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How to enable tabs on the left panel?
I am new to Blender and was watching some video tutorials. However, the one in the video (v2.78) has the tabs on the left panel,

and mine (v2.69) doesn't.

How do I enable them and what is their correct name? Or were they added in some later version?

I think it came in a later version, yeah. Why don't you upgrade it? There's downside, only positives.

@Leo, any proof of that? Ubuntu 14.04 repositories contain only v2.69. Before I upgrade I would like to make sure it is really necessary.

As well as upgrading blender, also recommend upgrading to ubuntu 18  (the repos are up to date (for now))  Very impressed after recent upgrade  from 14.10.

Upgrade your Blender. This feature was introduced in 2.70. By now 2.79 is the current version. You can just download a tarball, extract it, and run it.


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How exactly does "Gesture Border" work?
I started to mess around with the key configurations in Blender 2.8 to make it feel like Maya LT.
And there I see Gesture Border under Border Select. It seems to affect how Border Select works. I tried to find its definition on Blender Python API Reference, but, I found... nothing.
Anyway, I still haven't figured out how to make Selection in Blender feel like Maya. Please tell me if you ever encountered this too and what did you do. Thanks!

EDIT 1 (2018/6/1 10:20 SMT+8):
I didn't notice it before I ask this question but actually, Gesture Border input settings can also be found in previous versions. Maybe it's irrelevant to version, though I'm not entirely sure.
At this moment I think I should remove "in Blender 2.8" from the title, but I decided to keep it for clarification since there's a comment telling why this question was downvoted.
I still want to know how Gesture Border works though. But I won't talk about experimental versions anymore.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about unfinished experimental development software

I've also wondered about Gesture Border and can't find any documentation on it. I'd like to know how it works, too. Since Gesture Border has been implemented for quite a while and is not 2.8 specific I don't think the question should be closed.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Dockable Append window
Is there is a way to set a File browser UI pane to append mode or something of the like for a quick drag and drop Kit-bashing type of workflow? Even an addon would be nice.
I did see the paid Asset manager addon however for what I'm looking fo $40 is steep.

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


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How do I thicken my procedural dot texture?
I have this procedural noisy dots texture and I would like to thicken the dots outward.

I am looking to create an effect where the dots would expand similar to how you can grow a selection in GIMP or photoshop and then fill the selection with black.

This is the desired effect. Thanks for any help.

What kind of dots are you making? If a "swiss cheese" effect would suit you, a Voronoi texture works quite well. If you like, you can use a Power (math) node to control the size of the dots.

Why power instead of multiply?

@GiantCowFilms Multiply will brighten/darken everything. Power will make bright values brighter and dark values darker.


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Blender Cycles Render is rendering past end frame
My 13-second animation has been rendering for about a week and I expected it to finish today. However, it's been rendering past the end frame (starts at 25 ends at 330) and is currently at 337. Does this usually happen or how can I fix this? I also notice that when I try to play the animation while it's rendering, it says the file is corrupt; I thought it would at least play a few seconds of what was rendered. The output format is FFmpeg video.

When rendering longer sequence, always render to an image format output and combine it afterwards. That way if the render crashes you can easily resume it and nothing gets lost. I guess a screenshot of your render settings and renderview would help answering this question.

You should check your scene render settings:

Make sure your end frame range is where you want it to be. Also, don't mix up the render frame range with the preview frame range. You can toggle those two in the Timeline editor:

It could also happen if you use motion blur because it needs to render more frames for that (to mix them together). This can be seen at the top of the render window.
Also notice that videos can't be viewed while Blender renders them. You can only view them after the rendering is completed or if you abort the rendering.


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"Join as Shape" error when trying to import a file for shape keys from ZBrush
This is my first time asking a question on this forum and I'm new to Blender, so hello everyone! This is pretty much my first time using ZBrush, Substance Painter, and Blender. Web searches got me a long way but I've hit a snag. There doesn't appear to be a solution online for my problem. The closest thing I found was another post on this site from over two years ago [link], but there wasn't a clear answer then.
My workflow was: sculpting in ZBrush > Substance Painter > Blender. I exported an .obj from Blender back into ZBrush (I love its sculpting tools), and there I sculpted my desired shape key on a layer, split the parts and then exported it from ZBrush as an .obj. I imported it back into Blender and then tried the "Join as Shapes" function. Here are the results. It's not pretty... the mesh basically explodes. I tried applying transformations, but still no good.
Here is a link to my project files. I hope someone has an answer!

@MrZak, thank you for informing me. The vertex count was the same, if it wasn't it wouldn't let me join shapes at all. I found this out the hard way because when I first exported it back from ZBrush it merged the eyes, teeth, etc. into one object (that's what "split to parts" was for). Anyway, I found a solution, thank you for your reply sir!

Okay, so I found an answer. To reiterate, the problem was: I have an alien character with a frill (like the Dilophosaurus is Jurassic Park), and I wanted a shape key for the frill to go down. I made the original mesh in ZBrush. I exported it from ZBrush and imported it into Blender (after making texture maps in Substance Painter). I exported the mesh from Blender and imported it into ZBrush. After I adjusted the mesh so his frill was down, I exported it from ZBrush back into Blender. When I tried to do the "Join as Shapes" option, the error occurred.
Now, the workaround: I imported the un-adjusted, frill-up version of the mesh from Blender into ZBrush, then I exported it right back into Blender without making any real changes. Now both the frill up and frill down versions are both exported from ZBrush (from Blender). Not sure why, but now "Join as Shapes" works, so I'm happy. Since the vertex count never changed, the texture maps I made in Substance Painter still work too.
Thanks!

This is a old thread but I'm going to post an answer for anyone else searching, since I solved the same issue.
Blender seems to not like .obj files from zbrush, at all, mesh explodes completely.
Easiest workaround is to export your model as a webStandard .x3d format for the purposes of blend shapes.


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Adding geometry detail from textures to a low-poly model for 3D printing
As the title says I'm trying to take some models from a video game and use them for 3D printing. The models are (understandably) low-poly but they do have textures with a fair amount of detail.
My endgame is to 3D print the models for use as miniature figurines in the tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000 produced by Games Workshop (don't worry, I don't plan on selling the 3D printed models). In this game, the actual physical miniatures have far more detail than the low-poly 3D game models.
Here is an example of the textured and non-textured 3D model:

... and here's an example of the physical miniature:

I'm sure I'll have to do some manual tweaking regardless (the holes at the end of the gun barrels, for example) but I am wondering if there's an easier way to transfer detail from the textures back into the geometry of the 3D models. My best guess at the moment is some sort of depth/height/displacement map or projection, but I really don't know.
While searching I couldn't find any tutorials or advice on this exact subject so I thought I would ask here. I also own ZBrush and Substance Painter if it isn't possible to do in Blender. I just don't want to have to do it all manually unless there's no choice.
Anyway, please let me know if you have advice or suggestions on how to approach this problem!
Here is a Dropbox link for the models and textures: link.

The supplied textures aren't displacement maps, just color maps.
So any results will be... well... suboptimal :).
The miniature was definitely modeled manually.
Displacement using the provided textures - vs - original model with no displacement

Might be interesting to convert the textures to a bump or displacement map with a third party software https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/392/86891 and apply a smooth modifier afterwards to see how it fares...

Oh that's a good point :)

@JachymMichal Yeah there's some roughness, but it does have way more detail! I'm a bit of a noob at this specific thing, how did you get the results you got here? I checked out the displacement modifier but I'm not sure how to use the textures as a displacement map and get the pictured effect.

@Gorgious interesting, yeah the results look like they just need some tweaking and smoothing. I'm somewhat familiar with Substance B2M and Materialize, if those would be appropriate for this task. So would the process be editing the bump map and then testing it by trial and error as a displacement map in Blender?

Hey @Dakacha :). I simply subdivided the mesh, and plugged the texture into a Displacement Node as described in this answer: How to hook up various maps types in Cycles?. Don't forget to enable True Displacement in material settings.

@JachymMichal In 2.9 this post indicates that "true displacement" has changed to Material Properties > Settings > Surface > Displacement > "Displacement... ". The tooltip mentions "true displacement" so it seems right, but I can't seem to export this as geometry... I also got the displacement modifier to work by going to Texture Properties, creating a new texture (using the color texture for now), then selecting it in the Displace Modifier's settings (strength: .02, MidLevel: 1). The latter method does translate into actual geometry.

You're right on both accounts :). You can't use node displacement for actual geometry, you need to use (and apply) the Disp modifier :). I used nodes just because it was faster (and you can change the texture with colorramp etc...)

@JachymMichal Gotcha. Well cool, seems like subdivision surface (at least 6 levels) + the displace modifier are a good starting point for my purposes (adding geometry detail for 3D printing the model). I imagine I can refine the results by making a dedicated smoothed-out texture and/or applying the subdivision surface and displace modifiers then decimating and smoothing out the model's rough edges. Thanks!

@Dakacha No problem, good luck with your project :).


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My object mesh have some sort of serious tile pattern glitch

I think the problem I have has something to do with overlapping faces, because the pattern becomes more repeated each time i subdivide the object. I have tried to delete double vertices and recalculate normals to no end. However, the pattern disappears when i go into Sculpt mode, and the pattern stays no matter what material I assign to it. The pattern is still visible when the object is rendered.

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

Nevermind! I found the answer here


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How do I get rid of green numbers?

these green numbers are there and they are bothering me and making it hard to work. I can't seem to find a reference to them anywhere. any help would be much appreciated

Whilst in edit mode, press N to open up the properties bar. Scroll down to the mesh display section and make sure that all edge info and face info checkboxes are unticked.
Hope this fixes your problem.


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Reducing the number of faces on a basic text mesh
I want to create a text animation in blender. I'm trying to reduce the number of faces in my mesh. I'm having a lot of trouble adding faces to certain letters after I have gotten rid of some of the edges. For example, when I try to fill the letter "A" the entire letter including the negative space is filled.  I've tried ripping and separating the match but I haven't had much success.  I'm trying to mimic a YouTube tutorial but I'll never get to the end if I can't get the mesh straight.
I've included a screenshot of my project and a link to the video. My knowledge of edges vertices and faces or lack thereof is probably was giving me trouble.
I appreciate any assistance that you can give me

SAMPLE TUTORIAL

The problem is that if you try to delete too many edges on this kind of shape with a hole, Blender won't be able to understand what he's supposed to fill and what is supposed to be a hole. So keep the necessary edges. For example here are a try with an O with two different topologies:

Are you saying that I need to create two separate meshes to make one letter "O"? I am relatively new at this so you may have to dumb it down. Thank you.

no I mean you need to keep some edges so that Blender understand what is supposed to be filled and what is supposed to be a hole. In the first solution I kept only one edge and it doesn't work because it doesn't understand that there is a hole

I tried to recreate when you did, but failed. How did you create the 2 vertical edges. I used the knife tool and  ended up cutting the entire object including the doughnut hole in half.  I put one circular mesh inside a second mesh.


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Cursor not selecting the correct vertex
I just started using Blender and tried to select one of the vertex on the torus object. When I left click one of the vertices, Blender sometimes selects different vertex from the one I selected. Other times, Blender will not highlight any of the vertex so I could never click on the correct vertex. Is there a fix for this?
Thank you.

By default, left clicking is not for selecting. You would have to intentionally set this behavior in the user preferences. Instead, try right clicking for selection.

I forgot to mention that I did change my user preference to make left click as selection.

As far as I know there are no selection bugs in 2.78. You are in edit mode correct?

Yes I'm in edit mode.

If anyone else was having the same trouble, I solved the problem by changing the viewport shading from solid to wireframe and it let me select vertices accurately.

So did your problem only occur when the viewport shading was 'solid'? Maybe you have enabled 'Limit selection to visible' while your were in solid viewport shading? Then disabling this option could solve the problem. In 'wireframe' viewport shading the 'Limit selection to visible' option is always turned off by default

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


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After joining meshes they become white
Is this normal? Becouse it does it only with some meshes. I have applied "Subdivision Surface" and "Mirror" (with clipping enabled) to the parts that become white. I didn't apply mirror to the final part of the mag, and is not becoming white even if it joins other parts, so i guess the problem is there? How do i solve it?

Also, side question, how do i get back the "file/render/window" tab on the top of the screen? I have it in other views (like in UV editing view or scripting view) but i don't have it in the default view, thanks!

Have you tried in Edit Mode selecting all and Recalculating Normals?

Tried it now, it doesn't work

I solved it by removing the bottom part and create it by extruding the top part (joining the two top parts didn't create the problem)

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


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Why aren't there dots in the center of faces in Blender 4?
I am in Edit mode and face selection is activated, however no face has a black dot in the middle.

How can I display the face center in Blender 4?

It's not here by default anymore but you can activate their visibility in the Mesh Edit Mode Overlays panel > Center. Note that you need to be in Face select mode to see them :

The dots only appear in X-Ray mode while in Edit mode, which you can enable with Alt+Z.
You can also enable Normals, under Mesh Edit Overlays. (In the top-right, just to the left of X-Ray and the toggles for Viewport shading)
That allows you to always see the direction, and effectively the center, of all faces.If you don't like the little blue lines sticking out of everything, you can turn down the size to shorten them.

I don't think I understand, is there a way to always see face centers when in edit mode and face selection mode, like in the settings for example?

I am not aware of any such functionality in settings, but I updated my answer to farther clarify.


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How to remove world background in Eevee reflection plane
I am rendering using Eevee engine, I have a plane with a Glossy BSDF with roughness set to 0. I have selected Film->Transparent in my render properties. When I render this, the plane shows a reflection of the world background. I expected this to render the plane as transparent, showing only the objects in the scene. How can I remove the world background from the reflection?

The Glossy BSDF won't render as transparent if that's what you want. The scene does render without the world background image here though although it will still show in the Render preview unless you have Scene World checked on the Viewport shading menu.

At the end of the day all I want is a mirror. The mirror shouldnt reflect the world background. The attached photo is the final render, you may have to open it in a photo editing program to see the transparency.

You can't add images into comments or attach them for that matter. You'd have to edit your question and add it into that. It's approaching 1am here so I'm going offline now.


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Bounding box dimension in blender
I am using dimensions to get the bounding box dimensions of the object.
me_ob = bpy.data.objects['myobj']
cor = me_ob.dimensions

When i construct a cube with those dimensions, the cube appears to be shifted along the z & y axis. It is good along the x axis.
I am creating the cube from blender wiki

At first i thought that it be be because of the arbitrary shape than the cube or a cuboid. For cube and cuboid, the center can be found out by dividing the sides into two. but for a arbitary shape it will not always be half. To validate it, i shifted the cube manually. It fits perfectly after this.

Why do we remove the shift ?

Hi. Please include any relevant code in the question itself as text instead of in an image.

I was trying to add a link to the blender wiki but i was not allowed.   Check this link.. https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Py/Scraipts/Cookbook/Code_snippets/Meshes

There is an error in the url it says 'Scraipts' instead of 'Scripts'. Nevertheless, please take the code you have in the text editor and paste the relevant parts into your question. It makes it easier for people to answer your question if they immediately have access to the code you are using and don't have to type it up from an image or go to a url.

Create a cube at the origin point position of the object you took dimensions from. That should help to resolve your issue.


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Boolean Difference doesn't work despite all efforts to fix meshes
I am trying to carve a groove into an object. This works with other objects after some mesh fixes but not with this one, which was created using a surface nurbs curve (duplicated multiple times, then skinned and converted to a mesh)
The boolean difference modifier does not modify the mesh at all.
I already tried the following steps on both meshes:
Triangulate, Remove doubles, Recalculate normals (both outwards), Fill holes.
The thing I don't understand is that when I select "Intersect" in the boolean modifier to check where the overlap is, I don't get a solid object but an open one:

What am I missing here? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Here is the blender file (created with V 2.78c) Tali_Helmet.blend

Thank you very much. I read numerous questions on how to fix a mesh and I am 99,9% sure I did remove doubles in both meshes but there were really 8 doubles. It works now. Thanks again!


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How to extend an Image from side to side softening the hard edge of image
I have an Animation of the Sun Series: see
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR0QoztQVGtiHcwhVtd9i7qfvNkVm3m6c
as you can see from the Image below

The Corona or Radiating Fire of the Sun has a edge on both sides sometime, sometimes they extend up and down, but not much, and the few times this did happen I fixed them by hand.
This is a NASA public domain images of the Sun in AIA 193 4096x4096 format, with an Environment image texture of the Stars as background.
What I want to do is soften the hard line so it looks more like this:

I just did a fast Smudge by hand in GIMP, and asked this same question on their Forum.
There are over 33,333 images for one Year and I have over 6 years of images that I am working with, that is over 200,000 images, so I can not do this by hand in my lifetime since I am dying of Cancer my time is limited, I am old and have Arthritis as well, so it would be a very painful way to go out, and I might not finish it, so why start, but I wanted to finish this series, and go back and do years before the series started, which is 2010, so people can view the sun over a decade, but the hard edge looks bad, and I know there is a way to fix this, but I am not good enough at blender to figure it out, my guess is that I need to write a script that takes the edges of the images and blurs it side ways in an oval shape, no idea how to do that, anyone have any ideas?
I originally did the video in 1080, now I want to render it in 2160, since the originals are larger then the 3840, it should look good at 4k, but I want to fix this issue since it will take a long time to render all these images.
Update: I also started a thread on Gimp:
gimp-forum.net/Thread-How-to-extend-an-Image-from-side-to-side-softening-the-hard-edge-of-image
This will be just as hard to wrap my brain around, it deals with using a Gimp Plugin GMIC, I have no idea how to do this, so its going to be a huge learning curve, normally this would not be an issue with me, being sick is making it hard to focus on learning new things, not looking for someone to do the work for me, just looking for more information on how to do this, in a way I can figure out how to do it.
Using Gimp and a plugin, its possible to write a CLI command, using bash I can apply it to all the images, it would have to resize the canvas, then know the location to apply the effect, my guess is that this will take time, if its faster and easier to do this in Blender is a good question, both require me learning how to do it then doing it.
And a thread on BlenderArtists
blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?434645-How-to-extend-an-Image-from-side-to-side-softening-the-hard-edge-of-image
Thanks

I think this will be the first such statement in comments in history of BSE, but well... To much details.

You can blend the edges outwards by manipulating the texture coordinates to stretch out the image at each edge. To achieve this you can use an RGB Curves node to set the profile of the Red channel (X) to bend out the edges as follows :

To create the curve, disable clipping (click the round dot button and click the 'Use Clipping' button to disable it), create 4 additional control points, and set the 6 control points (by clicking each point in turn and typing the coordinates into the X and Y fields) to the following values :

-0.5, 0.0
0.08, 0.08
0.09, 0.09
0.91, 0.91
0.92, 0.92
1.5, 1.0

This will produce a curve that is straight in the middle section (resulting in no distortion in the middle of the image) and which flatterns at the ends (which will spread the extremeties outwards).
Note : Move points 2,3,4,5 closer to or further from the corners to blend less/more of each edge of the image. eg, moving point 2 to 0.04,0.04 and point 3 to 0.05,0.05 will blend less of the leftmost edge - the closer these points get to zero the less of the image edge will be blended. Similar for points 4 and 5 but the closer they are to 1.0. Moving points 1 and 6 closer in will reduce the extent of the blending.
Note the Mapping node to adjust the coordinates to add an additional 0.25 at the start and end of the Generated coordinate range.
This will spread the edges as shown :

This can be further manipulated using Maths nodes to 'curve' the edges with a Cosine operator and to fade out the edges as shown :

This can produce the following result :

This could potentially be enhanced by including noise in the blended section and/or the cosine to make it less uniform if desired.
Blend file attached

This works for me, thank you so much, just one question, how can I make the Black Transparent so the Stars show through? I tried this from the Compositor using the Difference Key, but when I alpha over the Sun it did not work for some reason, as a result the hard edge is still there also, my guess is that the Material is not transparent, no idea how to change this in Cycles, in Blender it was a property, so I get a contrast of the two black colors, and I do not know how to convert these Nodes to those compatible with the Compositor and get the same effect, without using an Object.

@JeffFlesher Glad to help. Not sure I understand fully the problem with the stars. You could try combining the output from the Emission Shader node with a Transparent Shader node by way of an Add Shader. This should result in transparency. If this doesn't help then probably best to submit a new question. If you do then let me know (by posting here) and I can take a look.

The only issue I now have is that the Date Time Stamp at the bottom is being erased, and also it looks like the transformation is taking place to close to the Sun, since not all the image will have a Hard Edge, I need to only effect those images that do, and I don't want to effect what Corona is already there so I could alpha over the original to fix that, so how do I adjust it so it only effects images that the Corona extends past the edge? Here is a link to an image without Corona link

I take that back, adding a Transparent Shader makes the Stars show through the Sun, so what I really need to do is make the Black Transparent, so you know how this can be done, or is this because the original is jpg and it does not support Transparency, if so will I have to convert all the files? That takes a long time and a lot of hard drive space so I want to make sure its necessary. Thanks for all the Help.

In the case I need to convert jpg to png to get transparency, is there anything else I should do to the image, normally I use IM to convert the images like this: mogrify -alpha set -background transparent -format png -path ../2016-png *.jpg if I wanted to make canvas larger I could add -gravity center -extent 4696x4096 , so I have 300 px on both sides to work with if needed, just not sure what I need to do to get this effect, not sure if adding -background transparent does anything if I do not extent, but it takes days for this to run, last time power when out, start over, or write script.

Sorry to ask so many questions, but can this be done from the Compositor instead of the Material/Texture Node editor? It would make this so much easier, but I just do not know enough about this setup to convert it. Thanks again.

You lost me at the RGB Curves Node, I cannot get it to take - values, I see yours has them, also the scale is change from what I can get, I can not get it to look anything like this, the zoom only goes so far, what am I missing?

Apologies - I mised a crucial step on the RGB Curves node. I meant to mention it but forgot to go back and add a comment. You need to set it to not clip to allow values outside the 0.0 to 1.0 range - click the round dot button and click the clipping button. I'll update the answer. I'll also look into using the compositor but it's not my strongest area.

There are a lot of questions there - it would be better to ask at least some of those as seperate questions. This site works best if each question is asked and answered separately.

Sorry, to me its all one question about the same question, but I understand if it gets off subject, and I hope I did not do that. But the thread is not really complete till I understand the answer, that is the way I look at it, for example, I just read you need to click the button, but it was not till I changed the min value did it work, details I did not know, so I ask more questions, its hard to avoid it, but the Compositor is better because it give more tools to pull this off, for one you do not need a material or texture, just an image sequence, I can use diff key, viewer node... Thanks.

@JeffFlesher The original question was regards the spreading of the edges of the image. I only meant that the showing through of the stars, the removal of the text, usage of the RGB Curves node should be raised as separate questions. This way they can be answered separately to provide an answer that's accessible to others experiencing those particular problems also. For the RGB Curves, once you disable the 'Use Clipping' button the ranges no longer matter (it's like setting all to +/- infinity). My original answer did mention disable clipping but I should have been more specific.

I added this as a new question:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/86547/how-do-you-convert-mesh-material-texture-nodes-to-compositor-nodes

@JeffFlesher I think it can be done in the compositor but unless I'm missing a trick thrn it's more complicated than doing it as a Cycles material. I'll post an answer if/when I get something working properly.

Thanks again for the help, same link as the new page with both projects: Sun-Corona.blend.zip, see Sun-Corona-Material.blend, I am getting close with it, all I need to do is blur that edge where I masked out the Material image, and added back the original, now I just need to make them look seamless, this is using your original work this thread. You can see that I am trying get the stars to show, masked out the Sun so they will not show through it.

Do you want me to open a new question about how to fix this blend File? I have a link in the last comment, instead of doing it that way, I have the alpha over working, but the issue is the Date/Time Stamp, I think I need to remove it in the Material Nodes, trying to do so in compositor did not work for me, but I might be doing it wrong, left in inactive nodes where I tried to mask it out, also I could not adjust the RGB Curve enough to only effect that outer edge, so it will not effect the second image, note setting to .04 and .05 leaves hard edge, See ReadMe.txt, thanks.

@JeffFlesher I'm not at a computer for the next two weeks and so cannot take a look until then.

Perhaps the best method is not to look at just the sides that are now flat edged, but at looking at rotation the portion of the image that is outside the ringed edge of the sun to overlay on the sides and possibly use some feathered masks to blend them into the existing frame.

Yes that was recommended Blender Artists but the Sun does not always have a Corona on the top or bottom, its minimal most of the time, I was hoping for an extended look, and not something that does not match or look real, really what I want to do is just a Smudge from about 10 px out to 300 px tapering, like I did in my example, if I do only 10 px, it will just smudge the black if there is no Corona, because that too is what happens at times in the year. Thanks.


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Animation are displayed at the wrong time while rendering
Hy All
Im working on a quite large video project with blender 2.78.a on a Debian 9.
Since the rendering crashes after a certain while, i render my movies in different slices.
For the first slice of 3000 frames, everything goes well. For all the comming slices, the animation (titles and flags moving in and out of the video) get messed up and the animated object are shown at random times while rendering.

Does somebody has experienced something similar?
What am i missing ?
Thanks a lot for the help

To be more specific, it seems, that when i want to render only a part of the movie, that the animations somehow get moved by the amount i reduce the timeline. Is there a setting witch binds the keyframes to the selected frames for render ?

On the second image, taken while rendering, one can see the marking in the timeline jumping to around frame 10000. It look like blender tries to find the object for the flag at this position to render into the actual frame. Note that during all this time, the markers for the keyframes for the map are visible in the timeline, so the flag should be there.

My hack is to render all out in images and stich it together with mencoder... but thats ugly. Somehow blender doesnt crash rendering the images, but rendering it as a h264 movie produces crashes at random places.


text:
Motion tracking an image to go offscreen
Hello Blender Community
I am trying to make images track the heads of characters in a video clip. I can do this fine, but when a character goes offscreen or behind an object, the image doesn't disappear with the track- is there a checkbox I'm missing or something?
Thank you.


text:
How do I mix more than one image with a video in node editor?
I'm trying to add images to a video clip using motion tracking, and while I can do this fine for one image in a clip, I can't figure out how to have more than one image added to the video. Is there a way to do this?
Thank you.

Please show screenshots of what you've got so far in the compositor.


text:
How can I build a versatile camera rig which can both orbit around its focus and pan?
This is a little hard to put into words, so please bear with me.
I'm building a camera rig. I need the camera to be able to orbit around an object, as if it were on a circular track, then move away from that object and then pan. Here is an example of the kind of motion I'm after:

The problem with the motion in the example is that the camera is initially rotating around an empty to which it is parented (the black circle) but then when it rotates around its own axis, it leaves the empty behind, and so will never be able to orbit again.
Essentially I want to be able to choose whether the camera rotates around the empty or the empty rotates around the camera at any given time and then animate back and forth between these two possibilities.
The final rig will be using bones and constraints to allow for crane shots and the like, so a solution doesn't need to just rely on the relationship between camera and empty.

You need to be able to orbit at different distances and that means you need dynamic parenting. The way to achieve this is through Child Of Constraints. To animate this, you need to do the following in this specific order:

animate the camera into the start position of orbiting, till now the camera has no parent, it is free
place Child Of Constraint onto the camera, target is the orbit control empty, press Set Inverse button - now the camera is parented to empty
animate the orbiting motion by rotating the empty and any local motion of the camera (panning while orbiting etc..)
on the last keyframe of orbiting, insert a keyframe for the camera (LocRot) and a keyframe for the influence of the Child Of Constraint (100%).
move 1 frame forward
select camera and choose Object > Apply > Visual Transform, do not move the timeline
keyframe the Child Of Constraint to 0%
keyframe the camera (LocRot)
you can move the timeline now
the camera is now free again, without any parent
repeat and profit, camera will have as many parent constraints as there are orbiting motions

This is a bit tedious, if you are up for the rigging job you can put this into a script that can be run with a custom button in UI to dynamically parent and un-parent.
There is this addon which for simple use cases will work fine, but it is limited. This is very tricky to setup inside the hierarchy of an armature (for example dynamically parenting hand to thigh) when all is also parented to the Root (the trick is to avoid double transforms with some clever drivers).
And if you are trying to do this on a linked armature, it is yet again even bigger challenge, because after file reload all drivers on constraints that are not present in the original rig, but are present in the animation where the rig is linked are discarded.
For completeness and best result I am also plugging this in:
How to smooth camera animation to have fluid feel?

That seems to be exactly it. Thanks. Fantastic answer.

The answer is still a fantastic one, but there does seem to be a problem (maybe a bug?) with it if using motion blur - the frame in which the influence is animated to 0% is always blurred, I presume because the renderer detects movement here.
I solved the problem by keyframing the Motion Blur Position from "End on Frame" to "Start on Frame" along with the Influence and that seems to have solved it, my eyes can't see the change.


text:
can I animate colors on materials the way falloffs are animated?
I'm thinking of a large matrix of splines that should have a delayed animation on their color.

Please be more specific, show some examples and what you have by now.

While you can animate colours, do you want each item animated at a different time, then each will need it's own material. Do you want the whole object changing at once or from the top of the object to  the bottom? You may want to look at dynamic paint for a way to control colour change.

Press "I" while your mouse is over the color in your material settings. It will add a keyframe. Then go into the Graph Editor to edit the curve:


text:
Match exact color between Node and what is being rendered
You know how you get a color without any shading when plugging in a color output into a shader socket? Is there a way to make sure that exact color is being rendered?
I'm working with a strict color scheme and want to match it exactly.
I'd really prefer it to work with EEVEE since it has the Shading2RGB node.

Emission shader with strength of 1 should output the exact color you connect to the color input. Thought volumetrics would affect the resulting color ("overlaying" over it).

Getting Blender to diplay a straight color without any shading is easy - that's not what I was thinking about. The problem is that Blender applies a lot of color transforms - which results in me not getting the exact color I want


text:
How to Toggle Selected Objects Visibility with H shortcut as in Maya
I want to be able to toggle the visibility of selected objects with a shortcut (H) the way you can do in Maya and XSI, shown in the GIF. I'm guessing scrippting is needed. I've tried to do it my self but I'm new to Python and Blender and as soon as the objects are hidden they seem to no longer be in a selection state/list. Eg if I manually select the hidden object/s in the Outliner and try to print the selected object to the console, none seem to be selected. Is this possible to do with the current state of Blender 2.8?

iceythe provided a solution over at https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-get-selection-objects-list-in-outliner/1184175/3?u=joelart
Toggle Hide Addon:
# ##### BEGIN GPL LICENSE BLOCK #####
#
#  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
#  modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
#  as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
#  of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
#  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#  GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
#  Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
#
# ##### END GPL LICENSE BLOCK #####

import bpy
bl_info = {
    "name": "Toggle Hide",
    "location": "3D View / Outliner, (Hotkey J)",
    "version": (0, 1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 81, 0),
    "description": "Toggle object visibility of outliner selection",
    "author": "kaio",
    "category": "Object",
}

class OUTLINER_OT_toggle_hide(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "outliner.toggle_hide"
    bl_label = "Toggle Hide"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(self, context):
        ar = context.screen.areas
        __class__.area = next(
            (a for a in ar if a.type == 'OUTLINER'), None)
        return __class__.area

    def execute(self, context):
        objs = context.view_layer.objects
        sel_objs = {o for o in objs if o.select_get()}
        hid_objs = {o for o in objs if o.hide_get()}

        # Hide selected
        for o in sel_objs:
            o.hide_set(True)

        # Unhide hidden
        for o in hid_objs:
            o.hide_set(False)

        # Select objects marked in outliner
        bpy.ops.outliner.object_operation(
            {'area': __class__.area}, type='SELECT')

        # Re-hide others
        for o in hid_objs:
            if not o.select_get():
                o.hide_set(True)
        return {'FINISHED'}

addon_keymaps = []

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(OUTLINER_OT_toggle_hide)
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    kc = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps
    km = kc.get("Object Mode")
    if not km:
        km = kc.new("Object Mode")
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new("outliner.toggle_hide", "J", "PRESS")
    addon_keymaps.append((km, kmi))

    km = kc.get("Outliner")
    if not km:
        km = kc.new("Outliner", space_type="OUTLINER")
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new("outliner.toggle_hide", "J", "PRESS")
    addon_keymaps.append((km, kmi))

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

    for km, kmi in addon_keymaps:
        km.keymap_items.remove(kmi)
    addon_keymaps.clear()

Here's as link to the githup addon/script page: https://github.com/K-410/blender-scripts/blob/master/2.8/toggle_hide.py

In Blender, the way selection works is a bit different. You can't really have something "selected" when it's hidden in the viewport.
You can hide an object with H, but to unhide, you generally either undo or alt-H to unhide all hidden objects. To have the same shortcut key do both an action and its opposite is pretty uncommon in Blender. The only thing I can think of is selecting all (A for select all AA to deselect all, but they are moving away from that by making alt-A deselect all).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SXSIQpYnl8

I think they Maya way is the most intuitive and ergonomic to perform with toggles and think Blender should move towards it instead.
That said, is there a way in Scripting to get a list of the objects that I've selected in the Outliner, if so then I can at least make H unhide them.

I occasionally wanted an option to toggle show/hide in Blender too. Illustrator & Photoshop use the same hide/show functionality as Blender does now, so it's not uncommon for people to be used to that (the "hide single object", "show all hidden objects" method). I wish I could give you a script, but I'm not too good at that. This guy seems to be wanting to do the same thing as you. And the documentation can help with scripting

Here is my solution, you can use this script as an addon , then register a new keymap with H key using object.toggle_visible operator , then disable the default H keymap.
import bpy

bl_info = {
    "name": "HideShowToggle",
    "blender": (3, 10, 0),
    "category": "Object",
    "author": "Gumoumoumou",
    "doc_url": "https://space.bilibili.com/22223199"
}

def GetAllSelectedObjects():
    visibles = bpy.context.visible_objects
    bpy.ops.object.hide_view_clear()
    selecteds = bpy.context.selected_objects
    for o in bpy.data.objects:
        if not o in visibles:
            o.hide_set(True)
    return selecteds

def main(context):
    objs = GetAllSelectedObjects()
    for o in objs:
        o.hide_set(not o.hide_get())
        o.select_set(True)

class HideShowToggle(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.toggle_visible"
    bl_label = "Toggle visibility of objects"

    def execute(self, context):
        main(context)
        return {'FINISHED'}

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(HideShowToggle.bl_idname, text=HideShowToggle.bl_label)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(HideShowToggle)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object.append(menu_func)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(HideShowToggle)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object.remove(menu_func)
```

Works great once you remove the ``` at the end of the file.


text:
How do I enable motion blur for Mantaflow fluids?
How do I enable motion blur for Mantaflow fluids? I'm using 2.82

When you bake the mesh for your liquid on the domain, make sure "use speed vectors" is checked in the mesh tab.  If it wasn't then you will have to bake the mesh again.  After that, it will automatically render motion blur if you are using Cycles.

I can't get it to show in the viewport with Cycles. How do I do that?

Motionblur in viewport with cycles is not supported apparently:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/8520/why-cant-i-see-motion-blur-in-the-viewport-cycles


text:
How do you quickly clear the mask when texture painting like when sculpting?
I know that in Sculpt mode you can use Alt+M and Alt+I to clear or invert it. This is super important for a fast workflow. I tried to make my own new Mask Flood Fill shortcut under Image Paint by adding "paint.mask_flood_fill" to the identifier field but it doesn't seem to work.
Am I missing something, is there no other way to do this but manually painting away the old masked areas by hand or adding a completely new image mask?


text:
Is there a way to set the radius of the new circle select tool by python script
I know a little bit of Javascript but don't have a lot of experience scripting in blender or Python. I've tried to set the Radius of the new Circle Select tool by code as it's not possible to use a scroll wheel my Wacom pen naturally, also the new radius if set by the mouse wheel does not persist as it does with the old modal circle select by using f + scroll wheel and that tool is bad as you can't move around in the viewport while it's active. My plan is to hook the script up to some keyboard shortcut etc.
I've tried to change it by something like this
import bpy

#switch context
previous_context = bpy.context.area.type
bpy.context.area.type = 'VIEW_3D'

#bpy.op.VIEW3D_OT_select_circle.radius = 30
bpy.ops.view3d.select_circle(x=300, y=150, radius=300, gesture_mode = 3)
#restore previous context
bpy.context.area.type = previous_context

or
VIEW3D_OT_circle_select.radius = 90

But I can't get it to work. What am I doing wrong, is the circle select radius property simply not possible to set from Python?

What you are trying to do is change the current context. Instead, you should just be overriding the context.
First step for that would be finding the context that you want to use, that would be our VIEW3D REGION for this case, so we can just cycle through all the context screens available till we find VIEW_3D
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == "VIEW_3D":
        #Do stuff

Now just the area itself is not enough as there are different regions inside an area. For our use case we will be needing the window region.
for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == "WINDOW":
                #Do stuff

Now we the required components to define a new context.
What we can do is clone our current context and replace its area and region with the ones we just found.
for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:        #Cycle through all the avaliable areas
    if area.type == "VIEW_3D":               #if area is called VIEW_3D
        for region in area.regions:          #Cycle through all the regions in that area
            if region.type == "WINDOW":      #if the region is WINDOW
                view3dArea = area            #save the area and region in variables
                view3dRegion = region
                break                        #exit the loops

override = bpy.context.copy()                #Make a copy of current context
override['area'] = view3dArea                #Change area to the one we just found
override['region'] = view3dRegion            #Same with the region

Now that we have the right context we just need to pass it into the function.
Simply done by passing it as the first argument as its positional argument.
bpy.ops.view3d.select_circle(override, Other stuff)

You can make a simple function out of this so you can call it whenever you want.
import bpy
def select(x,y,rad):
    for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == "VIEW_3D":
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == "WINDOW":
                view3dArea = area
                view3dRegion = region
                break
    override = bpy.context.copy()
    override['area'] = view3dArea
    override['region'] = view3dRegion
    bpy.ops.view3d.select_circle(override,x=x, y=x, radius=rad, mode='SET')

Simply call that function with the desired radius and coordinates.
select (300,200,50)

Or you can change the radius and get a bigger selection
select (300,200,100)

While the script works as you intended, it's still not persistently changing the radius of the Circle Select (as you can see here https://imgur.com/yc2CAbA) which is what I really want.


text:
Blender 2.79b Alembic (abc) export
I have installed Blender 2.79b on Dell AMD laptop with Ubuntu 18.04. There is NO Alembic export available in the export menu. Then I installed same Blender on Macbook Pro with OSX and Alembic export is there?! I can't find anything about this issue anywhere on the net. Does anybody have a clue what's going on?

After having the same problem I figured out a solution.
I installed a different ppa and then went into Synaptic, uninstalled the stock Blender and installed the cutting edge build.  The import and export options are there!  Yay!
Here's the ppa homepage:
https://launchpad.net/~thomas-schiex/+ppa-packages
Pop!_os -- Ubuntu 18.04


text:
Tweening for 2d strokes in grease pencil
Is there any way I can tween my 2D strokes in grease pencil?

If the lines share the same points (ie: copied keyframe and tehn used sculpt to push the line around) you can simply use the "interpolate" menu in edit mode, and it will VERY cleanly add inbetweens


text:
How do you convert Mesh/Material/Texture Nodes to Compositor Nodes?
This is in regards to my question:
"How to extend an Image from side to side softening the hard edge of image"
How to extend an Image from side to side softening the hard edge of image
The file link on that page is https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/3584/
The Effect works good, but needs some tweaking that does not work in the compositor using this effect as an input, but using Mesh/Material/Texture Nodes, aka, selecting the Mesh and using a node editor, is that you are sending this data to the Compositor, and yet you have no access to nodes its using, its prepossessing the data, in this case I do not want to use any Material, I want to use the Compositor so I can use Difference Key and remove the black background, so the Stars show through around the Sun.
I could not get that to work in the above blend file, I know I can still do that, but it does not work the same, if I use an Image Sequencer and transform its location by scale of .5, and mix in the Environment Image map of Stars, then add this: lets call it a node group called Corona, from above file into a compositor, it does not work, see link below for this file.
My guess is that I am not using a Mapping Node and object input, and I do not know how to fix that.
I do not appear to have a upload option so I will post a link below to the file I am working on.
http://lightwizzard.com/resources/home/lightwizzard.com/Light-Wizzard-in-the-Flesh/Sun-Corona.blend.zip
What I want is the effect of making the Corona that moves outside of the image to have a tapered look as the first thread in link above tries to explain, note that if the Corona does not make a hard edge, like the second image in this zip file, then I do not want any effect added, so I only want to expand the pixels out that are actually going past the image bounds, maybe using the lighter red as a threshold, and only effecting the outer 1 px, if needed I can alpha over the original image such that its image has no effects added to it, I do not really want to change the original, just fake the Corona but make it look real, so it would still need to taper to the darker red color to look natural, hope this was enough information.
Thanks.

The .blend upload option is not built-in to Stack Exchange. You can find it at http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com.

Thanks, did not know that, but the size restriction is 30 MB, this one over that due to the two image file sizes, that are included at 4096x4096.


text:
Apply a material to a heirarchy
I have an imported model with a hierarchy of objects.
Expanding to the tip of one branch looks like:

I'd like to be pick materials for sections of the hierarchy (e.g. by top level parents). But it seems that I can't apply a material to an Empty, and I presume in Blender that applying a material to a parent does not act on the material of the child.
What is the best way to go about this?
Further notes:

The meshes already have materials from the import, I'd need to override these (can just delete the materials)
I could do with python if the interface doesn't handle this use case
Right click and 'Select hierarchy' gets me half-way there. But since this selects the Empty's also, the material tab is still hidden.

Use "Material Utils" addon, bundled with Blender. It can reassign material to all selected objects at once
More details here: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Materials_Utils

Could you please expand on this answer.

Just install addon, select all objects you wish to change (via outliner or right in scene), press Shift-q -> Assign Material -> Select material and you are done. All selected objects will have this material reassigned
Addon description: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Materials_Utils

@IPv6 you could update your answer with your link!


text:
Python: How to display per render layer properties in a UI list?
I'm trying to make custom properties per render layer but I get an error. I tried to add a property to bpy.types.SceneRenderLayer and it seems to work. Then I try to make an UIList to show the render layers and that works, but it can't find the prop. I want to make a blender submitter for our render farm and want to have the ability to change things per layer.
The error is:
rna_uiItemR: property not found: SceneRenderLayer.test2

when I print(dir(layer)) for the renderlayer test2 shows up. Here is my code:
import bpy

class RENDER_UL_my_renderlayers(bpy.types.UIList):
    def draw_item(self, context, layout, data, item, icon, active_data, active_propname, index):
        layer = item
        row=layout.row()
        print(dir(layer))
        row.prop(layer, 'name', text='')
        row.prop(layer, 'test2', text='')
        row.prop(layer, 'use', text = '')

class TEST_PANEL(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "TEST"
    bl_idname = "RENDER_PT_ui_test"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "render"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        col = layout.column()
        col.prop(context.scene, "test1")
        col.template_list('RENDER_UL_my_renderlayers', 'RenderLayers', context.scene.render, 'layers', context.scene, "testindex")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(RENDER_UL_my_renderlayers)
    bpy.utils.register_class(TEST_PANEL)

    bpy.types.Scene.test1 = bpy.props.IntProperty()
    bpy.types.Scene.testindex = bpy.props.IntProperty()
    bpy.types.SceneRenderLayer.test2 = bpy.props.IntProperty()

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(RENDER_UL_my_renderlayers)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(TEST_PANEL)

    del bpy.types.Scene.test1
    del bpy.types.Scene.test2
    del bpy.types.Scene.testindex

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

SceneRenderLayer cannot be assigned a bpy.props property.
From the docs on property defininitions

Assigning to Existing Classes
Custom properties can be added to any subclass of an ID, Bone and
  PoseBone.

Run a little check in console using builtin issubclass (don't need to consider bone or pose bone in this case)
# bpy.types.Scene.prop = ...
>>> issubclass(bpy.types.Scene, bpy.types.ID)
True

# bpy.types.SceneRenderLayer.prop = ...
>> issubclass(bpy.types.SceneRenderLayer, bpy.types.ID)
False

You must first register the properties and then register the classes.
bpy.types.Scene.test1 = bpy.props.IntProperty()
bpy.types.Scene.testindex = bpy.props.IntProperty()
bpy.types.SceneRenderLayer.test2 = bpy.props.IntProperty()
bpy.utils.register_class(RENDER_UL_my_renderlayers)
bpy.utils.register_class(TEST_PANEL)

The reason is that as soon as the derived UIList class and the Panel are registered they are executed and displayed. In your code, since you were defining the custom properties after registering the UI classes, the custom properties were not defined yet at the time of drawing of the layer properties.

Still get the same error :( In both cases the test1 property show up but not test2

Hmm can't find test2 in the outliner/datablocks either. Test1 is where it should be. bpy.data.scenes[0].render.layers[0].test2 gives me (<built-in function IntProperty>, {}). Which is odd, py.data.scenes[0].test1 gives 0. So I guess I'm adding test2 in the wrong way or on the wrong thing.


text:
Why is my object rendering correctly in blender render and not in cycles?
Ok I'll make this simple:
Cycles render:

Blender render:

How do I make them both show up?
Thanks!

Cycles render and blender render use different types of materials, to "transform" a blender material to a cycles material there is the button "use nodes" in the materials tab:

By the way, this may result in a model with no texture so you will probably have to apply the texture in cycles.


text:
Particle System Makes Objects All Lay Horizontally With The Same Rotation
I'm trying to make a grass particle system, however when I select the group of grass clumps, they are all laying down. When I set the "Initial Rotation" to "None" instead of "Velocity/Hair" the grass is up the right way but "Phase" and "Random" under Rotation doesn't do anything so all the grass is facing the same way. Another person had a similar issue and the response said to change "Normal" under "Velocity" to 1 and "Z" to 1, this however only increases the size of my grass objects. A lot of other sliders in the particle settings also increase the size when I don't think they should. Anyone know why this is and how to fix it?

@cegaton thank you so much! Idk how I didn't find any of these. Looks like I needed to rotate my grass object to face the x axis.

@cegaton all my grass still seems to face the same way though and phase/rotation won't do anything.


text:
Blender Sapling Add-on Leaves not Showing up
I am using the blender sapling add-on to try create a realistic tree. I checked the 'show leaves' box and made the leaf shape rectangular.
It looks like this.

Then with the box checked.

Will it work even though nothing shows up and if not, what can I do to make the leaves appear?

Leaf scale is too small, I increased it. I now see the leaves.


text:
Wind build up speed with sapling addon
I have a tree with a low wind speed, but I want it to build up into a storm with high wind speed. Is there a way to increase the intensity of the wind as the frames go on?

Make it an action block in the nla editor and key it's influence. You can also combine different wind blocks created by the same sapling armature settings.

I'm not sure what an action block is, or what the nla editor is, are you able to attach screenshots?

If nobody has done it by then, I'll add an answer in a few hours.

When creating your animated tree, note all values and use the export preset. (It doesn't export all settings, that's why we have to manually input the rest.)

Go to the dope sheet and choose the action editor mode. You will see that a windAction has been created. Press the F-button next to the action's name to give it a fake user. Delete the tree. Since you gave the action the fake user, it is still existent, even though the armature is deleted.

Create the same tree with the same generation values (which we wrote down earlier). Change the animation settings as desired e.g for a stronger wind.

A new action is created next to the existent one. I renamed it strongerWind.

Go to the NLA editor and add a track with ShiftA. Add an action with ShiftA as well.

Check sync length and extend the action by increasing the end frame. Add the other action as well.

Offset the NLA strips. By scrubbing over the frames you will see, that either action is played in the 3D view. Select the first action and enable Animated Influence. Set two keyframes on the influence with the I key. Select the 2nd action and enable auto blend. Auto blend creates a blend between two overlapping action strips.

Set the first action to additive blending. Go to the graph editor, you will see the two keyframes for the animated influence, which we created. Here you can add more keys. The action is multiplied by the influence. If you the motion to be small, use an influence close to 0, if you want the full animation amplitude, use and influence of 1. With this technique, one action would be enough to slowly increase the strength of movement over time.

The animation results from first increasing the influence of the windAction, then blending over to the strongerWindAction.


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How do I make a single face of an object a particle emitter?
I have an object which has a particle emitter at the bottom. The entire bottom of it is currently the emitter but I would like to make the middle face the emitter. How would I go about doing this?

I can think of 2 ways that might work for you.

You can weight paint the bottom part that you want the particles to come from.

a. then under vertex groups > density choose the weight paint group you just made.

You can duplicate the face and hit "P" to seperate it from the mesh and just put the particle system on the new object you spererated. Then parent it to your main object (if it will be animated) and hide it with the emitter check box.

You can make Vertex Group out of bottom face (create Group, select Face and hit Assign, without painting)...

...and use it to control Density under Particle System > Vertex Group.


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Subsurface Causing Mesh Problems
Just started using blender, and naturally the first thing I'm making is a minigun. It looks dope.
Problem is, when I applied the subsurface modifier, I ran into a problem.

And without it...
Nothing.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Heres the link to the .blend files: https://www.mediafire.com/?1iq489br01zej02
Edit: It can be somewhat fixed by changing the number of subdivisions, but this makes it WAY to high quality.

Looks no problem when open the file here

Please use https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ for more permanent blend file uploads.

Possible duplicate of Why are some faces in my mesh darker?

You have many overlapping loopcuts in those areas, instead of doing that maybe try to inset the ribs to add crease

I downloaded the model and found your problem. You've got hundreds or vertices on top of each other.

What you want to do is select everything live I've done and press W to open the specials menu and press "Remove doubles".

As you can see, you've lost all your sharpness in your mesh. You we're probably extruding faces to make these infinitely thin ones that gave you sharp edges, but there's a better way.
What you want to do when you find an edge you want to sharpen it select it and by pressing Ctrl+E to go into edge crease mode and sharpen edges by pulling your cursor from the edge's origin.

Here you can see I hot a little too excited and did a bunch of edges.

If you press z to activate wireframe, you will likely notice that there is a high density of triangles where you are seeing that phenomena.  This is also probably why you see it get better/worse when you mess with subsurf's detail level.
You will have to mess with your topology in order for this to go away.  It is otherwise a harmless effect. If you do your UV's well, you won't even notice when you finally texture the model.


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rigging a character with armor that is in loose parts
So I have an idea for an animation that was supposed to be published by now, ut I keep having problems with my character rigs.
Let me explain I have a model that works extremely well with the rig I created but the armor I modeled to be on the mesh will not be rigged I have looked it up everywhere I can think of and every variation of this question but I still need help.
I tried using this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVfTRwXpmuQ It was helpful for the most part but I couldn't get the armor to not bend and deform the mesh.
Here is a picture of the character and the armor. One of the problems might be that because of the way I created it it is made in tons of little objects.
I cannot just recreate this character either like I said I am supposed to have published this animation by now.

Your picture is missing. Also see https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71730/it-is-possible-to-rig-a-character-with-multiples-objects


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image not properly rendering in cycles render

While rendering in Blender Cycles images are not properly rendering, but in the
render preview option switching solid shading mode to rendering its clearly coming.
I don't know what's happening in image rendering.

Switching the preview option to solid to rendering mode...


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extrude, intersect, slice complex shapes?
I have a 3D dragon (from Spyro 1) that I want to transform into a glass decoration for my home.
Before proceeding, i need to eliminate the 3mm thickness from every face, obtaining a shape that can be used to properly cut the glass pieces.
This could be useful to every artist who wants to do Tiffany glass works.
It's been two days I've been trying day and night, and still not found a good way to obtain what i need.
First, i separated every face of the model.
Mesh > Edges > Mark Sharp, Edge Split modifier, split angle 0°, sharp edges checked. In edit mode, select all, Alt+S scale planes by -0,03, (because the glass I am going to use is 3mm thick)
When the angle between faces is bigger than or equal to 180° it's OK. The scaled faces don't overlap, and they will be printed and cut as they are, but if the angle is smaller than or or equal to 180°, then the planes will intersect, and here comes the problem.

I have 160 different faces to intersect, and I am trying to do the job manually. It's a hard work, and Booleans do what they want. I am going crazy with them.
I have tried a second alternative, I extruded every face (vertex normals, -0.03), turn them into separate objects, then I used Booleans to subtract their shape from the dragon (it was like peeling an orange), but Booleans agreed to do it only on 90 of the 160 objects. Rage and frustration.
Should I insist with Boolean operations and extruded faces? Is there some magic that allows to do batch Boolean operations, or is there some trick or command that I don't know? (I am a total newbie)
I've prepared a file with the head of the dragon and two examples one for the scaling method, one for the Boolean method
drago di cristallo
I hope my explanation is clear enough.   :P

Hi, I check your .blend and have no good info for you. All I can write is: you doing it wrong from beginning. For 3D print you need one solid object, without nonmanifold edges and vertices. After than you can use solidify modifier for make "wall". BTW: scale 0.03 dies not mean 3mm. Its ratio/relative size. It is not dimension.

@Shubol3D - please read carefully. He doesn't want to print out a 3D model. He wants to do it in a Tiffany like artstyle.

@Davide, I assume that "3 drago untouched" is the result you are aiming for? The overall bad news is that Blender is not intended to do precision work. Its primary focus is and always will be that of a 3D modeling and rendering tool. So that's the first hurdle to take.

@ metaphor_set drago untouched is the original starting shape

this is the result i am aiming for  http://i65.tinypic.com/zo6sf6.jpg.
A smaller shape wich faces are at the same distance from the original ones (but on a 3D object).
I guess the best way could be "slicing" the faces with the booleans as in the exemple file...

So do you want to add a thickness to the drago's mesh ? Kind of duplicating the model and scaling it a bit down so they are of the same shape but of different size ?

@ metaphor_set: yes, you are right. I'm sorry. I have no idea why I thing he wants to 3D print this.

@Mr zak  i added thickness (going to the inside, not making the object bigger. that's why i used -0.03 instead of 0.03) to the faces in order to substract it from the whole model and obtain the internal shape.
the thickness should simulate the 3mm glass layer, someway.

Like here - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2566/adding-thickness-to-a-mesh-in-blender ?

@Davide, is this by any chance the result you are looking for? http://imgur.com/a/GuxG8

Mr Zak i've seen that yesterday, when looking info about the command solidify. i think i have to learn more about it, because it needs a chance. in fact, that command makes extrusions perpendicular to the faces.
metaphor_set no i am sorry. i need the inner faces resulting from the shrinking of the outer layer...
im trying to figure out with solidify. effectively it can do the trick, but some parts of the mesh become a mess.
look, it's the inner faces i need to extract  http://i68.tinypic.com/ff4prr.jpg
i need to learn more about that command and the parameters

but new vertex form for no reason, and some faces emerge from the inside http://i65.tinypic.com/2ivo10x.jpg

@Shubol3D, unclear... I share your opinion that is it for a 3D print, because of "glass decoration for my home" and "can be used to properly cut the glass pieces". But we may be wrong. I understand the question as "I want to use this model, 3D printed, in order to have a template to cut real glass parts". Davide, could you confirm ?

YES!!!
template, that's the word! i want to make a template. i wish i remembered this word yesterday...
but no, not 3d printed.  i want the shape of the internal surface, and i will print the faces on paper, and i will use them as template

ok, so what you want to do is to have the faces of the dragon (minus the 3mm) but made printable on a paper. On this paper these faces will be printed flat (as if each face was on the floor). So that all this allows you to cut the glass, using the faces on the paper as templates. That's it ?

If yes, simply use one of the methods given in the answers below, then go to edit mode, select all, use the "U" key, choose "unwrap". You will have it on the image editor and you can print it using the "UV" menu then "export UV layout" have a try on a carton before cutting the glass

I think that the solution to this is Blender's inset function. The goal is to separate all faces equidistantly from another and do this in an efficient way.
Please be aware of the fact, that Blender is not intended to be a precision CAD software. The primary use is and always will be 3D modeling and rendering.
In the first step we need to change the unit settings to the Units we want to take our measures in (Properties Window - Scene Panel). In this example this will be "Metric", "Degrees" and a conversion scale of 1.0

We also want to apply the scale of the object to ensure that the values will be applied in the right scale. Hit Ctrl+A and select "Scale.

This is how your object's Transform values should change.
The next step is to separate the faces from each other. Tab into Edit Mode, type A to select all faces, hit Space, type "Edge Split" and hit Enter

Now that we have separated faces in our mesh we can inset them. Blender is not capable to do this in one step but the method we are going to use is still fairly easy.
If something else is selected, switch to "Face Select", type A to select all Faces, then I to start Face inset. Use the mouse to resize the inset value to approximately the desired size. If the gap's size between the faces should be 3mm go to the operator panel and set "Thickness" to 1.5mm (type in both the value and the unit here). Do not select or deselect any faces after that!

The last step is to delete the newly created redundant faces. Type Ctrl+I to invert the selection, hit X to delete and choose "Faces".

As a result you should get a model which is made out of separated and evenly spaced faces.

The described method works also on ngons.

To get a cutting pattern for your Tiffany work, you could uv-unwrap your model, increase the margin width between the islands and export it as svg. With inkscape you would be able to resize the pattern and move the pieces around until you get something useful.

make a gap on the edges....this could be the perfect solution if there is some way to make the gap between pieces proportional to the angle, instead of equal everywhere.
I think something like that needs to be scripted as a new addon.
In fact,if the angle (measured on the inside) between two faces is 180 or greater, the gap will be 0.  If the angle between faces is 90, the gap will be equal to the given thickness.

When 2 faces form a right angle (measured on the inside of the object) it can be calculated easily.
We have the given thickness, wich is leg b.
We have the right angle
We have the angle between the 2 edges (wich we divide by 2) .
We only need to find the leg a, wich will be the gap size.

tan (angle)= adjacent leg\opposite leg.
After substituting β=45° and b=3  we have tan (45°)= 3\a.
a=3\tan (45°).
a=3\1.
a=3
In this case, the gap will be 3 (same as the thickness).
Obviously, when the (internal) angle is equal or bigger than 180°, there will be no gap and the calculation will be skipped.
The next step is to find someone who can script this sorcery.
https://s32.postimg.org/gtcts29ol/calculate.jpg

i mean, some script that create a duplicate of the faces, cutting away the gaped edge from every face. i hope my english is good enough...

First apply the scale to your object so dimensions are correct.

Add a Solidify modifier to you mesh with a $0.03$ thickness, so that you can obtain an inner offset of your surface 3 mm apart to the inside.
Apply the Solidify modifier, enter edit mode and select all the outer shell of your mesh by hovering one of its vertex and pressing L.

Erase the outer shell, mark all edges sharp, add an Edgesplit modifier and apply it so all faces are now independent.
Enter edit mode again, select all remaining faces from the inner shell and use the Inset operator to inset all faces $0.03$ units.
Tick the Select Outer option so all borders are selected and erase them.

You should now have a fully offset mesh by $0.03$ units inside, and all faces offset $0.03$ units from their individual borders.
Have in mind that with current object dimensions, an offset of 3 mm in almost totally erase certain faces, especially in sharp or very narrow areas like the tips of the ears/horns.


text:
UV unwrapping turns the uvmap model inside out
When I unwrap this the legs point outwards:
https://i.sstatic.net/6mlcv.png
I added some white and red colors to the pic to indicate where the verts ended up.
Here is a blend example:
https://www114.zippyshare.com/v/NxgNqXtR/file.html
How to get it to unwrap correctly?

You have the option Fill Holes turned on in the Unwrap settings which gives the undesired result in this case.
Turning it off will unwrap your model correctly.


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Using displacement maps (or something else) for adding rotational noise effect to mesh?
So I have made a fence using the array and curve modifiers. I can then use the displacement modifier to add some vertical and depth noise to the mesh to make it look more irregular and not perfectly straight.
But is there a way to add "rotational displacement" to my fence as well? So that in some places the fence is tilting to one direction and in some other place it is tilting to other direction? Tilting randomly along its longitudinal axis for example?

Here are two ways in which you can accomplish this:
1) Modify the curve's twist
A bezier curve has the often ignored feature twist that you can set per control point to influence the direction in which the boards are pointing. You can set the twist manually in edit mode by selecting a control point and pressing Ctrl+T, but if you want to create the impression of randomness you will need a lot of control points and manually setting the tilt is going to be tedious.
The following Python script assigns a random tilt to each control point of a bezier curve.
import bpy
import random
from math import pi

curve = bpy.data.objects['Circle']
points = curve.data.splines[0].bezier_points

for point in points:
    point.tilt = random.uniform(-pi/16, pi/16)

Adding the array and curve modifiers to the fence element will allow the fence to distort which is maybe useful for a wire-link fence but may cause ugly deformation of the fence poles.

For a fence consisting of disconnected planks, instead of a regular object array I use a plane array with duplifaces according to this or this answer, so the fence boards don't get distorted. I.e. add a plane, with modifiers array and curve, activate duplication in the plane's Object tab in the properties panel and parent a single fence board to the plane.
I guess it might be possible to try to mix these two approaches, i.e. use regular array for the mesh and duplifaces for the poles. As I don't have a wire-link mesh model available, I couldn't test it on one of those. Tests with a fence like above with horizontal bars were nonsatisfying.

2) Place the boards with Animation Nodes
Using the addon Animation Nodes allows you to place fence boards automatically at the desired location with the right orientation.
Here I use Animation Node's Evaluate Spline node to sample a number ob points along the bezier curve – and for each point get the coordinates as well as the tangent at that point. I project the tangent to the XY plane so that the standard orientation is “up” and not normal on the surface. This part is optional for a flat ground, but looks better if you place the fence on a hill.

I feed the coordinates, and the projected tangents into a loop. For each pair I create a random rotation with the Euler Wiggle node. The amplitudes of the wiggle node affect the amount of randomness for each axis.

There would be room for optimization, e.g. as the wiggle Evolution is linear whereas it might be desirable to match the evolution parameter at the start of the curve to the end of the curve, as it's a closed loop.
I combine the three transformations wiggle, rotation according to the tangent, and translation to the correct coordinate.
Back in the main node tree I place copies of the original board, each board with a transformation from the loop.
I also set a random shape key value for each board to get a random board height – similar to the random particle approach when using Dupligroups.

This looks super cool! I'll look at this soon. However this looks like it doesn't merge the pieces? The fence I have is actually a wire fence, like this: https://jooinn.com/images/barbed-wire-fence-1.jpg
I tried something similar earlier with particles and merging was an issue there too.

I tried running the python code but nothing happens. Maybe my curve settings are wrong. I don't know anything about python so I can only assume it is supposed to be the full code. I have my system console open and there are no errors. The animation node doesn't work for because I need the pieces to merge at joints because the fence is continuous mesh, not long object made of separate meshes. Thanks for the suggestion though.

@Life Sorry to hear that. Getting the animation nodes method to play well with a connected fence is more complicated, The twist method however should still work. For a wire-link fence probably best without duplication and with regular array. But apart from the name of the Bezier curve – and even that one should raise an error – I can't think of a reason for the problem. Could you maybe try manually twisting one or two control points to see if this has any effect at all?

Manually twisting does work. I tried changing some curve parameters but don't see any change. If I put wrong name of the curve I get an error so at least the python code runs but doesn't do anything. Then I tried to apply all the modifiers for the curve (it had shrinkwrap to keep it on ground) and now I get tons of "Invalid clnors in this fan" errors and complaints about non-uniform scale. I resetted the scales (some were not 1). Then applied all modifiers for the mesh and I get this error: "Info: applied modifier only changed CV points, not tessellated/bevel vertices". I have no clue :)


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Movement/rotation etc. hypersensitive in perspective view but normal in orthographics
I have been mostly using blender in orthographic mode but sometimes I use perspective view. My problem is that in perspective view the tools use is sometimes hyper sensitive. For example if I want to move a vertice. Even with shift the selection just moves so fast they just zap across the screen. Sometimes it could even be super slow. It is not a scale issue with my objects. I'm thinking this is because of some blender setting but why is perspective so unpredictable while ortho is perfectly fine?

Please clarify you question with an image. Please show your Blender work in screen shot for this and all future questions.

Maybe the view pivot point is unfavourably placed. Try Viewing Selected after selecting a vertex with the NumpadEnter key.

Pivot point is very far away from the object. It is a large landscape (highway scene) so the pivot is at 0,0,0 but the object mesh is like a kilometer away. Why would it use the pivot point anyways??? It is very unpredictable so I can not make a blend. In some cases in perspective view the tools are just incredibly sensitive.

Pivot can not be very far away from the object, it is setting available to be changed. Origin point can be far away instead and if in Edit mode it is used as pivot then chances are 3d cursor is used as pivot. Try to change Pivot point to something like Median point

Create 2 3D View windows.  Creating many windows in Blender is Easy.

One in Orthogonal View.
Perspective View

Perform the operation in Orthogonal,  while viewing in Perspective.  Also start your change with the mouse reasonably far away from the item in question to dampen the operation.  For example for small angles start with the mouse far away from the object.
Also other tools exist beyond Grab.  Try the Snap operation.

Two separate windows is not an option. I just press 5 to switch. I don't want to tho. And it is not just the grab tool. Many other tools are affected as well. Why is the perspective like this?

With my current   of well .... whatever ... and the sands of time ⏳ in movement your option must be the best.  Good luck.  I wish I knew your secret.  I am sure its quite experienced.


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How do I add more particles?
I have set to have 500 particles but blender only adds about 50. How do I add more? I know I can increase the number but why do I get like 10% of the amount I put in there? Why doesn't blender add 500 when I ask 500? How do I add say 2000 particles so it actually spawns 2000 in different places?
See the sample file:
https://www18.zippyshare.com/v/56ewtGPx/file.html
I am using a uvmapped texture to guide where I want particles. Texture should be included inside the blend.

You actually have 500 and not 50 but 450 of them are masked out by your image textures.

So the images just work as masks and not as guides where the particles are placed? There is no way to get those 500 to spawn according to the image?

@Life Yes there are ways. One would be to subdivide the mesh a bit, weight paint the plane like your image which makes a vertex group of the painted area and then select that vertex group in particles->vertex groups->density

I don't want to use vertex groups painting because it is really cumbersome. Essentially I need certain kind of particle system on certain kind of texture on the map and vertex colors is really annoying for that because I have 4 or 5 different particle+texture combinations and I don't want to try to keep 3-5 different vertex colors in sync.

@Life I dont know. I guess you need to open a new question for that. You could up your count from 500 to 5000, but maybe there is a more elegant way.

If you have no animation or want all particles to show at all times tick the options Unborn and Died in the Properties Window > Partices > Render panel

This will make it so that particles are visible at all times, before being emitted, and after dying or spending their life cycle.

On the example I still get just about 50 particles when I have 500 set.


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Transparent objects block objects behind them when not selected
In renders this the transparency works ok. But in viewport in materials view something is very broken. When I selected the transparent object the object behind it shows up ok. When I select nothing the transparent object becomes solid and blocks the other one. When I select the object behind the transparent object it stays blocked behind the transparent object.
Blend file added. When you open the file just click the different objects and see how the transparency turns on and off depending what is selected on both separate transparent objects. Render is fine but I can't work in render view.
blend: https://www108.zippyshare.com/v/gWH4KN9d/file.html

In the properties of the "glass" shader, under Settings / Viewport color, lower the Alpha value.
In the properties of every transparent object, in Object / Display, check Transparency.
Bonus : this kind of transparency also works in Solid view, not only in Material view.

Thanks. That seems to have worked. So many places to check. Is there any way to keep the selection edge for transparent objects? When I select transparent the selected edge goes away so it is impossible to tell when a transparent object is selected or not?

Enabling "Wire" (in the same tab) seems to solve that, I don't know if there is a better way.


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Paper on wall pulling with wind
I want to create a scene with a piece of paper stuck on a wall fluttering in the wind for a while, before being torn off and blown away. I attempted this with a soft body subdivided plane and wind force field, but wasn't able to get the desired fluttering effect. I want it to appear as if there is a strong wind.
How could I do this?

Maybe this will help https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/91480/yellow-sticky-note-in-the-wind


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UV unwrapping of a row boat is not working
I am almost new to blender and completely new to UV unwrapping.I have modeled a row boat following a tutorial on youtube. After completing the model, I am trying to unwrap it. But when I mark the seams and hit U to unwrap it.It shows nothing on UV/Image editor.I think I have done some serious mistake but can not figure it out.I have attached the blender file with marking all the seam: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=49243

Do you select all before hititng U? Did you unlink Render Result image (probably empty if you haven't rendered anything) in the UV editor?

I have selected all of my model before hitting U.But, I didn't know how to unlink render result image.

See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/55539/why-does-the-uv-image-editor-remain-empty-after-uv-unwrapping and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/16199/uv-mapping-doesnt-display-in-uv-image-editor?lq=1

Thanks Mr. Zak. I have unlinked the render result image and now it's working.

Have you tried this:

Change from Render Results to skiff-side.jpg

Instead of asking question in the answer please answer the question (even if you aren't exactly sure what's the problem in question). What is *skiff-side.jpg"? OP should unlink any image, and from your answer looks like skiff-side.jpg is a part of Blender which isn't.

Now, It is working.Why it's not working first time? and should I switch to skiff-side.jpg every time I have to unwrap?

Mr Zak I answered with "Change ...this by that". It's obvious that the jpg isn't part of blender. My answer works.


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Character modeling:Front view model is not aligned with Side view model
I am new to Blender.I am following a tutorial found on youtube.I have created a model for my character's face in front view.But it is not aligned with side view/right view.That means, it's position on the right view is so much below the character's body let alone in the exact position on the face where it should be.Can I align it or should i start over?

Move the image using these values:

By saying "do this" without explaining why, it only helps OP, and will not help any other Stack Exchange readers.

Thank you for that, it really inspires me to continue helping people.


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Modelling a computer monitor - need some topology advice on using edge loops for sharpening
I'm modelling a computer monitor (as a learning exercise after completing Blender Guru's "Donut" and "Anvil" tutorials) and need some advice on how to use edge loops the right way for sharpening some details. Please let me explain my problem with a few screenshots, see below.
The last screenshot shows the problem, the three edge loops over the corner surface causes problem when applying subsurface modifier.
I really like to learn the best way of working with topology, maybe someone can guide me in the right direction on how to model my example in a better way? My blend file is attached at the end.
Overview of model (using Mirror modifier):

Detail on my edge loops  for sharpening the corners:

Artifact visible using Matcap shading:

Blend file:

The artifact looks like the 3 vertices are not aligned (same height).

Thanks for your reply, but it seems a bit difficult to align them exactly and I would prefer a solution where I can modify my topology to be able to delete them (i.e. just to keep one edge going over the flat surface, but keeping the edges that sharpens the corner). Not sure how to approach that problem...

One not the best way is to go with edges in the corners continuing all over the surface, like in this example. Note that this is simple bevel of the corner edge made after dissolving 2 edge loops. What you saw was most likely due to too much tiny faces (made with Subsurf) in the corner of uneven surface. In this case change the flow of edges.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will try this as well as the suggestion in the answer by Dontwalk.

Here's one possible solution. Model with quads for your front faces (Don't have an edge on the corner).


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Override context for operator called from panel
I have an operator, “my_operator”, that is called from a panel, as follows:
class CATEGORY_PT_test_panel(bpy.types.Panel):
bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
bl_region_type = "UI"
bl_label = "Test"
bl_context = "objectmode"
bl_category = "Test"

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

    row = layout.row()
    row.operator('object.my_operator', text='Activate')

This works fine, but I need to override the context when calling the operator; I need it to run in the context of the Image Editor. The only way I have found that works is to create a dummy operator (that is called from the panel) and in the dummy call “my_operator” as follows:
class OBJECT_OT_dummy(bpy.types.Operator):
"""Dummy operator workaround used for override."""

bl_idname = "object.dummy"
bl_label = "Dummy"
bl_options = {'REGISTER'}

def execute(self, context):
    screen = context.screen
    override = bpy.context.copy()

    # Update the context
    for area in screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'IMAGE_EDITOR':
            for region in area.regions:
                if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                    override = {'region': region, 'area': area}

    bpy.ops.object.my_operator(override, 'INVOKE_DEFAULT')
    return {'FINISHED'}

Is there some better way to do this…? “my_operator” is modal for doing some stuff when the user clicks on the image in the Image Editor. I’m using Blender 2.8.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6101/poll-failed-context-incorrect-example-bpy-ops-view3d-background-image-add

Context overrides are sometimes necessary depending on the functionality of your operator but should be avoided if possible, in my opinion. I can think of these options to avoid context overrides:

If your operator performs a very complicated task spanning over
multiple context areas inside Blender, think about splitting the operators functionality into multiple operators that require only one context
If you already know that your operator is performing a certain task
that requires a specific context, make sure to call the operator
from within that context. In your case, it sounds like you are performing Image related tasks. Calling the operator from the Image Editor Window itself, can solve your issue. This can be done by adding your operator to existing menus or a custom panel of the Image Editors sidebar

import bpy

from bpy.types import Operator, Panel

class A_OP_ContextualOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "image.contextual_operator"
    bl_label = "Contextual Operator"
    bl_description = "Operator called with appropriate context"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    # check for appropriate context in case this operator is searched using F3-Search
    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.space_data.type == 'IMAGE_EDITOR'

    def execute(self, context):
        print(f"Calling contextual operator - Current Context is: {context.space_data.type}")
        return {'FINISHED'}

class A_PT_CustomImageEditor_Panel(Panel):
    # custom panel added to the Image Editor Sidebar
    bl_space_type = 'IMAGE_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_label = "Custom Panel"
    bl_category = "Custom Tab"
    bl_options = {"DEFAULT_CLOSED"}

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.operator("image.contextual_operator")

def custom_menu_entries(self, context) -> None:
    # custom draw method to add entries to existing menus
    self.layout.separator()
    self.layout.operator("image.contextual_operator")

classes = (A_OP_ContextualOperator, A_PT_CustomImageEditor_Panel)

def register():
    for c in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(c)

    # add operator to Image Menu in Image Editor
    bpy.types.IMAGE_MT_image.append(custom_menu_entries)
    # add operator to View Menu in Image Editor
    bpy.types.IMAGE_MT_view.append(custom_menu_entries)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

If you still need context overrides however, as of Blender 3.2 there is an easier way to do this: context.temp_override()
An operator with an "Image Editor" context override called from the 3D-View sidebar could look like this:
import bpy

from bpy.types import Operator, Panel

class A_OP_ContextOverrideOperator(Operator):
    bl_idname = "image.contextoverride_operator"
    bl_label = "Context Override Operator"
    bl_description = "Operator called with context override"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    # verify appropriate context is available in current workspace and save reference in context_area variable
    context_area: bpy.types.Area = None
    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        cls.context_area = None
        for area in context.screen.areas:
            if area.type == 'IMAGE_EDITOR':
                cls.context_area = area
                break

        if not cls.context_area:
            cls.poll_message_set("Need Image Editor window in workspace")
            return False

        return cls.context_area.type == 'IMAGE_EDITOR'

    def execute(self, context):
        print("Calling context override operator...")
        print(f"\tOperator called with context: {context.space_data.type}")
        with context.temp_override(area=self.context_area):
            # put Image Editor related code  here
            print(f"\tContext after override: {context.space_data.type}")

        return {'FINISHED'}

class A_PT_CustomView3D_Panel(Panel):
    # custom panel added to the 3D View Sidebar
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_label = "Custom Panel"
    bl_category = "Custom Tab"
    bl_options = {"DEFAULT_CLOSED"}

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.operator("image.contextoverride_operator")

classes = (A_OP_ContextOverrideOperator, A_PT_CustomView3D_Panel)

def register():
    for c in classes:
        bpy.utils.register_class(c)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Please note that the operator is coded to only work, as long as an Image Editor Window is open in the workspace. Depending on your operators or other Blender operators functionality, this may not be necessary.


text:
How to add an Image Reference to for Side/Front/Top
I'm new to Blender's menu and all and I see a-lot of users use an image reference to make their 3D model.
How do you add image to the side/front/top ?

Hi. Please remember to search the site before asking a question.