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Mesh Clipping Into Itself (Toplogy related?)
Newbie to modeling in Blender here. I was modeling an armor piece with a sort of etched panel line on the front, but I ran into an issue where the panel line ends. The left side looks good, but the right side is having some sort of strange issue I can't seem to solve. The normals are facing the correct direction, and adding additional edge loops didn't solve the problem. It is especially problematic after subdividing/soldifying.

Hi. Please use a title that matches the content of the question. It should be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the issue in such way that anyone searching for a similar problem is likely to find it. Use the [edit] link above, remove anything superfluous, avoid words like "this", "help", "issue with" or "question about". Remember, your title is the first thing potential visitors see, answers you get depend heavily on how insightful it is. See What is the problem of asking “How do I do this?"

Can you share your blend file https://blend-exchange.com

@HarryMcKenzie Sure thing! Here's a link:
Thanks for letting me know how to upload it. New to the stack exchange here, as you can tell.

As @Cornvius has said, there isn't enough room for a Solidify Modifier. To demonstrate look what happens as you increase the thickness. Notice that the geometry starts to overlap.

What you could do is dissolve this vertex. Or try to make other topology changes and test the result by gradually increasing the thickness to see the problem. It's easy trial and error.

Thank you so much! Sorry it was such a simple question. I'll try that out.

The red angle is a lot sharper than the green one, there isn't enough room for the solidified faces to not overlap. To fix that you'd have to introduce another edge loop on the blue line and move it forwards a bit so the red angle is not as sharp. The blue line can be a lot closer to the angle, the point is just no not make it as sharp
It could also be that the these vertices are not on the same level and you need to flatten them by scaling them to 0 on the Z axis

Hello! Thanks for the help. I did add an extra edge loop, and the vertices are leveled on the Z axis. However, I'm still getting some strange clipping which is visible from the bottom. I forgot to mention, but this model has no creasing as well. I can upload the file if needed. Thanks again.
Images Here:
https://i.imgur.com/pHJRyHI.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/zJCLWss.jpg

Upload the file if you can. To me it looks like the angle is still too sharp. Maybe try adding another edge able the one you added

Thanks again for your help, apologies for the delay. Was having trouble figuring out how to best upload the file. I've been trying to mess with the order of the modifiers, but still am having some issues.


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Odd shadows are jagged and spikey
Why are the shadows cast from a "point light" on the left hand side so jagged and spikey? The chest's lid demonstrates it best. I would expect a smoother line parallel with the castee.
I can't understand how the fairly straight & smooth lines of the object are causing this?
The light is a spot light, 3000w, diffuse/specular/volume are set to 1:00 (max).
I hope someone can suggest why this might be happening, and would appreciate any guidance in any areas of improvement or amelioration.

Hello are you using Eevee? Maybe share your file? https://blend-exchange.com/

Hello, Moonboots. Cool name. Switching it to Cycles has done a great job of removing those parts, so thank you. You wouldn't use cycles while editing etc? and if this was an animated treasure chest, rendering it in cycles, is there anything i should know to keep the render time manageable?

Eevee is not as good as Cycles for lights and shadows but maybe try to tweak the shadow parameters of the light and also the shadow parameters in the Render panel

Thanks, MB. If i did share my file alright, do you think you could do a quick favour and hop in there to check out why when i zoom out things dissapear? This is something i keep getting on my projects. I would prefer to zoom out infinitely without things suddenly dissapearing.

Maybe you're talking about the Clip? In the N panel > View > View > Increase the Clip End? If you're talking about your camera view, select the camera and go into the Camera panel > Lens > Clip End...

thanks, great video on boolean. Subbed from me. Merci mille, c'est chouette

Thanks, not enough content in english unfortunately  ;)

In the Render panel > Shadows > increase the Cube Size value, it will improve the shadows

Thanks a lot, you're a star

Eevee is not as good as Cycles for lighting and shadows, that said you can tweak the light shadows parameters and also in the Render panel >Shadows, increase the values (particularly Cube Size I guess):

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How to Print to Console When Hidden?
I'm trying to print to the console in Blender using the following function. However, it does not work if the console is not in view (i.e. it's not part of area in screen.areas). How can the console be targeted if it's out of view?
def bprint(*objects, sep=" ", end="\n"):
    """
    Print to Blender's console
    """
    output = ""
    for obj in objects:
        output += str(obj) + sep
    output += end

    for window in bpy.context.window_manager.windows:
        screen = window.screen
        for area in screen.areas:
            if area.type == "CONSOLE":
                override = {"window": window, "screen": screen, "area": area}
                bpy.ops.console.scrollback_append(
                    override, text=str(output), type="OUTPUT"
                )

Instead of iterating over areas of current screen, you need to iterate over areas of all workspaces. However, one workspace can be instanced multiple times (screens), but it conveniently lists them for you to iterate over. However, you also need to know which window the screen belongs to, and I think, as long as you don't use a very buggy feature Window -> New Main Window (for me, when I have two such windows and switch workspaces, they duplicate in place, and soon just crash Blender), all windows but the main one will have just one screen. Though you could run the script from non-main window, so maybe you should also set the "window": bpy.context.window_manager.windows[0] override when you don't find a window's active screen to be one of the console screens. Either way I expect this script to be outdated as soon as the mentioned bug(s) with "New Main Window" are fixed, but maybe not, maybe only active tab makes the screen used by the window? I could test it, maybe later...
import bpy

def bprint(*args, sep=" ", end="\n"):
    """
    Print to Blender's consoles in all workspaces
    """
    from io import StringIO
    buffer = StringIO()
    print(*args, sep=sep, end=end, file=buffer)
    output = buffer.getvalue()

    overrides = [
        {'screen': screen, 'area': area}
        for workspace in bpy.data.workspaces
        for screen in workspace.screens
        for area in screen.areas
        if area.type == 'CONSOLE'
    ]
    for override in overrides:
        for window in bpy.context.window_manager.windows:
            if window.screen == override['screen']:
                override['window'] = window
        with bpy.context.temp_override(**override):
            bpy.ops.console.scrollback_append(text=output, type="OUTPUT")

bprint("Testing", 2, object())

Oh I changed the context override to the new method, but you surely know how to convert it back to the old one if needed.

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


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Missing "Rendered" Viewport Shading option?
The Rendered Viewport Shading options is missing. There are only three options to choose from. I am doing a Blender tutorial and want to see the render, but the icon to do that is not there. Can anyone help? I have tried pressing Z, but it still didn't show.

Hello and welcome. Can you provide a screenshot of Edit > Preferences > System and also the Render Properties. Is it set to Eevee or Cycles?

Under Preferences > Add-ons, search for 'cycles' and make sure that the 'Cycles Render Engine' entry is checked.

Thankes John that fixed it.


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Albedo Map Texture Baking Issues: Color Inconsistencies and Missing Details from Procedural Textures
I am trying to bake an albedo map from the procedural texture applied on the model but facing problems. The problem is that the texture is not looking same as procedural texture colour is a bit off and it is missing details in some parts where it was visible in procedural one. I have tried making texture higher resolution, and check for uv stretching but both don't appear to be the reason for the difference in textures.
I should also mention that there are two materials applied on the object so I am not talking about those sudden regular transitions.

Download Google Drive Blend

I'm not absolutely sure I'm even seeing the differences between the two that you're talking about, but what minor differences I do see looks like a metallic map issue. If you transfer the albedo from one and apply only that one to the new model without also transferring the roughness and metallic values then you're gonna see some differences for sure.

If this doesn't fix your problem then I would ask that you share your Blender project file. Instructions for sharing.

@Jakemoyo the thing is that I am not transferring any texture maps between two different objects I am trying to bake out procedural texture map onto an image texture, now specifically albedo map and that is giving me problems it is missing out on details that are visible in procedural texture and it is missing out on details on some parts of the mesh not all of on which the material is applied . I will be sharing you the file thanks for help in advance

Here's the updated file sharing guide.

I would have used blend exchange but the file is heavy and I could not compress it further I have set access to anyone with link this time also the file I shared before was problematic for some reason. Here is the link. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WNt4l7QAME6Ip02EYW19J-UCxRHDZE4d/view?usp=sharing

1.6GB filesize.... I doubt you really needed all that data to provide a sample file to show the issue. It's going to take a while just to download that, and some people simply won't even try to. It's explained in the guide.

Yes I get it you are making a valid point but I removed a thing or two to make file size even smaller, but it stared to show some weird purple colouring in the rendered view but not in the material preview I guess it was from deleting the hdri image as environment that I didn't understand at the time of uploading the full file so I will upload that smaller version again, yes you are right that I may not have needed that big of a file to illustrate the issue. I will see to it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FJCXNBHVmY_OLDg01RfynTdwgBzzt7H9/view?usp=sharing Here is the new link to smaller file

The really confusing thing is that the file you provide seen to not be set up to provide the exact same result you have in your question, at least not without changing things on our side. Render engine is set to Eevee which doesn't bake, other materials are baking different textures you didn't mention, and the result baking is nowhere near the same result as yours:

So we run the risk of not encountering the same troubles as you do just because we don't start precisely from your scenario.
Inspection
You have six different materials and six different UV maps, most without self-explanatory names, and inside your materials you have lots of image textures mixed together... That makes it quite hard to troubleshoot for you, and even more so for someone who doesn't know your file.
There is also one of your materials that seem to not be bakable. pbm2 gives out a lot of black spots, I suspect that it is because of how you mixed multiple Principled BSDF, it might not know what to do with it for some reason.
I'd advise making things as simple as you can, it will save you time and headaches. And that would be to have one final UV map with one material, one Principled BSDF and its image textures.
For the rest of the answer I will be using Blender 4.1 and the Textools addon:
Release TexTools 1.6.1 · franMarz/TexTools-Blender
It doesn't seem to have been updated for Blender 4.3 yet but it has some quite useful tools to manage UVs and baking.
I also recommend reading the whole answer before acting, since some decision-making at each step is needed depending on the end result you want and how you want it.
Fixing pbm 2
This material can be summarized by being multiple procedural and image textures combined at different places using masks. Instead of mixing shaders, let's mix the texture data instead, and feed that into one final Principled BSDF.
To help doing that, You can add reroute nodes to the noodles that feed each Principled BSDF and use its label to tell what is what. For properties that are different across all three Principled BSDF but not plugged to any input data, you can add value nodes to help too.

Then you can proceed to add one Principled BSDF, mix all the signals using Convert > Mix nodes from A to B and from AB to C:

With a bit of cleaning up, it looks like this:

And the baking works again.
UV map
You have six UV maps, with seemingly none of them exempt of UV overlap, so we can't use any of them as final.

Let's make a new UV map with a nice name: UVMap Final.
You could make your new UVs using the Smart UV Project, it's the fastest but it might not give the best result.
If you select all your mesh and unwrap as is, you will get this:

Most of it is fine, we can refine it a bit, I.E. that big T-shaped island could be cut with a seam at its junction. Select the edges, hit ⎈ CtrlE to open the Edge Specials menu and hit Mark Seams.
Another thing you have to pay attention is UVs overlaping each other. They are hard to spot, but Textools have a button to select the islands that have overlapping parts:

And then it takes a bit of close visual inspecting to see where it overlaps and how to fix it:

Notice the checker map, that is also a tool from Textools that is toggle-able and doesn't destroy your materials.
Setting up the baking
In each of your materials, add an image texture node, with an image named "bake", with 32 bits float and a big resolution. plug its vector input to a UV Map node with UVMap Final.
Keep only that bake image texture selected so that the baking happens only there.

Then you can bake. Using Textools there really speeds things up because you just have to pick the texture size, bake type and hit the bake button. It will automatically use the right bake type influences and even the right color management and depths of your texture depending on what you bake. It also have a basic super sampling Anti Aliasing (bakes at x times your desired resolution and scales it down to desired resolution).
The tricky part with your materials is that they have very fine details. The finely brushed metal aspect is hard to get in an image texture, here's what I get with a 8192 px² texture:

There are multiple ways to go about it. First one being to just go even higher in texture resolution. Or reading your UVs to make use of UDIM tiles, effectively giving yourself multiple set of textures of more or less high resolution instead of one ridiculously high resolution set of texture.
It would probably help to also modify UVs to try and align UVs as much as possible to the XY axes. Since your brushed metal is straight, it will require fewer pixels to represent if your UVs don't make them diagonal to the pixels.
If your model is meant to be viewed mostly from specific angles, it can also be interesting to scale up or down specific UV islands, to give more pixels to the most important parts. For example, if you know it won't be often seen from below, scale down the islands from the below parts of the mesh. Small bits that aren't clearly visible like junction parts or inside things can be scaled down too.
Another possible thing is also to consider scaling up the procedural textures to make them more accessible to your image textures. It can be done using Vector Math nodes set to Multiply and using a Value node shared across all Vector math nodes you add to uniformly scales all textures up in one material:

Here's what I get with scaling up your procedural textures and baking at 4096 px² with 2x AA:

It's not perfect, but already it makes the whole thing look decent at a human distance.
You can also do a little bit of all of that.


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How to solidify a mesh object only connected with vertices with multiple curvatures?
How can I make a single object for 3d printing while making sure the vertices on the mesh are connected accordingly? The picture gives the object from 3 different views highlighting the different angles.

Addendum: I can't delete the previous question which is reduced to this single problem because "You cannot delete this question as others have invested time and effort into answering it. For more information, visit the help center."

You don't have to delete the other question. Instead it would have been better to just update and revise your previous post, instead of posting another question. Also as already mentioned in the other question, this is not really usable model, you have to model it properly. I suggest you go through a few tutorials first on how to model stuff in Blender like this tutorial for beginners or this one

hello it's not clear what you mean by "making sure the vertices on the mesh are connected accordingly", could you please elaborate?

@moonboots I think the OP means those jagged edges; he wants them to be smoothly connected. However, that is just addressing the consequence of incorrect modeling techniques.

@moonboots yes Harry is indeed right, modelling technique is indeed off but this is a one time project for me anyway.

So basically just smoothing the surface.

This feels like arguing with a little kid that lighting a whole role of caps will not produce a gigantic explosion, but they want to try it anyway. Alright, since you insist on wasting your time and 3-D printing materials on a part that is not the same shape as the part in the photo, I will help you make it the way you think you want.

Select All [a]
Make sure you are in edge select mode.
Select boundary loop.
Smooth Vertices [Ctrl+V, select option from menu]
Go to the operation properties panel in the bottom left of the 3D Viewport editor, and raise the Smoothing to 1 (the default is 0.5).
Add a Solidify modifier to the object.
Adjust the modifier's Solidify width as desired.
Adjust the modifier's Offset value to 1 or -1 as needed to make sure the mesh is being solidified outward, not inward.

You should now be able to export the mesh.


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How can I make a point in the middle of a face?
I'm making a moth creature, and trying to model its fur. I'm trying to make a box with loop cuts and a point in the middle of one of the faces. I watched multiple tutorials on how to make the points, but none of them show how to make one in the middle of a face. It always ends up with the point not being connected to the object, or it's not where it's supposed to be. I'm new to Blender. Does anyone know how to do this?

Select a face a got to Face > Poke Faces

Or you can select the face and press I to inset it, then S to scale and 0 to scale all the inside vertices to the same spot. Then merge them by pressing M > Merge by Distance.
You can also use the Knife tool with K to just cut across a face a couple times to make a vertex in the middle
I don't know what you are trying to do exactly but I can't really think of a way to make fur by starting here. Poking a faces is not a tool that is used that much. You are turning quads into triangles so you better have a good reason for making the geometry more complicated like that.


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How can I add a Keymap and Pie Menu shortcut for Auto Depth toggle?
I was trying to add a shortcut for the Auto Depth toggle because I use it frequently. Sometimes, I feel the need to open or close the Preferences window quickly, but the process is too slow right now.

I found a similar thread on this site, but I believe it's too old for Blender 4.1 or 4.2. Can anybody help me add it to the shading pie menu?

Hello and welcome. Use preferences.inputs.use_mouse_depth_navigate

Similar instructions as Can I assign a toggle shortcut to the Cursor Depth feature in User Preferences? except that in Context Attributes, you you have to use preferences.inputs.use_mouse_depth_navigate

Follow these steps:

Go to Keymap tab in Edit > Preference or press Ctrl+,

Under 3D View > 3D View (Global), scroll down to the end of the list until you find Add New button.

Click the Add New button

Click the arrow to the left of the newly created hotkey entry and replace the text input value none with wm.context_toggle.

A new box appears labeled Context Attributes where you should input the value preferences.inputs.use_mouse_depth_navigate

Give it a hotkey that does not conflict with any existing hotkey in 3D View.

You can easily create a Pie Menu using the templates in the Scripting Tab with menu Templates > Python > UI Pie Menu:

Then replace the green underlined text with this line:
pie.operator("wm.context_toggle", text="Toggle Auto Depth").data_path = "preferences.inputs.use_mouse_depth_navigate"

Run the script and test the Pie Menu.

You can also put this into an Operator that invokes this Pie Menu like in this example where your operator defined as WM_OT_CallPieMenu calls bpy.ops.wm.call_menu_pie. Run the script and press F3 in the 3D Viewport and find the operator name "Call Pie Menu" then press enter.
import bpy

class VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_idname = "VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template"
    bl_label = "Select Mode"

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

        pie = layout.menu_pie()
        pie.operator("wm.context_toggle", text="Toggle Auto Depth").data_path = "preferences.inputs.use_mouse_depth_navigate"

class WM_OT_CallPieMenu(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "wm.call_pie_menu"
    bl_label = "Call Pie Menu"
    bl_description = "Invoke a custom pie menu"

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.wm.call_menu_pie(name=VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template.bl_idname)
        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template)
    bpy.utils.register_class(WM_OT_CallPieMenu)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(WM_OT_CallPieMenu)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Note that wm.call_pie_menu is the bl_idname you define yourself for your custom operator which is different from the built-in operator bpy.ops.wm.call_menu_pie.
Additionally you can define a Keymap for this operator so you can invoke it with a keyboard shortcut. Same as the above steps but instead, replace none with your operator's bl_idname name called wm.call_pie_menu then add the keyboard shortcut.

In this example I can invoke the Pie Menu using Shift+, but you can customize it with any shortcut so as long it does not conflict with existing shortcuts.
But I just figured out that's redundant when you can directly call the Pie Menu without defining any new Operators by replacing none with the built-in operator wm.call_menu_pie and then adding the Pie Menu's name VIEW3D_MT_PIE_template in the input box below:

If you want to add your "Toggle Auto Depth" menu option to the Shading Pie Menu (shortcut Z), you will have to open the file:
C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 4.1\4.1\scripts\startup\bl_ui\space_view3d.py

Find the class VIEW3D_MT_shading_pie and append the following line at the end of the draw function of this class:
pie.operator("wm.context_toggle", text="Toggle Auto Depth").data_path = "preferences.inputs.use_mouse_depth_navigate"

So your class looks something like this:
class VIEW3D_MT_shading_pie(Menu):
    bl_label = "Shading"

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

        view = context.space_data

        pie.prop(view.shading, "type", expand=True)
        pie.operator("wm.context_toggle", text="Toggle Auto Depth").data_path = "preferences.inputs.use_mouse_depth_navigate" # add this line

Then save/overwrite it and restart Blender and press Z to open the Shading Pie Menu. Now you have your custom menu item:

Be careful when making modifications to the default Blender files because you can end up messing up the files and not be able to open Blender again. So make backups if you are unsure of what you are doing.

I appreciate your assistance. Could you recommend any reliable sources where I can learn more about this topic?

About python? Here's a good series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmJqIaSZlRs&list=PLB8-FQgROBmmeCnCfuJEGzP0nH0u3tz7j.


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How to Move Pose and Skeleton to Fix GLTF Model Import Issues
I imported a GLTF model, and the settings in the app I exported it from are causing the bubbles to be added incorrectly due to an issue with Blender and the enabled setting. I need to move the Pose and SK_Demon_Skeleton to SK_Demon so I can delete the erroneous bubbles. I was hoping drag and drop would work, but it didn’t. How can I move these two to delete the bubbles and fix the model?
The name of the model was SK_Demon, so somehow it got confused and thought that SK_Demon was supposed to be the skeleton, not the name.

The bubbles are just visualization of the bones. You can enable/disable them from the viewport overlays dropdown at the upper right of the viewport, or you can change their display to something else in the Armature settings panel.
Note that depending on your import settings, other ways of visualizing the bones may not look like you expect, even though they are 'correct', as described in the "Bone Direction" section in the addon documentation:

Bone direction: Changes the heuristic the importer uses to decide where to place bone tips. Note that the Fortune setting may cause inaccuracies in models that use non-uniform scaling. Otherwise this is purely aesthetic. The default value will not change axis, and is best for re-exporting from Blender. This default option will change display mode (adding shape and changing relationship line) to have a better view, even if original bones axis are not the most accurate.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/addons/import_export/scene_gltf2.html#properties

I was about to comment that the bubbles are still there when I export. But thinking about it I'm not sure if I actually tried exporting. I will try to export to make sure they are not there and I will try this setting to see if it helps.

Although I did figure out that the problem was an export setting Export Vertex Skin Weights: If your mesh has complex skinning, Blender might struggle with it. The problem is I have to combine this model with other animations in separate files to make it all one model so I can use them in an engine that requires all the animations to be in the same file. The problem is the program I'm exporting from wont let me turn this off for the separate animation files. Not sure why. I will play around with this setting when I get a chance.

I unchecked the Bones option in the viewport overlays as you said and they did all go away. I'm pretty new to Blender this isnt going to do anything crazy like make it act like there arent any bones making the animations not work?

The animations only seem to work if this is checked. I have the same problem with FBX. I'll investigate the export options in Unreal to see if I can get this resolved.

I did not get this resolved yet.


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Faces and Vertex not moving in edit mode (despite being selected)
I have been using Blender 4.2. I came across an issue with my model whereby I tried to move the mesh in edit mode. However, when I press (A) and move the mesh, some vertex and face do not then to move along with the mesh and stay invariant. There are no shape keys within the mesh; I have tried merge by distance; and the mesh is not weight painted.
Is there a way of recorrecting this.
Thanks.
Original Mesh

Mesh When selected and moved in edit mode

Thanks for the advice
Harry McKenzie
♦
here is the screenshot of the original mesh

and the screenshot of the mesh when it's moved in edit mode

I have also tried your alt H suggestion, but nothing happens

Hello and welcome. Rather than take photos of your monitor post actual screenshots instead, see How to take a screenshot. Photos are harder to read because we have to look past external interferences (like reflections, smudges or Moiré patterns) and guess if we are looking at hardware issues such as a malfunctioning display or connections, a software level issue like driver malfunction or glitch, or actual artifacts or issues with the model itself.

Have you tried pressing Alt+H in Edit Mode to unhide vertices and then A move mesh.


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How to create connecting faces to make intersections using Geometry nodes in Blender
Here I have created a grid mesh to make a city like street pattern. I used curve line to generate the streets and trim curve to leave space for intersections. However I have no idea how To make the intersection at the moment. My idea was that if I could connect the vertices of the ends, then I could use fill curve to generate the intersections. Can someone pls help me with this?
Initial Grid

If you put a curve perimeter around instanced, filleted curve-quadrilaterals, then the fill algorithm interprets them as holes:

.. maybe that would be a starting point?

very elegant solution. this fill curve is really awesome.

wow thanks. I'll try this out. Sry i forgot to upload my node network in the question, I've updated now. I'm trying to make dynamic road connections which would work with roads in all axes. Hence I started experimenting with this grid and got stuck there


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How do I align extruded faces perpendicular to the global z axis using geometry nodes

I am new to Geo nodes. I have converted the edges of the road to curve and then used curve line to get faces, then used extrude mesh node to extrude individual faces along z axis, but I want the faces to be perpendicular to Global Z so that I can use them either as buildings themselves or as base for buildings as this is mountain terrain and very uneven. Can someone pls help with this?
U can also think of this as connected stairs along a curve but steps have random height.
If u can further develop this to UV unwrap this and apply some building/shop texture or Use them as bases and add buildings as instances on top, it would be super helpful. Thanks in Advance

I was able to think of doing it this way:

Thanks it worked, now i need to figure out the UV mapping to apply the building texture


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Update export plugin from 2.5 to 2.9 - animated mesh's vertex positions
I have an old export script that worked in Blender 2.5. Now I wanted to update it to 2.9. My export uses vertex based animation as the MD2 file format uses it, so I need the vertex per animation frame position.
It works, but the mesh is not animated. I only get the vertex positions from the non-animated mesh, repeated for each frame.
# ##### BEGIN GPL LICENSE BLOCK #####
#
#  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
#  modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
#  as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
#  of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
#  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#  GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
#  Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
#
# ##### END GPL LICENSE BLOCK #####

bl_info = {
    "name": "GLBasic dda",
    "author": "Gernot Frisch",
    "version": (1,2),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "File > Import/Export > GLBasic dda ",
    "description": "Export GLBasic DDA 3D mesh with animation (.dda format)",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/"\
        "Scripts/File_I-O/GLBasic",
    "tracker_url": "https://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?"\
        "func=detail&aid=21733&group_id=153&atid=469",
    "category": "Import/Export"
}

# if "bpy" in locals():
#     import importlib
#     if "export_dda" in locals():
#         importlib.reload(export_dda)

import os
import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator, TOPBAR_MT_file_export
from bpy.props import BoolProperty, EnumProperty, FloatProperty, \
    FloatVectorProperty, StringProperty
from bpy_extras.io_utils import ExportHelper

def export_dda(filename, context):

    try:
        file = open(filename, 'w')
    except:
        # error = "IOError #%s: %s" % (errno, strerror)
        # REPORT_DATA['errors'].append("Saving failed - %s." % error)
        # ERROR_MSG = "Couldn't save file!%%t|%s" % error
        print ("Exception during open out file")
        raise

    print ("--------------------\nEXPORT v1.2\n---------------------------\n")
    scene = context.scene
    scene.frame_set(1)
    mesh_obj = context.object
    mesh = mesh_obj.data

    mesh.calc_loop_triangles()
    file.write("DDDA 1.1\n")

    # (1) UV coordinates for each polygon
    UVCoordinates = None
    for UV in mesh.uv_layers:
        if UV.active_render:
            UVCoordinates = UV.data
            break

    # build uv-dictionary
    tex_list = {}
    tex_count=0
    for uvcoo in UVCoordinates:
        uv_key = (uvcoo.uv[0], uvcoo.uv[1] )
        if not (uv_key in tex_list): # .has_key(tex_key):
            tex_list[ uv_key ]=tex_count
            tex_count=tex_count+1

    file.write("%d # tex count\n" % tex_count)
    file.write("# id u v\n")
    for i in range(0, tex_count):
        for coord in tex_list:
            if tex_list[coord] == i:
                file.write("%.3f %.3f # uv\n" % (coord[0], (1.0-coord[1]) ) )

    # file.write("%d # tex count\n" % len(UVCoordinates))
    # file.write("# id u v\n")
    # for i in range(0, len(UVCoordinates)):
    #     coord = UVCoordinates[i].uv
    #     file.write("%.3f %.3f # uv\n" % (coord[0], (1.0-coord[1]) ) )

    # (2) polygon node indices
    file.write("%d # num_faces\n" % (len(mesh.loop_triangles)) )
    file.write("# r g b / npts / id1 id2 id3 ... iduv1 iduv2 ...\n")
    iface=-1
    for face in mesh.loop_triangles:
        iface=iface+1
        vert_in_face = len(face.loops)

        if face.material_index<len(mesh.materials):
            mat = mesh.materials[face.material_index]
            # print "rgb=" ,mat.R, mat.G, mat.B
            file.write("%d %d %d #col\n" % ( (int)(mat.diffuse_color[0]*255), (int)(mat.diffuse_color[1]*255), (int)(mat.diffuse_color[2]*255) ))
        else:
            print ("no material")
            file.write("255 255 255 # no mat color\n")

        file.write("%d   " % vert_in_face) # == 3

        # print("face:")
        # for each vertex of that face
        for i in range (vert_in_face-1, -1, -1): # reverse faces
            # find the x,y,z node index
            vert_index=face.vertices[i]
            # print("node " + str(vert_index))
            file.write("%d " % (vert_index))

            # find the uv coord index for that vertex
            if (len(UVCoordinates) > iface):
                u = UVCoordinates[i].uv[0]
                v = UVCoordinates[i].uv[1]
                uvkey = (u, v)
                if not (uvkey in tex_list):
                    file.write("0 ")
                else:
                    file.write("%d " % tex_list[uv_key]);
            else:
                file.write("0 ")

        file.write("\n")

    # (3) per frame vertex coordinates

    """
    #We only have to do this once:
    ob = bpy.context.active_object #getting the object we want.
    dg = bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get() #getting the dependency graph

    #This has to be done every time the object updates:
    ob = ob.evaluated_get(dg) #this gives us the evaluated version of the object. Aka with all modifiers and deformations applied.
    me = ob.to_mesh() #turn it into the mesh data block we want.
    """
    graph = bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get() #getting the dependency graph

    startFrame = scene.frame_start
    endFrame   = scene.frame_end
    file.write("%d #n keyframes\n" % (endFrame-startFrame+1))
    file.write("# vertices: x y z nx ny nz\n")

    vert_count = len(mesh.vertices);
    for frameIndex in range(startFrame, endFrame+1):
        file.write("# frame %d\n" % frameIndex)
        #update the mesh objects vertex positions for the animation
        #set blender to the correct frame
        scene.frame_set(frameIndex)

        mesh_obj.evaluated_get(graph)
        mesh = mesh_obj.to_mesh()

        # get the vertices modified by the animation
        # animesh= mesh_obj.create_mesh(scene, True, 'PREVIEW') # FAILS
        # animesh.calc_normals()
        file.write("%d # nvertices, keyframe %d\n" % (vert_count, frameIndex))

        #now for the vertices
        for vert_counter in range(0, vert_count):
            #XYZ
            # vecpos = animesh.vertices[vert_counter].co * mesh_obj.matrix_world.transpose()
            vecpos = mesh.vertices[vert_counter].co #  * mesh_obj.matrix_world.transpose()

            #Normal
            # vecnor = animesh.vertices[vert_counter].normal # * mesh_obj.matrix_world.transpose()
            vecnor = mesh.vertices[vert_counter].normal
            # vecnor = unify_vec3 (mesh_obj.matrix_world.invert().transpose()*vecnor)

            new_x=-vecpos[1]
            new_y= vecpos[2] # swap y/z
            new_z=-vecpos[0]
            nor_x= -vecnor[1]
            nor_y=  vecnor[2] # swap y/z
            nor_z= -vecnor[0]

            file.write("%.3f %.3f %.3f %.3f %.3f %.3f\n" % (new_x, new_y, new_z, nor_x, nor_y, nor_z))

    file.flush()
    file.close()
    print ("done.\n\n")

class ddaExporter(bpy.types.Operator, ExportHelper):
    """Save GLBasic 3D model""" # Tooltip
    bl_idname = "export_scene.id_export_dda"
    bl_label = "Export .dda"
    filename_ext = '.dda'

    filepath = StringProperty(name="File Path", description="Filepath used for exporting the dda file", maxlen= 1024, default= "")
    check_existing = BoolProperty(name="Check Existing", description="Check and warn on overwriting existing files", default=True, options={'HIDDEN'})

    def execute(self, context):
        export_dda(str(self.filepath), context)
        return {'FINISHED'}

def menu_func_export(self, context):
    from io_glbasic import export_dda
    import os
    default_path = str(os.path.splitext(bpy.data.filepath)[0] + ".dda")
    self.layout.operator(export_dda.ddaExporter.bl_idname, text='GLBasic dda (.dda)')

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ddaExporter)
    TOPBAR_MT_file_export.append(menu_func_export)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ddaExporter)
    TOPBAR_MT_file_export.remove(menu_func_export)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Can you please post the full script? Otherwise hard to test IMHO. The vertices part at the end will also fail. Recommend have a look into: TypeError: Element-wise multiplication: not supported between 'Matrix' and 'Vector' and https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.80/Python_API

I changed what I found out, but I still can't get the animated vertex positions. I get the positions of the first frame, repeatedly.

See this Q. mesh_obj.evaluated_get(graph) returns a new object, it doesn't change mesh_obj. So you need to call to_mesh() on the object it returns, not on mesh_obj. See if that fixes it.

Yes! That did the trick. Thank you so much!


text:
How to retarget Mixamo animations in Blender to other armatures with the same skeleton/rig?
I'm playing around with Godot and I want to have a 3D character with multiple animations so I can learn how the whole playing and blending of animations work. Since I am no 3D artist, nor animator, some googling led me to Mixamo where I got some characters and some animations to work with. I've been following the process described in this YouTube video for "fixing" the Mixamo files and combining multiple animations into one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hk9ljcS1Ro.
Doing this manually in Blender sort of works, but is error prone and time consuming, so I found this script https://github.com/Johngoss725/Mixamo-To-Godot/blob/main/Mixamo_RM_Godot.py which I further modified and adapted to my needs. Now I can basically run this script and have it combine 150 different animations without skins and a single character with skin in a minute or two. Great success!
Except it only works with the XBot or YBot characters, all other characters I've tried this with results in a weirdly mangled character and I cannot figure out why...
Steps to reproduce:

New blender file -> Delete everything

Import XBot.fbx (I choose Automatic bone orientation and Ignore leaf bones)

Apply all transforms

Select the Hips bone

In Graph Editor select the Location keyframes -> Scale, Z, .01

Rename the action to T-Pose

Import Walking.fbx (I choose Automatic bone orientation and Ignore leaf bones)

Apply all transforms

Select the Hips bone

In Graph Editor select the Location keyframes -> Scale, Z, .01

Rename the action to Walking and stash it

Delete the animation armature

Back in the original XBot armature I open the NLA editor and select the stashed Walking action

Success!

Repeat the same steps for pretty much any other character (for example Dreyar) and you end up with a mangled animation...
I've messed around with various scripts and tools that all purport to handle this process automatically (i.e Mixamo -> Blender -> Godot) and they all have the same problem (in addition to many other problems) where they work with the XBot and YBot charachters, but none of the others.
Blender files, models and animations

Maybe it's my whole mental picture of how this should work that is wrong...
The way I understand it an animation is just a set of keyframes along a timeline, each representing the location and rotation of a given bone at a given point in time, along with some settings for how to interpolate between each keyframe.
Based on this it would seem logical that as long as my characters share the same skeleton with the same bones I should be able to apply the same animation to them with the same result. I understand there is a little more to it than that, but that is the basic concept, right?
But it seems that Mixamo does some "magic" when retargeting animations that I don't understand. The "easy" solution would be to download each animation for each character from Mixamo, but this is slow and tedious. It works for the XBot and YBot without downloading separate animations for each, so it should be possible to retarget them to other characters as well, right?

When I Import your FBX (Xbot or Dreyar) and under Dope Sheet > switch to Action Editor, I can simply assign Walk action to both and it works fine.

If you want to combine several actions go to NLA Editor and stack them as needed.
Edit
Later I tried also your second character Ch25 that has the switches in bone axis.
The thing is - Mixamo seems to be quite messy in sources. For models like Xbot I would have to enable Automatic Bone Orientation to get them in right direction ... for your Ch25 rigged in Mixamo and imported into Blender they are orientated correctly. It means these two rigs use different bone orientation and results in messy result when an action is shared in Blender between rigs.
Another Mixamo character like EXO_Gray on other hand has completaly different bone naming ... it means vertex groups are named accordingly ... it means completely incompatible with Xbot's action.
Conclusion
Since Mixamo's sources doesn't seems to be sync, you would have to use some retargeting addon. Addon Auto-Rig-Pro [$] worked for me at glance (you can find other scripts, but I'm not experienced with them, so I can't say how hard or easy is to use them).
Addon contains retarget feature. Since you let Mixamo to rig your character and you import FBX back into Blender ... select Source, Target, click to Build Bones List, Set as Root - mixamorig:Hips / mixamorig:Hips and press Re-Target.

Note: For fixing bone orientation see https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/249651/2214 there is one paragraph in the answer explaining that issue and how to avoid it.

Sorry for the huge post with probably multiple problems all in one. But yes, the issue was actually me using "Automatic Bone Orientation" when importing the character. If not checking that I was able to use the same animation for botch characters! Thank you!
Now a side note, apart from the aesthetics is there any problem with having the bones oriented all crazy like this? I.e. all sticking out? I liked the way it looked when using "Automatic Bone Orientation" because the direction of the bones made sense to me this way. Can i "fix" them after importing without messing up the animation?

Edited ... see a note.


text:
Object sits on floor in viewport and Eevee render but sinks into the floor in Cycles
I used a physics simulation to make sure these objects sit on the floor. Here is what it looks like from my camera view

Here is an Eevee render. Looks good:

Here is a Cycles render. You can see the objects are now clipped into the floor.

How do I fix this?
A commenter in another question mentions displacement. Could this be causing it?

I got the material from online and this is how it came as default.

From the image, It's the displacement is not the same in eevee than in Cycles. Instead of that, use Bump

You could also try adjusting the Midlevel down by eye.

As of 3.2.1 Cycles supports displacing the mesh itself with the Displacement node, Evee does not. This can be changed in the Material Properties > Settings > Surface panel.
Setting the Displacement option to Bump Only will cause the Displacement node to behave in Cycles the same way it does in Evee.
In Evee, you just have to add a Displace modifier and plug in the same texture, and it will look like it does in cycles.
So to fix your problem, I'd guess you should switch to Cycles and set the Material to Bump Only, since your mesh isn't subdivided enough to take advantage of displacement.


text:
NLA animations aren't combining
I have two animations, one that makes my object bob up and down, and another one that moves it around. I have given both of these a fake user (shield icon) and have pushed them down to the nla animation area. I have also created another track with add<add track (nla window). I have set both of their blend modes to "combine" and for some reason my object stays at it's original place when I imported it.

I have done something like this but the hovering animation gets overriden by the driving one. How can I get them to play together?

Do you have a screenshot of you NLA setup or are you able to share your Blend file with just the nla and animation?

make sure that you're tweaking the parameters of the Strip panel (Strip tab of the N panel)

Yes, I'm in the strip panel

@DarkSoul I put a screenshot

Judging from the screenshot it is because the strip needs to be longer than the bottom one. It needs to cover the area you want to animate if that makes sense.

Nope, I repeated the animation and it's still not working @DarkSoul

Okay but you need to explain your problem in more detail if you want anyone to help. You could also share your blend file to make it easier. What exactly isn't working? And what do both animation strips do? What are you trying to archieve and where what happens right now?

@DarkSoul Ok, so when I set the driving animation to replace, it works as expected. But when I add a hover animation above it with combine, the driving animation still gets applied but the object appears really far away. So what I want to happen is I want the driving animation to get combined with the hover animation, and for it to hover while it's following the driving animation.

So your driving animation moves an object and you want to add an hover animation on top to make it hover? If you add the hover strip on top, your object appears very far? In that case it sounds like adding the hover strip on top changes the location values of your object. Does your strip by chance animate the same values? In that case it can give unwanted results. I really suggest to upload your blend to have a closer look. Create a backup and remove everyting in it except the object and animation.

please share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/ ... make it simple as possible, delete useless elements for example


text:
Realize Instances node does not work on Light objects
I want to bring Blender lights into After Effects, which are instanced with Geometry Nodes. However, the Realize Instances node does not work on Light objects. Am I doing something wrong?

To my understanding, there's nothing to realize: no mesh, no curve, no point cloud etc. Geometry Nodes don't output objects as it's a data modifier that is supposed to only modify data of the object. I think there is some design inconsistency here, but to my understanding it's an intended design. It is possible to write a Python script to convert instances to objects...

@MarkusvonBroady I was surprised to know, that Make Instances Real has been updated and may get instances from GN

@CRANTISZ WOW THAT'S GREAT NEWS!!!

Sure. Realize instances converts geometry to mesh. But you can't convert lights into mesh.
Use Ctrl+A ⇾ Make Instances Real, It will convert lights to real objects, that's can be exported


text:
How can I align the object's or 3d cursor X, Y and Z-axis to tracking together with face normal

bpy.context.scene.cursor.rotation_euler = Vector((0,0,1)).rotation_difference(bpy.context.object.data.polygons[bpy.context.object.data.polygons.active].normal).to_euler()
bpy.context.scene.cursor.rotation_euler = bpy.context.object.data.polygons[bpy.context.object.data.polygons.active].normal.to_track_quat('Z').to_euler()

Can you tell us what exactly you're doing and what you're hoping to achieve?


text:
Emission Material Not Assigning to Selected Faces
Im having a hard time getting colored polygons using the emission shader.  I will link the blend file as well.
I go into edit mode and select the faces, then I create a new material and change the node to Emission with a strength of 1.  Then I hit assign and change the viewport to show the material but there is nothing ... no matter what color I use as well.
Here's the file, I really hope someone can help me out I'm going crazy over this:

Hello, it seems to work: https://zupimages.net/up/24/20/hflz.jpg

did you change to material or rendered view? if this still doesn't work, i would recommend making a video what you did or describe really step by step what you did.

Working fine here assuming you're just intending to add the colour to the whole of your body (Cube) object. If you just want to colour some faces of it you should add a default colour for the whole object then add another material with your Emission colour with the '+' button, select the required faces, and assign the colour to them.

In the download file it is working. By the way, when you have a single material on the object, you don't need to assign it to faces. The first material slot will by default be used for all faces. But this also means you cannot assign it to only some of the faces - you cannot have faces with no material if there is one present on the object. Well, to be precise you cannot have faces with no material slot assigned to it - but this slot can be empty if you remove the material from it. More in-depth information on this in my answer here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/292434/

I don’t know why mine looks like an unlit grey transparent ghost then.  I’m not sure if it’s a graphics card thing or what.  I’m so confused why mine looks the way it does and you guys open it and it’s just fine as was what I was intending to do.

I've got a sneaky feeling about the internal face on the mirror-plane (some intermittent anomalous behaviour with Bisect..)  But. probably not relevant

Ok so I figured it out.  It’s a weird solution but hopefully it helps others.
What I did was went into the render properties and selected, “high quality” using the Eevee renderer and it magically showed the material that was applied.


text:
How to squeeze a cube without rigging
I want to make cubes like the one in the picture. Are there built in functions that allow me to make a much more symertical squeeze?
I am trying to squeeze the sides of the cube.

Have you tried the lattice modifier or simple deform modifier?

Select all edges of the cube
Set the crease to 1 (This makes them stay sharp with the subdiv modifier)
Add the Subdiv modifier. The higher the level the less noticeable the faces are in the curve. FOr better visibility, check all the display types next to the 'Subdivision' name in the modifier.
Add edge loops to the cube with Ctrl+R
Scale or manually modify the edge loops to affect the geometry.

If you are using more than 1 edge loop, you can also add a mirror modifier so you only need to adjust the loops on 1 side

I did not get it, I just got a regular cube, can you show me the steps in images?

This is a really cool step by step tutorial contained in your image! I upvoted already, but if you could spell out the text from the image as bullet points that would be an even better answer.

Thank you for your answer but please avoid text written inside images, always prefer typing it directly in the body of the post instead. Image content can't be indexed and thus can't be searched for nor readily found by anyone looking for solutions in the future. Updates are difficult because it can't be easily edited in case of mistakes, nor updated in case of future changes. It doesn't follow the fonts and style of the website automatically, and doesn't work with screen readers.

thank you so much


text:
Animate a mesh "shell" morphing around another mesh/object
I'm following this tutorial from Ducky 3D where he morphs one Icosphere around another using some Geometry Nodes magic. I am trying to adapt the method to a non-spherical shape (a cube, to test) and want to morph the outside mesh around the inner object in a random but fluid way.
How can I get this outer shell to morph around the cube in the center in a smooth animated way that adheres to the cube's shape?
Using the seed of the random number in the geo-nodes doesn't work because it hitches from one value to the next, and I don't know how to interpolate the seed so it transitions smoothly.

EDIT: I missed the one Translate Geometry node that he throws in at the end of that chain pictured above. This deforms the shell around the cube almost in the way I'm looking for. I want to get it to work without any clipping, though (you can see some in the image in the question in the upper left of the cube)

Tut is just a sphere rotated arround another sphere ... in your case you would need something like a sphere shrinkwrapped (modifier od geo-nodes) on cube ... I guess.


text:
Remove duplicate faces sharing vertices
I'd like to know if there is an easy way of deleting all faces which share ALL of their vertices with another face.
I imported a model from a .dae file and merged vertices by distance. This has created strange 'double' faces whose vertices are completely shared.
I can manually delete the duplicate faces one at a time, and a single face remains.

I don't know if you can call it from the UI, but the validate Python function will remove the extra face. Switch to Object mode, select the object you want to fix, and run this in the Python console
C.object.data.validate()

Great! This line immediately deletes double-sided faces (so if two faces use the same set of vertices in a different order, only one face will be kept)

Merging points by distance should take the desired effect. In edit mode go to mesh - clean up - merge by distance, or select the geometry then M - by distance.

Hi, thanks for your reply - perhaps I didn't explain very well, but I've already merged the points by distance. There are only 4 vertices in total which the two faces completely share.

We had the same problem and solved it with the triangulate modifier, applying it removes the dup faces. After that you can return to quads with Tris to Quads (Alt +  J) command.


text:
My object deforms in a weird way when when using G (Grab)
I'm new to the community and started learning blender with blender guru's donut tutorials. However, whenever I use the key G, the object I am editing deforms in an abnormal way (Making sprinkles), despite the fact that they have previously worked well..

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

It Looks like un-subdivision or Decimate operator was used instead ... Is it possible you accidentally assigned shortcut G to this? I just don't know how accidentally :) see your Keymap under Preferences what key  is assigned to them ...

... or there is a more chance you have accidentally enabled Snap tool ;)


text:
How can I join these two edges together?
How can I join this cylindrical edge to this cube edge? (Edges are highlighted)
u7.jpg

You need to make sure both halves have the same number of vertices. It looks like your barrel is a little over-complicated, so I suggest you drop a few vertices there, and maybe add a few on the other side.

While this did work, it didnt look how I wanted it too, or rather the two edges didnt blend well at all

Can you show us your next version?

Ive added two new images, it looks relatively ok but im trying to get it to look as good as possible

How does the original gun look like?


text:
How can I wrap this fabric around this seat frame?
I am creating a UH-60 passenger seat. The blockout is done and I am trying to now do the fabric part however I am having trouble wrapping the seat fabric around the metal frame. I have tried adding in a plane, solidifying it and then adding a shrinkwrap modifier however that does not achieve the effect I want. Also have tried giving the seat frame collision and then ruining a cloth sim on the subdivided plane but it does not wrap around like I want it to, Reference and model below

Is there a reason you can't just model the fabric like any other part of the mesh?

I need the fabric to wrap around certain parts of the mesh, I could do it manually by extruding and loop cuts but thats takes very long and is also very dirty.

How realistic does it need to be, how close are you rendering this part? The reference image is tiny, I don't see the fabric sagging anywhere, it just look like a plane so you wouldn't need to spend so much time with sim or anything complicated.

This model is to be used for a game asset ive finished and it needs to be as realistic as possible. At the moment it is just a blockout however the cloth part is infact a solid 3d object with a small thickness. Ive also uploaded a new ref for better understanding

Looking at the design for these online, it seems that the seats connect to the frames, in a sort of cross shape with bevels.
What I think might produce a good result is copying and re using part of the metal frame mesh to start.
Video
duplicate and separate these parts, taking care not to select one area you wish to bridge loop.

go into edit mode and create a plane in the middle that matches the edge loops.

Bridge the edge loops:

Shrink/fatten everything so it fits properly and add bevel, solidify and subdivide modifiers so that it looks better.  Duplicate the  created mesh for both parts of the seat if possible.

Thank you! Cant believe i didnt think of this and instead went for the stupid complex ways haha

One small question I do have though is, how did you get the rungs to wrap back around into the seat cloth in the last picture?

The bottom tabs are probably stitched together with the cloth, so we don't have to worry about bridging those.  I'll throw in one extra image to show that.

I mean moreso as to how you managed to get those in the first place, Ive added pictures of my mesh to show you what I mean otherwise it was a perfect solution and I cant thank you enough

Glad to help.  When you first select your rings, you want them to have gap , so that they are not O but C shaped.

Is it possible to get a little recording of that specific part if you have the time? Not sure why its confusing me so much haha


text:
Object resize animation without stretching the bevel
If I add a resize animation to a cube with beveled edges, the bevel stretches and deforms. I've tried both the Ctrl+B shortcut and using the Bevel modifier on a Vertex Group, but both methods produce the same result. Applying scale didn't help in this case. Is there a solution for this?

Hello and welcome to BSE. yeah it won't work if you stretch the scale of the object. You have to stretch the mesh itself. So maybe try using Shape Key animation instead?

Yeah you cannot alter the scale as it will stretch the entire object. You will have to stretch or elongate the mesh itself within the object. Maybe try using Shape Keys instead. You can animate the Shape Key Value as well.


text:
Holdout and Alpha White Edges
I was wondering how I'd go about getting rid of the edges not matching in this scene. I'm using two scenes.

The outer shell that has a hole with a holdout material inset for one of the faces
The inside where basically everything else has the holdout material except the tunnel inside.

Whenever I composite the two alpha layers together, I notice a bit of a light edge where the layers meet.
What can I do about this?
Render, Holdout Material & Compositor Settings

Do you need the frame to show a hole in the shadow? If not, why do use a holdout material for the center of the frame? You can alpha over the sphere window without that. Also, holdout is not alpha transparency. No need to set the Blend Mode to Alpha Clip, you can leave it at Opaque, same goes for the Shadow Mode. By the way, when I render your file (withot making my suggested changes) I do not see a light edge. Rather a dark edge, but not very distracting.

Thank you! I'll keep these recommendations in mind for future reference.

The ridge comes from a little transparency left on edges, so if you compose this image over  a white background some white will show through.
To solve, uncheck "Use Alpha" option on viewer and composite nodes, or add another Alpha over node to precompose the image over a dark red background.

Thanks! This works too. I actually ended up figuring it out by adding a alpha convert node and changing the mode to "to straight". I appreciate your help!


text:
Understanding The Purpose - Capture Attribute
I've been learning to use Geometry Nodes lately & stumbled upon a question. In the simple setup I made (showed in the screenshots) I use the Capture Attribute node in "Float - Point" & "Float - Spline" configurations to move the spline mesh I have (consists of 4 Beziers) by 2 units in the X axis.
So, as far as I understand, the CA node stores the float value specified in the given attribute - a point or a spline. However, the result of these two configurations is no different than if I used a standalone constant value. I understand that in my particular case it really is no different which one of them I use, but the question to me is: when working specifically with splines, where the "Float - Point" & "Float - Spline" configurations could be useful?
Also, the amount of points I have in the curve doesn't seem to change the output as well, so even if I have a thousand of points, using the "Float - Point" configuration doesn't seem to do anything different at all. Which only adds up to my curiosity.
Couldn't find an answer online or in the forum so hopefully I don't miss anything obvious with this one.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/geometry_nodes/attribute/capture_attribute.html

When you use a single static value there is not much difference to see. But let's say you store dynamic values like the X values of the position, then each point on a spline like your example would be assigned a different value, while a single spline (no matter how many points) will only capture one value.

you might not have understood that the capture attribute node captures not only one value, but one value for each point in your geometry (the domain value of the capture attribute). Of course a constant (same value wherever) makes no difference - whether you capture it or not, because a constant is the same anywhere.

@GordonBrinkmann "while a single spline (no matter how many points) will only capture one value" - So that's the question to me, do I understand correctly that it doesn't matter in the case of the "Float - Spline" configuration which one of the options I use - a static constant value or a Capture Attribute node? And if that's the case, where, then, that configuration ("Float - Spline") could be useful? I just would love to dig into an example where using the CA node in that way would be necessary for any particular reason.

@Chris I understood that, but thank you for pointing that out. I get that in the case of my example the "Spline" just holds that single float value & that's it. My question is: what's the purpose of it ("Float" - "Spline" setup) & where could that be useful?

@Nik: if you have two splines (one object) you can change each spline individually. Then you can use this node setup: [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/fmkTBf6t.png

For the "Float"-"Spline" setup, you can see its advantages on two sides, if the value of interest is the same for all the control points obviously. On the one hand, you save memory space as a single value is stored, instead of as many values as you have points. On the other hand, the modification is faster as there is no need to update all the control points. This can make a huge difference in return time if heavy computations are involved. And whenever you need the value per control point, the attribute is transferred "on demand" to the right domain.

What Does Capture Attribute Add to Geometry

If something is useful for you, you can only decide for yourself - when you understand how this is working you might find use cases for it. As said in the comments, just using single values for all does not make much of a difference.
So I will show you what difference it makes when you use varying values, how the choice between Spline and Point changes the resulting values and why both can be useful, depending on what you want to achieve.
A simple example (with integer values instead of float, but that does not really matter): a curve object consisting of 4 separate splines just like in your example. Each has only two control points. All elements in Geometry Nodes have an index starting at 0 for each type of element. So the 4 splines have the indices 0 to 3, the 8 control points have the indices 0 to 7.

The thing is - the domain you choose in the Capture Attribute node also determines where it gets the values from if you plug in some node which reads geometry data like index, position etc. and not just unrelated values.
So if you now go and plug an Index node into the Capture Attribute node set to Spline, it reads the index of each spline and stores it on the geometry - the geometry are the control points of the curve. So on the first spline you have the attribute value 0, on the second 1 etc. Plugging this for example into the Z of a Combine XYZ node and use this as Offset in a Set Position node (which sets the position for each control point), the first two points are offset 0 on Z because they are part of spline 0, the second ones are offset 1 m on Z because they belong to spline 1 and so on, as you can also see in the position data in the Spreadsheet.

But if you set the Capture Attribute node to Point, it captures the indices of the control points from 0 to 7. In this case, each point gets its own index assigned (of course you would not need to capture the index of a point on itself, this is just for demonstration). Doing the same as before you can now see that not a spline is evenly moved upwards, but point by point and therefore setting the endpoint of a curve higher than the start point.

As I said, just for demonstration. The last result you would also achieve by using just the index in the Combine XYZ node without capturing. What I wanted to show is: deciding on which domain you choose, you can use common values for all or groups of elements, or have each its own individual value.
In the example above you could use the spline indices in a Set ID node, which gives the points ID values different from their (inherent and not manually changeable) index value. This can later be used to group them together when you want make a selection based on ID for some operation.
Here another example where using the spline domain can be useful when operating on points: let's say I want to use the Set Position node only on the second spline (index 1) to make it a bit chaotic. I can resample the curve to have more points, because a spline with only two points will not look very random.
If I set a Count of 10 for resampling, the splines have now 40 points altogether, the indices of the points being 0 to 9 on the first spline, 10 to 19 on the second etc. But if I want to be able to switch the resample count arbitrarily and not care for how this changes the index of points, I can simply use the spline index for selection.
At the same time the Index node provides the individual point index to be used in the Random Value node, so that each point gets an individual random value. For something like this you need a Capture Attribute node, because without it you could not choose which index the Set Position node should use for selection. Since it works on points it would use the point index, so without the Capture Attribute node you would always have to know the range of point indices you want to operate on. With Compare you are of course not limited to Equal to select one spline, it could be Greater Than or Less Than to select all from or up to a certain spline.

Thank you very much Gordon, this is a brilliant explanation! I will go through this several times to make sure I’ve understood everything but you definitely answered my question & went far & beyond than that. I deeply appreciate your help, thank you again & have a wonderful day!


text:
Getting Bone Heat Weighting: Failed to find solution for one or more bones
Since I wanted to replace the Assetto Corsa driver with other models, I unpacked the rider files in them and deleted the driver models, keeping only the skeletons. But it keeps reporting errors, and I've tried everything before this. This model is reporting the same error when I try to bind a skeleton I made myself. Only the skeleton generated with Mixamo works fine.

Duplicate to https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2845/bone-heat-weighting-failed-to-find-solution-for-one-or-more-bones and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15964/heat-weighting-failed-to-find-solution-for-one-or-more-bones


text:
K-Cycles won't render more than one blend file using the command prompt
I'm trying to render 2 different blend files in K-Cyles, frame 4 from each. This is the command I'm using:
blender --factory-startup -b "C:\\Users\\josia\\OneDrive\\Desktop\\night\_bounces\\1.blend" -o //render\_# -f 4

blender --factory-startup -b "C:\\Users\\josia\\OneDrive\\Desktop\\night\_bounces\\2.blend" -o //render\_## -f 4

The problem is that after it renders the first project it says Blender Quit, then has the second line of code (blender --factory-startup -b "C:\\Users\\josia\\OneDrive\\Desktop\\night\_bounces\\2.blend" -o //render\_## -f 4)  just waiting for me to press enter. If I do that, it renders the second one, but I want it to do both automatically.
It's weird because every tutorial I've watched, theirs just render one after another. Why does blender quit for me, a limitation of K-Cyles?

How are you running these lines of code? Are you entering them individually or do you have them in an executable script?

If you are using Command Prompt, join the two statements with double ampersand (&&). Or if you want to ensure both commands run regardless of whether the first command succeeds or fails, use single ampersand (&):
blender --factory-startup -b "C:\\Users\\josia\\OneDrive\\Desktop\\night\_bounces\\1.blend" -o //render\_# -f 4 && blender --factory-startup -b "C:\\Users\\josia\\OneDrive\\Desktop\\night\_bounces\\2.blend" -o //render\_## -f 4

If you are using PowerShell, join the two statements with a semicolon to execute your command as one line:
blender --factory-startup -b "C:\\Users\\josia\\OneDrive\\Desktop\\night\_bounces\\1.blend" -o //render\_# -f 4; blender --factory-startup -b "C:\\Users\\josia\\OneDrive\\Desktop\\night\_bounces\\2.blend" -o //render\_## -f 4

If you want to ensure the second command only runs if the first command succeeds, use double ampersand (&&). You can also put the two commands into one script. Open notepad and paste the lines:
blender --factory-startup -b "C:\\Users\\josia\\OneDrive\\Desktop\\night\_bounces\\1.blend" -o //render\_# -f 4
blender --factory-startup -b "C:\\Users\\josia\\OneDrive\\Desktop\\night\_bounces\\2.blend" -o //render\_## -f 4

Then save it as .bat (if Command Prompt) or .ps1 (if PowerShell) like run_script.ps1 and execute it from the directory where you saved the file:
.\run_script.ps1

cool thanks! I'll give these things a try!

@mojojojo Cool :) Let me know how it goes. If this solved your problem kindly click the checkmark to mark it as resolved.

This is very strange! I was originally testing with a few small blend files and this was working, but then when I set up the command for my real projects it decides not to render. It gives me an insanely high render time and just keeps going higher and higher but never rendering a single tile. in the task manager the gpu never shows it's being used and the cpu fluctuates from 100% to 30%. I've tried creating the bat file too and same thing.
When I try to render each project in K-cyles I have no problem and it takes about an hour per file..??

Probably something wrong in those blend files but we unfortunately cannot diagnose this problem without any blend file. It probably will also not be feasible to share them on this site. How many blend files do you have?

There's not though, they render just fine when i open K-cycles and render from there!

I have 6 i need to render, but actually i tried rendering just that first one from the command prompt and it gives the same problem. Any ideas what could be causing it to work in gui but not cmd?

looks like it's doing it with all 6 projects individually or together.


text:
Python: canvas-flip action is merged with the next user action in undo history
I wrote a simple add-on to enable canvas flipping in Blender (for Grease Pencil) with a hotkey, as well as a menu button. All it does is multiply the camera's local X scale by -1:
current_scene = bpy.context.scene;
active_camera = current_scene.camera;
active_camera.scale.x *= -1;

This basically works. However, if I:

flip the canvas
draw a Grease Pencil stroke
undo with Ctrl+Z

the last stroke disappears as expected, but the canvas also flips back. Somehow both actions are interpreted as one single operation.
(This code is based on a brief description of a similar functionality in the GP Toolbox add-on, which has the same problem.)
Why are the actions combined? Did I miss a step in the code?
Full add-on code below.
bl_info = {
    "name": "Flip Canvas",
    "author": "Latin1",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (4, 1, 1),
    "location": "Scene",
    "description": "Inverts the camera's x axis",
    "warning": "",
    "doc_url": "",
    "category": "Scene",
}

import bpy;

def flip_canvas_btn(context):

    current_scene = bpy.context.scene;
    active_camera = current_scene.camera;
    active_camera.scale.x *= -1;

class Flip_Canvas(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "latin1.flip_canvas";
    bl_label = "Flip canvas";

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

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

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
class LayoutDemoPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the scene context of the properties editor"""
    bl_label = "Flip the canvas"
    bl_idname = "SCENE_PT_layout"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "scene"

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

        scene = context.scene;

        # Interface button
        row = layout.row();
        row.scale_y = 1.0;
        row.operator("latin1.flip_canvas");

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(Flip_Canvas);
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object.append(menu_func);
    bpy.utils.register_class(LayoutDemoPanel);

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(Flip_Canvas);
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_object.remove(menu_func);
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(LayoutDemoPanel);

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register();

Blender version 4.1.1. As mentioned, it simply negates the camera's X scale. My add-on adds a button to the interface, and a key binding.

The code works fine in the Python console, or when selecting the camera and changing the X scale manually in the UI. But as an add-on, which I only created to link the code to a keyboard shortcut, the problem is entirely consistent and reproducible.

I added the source code to the original post. It should be installable as an add-on now if anyone wants to test it. (Omit the ``` at the end; not sure why that's displaying in the code.)

That is because you did not register your operator to be included into the UNDO history. You can do that by adding bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}
class Flip_Canvas(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "latin1.flip_canvas";
    bl_label = "Flip canvas";
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

And there it is. Thank you, the canvas flip is now its own, unique action. I'm now realising that in the ideal workflow, the canvas flip wouldn't even register as an action, remaining independent from the undo stack; but in this case your solution is indeed exactly what I was asking for.


text:
Textures messed up when animating character
after rerigging my character with a mixamo animation the clothes of my character shows some stribes / spots that shouldn`t be there. I attached a photo of the character. Maybe somebody has an idea how to fix this problem?
Thanx Alex!

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

So in tpose the clothes of the character look right. As soon as I move the bones in specific direction the clothes mesh get moved / strechted so that the word mashine f.e. that is written on the pants is disorted. I will also try to attach a screenshot of the shading elements of the pants.

Put a texture Texture Coordinate Node with it's UV output plugged into a texture Mapping node, and then plug that into the Vector input of every texture in your your material. See if that works.

The Textrure Cordinate Node in combination with the texture Mapping didn`t solve it so far but the vendor also gave me the following information: "that would be a skinning issue...
mixamo autorig and also auto skin your character, and sometimes it does it well while other times it fails.
it will mostly fail with complex characters, so u may need to modify the skinning manually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WqGmxioSdE
"
So it may be a skinning issue. I will check the youtube link he provided me and try my best. Hope this helps others who may have the same problem too

Not the best way but I think I solved it somehow. The disrupted text ist gone because I deleted this part in the textures. So no text anymore on the pants that is getting disrupted. The other problem was the skin that was shining through the clothes at some points when animating the character. So I deleted the skin in this area. My character is now without legs but when he is not naked no one will see :D


text:
How can i fix this Weird Edit mode Shading Issue?
https://gyazo.com/10e34ab61bdc020d43f44eb4ead883ce
i have this weird issue whenever i go Edit mode. can someone help me find the issue? or is it because of my GPU?
Fix!
Turning off "Cage on" of Subdivision Modifier Solves the problem of Z fighting.

it looks like overlapping faces, no?

oh its not overlapping sir

could you please share your file? https://pasteall.org/blend/ or any other platform

Hello and welcome. Instead of having users go through links and external sites please use the builtin tools to embed images in your post. See How to upload an image to a post? or GIFs

It's Z-fighting of selection of original geometry vs preview of a modifier.

@Maru are you using AMD 6000 series GPU by any chance?


text:
particles flying far away from the emitter
I am following Ian Hubert's lazy moth tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imkSdlbXB_U). Everything was going well until the particle system part. My moths are just exploding and flying very far from the object or the leader they are supposed to follow. I have tried copying the exact settings as in the video and tried some of mine own, nothing changes. They disappear into the void after 3 frames.
I did succeed in a completely new save file, but I just used cubes as moths.

https://we.tl/t-YA2YZpDRz4 - Blend file link. Was not sure about other ways to add it here.

please provide blend file so we can check it out

Added a link to blend file download in the post.

Ok, your scene was quite big and you had a lot of "stuff" set to "don't show in viewport" but this doesn't mean that this stuff does not affect your simulation!
So, change the weight to 1, delete everything in your collection except:

Increase scale a bit and the lifetime then you get this...
Result:

I didn't want to waste my time to much to find out what exactly the reason is because you had a lot of objects - some had collisions (which might influence the particles), you have two wind forces - which do influence particles and so on.
So still your task to do:
delete one object by one and check, when your simulation is running to find out, what objects are causing this unwanted behaviour of your simulation.

They still fly away from the lamp in a big chunk :(

yes, they fly away, but the exploding problem is solved, right? this is what i tried to solve.

you're right, thank you

i updated my answer. If my answer helped you, please check the checkmark left to my answer.

Thank you so much dude, you really took your time to help, respect!


text:
Armatures Presets folder created at startup
Every time Blender starts up, this folder is created on Drive C on Windows. If I access different drives during work process, the same folder is created on each of those drives. Do you know what is causing this and how can it be turned off?

I've never seen that here. Maybe created by a third-party addon? - There seems to be one on Gumroad called "Armature Layer Presets".

Yeah, that's definitely not a built-in feature. Check your addons. Looking through the code of the addon @JohnEason posted, it does create an armature layer preset folder but it goes to bpy.utils.resource_path("USER") which is where your addons and scripts in \AppData\Roaming would be. Not at the root C:\ directory.

Thanks friends. I started to eliminate the plugins one by one and it appeared that the latest update of Auto Rig Pro has a new path system, where every path defaults to /Armatures Presets, /Bones etc. So it does not go to the Appdata\Roaming and creates these folders in the drive root in case they do not yet exist.

Thanks friends. I started to eliminate the plugins one by one and it appeared that the latest update of Auto Rig Pro has a new path system, where every path defaults to \Armatures Presets, \Bones etc. So it does not go to the Appdata\Roaming but creates these folders in the drive root in case they do not yet exist.
Thank you @john-eason and @jakemoyo


text:
Camera numpad "0" key not working
This only started happening recently. My Numpad 0 key won't enter the "Camera mode" when pressed anymore on the viewport. Does anyone know why this is happening? I am currently using Shift+` as a result and works perfectly fine so I believe it is an issue with the numbers. This is happening on a Blender 3.2.

Are you sure that the camera is selected (its triangle must be orange), if not, select it and press Ctrl 0

Is "emulate numpad" turned on in settings?

Is Numpad 0 still in the key binding?

Hello, I have yet to try and turn on "emulate numpad" & make sure if the camera is selected with ctrl 0. I will send the results later on. Thanks for yalls help.

The issue has been resolved. "emulate numpad" was the issue being not active


text:
Moving a Smoke Simulation in Time
If I spend a couple hours baking a smoke simulation and then realize that I want it to happen several frames later in my animation, is there any way to shift what frames it occurs on without having to bake it again?

Locate the cache of the simulation. Per default, this would be in a subdirectory called blendcache_smoke.

Next open up the folder and find the frame index in the filename.

In my case the index is positioned at the -15th to -9th position counted from the end.

43756265_000001_00.bphys

By simply replacing 000001 with 000011 the simulated cache of frame 1 is moved to frame 10.
Several options:

Replace all the filenames manually.
Use a third party program to rename files.
Use a python script.

This script will do what you asked for.
import os
from bpy import path

def OffsetCacheIdx(pPath, offset = 0, idx_position = [-15, -9]):
    start, end = idx_position
    idx_length = end - start
    if (idx_length <= 1):
        print("Need a valid index position.")
        return

    smokedir_path = path.abspath(pPath)
    smokecache_files = []
    for (dirpath, dirnames, filenames) in os.walk(smokedir_path):
        smokecache_files.extend(filenames)

    smokecache_files = list(reversed(sorted(smokecache_files)))

    smokecache_indices = []
    # parse index to int and store in list
    for i, sc_f in enumerate(smokecache_files):
        name = sc_f[start:end]
        smokecache_indices.append(int(name))

    if (smokecache_indices[-1] - offset >= 0):
        print("Negative frame values, can't do that.")
        return

    for i, file_name in enumerate(smokecache_files):
        smokecache_indices[i] += offset
        new_file_name = file_name[:start] + str(smokecache_indices[i]).zfill(idx_length) + file_name[end:]
        os.rename(os.path.join(smokedir_path, file_name), os.path.join(smokedir_path, new_file_name))

OffsetCacheIdx("//blendcache_smoke", 10)

The only line you need to change is the last line. The first parameter is the path of the folder containing the cache files, the second parameter is the offset (how many frames you want to shift the simulation).
An optional third parameter can be the position of the index in the filename.
OffsetCacheIdx("//blendcache_smoke", 10, [1, 10])

Very cool! Thank you. I wouldn't have guessed it would be so complicated. Maybe Blender should add a feature like this.

I tweaked the above script to let me shift the cache in negative frames, not sure if this is dangerous or not but just saved me a couple of hours of rebaking :)
I basically commented out the negative frames part and the list reverse statement and added a '-' to the smokecache_indices statement...
import os
from bpy import path

def OffsetCacheIdx(pPath, offset = 0, idx_position = [-13, -9]):
start, end = idx_position
idx_length = end - start
if (idx_length <= 1):
    print("Need a valid index position.")
    return

smokedir_path = path.abspath(pPath)
smokecache_files = []
for (dirpath, dirnames, filenames) in os.walk(smokedir_path):
    smokecache_files.extend(filenames)

#smokecache_files = list(reversed(sorted(smokecache_files)))

smokecache_indices = []
# parse index to int and store in list
for i, sc_f in enumerate(smokecache_files):
    name = sc_f[start:end]
    smokecache_indices.append(int(name))
    print (name)

#if (smokecache_indices[-1] - offset >= 0):
#    print("Negative frame values, can't do that.")
#    return

for i, file_name in enumerate(smokecache_files):
    smokecache_indices[i] += -offset
    new_file_name = file_name[:start] + str(smokecache_indices[i]).zfill(idx_length) + file_name[end:]
    os.rename(os.path.join(smokedir_path, file_name), os.path.join(smokedir_path, new_file_name))

OffsetCacheIdx("//blendcache_AKV_CABIN", 50)

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


text:
Render audio button function and use
I was wondering what the "Render Audio" button does and how you use it. Is it at all related to the Speaker object?

I know that if you are using the video sequence editor, you can use the audio render to output only the audio of the sequence. http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/31334/can-we-render-only-audio-in-blender/31440#31440 . And I have never noticed the speaker object, so I must check what I can do with that.

i found an old tutorial from blendernerd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvH_83_JZCM

The render audio button combines all of the audio tracks that have been created in the video sequence editor into one audio file. This is useful if, say you had an animation that had multiple sounds in it but you rendered it as an image sequence and plan to put the output sequence in another project as part of a compilation. Say you forgot that you were going to create all the audio in the compilation. Instead of putting in the numerous audio tracks in again trying to put them in the perfect place again, you could render the audio from the first project and put it in the second project parallel to the matching image sequence. Also, it probably works appropriately with the speaker object, but I'm not sure at all. I've never tried. ;)
There's a simple example. I probably could have thought of something more realistic, but I hope that helps!

Great answer! How do you render a video from the VSE with audio and video? I don't believe raw AVIs work.

@AnsonSavage You're right. AVI files don't work for that. In the file type option, choose something else. I recommend the H.264 option. Under the encoding tab, go to "audio codec" and choose "MP3." BOOM! Audio. ;)

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


text:
Game Start Scene
I am making a game with several scenes.  How do I tell blender which scene to start the game in?  (For some reason, it won't start the internal player in the pause or intro scene).

For one, you could just move things over to different layers and have the game start on the first scene. Seeing as how you have an intro screen, it looks like you have got the buttons all worked out. Can you teach me how to do that?

doesn't just being in that scene that you want as the start make it the start scene?

Inside blender it does.  I'm not sure about when I package it however.  I could test it myself, but I was just wondering if there was a way to guarantee that one would start before another.

hmmm.... i would just make a simple scene(s) to test which it default loads into. if you don't want to i will when i get home.

If you are using the "Save As Game Engine Runtime" Extension/Add-on to export your game to an .exe/.app the program should start on the scene you had open/active in your blender program when you exported it.
So before exporting your game:

Select the scene you would like start your program in.
File > Save (Save your blend file.)
File > Export > Save As Game Engine Runtime

I tested this on Windows 10 it should be the same on all systems but just FYI.

You can set up a logic brick "always" and connect it to a "scene" actuator to set the scene.


text:
Getting a crease when using a Mirror Modifier
I'm trying to model a spaceship and I ran into this weird predicament. I'm using a mirror modifier as can be seen and I get this annoying crease:

If I enter edit mode, you can see that the verticies are connected:

And adding mean crease doesn't fix much:

What's a good way to fix it?

You have some non-manifold inside faces caused by the mirroring. Select and delete them with X or Del.


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How to disable entire tracks (or multiple clips) in VSE
I'm using Blender to do the video editing for one of my projects.  The interface is somewhat counter-intuitive, but I use it because it gives me crazy amounts of control and it's very dependable.  I'm working with multiple layers, and just because playback can be so slow, I was wondering if there is a way to disable a given layer for playback and then turn it back on when it's time to render (for example, if I had a music track or a color correction clip).  I know that I can press the "eye" icon on individual clip properties, but I don't have time to do that for maybe 100 sound effects clips every single time I want to switch between rendering and playing.  Thanks!

To disable within the VSE, use Mute Strip.
Mute Strips: H
Un-Mute Strips: Alt + H

Use B to box select, select all the strips in the desired track, then click Strip > Mute Strips (or press H). This will turn the selected strips off.

There's a couple of great features hidden in the user-preferences.
Press ctrl+alt+u to open user-prefs
Select the "input" tab
In the search-box type "mute"
The last part of the search-result concerns the Video-editor and here you'll notice that the options for muting and un-muting strips seems to be duplicated - but they're not.
Even though it says:

Mute
Mute
Un-Mute
Un-Mute

It really should say:

Mute selected
Mute everything BUT the selected
Un-Mute selected
Un-Mute everything BUT the selected

I can't remember the default key-settings, but I now have:

Mute selected = H
Mute everything BUT the selected = Alt+H
Un-Mute selected = J
Un-Mute everything BUT the selected = Alt+J

Furthermore if  you open the 'select' menu - you'll find options for selecting "all strips to the right/left" or just "strips to the right/left". The last one selects only strips on the same channel as the currently selected, whereas the first selects all to the right/left regardless of channel.

These can also be used to mute/unmute a boatload of strips in one go, and of course you can define your own keyb. shortcuts. If you assign a shortcut to them, muting an entire channel (similar to muting a track in an audio-sequencer) becomes easy: select a strip - select all to the right and/or left of it, mute them.

I know I am a bit late, but you can always group everything on a metastrip, and mute/unmute the metastrip. To create the metastrip just select all the strips you want to group and press Ctrl+G. Then, when you select the metastrip you can apply group commands to all the strips in the metastrip with the shortcuts Acebone mentioned. One thing to note, you can always access every individual strip in the metastrip pressing Tab when the metastrip is selected (pressing tab again will group everything together again).

Hey, welcome to the site! Could you add some detail on how someone unfamiliar with Blender would do this? We get a lot of new Blender users coming through here so it's best to make answers that are as complete as possible.


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Does the Color Ramp Node Normalize Values?
Often while working in the compositor, values are clamped between 0 and 1. Suppose I multiply a 0 to 1 image by 2 and put it through the Color Ramp node. Does it normalize the input such that the rightmost flag is controlling the values with a luminosity of 2? If so, is the output clamped between 0 and 1, or does it maintain the same range?


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How to Create a Custom View
You know how Blender has the numpad keyboard shortcuts to get to different views (e.g. Front, Side, Top, etc.)
I have some reference images that aren't from any of these perspectives. Is it possible to create a custom view axis so that I can have these references displayed from the correct perspective?

Thanks!

Isn't that what cameras are for?

You can use an empty to display an image and align it however you want. You should get used to that as this appears our only option for reference images in 2.80

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Hey, yeah! I didn't think about using a camera!

@sambler Oh, interesting. Do you know why background images are going away in 2.8?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/110532/cannot-find-background-images-feature-in-blender-2-8


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Solidifying nonmanifold geometry
I'm modelling a maze, and intended to use the solidify modifier. The walls of this maze are infinitely thin, but everything is modelled in quads:

When I add the solidify modifier, with even thickness enabled, I get the following result:

As can be seen, at the intersection of three edges, funky things are happening, creating wedge shapes. How can I avoid this?
Thanks!

There are reasons for avoiding non-manifold geometry when modeling. This is one of them. I would not recommend proceeding with this workflow further. It would be best to model the walls with thickness in mind from the beginning.
However, apparently there is an add-on that can help here:
Manifold Solidify

Because of the nature of the operation the directions the walls would get thicker in cannot be chosen. This may introduce some extra calculations needed to plan walls where the space between then is important for example if one is modelling a kitchen one might want to consider standard dimenions of kitchen furniture when planning wall lenghts. However, this might still make work a lot easier in some cases.