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Slow Playback of mocap data
I downloaded Animations from mixamo to import into my scene. In the mixamo webapp the animation plays back at 100fps. In Blender 2.8, its 7fps.
Solid mode, no modifiers, no materials. No other objects in the scene but a plane. Purely the imported FBX from mixamo.
What could be causing the framerate issues? Is there a way to remedy it so that the animation playsback at 24+ fps?

Currently running a Dell Insperon g5 with a gtx1060m and an Intel i5-7300hq 2.5ghz and 8gb of ram

IIRC (haven't done much mocap in 2.8 TBH) try one of the importer options to scale FPS such that the bvh action has one keyframe per frame, without a lot of inter frame keyframes. eg if bvh is 100fps and blender is 25fps you get 4 keyframes per frame, where 1 will do the trick.  Also don't have dope sheet open when playing.

I have been able to work-around the issue by reducing the graphical fidelity.

Recommend add more info to question.  Some screenshots and optionally the blendfile, the bvh. What is the playback for just an armature  in object or pose mode in 3d view (not in render mode), with no other editors open?.... lol started this comment an hour ago, didn't get around to posting. imagine having a VSE preview of the current scene open may slow it down somewhat.

IMHO, don't select rig (armature) (while playing) >> selection forces all other views (timeline) action panel etc to be updated (draw)  etc, which causes playback speed dramatical difference. (keys / curves) etc. goodluck

I found I could work around my issue by optimizing a few things. I want to stress that these are all to lighten the load of the CPU during playback and I have not found any way to make Blender's playback as reliably smooth as Mixamo's web player or Maya. I suspect this issue stems from how Blender's code handles hardware acceleration during playback. Something that would be far outside of my realm of expertise.
OPTIMIZING:
Models --

Merged Unconnected overlapping Faces(Merge by distance)
Remove Doubles
Tris to Quads
Apply Decimate modifier for a low res proxy model.
Erase nonessential faces from low poly proxy model

Viewport:

Use WorkBench
Shade Single if possible

Ui:

Remove as many panels as possible, this includes N and T menus.
Ctrl+alt+space to fullscreen for smoothest playback

Misc:

remove any VSE Preview panels
1a. If you need a vse preview panel, set it to the lowest resolution proxy settings

In Solid mode, with these changes I was able to go from 7 fps to 45 fps with my single character
In Eevee the difference was from 2fps to 14fps for the same scene.
Not a perfect solution but certainly a significant performance improvement, especially in solid mode.


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Fspy image not showing in wireframe mode

I'm using Fspy to model this kitchen. The picture on the left shows it in wireframe mode yesterday. As you can see, the image shows up behind the objects fine. Today I started modeling the chair. I don't know if I pressed a button or something to turn off the Fspy image. I attempted to re-import the Fspy file to see if that helps but it still doesn't show up. I'm new to Fspy and modeling at this level in blender. Any help would for sure be appreciated.

Maybe you've hidden the overlays, what does it give if you press Shift Alt Z?

Yes that was the issue. Thank you so much.

You've hidden the overlays, press ShiftAltZ or click on the button on the top bar:

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 get the texture segment that I have selected on an ico sphere
I am trying to split a planet texture into chunks and then put them onto a sphere in my game. However, I'm very new to blender and I'm not really sure how. I have UV unwrapped an Ico Sphere, and added a texture to it, but I don't know how to export the small bit of texture that I have selected, and how to export it as a whole image, not split up. Here is a screenshot of where I'm at:

(The game engine I'm using only allows meshes with up to 10k triangles, if anyone is wondering why I even want to do this)

So If I understand, all you need to do is just to separate bits of your sphere into different objects ti fit them into your game engine, you don't need to separate the corresponding bits of textures.
All you have to do is to select the part you want to separate like you did, then press P > Separate By Selection. It will separate the selected mesh into a new object. Repeat for each part you want.
Then you can export each object as is, they should have the same material using the same texture.
When importing in your game engine, make sure each imported piece uses the same material.

Ah ok, thank you for the help, I really appreicate it!

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


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ValueError "Testing not found" when trying to install CATS addon
I am trying to install the CATS addon. It appears as installed in the addons, but I can't activate it because of this 'Testing' not found error:

In short: The addon isn't compatible with Blender 3.6. Try v2.93 instead.

We can see in the addon's latest version release notes:

Fully compatible with Blender 2.93
Source: Release 0.19.0 · absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin

It doesn't mean that it will not work in more recent versions, but it does mean that it wasn't tested for it, and you might have issues.
In our case, the addon is trying to access the "Testing" addon category that was removed back in version 3.5 in think.
So either you wait for the addon's author to update the addon, or you use version 2.93 which you can find on Blender's website:
Blender 2.93 LTS — blender.org
Since the testing category was removed from v3.5, you might be able to try other 3.x versions, at your own risk.
Alternatively, if you feel comfortable with modifying the addon yourself:
Someone posted a pull request with a fix for v3.6 compatibility ;
Bump supported blender version to 3.6 by AraHaan · Pull Request #632 · absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin
You could try to download the modified files and see if it works for you on v3.6. There's no warranty of it working though.


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Question about Rigify's "Special" bones
everyone. I have a question about Rigify, sorry for terrible English.
The question is about bones in "Special" bone group, they have yellow wireframe.
For example, Rigify human rig has "chest" bone.
When I rotate this bone, "spine_fk.002" bone is rotated. No problem, I know why it is.

When I rotate "spine_fk.002" bone, "chest" bone is rotated. However, I can't find "chest" bone's dependency on "spine_fk.002". I think it has no constraint and is located at higher in hierarchy than "spine_fk.002" bone. Do anyone know why "chest" is rotated like this?

I want to know it and make this from scratch. Thank you!

Chest bone itself doesn't move.
You can see that if you remove custom shape:

But what really changes is the bone shape. Override transform is used to display bone in different place, while in reality it not depends on spine_fk.002 to avoid loop in parents errors:


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Blender 3.3 Invalid UV Map with Hair Curve object
I was trying to use the new hair feature of Blender 3.3.
I duplicated and separated the scalp of my model (⇧ ShiftD > P) and then added the Empty Hair object.
When I tried adding hair in Sculpt mode, I got the error Missing UV map for attaching curves on original surface, so I added a UV map named "UVMap".
I tried adding hair again, and now I have the error Invalid UV map: UV islands must not overlap.
I've tried unwrapping the UV map, but no luck there either...

When you have an object selected and go to Add mesh > Curves > Empty Hair, what it does under the hood is:

add an empty curve object;
set it as child of the object you had selected;
add a Geometry node modifier on the curve object;
set up the curve data to use the selected object's surface and active UV map.

If your object don't have a UV map already done, you need to create it, then select the curve object, go to:
Properties Editor > Curve Data tab > Surface Panel
Write the name of the UV map you created. By default, it's UVMap.
Your UVs must have no overlap. There is no secret to this, select your mesh object, switch to Edit mode, and in the UV Editor, make sure all islands are not overlapping and have a bit of space between each other:

After that, you should be able to select the curve object and switch to the sculpt mode to do your hair.


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My image Export fbx file not showing
I have added an image doing ⇧ Shift + A, then Image > Mesh Plane.  Then hit Z key, material preview, but when I go to Export FBX, my file is missing.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong
My steps that a teacher gave me in zoom class: ⇧ Shift + A > Image > Mesh Plane, select file png, then had to save and include _BR.png.
Did step to move image, then enlarge image, click File > Export > FBX, not seeing my file. I don't think its the same problem.

An image on a plane counts as a material in Blender. See FBX export why there are no materials or textures.

This question is similar to: FBX export why there are no materials or textures?. If you believe it’s different, please [edit] the question, make it clear how it’s different and/or how the answers on that question are not helpful for your problem.

What is the problem here? You don't see a file you haven't exported yet?


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What's Wrong with the color ramp?
The threshold is so low, and I can't really set anything besides these two states on the picture.
I'm trying to do a procedural material mouth rig, and now I'm at making the teeth.
The object is just a plane with 4 faces that I inset two times, and then I put a subdivision modifier on it without applying it to the object. I did everything exactly as I saw in the tutorial, so I have no idea what's wrong.
Mouth:

Mouth with teeth:

May I see the tutorial you used for reference?

Best advice I can give: Open a new file and start whatever tutorial you are watching over. This is how they are meant to be followed - if something goes wrong, do it again until you get it. If the tutorial is for the version of Blender you have and you are following it with factory settings loaded(File->Defaults-> Load Factory Settings) or settings the tutor tells you about, if you have a problem always assume you did something wrong, because that is what happens with beginners and tutorials in pretty much all cases. Don't worry - it's not a waste of time, you are learning.

Without knowing what this is supposed to do nor what it is supposed to look like vs what you have, we can't really help much. Please [edit] your question to show what you are aiming for, your tutorial source, maybe even share your file. You use the Object's texture coordinate, so anything you get from that depends on your object, including its origin position, orientation, scale and dimensions.

I managed to do it just a second ago!
I guess in the latest version putting the separate xyzzy vector to the object node of the texture coordinate doesn't work, but the generated does


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How to make holes in Sphere with good retopology?
I am trying to make a sphere with holes/bumps, with good retopology.
How to get sphere like in Picture?
Sphere with ~20 holes.
Without Boolean modificator.
I tried IcoSphere/Sphere with = Ctrl+B - V. But i get or 12 or 32-40 round holes.
But i need ~20 rounds/holes (+/- 2)

Hello, in your picture it looks more like bumps than holes

the holes must be inside... :D

@AlmasIskak You only have 2 choices of the regular solids ( Platonic Solids ). Either go with a Dodecahedron (20 vertices and bevel each vert with ctrl+shift+b) or the Icosahedron (20 faces and inset each face). Then use the same procedure as shown in Robin's answer. You can easily create a dodecahedron using the same addon used in this thread and the Icosahedron using Mesh > Ico Sphere with 1 level subdiv

The base topology of this looks to me like a Geodesic Dome, or Bucky-Ball. This can be reached vis the shipped Add Mesh: Geodesic Domes add-on, or by taking the dual mesh of a base Icosphere. The dual can be created in Geometry Nodes, or via the shipped Tissue add-on.
This shows the dual mesh, simply subdivided, and then with the central pole vertices CtrlShiftB bevelled out to inner faces:

The inner faces have further:

Had their edges Bevel Weight set to 1.
Have had the shipped Add-on: Loop Tools > Circle applied to them, with 'Radius' set, so they are all the same size.
Been assigned to a Vertex-Group ('Dome').

At this stage, the inset  faces were UV unwrapped, by 'Reset'. This means all those face's UV's are centered in the UV space, with the same area. The remaining faces were scaled to 0 in a corner.
The faces were then repeatedly I inset (with a further I to set 'Individual')
I found 2 vertex-groups helped keep control, one for the raised domes (left), and the other for the region of the mesh supposed to remain spherical:

Now the rest can be done with modifiers.

A Cast > Sphere modifier, open to adjustment further down the line, possibly aimed at the second vertex-group, above
A Displace modifier, aimed at the left group, above, using a Blend > Spherical texture, in the space of the reset UV Map
A Bevel modifier, by the edge-bevel weights we set earlier, to sharpen the edges of the domes, where they meet the sphere
A Subdivision Surface modifier.

The result, and its topology:

Hi Robin I added a gif on how to create the dome I hope I didn't make a mistake, for the newbies to see detailed steps.

Hi! Thank U very much,i really appreciate it!  But u see, there are 40 bumps/holes in this model. But before i mentioned, i need ~20 bumps/holes (+/- 2).  I made exactly this before, and get or 12 or 40 bumps/holes. So there is a problem in amount of bumps... ((

@AlmasIskak You only have 2 choices of the regular solids ( Platonic Solids ). Either go with a Dodecahedron (20 vertices and bevel each vert with ctrl+shift+b) or the Icosahedron (20 faces and inset each face). Then use the same procedure as shown in Robin's answer. You can easily create a dodecahedron using the same addon used in this thread and the Icosahedron using Mesh > Ico Sphere with 1 level subdiv

@HarryMcKenzie, with Dodecaherdron (12) i get 12 faces. Beveling it add not round faces Icosahedron has 12 faces...no 20 (

@AlmasIskak .... please read my comment again carefully and analyze properly :)

@RobinBetts Here another example using the Dodecahedron with 20 bumps as well. Can you provide more details on the Spherical texture for the displacement? Can't get it to work as nice and spherical as yours.

@HarryMcKenzie that's a Blend -> Spherical texture, put through a colour-ramp to cheat the curvature. But with a regular solid, it's maybe more easily, although more destructively, possible with prop. editing, rather than Displacement modifier,  since all faces identical? Go ahead and do it in 2 ridiculously simple moves :D ..

Hi, @AlmasIskak  This is the best I've managed so far. Still shows very slight pinching under Subdiv. It started with an icosahedron . I got tired of getting Cast to be predictable, so made my own little  GN version.. feeling my way through, hard to make into a concise answer. Here it is: https://blend-exchange.com/b/KAwrD0V5/


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"System is out of GPU and shared host memory" when rendering
Im trying to Render a simple Building with cycles. My Render settings and some statistics you can see below. Is it enough if I upgrade my RAM because my graphics card is actually very good and I don't want to buy a new one again. Or what would help here?
RTX 3070 Ti, i9-12900k 32GB 3200MHz RAM

My hardware should be able to render such simple things or not. (sorry I'm still a beginner)

You haven't asked any questions. It seems you have too much stuff in your scene for it to fit into memory. It doesn't really matter if the stuff is simple, there is too much of it.

@MartynasŽiemys do you think upgrading to 64gb ram would help? Also, I just found out that my CPU can do the rendering, but it takes a while.

@user148905 Have you tried restarting your computer? Then open Blender and do a render. It works for me when it happens during projects. Also, can you share your .blend file? It would probably help to check what is the problem.

Also, try enabling spatial splits if it doesn't work after the restart. What resolution textures are you using?  Sharing the .blend file will help us find the solution

Which version of Blender are you using? Get the 3.2 Beta if you don't have it and use the render noise threshold set to .1 or .2
Often having the CPU enabled as a rendering device will actually slow it down. Test it yourself to see in your scenario.
Check the size of your textures. You should be using 1-4K texture maps for the majority of materials unless you're really close to the object. Same for the world shader.
Use optix denoising for viewport, and OIDN for rendering. (low/fast vs high/slow 0quality denoising)
Set render feature set to experimental and try adaptive subdivision. Is your subdiv/displacement optimized?
What are your light paths in the render properties set to? Press delete on all of them to set them to default.
Is your grass scattering optimized/instanced properly?
Disable objects or groups of objects and see what provides the most performance gain when disabled.
It looks like your geometry count is low for your hardware spec so I'm gonna geuss it's your texture size. Increasing your ram wont help much, the problem is your GPUs VRAM.Wait till next gen(hopefully mid July) and get one with more than 8GB.
Before trying to render leave material preview shading(wireframe ideally) and then render. This way more memory isn't held up from material preview mode when it wants to access it for rendering.
Your hardware is more than capable. You should also get the latest Nvidia Studio driver.


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Having Problems with exporting to fbx
For some reason my Blender Exports doesnt work fine and this is not the first project with this issues some Objects are overlapping, missing or Faces of Objects are visible.

hello, typically the kind of problem you can have is inverted normals, have you checked the normals in Blender? Also make sure you don't have overlapping faces or vertices?

If I flip normals suddenly it's even weirder in Blender nothing overlaps. I have a feeling that extruded planes don't work properly, as well as already accepted Bolean modifiers

please share one of your dysfonctional object: https://blend-exchange.com/

@moonboots I uploaded it there a few days ago, can I see somewhere that it worked?

Once uploaded you need to share the link here

@moonboots ok done

First you need to recalculate the normals (and not Flip Normals): shortcut Shift N. Also, remove the doubles (M > Merge by Distance).


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Why is it whenever i render my object the shadows disappear?
Whenever I render my donut the shadows disapear, even when im in camera mode (ctrl+alt+0), but the shadows are casted just fine when I use viewport shading. (I'm completely new to blender)

maybe you've disabled a light for render, check the Outliner settings

Nope, but found the problem, i had selected my light as local camera...

But appreciate the quick answer, it led me to the solution:-)

@daskbosse If you want to switch to camera view, the shortcut is Numpad 0 (Ctrl + Alt + Numpad 0 is to align the camera to the viewport view, which means you will always change your camera's location and rotation if you use this shortcut). I guess what you have done is, you forgot the Alt key and just clicked Ctrl + Numpad 0 while you had the light selected. This shortcut is "Set Active Object As Camera". You can see in your screenshots that the shadow is there, but behind the donut in view direction (because you're viewing from the location of the light as you already found out).


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Transform cube face in the z up direction to vertice above (need automation method)
My scene currently has 2 objects in it from imported gis data sets.

The first object contains a series of cubes, think building shapes.
The second object contains a series of vertices that define the z up height. One vertice for each cube and is roughly placed in the center of each cube top face (building elevation)

Question:
What would be the fastest method to snap a cube top face to the above vertice if you had a few hundred cubes? (The snap to vertex is not workable because of the number of verts in the scene)
I have seen a drop to the ground script for objects so I think there may be addon for gis data out there?
Thanks in advance

A picture would clarify it. Are the cubes all the same? Are the vertices really snapped to the top of the cubes, not the bottom?

You may be asking for the DupliVerts feature.
In this case, the general steps would be:

Move the origin of the cube to the center of its top face;
First select the cube, then select the vertex cloud object, press CTRL P > Object;
Keep the parent object (vertex cloud) selected, go to Properties > Object Data > Duplication, select 'Verts". As shown in the image below.

P.S.: Remember to keep their origins staying at same location.

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


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Script skew camera in game engine
I want to make my camera to act like my illustration below with just some python scripting, because I want this to be changed during runtime. This is for a school project.
I'm very sceptic if this is possible, but I hope so.
The orhtographic illustration is from the back of two cameras with images below, where the left is regular and the other one is modified. The two images on the bottom is the desired result.

This is for a kind of "point of view" tweaking. Like if you were looking on the image from the side, it would still appear as it was facing you.
If this does not work, then maybe my next idea is possible.
This is two cameras from the top view where the right one is modified.

Thanks!

There is no built-in functionality for that. However, You can setup a custom camera view matrix using a bit of Python.
import bge
scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
cam = scene.active_camera
# get projection matrix
camatrix = cam.projection_matrix
#modifying the camera projection matrix by modifying the x and y terms of the 3rd row to obtain a shift of the rendered area
camatrix[2][0] = 2*shiftx
camatrix[2][1] = 2*shitfy
cam.projection_matrix = camatrix

See this for detail.

That was the only solution I found! Just forgot to add my own answer! But you're correct and your code works. It was actually the result I was looking for.

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


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How to add vertex precisely at crossing edges?
Let's forget 3D for a while and imagine it all happens in 2D.
I have two edges that are crossing each other, they are on exactly the same plane when it comes to Z axis (z-dimension is thus not important). How do I add a common vertex to those two edges precisely in the spot where they cross each other?
For example:

you are right, btw. I found tinyCAD addon the most helpful solution, thanks

@jubi Could you add an additional answer on tinyCAD to http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2976/add-point-to-intersection-of-two-edges ?

@stacker sure, I added it


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How to append parent object from an external file including all the children?
I would like to append a very complicated hierarchy tree from another file. The file has multi-level parent-children relations and I'd like to append the whole structure just by appending it's main parent object. The hierarchy should be maintained after appending.
I don't want to manually select among the hundreds of objects those belonging to the hierarchy tree and I don't want to use Groups. Is there a way to do it?

Why don't you want to use groups?

Solution with groups requires messing with source files and I'd like to avoid that if possible

I asked around and a user JA12 on #blender irc channel suggested me the following:

Open up the source scene, select the parent object in the Outliner with Ctrl+Left Click, that will select all levels of children as well
Use Ctrl+C (Copy) while those objects are selected, that will copy the selection to the buffer
Close the source scene and open up the destination scene
Press Ctrl+V (Paste)

Note: Copy Attributes Add-on prevents default copy action.

Unfortunately does not work. Get an error No buffer to paste from.

It definitely does work, I tried it in 2.75 and 2.73. Please check if you have "Copy Attributes" addon enabled, that prevents default CTRL+C action to be executed and remaps it to addon-specific menu. If yes, disable it. All addons that remap CTRL+C or CTRL+V shortcut to different action will cause this solution to fail.

Yes "Copy Attributes" enabled. Thanks

Alternatively, use groups:

Open the source .blend file.
Select the entire hierarchy (see step 1 https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/33300/29270).
Create a new group.
Add the selection to the new group.
Now save the source .blend file.
Open the destination .blend file.
Now append the newly created group from the source .blend file.

I specifically said in the original question that I don't want to use groups.


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How to control which edges are selected after beveling operation is complete?
In 02:05 of this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU6fYiujrlI&t=2m05s
some edges are beveled multiple times. However, when I try to do the same in Blender, after finishing my fist bevel, the selected edges include short in-between edges, and not only the edges parallel to the bevel.
What I'm getting:

What should the after-bevel selection look like according to the video:

I have to manually de-seclect everything and re-select only the edges I want to bevel again, while in the beforementioned video that is not the case. How do I achieve the same behaviour of the bevel tool like in the video?

Holding down Alt and clicking one of the long edges to select will select the entire loop.  Then holding shift+Alt+click on each additional edge will select everything there.  This would only 4 mouse clicks.

@MarcClintDion However in the video there are substantially more edges.

That video was made with an older version of blender (2.64). You can now do pretty much the same thing faster by beveling (⎈ CtrlB) and then using the scroll wheel or the numbers on the keyboard to set the number of cuts:

Or you could deselect the edge rings with ⎈ Ctrl⇧ Shift⎇ Alt RMB:

Not exactly an optimal solution, but I don't think this is possible without using an older version of blender..

While your solution is a good idea, the former, manual multiple beveling method allows a greater degree of control. In some situations even spacing of beveled edges is not desired.


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How can I set image textures per instances using geometry nodes?
I'm trying to set image textures per instances using geometry nodes.
I could get ids of instances and set colors per instances.
But I don't know how to set image textures.
Any ideas?

Crantisz. Thank you for your idea.
I tried it but I couldn't set UVMap correctlly.
But I find the way in an article below.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/241507/where-is-a-proper-way-to-get-back-uv-map-after-realize-instances

You can do this by using a bunch of mix RGB nodes (example with 4 images):


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Why is my Render coming out grey and flat?
I followed a Youtube video to make a disco ball from a mesh UV sphere. It looks great until I go into rendered and then it just looks grey and flat. Do you know what i'm doing wrong?
[Rendered Image

Need more details, like which renderer are you using, a screenshot of the material node setup and the world nodes.

Also see https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/170533/which-mode-should-i-trust-for-lighting

Since your disco ball is made up of mirrors, it is mirroring your perfectly grey world...perfectly.  Thus: a grey ball.
I recommend moseying over to PolyHaven (formerly HDRI haven, https://polyhaven.com/hdris ) and choosing an appropriate HDRI map that you can add to your background.  This way, your mirror ball will have something nice to reflect. Once you have one, go into the shading tab, change Object to World in the node tab, and set it up like this:

Thank you @kirbinator !! You might have noticed im very new to Blender, super appreciate your help!


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Lighting is too bright and cant seem to make it work
Blender newbie here. I recently finished the donut tutorial (I know, I know, but its actually helped me a lot). I'm trying to follow the tutorial again, but with my own object (a cupcake). I'm having some problems with the light, I've deleted it multiple times and tried again but its still super bright. There is also no shadow on the plane. Does anyone know how I can fix this? Thought I'd try here before redoing it. Thanks

did you try to decrease the power? to e.g. 1 W ? If you wanna have an accurate answer pls provide blend file, so we can help you out. This could have different reasons. To upload your blend file just open https://blend-exchange.com/ and follow instructions.

Hi Please use a title that reflects the content of the question. It should be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the issue so that users can at a glance understand what your post is about. Use the [edit] link below your post and avoid anything not strictly essential to the post. Remember, your title is the first thing potential visitors will see, and makes your question findable for future users. See "What is the problem with posting an image or link and asking “How do I do this?""

@Chris Thank you for your response, I've attached the blend file (and thank you for showing me how to do that!) as 1 W still seems off.

weird because it's not too bright for me

ok the main issue might be only because your light is pretty near to your donut. So either you can move your light more far away or your enter in lighting power e.g. a 0.1 so you get this:

if i move your light to this location:

i got this result, even with 10 W power:

thank you so so much! I really appreciate it!

if my answer helped you, pls click on the checkmark left of my answer. thx

The main problem here is not only the distance from the cupcake, but also the size. The Watt values for lights are trying to recreate realistic lighting which means, the size of things matters a lot, too.
Your cupcake has a diameter of about 0.016 m, that's just 1.6 cm which is quite small. So you have a very tiny cupcake with a light source very close to it. So this is how the render looks on my computer:

But if I take all objects including the camera and scale them by 5, so that they all get bigger while remaining in the same relation to each other, suddenly the 1 W light isn't so bright anymore. It is still very close to the cupcake, though. The cupcake is now 8 cm in diameter, maybe a bit too large now but you get the idea:

That's why one of the tips which Blenderguru Andrew always gives for realistic renders is: use real world dimensions.

Thank you! Simple error, but you taught me something!

@sarm Seemingly not enough to accept the answer :D


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How to export scenes with many materials for one mesh
Suppose I have this scene with some cubes sharing the same mesh but assigned different materials per object. And I would like to import this scene into unreal using fbx

Unreal generates a static mesh for each cube. Is there any way to make unreal import only one static mesh and assign different materials for each instance of it in the imported scene?

This is more of an UE5 question than a Blender question. I'm not sure about where to find this option in UE5, but in the UE4 static mesh import dialog there's a checkbox called "Combine Meshes" that I think is what you're looking for.

Or you could use an object info node's random output attached with a colour ramp to get the different colours...


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How would you model a wheel type shape like this on top of a sphere?

I can't wrap my head around it. I just combined two shapes now (the grid thing in the middle is created from an svg file) I need to know how to model something like that from scratch.

Create a circle with a triangle fan, select all the radial edges, and then checker deselect with settings so that the spokes of the wagon wheel as it were are deselected. Do a limited dissolve. Select all, and use inset faces with individual turned on. More explanation in an answer…

This seems trivial to achieve, what have you tried and where exactly are you having difficulties? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/256405/modeling-complicated-wheel https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/259044/modeling-complicated-wheel-2 https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/216018/connecting-these-two-meshes-together

I just thought a little bit and found a solution. So its all good.


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How to make fluid settle
I've created an animation of wine pouring into a glass, the problem is after the simulation is done and the fluid still splashes outside and goes over itself in the glass. I want it to slowly settle down after the pour is complete

provide your blend file please

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YhjdejZwULue3yyxs3X_vXkY1LtAQ3Ko/view?usp=sharing, Here's the link to download the file. Thanks for the help :)

normally you share the blend file with https://blend-exchange.com/ . I would load your file from google, if you wouldn't have set request access for it. So i will not look at it.

Opps my bad, i did not check the restricted part. I just tried uploading on blend-exchange but the file size is over 30 mb. I generated another link from my drive for the file, this time with no request access. Sorry for last time. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mQK08xDBHUuNTdt6t5lGvXXqUAmJ3r1C?usp=sharing

actually, I re-ran your simulation and I don't have any "slurping" over the edge of the glass.  The glass is rather full.  One thing you can consider i the Domain Diffusion section is the Surface Tension and viscosity, which can have an effect. Resolution below 100 can be another source of inaccuracy.   Also I often have to drop Liquid :: Particle_Radius below 1.0 for better outcomes.


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How can I animate a pipe by having 2 color rings pass along it, and have the rings rotate at the corners following the direction of the pipe?
How can I animate a pipe by having 2 color rings pass along it, and have the rings rotate at the corners following the direction of the pipe?
I have tried doing it with a Separate XYZ node attached to a ColorRamp,
but that leaves me with 1 axis to choose from. When I try the Combine XYZ node with 3 ColorRamp nodes (one for each axis) in between the two XYZ nodes, it does not work.
Check the last image, the rings should follow the pipe horizontally. How do I animate switching from the x-axis while keeping the initial movement on it?
Initial position:

1st stage of animation:

2nd stage of animation, the problem stage, the rings should rotate on the corner moving along the pipe:

Update:
Chris had posted a solution with a curve. The reply is much appreciated, unfortunately, I am working with a mesh (of different thicknesses), not with a curve. The pipe here is simply an example to showcase the problem. But the effect Chris posted is the one I am seeking to apply to my mesh.
Desired effect:

I think you'll need to show us what kind of mesh. In principle, it should be possible to use the U of a UV map.

You can unwrap your mesh with the Follow Active Quads option (you need to select one of the pipe face before):

Then create this chain of nodes (plug a (Texture) Gradient Texture into a (Converter) ColorRamp:

Keyframe the X Location (or Y) of the Mapping node:

It worked! I really appreciate the reply and the entire community here!


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adding modifier input with python API in 4.0
I'd like to create a geometry nodes modifier and add an input parameter (in this case a material) using the python API. I am able to create the node group and add a Set Material node with:
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_monkey_add()
monkey = bpy.context.active_object
modifier = monkey.modifiers.new(type="NODES", name="base_object")

group = bpy.data.node_groups.new("Geometry Nodes", 'GeometryNodeTree')

input_node = group.nodes.new('NodeGroupInput')
output_node = group.nodes.new('NodeGroupOutput')
input_node.location.x = -200 - input_node.width
output_node.location.x = 200

group.interface.new_socket('Geometry', in_out='INPUT', socket_type='NodeSocketGeometry')
group.interface.new_socket('Geometry', in_out='OUTPUT', socket_type='NodeSocketGeometry')

modifier.node_group = group
material_node = modifier.node_group.nodes.new('GeometryNodeSetMaterial')

I would now like to add the connection circled in this image (which I for now have to add via the UI):
In 3.x.x I would do this with
modifier.node_group.inputs.new("NodeSocketMaterial", "Point Color")
modifier.node_group.links.new(modifier.node_group.nodes['Group Input'].outputs['Point Color'], material_node.inputs['Material'])

But that does not work in 4.0. Any pointer to how to accomplish this in the current version would be appreciated!

You have to use the following line to create the new input instead:
modifier.node_group.interface.new_socket('Point Color', socket_type='NodeSocketMaterial')


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Is it possible to export a keyframed Geometry Nodes object to GLTF and keep the animation?
I have an animated GN setup that just has one value keyframed, that I want to use in a ThreeJS project. I got to the point where it successfully exports the geometry into the gltf file, but it isn't animated.
When the gltf file is imported again it has two keyframes at the start and end just like the original project but they don't change nor animate anything. Is this possible and maybe I'm just missing something? Or should I approach it differently?
This is a simplified video of what I want to export:

If this isn't possible with geometry nodes I am open to using a different method, but so far the GN setup gives me the most control and I would like to keep that

Anything other than object transform and mesh deformed by either an armature or shape keys is almost never supported by exchange formats and other softwares. The only reliable formats for dynamic meshes are Alembic and USD. But these formats are not supported by every software. Alembic is more present in VFX industry, while USD comes from feature film animation. That being said, your animation could be done with bones that follow a curve, which itself can probably be shaped Geometry Nodes, but that isn't in my skill set, so I will leave that part of the answer to other people.

Maybe you can check this topic for how to deform a chain of bones from a cruve or mesh: animation - Line of Bones to Travel and Conform to Curve (Train or snake following path) - Blender Stack Exchange

Probably the best way to do it - build model using javaScript in TreeJS


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Why does the face look weird after inset and shade smooth?
i am trying my first thing without a tutorial. I am beginner. Im making this stove and i want to add a little bump on the side. I inset this face, then inset again and raised it a little. After I shade smooth, the rest of the face ends up looking weird. I would appreciate a lesson :)

Pictures:

You need to apply the scale to that object in Object mode. Press the N key which will bring up the R/H properties bar and then click the Item tab (arrowed). You'll see that the Scale of the object isn't the same in each direction.

Hilight the object and hit Ctrl-A which will bring up the Apply menu. Select Scale and the scale will change to 1.000 for X, Y and Z and the shading on your object will now be correct.

This is important both for insetting faces and using the Bevel modifier in this case.

Ok Great! So it's always a good rule of thumb to apply scale?

Yes! Read through the answers here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/28558/scaling-in-object-and-edit-mode

Thanks for this reference and answer, I learned something!


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Parenting with ctrl+p doesn't work in one specific file
I'm learning how to animate in Blender, after many years animating in Maya, and I came across a weird problem the first time I tried to make a character hold a cellphone.
I found a tutorial that teaches how to rig an object so it can be animated with the character in pose mode. It was basically create a single bone armature and use the ctrl+p to make the object be parented to the bone. I followed the steps, but it didn't work.
I then created 2 other objects to verify if my method of parenting was incorrect, and it didn't work again.
I opened a new file an tried to parent 2 object with the same method and in this other file it worked. It just doesn't work in the file I need it to work.
When I try to parent any 2 objects in that specific file what I get is a dotted line between th 2 objecs, but both objects can be movd freely as if none of them weren't parented to the other.
What may have happened to this file that is preventing the parenting to work?
By the way, I'm using Blender 3.6

Dotted lines is relationship lines, meaning one is parent of the other. Now, depending what else you did to these objects, or your interaction mode, the parenting might not work as you expected. For exampe, did you parent the mesh object to the armature object or to the bone? You coming from Maya, I guess that's the biggest difference you will meet: joints are objects in maya, bones in Blender are elements of the Armature object. So if you parented the mesh object to the armature, it's normal for the bone to not affect the mesh object.

The detailed process I did was:
(in Object Mode)
SHIFT+A >> Armature - (It gives me a single bone)
Still on object mode I click on the object fist, then in that single bone, CTRL+P,
click on "Keep transform without inverse"
and it works perfectly. Bot only in other files, not in the file I need it to work.
In that file, not only parenting anythin with this bone is impossible, but also is impossible to parent ano other 2 objects.
And even in this file where it works, it only works in object mode, I need to be able to manipulate thsis object in pose mode.

The procedure you describe would parent your object to the armature object, not the bone element. In which case, it is normal if nothing happens in Pose mode. You should either use Armature Deform With Automatic Weights or Bone Relative if you have only one bone, or if you switched to pose mode and selected the bone you want to parent to.

What I tried to do now:
In a new file, not in the file I need it to work, I created a cube, then I created an armature , both with shift+a, then I clicked first on the  cube, it doesn't alowed me to switch to pose mode yet, so I, holding shift clicked on the armature, switched to pose mode, and in pose mode I pressed ctrl+ P. I the moved the bone in the pose mode and nohing happened to the cube. I stwitched to object mode and moving the armture te cube moved together.

Sorry, I Hadn't seen the whole answer with the screenshots and everyhing, now I saw and it worked in the test file, I'll rty in the real file to see if it happens therm since inthat file no kind of parenting is working, which is weird.

Oops sorry, i forgot to mention I was going to post an answer with the details x) if it still doesn't work, please upload your file on Blend-Exchange and share the link here so that we can check what's going on.

Your explanation is very good, but I still have some issues. The object I'm trying to parent to a bone is actually a combination of many parts. Maybe I need to do something to make all of tem one single thing or something like that, because now only a tiny part of it is following the bone, not th whole thing. I'll upload the file then. The 2 objects in there are linked objects, should I upload alll ofthem o only the blend file I'm working on? I still don't understand so well how these .blend files work yet.

Having multiple objects doesn't change the thing, just select all of them before the armature and it works the same. However, I don't think you can rig linked objects as is. You'll need to make a library override on it to be able to regain some control on it. I edited my answer for that.

I think it's similar to Maya's references if I'm not wrong? I don't think you can skin referenced objects to a rig. But you can reference the rig to which you want to skin objects on, or the whole finished rigged model.

Yeah,the only difference between maya's reference ad Blender's link is that i maya we dont need to tell the software to override, it just assumes.  I did it here, but it still only works in some parts, not everything. I think there is something wrong with this file because parenting in general doesn't work o it while still works in other files.  There must be something I need to clean up in this file, maybe some node, or some code.

This is the file:

Got the file, managed to parent without issues, just a bit of cleanup needed to get things working smoothly. Editing my answer.

I don't think you can rig linked objects as is. You'll need to make a library override on it to be able to regain some control on it.
You can do that from the outliner >  RMB > library override > make > selected:

But you won't be able to edit vertex weights: it's linked data after all. But it will be enough if you don't need to adjust them. No problems with bone parenting though.

Cleanup
Before doing anything in your file, let's cleanup a bit, lots of your mesh objects have multiple Armature Deform modifiers and even transform animation data which I am pretty sure isn't meant to be here.
Selecting the objects
From the outliner, RBM the Cellular collection that contains your mesh object, click Select Objects to select them all, and finally ⎈ Ctrl LMB one of these objects to make it active.
Clearing animation
To remove everything, you can use the F3 searchbar and look for the "Remove Animation" operator.

Alternatively, if you want to decide precisely which parts of animation to keep, you could do the following:
In the viewport sidebar, hover your mouse over the Location channels, press ⇧ Shift⎇ AltI to clear all these channels' keyframes or  RMB > Clear Keyframes or Clear Single Keyframe to target a specific channel.
Repeat on any channel you like.
You may also want to apply the scale ("Freeze" scale in Maya), it might avoid transformation issues down the line. For that, ⎈ CtrlA > Apply Scale.
To propagate these changes from the active object to all the selection (not needed if you used the Remove Animation operator), press ⎈ CtrlL > Link Animation Data.
Clearing modifiers
In Properties Editor > Modifiers Tab, delete all modifiers you see.
To propagate to the selection, press ⎈ CtrlL > Copy Modifiers
Armature Parenting
Maya treats "joints" as objects. Blender's bones are elements inside the Armature object. Parenting anything to the armature object will not allow you to animate it with the bones in pose mode.
To do that, there's a few different way:
Automatic Weights
Select the object to parent, then the armature object, and press ⎈ CtrlP > Armature Deform - With Automatic Weights:

This will parent the mesh object to the armature object, but also add an Armature Deform modifier which will allow the bones to deform the mesh depending on the individual bones' weights:

Since you asked automatic weights, Blender created vertex groups for each bone of the armature and tried to automatically assign the nearest geometry.
This is the most common and most flexible way to rig anything.
Bone parenting
Select the object to parent, then the armature object.
If you have multiple bones in your armature, press ↹ Tab to switch into Pose Mode, select the bone you want to parent to, and press ⎈ CtrlP > Bone or Bone Relative (keeps the offset). If you have only one bone in the armature, you can already parent as above:

This will make a regular parent relationship, which you can also see in the object's property tab:

It's less common than weights outside very simple rigs, or proxy rigs.
Bone Envelopes
Select the object to parent, then the armature object, and press ⎈ CtrlP > Armature Deform - With Envelope Weights:

Parents to the armature, adds the Armature Deform modifier, but deforms according to the bone's envelope shape which you can enable here:


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Cloth Sim not Rendering
I'm working on a cloth simulated shirt, and for a while I had it working. However, whenever I render it, the cloth does nothing, it stays floating in the air.
I've searched for answers on this, I tried deleting double vertices, making the subdivision modifier's viewport and render levels the same, but nothing works.
I made sure the cloth sim modifier has the rendering enabled, I'm not in edit mode, I feel like I've tried just about everything.
I have the render and .blend files attached here:

have you baked your simulation ?

I've tried but that doesn't seem to help the render.

yeah the bake is just the shirt mesh floating

You mentioned you had it working, is it supposed to work in your blend file?

no, the blend file is what I have now.

if I had a working blend file, I would have just used that instead of asking the question.

No need to be abrasive, we're trying to help here. The way you phrased your post made me think you had something functional in viewport but not in render.

sorry about that, I'm just a little frustrated.

The problem is probably a few "duplicated" vertices (or better vertices that are too close together). If you do a Merge By Distance with 0.001 m then 3 vertices will be removed and the simulation will work again. I also would apply the Mirror modifier, plus Scale & Rotation as noted in the answer below.

Yes! this fixed it! thank you so much!

The sewing process of the cloth simulation needs Self Collisions to work. Without it, the simulation basically can't make the vertices of the cloth interact with each other, they can only interact with other objects with collisions enabled.
Start by enabling Self Collisions here:

You should already have a functional simulation just with that. All that's left to do is playing with the parameters to get the look you want. I'm not an expert in that, so I'll leave it there.

On another note, a few advices to avoid issues down the line:
You model is over 2 meters high, it's quite tall for a human being. Just to give you an idea, this is a cube of 1.73m height and 43cm large/wide, which is an average human dimension:

Since you are doing physics simulations, measures matter. You are not too far out of scale, so it might not be that troublesome to keep it like this, but I advise you to scale that character down.
I'd advise applying the mirror modifier as well as the Rotation and Scale via ⎈ CtrlA > Scale to avoid further issues.
Also consider lightening your mesh. Fewer polygons are faster to do physics simulations on.

that's odd. It was doing fine for a while without self collisions. it only started recently.

I was trying as much as possible not to do self collisions because my computer isn't very powerful

reduce the mesh density of both your cloth mesh and collision mesh, it will help a lot in that regard.

And maybe also consider not using cloth sim at all. I don't think your character needs it.

I want the sleeves to flop around when she moves her arms.


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How do I Reset Timings on a set of absolute shape keys from python?
I have written some python to create a set of absolute shape keys:
import bpy
import bmesh
import math

def vert1For(u, t):
    return [ 0, u, 0]

def vert2For(u, t, dTheta, z1):
    theta1 = dTheta * math.sin(t+u*0.4)
    return [ math.sin(theta1)*z1, u, math.cos(theta1)*z1]

def vert3For(u, t, dTheta, z2, thetaLag):
    theta2 = dTheta * math.sin(t+u*0.4-thetaLag)
    return [ math.sin(theta2)*z2, u, math.cos(theta2)*z2]

def makeMesh(name, nSegs, z1, z2, dTheta, thetaLag):
    mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(name)
    verts = []
    faces = []
    for u in range(0,nSegs+1):
        v1=len(verts)
        verts.append( vert1For(u,0) )
        verts.append( vert2For(u,0,dTheta, z1) )
        verts.append( vert3For(u,0,dTheta, z2, thetaLag) )
        if (u>0):
            v2 = v1+1
            v3 = v1+2
            v4 = v1+3
            v5 = v1+4
            v6 = v1+5
            faces.append( [ v1, v4, v5, v2] )
            faces.append( [ v2, v5, v6, v3] )
    mesh.from_pydata(verts, [], faces)
    mesh.validate(True)
    mesh.show_normal_face = True

    return mesh

def addShapeKey(obj, i, nKeys, z1, z2, dTheta, thetaLag):
    kn = "phase %d"%i
    sk = obj.shape_key_add(kn)
#    sk.value = 0
#    sk.frame = i/nKeys
#    sk.frame = i*i/(nKeys*nKeys) # crazy version
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_mesh(obj.data)
    sl = bm.verts.layers.shape.get(kn)

    for u in range( math.floor(len(bm.verts) / 3)):
        t = math.pi*2*i/nKeys
        bm.verts[u*3][sl] = vert1For(u, t)
        bm.verts[u*3+1][sl] = vert2For(u, t, dTheta, z1)
        bm.verts[u*3+2][sl] = vert3For(u, t, dTheta, z2, thetaLag)

    bm.to_mesh(obj.data)

dTheta = 0.8
thetaLag = 0.2
z1 = 2
z2 = 3
mesh = makeMesh("fin", 40, z1, z2, dTheta, thetaLag)

obj = bpy.data.objects.new("fin", mesh)
bpy.context.scene.objects.link(obj)

sk0 = obj.shape_key_add("Basis")
print(sk0)
sk0 = obj.data.shape_keys
print(sk0)
sk0.use_relative = False
nKeys = 11;
for i in range(1,nKeys):
    addShapeKey(obj, i, nKeys, z1, z2, dTheta, thetaLag)

# This next bit does not actually work, and I'm not sure why.  That's why pretty much everything in bpy.ops should be avoided.
obj.select = True
bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj
print("retime")
bpy.ops.object.shape_key_retime()

Unfortunately, absolute shape keys are incomplete when you create them, whether from python or the UI.  The only way to make them work is to give their secret .frame property a value, and since that secret property is read-only in python the only way I know to do that is to use the Reset Timing button to invoke bpy.ops.object.shape_key_retime().
Unfortunately, I do not know how to set the UI state such that a python call to bpy.ops.object.shape_key_retime() will work the same as clicking it from the UI. (and this is why I generally avoid bpy.ops like the plague)
What extra python calls are necessary to finalize the state of the object so that no extra user interaction is necessary?  When I run the above code, the shape keys panel is even missing important bits of its UI until I click one of the shape keys in the list.


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UV Mapping Doesn't Display in UV/Image_Editor
I've gone through tutorials and get the UV Mapping to work when testing on a simple block. However, when trying this on a bigger model, the UV Mapping won't display in the UV/Image_Editor. The Eiffel Tower model is all one mesh and I select Smart UV Project. Any suggestions.

@RayMairlot Sorry about that... I actually saw this post and was still having issues!

@user3356901 The render result is being displayed in the UV editor (even though there isn't one). Press the X next to the the box which says "render result" at the bottom of the image editor.

That is because at the bottom of the image editor, you are viewing the render result.  Click the X to the right of the image selection box or select another image and you should be able to see the unwrapped pelt.


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How do you set the default font for a new text object?
Whenever I add a text object it always defaults to Bfont. How do I change that? I have not seen any settings in the user preferences. (However there is a setting to change the UI font.)

Impossible as said in the comment, but you can set the default font path in the user preferences so that it is shorter to change

I know it's not a good solution, but you can always set a new font and use a Fake User. Everytime you open Blender the new font'll be there.


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Why do I have problems with unwrapping and AO baking?
I have created a rough model of a corrugated iron roof. I need to unwrap it, and then create some shadow maps. However when I DO unwrap it, it looks, extra weird. Just pieces all over the place in the UV image.
And the lamp stops casting any shadows when I set ambient occlusion in my environment.
I followed this : https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Ambient-Occlusion-for-Blender-tuts/m-p/2876281#M30051
And it did not work for me.
What do I do ?

"smart uv project" (as in the tutorial of your link) is supposed to decompose your model face by face preserving their relative surface so. What did you obtained ? Can you show a picture of all that or share your blend file here http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Two questions here :
Concerning the UV map it is normal that you obtain "pieces all over the place" when you choose to unwrap with "smart uv project". Some simple explanation are given in this answer : How to UV unwrap complex models?
For the ambient occlusion, it is also normal that AO checked here in your tutorial
makes your shadows lowered or inexistant.
AO will illuminate the environment and make so cavities are darker but also the parts most exposed to the environment lighter. Think about it as if the environment light was stronger than your lamp light.
As Second Life shading works differently from Blender shading, I suggest that you mix your textures (shadow, AO and diffuse) in an image editor tool (like Gimp or equivalent) and import the combined result directly to SL as a diffuse texture.

I just wanted to say thank you. I know you posted a reply a while ago. i forgot this websites name. My roof looks, amazing so thank you again =D


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Make a mesh be pure light?
maybe strange question but is it anyhow possible making a mesh be just light? So if I turn down emission it would just disappear until I crank it up again?
Thanks for your attention

maybe this? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/17910/how-to-make-a-cycles-light-emisson-object-invisible-to-the-camera

Umm nope, that sadly makes it disappear completely but thanks anyway. :)

With this setting (Cycles), the object will be pure light for an emission above 1, a mix between transparency and light for an emission between 0 and 1, and purely transparent below:

Or could use an Add shader instead of the mix so it's always transparent and then just vary the emission. This would differ in that it would allow light through regardless of the brightness of the emission and so would not cast a shadow and effectively just be pure light..

@RichSedman You should post that setup as an answer so I can upvote it. It is the correct solution.

@RichSedman, I agree with Jerryno as I do not understand what you mean...

@JerryNo Thanks. I've posted an answer. It is very similar to lemon's answer, just using Add rather than a Mix.

@RichSedman... ok finally get it (depending if pure light is pure or emission)! But another way could be using both mix and add as that changes the falloff... anyway you should provide an answer!

Use an Add shader to combine a Transparent and an Emission shader.

The inclusion of the Transparent shader (set to 100% white) in this way will result in the mesh being fully transparent regardless of the intensity of the emission. ie, it won't cast a shadow and will be invisible apart from the light it emits.
@lemon kindly provided a comparison of various methods with varying emission :

From left to right...
1) Emission shader only

2) Transparent and Emission combined with Add shader (the one described at the start of this answer)

3) Transparent mixed with Emission

4) Transparent mixed with combined Emission/Transparent

1 and 3 produce shadows (and 1, obviously, turns black so is really not good). 2 and 4 don't produce shadows and are fully transparent - the only difference being that 4 fades at a different rate - mostly due to the Mix factor and the emission strength combining to affect the brightness non-linearly.
For a linearly varying emission with no shadow, number '2' seems the best solution.

For all purposes here is a comparison setup. Feel free to use it in complement to your answer . Note also that filmic color management enhances the differences between them.

You can use the volume material output to make your object pure light :

the emission volume is fast to render (not as smoke).
with very low emission strength :

Be aware that, sometimes, using 0 for strength will make your object black (bug). Use very low values instead.

To ensure it's transparent regardless of Volume you could add a Transparent shader on the Surface material output socket.


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How to morph a sphere into a torus in blender
I'm new to Blender and want to morph a sphere (or cube, cone, cylinder) into a torus.
Thanks for any help.

Sphere (or cube, cone, cylinder) and a torus are not homeomorphic to each other, so it is not pretty Straightforward as it may sound. Could you add more information about how what's the strategy you intend to use to handle the difference in the topology? Exactly, when and how you imagine the hole being generated? Do you have any reference example?

I do not have any references, which is why I'm asking. I have seen it done with particles, but not with shape keying.

you could perhaps fake that morph in some way, eg using a sphere and a torus, using shape-keys on both to make the first shape become an intermediate shape visually very similar to another shape obtainable with shape-keys also by the torus.... and then animating the transition.

So you are specifically asking a solution that use shape keys? This should be totally feasible by translating and collapsing the vertices in the target position with the help of many tools. But the results will easily reveal that the sphere (or cube..) was made out of a torus with the inner veritices collapsed. Would something like this satisfy your need? Could you add more information to your question?

Thanks all for your help and suggestions. As long as a 3d shape morphs into a torus without particle system, it's ok by me.
@Carlo, that animation totally helps. Could you show me how that was made? As I mentions, I'm knew, so a step by step animation like that or explanation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot.

Modeling & shape keys
You can somehow fake the effect with shape keys.
It's just a matter of grouping vertex in the target position. The way about how to approach a similar problem could be various, and they really depends on the shapes.
Start by creating two shapkeys and enter edit mode to start changing the vertices position:

If we for example consider the morphing from a sphere, you could start by selecting the inner faces of the thorus and then scaling everything toward the center and then on the Z axis:

Invert the selection and start running alternatively the command "smooth vertex" and "to sphere".  The purpose would be to better distribute the edge loops to mime a UV sphere topology (at least outside). Then scale the whole selection to match with the lower and upper vertex.

Result:

Despite having all those vertices on the inside of the sphere from the inner circle of the torus draining system resources, this is probably the best way to do this.

An approach using screw modifier and shape keys:

For instance, for the sphere:

Create a circle
Shift it in edit mode from its origin
Add a screw modifier and a subdivision surface

Now add/create a shape key
Scale and place its geometry to the center
Scale the overlapping part along the screw axis

Clever approach to reduce the number of operation needed for all the solids of revolution


text:
How do I set value node to #frame using python
when adding a Value node through the geometry node tree editor I can enter #frame in the value field to have it synced up with the animation frame index (for procedural animation etc.)

However, I haven't found a way to add this kind of node with python. I was expecting to be able to do something like this:
modifier.node_group.nodes["Value"].outputs[0].default_value = "#frame"

But then I just get
TypeError: bpy_struct: item.attr = val: NodeSocketFloat.default_value expected a float type, not str

Is there any way to make use of this feature using only scripting?

Add a driver from nodes
import bpy

md = bpy.context.object.modifiers["GeometryNodes"]
dr = md.node_group.nodes["Value"].outputs[0].driver_add("default_value")
dr.driver.expression = "frame"
bpy.context.view_layer.update()

thanks! For some reason driver_add doesn't show up in node_group.nodes["Value"].outputs[0].__dir__() so I was unable to find it


text:
Want to blur my Image output without using Vectors (Shader Nodes)
I just want to blur my Image without using Vectors in Shader Editor because my Vector input slot is already occupied.

The result in the Viewport is the one which I want to be blurred. But, as I said earlier, I dont have place to play with Vector Inputs. Is there any other methods which I could follow to make the Sharp Black and White Result a bit blurred?
Here is the .blend File
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OVM29znyYKZ93eQZxWk9cIFvFFF-6HA1/view?usp=sharing

There are two things you can blur; The Voronoi pattern's edges, and the precipitation/temperature areas of effect. Place any vector-based blur before them, and it will blur them.

If you don't have one, here's a decent vector-based blur:

I have Attached the Blend file..pls go through it.

So yup, it works, just a bit different that what I supposed. See Edit

Thank you........

Hi. In your provided decent blur node group, there is no Grain Fac

Oh right, it think I made this change later to more easily control the grain. I plugged a multiply node into the noise texture's scale, with the first input plugged in the group input as "grain fac" with a default value of 1, and the second value set to 1000 like the noise texture's scale originally was.


text:
Is there a bloom option in blender 2.77?
I switched to Blender 2.77 because it's easier to make materials in my opinion. I tried to do some rendering but I can't find a bloom option anywhere. I tried searching everywhere but there's no information either. I'm using the Eevee render engine.

I don't think Eevee existed before Blender 2.8 so please check which version you're actually using.

Hey, so sorry i got them confused, im using the default "Blender Render"

No problem, but best to get it right! 2.77 is a bit before my time, but there seems to be a 2013 bloom tutorial here.

Thank you very much!


text:
rigify buttons problem
So I created rig bones and etc, but I still can't properly generate rigify buttons, when I press Generate Rig
 ,
rig bones of my character goes somewhere down. How can I fix this?

Hi. Have you applied the scale to your model (Ctrl+A in Object Mode)?

Before pressing the generate button apply the scale of your Metarig also (Ctrl A).


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help with gloss reflections!
I'm in dire need of some help here, as you can see in the second photo both, the car and the light that illuminate it, reflect on the ground plane I added.
I'd need to keep the car's reflection only avoiding the emitter's reflection thus having a cleaner look on the image.
From what I've heard software like Corona and V-Ray can just deactivate reflections per object but on Blender it just doesn't exist.
I'd be down with whatever gets me the result, be it layering or nodes, but I'd need a replicable solution that I could use in all my renders, share videos, forum pages, and anything related all help is and will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance - Calo.

Are you using cycles or eevee?

can you add a copy of your blend file minus the car to your question? (How to add a blend file)  I think there's a solution but I'd rather test it against your actual light setup.

@MartyFouts: but then the object is much darker and i think callofugi doesn't want that

if you just want to have the light not shown in render i think you have to solve this with compositing and different view layers

i think that layers should be the way to do it cause i can't just torn off gloss, that is needed for the car's reflection


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I want to make the eyes glow with a toon shader
I have a model with a toon shader and want to make the eyes glow like in the image/video below. But in Blender the eyes don't glow as you can see in the screenshot below.
What should I do?
I wish I could set the intensity like this.

① I want to make my eyes glow
Case (Unity)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_M9YyH1h30
It seems easy with Unity, but I can't write it out well
I hope Blender can fix it.
However, I didn't know how to connect shaders and nodes.
I wonder if I should set the material for N00_000_00_EyeIris_00_EYE (Instance).
My model and shader image.

When I asked a question on Bing, it came out as follows.
I still had to fix it, but it didn't come out the same way. It's wrong, but I'll put it in the reference below for reference.

To make your eyes glow, you need to follow these steps:

Prepare MainTexture and Emission_Texture. The MainTexture can be a normal eye texture. The Emission_Texture makes the texture
white only where the eye shines.
Connect a Mix node to MainTexture and Emission_Texture respectively. A Mix node is a node that mixes two colors. You can
choose between the MainTexture or Emission Texture and a color for
the input of the Mix node. For the color, use either color1 or
color2. It doesn't matter which one you connect to, but either color1 or color2 must be black to be editable. The Mix node ignores black colors when mixing two colors. So you can't edit the
color of the blackened one. Don't make the color you want to edit
black.
Connect the output of the Mix node to Mtoon_universed. Mtoon_universed is a node that sets the eye material. In addition to MainTexture and Emission_texture, there are various items in the input of Mtoon_universed, but only EmissionColor and
EmissionIntensity are used this time. EmissionColor is an item that determines the color that the eyes glow. EmissionIntensity is
an item that determines the intensity of the eyes shining.
Emissioncolor is connected to the output of a Mix node that mixes MainTexture and Emission_Texture. Enter a number for EmissionIntensity. The higher the number, the brighter the eyes.
Connect the output of Mtoon_universed to the Main node. The Main node is the node that outputs the final material.
Here's how to make it stand out. The texture may not have changed in the Unity video, but I think that's because the creator of the video
already prepared a whitened texture. If you also have a whitened
texture, you don't need to change the texture.

I don't know what your MToon_unversion node group exactly does but to me Emission_Texture looks like a mask. What does your model look like when you connect the yellow output of the Emission_Texture node to the Material Output's Surface input slot? I would expect that the eyes get white (=glow) and the rest will be black. -- What color is EmissionColor? Expand the node to check it. It must not be black.

And yes, is the material in screenshot 2 actually the material of the iris? -- Last but not least it's not clear what value the glow intensity/emission strength has. I can't find an input slot that seems to define this.

Thank you so much.
I uploaded blender file.

Thanks for the blend file. I'm going to check it. I think your first sentence ("I would like to keep an eye on this model.") is a translation error because "to keep an eye on someone" means "to watch them/to keep them under careful observation" ;-)

Understand.Thank you!

To get the eyes to glow like in your reference picture, you need to do at least 2 things, maybe even 3:

enable emission for the eyes in the shader to make them glow
tone down the skin color to simulate a dark environment. Of course, you need to do this also for the hair, clothes, and so on.
optionally, increase the emission strength and activate the Bloom option in the Eevee render setting if you want to make the eyes glow like a spotlight.

The first thing to mention is that your toon shader, like most toon shaders, uses Emission Shader nodes to get the cartoon/anime style. This means, the head is a light source and emits light. For this reason

it is not or hardly(*) influenced by light. Even if you set the world color to pitch black and remove all lights, you will see the head in the same color as in a bright world/environment.
it does not get any shadows cast by other objects
additional emission light can be added in the toon shader node group

Keep this in mind for point 2.
(*) Note: actually, depending on the toon shader's settings it will be affected a little bit by light.
1. Enable Emission for the Eyes
If you check out the material for the eyes "N00_000_00_EyeIris_00_EYE (Instance)" and expand the Emission_Texture and the EmissionColor nodes then you will see that the image Shader_NoneBlack is actually pure black and the color is also black. This means that there is no (additional) emission for the eyes.

To fix this,

set the EmissionColor to a non-black color. Try yellow
change the image texture. You can unplug the Image Texture node (Emission_Texture) and  choose just the white color. But then the pupil is also affected by the glow and becomes grey. It's better to create an image as an emission mask and paint it to control where the emission should occur.

Let's create an emission mask. Remove the Shader_NoneBlack image with the [X] button in the node, and create a new image with the [+ New] button. Create a small image (512px x 512px should be fine, no Alpha channel needed).

Now you can paint the model in the Texture Paint workspace. Note that the eyes have their own material but share the UV map of the head parts. The UV map has overlapping UV islands from all the head parts. This results in the head being painted when you paint the eyes and vice versa. This is not technically a problem, but if you accidentally paint the eyelids or the head, it can mess up the pupils that you just carefully painted. Use the painting mask option to avoid over-painting. Don't forget to save the image.

2. Darken the Skin Tone
This can be done with the settings of the toon shader node group. Select the face material ("N00_000_00_Face_00_SKIN (Instance)") and choose a grey color for the Diffuse Color and ShadeColor, and/or try the ShadeTooy setting.

3. Emission Strength and Bloom
The Bloom is just a checkbox the Eevee render settings. But to see the effect, you need to increase the emission strength, which is 1 by default. It's in the shader node group. I recommend creating a new input group, then you can control the strength from outside the node group and it won't affect any other materials. Use the Tab key to go into/out of the group.

I used the Node Arrange add-on that comes with Blender to properly align the nodes, and then created the new input ("Emission Strength ") by dragging the Strength input into the empty Group Input slot. Then I renamed it in the side panel and moved the new slot below the EmissionColor slot.
Now you can control the emission strength in the material. Have fun with glow in the dark!


text:
How to render properly
I’m new to Blender and just started 2 days ago. I watched YT and get me started, but I can’t get rendering to work properly. All verticals objects are dark and top surfaces have good. I’m using Light/Sun since I just need my object to be lit. Not fancy but that’s what I need for now.
What am I doing wrong? What setting needs to be changed?

TIA

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

@moonboots Why? The screenshot shows he is using Eevee, the sun points straight down and even Shadow is disabled. And from this premise, L0Lock gave a detailed explanation of what he could do.

Oh ok my bad I thought he had artefacts

Your Sun light is perfectly pointing down. And I guess you are rendering with Eevee or Workbench since there isn't any visible Global Illumination. So you need to rotate it a bit if you want your walls to receive any lighting.

A sun light provides light of constant intensity emitted in a single direction from infinitely far away. It can be very handy for a uniform clear daylight open-space illumination. In the 3D Viewport, the sun light is represented by an encircled black dot with rays emitting from it, plus a dashed line indicating the direction of the light.
Note:
This direction can be changed by rotating the sun light, like any other object, but because the light is emitted from a location considered infinitely far away, the location of a sun light does not affect the rendered result.
Source: Light Objects — Blender Manual

If you use indeed Eevee, you might also want to check a few things:

Enable contact shadows in your sun light settings:

Enable Ambient Occlusion:

Enable Screenspace Reflections:

Add an object Light Probe > Irradiance volume, make its spheres spread across your scene, and bake Indirect Lighting:

Yes, he uses Eevee. The (disabled) Shadow option on the sun lamp is not available in Cycles or Workbench. So first of all if he enabled it this would already be a step in the right direction.

Thank you!!! You are my hero!!!

@Katsumi Nagata If the answer is correct, mark it as so


text:
What is happening with my sculpt tools/viewport?
I have just finished sculpting the body of my model and moved on to do the hands separately. I joined the objects, remeshed, and checked the normals of the final object. I have cleared masks and looked to see if anyone else has had any problems like this and found nothing. My sculpt tools are inverted, and the hands are grayed out. Clay strips don't seem to work at all, and I have to hold control to inflate.

I am at a total loss as to what may be happening here. Let me know what you think.

I have no idea what I did the first time, but i remade the hand and went into sculpt mode and now everything is working fine. Sorry if I wasted anyone's time, but if you have any ideas of what happened the first time I would still like to hear your thoughts. :)

It looks like you have masked the hand? Alt M to unmask the masked part


text:
Collisions with invisible objects in physics simulation
I'm creating an animation where balls are dropped, hitting boards and such using physics simulation.
Occasionally, during the descent of the balls, there's an occurrence where they collide with invisible objects.
I suspected that there might have been objects previously placed at the collision points, so I removed those objects and recalculated the physics simulation. However, the collision detection still persists.
I would appreciate guidance on how to continue the animation without these collisions.
Below is a video of the problematic area. After bouncing off the last board, it falls unnaturally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMndkWw1uZ4

I'm translating from Japanese to English using ChatGPT.
Let me know if there are any uncertainties.

Hello please share the file: https://blend-exchange.com/ (read the instructions and copy paste the link it will generate)

Thank you.
Starting from frame 2400.
Please play it as it is.

Doraemon~! Years ago i had similar issues, closing and opening Blender used to solve them.

@L0Lock I have tried restarting several times, but there has been no change. It seems that the causes are different.

I had posted the same question on another Japanese website, and I found a solution there. However, the cause remains unknown.
https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q13295014628

This site is region restricted. Could you post the solution here?

As @Nathan mentioned, we needed to delete the hidden objects from the physics collection. These objects were not part of the scene collection, so we had to change the display of the outliner to "Blender file".

You have several physics objects that are not visible, because they are contained within the rigid body world collection but not within any other collection-- not even the scene collection.  They are these three cylinders and three spheres, visible only after adding them to the scene collection:

As your linked answer offers, you can see the contents of the rigid body world collection in the outliner by switching the display mode to "Blender file" and looking in collections/RigidBodyWorld.
These objects (and many others) are multi-user data, perhaps giving you a hint about where they came from.  The cylinders are parented to the spheres.  Note that rigid bodies cannot be parented to other rigid bodies unless part of a compound collision body, and any that are may cause issues; there is an object "Body" that does exist in a visible collection that is parented and should not be (it is also constrained to its parent: the constraint is all that you need to establish the relationship.)
One way that this could happen is to manually remove the objects from their "real" collections.  Generally when you remove an object from all collections-- like, remove from scene collection-- it becomes unlinked and is deleted in the next save/load cycle as orphan data.  But because these objects exist in the rigid body world collection, they are not orphan data, and so even though there is no way of seeing them without some tricks, they continue to affect the file.  Additionally, I would expect there to be high risk of bugs whenever using an object whose only membership is in the rigid body world.  Many operations are likely to act under the assumption that things in real collections are the only things in the file.  The "rigid body world" system is a weird outlier in how Blender typically handles objects and developers are likely to forget about corner cases involving it.
It's possible that you're in the habit of deleting objects by removing them from collections.  That won't work when you're dealing with rigid body physics.  Just delete them instead.


text:
having problem in aligning the character and bone structure for animation
This is the image after aligning them together:

this is what happening every time i set the armature with body with automatic weights, i have cleared the parents and also tried to make body as the bone structure is but still same problem. i will send the file just dm me.

you can post the file here and add the link to your post instead of asking people to dm you https://blend-exchange.com

Please embed the link in your post.. then folks will be able to check it out for you

Hello and welcome. Please don't post the same question more than once. If your previous question was put on hold, address the raised issues by editing it so it can be reopened rather than post a new one, otherwise see What should I do if no one answers my question?

Before parenting the mesh object to the armature object, make sure that both have their transforms applied.
To apply all of their transforms, put both objects at the world origin, feet on the ground, facing -Y. Then press ⎈ CtrlA > Apply Transforms: All.
This should make the objects' current location/rotation/scale the default ones. When parenting objects to each other, they shouldn't inherit any offset thanks to this.


text:
Object shows wireframe in Render Preview Mode
Some Object shows wireframe in Render Preview Mode. How can I avoid this?

One edge is selected... so you're in Edit Mode. Just go back to Object Mode and the wireframe will disappear.

No I'm in Object Mode, the orange Line is the Ground selected.

Your screenshot does not show much information, so I can only give you some possible reasons for this.

You say it's Object Mode, but just for completeness: if an object is in Edit Mode, the wireframe will be visible even in Rendered shading. Here Suzanne is in Edit Mode:

Then there is the Wireframe in the Overlays. Although when this is enabled, all objects should show a wireframe:

Another possibility would be - if you are not in Edit Mode and not all objects show a wireframe - you can enable a wireframe overlay per object, if you go to the Object Properties and under Viewport Display enable Show > Wireframe:


text:
Video preview plays at old frame rate after changing it
How I found this problem:

First, I opened Blender.
Then, I opened the "Video sequence editor."
Since I knew I would be working with videos at 60FPS, I changed the frame rate from 24 to 60 FPS in the sidebar.
Then, I dragged in my first video, and the audio and video lined up correctly (since I changed the frame rate).
I made a new view thingy to put the preview in by dragging from the bottom left corner of the screen, and I set it to "preview."
Then, I dragged the "end" slider at the bottom until it lined up with the end of the video, so I could see the whole thing.

Now, here's the problem. When I press play, the video preview plays back really slow (at 24FPS) while the audio is fine. Furthermore, when I pan the video to play back at a different point, the preview starts at the correct point, but plays back too slowly.
How can I fix this, so that the video plays at the correct speed?

It seems that you were using a HD video source. AFAIK, Sequencer still works with single thread and not so much effective, relatively speaking. In that case, Proxy is born to well solve such issue.

Select the video strip you want to make proxy for, toggle Proxy/Timecode on the property sidebar;
Menu > Strip > Rebuild Proxy and Timecode Intices;
on Preview window sidebar, Switch the Proxy render size to the expected proxy percentage, which is just generated. As shown below:

Since the video quality would be significantly reduced, the playback speed is quite faster than the original source. However, VSE still uses original source for final rendering.

Another way to keep the video/audio sync while playing preview is to use the suitable playback sync mode, which locates on Timeline header. (AV Sync or Frame Dropping)

Of course, you can use the above tricks all together to keep the sync best. However, if the playback is still slow or not sync enough, then you'd better turn to a higher performance PC for that. :)

Thanks! This made it better, but the video still seems to be falling behind a little, even when the proxy thing is at 25%. Is there any way I could just make the preview go slower (both audio and video)? I'd rather have a slow motion preview than unsynchronized audio and video.

@Doorknob I see, try my updated answer. Good luck.


text:
How to mirror in sculpt mode?
I was working on a character legs with symetry enabled, as one leg was getting in the way I decided to hide it. But now that I unhided it, all the details are not in this leg.
My question is how to mirror what I have in one leg to the other one, just as I can do using dyntopo?

Switch to Edit Mode, A x 1 (or x 2) to select all elements;
Press Spacebar, search for Symmetrize;
Tweak Direction and Threshold in F6 panel.

NOTE: A partial selection will simply duplicate / mirror the selection. In your case, you just need a correction, so you should select all elements first.

Or just delete half, add a mirror mod, the turn on clipping. thats what I do.

I'm still wondering whether there are other parts other than legs is asymmetric as intended. In that case, he/she has to only delete the needed part (delete nothing but all vertices of the leg on the other side, in this case).

That is correct, though a model with asymmetric face but symmetric pants would fall under category odd.

I tried that and now when I go to object and sculpt mode, the right side is over the left side, but that doesn't happens in edit mode of course. I also tried to delete one leg, copy the other one, mirror it and the same happens. And finally tried to delete half body, add a mirror modifier, apply it, it worked but every detail from the multiressolution modifier is gone.

Dynamic topology offers a symmetrize function that copies the mesh from one side to another.
Choose the direction that you want to copy and then click symmetrize.

Bit out of date now but I think better than the current answer. For others, select "Active Tool" and there is now a dedicated Symmetry section with a Mirror X/Y/Z option.


text:
How to make a sideways bone?
This may seem sort of confusing after you read the title, but it is fairly simple. First, look at the following handgun below (glock):

Imagine I recreated this in blender, and I started rigging. Look at the magazine, it does not fall straight down. It falls at an angle. How would I make a bone that controls a piece of the model (I know how to do this part), but can move it at an angle? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Some sort of constraint probably

You can create a bone in an angle that will be scalable, add a child bone that will not inherit the scale, and parent the magazine to the child bone.

Bones in blender are not limited to one axis, thus moving them along an angle is easy.
You can constrain it to 2 axes (say X and Z by pressing SHIFT+Y after pressing G) when moving, and this is likely what you want. Insert a keyframe at the bone's resting position, then advance a few frames, and move the bone along the 2 axes so that it lines up with the grip. You can even start to rotate it after its exiting the grip. There is no need for it to follow the grip exactly, because this wont even happen in real life. Just move it approximately and you should get great results.

Yeah i've figured this out right before you posted; I have my reload animation finished. Thanks though, this will also help new users.


text:
"Moving Property" function?
I have a character who plays his walk animation when he walks, but what if he is behind a wall? He would look sort of goofy walking when hes in place. Is there a way I can have a property ("Moving") be toggled to 1 when hes changing his position (not rotation) in 3d space? Any helps is appreciated; I would like to have this in logic bricks if it is simple. Thanks!

Seriously? Stop using integers and use Booleans for true or false situations. You can simply have it detect True or False, instead of 1 or 0. toggle then works on Booleans.

You already answered your question by your own:
Behavior:
When moving play walk animation
This implies:
When not walking -> do not play walk animation.
As you do not explicitly told the character to stop (e.g. by command) you need to detect any events that stop it from moving.
There are many options to detect such events:

no movement requests from user
getting other requests from user (e.g. jump, run, stand, crouch)
hitting a wall
floating (e.g. when falling, jumping)
speed below a limit

I guess you want to know the last option. This is not possible with logic bricks. You need Python to activate actuators when the object does not move anymore:
import bge
controller = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
owner = controller.owner

limit = owner.get("limit", 0.001)

lastPosition = owner.get("_lastPosition")
position = owner.worldPosition.copy()
owner["_lastPosition"] = position

if lastPosition is not None:
    travelledDistance = (lastPosition-position).length
    if travelledDistance <= limit:
        for actuator in controller.actuators:
            controller.activate(actuator)

This needs to be activated all the time (enable True Level Triggering).
Attention

this is inefficient and should be used at a very limited number of occurrences
this does not differentiate between other situations when the character is not moving (e.g. sitting, sleeping)
you can tweak the limit by setting a float property limit

"this is inefficient and should be used at a very limited number of occurrences" - I will use this a lot and I need it to be able to reply quick many times; is there a way to fix that?

A more efficient way is to use other detection methods, such as a collision sensor. Obviously this will only work on expected collisions (e.g. the character stops when the front part is colliding with a wall).


text:
How to create a moving HUD?
I didn't know how to title this, but there is an effect video games generally have that I would like to achieve. If you have, for example, a turret in your vision, a healthbar will appear on it. if you are far away from the turret, the health bar will not be smaller. Also, the healthbar is right above the turret. How can I achieve this effect? Thanks!

I am not familiar with Blender's game engine. Generally speaking, you can draw your 'HUD' in view(or camera) space. That is, you project the position of turret to 2D and draw HUD with a size in view space. Also you need to be aware of depth test, draw order and blend functions.

If you're using an overlay scene for your HUD, try using an orthographic camera, that should keep it the health bars the same size no matter what the distance.

@christai I understand that, but I need the bar to always be above the turret. If I just put it in an overlay, it will always be where I put it.


text:
Saving Console output
I got some output for my python script on the console. I would like to save the output in a separate file. can anyone have any idea?


text:
What are the different ways to unwrap a model in blender with multiple parts?
I'm new to Blender and new to unwrapping in Blender. I know there is a simple way to create seams around each part and then unwrap them.
I have made complex models and I feel like this is the quick and easy way and not a proper way to unwrap.
Is there a method to unwrap each individual piece of a model so you can make sure it turns out correctly

Ctrl + E > Mark Seams while in edge select mode. U can also use U > Smart UV Unwrap.

IMHO, what you are asking is dependent of the kind of model you have made (image rendering, game, other...). It can also depend of the textures you want to use (already made textures, baking, ...). You should add some information about all that (eventually some screen shots).

I would b making my own textures from scratch for a video game. I would make textures on gimpshop. And so in 3rd max unwrapped each part of my model individually cuz I tv turned out better then marking all the seems n unwrapping cuz it didn't turn our correctly . N i want to do that with blender. But idk the interface that well.ik  How to put seems down n Mark them. But is their a way besides marking all the seems n unwrapping ? Is their another way then that in blender


text:
Moving a vertex along an edge
I need to move a vertex along an edge. I want to make a vector of 2 vertices and move the vertex along this vector using Python.
In this example, I show that I want to move the vertex with index 13 to the dot edge.

I'm not sure to understand what you need: is it about accessing the vertex data? Or a formula to translate/move along an edge?

A formula to translate/move along an edge.

Here is a step by step calculation using vectors:
import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

edge = obj.data.edges[0] #An edge, the first one

vIndex1 = edge.vertices[0] #Get the indices of the vertices of this edge
vIndex2 = edge.vertices[1]

v1 = obj.data.vertices[vIndex1] #Get the corresponding vertices
v2 = obj.data.vertices[vIndex2]

vCoord1 = v1.co #Get their coordinates
vCoord2 = v2.co

edgeVector = vCoord2 - vCoord1 #The vector formed by these two vertices

edgeVector.normalize() #So that it has 1 unit length

distance = 0.5 #Say we want to move v2 of this distance of 0.5 units

v2.co += edgeVector * distance #Translate the vertex

You can summarize by:
v2.co += (v2.co - v1.co).normalized() * distance #Translate the vertex

Many thanks. I did almost the same thing, but without .normalize (). Now I know why it .normalize ()

authors: Влад Киндюшов


text:
How can i avoid making doubles when using subdivision modifier?
Hello i learning blender and have a question about the subdivision modifier. I make the model as on the picture. I have a subdivision modifier on it.
I know i can use loop cuts to make the rods not pointy, but the problem is when i use it they create doubles, i dont know if doubles is so big problem, but i heard its not really wanted. I allso know i can slide the loop cut just a little bit before the end edge and then it will not make any double, but it feels a bit not totally correct doing it that way, i dont know lol?.
My question is if this is the way of doing this? or are there better ways?

something has to be clarified. Doubles are vertices (points) at the exact same position (X,Y,Z).

Creating loop cuts (sometimes called proximity or holding cuts in this situation) close to the edge is the proper way to accomplish what you want.

Doubles are generally a bad thing, as they are difficult to properly select, can cause artefacts, prevent cleaning whole model with Remove Doubles and can cause accidental unwanted merge when moving things with auto merge on. Sliding the loopcut just a bit before the end instead is totally fine way to do that, i really don't see what incorrect you see in that.

Doubles are not allways forbidden. That can be a choice.
But here you can also simply remove the bottom faces of the bar.

Edit : as i suppose the bar will go throught the sit.
Another point for the top of the bars : you could separate the bars from the back in order to avoid the effect you have here at the junction of them.
Edit2 : as a suggestion, another modeling approach, from left to right :

Cube with a bevel modifier
Cylinder with array
Applied modifier then joined meshes
Mesh deform modifier

All the previous answers would work, additionally, IF you are planning to apply the subdivision modifier, you can create the doubles, then apply the modifier, then select these vertices, and press W then choose remove doubles. As I said, this would be a solution only if you are planning to apply the Subdivision Modifier. If this is not the case, you can use an Edge Split modifier, it should be after the Subdivision modifier in the stack, and give it a propper maximum angle, just keep in mind, this will affect your entire object.


text:
Part of the mesh disapeared when using a square selection "B"?
I was selecting vertices to merge them and was using the square selection "B", and suddenly everything disapeared but the selected square. I thing I must have pressed other button by mistake, but do not know how to recover the normal view...does anyone know?
Thanks a lot

Doesn't you accidentally hit Alt+B? Alt+B is clipping border, hit it another time to reset view.

Hi!, thanks! yes, it was that had happened i think, and did what you say and worked! thanks a lot! greetings!

Hey! I´ve seen a tuto showing what clipping border is and is really useful! i didn´t know it. Thanks a lot