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Making particles collide with each other? Possible? (2.8)
So I have made what is essentially an asteroid field. I did this by making half a dozen asteroid models, and then making a large cube with a couple of ‘volume’ emitters that run for a single frame. Which then (with a couple tweaks to velocities et al) actually makes a pretty decent looking asteroid field.
However, the asteroids hit each other, and they overlap and pass through each other. I would, ideally need them to collide and bounce. (The large ones anyway, the small ones are dust effects and I don’t really care about those).
Doubly ideally, I would like to set up a scenario where when the objects collide they might ‘shatter’ or break apart in some way. But I suspect that would be significantly more complicated.
So for the main problem - is it possible to make the particles collide with each other?
I’ve tried playing with the ‘force’ settings, the self effect, and the various physics collision options, but none of them seem to do anything in this situation.
Any help?
(As an addition, it seems an addon called 'molecular' is meant to help with this, but it doesn't seem to work any more and I'm guessing it's no longer being developed)

you tried to make a object with physics enable and "self colision" checked and put this object to be emmited in particle system?
check this video and see if helps: https://youtu.be/F8j1K-_OlH4?t=35 (in 00:35min he shows the self colision working)

Particles collision can be achieved with the molecular addon by pyroevil. There is a 2.80 port but you may have to do some digging to find it. Version of the addon I have for Blender 2.80 is 1.0.7 but I hear a 1.0.8 is out.
Where do I hear it, do you ask?
Here: https://blenderartists.org/t/addon-moleculars-physics/521682/255
Addon here:
https://github.com/scorpion81/Blender-Molecular-Script/releases
As for the shattering, there is a cell fracture addon provided with 2.80. I'm not sure how you'll manage to use it on particles, though.
You can try combining with the particles instance modifier. Worth giving it a shot. Or using animation nodes, maybe.

It took a lot of finding, because the original creator didn't seem to be the one who actually updated it as I guess they've quit the development now. But I have managed to hunt down a working 2.8 version of molecular so hopefully that will work.
Why doesn't Blender have this functionality? C4D and Maya have it as basic functionality in their kits, its pretty much required for any kind of 'pouring' or other creations that use a large number of objects where particles are used to simplify it.
Unless I'm meant to use a different method in Blender, and I've made this difficult for myself?

Thanks for your update, I think that's the same link I ended up finding but I'm glad that I'm using the right one :)  I don't think fracturing is going to work on particles though, but I can keep that for just single objects that are centre-screen so it's not a big deal.

Yes it did take a while finding. Pyroevil is no longer the maintainer, now it's Pavel I think. As for fracture it will work on the objects that you use for particles render but you may have to go through them one by one, I don't know. Maybe be do a close up on one only. You can have particles emit particles too, but I'm not sure it's going to be realistic.

Please, check your "Midlevel" value on "Displacement" node in Donut material. You have "20.70". It is too high and this is the reason of your problem. Please change value to "0.0" or "0.5" and everything will be fine ;)

How is this answer (donut) related to the question (asteriod field)? Have you confused the question?

Answer should go here? https://blender.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/117021


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Emission material + irradiance volume causing light to shine through solid objects? (And other issues)
https://i.sstatic.net/HMXNs.jpg
I put my pictures on Imgur, because I only seemed to be able to add one photo to this post otherwise (I may have been doing it wrong, but all 3 are on imgur now anyway).
I have an emission material inside an engine jet 'bell', making a bright glow. Or trying to anyway, as the object only glows (bloom I guess) when the camera has the emission material in sight. When it's around a corner there's no bloom. Fine, add an irradiance volume.
However as you can see in the photos, the irradiance adds the correct 'bouncing glow' on the inside of the engine bells, but it also appears on other parts of the engine that -should- be in shadow. I can stop that happening by dropping the 'clipping end' of the irradiance to below about 1.5m, but as soon as I drop that low it ALSO stops making the inside of the engine bell glow.
Just to add, I have my materials set to 'opaque' for blending and shadows so they should be blocking light (as far as I know).
I assume I'm doing something wrong... I hope it's obvious (with the photos) what I'm trying to do and  the effect I'm going for. Is there maybe a better method in Eevee? Normal lights don't seem to work quite right, to get them to glow bright enough they seem to also glow through nearby materials, but perhaps I need to play with them more. Or maybe an emission volume, to get the 'glowing engine jet' type effect? Not sure if this is even a thing, as my last attempt at an emission volume did nothing at all haha.
Anyone with any suggestions or tips, I'd greatly appreciate it.

How to upload an image to a post

Yeh I know how to add 'an' image. My problem was that I needed to add 3 of them. Which that post doesn't seem to help with. I solved it with imgur anyway, the link is in my question.

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 create procedural square transparent simulated shadow?
I am new to Blender, and I would like to create a procedural material that simulates a transparent shadow for a cube.
I already know how to create a simulated transparent shadow for a sphere (see screenshot).
I looked for a way to do the same thing but for a cube, but unfortunately I couldn't.
Can someone more experienced than me help me find this solution?

You mean something like this? It's made by combining two (different direction) wave textures (scaled so they're each only "one" wave"). You can control the shadow's size and falloff using the ColorRamps:

Thanks a lot @Christopher-bennett

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


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Apply Bevel/rounding to junction of two combined forms
I'm looking for a special profile with a combination of two forms.
So that I can best manage the rounding/bevel of the junction of these two forms.
Is it possible and how can I get this result (see attached image)

I don't know whether you're using subdivision - so these approaches may not be your way.... (all the operations are under a subdivision modifier, level 1 or 2)

starting with a cube, add some edge loops (CtrlR), to support its sharp edges, and to halve its sides. Then cut the diagonals you can see, using the knife tool (K).
bevel the central vertex (CtrlShiftB)
inset the new face  (I) to make room for a bevel
extrude (E) the inset face
maybe scale the top face (in my case, Z is up, so that's SShiftZ), bevel (CtrlB) the edge at the turn to the extrusion, adjusting the profile with the mouse wheel to increase divisions, (you could do that, and change the profile and offset of the bevel at the bottom of the toolbar region while the tool is active, if necessary.)

But as you can see, that results in sharp turn, not very like the profile you illustrate, and there's not much room to move edge loops around.
So the bottom row in my illustration doesn't use beveling at all, and just tweaks the heights  and scales of the horizontal edge loops on the dome.
Edit mode>edge ..Alt select an edge loop
SShiftZ to scale it in XY
GG to slide the loop up and down without significantly altering the profile
GZ to move it up and down and alter the profile
If the subdivision modifier's' "Display modifier in Edit mode" box is checked, you can visually adjust the modifier's result to your profile. But be aware, if the subdivision level is changed, the profile may fatten or shrink.

I've validated as an answer to my question, but I still have not managed to redo this again, because just a little reminder Robin :-) , I'm fully beginner and i've to look everywhere to reproduce:

an 8-sided fan fill
... etc.

Just a small video screenshot would have been perfect but I don't want to take your time ;-)
Thank you Robin

My apologies. I'm not sure a specific gif would really help -  these are things you'll find yourself doing again and again, in different contexts - so I've expanded the steps in my answer. Which isn't definitive, either. There are many other approaches than this one, which is a traditional subdivision surface way.

Thanks a lot Robin for this more detailled reply!


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Transparency of whole image at the position of an object
Is there a material or render setting which makes the whole rendered image transparent at the spot of an object? I.e. not to create only a transparent object where the background is visible, but a transparent „hole“ with Alpha=0? I know that this can be achieved post-rendering by the Compositor and e.g. Cryptomatte, but I would like to define the transparent areas before rendering.
Greetings from Germany, Tschöbbel

Have you tried using the Holdout shader?

Looks as if this is what I need! Many thanks and Schöne Weihnachten!

Setting up Cryptomatte might be easier in some cases...

Holdout based on a material
The Holdout shader node sets the alpha to zero for the area occupied by the object in the rendered image. This is documented in Blender's manual:

The Holdout shader node is used to create a “hole” in the image with zero alpha transparency, which is useful for compositing (see alpha channel).
Note that the holdout shader can only create alpha when Properties ‣ Render ‣ Film ‣ Transparent is enabled. If it is disabled, the holdout shader will be black.

Holdout for a collection in the current view layer
As Jachym Michal noted, you can also use the holdout restriction toggle to mask all objects inside a collection for the current view layer. It will not affect the visibility of the same collection in a different view layer.

Display the holdout restriction toggle:

Activate the holdout for, e.g. Collection 2:

This approach sets the holdout attribute for the LayerCollection in the current view layer.
Alternatively you can also set/clear the holdout from the context menu in the outliner, if you're using Cycles as render engine. This can be accomplished by right-clicking on the collection to open the context menu and then using either View Layer > Set Holdout or View Layer > Clear Holdout. At the time of writing this option is unavailable when using any other render engine, due to a hard coded check in OUTLINER_MT_collection_view_layer (space_outliner.py).

Holdout can also be enabled for whole collections through the outliner restriction toggles. Blender manual on restriction toggles

@ᴊᴀᴄʜʏᴍᴍɪᴄʜᴀʟ that is another option.

@brockmann I don't know in what version you've tested this, but I'm not seeing any masking option in the submenu in 2.80, 2.81a and current master.

Set the engine to cycles @RobertGützkow I think we've found a missing menu item when using eevee.

@brockmann will check after dinner and add a a bug report if that's the case

@brockmann Seems like these context menu entry was added as a temporary option in this commit. I'll check with the other developers if there is any reason for having this inconsistency between the render engines. Eevee supports holdout for a while now, so that shouldn't be the reason. This is especially confusing for users because both set/clear holdout and set/clear indirect only aren't listed as engine-dependent settings in the manual.

Cool @RobertGützkow I personally don't see any reason why not having this in the context menu...


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Blender render doesn't upgrade
I have been trying to figure out the reason for 2 days and have lost all hope.
The problem is that Cycles Render doesn't upgrade. If I make any changes in the 3D view everywhere else the changes are visible and apparent but when I try to render or animate (press buttons Render or Animate info file) under "Camera" tab, then only previous versions will be rendered.
Blender file can be located here: https://uploadfiles.io/53lbh
What I've checked so far:

I've toggled Local/Global view - no effect.
All viewpoints are activated in render mode (everywhere camera icon is switched on)
All objects have layers attached to them under RenderLayer

There was no difference with either rendering in Cycles Render or Blender Render

Here is an example of the difference of both views before and after "Render" of the same frame.

Is there anywhere an option that keeps only the first rendering
result in cache and takes the information from there (that I could
possibly need to uncheck).

HELP!

UPDATE - Right now when I try to render, the process is 20x quicker and the first 15 frames are black.

If you have anything in the VSE it will override your 3d scene. Try going to the post processing panel in the render tab of the properties panel and disable sequencer.

@Brenticus, I could kiss you right now if I knew where you lived :D I tried to kill my computer for trying to fix this issue and you managed to fix my problem in 1 minute. However now my jewel is white for some reason :P

Well, lets just say it took more than 1 minute the first time... For your jewel, what does the material look like? Is it red in the viewport and not in the render?

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


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Is it possible to show glass as being transparent in the viewport
I have been trying for a couple of days to make an object with a glass material transparent in the viewport. I've seen a couple of tutorials using the material viewport shading and cycles render to change the color and Alpha values of objects but my system doesn't seem to work the same way.
I'm using version 2.79 of blender in material viewport shading and using Cycles Render.

The "Viewport Alpha" settings do not seem to work for the Glass shader the way it works for the Transparent shader (or a mix between Transparent and another shader).  However, if you set the Viewport Alpha to "Add" you will get a sort of fake viewport transparency, which looks about the same for any shader.  Maybe that's good enough for your needs?
Otherwise maybe keep a couple of different shader setups in your material.  Use a simple mix of transparent and glossy (or diffuse, or whatever) for your viewport editing needs.  When it comes time to do a "real" render, switch the inputs to your glass shader.
Edit: here is how these options look in the viewport ("Material" view), as suggested by @LukeD:

The cube and suzanne to the left have the same material.  It is a glass shader, with Viewport Alpha set to "Add".  The cube and suzanne to the right share a different material.  It is a 50/50 mix of transparent and glossy shaders, with Viewport Alpha set to "Alpha Blend".

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


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Delay when using texture paint
There is a phenomenon that the brush tool is delayed by 0.5 seconds to paint the texture in the 3D view panel.
The more problematic thing is that the delay time increase. That means, the more I paint the texture, the slower it is.
However, this problem does not occurre in UV panel.
My working environment is as follows,
CPU: Rizen 1700x
RAM: 16 GB
Graphics card: GTX 1070 (CUDA1902)

difficult to say, does this happen just with that brush tool, while others are faster? is your model particularly heavy (although you have a very fast machine it seems)? does it happen on any other (simpler) model too?

UV Image Editor will always be faster with paint because it isn't held back by projection effects like culling, cavity mask, etc. Painting in the 3d view needs to be done with small brushes for faster paint daubs, as large brush radius can cause a memory choke while waiting to project and calculate all the pixels to be affected by the paint stroke.
Also, a key factor here is how large your texture is and how many undo steps exist in your preferences. Decrease the undo steps or eliminate them altogether for the session and see if the memory spikes stop. The size of the texture and the bit depth can cause some issues with painting using projection in the 3d view, but you will see that the UV Image Editor handles them much easier.
The key difference in these two options for paint is that the UV Image Editor is one texture at a time (display) but the 3d view can display all or one (GLSL/Material Draw mode vs. Multitexture) and you can use both to their advantage to get the best effects.

Something that I haven't seen answered in posts regarding texture painting is changing the textures slots from "material" to "single image", then you choose the texture you want to work into and the UV coordinates to use, this made painting actually possible.


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Determining the optimal suspension location for jewelry
I'm creating jewelry with Blender and I'm wondering about finding/calculating the optimal suspension location.
Looking at the image I uploaded, you see a small eyelet.
I've used the chain simulation with rigid body physics, using higher than default iterations, etc.
However the chain keeps dangling like crazy even after a few thousand frames.
I would love a few hints to create a more quiet 'gravity simulation environment' to see what happens when I move the eyelet further to the centre or to the outside. What do you suggest?
Thanks in advance,
Wim Roskam

Set the origin of your object at the center of its volume.

Create a passive rigibody.
Make the jewelry an active rigidbody.

Increase the positional and angular damping.

Connect both with a point constraint where the 'hook' is supposed to be.
Simulate the rigid body simulation.


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Blender stop responding while texturing
Im trying to do 3d models with diferent pose but when I texture the 3d model and next I try to move the bones or do something, blender stop responding.Only after texturing. I need help. My PC specs:  AMD Ryzen 5 2600 |   RTX 2060 | 8GB RAM DDR4

"...try to  or something... only after texturing" is not exactly an accurate explanation. Please read this, then this, then use the edit link below your question to add relevant information.

Try turning off the textured view, I notice mine slows down pretty bad when I try to do anything rig related after texturing.


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Blender 2.79. Trig functions in the BGE
Are standard trig functions (sine, cosine etc) accessible in the BGE without resorting to Python script?
If so, what is the syntax for their use in assigning a value to a property?


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Why is this simple primitive shaded so weirdly?
I made sure everything is quads , I've checked the normals, I've unmade and remade all the faces, no luck. Why is the shading still so weird?
All I did to create it before I started trying to fix this was make a circle and reduce it to 3 sides to make a triangle, then extrude it along the z axis, and fill the top and bottom off with faces.

You appear to have the mesh set to Smooth shading. This will attempt to generate consistent normals around the edges and vertices to blend in with the adjacent geometry. Set the shading to 'Flat' and each face will have consistent shading (with hard edges).

Based on your face normals, you only have 5 faces on your object. You should have 12 if you're going to have all quads (see below):

You can see how many verts, edges, and faces your mesh has by looking in the bottom left corner in Edit Mode. Try and match the numbers I have here:

I suspect where you went wrong was in dividing up the extruded triangle. You can create edges by highlighting two vertices and pressing F but the created edge will not split the underlying face in two. To actually split a face in two, you should use the J key to "Join."


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Sculpture UV & Paint Issue
I'll start this off by saying I'm new to this. I've tried to look this up, but I can't seem to figure out exactly what the problem is.
So, I made a sculpture watching a tutorial, and it turned out pretty cool! Being excited, I was hoping to try and paint some colors onto it. However, when I go to the UV Editor or the Texture Paint, only a couple of small patches are allowing the selection.
It has a high level of detail, but I'm not sure if that could be the issue. There's two patches on top and one underneath. Everything I have found thus far seems to either see all or nothing.
I'm sure this is something that I probably messed up to trying to move forward too quickly, but I appreciate any help in advance!
Thanks!

You need to performe a retopology, after that unwrap your Uv's and then you will be ready to paint. Start Here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hEHtKH55Us  good luck

@Emir Thank you so much!

There is another way to quickly do the shading without the need of retopology and UV unwraping if are not going to animate the model. You can use the texture cordinate node to change the cordination from UV to project or other ways... then using some procedural or seemles textures and mix them together with a balck and white mask as a factor instead of texture painting. Highly recommend to watch the "Materials Made Easy - Non Destructive Shading in Blender" by Zacarist Reinhardt in Blender's YouTube channel from Blender Con 2018. (Sorry having internet problem I couldn't get you a link)

Thank you! I'm not planning on getting into animation yet so this should be a good way to go. I appreciate it!


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Rigify rig can't move my mesh only rotate 2.79a
For some reason I am unable to move certain parts of my mesh with the rig.
This is the default pose and it appears as everything is good.

However, when I try to move the arms or legs I am unable to do so. Example below:

I can still use the ball joints to rotate along the arms and move the fingers, head, torso like so though:

Your rig has two way of moving arms and legs: IK and FK; you can choose the behaviour using the IK/FK slider on the N properties panel.
In your case Ik is selected and you are trying to move the arm with the FK controllers, which are disabled.


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I seem to only be able to UV paint a few faces, not on the entire model
It's probably something simple, but I'm stumped.
I've successfully unwrapped my model, I have a UV map, and the first few faces I painted using a fill brush worked successfully. However, I seem to only be able to paint a few faces on the entire model, and it's not allowing me to fill anything else. I can select the face:

However, clicking to fill fails. It's worked on other individually selected faces on the mesh.
UV texture at this point in time:

I'm stumped. Something that's worked for multiple faces seems to be unwilling to work for any other face on the mesh (that I could find).
Recalculated normals just in case it was something like that, but to no avail.
Any help would be appreciated!

When taking screenshots please make them full resolution so they aren't very small. As to the question likely you enabled Face Selection Masking in 3d viewport footer so disable it to paint on all faces

Noted for future on screenshots. Ah - I had enabled Face Selection Masking so that I could flood on a face by face basis. Selected all faces before entering paint mode, any idea why those six could be selected but nothing else?

Normally if selecting all faces in Edit mode they will remain selected in Texture Paint mode with Face Masking turned on. You can always select / deselect them if anything with A (as in Edit mode)

Yup, and I was able to select additional faces but the fill tool just would not work on the selected face. Near as I can tell, it must have been a material/texture problem, as I deleted and redid that data and the problem went away. Thank you for your responses!


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Stage of new keybinds in 2.8 beta
Honestly i find them very cluncky. Lots of them are missing, e.g. Shift + C.
Will they be re-added or will we have to patch it ourselves?

Shift+C was returned a few days ago, try last build.
Information about changes in keymap you can find here:  https://developer.blender.org/T55162


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Clear meshes in blender game
I wish to make a hologram in my blender video game, but I don't know how to make objects transparent. I see tutorials everywere for cycles render but for some reason not game, anything helps.

This BGE book might help you: https://github.com/mikepan/GameEngineBook/blob/master/text/05-Graphics.md


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How to randomize audio
I am making a third person shooter and I have three different lazer sounds. I want to figure out how to make it so every time I click it plays a different lazer noise.

You can use a python module to choose different sounds to play. The advantage of a module over a script is that a module can have variables that are reset only when the game starts while a script they will be reset each time the script is run.
To treat a text block as a python module you need to end its name with .py and enable the register option in the header. Then you add a python controller and use the text block name without the .py and the function name to run.

Now in the module you need a function to play the sound. getCurrentController will give you the controller running the script and its actuators property is a list of actuators connected to it. We can then use an index to access each item.
import bge

idx = 0

def playsound():
    global idx
    cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
    if idx >= len(cont.actuators): idx = 0
    snd_act = cont.actuators[idx]
    cont.activate(snd_act)
    idx += 1

The actuator list can also be treated as a dictionary, so you can choose the actuator by name -
snd_name = 'Sound' + str(idx)
snd_act = cont.actuators[snd_name]


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Blender collision activation only once
I have it so that once you touch this block, my voice actress begins giving a tutorial, but if you touch it again, she starts all over again, do you know a way to make this happen only once?

Add a boolean property which is False by default. On collision, set it to True and play the sound only on collision AND if the property is equal to False.
Change the state on collision. States behave like layers, only the current active state(s) get executed. For a detailed explanation see: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/game_engine/logic/states.html


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Simple deform modifier making object thicker
I am trying to make animation of an object opening and closing using the simple deform modifier, but it is also causing the object to thickened. How can I only animate the opening and closing of this object without making it thick?

parent it to a chain of bones?

Would I have to animate by moving each individual bone? Or can add some procedural function on the chain of bones?

you can give a Copy Rotation constraint to each bone so that you only move one

For this particular use case, I found that if you make a chain of small bones then go to pose mode and change pivot to individual origins, then select all bones and rotate them to get the desired effect.

yes, even simpler than constraints


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Is it possible to combine spline IK for the body and regular IK for limbs?
I've got a centipede model with an IK rig.
I would like the spine to move along the spline curve in the background, following its curvature, while still letting me pose the legs like normal to make it look like it's running along the wall. None my attempts have worked out - either the body won't stick to the curve properly or I'm unable to move the legs without them glitching out.
Here's a link to an album where I list the methods I've tried so far, including gifs of what the model looks like trying to move along the curve.

as far as your question goes it is possible, it has to be set-up correctly - Where is your 'Spline IK' ??

I would like the spine to move along the spline curve in the
  background, following its curvature

That would be a 'Path' and could be done several ways 'Clamp To' or 'Path' constraint. The set-up on the legs does not look good to me, your leg bones with the IK should be shifted forward to what is prob the current IK targets and a new or that large bone re=scaled to be the IK targets. That is why the legs are 'Glitching out' on you. I will try and mock up a file for you if you want.
DISCLAIMER: This file created in v2.76 - If using 2.7x it will open fine,, If using 2.8x 'APPEND' the objects from the 'Object' folder.

I'd love to see your mockup file, because I'm not exactly sure what I should be changing. https://easyupload.io/hgq3vo I've uploaded the file here, in case you want to take a look at it.

I had a look at your file - the mesh object would be better if you had 'Edge Loops' where the bones bend (deform) it. The armature its self is scaled and rotated, you should 'Apply' that before Parenting(Weighting) the mesh to it, although I did it without any bad effects - The rigging is not that optimal unfortunately, I'm posting the file in my original post so you can have a look, Thanx

Thanks for the file! I spent a little bit of time fiddling with it and it's a perfect solution to what I want to do, and the rig itself is very well-made too. Did you use a tool or plug-in to help you? The .blend file came with a macro that wanted to execute - didn't let it, but it works fine without.

Your Welcome,No plug-in, Thanks for the heads up on Macro - will look into that.


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Animate object and render last frame using python script
I have a scene where some bottles are falling into a tray. I need to create a python script that runs this animation and renders the last frame and saves it. I have been looking for a method to do it but I have been unable to find anything. I am only creating a dataset for another problem that i am trying to solve and this is the first time I am using blender and only for creating this dataset so I'm sorry if this is a very basic question.

The following links should help: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/55637/what-is-the-python-script-to-set-the-current-frame
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/122742/how-do-i-initiate-a-render-from-python-but-still-show-progress-bar-and-ui-update

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/112029/is-there-any-way-to-export-the-last-frame-of-a-physics-simulation-from-command-l  https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/134521/problem-rendering-at-the-end-of-rigid-body-animation-with-script


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Connect Overlapping Faces/Verticles

Hello!
I have problem to connect this column to the base like in the photo.
I would like to connect that parts as one connected edges.
Please help :(

Maybe have a look at the answer here (summary: use loop cuts and merge the double vertices) https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/146673/correcting-non-manifold-edges-in-blender-3d-model-for-3d-print?noredirect=1#comment250505_146673 (The quickest way to model something like this would be to do two loopcuts and then extrude the upper face to make that column)

We don't know a lot about your topology, but you could try this way: Select your top cube, then click Face > Intersect (Boolean), then change the Operator box setting to Union. You may need to make some adjustments like Remove Doubles (Merge by Distance in 2.8) or draw some edges with knife (or J to join vertices).

Thank you! Thats work!


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Rounding a spinner on a British Spitfire

Hi, I am attempting to make a British Spitfire to the best of my ability, but I have encountered a problem. I have used a Cone Mesh to try and replicate the spinner of a British spitfire, but I cannot get the round shape that I need for it to look realistic. I will provide a picture below.

Once I am finished with the base shape of the spinner, what would be modeling steps to making it look more detailed? Below is a picture of a British Spitfire spinner.

Here are the steps I would take to model that:
1: construct a base set of vertices from one side of the rounded top, like so:

Add a screw modifier: (make sure it is lined up to the axis for this part).

Then finally add a subidivision surface modifier to make it higher poly:

I hope that is what you are looking for. You can just adjust the vertices (or line them up to your image) to get the curve you want. When you are done, you can apply the modifiers and put it on your plane.

Here's how I would go about it, from a sub-d point of view, aiming for least work and most accuracy.
Two things to notice: 1. The nosecone is truncated, so there won't be nasty shading problems at the tip. 2. There are 3 blades on the propeller. At some stage, holes will have to be cut for them, so the number of sides on the cone should be divisible by 3.
(I'm working in XY, Z up.. you may have to flip axes mentioned here)

Create a 12-sided cone, and CtrlShiftB bevel the vertex at the tip to the dimensions of the reference

I inset the new face, and CtrlR cut in a holding loop close to the rim.
X delete the inner face
Do the same to the base of the cone

CtrlR cut in a couple of intermediate loops, and
CtrlKeypad 2 assign a Sub-d Surface modifier, level 2

Now, working under the modifier, showing in Edit Mode, with cage conforming (switches in the modifier)
A combination of GG sliding the intermediate loops up and down the cone, and..
SShiftZ scaling the loops in XY..

..should enable you to capture the curvature of the cone.

The illustration shows:

How the cone appears while editing, with the modifier set to 'Optimized Display'
The underlying topology after subdivision
The finished cone

Later, you will be able to cut out a 1/3 segment of the cone, and give it a rotational array, so you can work on the details in one third, and have the edits automatically propagated to the rest.

Split a UV Sphere in half, scale it up on the z axis, and add a subsurf modifier with smooth shading ...with the right scaling and editing you should get the desired result.


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When I make a Keyframe it won't show up in Dope Sheet or Timeline. (See Picture)
I am trying to animate the strength of an emission node so it emits a lower amount of light to a higher amount of light, however, when I right click and click on "insert keyframe" nothing shows up in the timeline editor even though the strength is highlighted yellow. See image below

what you show is the Timeline, not the Dopesheet, to see the keyframe you need to have the node selected, is it?

@moonboots yes I just selected the node and the keyframe is now showing up in the dope sheet, thank you so much

could you please share your file, at least the object with the emission node? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/


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What is the best way to make a telephone wire in blender?
I am working on a project that has a light pole and there are wires going from one pole to another. I need to try and replicate the wires as realistically as possible, but I am not sure what the best way would be. Here is an image below of what I am referring to.

If you want lots of realism then use the Cloth simulator and pin the cloth wire to each pole. Is it just the "hang" that you need or how multiple wires interact?

just the hang @rob


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Changing views in 2.8 jumps out of ortho
I work mostly in ortho mode but after I switch to side, top, left, right or bottom view, and then move around the view changes to perspective. How can I ensure that it always stays in ortho view?

You need to deactivate Auto Perspective in Preferences > Navigation > Orbit & Pan.

Perfect, thanks!


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UV mapping seems incorrectly distorted
I'm very new to UV wrapping/unwrapping. However, I do understand the concept. I am trying to create a template to create the image I wish to apply to A curved surface on one side of a single object.
However, each time I true to use the Smart UV I get distorted results. I selected faces on the same side of a single curved surface but the UV wrap is more narrow than the object itself. I would expect the opposite.
Thanks!

I'm sure it was scaled at one point. Does that mean in order to get a "clean" unwrapping, I can never scale my objects?


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How can I control when a camera starts moving along a curve
I am making an animation for my senior project and although I have the actual animation done, I am having trouble with the camera paths. I have multiple camera paths set up (most of which will be following a path) and I wanted to transition between the different cameras as the animation progressed. However, when I start the animation, all the cameras start moving immediately. How can I make it so the cameras wait for a set amount of frames (time) before beginning to move?
Thank you for any help you can offer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7qGL3LIvcc
camera follow path
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZRtAtAvL6k Any inquiry ask me Thankyou

Just set keyframe where it is still, further in the timeline just before the other keyframes start moving the camera :)
Like, if you want it to be still in half a second, place a keyframe at frame 12, and then have the other frames placed afterwards. If it is in the middle of a move section, then you need to place a keyframe where you want the camera to be still, and then place the same keyframe at the frame of how long you want the still camera to last :)
If this didn't explain your issue, please tell me, and I will try to understand the issue :)


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tesselate a model with vastly different sizes of triangles in a way trigangles have roughly the same size?
I have an issue that is the opposite of dynamic topology. In order to remap the details onto a lowpoly model, I need to remesh the model so that has roughly the same triangle size across the model. Is there a script that can analyze the mesh and tessellate it at places were the triangles are to large to a kind of normalized triangle size? Perferably with keeping an existing UV map ....

Maybe try a Remesh modifier then a Triangulate modifier ?

yeah, that works in general but has servere downsides, that I am looking for another way.
a.) in order to capture the details of the model, it needs to have at least Octree depth =9 or better 10 .... => gazzillion of polygons
b.) the UV map is crap and the maps need to be projected from original to remeshed model, which is also an awkward process.
A python script that tessellates all larger trigs with a too big area ... that would be perfect. It could keep the original UV mapping and would have way less polygons

Did you tried Dynotopo's "Details Flood Fill" operator once enabled "Constant Detail"? It will not keep the uv map though...

Making all faces roughly the same size without loss of detail will necessarily require the new triangles to be the size of the smallest one. (barring some needlessly dense flat section having the smallest tri)

thx, Detail Flood fill with constant details, does the trick. Looses the UV map, but that's OK as I can project to the new model


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Can't use "i" hotkey in pose mode
I'm not sure what exactly happened.  But I was working on creating a walk cycle for a rig and I guess I mistyped something and now I cant use the insert keyframe hotkey whilst in pose mode.  I can use it in object mode, and I can still use the manual "insert pose" buttons in rig mode, but the i hotkey refuses to work when any bones in pose mode are selected.

What does "refuses to work" mean? What happens when you press it?

Nothing happens, the keyframe selection window just it won't show up.  Like the key doesn't register or something like that.


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Why do I get a text that reads "feet" on the top corner of the 3d viewport?
.
I somehow now have this in my startup file. Can someone tell me what this represents and how to change/remove it?

That are your units of measurement.
For Version 2.8X Enable/Disable Text Info in the Overlay Controls.

Then set the scale to the Unit System in which you measure.

For Versions 2.7x
You can change them under the Unit tab in the Scene Properties menu.

If you want "Blender" measurements just set the length to none.

Doh! Of course it is. I was confused because one of my last projects was to model a chair of mine and I had renamed the mesh of the feet, well, "feet". I thought somehow that was related. Thank you!

That is the unit you're using in your current project, it is set from the scene tab (see image below), to set it to how it is by default you have to select Meters in the tab where it says Miles and then set the length to None.
Basically, you chose Feet as the default lenght to work with so every square in the blender grid is 1 feet long to you. In the Scene tab you see below you can choose which unit to use when you work which can be pretty useful if you want to do things precisely.


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uv-allign-distribute add-on
I have spent the last hour trying to install the uv-allign-distribute add on from revolution. I'm doing all the usual things that I've done with other add ons and nothing is happening. Im installing both from the zip file and also tried installing by opening the zip and trying to install each different .py script. Nothing, nadda, zero.
I ask for help because sometimes with a new version of blender apparently add ons behave differently, (windows create is now archimesh for example,) anyway, any help appreciated as usual.

A link to get the addon would help us find any problems with it.

a/uv-align-distribute

https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?340206-Add-On-UV-Align-Distribute

The instructions for installing the addon could be clearer.
The releases download page on github has several download options, the easy one is the uv_align_distribute.zip - download this and you can select the zip file after clicking Install Add-on From File... in blenders preferences.

If you download one of the other options or download the whole repo from the project page you get the whole repo and you will need to copy one folder out of it to your addon folder.
After unzipping the full repo download, copy the uv_align_distribute folder, into your addon folder, not the outer folder that will have -master or -3.0 in the name, but the inner folder that will be seen with the docs and tests folders. The best location will be in scripts/addons in your user config location. If you want to, you could copy it into the blender install with the existing addons.


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Is there a way to control limited disolve?
I have a very high poly set of meshes, (due to my flagrant use of dynotopo while sculpting,) which I would like to decrease the poly count of. Limited dissolve took the poly count of one of the meshes from 130,000 to about 7000. However the mesh fell apart in some areas and I was not even vaguely happy with the result. Is there a way to control the level of limited dissolve or should I be looking at a decimate modifier?

Yes you can control limited dissolve
In Edit Mode with all the mesh selected
Press Delete and you get option limited dissolve
As soon as you click limited dissolve press F6 to open operator panel and adjust the angel and it will lower the verts (See the verts in the top info bar).


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Exporting all shader node with object to import into another scene
I have a loverly loaf of bread, textures, shaded the lot but it's to be part of a much bigger scene. When I export it as any of the files types on offer in the drop down, 3ds. .abc etc., the shader nodes don't come with it and I'm left looking at something like a plastic lump. Do I have to redo all the shading/textures/normal maps etc., in the scene to which I have imported the object or is there a way to bring everything across? Also tried the append function and had no joy.

From blender it is possible to link to an asset that is in another blend file. No need export/import for this. Check in the file menu under link/append.
Be aware that there is a difference between linking and appending. With linking you cannot change the linked data locally (as it will still be loaded from the original blend-file). The benefit of linking is that you can change the object/material in the original file and it will be automatic updated in all scenes where it is linked to.
Before linking works with an object. also be sure this object is in a group. And you link the group in stead of the object. Otherwise you won't be able to move the object.
By using append you will be able to change the data as a copy will be stored in the blend file you are working on. (more similar to Copy paste).

Ok this worked but then how do I find the nodes in node editor please?

I updated the reply that you need to make it a group in order to work correctly. I also added the difference between linking and appending

You should not use the import/export tools when copying stuff from one scene to another. Use the Append tool in your big scene (File->Append) and choose the bread .blend file. Then navigate to the "Objects" folder in the .blend file and select all objects belonging to your loaf of bread. This will import it with all materials applied.

The alternative is to first open the bread .blend, select the bread and press Ctrl + C and then paste it into an other file opened with Ctrl + v

ok maybe i'm being dumb but when i click on the bread.blend file I can see no 'object file' even if I click on it or 2x click on it. In fact if I do click on it then go to the top right and hit append from library it takes me to main interface with a message....bread.blend not a library

There's a few different ways to achieve it. If you plan to complete the entire project from the same local machine, you can always create a linked library. However, this can be problematic if you are sharing workflow with others, or need to import into other apps. The most fail safe way to achieve this is to bake & export all of your UV texture maps and assign them to the object. Just make sure you select "automatically pack resources" from the edit tab prior to saving.


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Switch between turntable and trackball rotation
New to Blender.  Working exclusively in User Persp window on 3D viewport (which is how I always like to work in 3D Studio).
Looked everywhere, no info:  Where is the menu setting or key combo to lock the Z-axis so I can turntable my view orbits?

The only place I know is in the user preferences (CTrL ALT U), input >> orbit style (left column).

Go to User preferences, then change the tab to Input then toggle the orbit style to your liking.

I found solution with add-on: Toggle Orbit (BlenderMarket). Buttons added to the Header to toggle between Turntable and Trackball orbit method.


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How are RGB values changed on an existing object?
I have an object with some color from an existing .blend file.  Where can the color be changed for this object?

There is probably a texture applied to this object which is why you see this color while the viewport shading is set to textured. You would need to change/remove the texture to change the color.

Thanks rjg.  I do recall, and have been seeing, that I had applied a partial reflective aspect to the object.

I just found out how with the present configuration (it looks like there was also a texture that had been applied):
Select the object.
Press Object button in properties.  ("Type of active data to display and edit:  Object")
In that same pane, scroll down to and maximize Display.  Current RGB is under Object Color:.
This can be done in either Object Mode or Edit Mode.


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How do you create a simple single vertex mesh with no actual faces whatsoever?
In link How to edit Parameters for an Object after it is created?, it is suggested in one of the answers to begin a workaround by "Create(ing) a simple single vertex mesh with no actual faces whatsoever,...."
There's an animated GIF embedded within the answer that illustrates its making, but does not include the menus and commands involved.
All I see in my own 2.92 for Add is commands for meshes that are 3D objects, not anything like a simple vertex mesh.  Can anybody look at what's going on in the link and tell me how its author is building the first 8 seconds of the screen that is reproduced there?

Create a cube or a plane or anything really, go into edit mode and select all with "a".  Then press "m" at center to merge all the vertices into one.
Alternatively enable the "mesh: extra objects" module in preferences and then you get an option to add a single vert.1
Specifically what this demo has done though is create a single vert as mentioned above, then duplicated it and moved the second one a little way off, then with both vertices selected they made an edge between them with "f".  Now you can hop into object mode and follow the rest of that little tutorial to make your cylinder.


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How do i insert a picture directly onto the face of a cube?
I have not been able to figure out how, a step by-step process would probably be best.

What was complex for you to understand from already existing instructions? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/516/add-different-materials-to-different-parts-of-a-mesh and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/8697/how-do-i-put-an-image-texture-on-a-material-in-cycles

You can try making a UV Map of the Cube, saving it, and then drawing the texture.

Go to Edit Mode by pressing [Tab]. Press U and then click "Smart UV Project". You can adjust some of the numbers to change how the texture is generated. You can also change the positon of the sides on the UV Map. To see textures, go to Textured mode

To save the UV Map to your preferred destination, click the Export UV Layout as shown below.

Afterwards, draw on the sides. You can do a test of which is going to draw on what side by drawing numbers on the UV Map or draw marks in Blender(I think there is a way to do that, but I don't know how).
When you are done making it, save it to your computer and open Blender again and import the image.

After you have done that, you will see the texture you have done in the Textured rendering.


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twist or untwist object in increments
I am trying to animate a DNA being untwisted as an enzyme moves across it and I can't get it to look the way I want. Here's what I've tried so far:
If I use the Simple Deform modifier, either the whole thing is twisted or nothing at all. If I use shorter increments of DNA with this modifier, the ends are not attached to each other and spin independently of each other.
If I use Shapekeys, the DNA doesn't untwist so much as it deforms (since the vertices move linearly to their destination points).
I have an idea that it might work using hooks but I have no idea how (I'm rather new to Blender). Help would be much appreciated, I'm also happy with a link to a tutorial doing something kind of like that.

I'd use an armature for this.


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Add vertices to existing hook
I made an object and animated it with a hook. Afterwards, I added some vertices to the object that are therefore not attached to the hook. Is there a way to add those vertices to the already existing hook so they will follow its path through the animation? I am using Blender 2.79 on Windows 10.

Keep in mind, that if your hook object is animated, you need to place it in rest/initial position before attaching new vertices (for example switch to frame, where hook is located originaly). Otherwise they could behave incorrectly.
Once did it, enter Edit mode (TAB) and Hook modifier will provide additional options. Select button will show vertices that are already used for hooking. With those selected you should just select new vertices and click Assign. Done.

Thank you, that was so much easier than I thought! Yet still I could not find it in the Blender documentation.

I didn't know you could do that - I've always had to remove the hook and re-create it. That's really good to know.


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VSE: Use png images in one channel as alpha mask for another channel
I have rendered a 2D animation from Synfig as png images. It put out the png image of each frame and also the alpha values of each frame as separate png. (basically a white silouette of the animated shape with a black background).
However, I cannot find a way to use the alpha pngs as transparency mask in Blender's VSE (Blender Version 2.79 on Windows 10). I loaded both strips of images in separate channels but can't find a Blend mode that subtracts one from the other. Any help would be much appreciated.

I agree that it is a bit hidden.
I have three strips here, a blue one which serves as the background, an orange one as foreground and the black and white at the bottom to use as alpha channel.
The orange strip on top is supposed to get the mask. In order to do that, it needs a Mask Modifier with the Black & white strip as its source.
After that, simply select 'Alpha Over' as the blend type for the top strip.

The alpha mask:

What you get with the default blend type (Cross):

The finished result:

Perfect, that did the trick! For other noobs like me I will clarify that the alpha strip (black&white) needs to be at the bottom, as you did it. I naively just put it anywhere.

One is glad to be of service.

By the way, you CAN put it anywhere if you hide it with H or by clicking it's eye in the 'Edit Strip' panel. The alpha effect will still work while the strip itself will be hidden.


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Translating Color Data from Cinema4D to Blender
I have quite a tough (for me, non-Blender user) task on my hands. I need to get color data of an animated object in Cinema 4D into Blender.
My first approach was animating the color of a material in C4D and exporting an FBX, this didn't work.
Next, I tried linking the 'Display Color' of my object to Vertex Colors, and exporting via an Alembic file. This .abc file retains my animated color data if I re-open (and play back) inside C4D, but when I bring the .abc into Blender, it only gets the color from Frame 1, which is no good to me.
Now, I'm trying to potentially rig up a Set Driver / Set Driven expression, taking rotation (X, Y, Z) and mapping them to the R, G, B colors of the material inside Blender. I think I have this Set Driver setup, but it doesn't change any colors, I am not sure where things are going wrong. In C4D, using Xpresso, this would be extremely straight forward, but i need the color data to come into Blender, and cannot do so.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, this is a crunch time project.

"but it doesn't change any colors" How are you verifying this, viewport preview? Have in mind that Blender viewport doesn't preview material animations well, you have to render to see the results

Thanks for the heads up about viewport playback. I wasn't aware of that, I dont use blender much at all, I'll check into this.


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Why is my alpha texture repeating as a triangle shape?
I've been designing a 3D intro where a logo, split up into 64 squares, comes out of the bottom smoothly. I used an online tool to split up my logo into 64 squares. For example,
 is the top left corner piece. I added this as a texture and made a material, but for some unknown reason, it displays like this:

If anyone knows how to fix this, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Never mind, I figured it out. Under the Mapping submenu in the Texture pane, the Coordinates need to be set to Generated. It then appears normally, like this:

Hope this helps.


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Trouble adding texture to another object from texture panel
(I use blender render if that is important)
I can add an image texture to an object from the texture. But when I try to do the same thing with another object, the texture panel is blank.

Going on the pic, it appears your scroll bar at right is fully down - just scroll it up  :)

@Edgel3D Yup. But I still can't add.  link.

Has the selected model got a material slot?  If not, give it one, then try for texture.  (Suggesting the obvious 'cos I've got little to go on)

@Edgel3D Yay, it worked. Appreciate it. Btw I didn't have to go and add a material slot for the first object.

I've noted that occasionally, if I select an object and go straight to it's texture properties, I can end up with a blank, and it happened again recently. I make it a habit of selecting the material icon 1st, then the texture to avoid this. (using vers 2.77a)  Glad to hear your problem is no more...


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Plane track does not follow marker through duration of frames
I make stop motion animation, and am trying to figure out how to overlay a mouth on a pattern I have for a characters mouth.
Everything is working as it should with the compositing, etc, aside from my plane track. The plane track will not follow the markers that I have placed on the character's mouth. I made a series of markers, traced it over the camera movements, and then merged them.
I then copied and pasted the marker 3 times over to have the required 4 markers to create the plane track.
Once the plane track is created, it appears for the first frame, but any frame past that point it disappears....
What am I doing wrong here?
Image attached of first frame with the plane tracker present. The following frames only show the marker.
Thanks,
Ben
UPDATE:
After following the steps on the suggested link (How would I attach text to a tracked point on video clip)
I get the following:

I merge them because the mouth moves fairly quickly as the character's head moves. With 12 different track points the plane track does not accurately follow the spot. When I say I copied and pasted the 'marker', I'm referring to the track points needed for the plane track. I called them markers because the option in the track tab says "marker". Sorry for the confusion

Just saw that your message had more. Thank you. I'll reply if I have any more questions.

@cegaton I have used your reference. I have it set up to the composite settings for the section titled, "if the text element is an image and not a 3D Object", yet I have an error showing up. I have pasted it in the original question post. Let me know if you have a solution. Thanks

I'm confused. I followed your link in your comment and did what it said to do. My image is saying this is the result on my end when I did what your instructions said to do..I don't get a physical error message from Blender itself - Im saying the result is not what I want. The result is an error.

@cegaton I figured it out. Wanted to say thank you so much for your help. Really appreciate you taking time out of your day.


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How to fix exterior faces Blender thinks are interior faces
I use Blender to create 3D models for printing. Occasionally when I select mesh by trait - interior faces, the results shows some exterior faces selected.
I tried to use Mesh > Normals > Flip to fix this but nothing happens. Same for recalculate exterior faces.
I've also tried the 3D model plugin to "Make Manifold" but it removes the selected faces.
The solid model looks correct but will not print correctly.
Is there a way to fix this?

Does it conected to a mesh or is it separated? I mean when you select a vertex and hit L key does it select all vertices or only highlighted part on your screen?

I think you would have more than one issue :-) here are nicely documented all possible issues check it out
https://www.sculpteo.com/en/tutorial/prepare-your-model-3d-printing-blender/correct-3d-file-mistakes-3d-printing-blender/

When you have trouble with Normals, i would highly recommend the following.

Go in the Viewport Overlays and activate "Face Orientation"

You should now see red and blue overlay on your object (blue face direction should always point outwards, red the backside of faces and should only point inwards)
Go in Edit Mode and press A to select all
Press Shift+N to recalculate normals outside
If there are still red areas facing outwards you need to select them manually
Press Alt+N and Flip those Normals

Now the entire object should be blue and you can deactivate the "Face Orientation"
A little tip, add Flip and show Face Orientation to Quick Favorits per RMB
It's so helpfull to have at hand and saves a lot of time.
Important is that only selected faces will be affected by the normal operations.
Interior faces as the tooltip says are faces were all edges have more then 2 face users!

Means faces that cover holes where more geometry is hidden behind.
Here a little visual explanation about it:

It's obvious that there are faces hidden behind the middle one covering a hole.
I believe you may have generated overlapping faces that lie above/in front of others that are facing outwards.
Try saving the file incremental and then select those interior faces and hide them with H. Should those now hidden faces not affect the mesh, just press Alt+H to show them again and delete them with X, "Faces".

Thanks, I have done all of that and the blue pointers indicate that the normals are facing outward. But then when I check again with mesh "Select all by trait - interior faces", the same faces are still selected.

Those faces should be either unneeded or are in front of faces that are hidden and are not needed.

To test: Add cube, duplicate 6x along x with grid snap on. (Move each duplicate cube along the axis so that the two cubes' side faces 'touch'). Take this group duplicate 6x along y with grid snap on. Then take this group duplicate 6x along z with grid snap on. You should now have a nested  'cube' made up of 216 smaller cubes with no gaps.
Now delete some random inner cubes and a few of the cubes making up the 6 walls of the larger cube. Something like Minecraft. You should be able to travel through tunnel-like spaces through the large cube.
Select all remaining cubes and join them into one mesh (Object>Join).
In Edit mode, select all vertexes. Go to Mesh>Merge>By distance. Set distance to around 1.2m to select all double and remove them.
Then, still in Edit mode, on Face Select, go to Select All By Trait> Interior Faces.
And there's the problem: While Blender does select most of the included/occluded interior faces, it doesn't select all of them. And, additionally, it selects some faces that are exterior facing.
This is not what is supposed to happen. It seems quite random and unreliable and needs to be fixed.
Whatever algorithm / coding is used to execute this process is not fit for purpose and another method must be found to perform this (should be) useful function.


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Use center of entire object as pivot point in edit mode (2.8)
I know how to set the pivot point to the center of an object in Object mode.
But in Edit mode, as soon as I select a group of vertices (or edges or faces) the pivot moves to the center of the selected items.
How do I keep the pivot point in Edit mode the same place as it is in Object mode?
Selecting Pivot Point - Active Element does not work. I know I can use 3D cursor but then how do I easily set the 3D cursor to the same place as the Object's pivot point?
Thanks!

I don't think the mesh has any knowledge of its object's pivot point in Edit Mode.. so to put the transform pivot at the object origin, that would be, (with 'Pivot' set to 'Cursor'),

Tab to Object Mode
ShiftS > 'Cursor to Selected'
Tab  back again.

I find it's pretty unusual, though, that I don't want my pivot at the center of some edge, face, loop, or somesuch.. in which case that can be selected, and the Cursor sent to Selected in Edit Mode.


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Fix to show thumbnails in Windows 11 doesn't work
I would love to see Blender 3.0.1 (and earlier) file thumbnails in Windows 10/11 Explorer, but the fix of running blender -R at the Command window never makes a difference.
I have opened a Command window as an Administrator and successfully changed the directory to the current version of Blender and run the command Blender - R.
I have tried running it multiple times then rebooted my PC and also cleared the thumbnail cache, but I never see thumbnails, only the large blender icon for my files. Yes, I do see a success message each time.
Are there are other tricks or third party tools to display Bender files as thumbnails? (Most of my files are simple models for 3D printing),

The link in the answer to this thread led me to this discussion on a Blender bug report. It looks like thumbnails using the blender -R command were broken around 2.90-2.92 and you now have to manually enable them in 2.93+.
Under Preferences->System there's an option to register the currently running version of Blender with Windows for generating thumbnails and opening .blend files through the file explorer.

This doesn't seem to happen automatically so you'll have to manually click Make Default the first time you install it on any computer.
Also from the little bit of testing I've done, it seems that the thumbnail depends on whether your scene has a default camera set. Without a camera, the thumbnail is just a screenshot of the entire Blender window at the point you save your file.

With a camera, the thumbnail takes a square snapshot from your camera, which looks much nicer.

That worked! Thanks!

I found for me it was a corrupt prefs file, which I deleted, then rebuilt and things worked again.


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How to flatten faces to display actual surface area
I have designed and 3D printed a stand for an RC boat. I need to line the surface of the stand with thin foam sheet to protect the bottom of the boat and prevent slippage.
How can I flatten the faces in red so that the surface area is accurately depicted (to make a template)? Scaling along Z doesn't work as it does not result in the actual surface area.
Thanks!

I think the shipped add-on Export Paper Model will do exactly what you want.

Damn, too bad I didn't know about it on Friday when I designed my paper disco ball in Blender: https://i.imgur.com/G7j2j1y.png - my approach was UV unwrapping

@MarkusvonBroady Out of interest, how did that go, re, surface area? I've been trying to figure out how much the various unwrap methods conform.

There were problems... :D Can't go much more complex than the UV sphere on the screenshot, at least not when using single A4. Closing the ball was hard ( https://imgur.com/SLzxURY ), since you can't hold the paper from the inside at the end. I think making holes + "outies" at least for the final connection of two main parts can make the assembly easier. Maximizing the surface for a given paper dimension requires strategical seams on the UV, something I didn't bother to do. I actually did that little project because I was aiming for bad results. :D https://imgur.com/5y1WBX5

"Outies" can be generated by e.g. duplicating faces and cutting them with a knife, but I didn't bother and just cut them manually, though that made me forget to leave two outies on top and bottom (were supposed to only make a single cut in the circles instead of cutting out a V shaped piece) https://imgur.com/Li3fCgG

@MarkusvonBroady Heroic! :D


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How to add a mesh to each vertex (30k vertices) so can import into UE4
I want to import a set of vertices into UE4 but am unable to do so since it lacks any mesh data. Is it possible to convert the 30k vertices into having meshes at each vertex so they are visible and can be imported? e.g. adding a small sphere or cube for each vertex.

Use a Skin Modifier
I created some vertices to test:

Then I added a skin modifier from the modifiers tab:

I then got this result, which I think is what you want:

When you are happy with the result, you should be sure to apply the modifier using the apply button in the modifiers tab to actually create the mesh data.
If the squares are the wrong size, go into edit mode, select all the vertices, and press Ctrl + A to resize the cubes.
I hope that helps!


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Import to blender removing faces
When I import a model to blender that I produce myself (using either OBJ writing or FBX SDK) it seems to randomly delete faces.
I've checked for duplicate faces but there are zero here, and I'd presume blender wouldn't remove those anyway. What's up?

Duplicate/degenerate faces are removed (by validate). You should post your obj/fbx file.

Here's a different one that I still have, but it has the same problem.

That file has duplicate faces. Line 10205 and line 16866 are both "f 2904// 2911// 2905//".


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How to do a simulation on blender for an exoskeleton
I m working on a similar project as in this video:
Could you guys tell me how it is possible to implemeent a simulation as such using a range of sensors?
I have no idea how it could be done.
Thanks in advance to anyone who has the answer

Possible duplicate of How to move an Arduino's servo motors using Blender?

try to explain "as such" somehow, refer to your current setup, what doesn't work, in a simplest form...


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Can't add Loopcuts to Filled in planes?
I'm trying to add a loopcut to a filled in part of my mesh.
why won't it work?

loop cuts only work with quads. You have an N-gon, composed of multiple edges, but in this case, it is easy to keep quad geometry so you can do loop cuts.


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Rigid body changes position while keyframing "animation" and "dynamics" checkboxes
I try to animate interaction about two rigid body objects. One of them is animated, the second one is animated but just a frame before the interaction I switch its behavior by keyframing "animated" and "dynamics" checkboxes in Rigid Body properties.
In a simple example I made it works well but in the real project I am doing after disactivating the "animated"checkbox, the rigid body objects suprisingly moves back to another position
The only difference between projects is animation nodes add-onn used to multiply objects. May it be the reason?
Please find linked below blender files. Any answers would be highly appreciated.
https://we.tl/eTJqTAsTN0
Jakub

.
P.S No idea why, but after reloading the second file the bottle loses its rigid bodiness...

Wouldn't a breakable rigid body constraint be easier to maintain? That would remove all the fine tuned keying.

Hey, I used breakable rigid body constraint and it worked greatly! Thank you very much!


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Removing distant vertices/keeping close vertices
I have a very large map of vertices imported into blender
I want to keep the areas where there are many vertices close together but remove all the random dots here and there. I couldn't find any other post about removing vertices based on distance and thought there could be some function or program to do this. If not can python interact with the vertices and remove them based on distances to nearby vertices?

Can you provide a sample data set.   See https://hdbscan.readthedocs.io/en/latest/comparing_clustering_algorithms.html

Yes, I've uploaded the whole .obj with a huge list of vertices.


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RX580 not supported in Blender 2.8
I have a Windows PC with RX580. Just installed 2.8 yesterday. Eeviee seems to be working perfectly, while Cycles can render only on CPU. In the Preferences the CUDA tab says that no supported GPUs are found. What do I do?

Check in the OpenCL tab.

@rjg I think you should have posted that as an answer. I think that's all there is to it with this question.

@MartinZ probably. Now you get the sweet reputation points for yourself. I don't think that hurts anybody.

Maybe this could help you: https://www.amd.com/de/technologies/radeon-prorender-blender I just found it due to having the same problem with my RX580; just trying it out. Regards,
Roger

You need to select OpenCL instead of CUDA for rendering with AMD cards.

Also see: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/80879/60759 and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/31795/compute-device-list-not-showing-card-name-when-using-opencl

How do I switch to OpenCL for Cycles in Blender 2.8?

If you have AMD, you specify in the settings as here . But unfortunately, Cycles does not work with AMD cards. Only Eevee.
Sazerac This proves that Cycles doesn't actually use AMD GPUs when rendering

Cycles does work, using OpenCL, thats why your screenshot shows the card listed there under 'Cycles Render Devices'. that said AMD card rendering is overall less well developed and tested to likely to have more issues.

CUDA® is a parallel computing platform and programming model developed
  by NVIDIA for general computing on graphical processing units (GPUs)

Basically CUDA is NVIDIA's proprietary technology.

That is true, but the question was "What do I do?", not what CUDA is.


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How can I constrain a bone to follow another bone from the same armature?
here's my question, simply and straight:
How can I make a bone follow (location and rotation) another bone from the same armature? Imagine a character with hand resting over the hip, I need to move the hip bone, and make the hand follow it.
What I already tried:

Creating an empty, vertex parenting it in the hip's mesh, and from the hand bone create a CHILD OF constrain to the empty. Not working.
Creating two empties, vertex parented one to he hip, and one to he hand, and adding rotation and location constrains (because copy transforms constrain doesn't have OFFSET) and struggling with the local space and the offset to pose the hand. This kind of works, but it looks to me that there must be a simpler way, the struggle with the OFFSET and the local/ world/ wherever space is insane.

Any thoughts how to make it in a simple way? I'm coming from Maya, and I'm used to constrain between rig controllers all the time (controllers in Maya are nurbs curves, not shaped bones), so there is no trouble with the hierarchy as it is with Blender bones.
Please, let me know if you need additional explanation.
Thanks a lot!

I think Child Of is what you're looking for, why didn't it work?

Yeah, that was my first guess, but if I select the hand bone, and add it a CHILD OF constrain, in the TARGET, Blender (2.80 beta), doesn't let me select the armature,  -I think because the hand and the hip bones are in the same armature, and it messes up the bone hierarchy.

so maybe you need to rethink the hierarchy, if your hand is parented to a bone (IK controller of the lowerarm), then give this bone the Child Of constraint

I can give this a try, I'll let you know!

Sorry, no luck. No matter wich bone do I add the CHILD OF constrain, Blender won't let me select the armature as target. The problem is still the same, it seems like Blender can't constrain a bone to another bone in the same armature, but I can't accept this! There must be a way for such a simple operation!

You can make a bone child of another bone within the same armature, but perhaps my explanation was not clear enough: typically for the arm you'll have the upper arm, lower arm, hand, and controller. The controller has no parent (except root bone), the hand is parented to the controller, the lower arm has an IK constraint with the controller as target. Now if you give the Child Of constraint to the controller, it works fine, the controller will follow the bone that you have chosen as target, and the hand and lower arm will follow

It turns out I was trying to add the constraints in the Object Constraints tab, instead of Bone Constraints.
You can make a bone child to another bone in the same armature with a Bone Constraints!


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Is there any way to augment the previous render?
I rendered my scene with 1000 samples and it is still looking grainy. I would like to pass another 1000 samples on top of this render result. When I start a new render Blender starts rendering the new image. Is it possible to tell Blender to reuse the result of the previous render and just run another set of samples on top of it?

There isn't direct way to do that however this can be done via compositor, answer with corrected math https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21806/how-to-combine-low-sample-renders/21809#21809. More complex solution https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5017/stacking-cycles-renders-in-the-compositor

@MrZak could you put this into an answer?

This is a duplicate in my opinion so I don't answer. You can answer it instead if you think there are any new details as opposed to the linked question or flag the question as duplicate


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Parented higher hierarchy bones movements in pose mode disrupt lower hierarchy bones
My issue is that if I have a line

X
Y
Z

with the letters as the bone / joint.
If I weight paint X - Y to move relative to Z, X relative to Y is left behind making the tube

bend in a S shape instead of an L shape.

How can I make X and Y move as one stick or unit instead of only moving Y and leaving X behind?

Note: I did try weighting the vertex/modifying the bones. Auto-rigging did not work at all But was successful at linking the bone to mesh.

could you please show some screenshots, maybe share your file? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Hope this link works: https://imgur.com/vF4t7qB  Thanks for the quick response.

The file Size was too large to upload. Still I tried alternate weight painting solid or in gradient. If I painted only over the bone the above happened. If I painted all the bones down from the respective bone, the above photo was my result. If I normalize all the above happened. If I gradient paint, the program acts as if the different weights are the same and the above happens. Binding the bones with automatic weights CTRL+P after selection did not do anything for weights. It only bound the bones to the mesh for me to weight paint them.

I tried to remake a mesh totally from scratch. I tried alternate weight paints many youtube tutorials and also tried to add/remove modifiers/align vertex/ normalize all.  This problem has been repeating itself though. I am trying to re-download blender after copying some youtube videos and getting different results.


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Bevel only certain edges with Bevel Modifier
I am trying to bevel only some edges on my cube and I manage to do so with the bevel tool, but I fail with the bevel modifier. I tried adding those edges, which I also selected when using the tool, to a vertex group and applying the modifier only to those, but still all edges get beveled in the result. I understand that this happens because the vertices and not the edges are in the vertex group, but I don't know how to work around this.
How can I achieve the same result with the modifier as with the tool?

Am using blender 2.8

It's not possible to add vertices sharing the same edges to a vertex group and avoid selecting edges they hold in between; see https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/51296/is-there-a-way-to-save-selection-by-faces

I don't think you can do it with the Vertex Group method, but if you choose Weight, then set the edges weight in the N panel, it works.


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Duplicating smoke simulation result for still image
I have a still scene which is lit by about 100 or so torches and so I created a basic smoke/fire simulation for one of them using the quick smoke effect. I've found a frame which I'm happy with and now I want to use this frame for all these torches. Obviously I can't have a scene with 100 smoke simulations if I want it to render this side of the century so I was hoping to be able to "duplicate" this single frame of simulation in a similar way as you would duplicate a mesh and then position it over all the torches.
I've had a go at baking the simulation but I am at a loss for how to actually go about duplicating it across to my multiple torches. Is this actually possible to do or is there a much easier way of having multiple fires in a single scene? They're quite far away so they don't have to be particularly high res. I'm using cycles.


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There is seemingly no way to get a Sketchup model to work properly in Blender. Pls help
I'm very new to blender, I've had a very frustrating experience trying to get something from Sketchup Make to Blender to Unreal Engine, with seemingly no way to do it.
Sketchup Make only allows me to export as a .dae file or a .kmz file.
Here's a screenshot: https://i.sstatic.net/za2xA.jpg
Here, I tried to import the .dae file.
On the right, you can see that the material still 'exists', as I can click on each individual polygon on the right and have it's assigned texture be recognised.
Unfortunately, for some reason, these don't appear on the actual model. Exporting a model like this to an FBX or OBJ to use in Unreal means I end up with a useless model which is unable to be correctly textured. (Also, every single polygon in the model is a separate object for some reason. Why is that? It means dealing with it in Unreal is a complete nightmare.)
I've read online that you have to assign each texture to each face. Well, for me, that will take literal hours. So I just can't afford to do that.
I also tried importing .skp files straight into blender with a plugin.
https://i.sstatic.net/CLa5P.jpg
When I do that, all the textures become solid colours in blender (yes, I've tried 'Rendered' mode and along with rendering it and everything) and the UV maps are still completely screwed in Unreal, with the maps being so small that any texture just becomes solid colour.
All I want is for a Sketchup model, which I've spent heaps of time making exactly the way want, to be imported into Blender. Or even better, straight into Unreal.
Does anyone have alternatives? Can someone please please help me out? I can't find a single tutorial or forum post that actually works. I run into some sort of different problem every single time. Any help is greatly appreciated.

One shouldn't add texture to each face of the mesh and it doesn't mean the model can't have textures if imported material doesn't show them; probably materail is set up wrongly upon import.

You will find that it works with Blender render, but not cycles render. Once in blender render mode (not cycles) change your view to Material rather than shaded or textured. You'll see your sketchup model as it appears in sketchup, with slightly better rendering. Rendering from here doesn't work well.
Cheers


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Brightness of environment texture diminished at last step of render
I'm rendering a scene in which a reflective plane (with ocean modifier) stretches to the horizon, and I have an image of a sunset for my environment texture.
My problem comes in the the last five seconds of rendering any given frame; the overall brightness of the image suddenly becomes dimmed as the render completes.  There is also a very slight glow around objects against the texture, like an alpha channel (although my transparency is turned off).
Attached image: TOP RENDER is calculating by going to Render > Render Image.  The BOTTOM RENDER is the viewport with view mode set to rendered.
Render settings:
PNG, RGB
1920x1080
100 samples
No clamping
Motion blur shutter: 0.5
Thanks

The render output is showing that it is the "composite" layer. What's going on in the compositor?


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Slow interactive interface/viewport
I installed blender 2.79 and when i run it the viewport interact really slow it has a delay of almost 1 sec after i make any movements.
Im using AMD 12 Processor
Radeon R7 4Gb GPU
8 Gb RAM
IDK What to do.

Someone told me before i run the blender. Right+click mouse button then select Graphic Integrated Then your GPU.
But in my case i dont see something like what he said.

How big is your blend file? 2. What is the viewport_mode you are in? (wireframe, solid,texture, material, render)? 3. What are you doing in blender when the viewport slows down? TIPS: A - Switch to wireframe or solid mode to get the fastest viewport experience: B - Here are a few hints to reduce slow 3D viewport drawing:
Blender manual

Add a screenshot or add the blendfile to your post through here:- https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com


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Weird cross hatching when I loop cut
When I add a loop cut I get this cross hatching effect. If I add one to the other side as well, then the whole object gets that effect. I've tried changing the shading from flat to smooth, and back. I've recalculated normals, I've removed doubles(0). It doesn't seem to affect the render at least, but i'm not sure if it'll affect anything else like the materials. Or is it just a random glitch that wont do anything else. I've restarted my blender and it didn't take it away either, so I'm lost.

Looks like z-fighting https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5441/cause-of-black-artifacts-in-render. Probably several face loops occupy the same place. They won't necessarily be removed as doubles

It's not a random glitch, it's called Z-fighting. It happens when 2 or more faces occupy the very same space. Then Blender doesn't know anymore which of the faces should be in front and which ones should stay in the back. It also means that you need to clean your topology.
One method of checking for problems is to be in Vertex- or Edge Select Mode with nothing selected and hit CTRLSHIFTALTM to select all edges and its verts that share more or less than two faces.

Here are 4 cross sections. The left one is how it should be. It has a clear inside and a clear outside and is the desired outcome. Every edge only shares two faces.
The second and third one have an internal face where it won't show from the outside. But  CTRLSHIFTALTM will highlight all verts or edges that are connected to that face. This little rascal will also prevent you from recalculating normals correctly.
The fourth is where Z-fighting will occur. While it's not visible, there's now 3 small faces on top of one larger face because I scaled them to 0 on the x axis. And since they're not the same size, removing doubles won't do anything.
Sadly, it's perfectly possible to create Z-fighting topology that the mega shortcut won't detect. Just add a cube, duplicate it without moving it and then scale it down a bit on a single axis.

Note that it is possible to have Z fighting without having any topology issues; consider a transparent cube sitting exactly on a table for instance. The usual solution is to just move them a part very slightly, leaving a small "air-gap".

Ok, I found the problem. I duplicated the object a while ago, but I undid a bunch of things, and I thought the duplication got undone as well.
But it didn't, I didn't bother trying to move the object before, because it only started flickering when I did the loop cut. But now that I think about it, it makes sense.
Sorry for wasting everyone's time. But thank you for the answers, they helped me realise my stupid mistake.


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Trouble importing .pskx file to blender
So, I will list the steps that I did to get to the point where I am having the error.
1) Download latest Umodel and use it to extract model from my game of choice, namely, NekopaLive, which runs on Unreal 4.

2) Download latest version of blender (2.7) Launch and delete all objects within default scene. Save scene as default.
3) Enable the Addon Script for .pskx imports from google searches.

4) Attempt to import .pskx file. Now, I play a lot of fighting games, so believe me when I say I can see very fast things.  The model flashes on screen for a frame, looking just like it does in Umodel, and then it goes back to the empty scene in blender, where I get the error:

Or written out:

Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "C:\Users\dilydaly\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\io_import_scene_unreal_pskx.py", line 658, in execute
      getInputFilenamepsk(self, self.filepath, self.importmesh, self.importbone, self.bDebugLogPSK, self.importmultiuvtextures)
    File "C:\Users\dilydaly\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\io_import_scene_unreal_pskx.py", line 598, in getInputFilenamepsk
      pskxImport(filename, importmesh, importbone, bDebugLogPSK, importmultiuvtextures)
    File "C:\Users\dilydaly\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\io_import_scene_unreal_pskx.py", line 211, in pskxImport
      indata = unpack('64s6i', pskxFile.read(88))
  struct.error: unpack requires a bytes object of length 88
location:  unknown location :-1

At this point, I am stuck. I am relatively new to porting models, and have never worked with Unreal porting before, so I would like to know what I would need to do next to get this model working in blender.
Could someone please explain to me what is going wrong here?
The part that stands out to me is "struct.error: unpack requires a bytes object of length 88" but I don't know what that actually means in terms of the model data.
I appreciate the time taken in advance to reply!

Check the outliner in datablock mode, there may be a mesh and armature created before the importer crashed that is not linked to the scene.


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Skin Modifier Not Rendering
I'm using a skin modifier to create a straight line between two vertices, to simulate a cord being stretched between two moveable points.
I'm following the suggestion in this response Rig a rope spanning two objects (minus using soft bodies, since my cord doesn't need to have curves).
The cord shows up in editing and even in Rendered Mode for viewport shading, but it's not in my final renders. I have 'Use modifier for render' set to true for all four modifiers for this line (the anchor hook, the moveable hook, the skin, and the subsurf) but I'm not sure what else I need to set to make this show up in the actual render.

(I'm also new to blender so I'm guessing I'm missing something obvious, but I haven't found any other questions on this)

Look at this https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/67490/why-does-my-object-not-show-up/67491

@Retrax Oh my gosh, yep, I just had the camera icon turned off for string in the outline...


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Dragging files into blender
Is there away to click and drag an STL file from a folder or my desktop to Blender? or do I have to use the old fashion way file-import?

Good to note : drag'n'drop operations are being worked for Blender 2.8. .blend files can be managed that way already.
For importing files, I guess this will take more time since each file type have its own addon, and in order to be able to drag'n'drop such files you need to make some choices concerning the import settings being used or prompt an import dialogue window to let the user chose his jam.

"drag'n'drop operations are being worked for Blender 2.8"
Do you know more on this? Will add-on makers be able to create their own drag-drop operations for specific file types?

Just the good old fashioned import I'm afraid. If you have a lot of STL's, I believe you can batch import them via. Python scripting. I have found this thread, this however is OBJ's and on Mac, but perhaps it cna point you in the right direction:-)
Drag and drop importing of .OBJ files


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drawing a belt around a gear

Hello, I am having a hard time creating belts and chains around a pullies and gears. I usually use a Nurb curve or the the Array modifier, but they usually end up not coming straight.
*** is there an easier way to create a belt/ chain around these gears?
Thank you for your time :)

what do you mean by "not coming straight"?

when I use the curve to draw the belt, the vertices are not always straight, the belt ends up looking like its slipping off the gear, and perfect in other places. I am really sorry but that's the best way I can explain it.   I wasn't sure if there is away where you select an area and the curve fallows right on top of the surface.

Your usual way to do that is pretty good but instead of nurbs use path or object edges turned to path (Alt+C - Curve from Mesh), then turn on Curve Tools addon if you don't have it on yet and in edit mode set spline type to nurbs. That will give you straight smooth path of your liking every time.

A constrained shape like a belt or chain on a complex path can be generated using softbodies.

This solution is similar to "attract part of a mesh around an arc"

Procedure (tested on Blender 2.79)

Create geometry for the upper gear, lower gear, right guide, left guide, and belt. Make sure the gear geometry is inside the belt geometry and the guides are outside. This is important because collision between the objects will be used to shape the belt.

Set the top gears a guides as collision objects.

Set the belt as a softbody. Follow the setting below. The changes to setting are to get the belt to smoothly follow the forces applies. This is done by applying a large aerodynamic force to slow down the movement of the belt as it collides.

Animate the movement of the gears and guides to their final position. To fit the belt to the path from these parts, they need to move relatively slowly from their initial position to the final position.
Run the animation and the belt will be stretched to follow the part shapes. (Note: A modifier was added to make the belt appear thicker) The final geometry can be applied following this method - "Saving the deformation"

A blend file for this is available at

Nice solution - and well presented answer. You could try increasing the Soft Body 'Friction' setting to calm it down - rather than aerodynamics.


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where can I find this in the python script?
I would like to make the transparent box selected all time, but I am having trouble locating the python script to rewrite it.
Does anyone one know how to do this??
Thank you so :)
enter image description here

To find the source that displays a property,  RMB on it and choose edit source. If blender has a visible text editor it will show the script with the cursor on the relevant line, if no text editor is visible you will get a notice at the top of the window to see the script in the text editor.

Note that the UI scripts you will get only display existing values, if you alter the UI script to always turn the value on you will never be able to turn it off.
I would suggest making an addon that creates new objects and new materials with settings the way you want. This answer shows an example of injecting a button into an existing panel.


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Shrink wrapping 2 mesh together
I need a help shrink wrapping a mesh.
* The tan part is the one that needs to be shrink warped because it was it has data on the front and the back side.

The puprle mesh only has data on the font side ( this is the reference scan i want the tan part to fallow)

My question is, Is it possible to have the tan part fallow the shape of the purple part and still keep the data on the back of it without being crushed.

Use vertex group option to control Shrinkwrap

1) In edit mode, go to your vertex settings (it's the triangle connected with vertices icon) and click the plus sign to add a vertex group. Rename this vertex group something like "shrink".
2) Select all your vertices (Hotkey "A") and then in the vertex group tab, click "Assign".
3) In your Shrinkwrap Modifier, add this vertex group.
4) Then, select only the vertices you don't want shrinkwrapped to your original.
5) After that, with those vertices selected, in the vertex tab and with the vertex group selected, click "Unassign". Those vertices will be excluded from the shrinkwrap.
Hope you can understand my explanation and good luck with it :)


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Why does adding shaders take the colour out of grass in render mode
I am making a field of grass using particle systems. The set up has 2 different clumps, green and green/brown plus some weeds and flowers. In materials mode, when I add shaders, (translucent and glossy for example,) I get the great effect that I want. When I go to render however the colour in the grass is completely gone. (I'm only setting the glossy shader to .002 by the way.) Anyway, glossy or not glossy, translucent or not, if I even go near changing a basic image texture>diffuse>output node setting all the colour goes in render mode. I have had some issues recently with seeing multiple shader and texture nodes in materials mode apparently because I'm on a MAC but this seems to be the inverse problem. Any Ideas?

It would be helpful to be able to see your results as well as you material nodes. Please se the Edit option to edit you question and add screenshots and/or any other information.

So the middle picture is materials mode and the bottom is in render mode. If i don't use any shaders then the render result is fine.

Thank you so much......if I put the diffuse before the 2 mix shaders all is wonderful......its the kind of thing that I can look at for hours and still not see!!


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Object not showing up in full render
I've gone through the arrow icon, camera icon and eye icon and all are active. The mug I made for the the Andrew Price tutorial does not show up in a final render. I have also hit alt H to unhide. Any other ideas lads?

"Any other ideas lads?" Not without more info. Please edit your question and provide more details and screenshots of your setup

Both arrow and eye icons will affect only viewport, not final render. Other ways to make object disappear from final render is dupliframes, inconsistency in render layers for example. So at least show screenshots of the object selected in viewport with Object tab shown in Properties editor window > Duplcation rollout opened and Render Layers tab as well

Maybe you are viewing/rendering in another layer? Or the Cup is the one in another layer? I have circled the layer boxes, if you are wondering where the layers can be found.

you can also check the visibility settings for the cup: properties panel > object data > cycles settings > ray visibility - it may be that some or all of the ray visibilities have become unchecked - turn them all on to make sure the cup is fully visible to all rays


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Where does the render output go?
I set up the render and have tried multiple 'write' locations...hell I even tried to send the output .png to the desktop...no joy...renders 1/2 an hour and I still can't locate a file. Help please.

Hi. Please only ask one question at a time.

If you use simple Render Image and don't setup anything in the compositing nodes, for example, then nothing will be saved automatically by default. To save rendered image open UV Image editor, press F3 to open File browser and choose location. Defined in the Render tab settings location will be used for rendering animations.

See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6769/no-file-output-after-rendering

Check your output setting in the render tab:

after the image has rendered it will be in your UV editor, then you just need to save as:


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Asset not rendering
Please see the attached screen shot. Notice the floor. In the top of the picture I am looking at a quick render in the viewport pressing shift+Z, In the bottom window is the render out from a "proper render." What on earth could I have done to make that happen?

Have you checked the Outliner to see if the floor is set to not render? If the  eye is showing for the view but the camera isn't then maybe you can just toggle the camera back on that way.

I'm so dumb I shouldn't be allowed to use this program......let alone a really nice computer. There is a hidden wall in the way of the camera which is not set to 'not render' so it was getting in the way of the camera. In my own defence, and there probably isn't one, the camera was viewing at the exact join of the  perspective point of the cabinets and the floor. Doh!!!!!


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looking for a location of window add-on
Could someone post an active link to the latest version of window generator add on please? I have looked for the last hour and while many links go to a dropbox site the links are all removed.

Never mind. I found one. Here's the link for anyone else looking: https://github.com/Antonioya/blender/blob/master/add_window_3/add_window_3.zip