, False)  # remove tag = True
        verts -= island
    return ret

class BMIslands(list):
    def __init__(self, bm):
        self.extend(BMeshIsland(i, island) for i, island in enumerate(get_islands(bm, verts=bm.verts)["islands"]))
        self.sort(key=lambda i: (i.co.x, i.co.y))
        for i, island in enumerate(self):
            island.index = i

class BMeshIsland:
    def __init__(self, index, geom):
        self.index = index
        self.verts = [e for e in geom if isinstance(e, bmesh.types.BMVert)]
        self.co = sum([v.co for v in self.verts], Vector()) / len(self.verts)
        self.faces = [e for e in geom if isinstance(e, bmesh.types.BMFace)]

class MESH_OT_random_island_vertex_color(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "mesh.random_island_vert_color"
    bl_label = "Random Island Vert Color"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}
    islands = None
    bm = None

    refresh: BoolProperty(name="Refresh")
    color_map: StringProperty(
        name="Color Map", default="vertcol")

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return(context.object
               and context.object.mode == 'OBJECT'
               and context.object.type == 'MESH')

    def main(self, ob):
        me = ob.data

        bm = bmesh.new()
        bm.from_mesh(me)
        self.bm = bm

        self.islands = BMIslands(bm)

    def randomize(self, ob):
        me = ob.data
        clayers = self.bm.loops.layers.color
        color_layer = clayers.get(self.color_map) or clayers.new(self.color_map)

        ami = ob.active_material_index
        for island in self.islands:
            r = random()
            for f in island.faces:
                f.material_index = ami
                for l in f.loops:
                    #l[color_layer] = (r, r, r, 1)
                    l[color_layer] = (r, ) * 4

        self.bm.to_mesh(me)
        me.update()

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        ob = context.object
        self.main(ob)
        return self.execute(context)

    def execute(self, context):
        self.randomize(context.object)
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(self, "color_map")

        row.prop(self, "refresh", text="", icon='FILE_REFRESH')
        layout.operator(self.__class__.bl_idname)

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Great! Many thanks for your bmesh magic. Had to find an automatic workflow to bake id maps based on random vertex colors per island in painter. Created a hsv version based on your code which allows to set the colors in vertex paint mode as well: https://gist.github.com/p2or/ab314836285579cdfdb5d7848af8ee5c Also fixed a bug when assigning a new name if there is more than one layer present. Anyway, this script is super quick and pretty useful. Can we have a repo for this?

@p2or Cheers. Update looks good. Thanks for the support.  Not too many too quickly, lol (based on time matching comment above)

In Blender 2.8, there is an attribute "Random Per Island" in the geometry input. It only works with Cycles though (not Eevee nor the material preview). It does the job!

nasty..this was the easiest and worked like a charm..THANK YOU

You may use a Color Ramp node to do it. Add a Separate XYZ node (Add-->Converter-->SeparateXYZ) and plug its Z output to the Fac input of the ColorRamp node. Set its interpolation type to Constant. Use '+' sign to add colors and set the sliders to fit the mesh's segments.

The problem is that it wont give a good result if i combine multiple assets with different shapes.

You could use vertex colors to flag different regions, instead of using locations within the generated coords box.

@JtheNinja Sounds good! Please write an answer.

Here is the pure Blender GUI way:

Add a new shape key (basis) and then another, call it 'merged'. Set merged to value 1.
Change pivot point to individual origins. Select all verts.
 S,  0  Enter.  All loose parts are merged into a single point in space.
Unwrap the mesh, sphere projection. each of these loose parts has all vertices in a tiny tiny area in uv space.
disable the shape key merged, or set to 0, or delete.
I can post a node setup, but you probably get it. By using a procedural texture in uv space, you get that loose part randomness you wanted.


text:
Left clicking adds a mirror modifier
I feel as if someone had messed with auto-correct on my phone, and now I can't do anything. Basically, I don't know how this happened, but the left click button only adds mirror modifiers to objects. It does not move the 3d cursor. Every time I click to the left it says "Add Modifier" and it has the mirror as the selected one. Can anyone help me with this?

What does LMB show for its default in user prefs? Have you by chance changed any hotkeys?

for testing purposes, try resetting to factory settings. The command is in the file menu. Check if the issue persists. most likely you accidentally messed up your keymap somewhere, which can be fixed rather easily.

There seems to be a keymap added to your system (most likely accidentally), which calls the add modifier operator, and its default is the mirror one. Go to your User Preferences -> Input section, and search for 'modifier' in the 'Name" field:

If you find a keymap like the one in 'nicely drawn' brackets in the screenshot, remove it by clicking the X button (marked with the arrow).
More interesting is actually how you got there. I did it like this: I clicked the 'add modifier' command in the Spacebar menu. The Properties Panel one works of course as well. When the menu pops up, I RMB clicked on the Mirror Item, which brings up another menu. I chose 'Add Shortcut', and simply LMB clicked in there. And the damage was done  :)
However, it's not exactly what you have, as my version automatically adds a Mirror, it does not open the menu any more. I had to manually clear the 'Type' field in the Keybinding (see screenshot, bottom right) to have exactly your behavior. Maybe now you can remember how you achieved it? Just played with keymaps maybe?

I have found a solution for the "Object Mode Left clicking adds a mirror modifier" problem in Blender 3.0.1.
The solution is; Go to Preferences, in the Keymap section search for name "add" and find an "Object Mode" under "add modifier". Then remove the list by clicking the "x" button and have a nice day :)


text:
Strange blackening after joining meshes
I've recently started working with Blender and i CONSTANTLY get this issue when i make 2 meshes and join them together to form 1 mesh.

This is what it looks like before i join the 2 meshes:

An this is what i get when i join them. (The magazine is not yet joined with the other meshes)
Any help on this issue will be really appreciated.
Thanks for the attention!

Can you enter edit mode and turn on the display of the normals, and check the normal direction? Sometimes that happens to me and I have to flip normals on parts or just Ctrl-N recalculate normals.

Select the entire mesh in edit mode, then press Ctrl + N to recalculate the normals.


text:
Rigging a tank turret and gun
I decided to make the Panzer VIII "Maus" tank in Blender as a way to experiment with techniques and such on the go, but i had also made another tank before the Maus and since then, i have still not been able to figure out how i can make the tank's turret and gun to be rigged properly.
What i want is for the turret to be able to be rotatable on the Z axys (left and right), but the gun to follow the turret's rotation, WHILE the gun itself can rotate on the Y axys (up and down). Before, n my previous tank, i was able to make the Turret rotatable, but the gun was either left floating in the air, or not being able to rotate, WHILE remaining attached to the Turret.
Here's a pic for a better understanding:

Feel free to point out any mistakes with bone placement, that would also help me as i'm not yet familiar with rigging.
I hope my explanation wasn't confusing or anything.
Thanks in advance for any help!

Each bone has a head and a tail. The head is the centre point of any rotation, so you position the head at the centre point of the pieces rotation, for the turret that is the centre of its connection to the base and for the gun it is the end that is connected to the turret. Position each bone so that its movements make sense for the piece of the tank that it will control.
Now parent each bone to the piece that it is connected to, the turret is the parent of the gun and the base is the parent of the turret. When parenting bones you can choose between connected and keeping offset, choosing connected will move the head to the tail of the parent but keep offset will parent the bone without moving it, this allows the bone to follow the parent and keep its position for its rotations.
To make animating easier you can add some constraints.
For the turret and gun, under transform locks in the bone properties, enable the location locks, this prevents you manually moving the bones in pose mode.

For the turret add a Limit Rotation constraint and enable Limit X and Limit Y and change World space to Local Space, now it can only be rotated on its Z axis. Any time you press G or R it will only rotate the one direction you want it to rotate.

For the gun also add a Limit Rotation constraint. Enable all three limits and change to local space. Now set a min and max value for the X axis, in my quick example I found a max of 32 and a min of -4.2 looks about right, allowing you to rotate the gun up and down without hitting the tank body and not point straight up in the air.

Here is my simple example rig.

I'm still confused as to how exactly to do it, i couldn't understand if i need to put the bones in as different armatures, or if i need to parent the mesh itself and then do something with the bones or something else. I'm sorry, i just find this rigging thing to be really confusing and hard for me.

Well, i added each bone as an individual armature, parented the bones to their corresponding parts and they all interact like they're supposed to. If i move the hull bone, the Hull, Turret and Gun moves, if i rotate the Turret, the Gun follows and the Gun rotates at the bone's base. This should be fine for animating and shouldn't cause any problems, right ?

@Ivan you only need one armature object, that one armature can have as many bones in it as you need but if what you have works for you then go ahead. Like separate objects, each bone can be parented to another bone so that it follows it around. For example in a character, the upper arm is the parent of the lower arm so that the lower arm always moves with the upper arm. Same with your tank, the turret is a child of the hull and follows it, it just doesn't have to be directly connected to the parent.

Yeah, now that i took a closer look at the hierarchy, everything became "Hull-bone" which branches off into the the different mesh objects and armature, so i got what i was supposed to. And i'm SURE that i understood rigging and parenting this time :)

How do you do this in blender 2.8. transform constraints no longer exist

@tatsu they still exist, the link was broken from changes to the manual, not that it was removed. The link is updated now.


text:
Simplifying specific faces
On the picture bellow there's a model i've been working on. At first, the mesh was pretty clean and optimized, with just enough vertices as it needed, but that was before i used the Subdivision Modifier. The mesh itself looks good after the modifier was applied, but in edit mode, the topology got pretty cluttered and hard to work with. The pill shaped cutout you see on the picture is something i want to extrude and then bevel, but the topology screws it up and i end up getting a deformed mesh. Here's the picture:

What i want, is to "simplify" those strange shapes and make them like the rest of the topology; quads with no triangles or god forbid N-gons.
Using dissolve makes n-gons and manually fixing the topology is going to be longer than the project itself.

it's not clear what your object is and is supposed to be, and anyway I guess it will probably be easier to re-do it from scratch... maybe describe what you want or give pictures and someone will tell what's the best way to do it

This specific shape is an IS-3's turret.
here's a picture: https://glossary-eu-static.gcdn.co/icons/wotb/5.1.0.4/uploaded/vehicles/hd/IS-3.png

I don't think you should 'Apply' the subdivision surface modifier because after applying the modifier, you cannot make any significant changes in the model later if you want to. I would suggest that you don't apply the modifier. This would not affect your final render. Also, after applying the modifier, your render times will increase drastically as compared to not applying the modifier.

It looks like you're trying to cut holes in a quarter sphere (well, kind of). Maybe beginning with a UV Sphere (i.e. concentric circles) is not the best way. Here is a try, beginning with a cube:

The topology was still going to be the same, since those weird flower-like shapes were caused AFTER the subdivision surface and i cut out the hole using Knife Project afterwards. I started over with a different method of manually extruding and scaling down a circle and applied the Subdivision modifier and it looks a lot better and the topology is clean. However, you've also fixed a problem with your method, because cutting out shapes with Knife Project can prove to be messy and your method seems a lot cleaner for my goal, so, thanks anyway!
Also, Ashutosh Budhdeo that's probably a good idea


text:
Question, regarding modeling as a process
I've been using blender to do small projects as a hobby, and i have one question, which i haven't been able to find around the internet, so i figured it's a good decision to ask here.
I've seen many videos of people modeling firearms, cars and other models, with a lot of detail. I've noticed, that they have their own ways of modeling and that's fine, but i've seen 1 thing that i can't really figure out. People, making a singular model out of multiple meshes, which are just intersecting, or perfectly aligned. But then, i've seen people model from 1 mesh by extruding, making loop cuts and using various add-on features to make a model out of 1 single mesh.
My question is: Is modeling out of multiple meshes good and perfectly functional for all needs, CGI, 3D printing, games and animation ? Or is modeling from 1 mesh the "better" option, or is there even a golden rule about how you should make your model ?
Thanks for all answers in advance!

"perfectly functional for all needs, CGI, 3D printing, games and animation" there isn't golden rule suitable for each purpose. Each one of them requires different options. Printing needs actual and precise geometry. Game model is required to be lightweight so lowpoly, intersections don't matter until it's not visible.

So, intersecting different meshes to form 1 model is perfectly fine, if i want to make a game asset as long as it's low poly and the intersections aren't visible, i shouldn't worry about compromising the functionality of the model ?


text:
Volumetric Scatter ignoring World lighting
I'm having trouble getting Volumetrics to respond to the World environment lighting. I'm using a standard node setup combining Volumetric Absorbtion and Volumetric Scatter and it appears to work as expected for standard Lamps and also for Mesh lights but not for the World lighting?
There is a checkbox on the World Ray Visibility to control visibility for Volume Scatter rays and that appears to have no effect (see the checkbox being flipped in the right-hand panel but no effect on Suzanne) :

To show that this is working for standard (point) lamps and for mesh lights but not for environment lighting :

The sequence in the above image is all on, lamp off, lamp on, mesh off, mesh on, environment off, environment on. You can see that the lamp affects the suzanne volume, the mesh affects the suzanne volume, but the environment does not affect the suzanne volume.
What am I missing here?.... Or is this a bug?
I've tried this on Blender 2.76b and 2.78a with the same results.

I'm not sure, but is this not the same limitation that makes Sun Lights not work well with World volumetrics? Since they are considered to be at an infinite distance nothing ever gets through the volume density.

I don't think so as with world volumetrics the volume is covering the entire (infinite) distance from the sun - so it makes sense that it wouldn't get through. In this case there's nothing between the (infinite distance) light source and the edge of the mesh so it shouldn't be affected. The environment light affects a diffuse mesh alongside it as you'd expect but the volumetric material just doesn't get affected.

I see, you are right. Possibly a bug then, maybe worth reporting to the devs

I've managed to get this working - the problem only occurs when Surface Multiple Importance Sampling is not enabled for the World.
Here I have two Suzannes - one with Diffuse (the one on the Right) and one with Volumetrics to mimic the diffuse (with the Diffuse at 20% grey to produce a similar shading).
With Multiple Importance of the World disabled (the default) the volumetric material ignores the (red) World illumination :

With Multiple Importance Sampling of the World enabled, the volumetric material is correctly illuminated by the world :

Also, with Multiple Importance enabled, the Ray Visibility works as it should - enabling and disabling the effect on the volumetric scatter.
I don't know enough about the Multiple Importance Sampling to know if this is expected behaviour or what the downsides of enabling Multi-Importance (if any) are, but it fixed the problem for my situation.

Tou should usually have MIS enabled anyhow.  It increases computation time but almost always makes up for it by requiring less samples.


text:
UV Maps - is it possible to use the third channel (W?)
The Vector of a UV map consists of 3 channels as for any vector in 3D space (whether Generated, Object, World, etc.) and as can be accessed via the Separte XYZ node. The 'U' and 'V' correspond to the 'X' and 'Y' outputs but the 'Z' ('W' in UVW space) is always zero.
Is there any way of assigning values other than zero to that 'W' channel? Obviously not via the standard 'UV unwrap' functions (since those only deal with the surface mesh so W is always zero) - but is this possible via Python?
I have tried using BMesh to assign the UV coordinates as in this answer  but that only assigns uv[0] and uv[1] but doesn't seem to allow uv[2].
I have tried using Vertex Colors as an alternative (as they do allow 3 channels) but those are only to 8-bit precision (ie, 0.0 to 1.0 in 256 distinct steps) and so are far from ideal. The other potential solution would be to store the vertex points in another data structure such as pixels in a 32-bit color image (similar to this answer but storing vertex data rather than object data), referenced via an Image Texture from a vertex ID assigned using Vertex Colors but that's just plain messy - it would be far simpler to be able to use a 3-channel UV map to store 3 channels of float-32bit data.
Any ideas as to how the 3rd UV channel can be assigned or does the code behind the scenes not even store it?

Using a second UV map where U may be used as W?

Good suggestion for a workaround. It wouldn't be ideal but should certainly work.

Looking into the Blender source code, the UV processing does not account for the third channel - so this is not possible within a single standard UV map. In order to store an additional (W) channel you could use an additional UV map - eg, 'UVMap1' could hold U and V while the 'U' channel of 'UVMap2' could hold the 'W' channel. However, this method does not provide a simple method of manipulating the UVW map (since the W channel needs to be manipulated separately.
That said, by considering the two UV maps as a 'front view' and a 'side view' of UVW space we can achieve a similar effect - but you need to be careful when manipulating the UV maps to ensure they stay consistent.
To demonstrate, start with your initially unwrapped mesh - a standard UV map :

Copy the UV map (click the '+' alongside the list of UV maps in Edit mode) and rename them to make it clear that one is the UV "front" view and the other is the 'WV' "side" view. 'Select all' (A), scale to zero in the X-axis (SX0Enter) and select everything and move it to the size (GX then drag to the side). You should now have something like this :

Now to move points into the W dimension you can simply select them (or select a whole face) and drag them along the X (U) axis with GX.

To combine the separate 'front' and 'side' UV maps into a UVW map you simply need to separate the channels and re-combine into a single UVW vector :


text:
Python script for "Cursor to Active"
I am making a python script that replace lights by spheres (to get the Blender light positions in Unity) for Dark Blender, but the script Cursor to Active command is specific to the 3d view so it does not compile from the text editor. What code should i write to make it work?

If a 3d view is not in local mode then bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_active() is the equivalent of
context.scene.cursor_location = context.active_object.location

Could also just get the location from the lamps in the scene
import bpy

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

lamps = [o for o in scene.objects if o.type == 'LAMP']

for l in lamps:
    # add sphere
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(location=l.location)
    # unlink from scene (could bpy.ops.delete or bpy.data.remove )
    scene.objects.unlink(l)

or pre select the lamps and use
lamps = context.selected_objects


text:
Add an image texture to a plane correctly
I have added some planes and i want to add image textures for them. But when I add textures it looks like this.

See textures are not applied correctly. Can some one please help me to get this done since I am new to blender.Sometimes it may be a small one but any help would be highly appreciated.

The planes aren't UV unwrapped and most likely use default texture coordinates. You could use genererated texture coordinates or unwrap the mesh and use UV mapping.


text:
When dragging to re-parent in the Outliner, I'm not getting any visual feedback. How do I fix this?

In a video I just watched it looks like this:

But I never got this "Drop to Set Parent" overlay or anything like it.
I'm on 2.77a on Windows 10. Also never got this on 2.77.
What's wrong here and how do I fix it?
Thanks,
Chris

I've never used that for parenting before. I suggest going to 3D view and hitting CTRL + P on the objects you wish to parent. Last object you select is the parent. EDIT: Both of these methods should be identical.

Thank you but that doesn't answer my question. I'm aware of the CTRL+P parenting but I'd like to know how to fix the display bug that happens when dragging items in the Outliner.
I've since found out that it's caused by the Window Draw Method in the User Preferences > System menu. When this is set to "Full", the overlay isn't drawn.

This works without notification Drop To Set Parent if using Full or Overlap Flip draw methods (but parenting will be performed); this works just fine with showing notification Drop To Set Parent with any other drawing method, i.e. Automatic, Triple Buffer, Overlap. 2.77.

This might be a bug that you should report. It might as well be just a problem with your graphics driver.

Works on 2.77a for me, so now i can suggest is reinstalling it and then checking drivers, still not fixing it, try resetting to default settings, you may of changed something, If all else fails i suppose it's a bug. Oh, and don't take restore to factory settings lightly.

The problem is caused by the Window Draw Method in the User Preferences > System menu. When this is set to "Full", the overlay isn't drawn. Changing it for example to "Overlap" fixes the issue. (however, there are other problems that arise in other parts of Blender when Window Draw Method is not set to "Full")

authors: Иван Пахомов


text:
Triggering NLA animations?

I've recently set up my NLA tracks for an entity someone has, and I'd like to be able to "trigger" the animations at any specific point. Is there a way to do this?
I know I could just shift or copy the NLA track, potentially. But I'm wondering if there's a way to just 'trigger' it in Blender? Or does it manually need to be set up?
In the image, you can see I've established my tracks:

Opening: Goes from Closed to Open and back again (which is just a copy/paste of the frames from both Open and Closed)
Open: Base reference that I'll have active whenever I want the thing open.
Closed: ^ but for whenever I want the thing shut.

However, "Opening" could be triggered multiple times to the same entity. It basically opens and shuts the object and I'd like it to be repeatable without copying NLA tracks over and over again. But if it's unavoidable, I can certainly do that too.

Keyframed animations only happen at a specific time that we have set, using the NLA it is possible to duplicate an action so that the same animation can be repeated at different times. While we can copy and paste the same thing into different places, it is a manual process.
To automate animations we can use constraints and drivers. Constraints use a simple interface to configure a range of preset conditions, drivers expand on this to allow values to be calculated using python expressions or scripts.
If you have multiple objects that you want to move in unison, constraints can allow one object to be the master control with the others moving in relation to the master. This means you only keyframe the one object at the time you want them all to move.
It is possible to input a distance between two objects into a driver, this would allow an object to move if another is within five units of it and have it move back when it is farther than five units away. While we can get great control over an item, it requires the use of python, even if only a short expression to define the calculation to use.


text:
Rendering Hard shading?
I'm trying to figure out a way to make a material that does not make any sort of soft shading at all -- rather it averages together and spreads it all over the face.
Here's an image of buildings from Darwinia where the buildings all have flat faces for shading, no softness. Just solid.
Is there a way to average it out like that, besides just using emission and manually assigning materials of different colors manually?

What render engine are you interested in?

Cycles render..


text:
Inverting 3D viewport?
In Paint Tool SAI, there's the option to flip the canvas so it's in reverse, which is perfect for when you have angle limitations, such as weak stroke directions. Is there any way this can be replicated with Blender's view?
I'm working on sculpting something but some parts I cannot quite get accurate strokes upon, and my best strokes are going from the upper right to lower left and vice versa, while going from lower right to upper left gives me trouble.
Basically I'm looking for something that inverts the camera view horizontally, but does NOT move the camera itself.

If you're looking through the camera view (not the viewport camera, but the "placed" one), then you can achieve this effect by scaling the camera by -1 on whatever axis you need (X axis demonstrated below):

Thanks, but can it not be done with the viewport camera?

As far as I know, the viewport "camera" does not have properties that can be edited like the scene camera (at least without scripting edits), so I think that's the best you can do.

Oh well. That's at least as close as I"m going to get then, but a temporary camera for use in this certainly helps. Thanks!