text:
Why can I not import an .mp3 file through Python scripting?
I'm following this tutorial and I'm about 29 minutes in. I'm using the .mp3 mentioned in the tutorial. Here's my latest .blend...
My script will create a single cube and switch the window context to GRAPH_EDITOR, but then crashes out with the error, "unsupported audio format". Error text follows...

Traceback (most recent call last): File "J:\My
  Documents\Desktop\Motion Graphics\cgCookieVisualiser01001Rev.blend
  \Text", line 34, in  File "E:\Program Files\Blender
  Foundation\Blender\2.70\scripts\modules\bpy\ops .py", line 188, in
  call ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw) RuntimeError: Error: Unsupported audio format
Error: Python script fail, look in the console for now...

It seems strange that the .mp3 wouldn't import via script. Has anybody a suggestion on how I should tackle this?

I just tested your file with one of my own .mp3s and found two problems:

The path contains backslashes. This is standard in Windows, but has special meaning in many programming languages. The backslash means that the following character should not be interpreted as a normal character but as a control character (like \n stands for new-line and \a will make a beeping sound). Your path contains a \0 which (at least in C) is interpreted as 'End of String'. This messes up your path: When the string ends there, the file is actualy a folder and has no extension. Thus it can not be recognized as a supported audio format.
There are two possible solutions:

Replace all backslashes with forward slashes / and make a Unix-style path
Replace them with double backslashes \\. The first backslash removes the special meaning of the second backslash and makes it a normal character again.

You wrote true instead of True (with a capital letter) in line 37. This is a minor issue, but causes an error when you run the script ;)

After that your script runs fine.
EDIT :
I just found another mehtod to use string literals with backslashes. If you write
mypath = r"C:\Path\To\Some\File.mp3"

the r in front of the string literal tells python that this is a so-called raw string literal. This will preserve the backslashes and not use them to create control characters.

Both your points are accurate but this is probably not the problem. It doesn't correlate with the error message OP posted.

@iKlsR I think it does. In his path there is a \0 which (at least in C) is interpreted as 'End of String'. When the string ends there, the file is actualy a folder and has no extension. Thus it can not be recognized as a supported audio format. I added it to the answer.

YOP. Does the trick. And dern'd educational too! Shoulda spotted the backslash thing, but I'm just not used to Unix and the \0 thing is just cunning. Double backslashes seemed to cause Blender to lock up, but forward slashes results in sweet, sweet expected behaviour. Regards 'true'... sigh Well, this is the first Python I've ever touched...! =) Many thanks to both of you for your observation and knowledge!

@maddin45 I checked the blend file. It was partly the issue but I know Blender spits the same error if ffmpeg is missing.

It's worth mentioning that in Win7 and .Net languages paths work fine under windows even with unix style paths using /, whenever or not this was also the case before Win7 is something I don't know right now.

In addition to the points maddin45 shared which directly pertain to your script, to play .mp3 files in Blender, you need a build that was compiled with ffmpeg support.
If your current build for some reason doesn't have this, you can always grab a new one.


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Assign button missing from material tab
Can somebody tell me where the "assign" button, for assigning a material has gone?

Here is where it should be, but it has gone away:

Why does this happen?

You need to be in Edit Mode. That way you can select the vertices to assign to. Otherwise Blender has to use the mesh as one whole surface when applying new materials.

Cool! Glad it worked :) If this answer helped please accept it by clicking the little checkmark, it really helps my standings on the site.

source: Stack Exchange

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

authors: влад орехович

sort: votes


text:
How do I get Blender to import a Collada file?
Collada is not among the import options, and not among the addons for import options.
So is there a way to import a Collada file to Blender?

Collada is a .dae file and as you can see here: https://i.sstatic.net/6OUPH.png (blender 2.73a) it is supported.

Hey Luke, we DO read the differences and its you not getting it. Probably the answers in the duplicate are not clear enough for some people, might be actually good idea to answer about import also here. The thing is export and import are tied together, and the answers in the duplicate say to get a newer version which solves the issue.

For every other format Blender has support for, there is more than likely an import as well as export option. While the title differs, the answer would have still been the same more or less. Regardless, I think this should have its own answer.

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


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Use the Shrinkwrap modifier to form a skin over a collection of objects
I'm trying to use the Shrinkwrap modifier to form a skin over a collection of objects, but:

I have to provide a single target object. I'd rather keep the objects separate, but I could put them all into the same vertex group?
In which case, how can I apply all vertices of all selected objects to a vertex group at once?

I don't think this is possible. Not the way you're looking at it anyway. However, this might be a viable solution. If you're trying to do this in the editor (rather than in the BGE) you could create a single duplicate of each of the objects you want to wrap around. Merge them together. Wrap your cloth or what have you around the duplicated/merged version of your objects. Apply the modifier. Delete the duplicate version. Move your cloth to the objects.
If you're trying to do this in the BGE I'm not sure it's possible without manipulating verts in script.


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Why do fireflies increase with number of samples when using a hdri light source?
I have a plane with a simple diffuse material. I use an HDR light source from Greg Zaal.
The world setup is as simple as this:

When I preview, the noise seems to increase with the number of samples. When I render, it is the same thing as every tile gets rendered. It starts out pretty noisy and then for each sample, some fireflies is added.
I would expect the fireflies to be many to begin with but be dimmed down when increasing the number of samples.

I've actually been rendering a video to demonstrate this. It's a still image, but the first frame is 1 sample, second frame is 2 samples, etc. It will (naturally) take a LOOOONG time to finish rendering, but I think it'll be an interesting demonstration of what Cycles is doing.

Great @Matt! Can't wait to see the video. How many frames did you plan to render?

Lol, the original still that I did had more than 3000 samples, which would be 3000 frames... but those 3000 samples took hours to complete, so that'd go from seconds per frame early on, to hours per frame very quickly ;-) I'll probably just let it run until I get tired of not seeing any progress ;-) ... 300 or so

EDIT AT BOTTOM
The real answer is more complicated than this, but suffice to say, there's a statistical "hump" you have to get over. That is to say, there's a point at which all of the pixels have been sampled enough times that they are at least close to the right value. At that point, more samples will clear things up. Before you reach that "hump," Cycles is still finding all the things that might contribute to the color of each pixel. There will still be lots of pixels that are way off because their first few samples just so happened to be really bright, and it will take more samples to bring them back down to a realistic level.
Here's a bit more of an explanation. It's not very technical, but it is correct. I generally think it's easier to think about it this way than the technical way. You might not, but here goes...
It can be useful to think of Cycles as though it were taking a statistical average of what color each pixel ought to be. Cycles sends out a ray. That ray hits a very bright spot, so it makes that pixel very bright... but Cycles has no way of knowing that the very bright spot is right next to a much darker spot, until it sends out another ray that DOES hit that dark spot. So now it averages the bright pixel it had before with this new dark value and it gets a little closer to the correct color. Until Cycles has enough data to get a reasonably accurate average for most of the pixels, you'll have a bunch of "outliers."
It's a little like if you wanted to calculate the average population per city in the US, but you could only do it one city at a time. If you start your calculations with a city like Wheelock, TX, then your computed average is going to be 350 because that's how many people are in Wheelock. You have to get the populations of more and more cities before your computed average starts to look like the real average. It's the same with Cycles. It's averaging multiple samples per pixel. Some samples are super bright, and not very close to the real average for that pixel. So you're going to have a super bright (or dark) pixel until Cycles gets enough data to bring that pixel down closer to where it's really supposed to be.
There is also another contributing factor. You can (almost) always get brighter, but you can only get so dark. So, it's possible to have a dark pixel that's much darker than it should be (the opposite of a firefly), but the darkest it can possibly be is zero. On the other hand, if you've got a 100000 watt light source somewhere in your scene, it's possible for a sample to hit that source directly.  and now you have a single pixel that's 100000 "brightnesses" or so. It will be much harder to average down that very bright pixel to a more correct brightness than to average up the 'zero' pixel. Even if the next sample is only a 1, when you average that with the 100000, you still have a pixel that's 50000 "brightnesses." This means that fireflies are easier to produce than "blackholes," but they're also more persistent than "blackholes." This is what Clamp Direct and Clamp Indirect are for. This is your way to tell Cycles "let's say that 100000 brightness pixel is only 100," so that it's much easier to average out. But it's really easy for that clamping to make things inaccurate, if you're too aggressive with it.
NOW, as for HDRIs, it's a simple matter of having a much larger dataset to sample. With a larger dataset, it's much more likely that any given sample will NOT be close to the correct average, resulting in more grain, rather than less.
Hope that helps!
EDIT: One very good solution to fireflies is actually to render the same image several times, but with a different "seed" value for each one. Then average these images (careful with the opacity math!) together in an image editor. When you save out the file, the 1000000 watt pixel will have to be 1, which is much easier to average with the corresponding pixel from another version of the image that maybe doesn't have that firefly because it sampled differently.

I see, thanks. I was hoping I was doing something wrong.

Well, your HDRI setup isn't ideal, but it's not invalid. You might take a look at BlenderGuru's Pro-Lighting addon. You can get his demo for free, and it makes HDRI environments much better. You should also check out this article on why HDRIs sometimes don't look right: http://adaptivesamples.com/2015/11/09/hdri-mpumalanga-veld/

Fireflies is just the name that we give to the bright, isolated, pixel that seems to create a color discontinuity with the pixel in the neigborhood.
It is said they are resulting

...from numerical instabilities in solving the rendering equation.

So, talking about the rendering algorithm

there is no guarantee that it would converge to the correct solution

Despite this, I think that in your case (and most of the times) the method is able to give a good solution, it's just a matter of iterations number.
Below you can see a few steps of the rendering process and an ending comparison with the result achievable by enabling Multiple Importance samples (see Commonly Ignored Features #1 from the author of the HDRI)

So "fireflies" from this point of view, can be considered as just the earliest stage of the rendering process, as they are when rendering caustics. We consider them bad because compared with other parts of the scene the area where they appears is always behind in terms of convergence.
Stop killing the wonderful fireflies! :)

Thanks. Turning on the Multiple importance sampling made the shadows much much sharper. So I turned it off again. :-)

I think that most of Greg Zaal's efforts in his HDRI-making have been done in order to finally get those incredibly sharp shadows. :) Try to use his node setup and lower the amount of high values to the average.

Hehe... thanks for the explanation and digging. :-)

One way to reduce noice is to render with fewer samples, but many images with different seed. Of course, reflections (but not scene detail) are smoothed and details might be missed. We are still approaching "the hump".
Ten images manually combined, each rendered with 20 samples.

One image rendered with 200 samples.


text:
Paint on UV'ed model with external editor
The thing is that the guide I'm following uses 3Dcoat to have the texture projected from the one side to the other side. I figured that Blender would be able to do this also, but I'm not quite sure how it works. I've tried to search the internet and there's probably guide, but I do really not know what to search for to find what I'm looking for.
Guide that I'm following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiNASmArkxA
EDIT
Thanks for the help, I found what I was looking for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb-OZTNFatw

Most of the painting functions from external software is available in blender, and symmetric painting will be available in version 2.75.


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Where is the cleanup menu in 2.74?
I can't find any sort of mesh clean-up menu. I'd like to be able to find Ngons/degenerated faces/ect. quickly on large, complex meshes. Maya is great for this (highlights their locations without auto-fixing them). Can Blender do this?
I've checked the manual. It says to go to Mesh >> Cleanup. Where is this exactly?

Switch to edit mode and you will see the Mesh menu on the bottom of your 3D view window.

I use a nice little addon called MeshLint for locating Tris, Ngons, Interior Faces etc. within my models. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Modeling/MeshLint

That's perfect! Exactly what I was hoping for :D Thank you

As I read before it is a spell checker for a Mesh.

Could you add a little detail on how the addon works, to improve the answer?

First, you need to be in Edit mode, then check the 3d view header (the bar at the bottom) of the 3d view and you will see the Mesh menu item.

Additionally, you can press Space and search for the operation you want to perform if you know the name.

You can use Select Faces by Sides[citation] to select all the n-gons like maya

That's great, thank you :) What about Ngons? Can Blender find these?

This did not answer the question.

@M.Miles Actually, your answer doesn't answer the question and should possibly be a comment on mine. What you answered was a followup, what op wants doesn't correlate with what he asked, if someone comes in the future looking for the mesh cleanup menu, they have it.


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Is it possible to edit images programmatically with the Blender API?
I need to ascertain if it's possible to complete a project in Blender exclusively (my preference) or if I need to use an OpenGL API to write an external application for my needs.
If the project can be completed in Blender, then I need to be able to color pixels on a 2D image using Python within Blender.  If that can be done by pixel coordinate, then my project can be completed in Blender.
Because the Blender API documentation is laid out by structure of API itself rather than by task (a good thing!) I'm having trouble locating the part of it that I'm interested in.  Because usually Blender isn't used for this, I can't find any discussions that point me in the right direction.
edit: I see that bpy.ops.paint.sample_color() can be used to sample a color on an image; I'm just having trouble finding a way to directly manipulate pixels.
edit2: I should mention that I also found this in old documentation, but searches for something similar in the current documentation come up empty.
last edit: This thread from 2007 includes a script for pixel level access to images.  however, it is dependent upon classes that are not a part of the Blender API and do not appear to be part of the Python repository.  The colour class does not inherit as_tuple, which in turn only seems to be part of the decimal class.
So, I'm not listing it as an answer because there's no way to know with certainty just what the author meant when those classes are used.

Would you add your last edit to this meta question http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/429/duplicate-answers/430#430 I think this is a very good example.

That page shows me as logged out and will not let me log in.  When I click "log in", the page just refreshes, and when I click "join", it loads a page that shows me as logged in but it's back to logged out on that page.

Within blender's image class you can access the raw pixel data at image.pixels as an array of floats, 4 floats per pixel (RGBA). image.size[0] is the width in pixels image.size[1] for height.
This answer shows how to crop an image, while this one about performance might be useful.

Awesome, thank you!  I saw that pixels can be grabbed that way, but thought that each element of the pixel array is a single float.  That's much more intuitive.

This snippet provides a get and set_pixel function as a demo a sine is drawn.
It uses a image named 'Untitled' (default when you create a new one in the UV-Editor)
import bpy
import math

# image name from UV editor
image = bpy.data.images['Untitled']
width = image.size[0]
height = image.size[1]

# RGBA
color = (1.0, 0.0, 0.0 , 1.0 )
print("%d x %d" % ( width,height))

def set_pixel(img,x,y,color):
    offs = (x + int(y*width)) * 4
    for i in range(4):
        image.pixels[offs+i] = color[i]

def get_pixel(img,x,y):
    color=[]
    offs = (x + y*width) * 4
    for i in range(4):
        color.append( image.pixels[offs+i] )
    return color

inc = math.pi * 2 / width
s = - math.pi
for x in range(0, width-1):
    y =  math.sin( s ) * (height/2) + height/2-1
    #print( get_pixel( image, x, y) )
    set_pixel(image, x,int(y),color)
    s = s + inc

Result:

Very cool!  This is as straightforward as I would have hoped.  I just hesitated to experiment on those lines out of sheer inexperience and I thought the pixels array held a single float per index


text:
Turn off shading
I know this is probably a super easy answer, but I can't find it anywhere.
How do I turn the shading off on objects when I got them in texture mode? I want to fully see the texture without the crazy dark shadows; preferably no shadows at all.
Thanks.

Ok so when you go into texture mode, you want to press "n" on your keyboard.
Scroll down, and near the bottom of the list you will see "shading". click on it, and you will see this:

Click on "Shadeless" and there you go! No more shade!

Sure thing! glad to help!


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In Python, how to set the proper context in order to set the strength of a sun lamp (in Cycles)?
I'm trying to use Python to create a sun lamp (in Cycles mode) and then change it's strength.  I began by performing the operations manually and then copying the Python code that was produced in the top output area.  When I then run the script, the sun lamp is created, but I get an error before the strength can be set.  Here's the code:
import bpy

bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'
bpy.ops.object.lamp_add(type='SUN', view_align=False, location=(0, 0, 0))
bpy.context.space_data.context = 'DATA'
bpy.data.node_groups["Shader Nodetree"].nodes["Emission"].inputs[1].default_value = 2

Which produces this error:
File "/Text", line 5, in <module>
AttributeError: 'SpaceTextEditor' object has no attribute 'context'

It seems as though the problem is that I'm not properly telling Blender what object I want to change?

The answer (thanks to poor):
import bpy
bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'
bpy.ops.object.lamp_add(type='SUN', view_align=False, location=(0, 0, 0))
bpy.context.object.data.node_tree.nodes['Emission'].inputs['Strength'].default_value=3

Welcome gwint :) If the duplicate above don't solve your issue feel free to comment here.

Hi poor! Still no luck. I tried the code from the answer you linked to ("node = bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes['Emission']") but got the error "AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'node_tree'". It feels like I just need to know how to access the node data of the sun lamp I just created but I don't know how to.

(As an aside, I feel like part of the problem is I can't find a good intro guide to Blender 2.7x scripting for someone who's an experienced programmer but not an experienced Blenderer-- suggestions welcome :)

You can try: bpy.context.object.data.node_tree.nodes['Emission'].inputs[1].keyframe_insert(data_path="default_value",frame=120) The only difference is that lamps don't have a "active_material". You can use the console inside blender and the autocompletion there (CTRL+Space). Good resource is e.g. this: http://blenderscripting.blogspot.de/

Yes! That's the special sauce: "bpy.context.object.data.node_tree..." Thank you poor!


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Export fluid simulation data INSIDE file
I am planning to use a render farm (render.st) to render an animation containing a mantaflow fluid simulation. Blender stores fluid simulation data outside of the .blend file, which I am unable to upload.
The "Automatically pack all into .blend" feature doesn't seem to pack the fluid data, as my fluid data folder is a whopping 14.4GB while the .blend file after packing is only 14.4MB.
Is there a way I can send mantaflow fluid sim data to a renderfarm?

Does the farm not accept zipped folders or something?

The answer to that question is in our (RenderStreet's) knowledge base, search for 'baking'. This is a quote from the first section in the article:

For uploading there are 4 options:

Use our plug-in. The plug-in will collect automatically all baked caches and all project assets and will upload them to our servers. You can download the plug-in from the link in your RenderStreet account
Zip the entire folder and upload via the "add render job page". You'll receive an error message saying that we were not able to find the blend file in the archive. In the process, the archive will get unzipped and then you'll be able to find the uploaded folder at the bottom of the page, in the FTP files section.
Via Dropbox or another cloud storage account .
Via FTP .
Also, when having a question regarding our service, asking our support will get you an answer :)

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


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Identical (but smaller) scenes render a slightly different image

I am experimenting around and trying to create an "inception" effect. Basically, a cube splits into several smaller ones and breaks apart, while the camera zooms into one of the smaller cubes. The smaller cube then breaks apart, and it repeats. I want to make this a loop, so to do that I need a start and end frame that look exactly the same.
Unfortunately, for some reason, the end frame which shows the larger (yet identical) cube has a slight but noticeably darker shadow (see the gif below). The light is a sun lamp parented to the camera, so the angle and intensity should be exactly the same. Are there any other possible reasons for why this happens? I have attached the file above so it will make more sense.

Probably not an answer, but your sun should probably not be parented to anything. see doc on sun light the location of a sun light does not affect the rendered result.

Hey :). Can't test the scene now, just keep in mind that the Sun lamp light falloff doesn't follow the Inverse Square Law, which can play a role

@JachymMichal Yes, this was the specific reason I used a Sun Lamp. I figured that because the light source for the sun lamp is deemed as infinitely far away, there will not be any changes in lighting due to scale.

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


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Realistic Paper Tear
I am trying to make a photorealistic paper tear. I already have the correct animation. I used two curves to bend a sheet of paper (a plane) to tear into 2 halves. To make the tear lines I subdivided the plane and at the tear line I used random transform to shift the vertices, then split the plane into 2 objects.
This does not look very realistic. There are two issues: the shader, and the geometry.
Geometry:
If you grab a piece of paper and tear it, you will notice that at the tear line that there are actually multiple layers of paper and not just one. There are also some "hairs" that appear inside the tear line.
Shader:
Paper isn't actually a solid color, it is slightly translucent but there is some variation of translucency. My attempts with noise textures don't look right.
I could probably work out the shader, but I am completely stumped when it comes to the geometry of the tear.

Could you add some screenshots of what you already achieved?

@bstnhnsl its nothing worth showing, just two bent planes with a jagged edge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03o5i6SFNgs

Hello :). Wouldn't it be easier to just use an image texture of a real paper tear? And since paper is just about 0,06 mm thick, solidify modifier should work well enough.

@JachymMichal yes, however, I would like this to be entirely procedural.


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Rounded 3D Text Style?
I am attempting to make some text which is not flat, and has a circular bevel and spherical caps. I found a good example of what I am trying to make:

As you can see, it is mainly composed of "pill" shapes. I can probably model this somewhat quickly, however, I need many of these styled letters in order to form some readable text and I do not want to make each of them one by one.
The desired workflow would be to first create a text object, and then turning it into the end result. However, I have a lot of trouble finding a simple way to turn text into something like this.

I think that you have no other choice but to find a font that looks round, use it as a blueprint and to recreate it with basic shapes and booleans, it should be fast though as it's a rather simple font


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knife_project in --background
I like to use the function knife_project() in a command line :
blender.exe  --background --python ...
but bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations=1) isn't avaible.
I try to use modal function, operator function but knife angle is always bad.
code is :
    def execute(self, context):

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)
    # returns first 3d view, normally we get from context
    def view3d_find( return_area = False ):
        # returns first 3d view, normally we get from context
        for area in bpy.context.window.screen.areas:
            if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
                v3d = area.spaces[0]
                rv3d = v3d.region_3d
                for region in area.regions:
                    if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                        if return_area: return region, rv3d, v3d, area
        return None, None

    region, rv3d, v3d, area = view3d_find(True)
    override = {
        'scene'            : bpy.context.scene,
        'region'           : region,
        'area'             : area,
        'space'            : v3d,
        'active_object'    : bpy.context.object,
        'window'           : bpy.context.window,
        'screen'           : bpy.context.screen,
        'selected_objects' : bpy.context.selected_objects,
        'edit_object'      : bpy.context.object
    }
    rv3d.view_rotation = Euler( (0,0,0) ).to_quaternion()
    rv3d.view_perspective = 'ORTHO'
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    obj=bpy.data.objects["Wall"]
    bpy.data.objects["Grid"].select = True
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active=obj
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

    #bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations=1)

    bpy.ops.mesh.knife_project(override, cut_through=True)

    return {'FINISHED'}

Is there a way to replace redraw_timer ?
Best Regards,


text:
How can I learn basic anatomy/proportions good enough to where I can sculpt a basic head from scratch
I did this but I got frustrated and quit.

I hope you meant 'sculpt' and not 'scalp'. For the latter I'd recommend the knife tool.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this question is not about Blender.

I voted to close the question because it's not about Blender, but it seems worth an answer anyway. I suggest visiting an art supply store;last time I stopped in one, they had books describing how to draw the human form. While the tools and workflow in Blender are different, the principles described will be quite similar. Or if you're too far from an art supply store, a bookstore or perhaps a big box hobby store should have similar titles.

It's helpful if you draw enough still life of people's faces and understand the basic proportion of a human face. Art is a process, it takes time to master some individual are more talented but mostly those who does it well have lots of passion in it. So calling quits is never an option, especially for those who love arts.

I've found that when starting out modeling a head, it's helpful to insert a background image and simply draw the head by extruding a vertex around it. Then you can add depth to the head and make it look realistic. These two videos got me started with the basics of modeling a head from scratch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifFD8iD976g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LwQO_tWTAQ
To add a reference image to model from, first press numpad 1 to go to front view. If the view isn't already orthographic, press numpad 5 to switch to orthographic. Then, press the N key to open the right toolbar, and scroll down to "Background Images". Check the box, then expand the menu and click Add Image. Set the Axis as "Front", then click Open to open the image you want to use. Do the same thing for the left, right, and back views, but make sure the image you use for those views is truly of that part of the head. For example, make sure from the left orthographic view you can see the image of the left side of the head. Once the image is added, you can change the opacity of it with the slide under the background image menu.
Hope this helps!


text:
Unable to link 2 nodes to mixshader at once (python)
Somehow this code is unable to bind two nodes(Emission and BsdfTransparent) to mixshader input at once. I'm able to do it in the node selector view and get the result i want. Anyone know whats wrong ?
### create nodes
emission_ = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeEmission')
output = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeOutputMaterial')
tex_coord = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeTexCoord')
image_texture = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeTexImage')
#for adding alpha channel to shaders
mix = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeMixShader')
trans = genMat.node_tree.nodes.new(type = 'ShaderNodeBsdfTransparent')

### linking nodes
genMat.node_tree.links.new(tex_coord.outputs['Generated'],image_texture.inputs['Vector'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(image_texture.outputs['Color'],emission_.inputs['Color'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(image_texture.outputs['Alpha'],mix.inputs['Fac'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(emission_.outputs['Emission'],mix.inputs['Shader'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(mix.outputs['Shader'],output.inputs['Surface'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(trans.outputs['BSDF'],mix.inputs['Shader'])
genMat.node_tree.links.new(image_texture.outputs['Color'],emission_.inputs['Color'])

When a node has two inputs with the same name, for instance 2 color inputs, then you should pass the index instead of the input name.
# both inputs are called 'Color', so it's not enough
links.new(image_texture.outputs['Color'], emission_.inputs[0])
links.new(image_texture_2.outputs['Color'], emission_.inputs[1])

The shader mix node has 3 inputs, two are called 'Shader'. You'll need to use indices to distinguish each.
# The mix.inputs[0] is the factor, indexing starts at zero
links.new(emission_.outputs['Emission'], mix.inputs[1])   # shader 1
links.new(trans.outputs['BSDF'], mix.inputs[2])           # shader 2


text:
How to make object A a parent(keep_transform) of object B via Blender's Python API?

parent keep transform??

objects = bpy.data.objects
a = objects['Cube']
b = objects['Cube.001']
b.parent.keep_transform = a

CODE:
import bpy # sin esta libreria no funcionan los comandos en blender
techos = bpy.context.selected_objects

for i in techos:
    #bpy.ops.object.empty_add(type='PLAIN_AXES',radius=100,location = i.location) = o

    empty = bpy.data.objects.new( "empty", None )#crea un empty y lo guarda en una variable
    bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(empty)#agrega el empty a la escena
    empty.empty_display_size = 3 #da un tamaño al empty
    empty.empty_display_type = 'PLAIN_AXES'#determina la forma del empty
    empty.location = i.location #la locacion del empty es la misma que la del objeto seleccionado

    i.parent = empty#el objeto seleccionado es hijo del empty
    i.matrix_parent_inverse = empty.matrix_world.inverted()

    #i.parent_set(i,keep_transform = True)
    #i.parent_set()
    print(empty)

I found a solution, putting the object "I" on both sides, however I can't understand it well

parent keep transform??
objects = bpy.data.objects
a = objects['Cube']
b = objects['Cube.001']
b.parent.keep_transform = a ???

If you want to retain the transformation of the child you can do this:
 b.parent = a
 b.matrix_parent_inverse = a.matrix_world.inverted()

You need to update depsgraph after creating the empty (matrix_world of the newly created object is updated after updating depsgraph):
import bpy # sin esta libreria no funcionan los comandos en blender
techos = bpy.context.selected_objects

for i in techos:
    #bpy.ops.object.empty_add(type='PLAIN_AXES',radius=100,location = i.location) = o

    empty = bpy.data.objects.new( "empty", None )#crea un empty y lo guarda en una variable
    bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(empty)#agrega el empty a la escena
    empty.empty_display_size = 3 #da un tamaño al empty
    empty.empty_display_type = 'PLAIN_AXES'#determina la forma del empty
    empty.location = i.location #la locacion del empty es la misma que la del objeto seleccionado

    # Add this line
    bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get().update()

    i.parent = empty#el objeto seleccionado es hijo del empty
    i.matrix_parent_inverse = empty.matrix_world.inverted()

    #i.parent_set(i,keep_transform = True)
    #i.parent_set()
    print(empty)

It does not work although I can make the relationship the object moves from its place of origin.

Please see edit. Is it possible for you to share your code?

there I put the sample code choose some objects from the scene and this script creates an empty which is then the parent of the selected object

Please see the updated code. You need to add the line: bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get().update()

Update the publication with the solution I found or found, but I vote yours too.
If instead of putting empty I put "I" the problem is solved, but in the way you told me too, even if I don't understand it very well, you helped me a lot ... until next time ...

It's because object i has the same location as the empty (empty.location = i.location). If you transform the empty in any other way, you will need to update the depsgraph. Anyways, glad that you could resolve the problem!


text:
How do I curve a section of a model?
so I'm new-ish to Blender and currently practicing by just making some random 3D models of stuff. Today I made a model off of this switch:

My only problem is the edge of the switch, its curved but how I have my model, I have it straight as shown here with the vertices selected:

Im trying to bow the edges so that it curves up but I've tried so many things to no success. Any easy way to edit the vertices to curve it up without moving them free-handedly?

Make the actual part, using the mirror modifier, as if it was in between the positions, then just rotate it.

Gonna have to get even more basic than that with me. As soon as I went in and tried to make sense of the Mirror modifier it glitched the area. Is there like a extrude cylindrically or something? That would be so good right now. Only reason I haven't used a cylinder on the area is because boolean modifier seems very buggy

Spin could help you. There's a bit to know about it, turning around the 3D cursor from the view angle, I suggest you try to find a tuto about that. Here's what blender doc says about it : https://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/meshes/editing/duplicating/spin.html?highlight=spin

rotation of a vertex with proportional editing could help too, you only need to choose a good axis to turn around and handy falloff and radius. https://www.blender.org/manual/getting_started/basics/transformations/transform_control/proportional_edit.html

or use a curve, and use "mesh from curve" (object menu/convert to, or Alt-C). Then join the meshes and remove doubles.

This can be done by selecting the bottom two vertices, pressing O, and moving them in the desired direction (be sure to put it on the Sharp falloff type and make the radius large enough using Scroll):

Although you can do this, I would recommend making the switch as if it was in between the two states, so it is symmetrical. You can then easily rotate it.

Start by forming the switch profile. Add a circle with 12 vertices, and in edit mode select all and press S-Y-2, then press Enter to finish. Now select all except the bottom vertices and delete them.

Now you can extrude downwards using E, Z. When scale the new vertices to zero along the zed axis by pressing S-Z-0. Now scale along the Y axis as desired (S-Y).

Now extrude the outline to the desired width using E.

Now you can delete half of the vertices.

And add a Mirror Modifier:

Make sure you select the right Axis, either X, Y or Z. In this case it is Y.
Now any changes you make to the one half are exactly mirrored to the other half. Also, this piece can be rotated easily to animate the switch if ever necessary.
Things you might want to consider:

Bevel modifier/Sub-Division modifier
Re-calculate Normals (Edit mode Ctrl+N)

This should get you a good base mesh to work with, from which you can add specific details.


text:
Can I change Info bar colour on scene change
I am trying to write a script to set Interface colours for individual scenes. When I switch scenes in the Info bar drop down menu I want to change the Info Bar background colour. This gives better feedback for scene swapping/tracking.
So far I've got bpy.context.user_preferences.themes[0].info.space.header = (1,0,0)

I guess I need to create an open list of scenes that I can append later.
Then allocate the spectrum of colours to it?
Not sure I can create a UI to allocate colours to scenes, so I'll have to bump the values in increments instead.

But first I'm stuck on calling the colour change (I considered iterating a bunch of themes and switching them as needed). At the BA forum it was suggested that the scene change is a frame change event but I'm not sure how to separate that from any other frame changes...
Hopefully if I can set up colours for the info bar I could tie them to node scene inputs.

Cool idea, I wrote this addon for me just now and I triggered the Header draw event. You can copy it from below or from here: scene_colored_header.py
EDIT: Updated to the newer Version. Don't use the old version, it generates a continuous redraw of the Header, wich I don' noticed. leads to cpu inceasement
blender 2.8 and above:
bl_info = {
           "name": "Colored Header for each scene",
           "author": "Leon95, Idea: 3pointedit",
           "version": (1, 2),
           "blender": (3, 0, 0),
           "location": "Properties > Scene Tab > Scene Panel > Display Color",
           "description": "Define a Header Color for every scene and display it in the Header",
           "category": "Scene"
           }

import bpy

def_color = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(size = 4,min = 0.0,max = 1.0,
    default=list(bpy.context.preferences.themes[0].topbar.space.header))
def_color = list(bpy.context.preferences.themes[0].topbar.space.header)

def ui_properties_costum_header_color(self, context):
    row = self.layout.row()
    row.prop(context.scene, "headerColor")

def ui_info_header_refresh(self, context):
    #assign the property to the header theme every time it is redrawn
    l_co=context.window_manager.lastHeaderColor
    ch = context.preferences.themes[0].topbar.space.header
    cs = context.scene.headerColor
    #check, if reassignment is needed, since  assigning a color leads to redraw
    #(which the causes some kind of stack overflow)
    if not (round(l_co[0],3) == round(cs[0],3) and round(l_co[1],3) == round(cs[1],3) and round(l_co[2],3) == round(cs[2],3)):
        bpy.context.preferences.themes[0].topbar.space.header = bpy.context.scene.headerColor
    context.window_manager.lastHeaderColor=[cs[0],cs[1],cs[2]]

def register():
    co = list(bpy.context.preferences.themes[0].topbar.space.header)
    bpy.types.WindowManager.lastHeaderColor=bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(size = 3,min = 0.0,max = 1.0)
    bpy.types.Scene.headerColor = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(
                                     name = "Display Color",
                                     subtype = "COLOR",
                                     size = 4,
                                     min = 0.0,
                                     max = 1.0,
                                     update = ui_info_header_refresh,
                                     default = co)

    bpy.types.SCENE_PT_scene.append(ui_properties_costum_header_color)
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_HT_upper_bar.append(ui_info_header_refresh)
    #bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(ui_info_header_refresh)

    #reassigment forces redraw
    bpy.context.preferences.themes[0].topbar.space.header = bpy.context.preferences.themes[0].topbar.space.header

def unregister():
    bpy.types.SCENE_PT_scene.remove(ui_properties_costum_header_color)
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_HT_upper_bar.remove(ui_info_header_refresh)
    #bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.remove(ui_info_header_refresh)
    bpy.context.preferences.themes[0].topbar.space.header = [def_color[0],def_color[1],def_color[2],def_color[3]]
    bpy.context.window_manager.lastHeaderColor=[0,0,0]
    del bpy.types.WindowManager.lastHeaderColor

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

blender 2.7 and below:
    #scene_colored_header.py
bl_info = {
           "name": "Colored Header for each scene",
           "author": "Leon95, Idea: 3pointedit",
           "version": (1, 1),
           "blender": (2, 68, 0),
           "location": "Properties > Scene Tab > Scene Panel > Display Color",
           "description": "Define a Header Color for every scene and display it in the Header",
           "category": "Scene"
           }

import bpy

def_color = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(size = 3,min = 0.0,max = 1.0,
    default=bpy.context.user_preferences.themes[0].info.space.header.copy())
def_color = bpy.context.user_preferences.themes[0].info.space.header.copy()

def ui_properties_costum_header_color(self, context):
    row = self.layout.row()
    row.prop(context.scene, "headerColor")

def ui_info_header_refresh(self, context):
    #assign the property to the header theme every time it is redrawn
    l_co=context.window_manager.lastHeaderColor
    ch = context.user_preferences.themes[0].info.space.header
    cs = context.scene.headerColor
    #check, if reassignment is needed, since  assigning a color leads to redraw
    #(which the causes some kind of stack overflow)
    if not (round(l_co[0],3) == round(cs[0],3) and round(l_co[1],3) == round(cs[1],3) and round(l_co[2],3) == round(cs[2],3)):
        bpy.context.user_preferences.themes[0].info.space.header = bpy.context.scene.headerColor
    context.window_manager.lastHeaderColor=[cs[0],cs[1],cs[2]]

def register():
    co = bpy.context.user_preferences.themes[0].info.space.header.copy()
    bpy.types.WindowManager.lastHeaderColor=bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(size = 3,min = 0.0,max = 1.0)
    bpy.types.Scene.headerColor = bpy.props.FloatVectorProperty(
                                     name = "Display Color",
                                     subtype = "COLOR",
                                     size = 3,
                                     min = 0.0,
                                     max = 1.0,
                                     update = ui_info_header_refresh,
                                     default = co)

    bpy.types.SCENE_PT_scene.append(ui_properties_costum_header_color)
    bpy.types.INFO_HT_header.append(ui_info_header_refresh)
    #bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(ui_info_header_refresh)

    #reassigment forces redraw
    bpy.context.user_preferences.themes[0].info.space.header = bpy.context.user_preferences.themes[0].info.space.header

def unregister():
    bpy.types.SCENE_PT_scene.remove(ui_properties_costum_header_color)
    bpy.types.INFO_HT_header.remove(ui_info_header_refresh)
    #bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.remove(ui_info_header_refresh)
    bpy.context.user_preferences.themes[0].info.space.header = [def_color[0],def_color[1],def_color[2]]
    bpy.context.window_manager.lastHeaderColor=[0,0,0]
    del bpy.types.WindowManager.lastHeaderColor

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

The coolest thing is that you can animate the header color :)

+1 This is pretty sweet. A cool idea from op indeed, registered and currently using it. Only critique is by default the color changes are rather subtle.

That is AWESOME, thanks sooo much! At least now I have a script to learn from, win win.

@3pointedit  :: I am new.  Do you know happen to know where I can assign the custom color?  Which variable is it?  Thank.

@cppBeginner script was no longer working since 2.8. It is now updateted and you can find the setting now in the scene tab of the properties window


text:
Trouble enabling Cube surfer addon
Every time I have tried to enable the Cube Surfer addon but this error message comes up.
FYI I have the correct versions of everything.
I have had this problem with some other add ons as well. Sometimes it's when I have tried to click a button in an addon (after 'successfully' installing)

Technically this is off-topic for blender.stackexchange but I expect several people will be interested and have trouble getting this addon working so I will add this info here.
Cube surfer is written in cython not python. The cython project is a kind of hybrid between C code and python code. You need to convert the .pyx file in CubeSurfer to a c file then compile it into a shared library. You will need to install cython and a compiler if you don't have them already.
There is a setup64.py to build it included with CubeSurfer, it is only setup for windows, for other platforms you will need to make some changes.
If you have trouble building this you will need to ask for help on irc or stack.overflow or the CubeSurfer developer
It could be possible that builders may offer this addon pre-compiled with graphicall builds - there don't appear to be any yet.


text:
Piston Flipping Backwards When Rotated
I'm working on rigging the actuator arms for the landing gear doors on a project and have run into an irritating problem. When the doors are open everything is fine:

However when the door closes:

As you can see, it flips the arm 180 degrees. This is happening to all three actuator arms. I have it rigged as follows:
1) The door itself is parented to the armature that actually rotates the hinge.
2) I'm using empties and track to constraints to animate the actuator arms.
3) The actuator sleeve (the upper half with the ball joint) is parented to an empty called Upper, which the acuator piston (with the arm) is Tracked to.
4) Vice versa for the Lower empty.
5) Lower is parented to the door object, and moves with the door. Upper remains stationary as it's fixed to the bay (no parenting).
This is one of my main landing gear bays. I'm using a similar setup for the forward bay doors, which are NOT experiencing this issue.

I just remodeled and repositioned the actuators so they stop flipping. They're not exactly where I wanted then to be, but they work proper in the new spots, so all good.

I'm no rigging expert, but... maybe it's just taking the shortest path to rotate and maybe this can be fixed with an IK pole target.

I don't think that will work, as the piston doesn't have any bones itself. It's entirely using the Empties and track constraints to animate when the door open and closes. I think I got what I needed though, by changing it to a Locked Track Constraint, but wanted to see if there were any other options before marking this answersed.

Nevermind, Locked Track didn't work either. That just screws up the piston in other ways.

I have a feeling you may need to use an armature for this.

The problem is the forward gear bay doors are set up the same way and AREN'T doing this.


text:
Can animation nodes be used for animating a rubik's cube?
First of all, wat an awesome adon
I made a Rubik's cube and was wondering: can it be used to randomly scramble the cube? And how would i do the parenting to 6 empty's i placed around the cube.
I tried to do the parenting based on XYZ position of the origin point of the small cubes I have split all cube locations into 6 lists(-X, +X, -Y, +Y, -Z, +Z)
Does anybody have an idea how i get those cubes to behave nicely and stay in the cube after 1 turn? And can the logic nodes or scripting node be used to do some 'smart' parenting based on > if a empty is rotating or selected?
Would it be better to make an armature and animate that?
Any hints,tips and tricks are welcome :)

Here's my solution for rotating multiple cubes using Geometry Nodes: Realistically randomize Rubik's Cube And here's older solutions using Animation Nodes: Animation Nodes Rubik's Cube

It needs some work but possible. You can try using Child of constraints, to dynamically parent the cubes to empties as time going. Here is an example setup:

Also, you can try using particles to generate location set. Like this:

Both solutions are a bit tricky, and not perfect, still figuring out how to fix that, but that's how it goes for now.


text:
problems importing boost module into blender
blender boost version?
have problems incorporating dlib with blender (2.77a)
hello,
    My name is pascal and i am having trouble installing dlib with blender.
Dlib is a model that uses boost to do lots of cool things. What I’m interested
is the capableilty of extracting facial points from a webcam.
    This means i can control any blender rig on any computer using any webcam…
Well if i could get dlib working.

I have tried building blender 2.77a from scratch on my computer
i have tried taking out blenders python and inserting my own
i have tried a simply sys.append() to the python system folder that has dlib in it

created a python 3.5.1
for 1 and 3 in order to recognize my own python. I had to do sys.append() which then worked and imported everything that did not use boost.
for 2 worked for all but boost library without needed to create python paths.
so this is what it looks like when it crashes or gives me an area
import dlib  #this works

import os
predictor_path = "/Users/pascaljardin/Desktop/TheBitcoinDimension/CodeStuff/shape_predictor_68_face_landmarks.dat" #need this to be installed on desktop

print(os.path.exists(predictor_path))
    Code output: True

dlib.shape_predictor(predictor_path)

# Code output:
#   Traceback (most recent call last):
#     File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
#   TypeError: __init__() should return None, not 'NoneType'

This is where i receive this error or blender will completely crash. As i understand the reason why importing lib worked is because it was able to find the links to call it. But when it wanted to actually run something, the boost got all messed up… well thats my understand any way
Here is what i installed in order to get the facial points and something in this is not happy with blender 2.7. Everything need for dlib to work: installed on python 3.5.1, but can us any python 3.x
 boost:  1.59.0-py35_0 menpo
 bzip2:  1.0.6-3
 dlib:   18.18-py35_2  menpo
 libpng: 1.6.22-0
 mkl:    11.3.3-0
 numpy:  1.11.1-py35_0

with that said, i can use the sys.append() to another python environment and by doing so dlib can be used in that environment
so do i need to build blender form scratch a special way for this to work?
Or do need to use a older blender like 2.6 for this to work
Because the python version dose not matter to install the dlib, as long as its python3x
or better yet is their a line of code that will magically get dilb working?
Thanks,
    Pascal

If you look at the libs used to build the blender releases you will see that boost 1.60 was used. I also think blender includes numpy 1.10.1. Start with matching lib versions, as blender has boost loaded it will use that and not load the version you expect, which you compiled dlib with. The other option to try is building blender yourself, not sure what boost options are linked into the included boost, it may be missing the code you need to use dlib.

thanks, I understand now that the boost was the wrong version. Therefore blender couldn't read dlib. Now I'm using a different environment with the correct boost.... but now i don't know how to install dlib!

Dose anyone now how to create an python3.5 environment with dlib and boost 1.60 ?


text:
facial landmark deduction compatible with blender?
I'm trying to to get dlib integrated with blender for over 3 months. Is there any other facial landmark detection that I could integrate with blender? or is there a method to get dlib working in blender? Ive tried everything I could think of.
thanks pascal

I imagine dlib just takes a raster image and spits out the most probable contours face, nose, mouth, eyes, ears) as 2d locations/pixel on the raster? Are you looking to implement something that will run on video or just single frames?

You should mention whether you are able to get dlib running independently of Blender. (to show that you were able to satisfy those dependencies)


text:
Advanced plane 3d tracking and axis identification
Are there any ways to make 3d tracking better?
Atm I have a problem with recreating room (example below). And as it can be seen red recrangle do not quite match walls, floor or ceiling. Quite nasty situation. I've tried to make 'floor' from points on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling and even the blue screen. Nothing helps at all. Every time it kinda fits only one plane but as soon as I try to extend it to make a box these planes stop being parallel. So I'd like to know is there any way to mark meshes as walls, floor, ceiling apart from 2 default buttons since they do not work in my case.
Also is there any way to mark 2 trackers as x axis rather than just 1?  I mean if I've tracked 2 points on the floor and want to make 'em any axis can I?


text:
What causes vertices to become randomly linked OR form 3d shape instead of plane? (2.8 may build)
Whenever I create new mesh plane I usually delete it and then manually create custom shaped mesh via ctrl+click, then click select all vertices (A) and make new face from them (F).
However sometimes these things happen:

after making a new face I enter sculpting mode to find out that some of vertices have become linked randomly e.g. one point might be in the middle of the mesh and the other near the edge or few vertices away, so moving one of them causes changes to BOTH. Sometimes there are plenty of linked vertices on one single newly created mesh.
Also sometimes after new face was created instead of custom shaped 2d flat plane I get 3d object with flipped normals (!) as if all outer vertices were selected and a new face was added to form 3d object.

Why that happens? I do similar routine every time yet results always vary. Are there any hidden hotkeys I might accidently press that might cayse that? Also why for each 3d object I create that way normal are flipped?

normal of face is determined by the order of the vertices (the order in which vertices are referenced by the face). Clockwise and anticlockwise will give opposing normals.


text:
How to change transparency color in material options? 2.8+
I have two images. One on black background and the other on white.
How to pick a color to act like transparency mask? How to separate it and put in alpha?

maybe this will help: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/176419/make-specific-color-in-a-texture-transparent/176425#176425

@moonboots adding ColorRamp helped to remove white color. Thank you. Can you post it plz so I can pick thats as a solution?

I think the topic is going to be closed as it has already been answered  ;)


text:
Gradient texture from color into transparency incorrectly turns into black
Basically I have a texture with transparent background applied to my model. Thats my setup:

As you can see  the part of the wheel that is meant to be "a highlight" unfortunately has black stripes instead of being transparent.
Here is how in looks in photoshop.

How can I make transparency work properly?

You need to plug the alpha output channel of your Image Texture into the alpha input of a Principled BSDF for example:

Also, don't forget to choose Alpha Blend in the Material > Settings > Blend Mode.

I've followed the instructions however now the wheel sides are almost fully transparent and whole model is affected by lights
but yeah - highlights are now showing without black color

make sure that the wheel sides UVs lay over the color you want, not over a transparent part of your image, or assign them another material

yeah I have highlight as a separate mesh few pixels above the wheel. I have separated materials and it helped but only a bit. There are no hard black lines however now it blends with black color https://i.sstatic.net/Dy3Oo.png

I'm not sure what's your problem, maybe edit your question and give a link to your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/ don't forget to pack the image before sharing

my bad
I've connected color to alpha. Fixed it and now everything works fine. Thank you!


text:
Patricles birth rate/count
Particle emission system has control over total amount of particles to create, but is there any way to control amount of particles to spawn at once?
For example having 120 particles over 120 will produce 1 per second. How can I change it to 2 per second?
I guess I can make duplicate of that particle system and change seed so all of the settings will be the same. However that always becomes a problem if I need more than 1 per second since in order to make changes I will have to perform same routine over all systems or to copy them again and again after each tweak I make.

Maybe this can help you? https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/187074/86978

@Chris I've followed that solution and particle system looks buggy. That advice in theory should work but in my case particles sometimes spawn at density 1 and then disappear or spawn but without gravity. Example file ends up with particles scattering randomly. Dont know why. Checked in 2.92 and 2.93

120 particles over 120 frames produces 1 per frame, not per second. The rate per second depends on how many FPS you have set. To get 2 per frame over 120 frames you have to set it to 240 particles. But you can't actually set a rate and theoretically those particles are generated randomly. So they are 2 per frame on average but not necessarily exactly 2 on each frame.


text:
Problem with Subdivision Surface after Bevel
Creating a very simple figure out of plane with Bevel modifier following by Subdivision Surface resulted in weird geometry.
Steps how to reproduce the problem:

I've used a mesh plane,
squished z-axis and applied scale,
then added 4 loop cuts,
then moved middle part with G or move tool,
afterwards added modifiers
and used shade smooth.

Normals weren't changed, all geometry is same as before, no n-gons were created. Why this might happen?
Simple plane with 4 loop cuts

Bevel settings

Subdiv settings

normals

@JachymMichal Perfect! That topic was the solution! Could you please post the related link it below so I could accept it?

Hey :). Glad it helped. I'll mark this thread as a duplicate, so you can just agree with the close vote to link both threads :).

It looks like you've only applied SubSurf to one set of faces. Try applying the solidify modifier, if you can, then bevel your edges and apply the SubSurf.


text:
Delete part of an imported obj model in Blender?
I've made a model in Magicavoxel and exported it in obj format. I then import it to Blender to change pivot point. My problem is that i have to export it from Blender in two parts. My question is how do i delete a part of an obj import?

The same way you delete a part of any mesh. Which part of the workflow are you having difficulties with?

Ok thanks but i have almost no experience of Blender and have no clue yet how to delete anything the way i want to. But i'm going through tutorials from absolute scratch and i feel it will take some time until i reach the knowledge i need. I am in a bit of a hurry ;)

Is the meshed separated in group for OBJ file?
Try to use Split by Group in importing OBJ file:

In that way, the object can be imported separately if the OBJ use group for objects.
Just delete the object by X
If the Object is still joined
Enter edit mode and deselect all vertices alt+A, and hover on the main structure and press L for linked mesh. Revert your selected by Ctrl+I and delete those vertices.

Thanks! Both of these suggestions worked! I belive i have to stick with importing the parts seperatly to Blender to be able to keep the textures created in Magicavoxel. What do you think? Is there any way i can keep the textures of the part i am exporting from blender?


text:
Blank Eevee render on all files
I'm trying to render something with the Eevee render engine in the new Blender 2.8 beta version, but the render shows up only blank. This occurs on all blender files, and these files render fine on other computers.
Perhaps the Microsoft Surface Pro I am using just isn't up to the task?
Cycles render works fine.
Here's a screenshot:

It'd be great if I could get some help!
Thanks

@cegaton No, the device I am using does not have a dedicated GPU, so I'm guessing that since EEVEE doesn't use the CPU when rendering, the GPU on the device just isn't capable. If you know a way around this it'd be great, otherwise there's probably no fix.

I read the second one, first didn't load for me. So, no cpu rendering. Got it.
Looks like I'm sticking with Cycles


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Blender 2.8 crashing on startup despite working mere minutes ago
I was using Blender 2.8 Beta fine, and then when I went to Edit > Preferences, is crashed. Now on startup, it spits this error and then immediately closes.
"al lib (EE) getchannelmap failed to match front-center channel (2) in channel map"
Getting this written down was a pain because of that. I tried deleting the preferences folder... and installing a different build of Blender 2.8, but it still won't start.

Did you use a surrounding sound configured in your computer? It seems like the sound library failed to configured your devices. Swap the sound output device to something else and try again might work, I guess

have you rebooted?

This happens to me when EeVee is Switched to Cycles etc. on Blender 2.80, which get's weirded-out with material normal map texture displacement on a sculpt and I see green speckles in the viewport with freezing and often a blue screen of death is also known to appear on high -end system with 20 cores and RTX 2080 Ti. Yes, Rebooting helps but is not the best solution to Blender 2.80 crashing initially.


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How do I Select Vertices in 2.8 Beta?
I was using Blender 2.79 for a little bit before I downloaded the 2.8 beta. So I'm still a beginner. But I'm a little confused. For some reason, when I'm in edit mode, and in vertex mode, when I try and select a vertex or multiple vertices, it won't select. I don't have this problem with Edge or Face mode either.

By default selection from 2.8 on is set to left click. Note also that if your graphic card isn't supported (it has to be OpenGL 3.3. compatible) selection in Solid shading mode might not work at all.

It should be left click. But, on the splash screen (screen when you open 2.8 with the galaxy picture at the top) you can change it. Mine was in right click for some reason, but I switched it. Or, you could go to user preferences (hotkey: “ctrl + ,”).
Another solution is switching the tool. In the viewport, check if your tool is the ‘select’ tool. Then you can select.
Hope it helps.


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Switching a bone's head and tail
I was trying to set up IK on a model I'm using for animation, when I noticed the foot was trying to bend the hip rather than the knee:

I think this is because the thigh bone is facing the wrong way (the head should be at the hip, and the tail should be at the knee).  If that is what is causing this problem, is there a way I can switch the head and the tail without deleting the bone?  If that isn't the problem, what is the problem I am having and how do I solve it?  Thank you.

I figured it out.  For anyone trying to figure this out in the future, select the bone in edit mode, press w, and click switch directions.

for me the shortcut is Alt+F in object mode for switching direction, armature > switch direction


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Why are straight lines sloping in render?
Why are the walls in my architectural renders sloping and how do I fix this?

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/5183/599

The lens shift controls on the camera exist in Blender precisely to solve this problem. Photographers use tilt-shift lenses to do the same thing.
Rather than rotating the camera upwards to the building, you can keep it pointing straight ahead, and increase the camera Y shift. This will preserve straight vertical lines.
A good visualization of that is here:
http://digitized-life.blogspot.com.es/2013/02/blender-26.html

All of the vertical lines are sloping towards a vanishing point because you are looking up at the building. It's called 3-point perspective. It's natural, so it's not out of place or wrong. But since you have everything above the horizon line, 3-point perspective will be pretty obvious. If you don't like it, try making the camera face the building dead on without any up or down tilt; that would make it more 2-point perspective.


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Walk Mode in 2.69?
I'm using Blender 2.69, and having tried the Fly Mode and finding it wasn't to my liking, I started looking to see if there was a preferable alternative.
I found this:
https://developer.blender.org/D30
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/3D_interaction/Navigating/3D_View/Navigation_Modes
However, in my UI in blender, I don't see a "view" option at the top of the screen, nor under File > User Preferences > Input do I see anything allowing me to change the view navigation mode. In fact, searching in Input for "view", "navigation", "fly", "walk", and other searches only gave me hotkey bindings to enable/disable Fly Mode, and to change the key bindings for it, neither of which are what I want.
It's clear that the Walk Mode does exist, the question is: is this some kind of experimental new version of Blender I need to download/build manually? Is this an older feature that's long since been removed? or is my UI mis-configured, or is this a plugin?
I've seen other people asking for a feature like this, and the answer they were always given is "doesn't exist". If you can help me, I'd greatly appreciate it.

You need a version newer than 2.69, try installing/building a development version. (see this post)
Once you have a version of blender from after the commit you linked to (Dec 2 2013), Walk mode should be the default. Press ShiftF in the 3D view to activate it.
You can change the navigation mode settings in CtrlAltU> User preferences > Input > View Navigation:

Exactly what I needed. In case anyone wonders, this is the version I used. Installation consisted of unzipping a folder, and nothing more.
http://graphicall.org/110


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Sound Block Buttons
Not 100% sure this is what im looking for, but does anyone know where to find the sound block buttons? (for the most recent version of blender?)
I do some animating and I want to sync mouth movements to an audio. I check audio scrubbing, so I can match a single frame to a single frame sound. But when I click on the timeline, the audio plays from that point. The animation is paused too so I can't properly animate.
I'm not sure if Sound Block Buttons is going help me, but I've been trying everything. I've googled all I can. If anyone can help me, or find another way to animate to vocals, please let me know.

I think the option you are looking for is called Draw Waveform.
In the Video Sequence Editor, press N to display the Properties Toolbar. Find the Sound panel (while the audio track is selected) and enable the Draw Waveform option.


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Rendering an Image with a Specific Size
I want to render an image that is, for example, 170 px by 180 px. How can this be done in blender? I'm using the cycles render. Is the process any different for an animation?

Yeah, it's probably a duplicate, but I like this question and answer better. It's actually more useful, I think.

I was asking a slightly different question. That is how to increase the resolution. Of course, because I'm a noob, they have the same answer.

You can specify the render size in the dimensions section on the render panel just as you do for any other image rendering. To get the full resolution of the final image, also make sure that the Percentage scale for render resolution slider is set to 100%.
This setting is also for animations, and behaves exactly the same way.

In Blender 2.8 and above the setting is in the Properties Panel under Output Properties > Dimensions > Resolution X,Y


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Bone heat weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones
I am creating men/woman character using MakeHuman tool and import into the blender tool. I followed the steps given in the below youtube video tutorial to work with blender.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYiAd_08-0k
I can generate the armature. But When I skin the armature into the character I got the following error
"bone heat weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones".

What may be the problem and how can I fix this?

I also faced this message, the reason was that the model wasn't symmetric (after twiddling with an already applied mirror modifier). In this case you could try to cut off one half and mirror it again. After that the parenting with automatic weights should work.
See also this thread on BA Bone-heat-weighting-failed-to-find-solution-for-one-or-more-bones

What ended up working for me was selecting the object and centering it and the root bone to the origin, and rigging the rest of the object.
What is important is that the very first bone that you place is centered at the object.

I have run into this as well;
In my case it turned out to be some rather complicated and overlapping geometry near the center of the model (mandibles and a toothy mouth) that I had to weight paint manually  You can mask which vertices get auto painted if you use the Weights -> Assign Automatic From Bones with face or vertex selection masking, or you can separate the complicated bits from the main mesh and then auto weight paint the main mesh.
I've also had this happen around the toes on barefoot human models, but haven't gone to the trouble of figuring out what specifically was the problem.


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Open or extract parts of a very large .blend file
I accidentally saved a large research project in a single .blend file and closed it. It is 304.4MB and it crashes blender every time I try to open it on several different windows 64-bit and 32-bit machines with relatively powerful GPUs (Quadro 4000, GTX 670, GTX 690).
Is there a way to extract anything out of this file and/or break-up the file perhaps as a way to work around this?

See How can I reuse existing materials, objects, etc from an existing .blend?. TL;DR Just append stuff out bit by bit.

Do you have VBO enabled? 300 MB is not thaaat large, I wonder why it crashes...

Don't know what VBO is.  I have been vexed by this for a couple weeks.  Still don't know why it is crashing. Last changed the file in 2.4 when I added rigging to a vertebrate skeleton

Borrowing an extract from RolandiXor's answer, you can create several new files and append pieces out of the large.blend file.

Appending
This creates a full copy of the existing data, which you can modify without issue and include in the file you are editing. You do not need to keep both files together. You are also fully able to edit the appended data (such as an object, material, or scene) without affecting the original file from which you appended.
Appended objects have an orange outline when first appended (with the default theme), but once you deselect them, then select them again, they show as normal objects do.

When you enter the blend file, you will be shown several directories, these are the categories in which a general scene is grouped. I would suggest moving large models (located in Objects) into their own files (and adjusting any modifiers that might be on them such as subsurf) and if you need to recreate the scene again, use the other technique which is Linking which will allow you can attend to specific models without all the overhead of a cluttered scene.
It is a very good idea not to keep large scenes that consist of several models, multiple textures and effect systems in one file but to rather distribute these over several files and then link these into one file. The advantages of doing this are numerous.
To efficiently work with a heavy scene or dense meshes, you can find several tips here.

Can this (appending) be done without opening the monsterous file I accidentally created? Or am I SOL with the existing file and just learn better workflow in the future?

@DistractedProf You don't really 'open' the file, you browse through it as you would a filesystem. Press Shift + F1, find the file and select it. See the answer for more details.

Thank you for teaching me something new. I will try this out.


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How can I change Blender's theme?
I just downloaded blender and its very bright. I want it darker. How can I change the color of it?

If you run into any trouble, see - How can I get back to Blender's default theme?

Blender? Bright? What do you think of Microsoft Word?

The energy theme might be interesting for you: http://studiollb.wordpress.com/download/

@WChargin blinding

You can customize the color of pretty much everything in File > User preferences > Themes (you can also open the User preferences by pressing CtrlAltU)
From the wiki:

The colors for each editor can be set separately—simply select the editor you wish to change in the multi-choice list at the left, and
  adjust colors as required. Notice that changes appear in real-time on
  your screen. In addition, details such as the dot size in the 3D View
  or the Graph Editor can also be changed.
Themes use blenders preset system, you can save a theme to an XML and install it on another system.

You may want to try using some of the presets that come with blender, or some user made ones.
Using presets
You can select a preset in User preferences > Themes > Presets:

You can install new theme presets stored in the XML format by pressing Install theme on the header and navigating to the XML preset file:

Some themes not included in blender yet are here.
You can also create and delete your own presets by pressing the + and -
buttons next to the Presets menu.
XML Preset files are stored in /$blender_directory/$blender_version/scripts/presets/interface_theme/
For more information on where $blender_directory might be see the wiki:

Blender can be installed system wide or run from an extracted bundled
  with all necessary files contained.
There are 3 different directories blender may use, their exact
  locations are operating system dependent.

Note that there are some Contrib theme presets (see this thread for a list) that only come with SVN builds and are not included in the releases. You can get them from the interface_theme directory of a development build, or directly from the SVN repo. With the latter method you might get a security warning, see the wiki:

You will probably see an error message about the certificate that is
  not issued by a trusted authority. However the certificate is fully
  functional and will ensure secure transit of the data. You can
  permanently accept this certificate.


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Find the name of textures linked to an object in python?
How can I find out the name of a texture linked to an object?
Is there an image operator to find this out?
I searched in forums but wasn't able to find a working script, I tried this script:
import Blender
from Blender import*
img = ''
sel = bpy.context.object.name
if sel:
me = sel[0].getData(mesh=True)
for f in me.faces:
    if f.image:
        img = f.image.name
        print (img)

But the code doesn't work in my python console with Blender 2.68.
How could we find what are all the images in an object and its name and path?

This code is quite ancient (pre - blender 2.5). The Blender module does not exist anymore and we use the bpy module now for data access.

From the above two answer I got and This is code I desired to bring out. . . Thanks...This tells the Image name and its path.
ob = bpy.context.object
if ob:
 for mat_slot in ob.material_slots:
     for mtex_slot in mat_slot.material.texture_slots:
         if mtex_slot:
                 if hasattr(mtex_slot.texture , 'image'):
                 print("\t\t%s" % mtex_slot.texture.image.filepath)

o/p
    /home/vrmgm102/Desktop/splash.png
    /home/vrmgm102/Desktop/tree_5/tree_5.png

mtex_slot.texture --> to get Texture name
mtex_slot.texture.image --> to get Image name
mtex_slot.texture.image.filepath --> to get path and Image name

This is a more direct version of the original script.
import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object
if obj:
    me = obj.data
    if me.uv_textures.active is not None:
        for tf in me.uv_textures.active.data:
            if tf.image:
                img = tf.image.name
                print(img)

Note that you now need to access the face's image though the uv_textures data-layer, in this case we assume one exists and choose the active one. me.uv_textures["UVTex.001"].data would work too if its present.

What is the up to date equivalent of that functionality?

This script will iterate over all objects and print texture names and image name when available, try the dump() method to find out more on attributes you are interested in.
e.g. dump(mtex_slot)
import bpy

def dump(obj):
   for attr in dir(obj):
       if hasattr(obj, attr):
           print("obj.%s = %r" % (attr, getattr(obj, attr)))

print("\n\nObjects")

for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    print(ob.name)
    for mat_slot in ob.material_slots:
        for mtex_slot in mat_slot.material.texture_slots:
            if mtex_slot:
                # dump(mtex_slot)
                print("\t%s" % mtex_slot)
                if hasattr(mtex_slot.texture , 'image'):
                    print("\t\t%s" % mtex_slot.texture.image.filepath)

This script access material images, the script in the question is asking about uv-texture images (still useful, but added own answer).


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How can a custom icon be loaded in an add-on?
I have created an add-on but I can't apply my own icon to the operators in this add-on.
Is there any easy way to implement this?
Or do I need to add the icon to an SVG file?

Does this answer your question? script custom previews in a menu

You can only use already available icons, too see which are available enable the Icons add-on. A panel with all icons will be displayed in the text editor properties (or python console). The name of the icons is shown in a tooltip.
You can use the icon attribute like:
row = layout.column(align=True)
row.operator('id_name', icon='QUESTION')

Custom icons require compilation which is off-topic here but you could find a discussion on custom icons at this BA thread.
Possibly outdated information on how to integrate custom icons you find in the Wiki. There is descibed that all icons are stored in a single .png file which explains that you can't use SVG or any other format.

If your addon draws using opengl (via the bgl module) you can draw your own images directly, however this is not accessible while drawing typical buttons & layouts.
You can however do this from: (http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_69_release/bpy.types.Space.html?highlight=draw_handler_add#bpy.types.Space.draw_handler_add) unfortunatly using these callbacks is currently undocumented but you can see examples in scripts distributed with blender.

Very useful link but I'm still searching the Examples for That 'Space type' script

Math Vis addon is one, though it draws mostly in 3d space (except for text).


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How would I twist a torus or circle into an infinity symbol?
I can't seem to figure out how to create an animation of a zero twisting into an infinity symbol. I'm brand new to blender, and not really sure how to manipulate a torus to achieve this. Any help would be appreciated!

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/16467/599

thanks! this got me on the right track, but I'm still pretty lost (I downloaded blender 2 days ago). I downloaded your "spinning_ball2" file, but am unsure on how to change the animation from a ball to just an infinity symbol. Sorry if I sound dumb!

Changing the maximum amount of twisting should work. I don't have time to write a complete answer atm, but here's a .blend with an example: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/32315

wow, thank you very much! the blend example allowed me to see what different settings do. I appreciate the help!

If no longer a torus, what would this shape be called?

One way would be to do something similar to this, but with fewer twists.
I found that  100° twist with the Simple Deform modifier gives a pretty good infinity symbol when seen from a front view:

By animating the amount of twisting (you can hover over almost any UI element and press I to insert a keyframe), you can get a result like this:

if no longer a torus, what would this shape be called?

Quick solution I discovered as a new user:

Object Mode: Add->Curve->Circle
Tab (edit mode) & A until everything is unselected
Select handles on opposite sides (say on the Y/green axis) and X to delete them
(must be deleted as a pair to keep symmetry)
Select the END of one of the 2 remaining handles (on the X/red axis) and rotate 180°  R X 180 Enter
Optional: Select both handles with A, scale with: S Y 0.5 Enter

Turn it into a tube:

Shape: Resolution: Preview U: increase to smooth curvature
Shape: 3D
Fill: Full
Geometry: Bevel: Depth: increase as desired
Geometry: Bevel: Resolution: increase to desired smoothness of tube
Active Spline: Smooth should be checked

You could use Shape Keys in Object Mode add to shape keys in the mesh/Properties.

Switch to Edit Mode TAB
Select the vertices at the top and bottom (yellow) switch on proportional editing O, scale S,(adjust the influence as indicated by the white circle with your mouse wheel) constrain to y-axis Y.

You could make a bone twist one half of the torus. Sadly, the mesh near the middle gets really thin.

I think one of the laplacian modifiers is meant to help with that kind of thinning; don't have time to look farther right now.

Geometry Nodes
just join the party here :) The gandalf3's way if I can say that ... two points moved upward ... so just an optical illusion based on point of view :)

Another way to move control points up and down from object centre to easier change a shape and animate ...

do you think possible to make the animation symmetrical in this case?

Sorry ... Do you see it asymmetrical now in this setup? Or I didn't get the point :)

I meant it looks like the left part flatten first or as if the left part is initiating the transition (not only your solution but 'all'). I was wondering if it is possible to do it so that both sides (left/right) are symmetrical?

Hm ... I have a problem to imagine how such thing moves (other than the stacker's answer.

Torus as an infinity symbol:

Object Mode: Add->Curve->Circle
Object Mode: Add->Mesh->Torus (the circle will be hidden inside the torus -- Torus should be selected)
Add Modifier->Deform->Curve
Object: BezierCurve
Apply (leave Deformation Axis as X -- the result won't look right; but...)
G Y -1Enter
Voila!

I actually really like this method. It was the easiest. Though the normals got messed up afterwards. I decided to use a full line in the finished torus and turned it into a curve and played with that. Thanks!

Curve of two points
Curve Circle simplified into a two control points only ...

Each control point Hooked by Empty ... animate Empty rotation (and scale to fix curvature) ...

Note:

I set under Curve Properties > Smooth 0.5 (if zero there was a geometry twist)
with just two control points there is probably not possible to set more roundy shape of infinity


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How to render the movie texture in the Open GL viewport rendering?
I try to render animation using Open GL render animation option. I added a movie clip as a texture to a plane.

When I change the keyframes manually (in Material viewport shading ) the following animation frames are visible (they're refreshing right).

Interesting fact is, it only works this way if the Preview panel is expanded.

The problem appears when I try to render it using Open GL render. Despite the fact that I enabled the 'auto refresh' option in Image Texture node the animation on the plane is not visible (it display only the current frame image). Is there a way to make it work?

check to see if its working with the normal render , if it is then something with GL is wrong / different.

I had problems with this before, preview from movie image nodes glitched in viewport and only worked well in render. For me the texture updated when the cursor was in the correct window when playing animation with alt-a, sometimes I had to select the object itself or it was just random..

Thanks to Jerryno's tips, I've found an answer how to do this finally in Cycles. I've discovered, that to make it work, Blender has to have the preview of the texture visible. So I've set up windows as below. In one window you have the viewport shading set to Material and in other one it is set to Rendered.

When you press play button all images refresh fine. After pressing the Open GL render active viewport button (or clicking Render--> Open GL Render Animation) you get the movie with an animated texture. Don't know why, but sometimes you'll have to press/click it few times until it works though.
...............................................................................................................................................
I tried to make it work in Blender Internal also. When you press play button images don't refresh, unless you do one tricky thing. You have to keep the Preview and Image panels of the Texture header expanded. Then you hover the cursor over Preview panel and press Alt+A. Now the images in the Texture viewport shading are refreshing well. Sadly they don't behave the same after pressing the Open GL render active viewport button. I guess making the Open GL animation render with a working video texture is impossible in BI.


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Colour shift when viewing render outside of blender
So this is what occurs the left is original right is when its saved
knowing tiff saves it raw, I did it and was able to open it in Photoshop the same way(correct) it was in blender but just like blender when I tried to save it in Photoshop the colour keeps changing

If the file is reopened in blender or photoshop the rendered jpeg or png it comes back with the correct colour, tried 16,8 colour depth as well with different compression's

Did you check the color management settings in the scene tab to check if you are using the same color space in photoshop and blender?

Just curious, could this be an illusion? The one in Blender always has dark grey around it, while many other applications have lighter menus. Your brain might trick you into thinking there was a difference. Click and hold on a specific place on the image in Blender and see the exact color values on the bottom of the screen, and compare with when it is exported.

check your screen's display profile (in control panel, diplay, resolution -> advanced parameters - color management tab). using specific profile can lead to differences between windows/blender/photoshop colors.

Blender saves to different formats using different techniques and curving according to some file based assumptions. TIFFs do not save "raw" by default, nor does the term "raw" have any real meaning here. Some examples file formats may have on output include:

Saving to a JPEG or TIFF at 8 bits per channel will apply a nonlinear sRGB curve to the data, and may change the internal float format to the respective format's storage type.
Saving to an EXR will transfer the internal reference space buffers unchanged which, by nature of EXR, is a linearized float scene referred format.

From what I can deduce from your screenshot(?) it appears that a subtle shifting is happening in the intensity along the trunk. This suggests that the right image is being color managed for your display from within Photoshop.
Blender does not use ICCs for color management, nor is the display corrected by default[1]. Further, it will not tag images with ICC profile information when saving. This means that the software will make a guess as to what reference space the image is in when it is loaded.
If I had to speculate, I would guess that the image viewer on the right is color correcting the assumed sRGB image format you have loaded. This effectively takes the theoretical sRGB values output from Blender and attempts to emulate the correct sRGB values based on a profile of your display. It may also have to do with an incorrect reference space being set from within your image viewer.
So without further information, it would be impossible to diagnose what is happening with absolute certainty. That said, if you open the color management settings in Photoshop, you will likely find a display correction profile in place there, or an incorrect working reference space ICC profile. In the case of the former, you can disable the display profile and see the raw dump to the screen as Blender rendered it. In the case of the latter, there are sadly many sRGB ICC profiles out there that are not identical to each other, and some are even outright incorrect[2].
Hope this helps you make a little progress into figuring out the issue.

Blender can be augmented to display color critical and accurate results, hardware depending. This involves profiling one's display, converting the resulting profile into a 3D LUT, and inserting it into the OpenColorIO configuration set.
The sRGB.icm ICC file included with the Argyll color management system is accurate and should deliver proper output.

Great answer Troy, I'd love to read more about point 1 regarding the setup of Blender to display colour accurate output. Maybe a blog post somewhere? Cheers.

@ToddMcIntosh Perhaps if someone asks the question at some point I'll do my best to provide an answer.

Okay, have at it! http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/31068/how-can-blender-be-augmented-to-display-color-critical-and-accurate-results


text:
Does the Blender Game Engine Support Texture Nodes?
I have a nice procedural dirt texture made up for a sphere, but when I play the game with an object that utilizes the texture, it will only show the color of the defuse and completely ignore any textures.
Even when I switch back to the Blender Render mode, the renders will not display the texture.
Hopefully this image will give you some context.

Not 100% sure but it may be that nodes aren't supported in the BGE (could be a performance choice). You can use the nodes material you have to bake to an image texture that can be used within the BGE

BGE doesn't support generated textures. Try baking the textures to an image.

If you post that as an answer I could mark it as the answer. That way people who stumble upon this will see it as the answer.

If you are using GLSL shading mode, and the Nodes option is checked in the render tab of the properties window (by default it is); then the BGE supports material nodes. However procedural textures, and generated texture coordinates are not supported.

To be able to use your procedural material, you will have to bake it, then use the resulting image in a new material in the game.


text:
changing filepath and creating directory in python
filepath = bpy.data.filepath
directory = os.path.dirname(filepath)
path = directory + "/" + "BakedTextures_" + obj + "/" + obj + "_" + map + "Tex.png"

Trying to define a path variable while creating a folder inside my blend file directory to later use that variable for saving a baked image texture made in Blender. So far with this code I get this error:
Traceback (most recent call last):   File "D:\GOOGLE_DRIVE\WORK\3D_Work\OldWorld\Ducs_Armor\Ducs_Armor.blend\Text", line 15, in <module> TypeError: can only concatenate str (not "type") to str Error: Python script failed, check the message in the system console

Clearly I'm doing something wrong with my backslashes and probably something else, but I can't figure it out on my own, can you help please?

The string concatenation doesn't work because (at least) one of the variables isn't a string.

Python has useful functions built-in to handle common pathname manipulations.
import os
desired_path = os.path.join(some_existing_path, "some_folder", "some_file_name.ext")

See os.path, and see shutils for high-level file operations.
to test if a directory exists, and make it when not found):
if not os.path.exists(directory_to_test):
    os.makedirs(directory_to_test)


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How to convert a .svg to a 3D Model?
I want to achieve the embossed effect seen in the attached image. I have made an svg file and imported it into Blender. I am not sure how to proceed to get that emboss effect. Do I have to follow some other steps? I don't know I'm going into the right direction
You can get the svg file here

Can you tell me how to achieve that model

@atek unfortunately there's no automated (press of a button) way to give that 2d shape the 3d body seen in this image. (at least not in Blender). http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2016/10/10/microsoft-paint-revamp/ microsoft's new version of Paint will be have such feature soon. until then you will have to do some manual 3d modelling.

since you didn't tell the detail, I will try to answer in the beginning.

first you need to import your svg file
File > Import > Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg)
its look like your svg is too small, goto edit mode and scale it up
press tab, then 's' to scale it up. remember to do it in edit mode.
goto the curve panel then increase the bevel depth value

this method will not get the very similar result to your reference image. if you want to get a great result you need to modelling it manually.

Within Blender, go to File | User Preferences.

Within the User Preferences Tab, click on the Add-Ons Tab.

Within the search box, type "SVG". You should see the Import-Export SVG add-on as an option. Click the small check box at the top left corner of the add on, and then  click "Save User Settings" at the bottom of the add-ons section.
You can then close the User Preferences panel... but remember to save the user settings before doing so.
Now go to File | Import | Scalable Vector Graphics:

Blender will import your svg.... as you can see in my jpg.
Should if I can help.

he already imported the svg..