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Problems with Solidify Modifier and Model Shape
I'm currently making a 3D model of a tray to 3D Print. Unfortunately, when I try to give it a thickness of 4mm using the solidify modifier, it will mess up the shape/diameter/other of the object.
Does anybody have any ideas on how to make it apply correctly? I've played around with the modifier a bit, and got it to apply the correct thickness without changing the diameter of the tray. But it still does not apply to the model correctly.
This is a screenshot of the tray without the modifier

This is the tray from underneath

This is the desired thickness of 4mm. As you can see it looks fine - that's because I still haven't applied the Modifier. I think the Subdivision surface modifier is messing it up.

When the modifier is applied...

It makes a very weird vertice pattern, not too sure where to start moving them.

File Link:

Did you apply the modifiers from top to bottom ?

I checked the file, the subdivision surface modifier is first then the solidify modifier. Also there were some extra (double) vertices that messed up the modifiers.
Solution:

Deactivate all modifiers
Go in edit Mode and select all with A
Press Alt+M "by Distance" (should remove 12 vertices)
Move solidify modifier to top with the small arrow
Select the object and go in object mode to RMB and select smooth shade
Go in the "Object Data Properties Panel" the green upside down triangle
Unfold the "Normals" section and activate "Auto smooth" default value of 30 is fine
Smile

The surface now looking better, the thickness can be slightly reduced as the subD modifier works over it, so you can adjust it a bit by increasing the offset in the solidify modifier.
Also the offset of the solidify modifier is working based on the normals of the objects faces, which should normally face outwards.
Using a positive offset you make your object thicker then it was, negative offset it gains thickness inwards.
Your main problem with the subD modifier is though that you would need to have a control-loop at the bottom to ensure the form/thickness.
Here the file with a control-loop at the bottom.


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Compositing a transparent helmet
A reference for what I'm going for. Trying to composite a helmet similar to what is seen below but onto a photo of a dog.

Here is my background plate.

I'm having a difficult time making it look like her head is in the helmet. The approach I've tried is:

Render front & back of helmet (full helmet)
Render front of helmet only (front)

These are rendered out with alpha (no background plate included in the renders).
I'm compositing in photoshop. If it's relevant:

Create mask of dog
Subtract mask from full helmet so that dog shows over helmet

Which results in this.

How can I change my compositing workflow in Blender to make it look like the dog's head is really inside the helmet?

maybe put a Render of the front of the helmet on top? The reflections over the dogs head are missing

I guess this is part of the issue. A render of the front helmet is on top, but rendering just the front half of the helmet completely changes the reflections on it.

Unless you really want to go nuts with this assignment, why not place a render of the ENTIRE helmet on top and play with the blend modes? To get something realistic, you would have to distort the image behind the helmet according to the surface normal of the helmet. Maybe you can do this with a curvature map. Doing this would warp the image behind the helmet most drammaticaly near the "edge"

@hatinacat2000 I've given various blend modes a go and it looks ok from a distance. I guess I'm looking for how this might be approached by an expert VFX person. For instance, throwing a masked plane of the dogs head in the actual helmet in the 3D scene or mapping it to some rough geometry that approximates the head (IDK, just throwing things out). I've seen a few tutorials on projecting the plate in camera space onto a plane to create the warping behind the helmet so will give that a go.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Error message importing MHX2 in 2.8
I'm definitely an amateur so excuse me if this is an obvious thing, but I'm trying to import Make Human characters into blender to fix clothing layer issues before moving them into Unity. I'm more than open to alternative suggestions on this whole process but I'll describe what I'm doing and what's going on right now.
I made a character in Make Human and exported them as an MHX2 file. I then installed the MHX2 importer from this URL https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/mhx2-makehuman-exchange
This allowed me to see MHX2 files to import. But when I selected my imported NPC I get a redline of error messages and it fails to upload. After mashing my keyboard I managed to get this window pop up somehow, which I assume is the error log: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/353422958984953857/627373902674395136/unknown.png
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? My one and only thing that I need to do is fix clothing layering on Make Human NPCs, if there's a simpler way of doing that with a different program or something obvious I'm missing with this one then I'd really appreciate a hand. Whether or not you've got a suggestion, thank you for reading this.

The add-on hasn't been properly updated for Blender 2.80. It tries to access color_space on an Image Texture node, which is no longer part of ShaderNodeTexImage in Blender 2.80. It used to be in Blender 2.79b and before.
The proper way of accessing the color space settings is to retrieve the Image object referenced by ShaderNodeTexImage which has the colorspace_settings.
The issue has already been reported to the developer.

Not meaning to sound dense but there's a lot of terminology in there that I'm not familiar with. Would reverting to 2.79b fix this issue as you described it?

@WilliamG Yes, but then you need to use the 2.79b compatible version of the add-on as well.

I'll give that a try, thank you very much for the assistance.

@WilliamG You're welcome! If this answer solved your problem, please mark it as accepted by clicking on the checkmark next to it.

Will do, thank you.

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


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Why can't I adjust proportional size?

I am new to blender and am trying to grab only a part of the mesh and move it with the sphere tool for the falloff. I read that you press g and scroll up and down to make the scope bigger/smaller so you don't move the entire mesh, but when I do that, a dotted yellow line and square appear instead and the whole mesh starts rapidly moving around.

I would really appreciate some help on this, it's driving me insane!

you are using the edge slide tool in the bottom picture (G G is the shortcut). simply turn on proportional editing, then move your selection like you normally would.

You have to select proportional editing first(at the bottom the 3d view), then hit g to grab.


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I'd like to add an edge loop around not connected faces
So, I'd like to add something like edge loop around these faces to manipulate them (e.g. change size in the middle of each. I'm making a broom, by the way.
).

use the knife tool with the "cut through" option enabled

Would like to write an answer, so I can review it review positively?

Use the knife tool (K to enable, Z to cut through, C to cut perpendicularly or 45°, E to keep activated):


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Copying keyframes makes objects snap to one point
I am quite new to blender, and I wanted to make two fractured rigid body balls collide in the air, but I am running into problems. I can make a single pice of the fracture move, and then become dynamic which is what I want, but when I try to copy the animation data to all of the other pices, it copies the location keyframes too resulting in all the fractured pices teleporting to a single point(Not what I want). Is there a way to copy the animation data so that the whole ball moves as a single part, and then shatters when it collides with the other ball?

Inorder to prevent fractured pieces from going into a single point, move all the fracture origins to the center of the ball. You can do this by selecting all the fractures, Shift+S, Cursor to selected, Ctrl+Atl+Shift+C, Origin to 3D cursor. And then copy the animation data to other pieces or do what I did in the below file.
Please check the layer2 in attached files to see how I implemented the collision.

I parented the fractures to empties and animated the empties.
For all the fractures just until a few frames before the collision (at about 70 frame), I kept rigid body 'dynamic' option off and 'Animated' on. After this point, 'Animated' off and 'dynamic' on. Let me know if you need more clarification.


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Help with Video Editor, Speed control effect strip and keyframing
newbie here. I need some help with the Video Sequencer. I'm trying to change the speed control of a video accelerating and decelerating some parts and using curves to smoothen the effect. My problem is very basic, about keyframing.
I add the video, add the speed control effect strip, uncheck 'stretch input ...' and uncheck 'use as speed'. Then I keyframe the 'frame number' control in a specific frame with a specific 'multiply speed'. I repeat a with other frame.
The result is that the video shows as a still image, with some bumpy movementt at the keyframes that does not reflect the speed changes.
What am I missing? any help please?
thanks!

Convert your movie clip to an image sequence as compressed files don't work very well when being slowed down (the frame count can be confused), and don't expect smooth slow downs as Blender simply duplicates frames or drops them to achieve a specific speed. No frame blending occurs.

cool. thanks. I want to speed up and down to normal again, so no slo-mo really

Not good slo mo anyway.

anyways, I'm still not able to keyframe correctly the Speed Control strip effect. When I start adding keyframes to the effect Frame Number it starts to do weird things. I'm pretty sure I'm not doing it right, and the fact that keyframing the effect property does not have a graphical representation does not help...

Are you using a frame sequence instead of a movie clip? What value are you animating? Did you press the Refresh Sequencer button at the bottom of the VSE timeline?

Yes, I'm using the Sequencer, and I refresh the sequencer, etc. I think my problem is about understanding the property keyframing and so. I'm adding successfully the speed control effect and playing with its properties, but the problem is when I try to keyframe it to add smooth acceleration and deceleration (via curves)
In the speed control effect I uncheck "Stretch to input..." and "Use as speed", then I keyframe the property "Frame number" and play with "Multiply speed". Then things start getting weird.

I recommend animating the Speed Factor value not the Frame Number. If you animate the frame number then you have to keep track of what frame you are up to. And you would have to generate an f-curve angle that constantly progressed at 1 frame per frame upwards.
Using the Speed Factor however you just animate the playback speed and ignore the Multiply Speed (in fact it can't be animated) which should be left at 1.00 (unless you want a global speed change for the clip).

In the example above, the strip begins playback at full speed or 100%, or Speed Factor 1.00. Then when I want the video to slow down I place a new keyframe with the same value 1.00. This acts as a Hold value, so the media plays full speed up to this point.
Then I place a new key frame and makes its Speed Factor 0.00 or 0% speed. This pauses the video. If I move the 0% keyframe to the right, I create a slope in the f-curve, this is the deceleration, the steeper the slope the faster the deceleration. A vertical slope is the same as pressing pause.
The problem with this approach is that it is very difficult to land at exactly the right frame for your pause. That is why you may want to use the constant slope style of Frame Number.
In the Frame Number example notice that the curve must also be a vector or straight line, as a bezier curve will generate ramping that you might find undesirable (odd frame duplication).
Notice that I have placed a keyframe at the first frame and the end frame of the same values, 0 - 803.

To make a pause hold , you need to split and slide this f-curve so that its angle does not change. In this case I selected the middle keyframe (which I made at the exact frame that I wanted) and the last keyframe, then duplicated them and slid the right. I then deleted the first end keyframe.

Thanks @3pointedit, you made my day. I've successfully created a boomerang video with accelerating and decelerating speed, very smooth. Here there's a sample of how the curves are: https://imgur.com/a/0iI43Ce  The result goes from this (horrible speed changes) https://imgur.com/a/Lb7UGyQ to this (much better) https://imgur.com/a/R6Ckpfk

This answer really rounded out my understanding of Speed Control in general and Frame Number animation in particular....to the point where I think your own statements about the difficulties are overstated...it's actually pretty straightforward. :) I find that for most circumstances pinning the start and end frame of the strip (or maybe a sub-segment) as first step makes life easy. It's usually simple to figure out what values to keyframe there. (Esp if net effect is strip has same duration as before.) After that you can freely experiment in the contained frames.

Note that I use "pin" here as a descriptive term only, it's not a Blender operation. You start by key-framing the start/end frames which, in effect, pins the endpoints of the strip/area you want to modify.


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Curve bevel, both built in and using another curve not uniform in thickness
Im trying to make a pipe using single edge, converted to curve, and then bevel it to add some thickness. but the result turns out weird.
as in the picture, the vertical section of the pipe is in uniform thickness, but the horizontal segment is much more thicker. This happen whether using built in bevel selector or using a bezier circle as bevel object.
how can i make it all uniform in thickness?

You've scaled your curve in Z in object mode. Ctrl-A > Apply Scale will fix that one. (BTW, you might not need a bevel object in this case? Unless you need to edit it, you could use the curve's native profile )

You must have scaled it on the Z axis. Select your curve and ctrl A > Apply Scale


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Combining Complex Models
I am very new to blender, and I have created a complex spaceship with multiple turrets that are parented to swivel on the correct axis. I want to be able to combine the entire thing under one file so that I can easily sort and animate it in a fleet formation. So far the only way I can find is to join all parts together, but this leaves me unable to move the turrets. As seen in the picture, the parts add up fast, yet I can't seem to find a way to join them into a 'folder' I guess so that I easily access other ships without having to sift through all of the duplicates parts

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/47295/sketchup-like-components-case-study-is-it-in-or-even-feasible

Parenting is hierarchical .. so  depending on which parts of your model you want to control other parts, a object can have siblings and a parent, and its parent can have a parent of its own.. and so on. The 'family tree' is normally collapsed in the Outliner, reducing clutter. You can select multiple objects and parent them to the last selected (active) object simultaneously, using Ctrl P.
You could join all the objects you don't want to move independently, and make the turrets children of the joined object. (The turrets' children will become grandchildren of the joined object)
Or, create a heirarchy of parts. In it, you can make a link between any child and its parent 'rigid' with respect to translation, rotation, and/or scale by locking the child's own transformations using the padlocks in the 'Transform' panel of the Properties Region of the 3D View. This will mean only ancestors can move the  children in those ways. If you want to lock multiple children at once, select them, and hold Alt while locking.


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Mesh not following Armature
I created a basic human model, then copied the vertices and used a shrinkwrap modifier to make spandex-type clothing. I then connected the clothes to the body using Boolean union modifier.

However, when I try to pose the body using armature, the clothing falls away from the body, even though they are joined. I've tried parenting the clothes to the body as well, with the same results.

Model File:

Why did you choose boolean instead of a simple join (select your different objects and ctrl J)?
I guess you have several solutions:

The easiest would be to remove the body mesh under the cloth, or, if you want to keep it, make it invisible with the Mask modifier: Select the part of your mesh that you want to hide and assign it a vertex group, give your object the Mask modifier, in the Vertex Group dropdown menu of the modifier, choose the vertex group you've just created, and, on the right of this dropdown menu click on the inverse arrow.

If you want to keep the body you can try the Mesh Deform modifier as explained in this video by Daniel Kreuter:

Parent your body with its clothes to your armature (if the clothes are another object, choose CtrlP > Armature Deform).

Delete all vertex groups from the clothes (select the vertices and on the right of the vertex groups list, down arrow menu and Remove From All Groups). Assign these vertices to a new vertex group.

Create a mesh that is fully closed and that will encompass your whole clothes, i.e. that will be your « cage ».

Select your cage, then shift select the armature and CtrlP > With Automatic Weight. Give the necessary corrections in Weight Paint mode.

Give your body a Mesh Deform modifier (put this modifier above any Subsurf modifier) and in the modifier choose the clothes vertex group. Choose the cage as the Object and click on Bind.


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Assign colour to vertices given face texture, and enable conversion to a point cloud
I'm a-bit of a Blender newbie here so please forgive me if what I'm about to say sounds stupid, but I've been trying to solve this issue for far too long now and am becoming way too frustrated...so, on to my problem:
Main objective:
I have a .blend model containing several objects, each of which I want to convert to a point cloud (i.e. I want to convert the scene in my model to a point cloud which needs to be contained in one file, preferably .ply format).
Progress so far:
I have found a way to export the objects in my model into one .obj (+.mtl) file, convert it to a .ply file to use it in an algorithm which samples the object meshes to create a point cloud, and save this point cloud in another .ply file.
Great, you successfully converted your objects' meshes into a point cloud...so what's the problem?
After saving the objects in my model to the .obj format, I found out that it is the faces which are coloured, not the vertices; i.e., the RGB values of the vertices are grey. I want to assign RGB colour values to my vertices too, so that the points in my point cloud are also coloured.
Other details:
I am using the Cycles Render, and have noticed that when I select the 'Materials' viewport shading, all colours look fine, but when I switch to the 'Solid' viewport shading, most of my objects lose their colour; I understand this has something to do with only being able to view the Viewport Colour in Materials->Settings when viewing the 'Solid' viewport shading.
I have several models similar to this which I did not create myself, and all need to be converted to a point cloud in some way, so I'd appreciate if the solutions aren't too time-consuming.
My options at this point are to get the point clouds without any colour information (which I have been able to do), or to see if you guys can help me with getting colour onto my vertices ;)
Of course, I am also open to other suggestions as to how I can convert my objects to a coloured point cloud.
Lastly, thank you in advance for any assistance that you could provide :)

It is not quite clear from the question but looks like you have textured model and want its colors to be saved in the vertices. There isn't any color on vertices as texture uses image assigned via likely UV coordinates, so you want texture for the model to be saved into vertex colors instead. Blender can bake texture into vertex colors (Internal engine only), but quality of bake will depend on mesh density

"you have textured model and want its colors to be saved in the vertices" - yes, pretty much; I tried baking using the Cycles Render (since the model was designed using it), but to no avail; I presume that to use the internal engine, I would need to transfer the textures from the Cycles Render to the Blender Render in some way?

Would it be possible to elaborate a-bit, particularly how to "choose the image used as texture in Cycles, then create vertex color layer" please? Tried to do it all, but I think I'm doing something wrong...I apologise, but I'm a beginner and still find all of this a-bit overwhelming :p

If you want to make each vertex store color from the appropriate place from the texture you want to bake texture to vertex colors. In case of baking in Blender this means you want your objects to be unwrapped and have a texture assigned to faces of the starting mesh.
First, unwrap the mesh if it hasn't been already. Then, if Cycles render engine is chosen, create a new scene / project and somehow transfer your mesh object there (Ctrl+C > Ctrl+V between different files can be handy, or append it from File > Append > Objects).
In the new project choose Blender Internal as render engine  (see how).
Then assign desired texture to faces of the mesh. To do so, open 2 editors in Blender window and choose one of them to be UV/Image editor (see more on this). In 3D viewport, enter Edit mode and select all. In the UV editor UV map should appear (see more info here if it doesn't). Choose your image texture you want to bake from in the UV editor via the dropdown list below the image.
Create a material for the object (default one works fine), then create new material texture for that material, its type by default should be Image or Movie. Choose image to bake to once more, this time in the dropdown list in the texture settings, Image rollout. Make sure Mapping is set to UV.

From this point you're left only to bake. In the Properties editor go to Render tab, scroll it to the Bake rollout and choose Textures. Below enable Bake To Vertex Colors option and press Bake button.

Note that quality of bake depends on density of geometry of the mesh.

Regarding the Bake UV textures to vertex colors addon. It makes it possible to bake in Cycles the same, but there's a small nuance - it expects texture to be assigned the same as in Blender Internal, i.e via UV editor to the face textures (however the addon doesn't require creating a material and assigning a texture to that).
Cycles doesn't do that since it doesn't use face textures to map images to mesh, so for baking with that addon in Cycles you'd need to switch to Internal, assign texture to faces with all selected in UV editor as explained above, then switch back to Cycles and bake.

Thanks! I do seem to have made it work because I can see the image that I baked when exporting to a .obj file and viewing in MeshLab; oddly, the texture does not seem to be exported when saving as a .ply file, although I got around that by opening the .obj file in MeshLab, then saving as .ply.
Reading the contents of both .obj and .ply, it seems that the actual vertex colors still retain the greyish color of the surface; the color is represented as texture coordinates for each of the vertices forming a face...not ideal, but I think I can find a way to assign colour to a point within the face

Btw, I know it's not directly related to the question, but I'll ask just in case anyone knows; given values of a face in a .ply file, e.g.:
3 14374 14420 14405 6 -0.657338 1.307212 -0.541405 1.326640 -0.657338 1.326640 163 163 163 255
I know that [14374 14420 14405] are the indices of the 3 vertices forming a face, while [-0.657338 1.307212 -0.541405 1.326640 -0.657338 1.326640] represent the (u,v) texture coordinates of each of the 3 vertices; but which pixel is the reference (i.e. would [0 0] be the top left pixel)? And do values outside the range of [0,1] indicate wrap around?

@ChrisG it is strongly advised to ask separate questions as separate posts here; not only it allows more organized content for answerers, but also for those who search for similar questions. Regarding exporting vertex colors in PLY - make sure vertex colors are enabled for exporting in options.

@R EL Clein Yes I know, but since it was related to my original question I thought it might be better to group the questions into one thread for anyone wanting to do something similar to what I want to do; re. vertex colours in PLY, I had indeed enabled vertex colours...but anyway, I found a solution to sample the mesh and retain the texture colours on my points, which I have posted as a separate answer; thanks again!

R El Clain's answer enables the exporting of the object textures in your Blender model; the exported object will be a mesh. If you want to then get a point cloud, the mesh needs to be sampled...I found that the best way to do this is to export to a .OBJ file, and open with MeshLab; then, go to Filters > Sampling > Texel Sampling, which will result in a layer with points sampled from the original mesh. The default settings worked fine for me (most important is to make sure that the RecoverColor flag is enabled).
Note that the number of points may be quite high; you could then use the Poisson-Disk Sampling to reduce the number of points (again, go to Filters > Sampling > Poisson-disk Sampling) and change the settings as required (however, ensure that Base Mesh Subsampling is enabled). Of course, you could also use other tools to down-sample the point cloud, such as the Point Cloud Library's Voxel Grid Filter.
Irrespective of whether you do the down-sampling or not, you can then export the mesh to a number of formats supported by MeshLab by going to File > Export Mesh As... and then selecting the desired format, such as PLY.


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How to delay all keyframes to make space for a new animation scene?
I have made an animation, but I have now decided that I want to have another scene in the middle of the animation.
Is there a way to delay ALL keyframes and make space for the new scene without breaking the animation?

hello, maybe give more information, do you have several objects that are animated? do you use the NLA? etc...

Yes, I have several rigs that are animated, and had their textures keyframed as well. I don't use NLA.

you could push all the keyframes but it may cause problems for some animations that are not displayed in the Dope Sheet?

To solve your problem, you can select all (animated) objects in your scene, then select all keyframes that you want to move, and hit G to translate them further ahead.
To prevent this problem in the future, I suggest splitting your animation into shorter sequences, but this is case specific, not useable for when you want to extend the scene.
Since I don't know what exactly is going on there, I can only suggest.


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How to make distance fog
I've been trying to use volume scattering to get this effect though it doesn't look as nice as this one does, with the blue-ish shade.
I was wondering what the trick is. Thank you!

the easiest and lightest way is to create a plane and give it a gradient (or image texture) that acts like a mask between a diffuse (or emission) blue and transparency, I gave a similar answer here (third point), tell me if it answers:  https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/114207/softening-the-color-of-the-line-gradually

Thank you! I'll try to use this technique.

Read: Low lying fog

Use the mist pass. You can enable it by going to the Layer Properties and under "Passes", enable "Mist". Then, in the camera settings, under "Viewport Display", enable "Mist" so you can see where the mist begins and where it ends (the location where an object will be completely invisible, shrouded by mist). This can be adjusted in the World settings.
Now head to the compositor workspace and you will see a "Mist" output. Plug that into a coloramp. There you can adjust values, and clamp the pass as you want. It will make sense once you mix it with the output using a MixRGB set to "Add".
Here is a very quick youtube video I found detailing the parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXXYUv-793c

As an alternative to the mist pass and compositing you can create a cube the size of your scene and connect a principled volume shader to the volume socket of the material output. You can add noises and animate it, render times will be significant though. Hope that helps.


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How to make particles flicker?
this is the particle system that I made:
https://gyazo.com/c646168b33b1db50c477d150f6b29b8a
I wanted to add flicker, the effect in which each individual particle blinks off and on on random pace. I maybe even want some of them to just turn transparency on and off so they wouldn't disappear completely when they flicker.
I thought about animating the material but it just turns all particles on and off all at once.
Is there a way to do it?
thanks

looks great, no idea how to help yet

You could create a collection of particles, each one having its own material and an action on its Emission strength

Are you using Eevee or Cycles?

I am using Cycles

Another way to do it. The solution may depend on the final effect you want.
But if you are using Cycles, you can use 'Particle info' node (documentation here, this node is Cycles only) and for example a mix between particle age and random value.
It also uses a noise texture to pick random values as the age changes.
The other nodes are just an example of how to influence the flickering frequency: you can either change the scale value so that the texture node variation is slower, or change the texture scale, or change the threshold which is used to keep the particle lit or transparent.
This shader setting is associated to the particle object.

But again, this is just an example.

Thanks a lot! This is the best solution.
This is the final result: https://gyazo.com/ce7be857b6812bb1a444055989f30af2

great, cool result!

Brilliant. I have to bookmark this solution. Great work.

Create a collection of several particles, each particle has its own material with an Emission node, keyframe the Strength value of the Emission node so that it flickers at a different time. Of course the particles with the same material will be synchronized, so you need enough particles so that the synch is not noticeable.

Result with only 3 particles:

Thank you so much


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Pose gets distorted when animating
I am trying to animate a character, I have created it's initial pose, and I have made that all bones will be automatically keyframed within every bone movement I make, just a personal preferance.
Anyways, when I move the blue thing in the animation bar, the character gets distorted.
I'll provide images.
How it should be:

After distortion:

Please help me.

It could be that you haven't weight painted properly, but I'm very much a beginner in blender animation.


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How to use masking to hide an object
I need help creating an eyeball for my steve.
How do I go about hiding the part of the eyeball that went out of the white area?
I had a guess it's about masks, but I have no idea how to implement it.

Thanks

have you tried with a boolean object?

No. What does it mean?

This is getting a little dated now.  2.8xx does things differently. Blender's internal  and OpenGL renders may still work.  I've included this link in case it helps.  - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/117572/how-to-put-a-mask-into-3d-space/117941#117941

You can give your eye cube a Boolean modifier. Create a second cube with a hole in it that is as big as your eye white area, make it invisible in the viewport and in render (Properties panel > Viewport Display > Dsiplay As > Wire and disable the camera icon in the Outliner), give your eye cube a Boolean modifier, mode > Difference, with the hole cube as Object. Now when you move your eyecube, the part that crosses the hole cube will be invisible:

That worked like magic! Thank you so much!!!!

and of course parent the hole cube to the head or head bone so it follows its movement


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Suggestions to make a "uwrap" animation with this ball model
I would like to convert my ball model into a 2d-ish model with an animation. Already tried to find some tutorials or materials presenting ways to do that, without success.

I would like to animate the ball into something like this:

I believe this is a hard thing to do, specially cause I don't have too much experience with Blender (started to model with 3Ds max) or animation, but I would like to try even so. Any ideas or tutorials?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/31621/folding-a-cube-animation https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6767/how-to-make-folding-origami-animation/6773#6773 https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57976/how-to-simulate-miura-fold

@vklidu thank you sir, I'll check it out the script, hopefully I'll be able to achieve what I want.

@vklidu Got this error when tried to activate the convert to armature addon in the Blender 2.79b:
https://imgur.com/a/bPXekvl
Not sure why it's happening, already look in the tool's page but didn't find anyone with this particular error...

@vklidu reopened, feel free to add your answer.

If you are looking for result like in your second image - ready to use file (print-cut-glue), use build in "Paper Model Export" addon by Emu.
But for unfolding, use his "Convert to Armature" addon - download version for 2.8x. More info here.

Unfold Animation

download-install-enable addon
select object, go to edit mode (Tab), select edges you want split
Ctr+E > Mark Seam
search Split Seams
additionally select one face you prefer to start generate bone tree
search Convert to Armature

That's all ... to be precise, object is not animated yet. Script generates Armature object with bones assigned to faces and creates unfolded Pose. To animate unfolding - go to Pose Mode (Ctrl+Tab), select all bones, add Keyframe (I) > Rotation, move on Timeline, Clear Rotation (Alt+R), add second Keyframe > Rotation.

If you have more complex mesh you can let "Export Paper Model" script to Mark Seams for you (3Dview > Properties Panel (N) > Paper > Unfold). Continue as described above - search Split Seams ...

I did not test it but I think it's worth a try.
Try TexTools addon. It makes an animation using the UV Mesh and the mesh using Shape keys.
The link: http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/

Thanks @LeoNas, I would like to keep the 3D aspect of the ball parts after the animation. But this seems useful indeed, I'll check it out and use it as a prototype at least, if the result is good, I'll stick to it.


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Is there a way to extrude an edge ring diagonally?
is there a way to extrude an edge ring diagonally?
This is my model, I need to extrude the edge ring keeping it's direction:

This must be simple enough, yet I couldn't find an answer for now, maybe I'm expressing myself badly in the search or something.

i am not sure how you created your model, but if you have a rotated cylinder you could just select it like you did and press 'E'. But looks like this does not work for you. Would you mind providing your blend file?

Change your Transform Orientation to Normal.

Remember to change it back to Global for all of your regular stuff. :)
https://docs.blender.org/manual/es/2.79/editors/3dview/object/editing/transform/control/orientations.html

I did tried to use the normal orientation before, it happens I was trying to extrude without a fixed axis. Extrude along Y axis kinda worked I guess, though a little bent.

There should be a way to get it exact.  Perhaps someone will come along with a better answer for you.


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How to add a node tree and a Object Separate Text in Blender 2.79b
I'm trying to follow this tutorial Animation Nodes Letter Wiggle
There is created a node tree at minute 2:10 an after that it's added an Text Object Separate, but in the version that I have I can't find how to do that, because I don't know how to add the node tree and also the Add menu is different. Have I to install something? Thank you.

Welcome to blender SE. Animation Nodes is an addon that doesn't come with blender by default, so you need to download and install it first. Please check the installation guide.

Thank you Omar, I also have to use the version 2.77a instead of 2.79b, it seems that it doesn't work with the latest version.

@user153489 It is likely that it doesn't work because you are using a version with python 3.5, try downloading a version with python 3.6 from the release page.


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Delete small structures on a surface

I try to modify an object in Blender which was extracted from a CAD file. It looks like half of a sphere with a solid rim and some distortions (something like you can see in the picture)

My problem is: I want to have a flat inside of this object. Is there a possibilty to achieve that without selecting and deleting all the vertices I don't want? It is hard to use border or circle select because there are always some vertices behind the structures I want to delete.
I hope I described it properly.
Thanks!

are you talking about the several peaks we can see? It's easy to delete them, for example with a tool like Grid Fill, you can share your file so that someone can show how to do

Seems like an annoying problem :/ It would be good if the CAD program had choices for different kind of export settings that would make better mesh.

You can't do much in Blender to have a better mesh imported. Hopefully your CAD program's export settings have more options for better exported mesh.
For that particular object and problem, I'd go like this:

Select a clean faceloop in order to see how many faces there are in one ring (in my case, 128):

Select the absolute center vertex of the object and place the 3D cursor there by hitting Shift+S and selecting Cursor to Selected

Select another vertical faceloop that doesn't have any of the crappy geometry. Make sure to zoom in and add faces to the selection all the way to the cursor, both from top and bottom of the object. (In my case I needed to select 2 triangles near the 3D cursor and from the bottom.)

Hit Ctrl+I to invert the selection. Delete all the faces.

Use calculator to find out what is 360 degrees divided by the number from phase 1. In my case 360/128 = 2.8125 degrees
Press . to use the 3D cursor as pivot point. Select all with A or AA. Do the following without clicking with mouse, moving is okay: Shift+D to duplicate the faces, R to rotate them, Z to use only Z-axis, type 2.8125 (or the number specific to your case), hit Enter. Press , to use the default Bounding Box Center as the pivot point again.

Press and hold Shift+R to repeat last action until you reach the whole circle.
Select all with AA, press W, select Remove Doubles, Ctrl+F and select Shade Smooth to be sure the geometry is nice and clean. In some cases you need to press T or F6 right after Remove Doubles in order to adjust the Merge Distance to make sure all the vertices are welded together.
There you have it, a clean bowl :)


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Can i weight paint a logo?
Hi i woul like to paint my logo on a weighmap for my grass system but i cant figure out how to change the brush or use a texture like in texture paint mode. Is it nor possible? Should i draw the logo on hand?

Are you trying to vertex paint a plane?  You seem to be talking about texture painting but they you invoke weightmapping...

yes i try to paint a logo on a weigt map that controll my grass so the grass will grow on the plance exept in some places forming the logo.

What do you think is the best way to do this?

Unless you've got a special reason to use vertex weight, wouldn't it be easier to use an image  texture to control the length of the grass?

So it is not possible to change the weight paint brush or apply a texture?

Not a direct answer to your question, but you can also use both procedural and image textures to drive the length of your grass:
Hair_Length_by_Image_Texture.blend

More info here.

To transfer a texture to vertex weights, you can use a Vertex Weight Edit Modifier, which accepts a texture as a mask.
Personally, I find the current documentation unhelpful, and I haven't managed to reverse-engineer the logic of the modifier's fields from its behavior, so this answer isn't as complete as it should be.

The 'Logo Tex' texture in this example is a white out of black logo.
The 'Logo Group' vertex group is all the vertices of a subdivided plane, set to 0, initially.
The critical settings for this case appear to be a smooth or spherical falloff, and a value in the Add Threshold slightly above the Default Weight.
You can apply the modifier and take the result into Weight Paint to smooth, or make other alterations to it.
It would be great if in a comment or proper answer to this question, someone could explain exactly what the settings are doing, or point me in the direction of a tutorial that isn't actually about something else, or based on guesswork.


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How can I view the object in 2D in the front view
I'm a newbie to Blender, so sorry in advance if my question sounds stupid -and I'm sure it is-.
I'm working on a tutorial where I have to create one cube beside the default one. and then I have to manipulate them in the front view.
the problem is, after creating the new cube, and switching back to front view I see the cubes in 3D dimensions, not 2.

while in the tutorial this is what I should expect:

could you please assist me what's wrong?

Just press 5 on numpad

Note that by default when hitting Numpad 1 to enter Front view orthographic mode is enabled and used automatically, but this can be turned off in the User prefs > Interface > Auto Perspective; if it's unchecked, there won't be orthographic mode used when entering Front View so maybe that's the case in your question.

You must have been in the front perspective mode instead of front orthographic mode. You just have to press numpad '5' key to get to orthographic mode.
Front perspective looks like this and you can see that on the top left of the screen.

Front ortho looks like this. Again, its mentioned in the top left of the screen.

If you don't have a numpad in your keyboard.Press Ctrl+Alt+U for preferences and enable 'emulate numpad' in the 'Input' tab. And then, instead of numpad 5, you can just press the normal '5' to get to orthographic mode.

You can also find it in the view menu of the 3D viewport.


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Move origin of all objects to same Y value
I am making a Font in Blender. I have modeled it as OBJ files for my 3D Rendering Engine, however I discovered the centers are all incorrect... the origins are at the origin of the world i modeled them in. So I centered all their centers to center of mass. Now, the centers are overall in the centers lines of the shapes. That's good, but now I want to set all their origins to be at the same Y value, preferably 0. Is there a way I can do that?
MY QUESTION
I want to set the origins of all objects to the same Y value without altering their X or Z values
if I could write a script to do it, I'd love to, although I've never written in python before, so I'd need to know for instance how to loop through all objects in the scene and how to access and set their origin

Just copy this script into your scripting window and press "Run Script"
import bpy

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    obj.location.y = 0

Good night.


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Installing pip for Blender and GDAL
I'm trying to configure gdal within blender using the information here: https://github.com/domlysz/BlenderGIS/wiki/How-to-install-GDAL. I already have blender totally configured and the correct gdal .whl file downloaded but, when I try to install pip (python.exe -m ensurepip) using the command window, I get the following error.

I check that \2.79\python\Lib\site-packages\easy_install.py' but there isn't that "easy_install.py" file there.
I tried to reinstall blender but still the same result.
Any idea to configure gdal for blender solving or jumping this step ?

Try to use Command Prompt as an administrator  to ensurepip?

You may need to change your directory by cd "the/folder/blender/python"
It seems like the system block out the process during I/O writing to the Blender installed folder.
And be careful, Blender uses its own Python in the installed folder as the default executable Python. You may want to bind that python for installing thing through pip install.

As easy as that. Thanks. I'm always trying to get rid of commands but...not this time.


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Change between layers using shortcut in blender 2.8
I've recently update blender to 2.8 and now I'm looking for a shortcut to change quicly between layers (or collection views). Something like 2.79 had:
Shortcut to switch between layers?
I use to make presentations using full screen view (control+alt+space) and there is no way to change views there.
Any idea ?

Thanks to Serge L and Igor Svara I get to something workable. As Igor said, numbers worked but I had to create a new layer config with all the layers and just hide/unhide those that correspond with the layer config that I'm looking for.
Let's try to explain it:
My project has 8 layer configs of object within a landscape. The first one is called A1MDS (as you see in the menu). This is configured to just render some of the objects. If I put this in the menu of layers and press 1, IT WORKS but just because 1 is showing exactly the "Collection 1" objects:

...but, if I'm in this view and press number 2...it shows nothing because my renders are configured to avoid layers in Collection 2:

If I want to go to "view number 2" I have to do it by clicks, selecting the next view config (A1MDT) within the menu:

So here is the solution that doesn't affect the configuration of the renders: Create a new layer config with ALL THE COLLECTIONS. I called viewport and this is very useful to go to each collection, just pressing numbers and without affecting any of the configurations for the rendering views. You can see that those "eyes" icons that represent hide or unhide are different depending on the render config (layers not rendered don't even have an "eye") and viewport config (the "eyes" are there but they are closed).
So, here is viewport pressing 1:

And here is viewport pressing 2:

In the editor type (view Layer) you can press the eye symbol of a collection while holding ctrl to isolate that collection (hide every other collection but that). Sorry I would just comment since I'm not sure that is the answer you where waiting for, but I'm not allowed to do so yet. Hope helps.
Otherwise, every collection corresponds to a number, so you can cycle through collection by pressing the numbers.

Thanks but what I need is exactly a shortcut that changes layers/collections directly from the full screen view (contro+alt+space).

I added a part, see if that helps.

Try CTRL+H +Number (optionally). This will isolate a collection.
The only drawback is that ALT+H is supposed to undo isolation, but works only if pressed over Outliner area.


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Unaligned camera: red and yellow squares
I'm having the following problem: camera has a trembling yellow square that moves when I move the camera view. Hoy could I align this squares ?

what is this yellow square?

What happens if you delete that camera and replace it with a new one?

I don't know if this is a bug or just something that I don't understand deeply. The thing is that changing the clip start value within the camera lenses solves the issue.


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Why is Eevee animation render different from a single image render?
I'm trying to render an animation of a scene that I have previously rendered an image of successfully but the animation render is ignoring keyframes and some of the shader nodes but not all. When I play the animation in the 3D viewport it works perfectly, just not in the animation render. How can I fix this?


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2.8: How to texture paint some elements of mesh only?
I'd like to know if there is a way to paint some parts, in my case the eyes of my model, without touching any other part.
I've tried to in Edit Mode select the UV Sphere, that is already joined with the body of my mesh, pressing CTRL + L and hide everything else.

But as soon as I change to Texture paint mode all my mesh appears again and when I paint I paint not only over the eyes but the hole body...

i highly recommend to learn more about UV unwrap

You can make use of the Face Select Mask setting to limit the effect of your texture paint to selected faces in Texture paint mode.
First image is the basic setup in Texture Paint.

Second image is turning on the Face Select Mask and making a selection on the model.

Third image shows a result with two areas painted, one selection active.

This helped me: turning on the Face Select Mask but didn't notice where this button was...

The button is to the right of where your arrow was pointing

yes, that was it all the time, didn't know what it was for... should have hover over it.

I still can't find the button? Could you edit the answer to make that clearer?

See the first picture now - edit was made to circle and point to it in green. Once you see it, you won't ever miss it.


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Adding lights to selected objects with python?
I'm working in Blender 2.8 and I'm new to python and scripting in general.
I have a file that contains multiple lighting fixtures (100+). I'm trying to write a script that will add a spot light to each fixture that I've selected.
Here's what I have so far:
import bpy

selected = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]

bpy.ops.object.light_add(type='SPOT', location=selected.location)

The issue is this script only adds a light to one object, not every object I've selected.
I haven't gotten to it yet, but I'd also like every light to have share the same light data, so they can all be changed at once.
Thanks in advanced for the help!

You probably need a for loop somewhere in there, along the lines of for item in bpy.context.selected_objects

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos, this helps! The result gave me lights for each selected object, but they all position themselves to a single object. I'm still missing something here.
I've noticed if I change the 0 in selected = bpy.context.selected_objects[0] to another number, it changes the object that the lights are added to.

Well you need to complete it to actually work. Something along the lines of for item in bpy.context.selected_objects bpy.ops.object.light_add(type='SPOT', location=item.location). I'm not much of a coder myself, and I'm not even testing this so not sure it actually works.

Right before you posted that, I tried the same thing! for items in bpy.context.selected_objects:     bpy.ops.object.light_add(type='SPOT', location=items.location) does exactly what I need. Way more simple than I thought. Thanks for the help!

import bpy

for obj in bpy.data.collections["Collection"].objects.keys():
    bpy.ops.object.duplicate(linked=True)
    light = bpy.context.active_object.name
    bpy.data.objects[light].location = bpy.data.objects[obj].location

This should do the trick, make sure you create a light first (this will control all the other light) and have it selected. Also you want all your light fixture objects in the same collection named "Collection".

This is the best method so far! You're a life saver. This'll save me so much time in the future. Thank you so much!


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Why is my donut not smooth and sculpting it causes distortion?
Im completely new to blender and ive been following this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OTX3ZdYvEA&list=PLjEaoINr3zgEq0u2MzVgAaHEBt--xLB6U&t=0s
I started noticing around part 4, that my icing looks edgy and jagged especially when zooming in. At part 5 it got even worse when i started sculpting and those lines appeared.

Have i missed something or is it related to blender settings or gpu/cpu?

did you give it a Subdivision Surface modifier?

Check your dyntopo settings, this often catches me out, sometimes it manages to disable itself if you switch between views and then sculpting starts doing unexpected stuff

Thanks for the answers. Yes but i seem to have missed increasing the viewport, that did smooth it out (only in object mode thought) but it also gave more "distortion" ^^ Where do if find the dyntopo setting? Is the tutorial using this or multires?

I think i figured it out. I made a copy of everything and did not hide it from the view which caused the distortion


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Edge Loops Not Working
hoping you folks can help.
In Blender 2.82a(2.82.7) edge loops seems to neither work with Alt+LMB, or double click or even going to Select->Loops->Edge Loops.
On the other hand Edger Rings is working fine.
Has anybody else gotten this issue?
Any help would be appreciated, cheers.

Can you share an example file? Edge loops behave very differently in different situations.

Hello and welcome :). Did it work in previous versions? Are you on Linux by any chance?

Hello you two, thanks for replying. I'm running on Windows 10, and sorry, but I don't know how to ember a pic into this thread, but I can tell you that it edge loops doesn't even on a newly generated cube primitive that's had no modification done to it. I've now tried it on two different PC's, both running windows 10, with the same results.

A cube doesn't really have edge loops. Did you try on a UV sphere? Also, isn't the shortcut Alt+Shift+RMB ?

Same thing here, sort of...but won't work on Linux.
Blender 2.82a: Alt-LMB does not work for 'Loop Select' on Linux Mint nor Linux Ubuntu. Also, does not work from the 'Select>Select Loops>Edge Loops' menu. Tested on Torus and UV sphere. Two different PC's. Does work on Windows 10 however. All new installs of Blender with factory defaults. No preferences modified, no emulations, etc.
Also tried with 2.83beta. Same results. No go on Linux, works on Windows10.


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Gap created after Screw modifier
Just a quick question, is it normal for there to be a gap along the surface of a mesh once the screw modifier has been applied?

There can be gaps but they're not inevitable.

The Angle should be 360° so the edges line up.
The Screw value should be exactly the same value as the object's dimension in the relevant axis.
The highest and the lowest vert should have the same distance from the screw axis.
After applying the modifier, using Remove Doubles with the relevant verts selected and a large enough threshold should kill any small gaps. Without that, a Subsurf Modifier might produce a gap.

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


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Can't cut a simple box in half
I am trying to follow a tutorial to start building something using a cube but I can't even get past the first step, because even if I do exactly what they say, I don't end up with the same thing.
The steps I have followed

Select cube, Ctrl +  1 to go to front view,
Ctrl +  Rto put a line down the middle, click, have line.
Select all the vertices on that side, both used box select and then selected them all individually.

I hit  X, delete vertices, and I am left with this:

Not half of a box, just one plane, no matter what I do! how am I doing this wrong?

You only need to delete the 4 vertices on the side.

You'll be left with an open half of a cube.

Currently, You're deleting all selected vertices, which includes the 4 around the center. If you want to delete only half of the cube, either go into face selection mode and delete, or in vertex selection, delete only the far left. Hope this helps!


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How to make a thin sphere with a hole?
I've spent last three days trying to create a model of a planet for 3D printing with a displacement applied to its external surface and one of the polar caps removed so to create a something like a bowl.
It's essentially a thin (but not zero thickness) sphere with rough surface on the outside and smooth on the inside.  Here is what I did:

Create large sphere, unwarp it, apply planet texture a a displacement.
Create smaller sphere inside the large one, invert the normals.
Join the two.
Create a plane and subtract it from the 3.

The problem here is that subtraction of a plane does not create bowl "opening". It remains closed, albeit the boolean subtraction works. But it looks like a solid sphere with one of the caps cut and not like a bowl.
What am I missing here? Thanks!

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1838/is-it-possible-to-prevent-a-displacement-modifier-from-affecting-certain-parts-o

If you use booleans, use solid meshes as cookie cutters, not planes. A cylinder maybe.
Inverted normals and an inner surface are indeed a good idea.

Also kill any selection and hit my favorite shortcut: CTRLALTSHIFTM to check for any problems with the mesh. Ideally no verts or edges should get selected. Booleans like perfect watertight topology. Just like 3D printers.
Then you can subtract the cylinder and have holes in your egg shell.

Or you simply delete a few edgerings, select the rim and connect them with the bridge tool.

Thanks @Haunt_House it worked. After lots of experimenting, I found that I have to apply all modifiers and not have them hanging there.

@DennisSakva One less thing ( :

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


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how to stretch part of object
How can I stretch a part of an object ?
I selected one side of the area I'm hoping to stretch (just want to add 2/3 cm) but if I press E (extrude) it's going in a weird angle, and don't seems to be the solution anyway.
How should I proceed?

Ok, I found a way to extrude only with Y using the UI submenu, but that's still going inside the object, should I cut the object in two part, extrude, then put it back together?

When you say stretch do you mean the part that is highlighted should be longer?

Ok, I found something, but surly is not the right way to do it, also having some issue with this method:

Select one part of the side
SHIFT + D to duplicate
Delete the primary part of the side you just duplicate
in edit mode select the vertex you want to stretch.
press E then right click to cancel.
on the submenu add the value you want (4cm in Z in my case)
move it back together.

In my case it's not really smooth

Don't look smooth on blender, but the STL look smooth in the OS viewer or in a slicer software (3D Printing)

Why don't you select the half of the model and move it along the Y axis?


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Opposite of extrude (removing)

I created a phone stand, but I would like to cut the top.
Is there a way to do the opposite of extrude ?
Tried to select the face and delete but that don't do only delete this part.
Try to created a new mesh and adding a modifier / Boolean in order to remove this part, but don't seems to work neither

Select the face and hit the g button twice.

The top face, right?

@LeoNas yes the top face

@FFeller, didn't work on my case but I didn't know about this option and I learn something which seems very handy, thank you.

There are several ways to do this.  The two that I think are most straightforward are:

Subdivide the 4 edges that are coaxial with the direction you want to "shrink" the mesh in.  Slide the verts along the existing edges to where you want them to be and connect them by subdividing (knife tool) the existing faces.  You can then delete the faces that stick out (there should be 5 of them) and create a new face using the new vertices.
Boolean operations.  I'm not exactly sure why this isn't working for you, but I have a few guesses.  First, both objects you're using have boolean operations configured, but not applied.  You may need to apply the boolean to the first object ('stand') before it can be used on another object ('Astand').  Second, it looks like the faces of your objects are coplanar, causing a well known problem commonly known as Z-fighting.  This should be resolved before applying any boolean operations.  Finally, it can be hard to tell if a boolean operation applied successfully when all the objects are still visible.  I'd turn off the visibility of the object you're subtracting ('stand') while leaving the object you're subtracting it from ('Astand') visible.

Thanks @colonel of Truth, very handy will try that in a min


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Damped Track on object in armature moves in unexpected and irregular way
A problem arises when I move the arm of a robot I am animating. A piston connected to (and a child of) this arm has a Damped Track on it. When the arm is moved using it's IK armature, the piston occasional glitches out of position, and then quickly realigns again as intended.
It seems there is some time needed to recalculate the right position. This would not be a problem for rendering a still image, but the glitching shows in 3D viewport movement and a rendered animation.

Exactly the same render of this particular animation yields a different result:

The arm is connected to a rotating platform (their bones are respectively child and parent). This platform has a child, a cylinder (recognizable by the two capsule shapes attached), that is also the target of the piston's Damped Track. I think this loop of constraints might be responsible, but i'm not sure how exactly. (And the cylinder also has Damped Track, with the piston as target; it also glitches, but not as often)
I also think my problem is similar to this one:
Damped Track constraint on bone lags
There may even be a proposed solution in the comments, but I'm not sure how to apply it to my situation.
The piston glitching or jittering is not intended or wanted. : )
I am interested in any solution to this problem, or any (other) reference to something that might help : )

I ran your file and rendered it. Neither in my 3D View, nor in my render, did I see any of the issues you describe or show. Everything was normal. I was going to provide a video to prove it, but I can only post one in an answer. And I don't have an answer for you. Hopefully, though, this will give you an idea of what you might check next.

Thank you : ) Your result is a bit unexpected though, and I'm afraid the opposite of helping me where to look next : ) Assuming you didn't change anything in the file, it would have to be something that is not the same for both of us. (might be my particular hardware setup; then I wouldn't know what to do) I think within Blender that only leaves Preferences. The only thing I can think of is maybe something to do with memory or cache, though I doubt it and also I have no experience with these settings. If there's anything you know about this or anything else you can think of, please let me know

I managed to fix it. Thanks again for helping R-800. (I'm still a little puzzled why you had a different render result, but i decided not to dwell on it)  : )

A bit weird answering my own question but I found a solution. : )
I now believe the problem was due to the piston and cylinder being each-others Damped Track target. I suspect micro translations of their origins when moving caused it, but that is a guess.
I added an object, child of the platform, at the location of the cylinder origin. And also an object, child of the arm, at the location of the piston origin. I used those objects as targets for the Damped Track constrains, instead of the piston and cylinder objects themselves. It seems this has negated the glitching or jittering effect entirely.

Even though i found a satisfactory fix myself, still, thanks to anyone who gave this problem some thought.  : )

Glad you got it sorted. Also, there's nothing wrong with answering your own question. In fact, in this venue, it is actually encouaged, since it creates an opportunity for others with similar issues to discover your newfound knowledge.


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how to use a driver to drive object on object's local axis
I have a rig with face keys.  i have a separate animation and i would like to use the animated data to drive the face keys.  problem is when my object rig turns the axis changes relative to world axis.  there is an option to use world axis or local axis but the local axis refers to the subject's local axis right?
question:  how do i use a driver to drive an object's data on the OBJECT's local axis?

AFAIK, you have two options:

Assign a Transform constraint to the object. This allows you to map a transform range of the source object to a transform range of the target object, in either their World or Local spaces.
More conventionally, parent the driven object to another one (often an Empty). Then the driven object's transform will be evaluated in its parent's space, in a driver expression. If the parent is aligned to the child when the relation is formed, that will be equivalent to the child's Local Space

Thanks for that. Couldn't get the second option to work until I did it in the right order - that is the child needed to be straightened up so its axes agreed with global space, then the parenting, then tilt the parent at the desired angle. (I was using the example of putting a driver on a rotation axis.)  I'm just mentioning this in case someone else makes my mistake.  I'd already thought of using an empty as a go-between like that and couldn't get it to work, but your confidence in your answer made me explore all the possiblities

@Susan thanks, I'll expand the answer when I have a moment... there are all sorts of shortcuts and habits associated with parenting that it's easy to forget you've acquired, and use without thinking.


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Budget PC Build for Blender 2.8
I'm planning to build a pc for Blender 2.8, mainly for cycles rendering and sculpting. Will this build be sufficient for the task and for long term use?

Ryzen 7 2700
Motherboard (supports crossfire)
32GB(3200) RAM
2x AMD RX580

In case of B3D you should care about the software rather than hardware. I mean OpenGL, Python etc.

See: https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/

IMO your question is incomplete.

Will this build be sufficient for the task

Well, it depends. For sure you can use it, do renders, but it can take more time to complete the task compared to other systems.
Another thing to consider is if you will use things like physic simulations or particle systems.
Always keep in mind that an high poly count will increase render times, so you have to optimize your scene, especially with sculpted meshes.

Budget PC

This can also be a questionable one.
What do you mean with budget? For someone it can be 500 dollars, for other people it can be 700. In this case even 150-200 dollars can make a nice improvement.
Anyway you can check some benchmarks to see what performs best in your price range.


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How to stop overlapping spheres when sculpting with radial symmetry
I am testing out sculpting with alphas, using an anchored stencil. I have a basic cuboid shape where I want to apply the alpha stencil to each of the 4 side faces. For this I am using a radial symmetry of 4 on the z axis to apply it on each face. The problem I'm having is that when I click and drag to sculpt the stencil, eventually the sculpting spheres from the adjacent sides enter the side that I'm sculpting, creating a distortion to the pattern I'm applying. Is there a better way to achieve what I want without radial symmetry perhaps, or are there setting to not overlap the radial sculpts?
Attached is an image of what I'm getting, and the settings used for the sculpt. Note the circular shapes on each side of the face, which are coming from the same sculpt happening on the adjacent faces.
Many thanks!


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Any good Python reference book for Blender 2.8?
I am looking for a good reference book on Blender 2.8 or any recent blenders. I am coming with Python back-ground and want to work in blender mostly using Python as it gives excellent control over various aspects of this amazing program.

I recommend that you use the official docs, everything else will be out-dated and therefore not very helpful. https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html

@rjg I think this comment would make a great answer. Mind moving it?

I recommend that you use the official docs, everything else will be out-dated and therefore not very helpful.


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Audio Missing - Blender 2.8 Video Editing
How can video be rendered with Blender 2.8 to include sound. Each of my attempts have failed:
- Render FFMpeg
- Render AVI Jpeg
- Sounds encoding checkbox cannot be checked because sound encoding subsection is missing from the Output and Render context panes in Blender 2.8 (in both Eevee and Cycles.
- Tried syncing time/speed of sound and clips
- Strip audio volume is engaged (0.9)
Any help is greatly appreciated.

If I open a new Blender scene in 2.8 and then go to the Output icon, set the File Format to FFmpeg, expand the new Encoding section and the scroll down to Audio. I can change the Audio Codec from No Audio to my required codec. With a completely new .blend file is that the same for you?

Thank you very much. I had looked over that context pane repeatedly, but I never realise that the encoding drop down was only available in FFmpeg. Thank you very much for that.

@rob Thank you for the answer. I also dont know about encoding drop down there. I think it should be answer than omments


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Stripes and Patterns on object
When I put a Alpha blend at my object it gets stripes as the result of the Material.
I am not sure what causes this. The object is unwrap and the faces are showing all the same direction. there should be no open edges as well. And none of them are overlapping.
I am not clear how I can share the blend file here.
See the image below

https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/


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Importing .obj, normals appear randomly flipped
I am trying to import a .obj model in Blender. The .obj in question can be downloaded from https://poly.google.com/view/9pffFcv7LSm.
When I import the model in Blender, most of its faces look inside out. It's as if normals were randomly flipped. However, when I display the normals overlay, they all point properly outwards.
I've tried triangulating the mesh and/or recalculating normals, but so far nothing has worked.
I've attached a few pictures of the result I'm getting, but you should be able to reproduce with the link above.

Not sure what it is but when I create and assign a new material to the duck, the viewport error is gone. Might be worth reporting that as a bug: https://developer.blender.org/

@brockmann I changed the material's blend mode from alpha blend to opaque, and it appears to have fixed my issue. Thanks!

I had the same issue, solved it by unchecking "Show Backface" in Stettings under the Material Properties.


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Kitchen sink modelling
I am planning of a renovation, specifically my kitchen and I thought in doing it in Blender and UE4 since that would be a great opportunity to learn the programs as well.
I have managed to model the house (walls, windows, cabinets etc) and now I am in the process of modelling the appliances and stuff. I managed to do a fridge and now I am trying to model the kitchen sink in the photo:

I began with a simple plane and I managed to do the two bowls of the sink, but soon I ran into a problem because I noticed that this sink has three layers/planes or at least that's what I think.
So my question is this: Should I try and create more loop cuts in the specific plane and try to extrude/move/delete etc the edges or vertices? Or should I create the three layers separately in planes and join them together afterwards?
If I create those three planes, how could I "bend" the edges of my plane so I could get the shape of e.g. the second plane?
Is there perhaps an easier approach in this? Or a resource (e.g. article or tutorial) explaining something similar?
Please don't get me wrong I merely ask for a suggestion, not for someone to write a tutorial! :)
Thank you in advance and please excuse my English, it's not my native language!

Watch this timelapse "Modeling a kitchen sink" it might be helpfull https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLe4GAMmakQ

Wow! That sure opened up my eyes! :) Thank you so much!
It is way more difficult than I anticipated, but now at least I have a good understanding of what needs to be done!

use your photo as a background, follow the shapes and make several extrusions

I have placed the photo as a background but I can't seem to design the curves as I want them to be. In the second plane for example, I have to draw the curves but I can't seem to be able to do it. I have tried with bevel, adding a second plane within a plane, but nothing

First use the picture as a background, draw all the lines, use shift ctrl B on vertices to create round corners, then join the vertices to fill the whole shape, then you can begin to extrude down. Afterwards, create some bevel to sharp the edges before you put a Subsurf.

Grrrreat!!! Seems like an easy and straight-forward way to do it. I will try it out tonight. Thank you sooo much for your answer

for each of your layers, make an extrusion and play with the geometry a bit with the sub-surface modifier.  With the subsurf modifier applied, you will add alot less vertices with smoother curves when you add in loop cuts.
After you have the sink, use a boolean to cut its shape out of the counter.

Thank you for your answer! I will try it tonight and let you know of my progress! :)
I hope that with the sub-surf modifier, I will be able to create those curves of the second plane


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GLTF export location offset error
I have to make a WebGL page to display an animation importing a character that someone else created for a "normal" animation (for video). I'm using three.js GLTF and Blender 2.8 combination to achieve my goals. This is the procedure I'm implementing and it works like a charm:

Import object from blend file #1 to blend file #2.
Ctrl+A to apply all transformations.
Animate
Bake animation
Make animation linear
Push action to NLA

This works 100% of the time but with this imported model I get a location offset in my web canvas. After over 12 hours of testing and looking up information about this behavior the only solution was to make a new object and associate the imported mesh and get rid of the imported object.
Here is a Shared Folder
 containing the Blend and exported GLB file, where the object "body" is the one with problems and the object "suzanne" is the error free object. Both share mesh and action.
So my QUESTION IS:
Does anyone knows what is going on with this object?
Cheers.

Forgot to mention the original model was made in a  Blender  version earlier than 2.8.

It would probably be worth testing this on a recent version of Blender. If the problem is still there, you can file a bug on https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-Blender-IO.


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Physics is not rendering, It only renders when I bake it
So basically I was making a flag simulation and it sticks to the initial frame and it doesn’t simulate anything for the whole render.(Unless I bake it). Is this meant to be or is something wrong, Please help.

Depending on your setup this is normal. Always bake simulations before rendering. They have to be calculated anyway so why not beforehand in a controled cached fashion.

Yeah I’ll do that, Thanks :)


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exporting procedural landscape
hi guys sorry if this is a repeat question but I haven't found the answer and I've been trying for days this is driving me nuts. So I am new to blender and I have created a procedural landscape and would like to export (.glb format) it so I can import it to three.js. When I export simple objects aka a cube with a texture everything works fine but when I try to export my landscape I get a plane with no textures. I am obviously missing a step or two that I should be doing before I export. If you need more info let me know.

i would really appreciate some help on this should i be creating a landscape a different way such as ANT

When you say "procedural landscape" did you use a displacement modifier? or use shader nodes connected to the displacement socket?

I've done both using a noise texture in the displacement node and baking the image then using it with the displacement modifier in both cases when I export i get a plane with no displacement or materials

Using node based shaders and modifiers is something that is specific to blender, neither of these export well to other programs.
For node based materials, you can bake the shader nodes to an image that can be used in other programs. This only applies to the surface appearance; such as colour, specularity, glossiness...
A normal map used in a shader can also be used in other programs, but mesh displacement in shaders will not export.
When you are using a displacement modifier, as well as any modifier except armature, you will need to apply the result of the modifiers when exporting. Most exporters provide an option to do this for you during export. For gltf, look for the Apply Modifiers option, in 2.80 it is under General, in 2.81 it is under Geometry.


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Blender Grabbing Vertices Duplicates Them
I'm following a tutorial on how to make a low poly character and whenever the guy im watching grabs certain vertices and pulls them they move but for me, the create a duplicate version of its already existing vertices and i don't know how to fix it.

you must have duplicated your mesh, you can try 2 different things:

Select and delete the duplication: put your mouse on the mesh and press L to select the duplication, then G to move it away and X to delete.
Merge the overlapping vertices: Select the whole mesh with A and press AltM > Merge By Distance, you can see how many vertices have been deleted on the top horizontal bar, meaning there were overlapping vertices, maybe you'll have to play with the Merge Distance parameter in the operator box on the bottom left of the 3D viewport window.


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How to tile/repeat gradient texture based on object polygons faces, in shader editor?
i need to repeat the gradient texture for each polygonal face an object has, it's possible?

Please provide more context. What is it for? You can repeat a gradient texture by plugging Parametric output of the Geometry node to it's vector input. That would technically answer your question as it is now, because it is repeating and you did not specify how you need it to repeat, but I get a feelling that's not what you are after...

Thanks, that is exactly what i was looking for!!!

One way to make that is by creating a special UV unwraping which will basically take every face of your model and unwrap them all on top of each other and taking the entire UV space.
If you have other UV maps already, make sure to first create a new UV map in your object so you don't lose your previous UV maps:

Then select the new UV Map, go to edit mode, select everything with A then press U → Reset. This will result to something like this in your UV Editor:

Once you've got that, you will need to call that specific UV map in your shader. Go to the shader editor, hit ⇧ ShiftA → Input → UV Map. Specify the UV Map you want in that node, then do whatever you want with that:

Thanks, i really appreciate it. It's a good alternative to map each face by uv. I did not knew this good trick.


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Blender 2.8 Cycles Projecting world background to an object
How can i project world environment hdri texture to an object,like camera mapping, i know i can use a material that has only shadows for later compositing it,and rendering the world environment alone, but i'd like to know if there is a way to do that, a kind of background shader? or using nodes and vectors/rays in shader editor? Thanks

I must be misunderstanding--surely you know how to map any texture to any object? Is that what you want, or is the background itself not visible in the render like it used to be? Is your environmental texture only showing in reflections, and you want to act like a "skybox" again?

Yes i know how to map any texture to any object, in this case i'm not able to give a world background shader to an object, projected from view, to let it results like hidden or invisible as having same colors of world environment background behind it.Maybe background shader was doing that but i've read somewhere they left it from 2.8 version.


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Animation nodes, instances orientation in a Dodecahedron
I'm trying to orient instances so that they align correctly to form same shape of the Mesh Object Input, here a pentagonal faces Dodecahedron. I've used Vertex Group Input to control the Guides param. of Direction to Rotation node, but it's a kind of dirty trick, not perfect clean math solution at all.How to orient instances correctly? blend file

This method works for any object which has symmetric faces of the same size. The main idea is to align the instance object's (in your case the Tritube) any axis (local) along the edges of the base object (in your case is the Pentaface).
Note: This method required that any symmetric face of the base object should not have any cutting edge. For example, a cube object should not have a diagonal edge in any its face or in case of Pentaface object:

Step-1: A edge has a start, end, and center. So, the equation below gives the guide for start and end:
Start-Center = guide at the start
End-Center = guide at the end

To solve this for all edges, I have made a Guides for Direction Loop loop-node which takes the vertex locations, edges of the object and two empty vector lists, calculate the guides for each vertex. To simplify further, I have also made a AN-Guides for Direction group-node which automatically creates two empty lists for the Guides for Direction Loop node, so you only need to supply the vertex locations and edges:

Step-2: Then connect the vertex normals to direction and guides from the AN-Guides for Direction group-node to guides of the Direction to Rotation node:

Sometimes, you may need to rotate the instance object (in your case the Tritube) in edit mode to match the direction of the edges of the base object.
Step-3: Here is an example for cube object but same node-tree:

Step-4: I have converted the node-tree of How to call vertex groups in Animation nodes into a group-node for easy usage:

Step-5: Now, you can easily change the z-direction of instances with vertex weight but keeping them align with the edges of the base object with this node-tree:

Complete Node-Tree:

Blend File:

Yes, pure gold! I doubt someone has a better way to do it. I'm try to see in depth what's going on Guides for Direction Loop, to better understand it. In the meanwhile i discovered it seems not work with IcoSphere mesh, it's triangle faces that causes issues? link - Thanks!

Your welcome. Yes, I know that because it does not has symmetric faces of equal size (also mentioned in the answer). However, aligning instances per edge is easy and possible for any object of any shape. But I'll update this answer when I find a method that works for any object.


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How to quickly preview what a shape key with a driver does?
I have a shape key with a driver. Its value is currently 0. I'd like to "preview" what it does (a.k.a. see its shape at value 1), but because its value is controlled by the driver, I have to RMB > Edit Driver, find the driver, and change its value, or remove the driver first then add it back later.
Both seem very tedious for such a simple task. Is there a faster way to "preview" a shape key?

You can select the object and go into edit mode (Tab button). From there select you shape key and you should instantly see the value at 1.0. Is this what you're looking for?

I would just save the project, remove the driver(s), preview, revert.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/95352/how-do-i-temporaily-turn-off-a-driver

Use a Pin icon under Shape keys ...

Edit: ... I dont know much about drivers, but you can duplicate (copy&paste) driver of each shape key and use like one Empty_Master object that will control Value for all your shape keys at once ...

It's not exactly as setting value as 1 (if you have more than one shape keys). But yeah I guess it's good enough

You didnt mention ... Edit ... if that make a sence to you :)


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Stretch a part of mesh and push the other parts away
For example I have this model:

I'd like to stretch the neck part. But if I simply scale it, the head is not moved so the neck will clip into it. If I use proportional editing to scale it, the head does move, but the general shape changes too.
I guess one possible way is to create an armature, set bones for the head and neck, then scale the neck bone. Is there a simpler method?

If I understand correctly what you want, Proportional Editing can work well if you choose Linear mode. Select the whole head and pull:

Oh I completely misunderstood how proportional editing works lol. I tried to scale the neck instead of moving the head. Thank you very much.


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Object gizmo setting doesn't take effect for bones
When I select a bone in pose mode, no matter what my Object Gizmo setting is, the Gizmo always looks the same:

Even the "global" is not global at all:

It works as expected for objects, but for bones it's always the same. Is it a bug? Or am I missing something?

@moonboots yes, but it doesn't make sense to me. As shown in the picture, the gizmo doesn't align with global axis either. It seems to align with the bone's local.

If in the "T" panel you select the rotation instrument, the choice between World/local has to be performed with the upper center dropdown menu in the 3D window, while if you are using the default select instrument you can activate a gizmo with the viewport gizmo menu (that in your uploaded image) and in this latter case the choice between World/local has to be performed here (and it works!).

Thank you very much! For future reference, "Transform" tool and "Select" tool both use viewport gizmo setting, while "Rotation" tool always uses local (not respecting viewport gizmo, nor transformation orientation). And it only happens for bones, not objects. I suppose it's a bug.


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Which space is the normal map (for BSDF) defined in?
I know a pixel on a normal map's RGB value represents the normal vector's XYZ coordination. but in which space? World space, the object's local space, or relative to the face's normal? If it's not relative to the face's normal, does it mean that a normal map completely overrides the face/vertex normals?
Let's assume we only use Principled BSDF here.

The BSDF you plug it into doesn't matter.  The way that the normal map is treated doesn't depend on what it ultimately feeds.
As you realized, a tangent space normal map is made out of (remapped, -1,1 to 0,1) vectors in tangent space.
An object space normal map is made out of (remapped) vectors in object space.
The output of a normal map node is expressed in world space.  The normal map node undoes the remapping of the normal map and transforms its space from either tangent or object to world.

I did some research and the answer is "tangent space". It's actually a surprisingly complicated concept. In short, it depends on both the face normal and the UV unwrapping.
https://learnopengl.com/Advanced-Lighting/Normal-Mapping

It depends on how the normal map was generated. It can be in object or tangent space in blender, but normally it is in tangent space.


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What's exactly "Available" keying set?
Most keying sets are pretty self-explanatory. Like Loc or LocRotScale. But what's Available?

The official document doesn't say anything about it either.

The Available keying set is the set for keys that were created by keyframing an Available Key.
When you create a keyframe, you create one or more F-Curves, or you add that keyframe to an existing set of F-Curves.
As the tooltip says when you hover over Available in the keyframe menu, it inserts a keyframe on each of the already existing F-Curves.
The Available keying set is often used with automatic key generation.  The workflow is to go to frame 0 or 1 and set a keyframe for each property you want to change.  Then you enable the Available keying set and turn on automatic keyframing.
This way, when you move the frame and then modify state, only the bits you want to include show up in the keyframe that is automatically added.
This is very useful when creating actions in the NLA.

It looks like Available will create a keyframe for the transforms that have already been keyframed. If you have already created keyframe for Location and Rotation (but not Scale) and now for some frame you create a new keyframe > Available type, it will only create a Location + Rotation keyframe, no Scale keyframe, even though you've scaled the object at this frame.


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Scripting: Is vertex weight a proper way to store extra information on vertices?
I'm making an addon and I need to store some extra information on vertices. The natural way to do this seems to be generating a group and set weights of vertices in it. But I read this from the official doc:

In order to be used for things like deformation, weights usually have
to be normalized, so that all deforming weights assigned to a single
vertex add up to 1. The Armature modifier in Blender does this
automatically, so it is technically not necessary to ensure that
weights are normalized at the painting stage.

Does it mean that if I set a vertex's weight in my script-generated group, say 100000, it would cause all the other weights for bones to be normalized to very small numbers, so
that they add to 1?
Is vertex weight generally the correct way to store extra information for scripting?

You don't have to worry about normalization.  You do have to worry about clamping.
First, clamping.  Blender will not let you use a vertex weight of less than 0.0 or greater than 1.0.  (Well, I've seen some bugged files with negative values, but it's not supposed to happen.)  Vertex group assignments are not intended to be used outside of this range, so 100000 is right out.
There are alternatives.  First, even though you can't have 100k weights, you can just divide all your weights by 100k and then make your effect 100k times as strong.  Second, while you haven't said what your end goal is, you can store information in other ways, including UV (which is also clamped, but to a much greater range.)
Okay, normalization.  Normalization doesn't affect your actual groups, and it only happens at the time of evaluating an armature.  Let's say you have two bones, and all your verts are weighted fully to both of these bones.  In order to evaluate your armature, Blender normalizes the weights-- so our weight is the weight, divided by the sum (of all weights for groups with the same names as deforming bones in the armature.)  The actual weight values are unchanged, it's all totally behind the scenes, and it only affects armature deformation.


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Vertex Group With Checker Deselect
I' trying to create a vertex group with checker deselect,

and trying to create a vertex group with that selection, but when a select the vertices of that vertex group it selects the entire cube and the selection that I made before gets replaces.
Any suggestion to trying to solve this?
PS:. I'm new to blender so if am going something wrong I would appreciate that someone would point it out to me.
Thank you.

It's impossible to save that selection into vertex group. You can try saving into material slot (a hack basically), extruding selected on your screenshot and saving that to group or detaching selected vertices with Y and using 2 meshes (a hack). It all depends on what is your goal with that vertex group

"It's impossible".... because it's a selection of all the vertices, and a vertex group contains no information about how the vertices are used in faces. What you need is a way of storing a selection of faces.. as demo'd by Mr Zak.

Thank you for answering, I will try using a material slot instead, but I want the vertices to be connected, because I will try to render something using a texture like glass and if I don't use a single mesh it will take to long to render and the refraction, I think it will make it look awful. Here it is what im trying to do: http://brokenliquid.com, thank you.

In the image, you have selected every other face and now have half of the faces selected. Vertex groups can only contain vertices, so for each face, blender is selecting the vertices that make up the four corners of each square. Because your selection of faces touches all the vertices in the cube, Blender adds all the vertices in the cube to the vertex group.
To see exactly what this is doing, try selecting just one face, then switch to vertex select mode to see what vertices selects.
To get every other vertex selected, you can go into vertex select mode and select every other vertex before grouping.

I'm just learning blender and came across this same question i had.
FYI, I'm using Blender 3.1 currently.
After configuring the checker deselect use one of the options below
Option 1. Vertext -> Vertex Groups -> Assign to New Group
Option 2. You can also use the hotkey Ctrl+G
Look in your vertex groups now and you will have a new group.
Use the select and deselect buttons to confirm


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GSG Signal add-on alternative for Blender!
jut wondering if you guys know, if there is any add-on, like the Signal add-on from greycalegorilla (GSG), to make looping animation easier in blender.
Thank you.

Short answer: Never heard of it. Long answer: Could you possibly be a little more specific? Please read How do I ask a good question?. Especially "Be specific" and "Make it relevant to others".  Please try at least to explain what this Signal add-on does or provide a link to a good explanation. Nobody's got time to search the internet for answers about every obscure tool that exists.

thanks for you replay, I thought that signal was more known, but ok. Is hard to explain, "Signal allows you to instantly create complex animations with intricate loops, realistic noise, additive effects, and all with no keyframes.", here is the link I think is a better way to put it, https://greyscalegorilla.com/downloads/signal/


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Cant see change when I change material color and no differnce between Eevee and Cycles engine
I am new to blender, when I first started every thing was fine, I could see all changes I made to the material and switching render engine to the Cycles was working fine, then I saved my project and closed blender. When I reopened blender I couldnt see the colours, they were still there but just not appearing on the screen, also when changing the scene render engine from eevee to cyles nothing changed. I see the colours and the change in render engine when I rendered my model by pressing f12. I've already tryed restaring my project and re-installing blender. pls help

This is also explained in the very tutorial you're following, just watch it carefully.

In the top right there are the 4 circles, the first is for wireframe view, solid view, lookdev view and last (the one you need) render view. Clicking this should display the material