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Older settings did not load after newest 3.6 update!
I recently updated to 3.6 and the usual "load older settings" prompt came up. I clicked on it but it didn't seem to do anything? My addons are all gone and I tried reverting to an older version of Blender, but it refuses to open if I do so. Any help is appreciated!!

What Blender version did you update from? What operating system? What do you mean "My addons are all gone..."?

I was using 3.5 before updating to 3.6. I am using Windows 10. My addons as in my user preference. Everything seems to be reset to default.


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Mesh in the real edges
I am new to Blender, and I use Blender 3.3.6. I need help creating a mesh that looks like the mesh in the image given without having sub-divided edges.
I used the knife tool in the edit mode to cut an extruded mesh to get this mesh, but the created mesh is sub-dived as shown in the image below.

What exactly do you mean by subdivided edges? Please make the question more clear. Secondly the mesh which you have shown probably has overlapping faces. Also is there a reference that you have? Will be much helpful if you provide that as well.

I am not sure how to say it. can you describe the steps to make the mesh in the image? please.

For a quad based topology, you would divide the cube to 3 face loops, so you can lower the middle one. Then you would divide it also vertically, to at least 2 face loops*, so you can lower it to the nearest loop, using vertex snapping and ⎇ AltE Extrude Manifold:

*-I used 3 loops to get squares, but it's not very important, especially if you're about to scale the loops later in order to get the specific dimensions you want:

But it seems you want to get a minimum topology, meaning as few polygons as possible, and in this case you can just create a single face, and then extrude it:

X key to access the delete/dissolve menu, switch between vert, edge, face selection mode using 123 keys. Once you have the cube you can just dissolve unnecessary edges and vertices, as you saw at the beginning of the last gif.

Thank you, I will try this.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Add driver using Python?
quick version:see the image
In short, I'm looking for correct way to use "driver_add("path", index)" to add driver to geometry node input.
Creating drivers in common modifiers are easy:
For example creating a driver at the width paramater of bevel modifier using the script below.
# Get the object and modifier
cube = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]
bevel_mod = cube.modifiers["Bevel"]

# Create a new driver for the Bevel modifier width parameter
driver = bevel_mod.driver_add("width").driver

However when facing geometry nodes, it does not work.
Because there is "[" after the modifier, rather than ".":
GeometryNode Input path: bpy.data.objects["Cube"].modifiers["GeometryNodes"]["Input_2"]

Bevel Input path: bpy.data.objects["Cube"].modifiers["Bevel"].width

I can add driver manually to both modifiers by right click, but I have 88 objects to add driver to.

Add driver to GeometryNodes input
import bpy

md = bpy.context.object.modifiers["GeometryNodes"]

fc = md.driver_add('["Input_2"]')

# need update the interface manually (place the cursor on the input box)

wow, so simple! Perfectly solved my confusion!

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


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Properly render freestyle in this example?
I have a set of planes which I have "solidified" and then Boolean intersected with a skeletal hand to form the below model. The skeletal hand lines and the plane lines are in two different collections, which have two different freestyle line sets associated with them.

The planes have a black stlye, and the hand white. I have disabled selection by visibility and only have selection by collection enabled.
The render gives the following image:

As you can see, all of the freestyle lines are overlapping one another, and it ruins the depth perception of the image. I cannot use visibility by QI range, because the same thing inevitably happens. Is there any way to stop this happening?


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add up multiple attributes of same index?
I have 3 curves and a target curve
How do I add up the attribute(offset for example) of every point, and transfer to the target curve based on index?

Attribute Statistic node can only excute and output to one point at a time. Do I need something like repeat zone?

Accumulated field node with a sample index will do!
Answered by zeroskilz at blenderartists.org

Accumulated field node with a sample index will do!
Answered by zeroskilz at blenderartists.org

Thanks for the posts. This is not a regular forum, according to site rules links to answers are not answers if the link goes missing your answer becomes an empty shell without content. Answers should be substantial and stand on their own without relying on external data like links, videos or images. Instead of having users go through external links, either transcribe essential parts of the process here, linking the source, or posts these in the comments section instead.


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How do I rotate multiple bones based on the origin of one bone in pose mode?
Novice here. I know this question is likely been asked before, but I could not find the answer.
So basically what happens now is shown as the picture below:

I want to do an animation that the character rotates her left leg forward. I selected multiple bones from the foot to the thigh, and I expect them to rotate based on my last selection (which is the bone attached to the thigh), however it seems like they rotate based on the center of all three of them.
What I have tried:

Let the calf and foot bone be children of the thigh bone. (basically just Ctrl+P, set parent to bone/object, I tried both, and my last selection was the thigh bone )

Set my cursor to the root of the thigh bone.

However both methods do not seem to work. I wonder what is a quick solution to this?

You should investigate Inverse kinematics rigging. There are various YT tutorials for rigging legs with IK such as this one for instance.

@JohnEason Thanks, I will take a look at it.

To answer you first query, if you select and  try to rotate all 3 leg bones together they will try to rotate around the median point of all 3 if you have the pivot point set to 'Median Point' (linked circles on the top toolbar).

@JohnEason Appreciated, this kinda solved my problem.


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Is there a way to connect a field Boolean output to a geometry switch node?
As you can see I am trying to connect the output of a Boolean Math node to the input of a Switch node set to Geometry. The problem is that it not possible because part of the Boolean node comes from a field. You can not connect this to a Switch node set to Geometry. I am not at all an expert when it comes blender geometry nodes. Is there a work around to this or is there a node for this? Any help is much appreciated!!!

Could you, at some point, mark elements of the geometry with the boolean, and use Delete Geometry  or Separate Geometry instead? Hard to say, without more context.

What is shown is the end a loop step that is locating vertices that are coincident to an edge but not connected. If it finds one for a vertex it modifies the geometry so the vertex is welded to the edge. What I am trying to accomplish is stopping the search for that index after it fins one.

To convert multiple values to a single value, either:

use Attribute Statistic node in order to evaluate a single value based on all/selected values:

use Sample Index node to pick a single value out of multiple values:

If this doesn't help you, it's likely an XY Problem and you need to rephrase your question to show what's the real (Y) problem.

It seems I had not looked at the Sample By Index node close enough. I was not aware it was both a field and value node. So if I understand it correctly the image above should do the trick. I have emphasized the nodes that input to the Boolean node in question just for clarification.


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how to flat mesh and remove rough edges?
Does anyone know how to flat this mesh?
Whenever i move this mesh, is even more rough. Does anyone know whats is this?

Hello and welcome to BSE. I'm not sure what you mean by "how to flat this mesh". If you mean flatten that you end up with only 2 faces perpendicular to each other, why not just model it again?

The screenshot looks to me likes an Anti-Aliasing issue. The edges seem to be pixelated and rough which I believe is what you meant.
What is anti-aliasing? - Anti-aliasing is what computer graphics use to smooth out edges in images. It keeps them from looking like the edges of the mesh in your screenshot.

How To Fix It:

Go to the Blender Preference Settings. [Edit > Preferences] OR [press  F4  to open up the "File Context" menu and choose it from that list]
Go to the Viewport tab located on the left side panel
In the "Quality" section, change the "Viewport Anti-Alisiang" to a higher sample count.

Side note: The sample count is set to 8 by default and usually just increasing one step in the list of options will work.
My apologies if it doesn't.


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Best practices for collaboration
We are working on an internal project with several people on a Blender file. This file serves as a template for a rendering pipeline in which various parameters, objects, etc. are adjusted during processing via the Python API.
The entire project is one big disaster. This is because with different people working together, changes are made to the Blender file that are untraceable, and there are constant misconfigurations due to renaming of materials, and other things.
Question: Are there best practices for team collaboration? How are large projects handled in Blender? What are the recommended best practices? What should be avoided? Is there additional documentation for this specific purpose?
Thanks,
Torsten

Hello. It's hard to use common version control tools on Blend files because they're binary and the order of lines may be completely mangled on every save ,especially if you use the compressed format. I think the common practice is to use asset linking. Every one works on their specific asset in their file and a manager links everything in a main file or main files. That way changes can be made asynchronously and merged after the fact. But it really depends on the workflow in your team

Thanks for this comment. I'm just wondering how big projects, like in the movie industry, solves this challenges? Light scene, materials, objects ... It's not possible to generate something like a trace file?

Hello and welcome. As it stands this question is too broad to be answerable without requiring an extensive tutorial or description. It also seems to be subjective and attracts opinion based answers rather than facts, because there are no "right" or "wrong" answers and every suggestion is equally valid. For art critique, tips, or other open ended discussions like this it is best to ask over at Blender Artists or similar forums. If you can rephrase it to focus on objective questions or solving specific issues feel free to [edit] it so it can be reopened.

It might be worth investigating the Blender Studio pipeline web site. I'm not sure whether you can access it without a Blender Studio subscription though.


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Join Instances of Animation Nodes/ Make them seperate Objects
Is there a way to join the instances of an object from animation nodes to one mesh or convert them to independant "real" meshes?
I want to set only one boolean modifier object as an array of objects i created with animation nodes instead of applying n-modifiers for every cube.

In the advanced node settings of the instancer node, you can use the Unlink Instance From Node operator to make the object independent of the node, then you can merge them and do whatever you like.

Found the Solution(Dont know why it dindt work the first time):
1. AN autoexecution: Off
2. Clear Parent
3. Rename Object before executing AN again


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Can't activate experimental Particle Nodes/ Simulation Window
Was the experimental Particle Nodes Feature removed in 2.91.0 Beta? (Nov 8, 00:34:11)
I’m Trying to access it via Preferences > Experimental but there is nothing there but “Debugging”-Features. Interface > Developer Tools is checked.
Did search for it excessively, but couldn’t find anything about that problem.
Also I wasn’t able to find a branch.
And I got the same problem in 2.9 and 2.92 Alpha.
Maybe it’s a bug in my install? Factory Reset doesn’t change anything, sadly.

I think the experimental features are only included in the experimental 'daily' builds, not the official releases. You'll probably need to download from https://builder.blender.org/download/branches/ for those features.

That was it! Found it with your link as "experimental-build branch". Thank you RichSedman!

The experimental features are only included in the experimental 'daily' builds, not the official releases. You'll probably need to download from https://builder.blender.org/download/branches/ for those features.


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Visible Edge between N-Gons + Shade Smooth
n-gons + smooth shading produces visible Edges. What would be best practice to solve this while keeping the n-gons in Blender 2.82a. Cant remember having this problem in 2.79.
the vertices are all on the same hight.
with shade flat there isnt an edge visible.
Thank you for your help!

Have you tried edge split? Ultimately all faces are broken down into tris for smooth shading.

maybe try to go in the Properties panel > Object Data > Normals and enable Auto-Smooth, play with Angle value?

thanks J_M and moonboots unfortunately both methods dont work because they both are meant to exclude all angles above their value. This thing happens around 7degree wich means to whole mesh would be flat just to fix this issue.


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Python variable is not persistent/ changes from unrelated bpy.ops line
I want to store the rotation of an object to be able to change it back after some operations. From my little coding experience "rot" should stay persistent and not be changed in the next line by "bpy.ops.object.transform_apply". Am I missing something?
import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

rot = obj.rotation_euler
print("store object rotation", rot)
#evaluates correct

bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=True, scale=False)
print("rot after rotation-apply", rot)
#problem: rot has changed to (0, 0, 0)

#other operations

#problem: rotation cant be set back.
obj.rotation_euler = (rot)
print("gameobject_final_rotation: ",  obj.rotation_euler)

obj.rotation_euler is a reference to the rotation object which is affected by bpy.ops.object.transform_apply. In order to store the old rotation in a variable you can use:
rot = obj.rotation_euler.copy()

Thank you very much, looks like i realy have to improve my python knowledge :)


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How to get instanced object from particle system at location?
I need to check which object is instanced at a certain location. The particle system spawns a collection of objects either as is or with the “Use Count” feature.
At the moment I found a way to get the locations with animation nodes, but couldn’t find a way to find out which of the collection objects is being spawned at that location.

Mabye there is a way to do it in python?
Thanks for the help!
This question is asociated with another question of mine: How to get same hair particles from collection in second particle system/ or how to delete instanced particles without converting them to real meshes?

Found a python solution to get all the instances in the depsgraph. By filtering with "is_instance" you can get the names of the instance object that corespond with the source objects.
import bpy

context = bpy.context

dg = context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()

counter = 0
for i in dg.object_instances:
    obj = i.object
    print(obj.name)
    if not i.is_instance:
        print(f"Object {obj.name} at {i.matrix_world}")
    else:
        print(f"Instance of {obj.name} at {i.matrix_world}")
        counter += 1
print(f"Len of instanced objects: {counter}")


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Camera option won't work?
I'm trying to render a Roblox character but the camera won't work. I've tried pressing just 0 which made my whole character disappear, I also tried doing ctrl+0 but it said "Modifiers cannot be added to object camera 001". It seems like I'm the only one with this problem.. Can anyone help? :(

Maybe a classic missing-numblock problem because your on a laptop or mac?
if so: User Preferences->Input->Emulate Numpad

no I know its not the keyboard because it does recognise that Im wanting to use the camera option but it just simply won't let me.

do you have a file? Maby something is strange there..

@nachocheese No it doesn't your saying it states Modifiers cannot be added to object camera 001 when pressing Ctrl 0. However, this only happens when you press 0 on the number row instead of the numpad.


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Imported model bones not working
I have imported a free model of Mega Charizard Y from a 'models resource' website.
The imported model says that it has bones, but when I go into pose mode, I cannot move the bones around. They also look different than bones I have seen in tutorials, so I am really confused.
I want to be able to 3D print the model, and want to pose him into a much more dramatic action sort of pose.
Any help with this would be great please!

What you can see are the relation lines, not the bones. For some reason your bones are so tiny, you can't see them. Select the armature, go to edit mode, select Individual Origins for Pivot point, then hit "a" to select everything. (If you selected everything the Gizmo must be appear in the middle of the skeleton). Then hit "s" to scale and type in a big number (500,000). Then hit enter or left click and go back to pose mode.

Thanks so much, really appreciate the help.


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Is it possible to automatically clear unused areas of a texture map with default Blender tools?
I'm a very basic noob in Blender, and I've been unable to find a solution to my goals.
I have a basic model and I'm adding a texture, so far so good. The screenshot is a mock-up, not the real thing, but it serves a purpose.
There is often a lot of wasted space in a texture, so it looks something like this:

I see some lovely uvmaps, with nice clear space around them, like this:

My question is, essentially, how can I achieve something more like the gun model uv map / texture using default or freely available Blender tools for 2.79 or 2.80?

You can manually paint the unused area white in the uv/image editor, but there is no easy select and delete.

Thanks...I think, having investigated this a bit more, I can bake it to get rid of unreferenced areas. This is not an answer yet though.


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Vector Displacement from Zbrush to Blender
How do I get Blender to render a vector displacement map from Zbrush properly?
I have rendered the diagnostic scene from Zbrush, but none of them are accurate enough to be useful.
I am running Blender version 2.80 build from 7th feb, 2019.

IIRC 25 is compatible with blender coordinates...which is [+X, +Y, +Z]


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How do I get flat texture projection on a object without distortion?
I tried using Window Texture coordinate, but it changes scale if I zoom in or out. The Camera Texture coordinate works in with orthographic camera but gets distorted if I use perspective camera.
I want the texture to have a fixed scale and not be distorted like on orthographic mode.

What version and render engine?

2.8 cycles, its the same in 2.7 cycles.

@Rc12 I have added a new answer, which may fit your requirements even better. Please take a look at it. [Sorry for beeing a year too late.]

You can use the Window mapped Texture Coordinates. But you need to scale the X axis to get 1:1 ratio on your texture. The UV coordinates are 0-1 in screen space.

Or if you need to scale the texture depending on the distance from the camera. This is a bit simplified material that have an arbitrary power node to adjust the otherwise hard to achieve FoV calculations.

If you zoom in or out using window coordinate the texture changes in scale. I want the texture to be projected from the camera and have constant scale. If you use camera coordinate in orthographic mode it acts like window but doesnt change scale.

@Rc12 Changes scale? Can you elaborate? The texture is fixed to the window - it does not change scale.

The texture IS constant but is bound to the window size. Do you need it to be scaled with the object distance or the pixel distance?

I want the texture to be fixed on the object. So If I zoom out, the texture on the object is same as when I am zoomed in. When using window I have more lines when zoomed in but less when zoomed out. I want it be be scaled with object distance.

Then you will need to scale the texture based on the object distance and the camera Field of Vision. It will be a complex setup that not only is a material since the camera position and FoV is not available in the material nodes (yet?)

@Jackdaw If you are ok with using cycles, then you may be mistaken. Please review the last node setup in my answer. The node setup is simple and it does not require additional user inputs.

Use the Texture Coordinates of your Camera

Add a texture coordinate node and choose the camera output. If all coordinates had the same depth values, then the texture won't be distorted. You can simply reduce the length of the coordinates so that their z value equals 1 by dividing the coordinate by their z value.
Use a Vector Math node for the division and you have scale and ratio invariant view coordinates.

You will notice, that the texture still changes when altering its scale. This is because the Z coordinate is 1 and it's beeing scaled. If you don't want that, then multiply the Z coordinate with 0 with a vector math multiplication node (set X and Y to 1 though, because we don't want to change them).

The setups above will still zoom in and zoom out. They don't change when the camera is moved, but change when the cameras focal length decrease or increases.
However, since we have the relation of the camera coordinates and the window coordinates we can counteract this by multiplying the coordinates with the quotion of a single dimension of window / camera.
The following node setup will produce axis-equal window coordinates independently of camera position, rotation, or focal length.

It works perfectly in cycles, but causes some artifacts in EEVEE in the center due to zero division.

Use the UV Project modifier:

Then in nodes you use UV mapping. This setup is independent of render resolution ratio.


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Snap bone 'a' to bone 'b' , similar to "keep offset"
How can I use python to make bone a snap to bone b in pose mode, like a parent-child relationship with offsets maintained. I tried using "matrix" but the results were terrible.
Even if I don't move bone 'a' at all, bone 'b' will still change strangely
ps: I am trying to write a script to snap ik to fk
'''
def execute(self, context):
    obj = context.object
    if obj.type != 'ARMATURE' or context.mode != 'POSE':
        self.report({'WARNING'}, "Must be in Pose mode with an Armature object selected")
        return {'CANCELLED'}

    bone_a = obj.pose.bones.get('a')
    bone_b = obj.pose.bones.get('b')

    if not bone_a or not bone_b:
        self.report({'WARNING'}, "Bones 'a' and 'b' must exist")
        return {'CANCELLED'}

    # Calculate the offset matrix
    offset_matrix = bone_b.matrix.copy() @ bone_a.matrix.inverted()

    # Apply the offset to bone_b, using bone_a's matrix
    bone_b.matrix = bone_a.matrix @ offset_matrix

    return {'FINISHED'}

'''


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When I render my animation these transparent/black rectangles keep showing up on the surface of the model, how do I make it so that these don't show?
I've been making a rotating animation and whenever I render the video, these black rectangles keep showing up.

During rendering, these rectangles appear as transparent boxes

I've had these issues before and have never finished an animation because of it. Any ideas as to what the issue may be? Could the problem be my laptop? This is a somewhat old device and not necessarily the most powerful.
Here's the file just incase you need it;
https://mega.nz/fm/pTU2ARZS

That link to your file requires you to log in! Please use the supplied site to upload blend files s long as they are under 30Meg in size: https://blend-exchange.com/ following the instructions on the page to add the link into your question.

Thanks for letiting me know, here's the link:

That looks as if it might be a graphics issue from your images which could well be due to your laptop. What Blender version are you using and does the laptop have a graphics card with the most recent graphics driver?  It's difficult to tell from your blend file because you didn't include your material file (Color_Map_from_Mesh_defaultMat.png) and it doesn't look as if you've added any seams to your model or UV unwrapped it. You could include the materials file by using File > External Data > Pack Resources in Blender before saving and uploading.

Thanks for the help, it was an issue with the texture image graphics.


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How can a Nordic cross be projected onto a sphere without stretching?

Hey, does anybody know how to make it so that the lines on the flag going up don't get smaller?

You good you good

U -> Project from view or default texture coordinates should work:


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I am not able to get a 3d track

I am trying to 3d track a footage (FOOTAGE DETAILS : 360 rotation drone footage ) . I am not able to get a 3d track , even if i place 8 points manually the camera solve is too high and the camera glides too much , what should i do ??

Add more than a bare minimum of tracking markers maybe?..

How long is the footage? Do you have a link to the video so we can see what the footage looks like?

Maybe you need to scale up the zone and also help manually?


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Nodes won't show up Blender 3.0
I am pretty new to blender. I'd like to use nodes to create a material, but even though I have nodes enabled and used them to choose a Glass BSDF, and they are showing up in the properties panel, I can't see them in the node editor nor click anything in the node editor -- everything is greyed out. I am using cycles.

You are in the Texture editor, it's a legacy editor to edit Blender pre-2.80 textures with nodes. What you are looking for is the Shader editor:

And once you are there, make sure you are in the Object shader type to see your object's shaders:


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Beveled edges rendering like they're cut into
I made a very simple animation, and with camera movement, the beveled edges appear as if they are cut into. How can I fix this?
I am rendering with blender render.

Its will be better to have your .blend file.

blender file here: https://ufile.io/h7cka

Thanks! I tried to add motion blur, but that didn't help!

the file you linked is not available for my region, do you use google drive, instead?

who told you to add motion blur?

No one, I was just trying things. One second, let me add to google drive

when I click on render first it renders small height-ed rectangular and when it finishes rendering it becomes normal rectangle as expected, do you have any idea why this happens?

are you using some interleaved codec?

@yash, same happens for me! idk why.

@samir - I don't even know what that means. lol. I am very new to blender!

I am rendering from the .blend by clicking animation into an .avi file

Solved it! I needed to uncheck "fields" under Post Processing.
What that does, I don't know, but unchecking it fixed it!
Thank you!

@user68946 as you got the answer, you should post by clicking "Answer your question" comments are not noticeable so you should answer your question yourself.

Thanks for the tip! just added!

Solved it! I needed to uncheck "fields" under Post Processing. What that does, I don't know, but unchecking it fixed it! Thank you!


text:
Fixing starting location for NLA
I am very new to learning Blender so please bare with me on this one! I've read similar questions and tried the suggestions without success!
I have two actions I want to merge together using the NLA editor. When the second action starts, it jumps locations. I did not make these actions, I am just trying to put them together.
.blend file on Google drive here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1X-3MGEjLqLDbv0jgOK1G5n3nY1bRRED4
Thank you for any advice you can offer!!

You character jumps because its position to its origin has changed between the 2 actions.
It depends what you mean by merging actions in the NLA Editor. You can merge 2 strips to make one in the NLA but if you just want your character to have a coherent animation (i.e. have the same position at the beginning of the second action than the one at the end of the first action) you can do it this way:

Open the Graph Editor. In the NLA, select the second strip. Press tab so that you can see all the bones curves in the Graph Editor.
As the master bone of your armature is Hips, and as the shift between the 2 actions position is on its Z location, select the Hips Z Location track and press shiftH to make all the other ones invisible.
Select the curve with A and move it on its own Y axis, you can see that the armature moves in the 3D view. Move it where it is supposed to be.
Correct on any other axis if needed.

Now keep in mind that it seems like you don't have any transition between the 2 animations, maybe it's better to create one. Also, instead of keeping two separate actions, you can choose to select all the animations of the second action in the Dopesheet and paste them at the end of the first one. You won't need 2 strips anymore as you've copied the content of the second one in the first one, and you'll have to correct the position the same way as explained.

This is so helpful! THANK YOU!!
I'm rendering another animation now, but I'll give this a try later today! Thank you again!


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Using fSpy for Blender
I am trying to use the add-on fSpy so I can scale everything accurately in Blender, however all the tutorials I can find online only explain how to setup fSpy in Blender and I am stuck on how to make my jpg file I'm basing my room off into a .fspy file to be applied, is there an fspy app I'm meant to be using? And if so how do I open it because all I have are the init addon and fspy python files which don't do anything when I double click them

You have calculated the focal length and now you have the problem to import it in blender? Or you haven't even calculated the focal length yet?

fSpy is a standalone application that outputs a .json file. The Addon is used to import the .json file configuration inside Blender.


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Having troubles adding material to a subdivided face
I am a beginner in 3D modeling so I thought I'd give my AC remote a try as a first model, so far so good but I got stuck when adding a material, when not using a subdivider it all sits good:
https://gyazo.com/dce43d0964e769bdc6fba36c61efba3b
but when I enable the subdivider it only applies it to a small portion of it:
https://gyazo.com/eb1f29c34168bbfa41bb491e4c365787
Is UV unwrapping the solution? I'm fairly new to this, have no idea how to approach this since I have many edge loops all over it to sharpen the subdivider, which leads me to another question, how do you deal with a mesh after adding edge loops after it? I have many vertices sitting on top of each other, which makes it nearly impossible to select the right connected ones..
Thanks in advance!

Maybe these answers are relevant

Unwrap doesn't affect the material. Apply the modifier then go to edit mode, select the faces what you want to assign with the second material and select the second material, then click on assign.

This is exactly what I did (as can be seen in the first gyazo link), but when I turn on the subdivider modifier it goes small for some reason.

Apply the modifier first, then assign the material.


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How can I render in Blender while preserving the metallic shine, background appearance, and reflections?
I have a project in Blender. The appearance of my project during rendering is shown in the first image, but I want the metallic reflections and the "reflection of the Earth" on the background, as shown in the second image, to remain the same. When I render, the metallic shine and the background disappear. How should I render it?

I tried the method in this tutorial, but I couldn't succeed, there was no change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVBXQWIcuUk

In the Viewport Shading panel that you show in your first image you need to enable the Scene Lights and Scene World options in order to see your current scene settings. Your object is metallic so it will reflect the HDRI image you've chosen in your world material, this HDRI may be not the best, maybe choose another one

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/128499/how-to-use-built-in-default-hdris-in-renders https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/190642/how-do-i-get-proper-reflections-eevee/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/170533/which-mode-should-i-trust-for-lighting https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/179960/render-looks-way-different-from-viewport-render-mode-how-can-i-fix-this/


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Cloth keeps getting wrinkled and falling
I've been trying to create the cute poncho from the game "Cult of the Lamb", to use during my streams.
However, since I'm fairly new to Blender, I decided to go for something a tutorial could show me, so I went for a shirt.
I've followed at least three tutorials, and I've done everything they did, with no falter. Still, the same thing keeps happening, and the shirt just gets crumbled and falls through. Please ignore the little ball, it's supposed to be the bell.
Everything they tell me to do is to select the Cloth, go to Physics, and select "Sewing" under "Shape", and to click on my model, and add Collision.
Here are the Collision properties for the model

And here are the Cloth properties for the shirt.

Thank you so much for your time.

Hello please share your file (remove the useless parts)

Sorry about that. Had to search how to do it.

Merge by Distance the body topology, deactivate its geonodes modifiers (not sure why, you may know, maybe it createsbad topology ?), apply the Mirror modifier of the cloth, put the Quality Steps at 10, activate its Collisions and Self Collisions, put their Distance at 0,001, maybe increase the Quality of the collisions,it seems to work

Thank you! Thank you so much! This totally did the trick. It really was the geonodes. Thank you so much for your time!

Merge by Distance the body topology, deactivate its geonodes modifiers (not sure why, you may know, maybe it creates bad topology ?), apply the Mirror modifier of the cloth, put the Quality Steps at 10, activate its Collisions and Self Collisions, put their Distance at 0,001, maybe increase the Quality of the collisions,it seems to work.


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Light not working
I have 132 spot lights in the scene but last 2 are not working, although the data is same. I added another area light and it's also not working, although the previous one were working. I've closed and opened the program and they worked but just after sometime they again stopped working. What is causing that? I need to adjust the intensity of light, but that's impossible when the effect of light cannot be seen.

there is a max number of lights you can use

If you're talking Eevee, see https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/eevee/limitations.html
In Cycles you should have no limit in theory until your hardware is maxed out.


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Snap edge to vertex by dragging one side of the edge?
I would like to drag a vertex, in such a way, that the moving edge snaps to another vertex.
Below shows what I'm doing now. I drag the vertex to the right until it 'looks okay', but I really want that edge to snap to that bottom vertex above. That way the edge would be in line with the other vertices. Is that possible?
(Note this is xray view, so the moving edge doesn't actually touch those other vertices.)


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Principled Shader and Fresnel - Geometry or Normals?
The Principled Shader (PS) correctly applies Fresnel all the time.  Brilliant!  But is it based on geometry or on normals?  If I have a high-poly figure with many facets smoothly curving away from the camera, I get the correct Fresnel at the point facing the camera and the point orthogonal to the camera, and all points in between, right?  What if I use that high-poly to bake a normal map for a low-poly version?  The geometry won't have much of a continuum of angles, but the normals will.
I think the answer is normals -- the Shade Smooth operation is just interpolating normals and I'm certain the Fresnel is calculated correctly.  Can anyone confirm how this works?  Or if there is a cutoff, perhaps, where you need to have a minimum amount of geometry for the Fresnel to work with the PS?

In case this question is left unanswered by a blender developer: I can't see any indication of that it only uses the geometry only. I can see indications that it uses the normal map.  But I can't answer with 100% certainty.

Yup, that's where I'm coming from.  Sorta kinda think I know what the answer is, but it would be nice to have a definitive answer (that might reveal some useful insights along the way).


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Auto weight painting error
Hi very new to rigging a model and have no idea whats causing the error.
I've tried recalculating normals and removing doubles but nothing has worked
here's a link to file
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3wbhbfvr52bl719/squidmonkey%20test.blend?dl=0

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/38669/armature-bone-heat-failed and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/131130/bone-heat-weighting-failed-no-solution-works

I just had a look at your model. It fails to parent the base mesh properly with automatic weights and this usually happens for a number of reasons.
It's because there are errors with your base mesh. Looking around the neck you'll find quite a few holes in the mesh. These need to be filled in being careful not add interior edges or faces.
Around the hand I found a few more holes.
I assume, what you did was to sculpt the monkey and then decimate it.
Decimation basically decimates your mesh (destroys it). So it's no good really for animation.
Honestly the best way to approach this is to prepare your model for rigging by retopologising it correctly. So you want to avoid triangles but also make sure there are no duplicate vertices, holes in the mesh and that there are no extra parts of geometry overlapping each other. Retopology really helps us have a lot of control over our mesh to ensure that we don't have errors.
A clean quaded topology also allows for nice animation, so focus on getting nice edge loops around where the limbs fold and that the vertices are spaced out nicely and this will prevent any ugly artifacts from appearing during animation.
If you'd prefer to skip the retopology of your model (which I don't really recommend although it'll save you time), really check your mesh carefully for holes and inside faces and overlapping geometry. This actually might take more time than just retopologising it. The mesh looks quite difficult to manage as a modellor (also considering that the mesh consists of mainly triangles and many ngons).
However, to retopogise it, start with a plane and turn on snapping to face and apply a shrinkwrap modifier to the plane. Then start extruding one edge along your model.
That's the basic explanation but I suggest checking out youtube for some good tutorials on retopology.
NOTE: After applying the Remesh modifier, I was able to Parent the mesh to the Armature with automatic weights. So it's definitely that there are some issues with the mesh.
I hope this helps you and good luck with it!


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How to make longer shadow
I have a shadow in this scene that only shadows his head and a part of his leggs, if you look closer you can see that the shadow goes away.
How can I make my character's shadow 100% on the ground?

Thanks
Kind regards,
Gamer_io

It looks like your lighting is all around your character causing little to no shadow. Position most of your Light sources on the left side to achieve a bigger shadow.
This is not related to the question, but please avoid thanking people on this site for the convenience of other readers(I know from experience and I apologize if that came off harsh).

Do you maybe know how I can fix that? I'm only using 1 light source, the sun.

Perhaps remove the sun and add and position a lamp manually.

No, still doesn't work. Maybe my computer is too weak.

Your computer shouldn't be a problem... You are following a tutorial yes? If so, copy exactly what they did, and if you already did then ask them this question.


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Keyboard Issues
I just encountered something that is now blocking me completely from 3D modeling altogether.  I am hoping that posting here might garner some help.  I have tried various solutions from the net (se below) and none helped, so I am at a block:
I tried to boot Blender 3.5 today.  I forget the exact version number, but it was 3.5.x  I could not use any keyboard shortcuts.  In search fields only certain characters of my keyboard were recognizable.  Those were:
KEYBOARD:
` / [ ] \ ; ' { } | : " < > ?
Backspace
Delete
Enter

With SHIFT key:
~ ^ _

NUMPAD:
/ * - + .
Enter

Suffice it to say I was baffled.  I tried the obvious solutions, shutting down Blender and restarting.  This did not help.  So I rebooted my entire laptop.  That did not help, either.  So I tried deleting ALL files from \AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender.  This did not help, either.
Okay.  Odd.  So I decided it was time for an update anyway.  I go to the Blender site and download/install 3.6.0.  I was annoyed I'd have to reinstall my add-ons again and have to reconfigure everything to my liking, but … ouch.  I didn't get a chance.  My fresh new install of 3.6.0 has the exact same issue.
I have searched the web and the ONLY folks who have EVER had this issue or anything even close were having these issues because of some addon called "Blender Kit".  I do not have this, and to verify I managed to get into add-ons and select "only enabled" to see what I have enabled, and Blender Kit (Whatever that even is) is not one of them, so this is NOT my issue here.
Also, to verify, at the fresh install of 3.6.0 I did not change anything from default, so my keyboard layout should be fine.
Does anyone have any clue what I might do as further steps to resolve this?
Thank you so much in advance for any help, and I hope you all have a safe and wonderful day.

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

Never mind.  I solved it.  I recently installed a new anti-keylogger for security purposes and forgot I had that running.  You absolutely cannot ever use an anti-keylogger with any Blender version, so I have to disable it while modeling.


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How can I add a Vertex to the end of a trim curve node in geometry nodes to track a camera off?
I'm using geometry nodes to set up a dripping ink effect using trim curve and I'd like to add a Vertex to the end of the trim curve to track a camera off.

"track a camera off" = ? As for adding a vertex, spawn a single vertex (e.g. grid of resolution 1×1) and set position, with the sampled factor 0 or 1 of the curve after it has been trimmed.

Sorry if I'm not being clear. I'd like to add a vertex to the end of the trim curve, and use the 'track-to' constraint on the camera to follow the drip (end of the curve).

Use this answer to create an empty and track the camera to the empty: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/265349/60486

Okay I'm not sure I totally understand how to do this I'm fairly new to the software. Thanks very much for your help.


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How do I create an addon that enters data into a .csv file?
I'm trying to create an addon that simulates cells with a range of randomized features. The idea is for the user to be able to enter min and max range values in the addon, and the chosen values to be stored in a spreadsheet which is later used to simulate the cell geometry. Right now, I just want to know how to create an excel sheet that stores addon inputs.
I am very new to blender, especially the scripting side of things, so any help is appreciated!

What did you achieve so far with scripting? How about starting here https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/scripting/addon_tutorial.html

Agree with @taiyo As to handling csv files, the first google result for python csv looks like a nice starting point: csv — CSV File Reading and Writing — Python 3.11.4 documentation. Reading and writing a csv isn't about how to use Blender, so we can't really help here. And no matter the subject, if you need help, you gotta start somewhere for us to be able to help more than throwing search links ;)

Could you define what you mean by "addon inputs"? This is not some standard terminology.

You can find add-on templates in the Text Editor's Templates menu:

So that's a basic example of how you can write an add-on. Writing CSV is absolutely the same form an add-on as from any other Python script. There are many ways to do so. You could use pandas(need to install the module for Blender's Python in that case) library to work with your data and then save it to CSV with pandas, you could just use csv module as well:
import csv

with open('csv_file.csv', 'w', encoding='UTF8') as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    writer.writerow(["A", "B", "C", "D", "E", ""])

or since CSV is just a text file you could simply write it the same way as you would write any file with Python
So let's say I want to output all my selected objects to a CSV file C:\temp\a.csv and I want to have their names, types, location, rotation euler and scale:
import bpy
import csv

sel = bpy.context.selected_objects
with open(r'C:\temp\a.csv', 'w', encoding='UTF8', newline='') as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    writer.writerow(["Name", "Type", "Location", "Rotation", "Scale"])
    for o in sel:
        writer.writerow([o.name, o.type, o.location[:], o.rotation_euler[:], o.scale[:]])

And here is the output:


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How to adjust edit view settings?
I am absolutely new to Blender, moving from SketchUp. I find it hard to see where are my edges and faces are with the default settings. Where can I set how edges and faces are rendered while editing? Here is an example:

I would like to have contours and less opaque faces. Where can I set those?

In my answer I assumed that you are already aware of different visualization modes in the viewport by pressing z you get into wireframe mode.

Possible duplicate of Noob question: How to make objects brighter during design

In my answer I assume that you are already aware of different visualization modes in the viewport by pressing z (wireframe mode) and pressing alt+z to switch back and cycle between Textured and solid mode as for shift+z for render mode.
An alternative way to get semi transparent objects in your viewport is to change the Material's Settings > Viewport Color.
So create a new material for your object and its Material Tab > Settings > Viewport Color set the color (with the alpha transparency) of your choice.
Then go to Mesh Tab > Display and enable Wire to have the closest you can get to an outline.
Important note, is to set your render to Cycles in order to have access to these material's settings.
see the image below:

Thanks! I tried adjusting those settings, but it is not quite like I would like it to be. I maybe too used to SketchUp, I would like to see those edges in some contrasting colour in solid mode as well, but I guess it is not possible.


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Latest selection in multiples different
Okay, I'm new to Blender and my search has failed so far. Perhaps I just don't know the right terms.
I'm used to CAD programs. When I ctrl-select or shift-click to select multiple vertices or lines in any of those, they're all the same. However, in Blender (at least 2.8) the latest one is white instead of the others' orange, and many alterations seem to not effect it or do so in a very limited manner.
For example, scaling two halves of an edge will move the orange half into the white half, and doesn't move the end of the white one.
What purpose does this serve? And how do I correct it?

The item (object or mesh element like vertex, edge or face) in white is considered the active element.
It is generally the "master" whose properties are shown in the UI (properties region sidebar or properties area); and may also be used as the pivot or center of transformations, if selected in the 3D view header.

Okay, that actually helps how I think about it, seeing as how things are affected relative to the active object.
Still, is there a way to include it in a selection to adjust it equal to others instead of marking it as the 'baseline'?

There are four other entries in the illustrated menu

So there are!
Took me a while to actually find that menu because it doesn't pop out and lacks a label.
Seems at least one of them gets things to act the way I need.
Much appreciated.


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Is there a way to remove "input sockets" from a custom node group?
I made a node group but i only want to have the parameter and remove its input socket, is this possible?

Yes, Edit your group and expand the N-menu in the material nodes windows and select the socket you want to remove. Then press the X beside the name.

thanks for the answer. But if i do that i remove the exposed parameters too. I just want to remove the "input socket" where you plug stuff, and keep the parameters

Then I don't know... Sorry for missing that detail in your question :-P

I don't think that is possible, at least not without without some python scripting

you can do it via python scripting, or buried in the UI: in the outliner in "Data API" view, search for the desired input and check "Hide"

It would be great if you would show in your answer how to accomplish this in Python and the Data API view. As of now this will likely not help other users, since if they did not previously know about these option they will likely not know how to use them either.


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How to keyframe the image sequence offset using Python?
How do I get the keyframe_insert to work with frame_offset? When using it from the image below, you can see that I can add the keyframe by hand, but with "Copy Data Path" I can't make it work with the code though.

def preview_enum_update(wm, context):
print("wm.my_previews = %s" % wm.my_previews)

#load image - first of all
dividedImageBeforeDot, dividedImageAfterSecondDot = os.path.splitext(wm.my_previews)
dividedImageBeforeDot, dividedImageAfterDot = os.path.splitext(dividedImageBeforeDot)

materialName = "Testing"

myMaterial = bpy.data.materials.get(materialName) or bpy.data.materials.new(materialName)
myMaterial.use_nodes = True

node_tree = myMaterial.node_tree

node = node_tree.nodes.get("Image Texture") or node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeTexImage")

node.image_user.frame_duration = 1
node.image_user.frame_start = 1
node.image_user.frame_offset = int(dividedImageAfterDot.split('.')[1])-1
myMaterial.keyframe_insert('nodes["Image Texture"].image_user.frame_offset')

In general, set the property's value and THEN insert the keyframe with that value (mentioning the frame number). The value needs to match the property type. In your case:
Step 1 -
bpy.data.materials["Testing"].node_tree.nodes["ShaderNodeTexImage"].image_user.frame_offset = 1

Step 2 -
bpy.data.materials["Testing"].node_tree.nodes["ShaderNodeTexImage"].image_user.keyframe_insert("frame_offset", frame=1)

Which sets the frame offset to 1 for ShaderNodeTexImage at frame 1, for Testing material.
For objects, it's a bit different, but the concept is the same -
bpy.data.objects["obj_name"].hide_render = True
bpy.data.objects["obj_name"].keyframe_insert("hide_render", frame = 100)

which hides the object in render, at frame 100
The API documentation is not explicit about all this, but you have to connect the dots by understanding how Blender API is structured and how Python works. Refer:
https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.ImageUser.html?highlight=frame_offset#bpy.types.ImageUser.frame_offset
https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.bpy_struct.html?highlight=keyframe_insert#bpy.types.bpy_struct.keyframe_insert
This module is used for all Blender/Python access:
https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.data.html
Play around and practice, self learning is best learning :)


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How can I select unconnected vertices, edges, or faces that are nearby my current selection?
I have a mesh which is a clump of grass comprised of stems and blades sticking from the stems. The blades are touching or nearly touching some faces of the stems but are not connected to them. They are all in one mesh together. I want to select some of those stems and then select only the blades that are sticking from them. I can select some faces of some stems and then "select more" to increase the selection to include all of the faces of only the stems I have selected. Then I want to be able to select any vertices that are in close proximity, though unconnected, to my current selection of faces. This will allow me to get some verts of the blades and then "select more" to get the whole blades. The entire grass clump is quite dense so it would be time consuming to manually search through it to only select those things I want. So how can I tell Blender to select any items that are nearby (short distance) any items of my current selection though are not connected? Thanks!

Hi. I suggest adding images to your post to explain your points.

In Edit Mode you can hold L down while hovering the mouse over what you want to select. Then the whole piece of connected geometry will get selected, and you only have to move the mouse around a bit to pick up other pieces of unconnected geometry. Depending on what your setup looks like, this might help.


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Blender (Cycles Render) Normal Map Baking goes wrong
Who I am and what I do:
Hello People!
I am fairly new to 3D modelling (still using 2.79) and at the moment I am working on
an M1 Abrams low poly tank (around 4600 Tris).
What I want to do is use a copied version of the low poly tank to add extra detail to it and then bake a normal map from the high to the low poly model.
I am used to the baking procedure in cycles render with small objects (like a cube for example). That means I am familiar with the setup (image, node etc.), ray distances and so on. Let's say the basic of basics of baking a normal map in Cycles Blender.
The Problem:
It starts right away. I moved the copied tank (haven't added any detail to it yet) to the same position the low-poly has and I get this as a normal map:

What do I expect:
I thought that the rays will find no difference (surface) at all because it is the same model, right? So the image should be blank. Instead I get a lot of stuff and artifacts on it.
What I've already tried:

Playing around with Ray Distances (From 0 to 1 and between).
Added smooth shading to high and/ or low poly model
Removed Doubles, Rotation & Scaling

If somebody can help me?
Thanks!
Have a nice day.

I didn't understand what was the reason of baking shown on the screenshot (did you bake from lowpoly to lowpoly?), that said, yellow color on normal map usually means intersections in geometry. That might mean rays come long enough to cover lowpoly surface and then protrude into yet another layer of surface of lowpoly (e.g. areas where polygons are placed not far from each other towards each other, like indents, blocks etc)

@MrZak Hello, yes basically it was a "low poly to low poly" try. I was planning to copy my low poly so I have it twice to add detail to the copied version. With a cube for example this works. If you copy a unwrapped cube and put it to the same location it will produce a blank normal map because there is no change. If you add geometry to the copied cube this will be shown on the normal map. I expected the same kind of behavior to the tank seen on the screenshot. I separated the hull and the tracks for example and watched for no intersections but still it was showing the same results.

Your normals are inverted. Some of them are broken appart (they are not united) try going into edit mode and move them, you´ll see how they get appart and break from the original mesh. You got all traces needed since the normal map already tells you where this is happening. ALT+M will join vertex together (choose AT CENTER).
Another solution is to check out the normals. Definelty looks like the ones you have problems with are INVERTED NORMAL faces. Delete them from your model, recreate them in EDIT MODE and then select your object CTRL+N to average normals while in edit mode. Hope that fixes. It will certainly.
Cheers.

Hello Pierre and thanks for the quick answer!
When I created this tank I joined different Objects together. So for example I did the turret and hull separately and then when I finished them joined them together. Do I have to connect all the faces to each other (so every vertex is connected to each other) to make this working?

PS:  Because I've searched and I think I've just found one face which was not propertly connected for some reason. But all other artifacts are still there and I cannot find faces which will break appart from the mesh the same way.

Check if they have NO MATERIAL. That also causes some conflict since it´s like the baking map doesn´t know where to shoot the ray. That seems like the probable cause. If it is, vote my answer up. Thanks.

@Pierre Schiller
Thanks for your effort.
I don't think it is caused by inverted normals. I've checked the parts yellowed in the normal map. That would have been to easy. I spotted some vertexes which should be combined but it was not like a whole messed up topology. Some mistakes but fixed them quicky. Though it did not help sadly. Also I usually check faces when I build up a model anyway and use the remove doubles/ recalculate outside function a lot. Checked all faces and the outside is outside.
I think it has something to do with combining, could it?
I mean I combined objects into one object and THEN I've tried to do normal map baking. Is this a problem? Since they have been one object but the mesh is basically not connected to each other. They are just treated as one object (CTRL+J in Object Mode).
Also I checked the material. Everything is propertly assigned.
UPDATE:
So far I think this answer of user50810 is the solution.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/98266/69146
Thank you for your help and your time!

that its the answer for me, try baking individual objects.


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Explain N-poles and E-poles?
what is N-poles and E-pole?
I can not understand it.
And i read the some blogs they said to E-poles has 5 edges and N-poles has 3 edges.

 -

This ,and more, is on the Topology Guides site:

E-poles or Extrude poles  are the most common pole type and consist of five edges intersecting at a single vertex. E-poles are most notorious for appearing when extruding faces on a mesh and for forming unwanted flat “corners” within the topology when edge loops meet or turn.  E-poles are also what form concave corners in hard surface models.

and

N-poles or "Nose" poles are vertices that consist of three intersecting edges. This type of pole is far less common, but often appearing around poles or inset parts of a mesh. In organic modeling, this pole is often known as the “nose” pole, since N-poles are often necessary for modeling the base of the nose. N-poles are also what form the corner of a cube or most other convex corners.

I'm trying to understand why these poles are prefixed with E and N letters. This is what makes them so hard to remember which one is which. Why not call them 3-poles and 5-poles? An N-pole to me, sounds like it should be the name for poles with 6 or more connected edges, so that i follows the same logic for the N-prefix used in N-gons for 5+ vert polygons.

I edited my answer and gave another link. Hope this explains the terms.

@Henrik Actually you can remember it from the capital letters E and N. The simplest meshes forming these letters (completely connected) would be four vertices building an N with 3 edges, and six vertices building an E with 5 edges.


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How to remove title bar in Blender 2.8 Beta?
How do i remove the tittle bar for blender 2.8?

In blender2.79 I'm using the hot key Alt+F10
It does not work for Blender 2.8 beta.


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Separate alpha from color in Shader Editor
In the Shader Editor, I can create an RGB node and in there, I can set an alpha value as displayed in this screenshot:

However, no color separation node in blender supports extracting that value and no combine node accepts it as input either.
Is there any way to separate an alpha value from a color, or to combine it into a color using only nodes in the Shader Editor?

Alpha is just a value, what is the need to extract it from a RGB input?

If that works, you would only need one connection to transfer color and alpha value to another node. This would result in a cleaner node graph with less connections. Otherwise, you would always need to change 2 connections (color and alpha), though there are use-cases where both go along almost all the time (when working with RGBA images for example).
I could separate the alpha in my custom group for example, to blend two textures and then you dont need to separate alpha inputs. That makes more sense to me because whenever I change the color input I would change the alpha value as well.

If you find that important, could try to ping the dev on this subject eventually: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:OmarSquircleArt/GSoC2019/Proposal

I'll check that out, thanks. It just felt very weird to me, that we have 4 dimensional colors passed along in the Shader Editor, but the 4th value is for no use at all. If we could have an alpha output on SeparateRGB, that could be very nice I think.

Second this - seems very weird to me that the compositor has Separate RGBA where the shader has Separate RGB

It's only a partial answer to the body of the question and it's a bit hacky. You can use a ColorRamp node, set the Factor to 0 and tweak the color and alpha values of the first stop. This would effectively emulate a RGB node with an alpha output.
But you you can't use it to combine RGB values and an Apha value since the color ramp node doesn't take inputs for its color stops.


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What is the proper way to access the active scene in a driver expression?
I tried to access the FPS setting of the render settings in a shader node through a driver expression.
The attempt was successful, but I got a warning and a tip saying:

WARNING: Driver expression may not work correctly
TIP: bpy.context is not safe for renderfarm usage

According to this thread the proper way to set the active scene is through bpy.context.
Therefor, I assumed, that the proper way to get the active scene would be through bpy.context as well.
This warning however makes me feel like there is a more proper way to access scene data (like render settings) through drivers so they would also work in renderfarms.
So my question is:
How do I properly access this kind of data in a driver expression?

You'll have to modify the drivers namespace because the expression field can't directly acces the context See  How can a blender driver python script access scene properties like FPS?

@Gorgious thanks, that helps a lot! Seems like I was using too abstract search terms. Probably would have found that if I literally looked for my specific problem.

You can simply enter the word frame into expression, and it will refer to the current frame. To slow down, you can do, frame * 0.01


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Show custom thumbnails in file browser for folders
Is there a way in the Blender file browser to show custom icons or thumbnails for folders?
It bugs me when I'm browsing through textures and I have to open all folders containing a group of PBR textures seperately to get an idea how one looks.
It would help, if there would be a way to preview files like Windows does it (see screenshot), or if there would be a way to set icons manually/via script.

As far as I know, this isn't possible in Blender for now. The file browser is being revamped for one of the next versions (I think 2.81 or 2.82 if I remember correctly), so maybe it will be a thing then.

That's unfortunate. I'll check out the file browser rewamp though and see if something like that is planned.

I've stumbled across this twitter post, maybe you can get in touch with the devs in charge there: https://twitter.com/BillRey/status/1160201393514471424?s=19

Thanks. I dropped a comment there with a short version of my question. Depending on if and what kind of answer I get, I will try to promote this idea further.


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Copy channels from one image to another using GPU
I need a Python script to copy a channel of one image to the alpha channel of another.
I already created one, but it uses the approach of copying from one image pixel array to the other:
def copy_alpha(from_image, to_image):
    to_pixels = list(to_image.pixels)
    from_pixels = list(from_image.pixels)
    for i in range(0, len(to_pixels), 4):
        to_pixels[i+3] = from_pixels[i]
    to_image.pixels = to_pixels

It works, but gets slow using very high res images.
My idea would be to do this operation via GPU instead. A while ago I created a GPU based channel mixer in Unity using a shader and I was wondering, if something like that could work in Blender as well.
I realized there is the standalone GPU Shader Module and the GPU Utilities module, but I couldn't find a proper function to handle this task.
I also want to avoid using the compositor, because my script must work in situations where there is no compositor used in the Blender file.
And setting up a temporary compositor node tree via Python to handle this task seems like a very dirty solution to me.
What would be a good approach to send two images in Python to the GPU/to a shader so channels can be merged on the GPU?

To do that on GPU simply use Separate RGB node and then use one of its outputs as alpha. I don't think it makes any sense to send data to GPU in order to download it back from GPU, as you can just read the channel on CPU and save it on another channel. In both cases the CPU reads the channel once [in GPU solution in order to send it to GPU] and writes to a channel once [in GPU solution when reading from the GPU backbuffer]

This is not a direct answer to the question since it doesn't leverage the GPU module. However you can get decent results with numpy which is the closest you'll get to using the efficient underlying C code base.
On a 10k*10k image (100Mpx) it took 1.5 seconds on my low-to-mid range computer. It would hang for several minutes with the code in the question.
import numpy as np

def copy_alpha(from_image, to_image):
    pixels_from = np.empty(shape=len(from_image.pixels), dtype=np.float32)
    from_image.pixels.foreach_get(pixels_from)
    pixels_to = np.empty(shape=len(from_image.pixels), dtype=np.float32)
    to_image.pixels.foreach_get(pixels_to)

    # Begin at index 3 (alpha value of 1st pixel), and iterate every 4 channels
    pixels_to[3::4] = pixels_from[3::4]

    to_image.pixels.foreach_set(pixels_to)

You may need to find a way to refresh the UI afterwards to update its display.

It seems amazing how fast it is

@NoobCat yeah, numpy and foreach_get / set are pretty awesome. :)

Wow, awesome! While it's not a direct answer to the question it addresses exactly the problem that resulted in the question being asked, which is the poor performance of the copy process. So I'll accept it still!


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Draw floating UILayout
In sculpt mode you get this menu with a right click:

The UI elements in this menu are visually the same you would get by drawing a UI using bpy.types.UILayout functions.
Yet, the only answers I found for drawing custom floating UI elements referred to bgl and blf, like in these two Blender StackExchange questions:

How to draw shapes in the node editor with python bgl
Floating UI window in 3D view

However, ideally I would use standard Blender UI elements to create something like that.
Is there a way to draw standard Blender UI elements in floating windows like those in the screenshot using Python?

WindowManager.invoke_props_popup(operator, event)

Operator popup invoke (show operator properties and execute it automatically on changes)

Code based on How to call a confirmation dialog box?, I just  replaced invoke_props_dialog by invoke_props_popup to diplay the popup without confirmation option:

import bpy

class SimplePropConfirmOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Really?"""
    bl_idname = "my_category.custom_confirm_dialog"
    bl_label = "Do you really want to do that?"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    prop1: bpy.props.BoolProperty()
    prop2: bpy.props.BoolProperty()

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return True

    def execute(self, context):
        self.report({'INFO'}, "YES!")
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        return context.window_manager.invoke_props_popup(self, event)

    def draw(self, context):
        row = self.layout
        row.prop(self, "prop1", text="Property A")
        row.prop(self, "prop2", text="Property B")

class OBJECT_PT_CustomPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "My Panel"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_custom_panel"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = "Tools"
    bl_context = "objectmode"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.operator(SimplePropConfirmOperator.bl_idname)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(OBJECT_PT_CustomPanel)
    bpy.utils.register_class(SimplePropConfirmOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SimplePropConfirmOperator)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(OBJECT_PT_CustomPanel)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

That's exactly it. Thanks! I was hoping to get more control over it, like setting it's position and the mouse distance to make it disappear though. But it's already great to have it working as in your example.

Cool. Unfortunately, there is nothing else you can do... in order to 'get more control', you can set the cursor before calling inkoke_props_popup(), that's it @narranoid


text:
How to make 2 rigid body objects hit and stay together?
Usually, when an active rigid body object hits with a passive rigid body, it will collide and bounce off the passive one, base on physic.
But how to make the active rigid body object hits and stays / sticks with the passive rigid body?
My goal is to make a donut with chocolate scraps on top of it as topping. I tried to make this with particles system. The problem is the chocolate scraps will intersect with each other.
I found that many people suggested rigid body object as a workaround to this intersect particles problem. By making many rigid body objects that float in the air / above an object at frame 1, and let it falls and rests on the object to create the particle effect without intersection.
That would worked perfectly fine with flat object like a plane. But with my donut as in the screenshot, the scraps would bounced off as soon as it hits the donut. I wouldn't want that, I want it to stick with my donut as a topping.

Add a lot of Friction to both the donut and the scraps.
Add rotational damping to the scraps.
On the scraps, choose Enable Deactivation and tweak the values (make them lot bigger).

The parameter you´re looking for is located on the first particle system (you need either 2 separated particle systems to collide) or set an OBSTACLE and make it act as the particle "Sticky" object.
So on the object (or particle system) which you decide it´s going to stick, go to dynamics property tab (last tab on property panel to your right) and search for FRICTION and Stickiness. Notice I have enabled the tab COLLISION on the dynamic´s tab for an object. (the plane)

Thank you if you vote me up as the answer.
BFCT_Schiller


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Animation & Rigging - Re-orienting bones in an IK rig for a different proportion characters
Probably half this question isn't entirely blender specific. But if I make a rig for a squat biped and create a set of animations, and then create another character that is tall and narrow when I re-position the rig to fit the proportions of the second character the animations go haywire.
Is there a system of constraints or something I can setup to make re-using a single rig and animations for large range of characters that are much different from the original?

This operation is known as "retargeting" and it's  quite a huge topic to be detailed in a simple answer, you can try to search infos and tutorials about.

it should not go haywire, maybe share a file with the 2 characters and armatures that share the same animations


text:
What are the steps to get the UVs back to a square with evenly spaced verts in 2.8?
I realize there are some things I don't know how to do. I previously had an addon for 2.79 that helped with UV layouts and it isn't available in 2.8. If I have basic shapes with increased detail, what are the steps to get the UVs back to a square with evenly spaced verts? If I'm trying to create a mesh I can use as a base to create vfx.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/78358/how-to-straighten-curved-uvs-into-straight-belt/78376#78376


text:
Apply the same animation to a group of objects
I am new to blender and am using it to create turntable animations of 3D objects. I have a lot of objects and using the same animation for all objects one by one manually is very time consuming and tedious. Is there any way I can automate this process?
I cannot use python scripts (with bpy) as I am struggling to install bpy with pip after recent updates. So is there no other way apart from python to automate this?

There is a much better option than animating every single object. Just add an empty to the scene and parent the camera to it. Now simply animate the z-rotation of the empty and your camera will follow. (I know that this is not what you asked for but leaving this just in case it helps you out)

I was just about to say that in a comment. The other question is why can't you use python scripts? - Python comes with Blender so there's no need to install anything else. You just write and run your scripts in Blender.

@Akshay2005 - Thanks for the suggestion, yes I use Empty to do turntables but I have to import an obj every time and animate it to the same filename. I have over a lot of obj files so that is not viable.

@JohnEason Without installing bpy, I cannot import bpy.
'Python comes with Blender so there's no need to install anything else' - How do I import bpy and how do I run scripts? Can you point me to a reference?

@JohnEason - Just found the scripting workspace. Thanks. So stupid of me not to notice.

You don't animate the object to make a turntable, you animate the camera, it's much simpler and it doesn't require any scripting or redundant animation copy-pasting.

If you wanted to have a group of objects follow an object's animation, you would just parent these objects to the animated one.

You don't need to install bpy unless you want to execute python scripts outside of Blender. Which is something that you only do when you want to develop something consequent like an addon, and you want to use your preferred IDE or text editor instead of Blender's text editor. But for simple one-time usage scripts, Blender's script editor is more than enough and no package installation is required. But again : you don't need to script anything for a turntable.

@L0Lock - I create one turntable animation from one object. Then I remove the object and import another. Then I create another turntable for that object. This continues for all the objects (500+) that I have. This does not make sense right?

As L0Lock says you could make the camera rotate instead of your object. But you could also give the exact same action to all the object, without recreating it. The only tedious part is to import each object one by one, is it the thing that you're trying to automate?

@moonboots yes I was trying to automate loading the object and deleting it after the animation has been created. I found a way to do it - probably my question was not phrased correctly, which is why the confusion.

If the objects share the same animation you just have to instance the animation data via linking:
Select all the objects and in the menu Object select Link../Animation Data.
That Will link animation data of the active Object to the selection.
Being linked, any further change in the animation Will affect all the objects.


text:
Inactive areas in weight paint still move no matter what I do
Moving the arms on my character deforms the hands for seemingly no reason. In both styles of weight paint view, they are not active whatsoever. I also attempted to manually remove the vertices from the vertex group but it seemingly did not work or did not do anything. I am desperate for help as I have found no solution that works.

Please share your blend file via https://blend-exchange.com/ following the instructions there to copy the link, then edit your question and paste the link into it so that we can look at your file.

You assigned that part of the mesh in that specific vertex group, it doesn't mean that it isn't assigned in another group already. If you look to the other groups, you will probably find out that it's influenced by other bones. That's why enabling Auto Normalize is often recommended, or at least run the normalize operator once in a while.


text:
Above Threshold and Below Threshold in DataTransfer Modifier?
I'm working on DataTransfer Modifier to blend vertex color of 2 colors layer , it worked but i dont understand how Mix Mode : Above Threshold and Below Threshhold worked , i tried to modified Mix Factor from 0 to 1 but nothing changed . What is "threshold" that Mix Mode mentioned ? and How to adjust that parameter ?
Sorry for my bad english .
Thanks alot .

I'm pretty sure It means "replace destination with source, only where source's value is above /  below threshold", and that with color, the threshold will be defined by luminance, (although it's not documented).  It doesn't really make great  sense, with color, IMO. The operation would almost certainly be simpler to define clearly with Geometry Nodes. Can you describe the effect you want to achieve?

https://i.sstatic.net/0qbwo.jpg
this picture includes 3 versions of cabin with AO vertex color, 1st row is a top view and 2nd is bottom view.
I baked AO for a cabin with two versions :
OFF is a version without  hemisphere
ON is a version with hemisphere
MIX is a version when i uses DataTransfer to blend AO between 2 versions OFF and ON with Mix Mode : Add.
As u can see that a version ON had a dark AO on roof of cabin , i'm not only dont want a dark AO roof but also dont want a low contrast of other parts of cabin , i just want to replace destination AO vertex of a dark roof


text:
Change the font color of object names when displaying object names in the viewport
When I show object names in the Viewport, the font color by default is black.  How do I change the font color to something else?  I looked under Preferences with no luck.

How are object names shown, again?

As weird as it sounds, object names in the viewport use the color settings from other elements.
For unselected objects, change the Wire color:

For selected objects, change the Object Selected and Active Object colors:

But of course it doesn't impact only the name: also the wire and outline, and on any object:

That worked.  Thanks.


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How to create Cloth Simulation for Deflating a net wrapped around balloon in Blender?
I am trying to wrap a net (made out of torus shapes) around a balloon.
As the balloon deflate, I hope to make the net get flat and flat (on the ground.
I was exploring the inflate and deflate on Blender, but I have trouble figuring out how to add motions/other physics to the net.
Which feature can I use to make the net to collapse and get flat along with the deflated balloon?
Would I have to parent it and make it collide to a flat plane surface?

Describing my plan: inflated (nice inflated circular shape with a net wrapped around) at frame 1 and deflated (winkly and flat rubber balloon) at frame 100.
Here are some of the tutorials I watched related to my interests, inflate and deflate, applying cloth and collision, possible shape keys. Many of the tutorials I watched the collision usually stay static. It hold its solid shape, doesn't deflate like the balloon.
Blender - inflate or deflate any model
How to create a soft body in blender 2.8
Make anything inflated

Maybe create a spherical cage that will have the cloth simulation, and give your net + balloon a Mesh Deform modifier with this cage as Target?

@moonboots Hello! When you say spherical cage, is it like put a new big sphere around the balloon and net? (Just like Quick Effects (Domain)

Yes that's it, it needs to be test though so that the torus don't intersect with the balloon

@moonboots Thank you! Do you suggest that I add any additional physics to the balloons or the net?
I am waiting for Blender to process 'MeshDeform - Object: spherical cage' applied to both balloon and net (no physics applied to balloon and the net). My laptop is taking forever to process :( ...
I accidentally tried one with net (collision applied) and balloon (cloth), the spherical cage wrapped it around and looked shrunk (I could see the white net in some parts - wonder if this is a glitch)

Is the net supposed to stick to the balloon or is it another object (in real life) so when your balloon will deflate there will be some gap between the net and the balloon?

@moonboots Hello! It's supposed towrap it around the balloon, there should be a little gap that when the balloon deflates, the net would be on/around it. It is like slime in a net (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZtaXbNorvU) I could not really find a good picture that visualizes the net around the balloon. Hope that makes sense


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Water simulation - How to make water spill (difference between 2.8 version and 3.6 new update)
How can I recreate this fluid simulation from 2.8 version to current 3.6 version? I do not see any 'obstacles' in fluid simulation.
I was following this tutorial "making water spill from backet in blender 2 8 fluid simulation part 2" to create a spilling water from a glass.
While following this tutorial from 2.8, I noticed that the 3.6 version has a different setting for fluid simulation.
For example, 2.8 version had 'Obstacle' for Fluid Type. But on my current version, I only see Effector, Domain, Flow, or None
2.8 version

3.6 version

From 2.8 version, aroudn 10:18, they chose:

Fluid Type - Obstacle Settings
Volume Initialization: Shell

If you have any suggestions for fluid, how to make the liquid stay in the shape, please let me know!!
Ideally, I would like to create a scene where a cup gets blown away by the wind and spill water.

obstacles is now called "effector". I think shell is now geometry (which means, the water is no inflow, but "one time water".

I guess there will be more tweaking necessary, because 2.8 did not use Mantaflow for fluids and results might be very different in general, because it is a different simulation engine. From the 2.82 release notes when Mantaflow was introduced: "Mantaflow is the new physically-based fluid simulation framework in Blender for gas (smoke & fire) and liquid simulations. It completely replaces the existing fluid simulation systems and changes the way you work with fluids." If you want to work with fluids in new versions, you should watch some Mantaflow tutorials instead of the old ones.


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Problem with Rigify - Rig distorting and affecting unintended parts of the mesh
After generating a Rigify rig, some parts of the body are being affected by controls they shouldn’t be.
For example, the IK hand control moves the ear or other body parts. When I check the weight paint, affected areas appear as pink.

I’ve tried the following steps but still have issues:

Applied 'Transform All' to the mesh and metarig.
Used automatic weights, but some body parts still get influenced incorrectly.
Enabled 'Preserve Volume' in the armature modifier, but it didn’t fix the issue.
Reassigned the vertex group for the head (set other IK/FK bones to 0 influence on the head), but the issue persists.

Even when I manually try to adjust the weight paint (setting some areas to 0), the problem persists. How can I stop these unwanted influences on other parts of the mesh?
How can I find what is causing this issue?
Thank you.
Blender file here:

the head mesh has also duplicated vertices -> https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/253250/107598 And the body has not scale and rotation applied (Ctrl+A in Object mode). Also, your model is turned by 90° around the Z-axis so front view shows the right side and the feet controls are messed up -> https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/310077/107598

The head has flipped normals, so it's inside out. You need to fix it, see point 2 here:  https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/273345/107598

@Blunder Thank you, i didn't notice that. let me try fixing those and the check out the link you shared!! I was able to fix the distortion by apply weight paint through data panel - vertex group.


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Emitters (baked particles) not showing Camera render/animation (Invisible, not rendering)
I baked particles in Blender, but they don't show up in renders when I select the "Emitter" option.
When I attempted to Render Image and Render Animation, I couldn't see the particles. Although they were baked, they appear as squares instead of circles (emitter).
I've made several attempts to delete the cache, but it hasn't resolved the issue.
Please let me know if there is any way to fix them!!

Currently your particle render settings are set to Halo, which by default does not show up in renders, as its more of a placeholder. If you want to make your particles visible you need to change the render settings as shown below.
Before changing settings:

After changing settings:

Thank you so much!

I have a question about baking particles. I initially had only "emitter" particles (not hair particles), but somehow, when I bake, the hair particles (lines) appear and stay there even after baking. I'm not sure what caused this. Do you happen to know a way to fix it?
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/301783/particle-system-baking-issue-unexpected-hair-particles-or-stretched-lines


text:
Camera Distorts Mesh
Seeking help on below.
I was trying to set up my camera to prepare for rendering but whenever I clicked on CTRL+ALT+0, it distorts my mesh.
I have tried to:

Delete the camera and added a new one
I have tried ALT+P to the camera to remove any parenting, just in case it was attached to the mesh.
I tried to apply the scale, rotation and location.
I tried to apply the Armature Modifier but the mesh and bones is not anymore connected

But still have no good results.
This is how it looks without the camera view:

Whenever I hit CTRL+ALT+O, the mesh is deformed:

From above image, if I go to edit mode it shows like this.

Now when I tried to apply the ARMATURE modifier and hit CTRL+ALT+0, the mesh is not deformed but is not with the bones anymore. Also, I'm not sure if ARMATURE modifiers should be applied or what is the practice for this?

Thank you in advance.

Going back to this, I got a solution from someone.
What I have done was to open a new Blender scene and delete everything in the 3D viewport. Then file → append and find the old .blend and to objects and hit the A key and append all the objects. And it worked.
The character is no longer distorted whenever I try to position the camera.

Important thing to know when using the Ctrl+Alt+0 shortcut: only a camera object should be selected.
If another element is selected instead of a camera, it will be moved to the chosen viewpoint and rotated to match the orientation of a camera object.
I think that's the issue here. You pressed the keyboard shortcut with your mesh selected and the armature being too far, the mesh becomes glitched.

after reading your reply, I went back to my project and check if this is the case. To make sure, I hit A to select all then hit ALT+A to unselect all then just click the camera. But still whenever I hit CTRL+ALT+0, same issue was encountered.


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Plane Track Does Not Stay in Place
newbie here.
I'm trying to follow a tutorial but I am unable to make the tracker stay in one place. Once I play the video the tracker moves

Need help to understand on how I can fix this.
There are also times that I was able to place the tracker that it stayed in place but after a while it goes to the same state of not staying in place.

1st Image shows that tracker intended placing:

2nd image shows that the first two trackers already moved when the camera panning reached it.

3rd image shows that all trackers already moved from original place.

I got the video from pexels.com:
https://www.pexels.com/video/interior-design-of-a-living-room-4301617/

It would help if you included a link to the tutorial so that we can see what you've been told to do.

there are a lot of tutorials on tracking on youtube. try this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O67P0uzbQBk


text:
Wrapping object issues
I'm a debutant in blender and I got some issues while working on the donut tutorial. I give a shape to my donut at the start before coming back to modify it a way later. Now I'm trying to wrap my icing around the donut as it was previously (image 1)
I used shrinkwrap modifier on the icing and added a solidify. Then it gave me this kind of jagged form (image 2)
Also, I lost a lot of the icing thickness (image 3)
I figured I could take it back by increasing the solidify's thickness but I dont know how to do it the right way (image 4 and 5)
How can I wrap my icing around the donut properly ? Thanks.
https://1drv.ms/f/s!AoQ_BDPUpElgnD3xYiJFRIypFCLb?e=PqvfuR (here's the images)

please embed your images directly into the post

Please show the images and share your file: https://blend-exchange.com/

#1 is to make sure you have enough subdivisions which will make it smooth. #2 and probably more important is to do the shrink-wrap BEFORE the solidify which should solve the jaggedness

This is what I did. The more I increase the thickness, the more the object is getting weird (Image 6)
https://1drv.ms/f/s!AoQ_BDPUpElgnD3xYiJFRIypFCLb?e=PqvfuR


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Topology Issue after sculpting
Apologies for the interruption, but I've come across an issue with the topology of my 3D model.
Prior to sculpting, the topology was perfectly fine, but after completing the sculpting process, it turned out to be quite dreadful.
Therefore, my question is:
Is there a way to adjust the topology without altering the shape of the model?

If you slide some edges it may not change the shape, yes

Try the Slide Relax Brush in sculpt mode. It lets you slide the geometry while trying to respect the general shape of it. By default you can drag those edges manually, while holding Shift it automatically tries to make the quads and even size

Thank you, mate. It worked like a charm.


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How to replace all material nodetrees on selected objects for random colors?
I need help writing a python script for speeding up my workflow, I have this imported object with dozens of broken materials, and I need a way to:
1 - Go through each material nodetree on selected object, delete everything and replace with a random diffuse color, so I can work on it later but have visual reference of parts (like color A its gonna be metal, B wood...);
2 - Join materials with the same name into a single one, keeping the nodetree from the lowest number (like wood, wood.001, wood.002...).
The second one i have found a few similar examples here, the first is what I have no idea how to do.

What do you mean with your second point? If an object has multiple materials, then you want the lowest one applied to all faces and the others removed? "Merging materials" is a vague expression.

Hello and welcome. This is not a regular forum, we are a question and answer site aimed at providing users with assistance along the way, rather than solve the issues for them or present ready made solutions. For commissioning work, job posts or hiring someone, there is a paid work section at Blender Artists Forum. Otherwise rephrase your question so it shows your efforts towards solving the issue, rather than ask for someone to do it for you, so it can be reopened.

Try this script for your first problem:
import bpy
import random

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    for material in obj.data.materials:

        # remove all existing nodes
        nodes = material.node_tree.nodes
        nodes.clear()

        # create the diffuse bsdf node with material output
        diffuse_bsdf_node = nodes.new('ShaderNodeBsdfDiffuse')
        material_output_node = nodes.new('ShaderNodeOutputMaterial')

        # set random color
        diffuse_bsdf_node.inputs['Color'].default_value = (
            random.random(), random.random(), random.random(), 1
        )

        # noodle them together
        material.node_tree.links.new(
            diffuse_bsdf_node.outputs['BSDF'],
            material_output_node.inputs['Surface']
        )


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How to batch copy transforms from one object to another by name
in order to speed up the process of configuring a ragdoll humanoid with Blender, i use an addon that creates empties on the head of each bone aligned to the bone (Bonera), and other that creates meshes on the same location but with already configured rigid bodies and rigid body constraints (Rigid Body Gen). Then i manually copy the transforms from the empties to the meshes so they line up one by one. How could i do this for all selected  meshes at once with a script?
Like for the selected meshes, copy loc and rot from the empties using their name as reference (copy loc/rot from bone_[name] to joint_[name])

From the information you've given, only this simple script can be derived. Hope it helps. If it's not working, please provide more precise information about your scene setup.
import bpy

# get all selected objects
for selected_obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:

    # only consume meshes
    if selected_obj.type == 'MESH':

        # get bone and joint object with mesh name
        bone_obj = bpy.data.objects['bone_' + selected_obj.name]
        joint_obj = bpy.data.objects['joint_' + selected_obj.name]

        # copy loc and rot
        joint_obj.location = bone_obj.location
        joint_obj.rotation_euler = bone_obj.rotation_euler

Thanks @taiyo, it was almost there, i just had to remove the "joint_" string from the obj name before assigning the bone, the way you did it become "bone_joint_name", the end script is even simpler, your answer helped me to figure it out:
bone_obj = bpy.data.objects['bone_' + obj.name.replace("joint_", '')]

I just noticed that if the empties are parented to something, the copy loc and rot does not work properly, is there any code for copying the transform data if the "bone_" object is a children of another obj?

@Jh0nny loc and rot are local values (relative to the parent), if you have a hierarchy its gets more complicated. You can get the global values with decomposing the obj.matrix_world attribute, see this answer https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/209398/how-to-copy-rotation-from-active-to-selected-in-python.

Thanks, it works now!


text:
How to better visualize weight?
Do I really have to click through every bone to see what causes a vertex to move? Isn't there a better way to see what bones affect what area?

For a whole area (several vertices) you can switch to Weight Paint mode and select each vertex group in the Vertex Groups list, or select the armature, shift select the mesh, switch to Weight Paint mode, select each bone (maybe that's what you're already doing).
For a single vertex you can select it and in the N panel > Item > Vertex Weights, you can see what vertex group(s) this vertex is assigned to:

With the default setting some vertices that have a very low influence will appear blue and will be confused with zero weight, so, if you want to be able to see the areas that have zero weight, enable the option in the Viewport Overlays panel, and zero weight will appear black:


text:
Corrective shape keys for IK-driven bone
The bottom bone here is affected by an IK chain:

Unfortunately, it's rotational value doesn't change unless I rotate the bone directly.

This is a problem, because I want to use it's rotational value to drive a shape key. The shape key would, if the bone is rotated, flare out the bottom part of the cylinder.

What can I do?

You can get the transforms of a bone after the actions of constraints by using a "transform channel" type variable in your driver:

Driving from a "single property" type variable won't get the post-constraint transform, just the raw f-curve values.


text:
Create shape as if molded by enclosing object
I have this jar:

Now I'd like to create a separate object, with a shape that perfectly fits the inside of this jar. As if the jar is a mold for the new object. Is there an easy way to do this?

Select the inner faces of the jar, duplicate, fill the top and bottom?

@moonboots that's what I did, took me about 2 minutes though, so was wondering if there was a quicker way

You're too impatient! :^))

Select the inner face ring with AltLMB then press Ctrl+ to select the adjacent faces, duplicate with ShiftD, separate if necessary (P), fill the top and bottom faces:

thanks, worked but with lmb instead of rmb

OK, thanks, I've corrected ;)