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Is it going to give me issues if I rig my character without joining it? And if so how do I keep all my pieces together?
Sorta brand new to blender, please be nice! I really want to be making low poly characters with segmented limbs in order for me to switch them out easily. I have never done it this way and am wondering how this works?
Am I forced to join all the segments before making the IK Rig or is there some other way that I can keep them all together without joining while animating?
I know that there is probably a right and wrong way to go about this and I want to do it the right way, but I can't find much documentation on how to do this. I want to add certain modifiers to the head and hands to make them damp track the camera like DOOM sprites (attached photo). I feel like I can't do that if all the pieces are joined
Sorry if this is a lot! Let me know if I can describe anything more thoroughly! Thank u stack exchange.

General case
There are caveats in having one or multiple mesh objects for a rigged character.

Ease of weight paint. Although Blender supports multi-object editing since years, it's (a bit) harder to manage on multiple objects than a single object.
Performance optimization. May it be Blender or other softwares, even game engines, having one mesh object vs several is usually simpler to optimize for rendering performance as it requires fewer draw calls. Though admittedly, in your case it's not a dozen objects that will take a hit in your performances, unless you are running on a potato.
Safer exports When it comes to exporting, such as in FBX, having a single mesh object reduces complexity and potential issues during the export and import processes, making it easier to manage and animate. Although it doesn't mean that multi-objects will cause issues.
Versatility if you don't need to export to other softwares or are able to do so as a geometry cache (alembic or usd), having multiple objects give you quite some flexibility: being able to use different subdivision levels on each one of them, using booleans, ...

Particular case

I want to add certain modifiers to the head and hands to make them damp track the camera like DOOM sprites (attached photo). I feel like I can't do that if all the pieces are joined

I don't know which modifiers you think of exactly. Damp track is a constraint, and bones have bone constraints. So you could use either. If you intend to export, I would stick to bone constraints, as they can be baked into keyframes and exported as a single animation data block with all your armature's bones. Whereas having animation on both your armature bones and your objects would lead to having to export one animation data block per object, and that's annoying to handle externally.


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Rope on Rope Dynamic simulation?
I have a question about how to create the rope dynamic simulation. The point represents more than 2 ropes laid down on each other with tight similar to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlK94Qw0vIY

Hello and welcome. While files, images, and external links may be helpful additions to questions they should not remain the only way to obtain information about your issue. Don't make understanding your question rely on downloading a file or visiting an external site. Use the builtin tools to upload images or gifs, besides thoroughly explaining the problem in written form so it can be searched for and indexed thus helping future users find it.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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CPU spike when moving objects, rendering is not affected
I am learning how to use blender 4.2 and import image sequence as scalar data, so it is a volume. The nodes I use is bioxel nodes for scientific visualization.
https://github.com/OmooLab/BioxelNodes
I tested on different computers, different file size (160MB to 1GB), whenever I move the object or do something such as resizing, the CPU will spike to almost 100% and make it very laggy. The speed of rendering in the render viewport works just fine. (I render with GPU).
If anyone can provide some tips or guidance that would be great.
Thank you!

This sounds like it might have far more to do with the add-on rather than Blender itself, probably that said transformations trigger a recalculation but insist it happen right away rather than waiting till the transformation completes or put it on a tick. Have you tried contacting the developers?

@TheLabCat Thank you, I am trying to talk to the author and waiting for his response. A following up question, the node imports my image sequence as a volume. The volume is a square block that contains my data, the actual object can be shown by thresholding the data to reveal, but how do I get the actual object out as an individual mesh or volume? The node provides a function called "pick mesh", which will isolate and copy the actual object out, after that, there is no more lag. I am guessing that there is too much small empty stuff in the original mesh space that consumes CPU.

I recommend you ask that as a separate question so you can attach proper details to it.

@TheLabCat ok sounds good! thank you!

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


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How do I color my annotations and open the note tab in 4.2?
In a tutorial I am watching which uses Blender 4.0, while in the annotations tab there is this little bar on the top left corner that lets you change the color and access the Note drop down menu.

But this little bar is no where to be seen for me. Was it removed? Is it hidden somewhere? Here is my screen for reference.

That toolbar only appears after you've made the first annotation stroke. It's the same in Blender 4.0 (and below) and 4.2.


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Smoke simulation rendering very differently in viewport and final render (cycles)
I'm working on a render which makes use of a couple smoke simulations, which are rendered on their own view layer with most of the other view layers being used for indirect lighting or holdouts. In the viewport, it appears as intended, but when it's rendered, half the smoke appears to be missing, mostly from one of the two smoke simulations.

On the right is the viewport, and is how the final render SHOULD look. On the left is what happens when that particular view layer is rendered.
I've already checked several things to try and fix this. I've tried rendering without a transparent background, rendering everything as a single view layer, making sure it's not an additive transparency issue (there isn't an add shader between a transparent shader and something else, which someone told me could be an issue), increasing volume and transparency bounces, etc. I'm completely at a loss as to what could be wrong here.
The only other thing I could imagine is going wrong is something to do with light/shadow linking, as I noticed shadow linking for a specific object was working correctly in the viewport and not in the final render, but none of the main lights used to light the whole scene are included in that shadow linking collection.

Because it might be relevant, here's the shader for the smoke domains. I'm wondering if this might be an issue with the domains themselves, but I'm not sure. If anyone has any questions or things they need to see to help diagnose this problem, let me know.

Answering my own question, but I figured it out: motion blur being enabled was causing the issue!


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Why won't this fluid simulation bake?
I have a scene which contains a creek. This creek continues to the very bottom of the scene and has a depth of approximately 25 default cubes. I have my fluid domain that surrounds the inflow object, outflow object and also my creek.
The problem is when I hit the 'Bake' button (final frame - 65). The fluid simulation progress bar which appears above the scene gets stuck at 0 percent progress all the time. After a while it goes invisible again.
When I came up with this error I opened another project and created a default cube as domain and inflow and it worked! After that I returned to my creek project and did the same things and it didn't work.
I did some research on the web and a lot of people says that "you should play with the variables of domain" but there has to be a solid solution for this.
This is my scene.

Could the simulation be to complex for your hardware? Could it take more memory to process than what's available in your system. Please edit your question and provide more info like system specs, scene and fluid settings, blender screenshots, or possibly a blend file.

i have deleted the fluid objects after a while.i can only provide you my system specs.intel i7 3.4 ghz 8 core,gtx 960m 2gb and 8 gb ram.I dont think its because my system specs although im suspicious about is there any chance that multiple scene layers have influence on fluid baking.

I've had a similar situation while modeling a complicated scene in a bottle. It works eventually; but there seems to be some kind of pre-caching and precalculating involved which is related to the obstacle complexity. For me, on a reasonably good machine, I was at around 10 MB of memory with a lot of wiggling for the fluid to do, and it was close to a minute of wait time before the meter started to move.
I would suggest starting with some simpler subset of your scene, and verifying that the fluid simulation works as intended. I would also suggest at times of long 0% waits simplifying your modeling to rely on the fluid sim as little as possible.

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


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Merging isn't working, when I merge two points it stretches to the middle, how do I stop this?

this is what happens as I try and do this, I don't know it is the character or if its something else, I really don't want to start the it again and would really like some help thanks
Thank You To everyone that answer I had made the hand on the mirrored side to it was trying to connect to the over side :)

It could be that you select and try to join one vertex of real geometry and another - of generated with modifier (and hence not existing yet). Try disabling both modifiers in Edit mode and see what you can join.

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


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Why is only half of my image is not properly rendering?
Alright. I'm kinda new to blender, and this is the first time I stuck with it. I followed a simple tutorial on how to make a bear. On my final render, the top half of my image isn't rendering as it should.

It looks slightly blurred at the top starting at about the very center. I don't think I have any weird settings turned on that would've caused this.
If it helps my specs are
GPU: AMD R9 270
Processor: AMD A10-7850K

I'm using my GPU to render the image. I've tried rendering it with tiles and using the other option that renders the whole image sample by sample.

Edit: After some tests, I've determined I stopped the render too early. The samples didn't complete. Apparently the top takes longer to render for some reason. It solves itself after about 1000 samples.

It's barely visible. When I zoom in on the image, I can clearly see it. I haven't changed the depth of field settings, and I don't think I'm using compositor nodes


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Why is my texture projecting onto other objects?
Alright, so let me start off with I'm fairly new to blender, so this may just be an error on my part for not using a certain setting or something.
My problem is that my texture is semi-appearing on the walls of a box I'm making.
At 500 samples:

In the 500 sample one it's not as major of an issue, but at lower samples it is. Whenever I changed the textured floor to just a plain pink diffuse bsdf, the problem still occurs.

In the first picture I used an image texture plugged into a velvet and glossy shader which is plugged into a mixed shader. In the second picture just a pink diffuse bsdf is used.
Edit: I should've asked how to stop this from happening, not why.

This is like in real life : if you put light on a red surface which is near a white wall, you will see some red on the wall. Is your question only about "why" or do you want to avoid this behavior in Blender ?

I'd like to avoid it.

this can be a solution : http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/14335/how-can-i-avoid-colored-light-reflections. Please confirm us if it is really in your context.

That solved my problem. Thank you so much. That'll also help in the future with future projects, so thank you very much for that too.

You are welcome. I will vote to indicate your question as duplicate of the one from the link I gave you (that's the process to avoid too many answers here).


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I'm embarrassed to ask this about scaling faces
I'm not a smart guy. I haven't been able to google the answer or figure this out on my own.
I placed a cylinder down and scaled it by millimeters to 12.9 mm on x and y, but I also need to change the top end face size to 12.7 mm. I can't figure out how. Unlike the object properties, in edit mode the only property that seems to be available is something called Median. According to google, median just displaces the location of the centerpoint of selected stuff.
All I wanna do is scale a single face of this cylinder by exact millimeters, but so far this software doesn't seem to be capable of that. pressing S and typing anything in just gives wild results.
UPDATE - I gave up on it. I realized that blender isn't as powerful as I had hoped and just did a bunch of extremely time consuming boolean stuff to make 2 cylinder faces into 1 object to get the desired result.
Apparently the folks on the development team have been neglecting the smaller, more important features in favor of professional features that I'll probably never use in my life. No judgement here. It's their software, they can do whatever they want with it.

First make sure to start with a 1 base: scale the base cylinder to one in all dimensions.
If you've added a standard cylinder, it should be 2x2x2 meters.
So scale it 0.5 in object mode, then apply scale CtrlA to have the same in edit mode.
Once done enter edit mode, take the faces you need (maybe the bottom of the cylinder) and scale 12.9: S12.9
Now select the top part and scale 12.7: S12.7.
The proportions should be good. Now scale all 0.001 to have it in millimeters.

In the blend file above, top part is 12.7 and bottom part is 12.9.

Ok, but that's in object mode, not edit mode, and you scaled the entire thing. I'm not trying to accomplish that. I want to scale just a single face by exact millimeters.

Which face? Could you add some details in your question? If its the top is that to mean the radius should be 12.7?

I'll give it my best shot to explain this. I placed a cylinder, whose exact dimensions are X: 12.9mm, Y: 12.9mm, Z:25mm.
After doing so, I needed to shrink the end face at the top of the object, so that the bottom of the cylinder is 12.9mm xy, and the top would be 12.7mm xy,
Sort of like an extremely subtle cone shape but the difference is by a mere 0.2 mm.

The problem being is that the software doesn't seem to be capable of using millimeters in edit mode. When resizing something, it only deals in percentages. I failed math all my life, hombre. I could technicaly divide 12.7 by 12.9 and get 0.984 but that fancy math won't help me in the long run. Eventually I will mess something up during the math and screw the entire model up.

Either I don't understand which part should be at which dimension, or simply select the wanted part to set it at the wanted dimension. Will add a blend file so that you can check if the answer gives what you want.

The bottom circle should be 12.9 mm wide, and the top circle should be 12.7
I can achieve only one of those by changing the dimensions of the object in object mode, but once I switch to edit mode, the software stops using millimeters and only uses percentages, so I can't change the other circle to the exact diameter in millimeters that I require.

Now, technically speaking I solved my problem by creating 2 cylinders, one 12.7 millimeters in diameter and deleting all faces except the top circle and then changing the other cylinder to 12.9 and deleting all faces except the bottom circle. I then joined them and bridged the vertices and edges to make the solid cylinder I wanted with the exact specifications I desire.
I don't want to have to be forced to do that everytime I want to add things to the model. It takes way too much time and won't work all the time. I need to be able to resize faces by exact millimeters.

So this is how you create a tapered cylinder with exact dimensions. You can adjust the height by moving the second circle in z-direction (press "G", then "Z" and type the height in)

That's extremely long and drawn out. Are you telling me the software is incapable of performing such a simple task?

Getting precise measument is difficult in blender, it's not made for that purpose. But I found one more way that is not that complicated.

Another method, it is a bit faster:

Add the cylinder with the dimensions of the lower face (in your case 12.9 mm on x and y)

Move the cylinder in editmode up, so the origin is on the lower face. (Alternatively you can just select the face and move origin to active)

Add simple deform modifier set it to taper, select z as axis and set as deform factor:
(d1 / d2) - 1.
d1 is the fist diameter (12.9mm) and d2 the second diameter (12.7mm) so you have to
type: (12.9mm / 12.7mm) - 1

Apply it and your done.


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Objects are disappearing during a boolean subtraction
Because of a lack of features, or ignorance on my part, and/or even my inability to google real good, I find myself at a point where I'm trying to "cut" cylinder ends at 45 degree angles and then snap and join them together to create pipe joints.
The knife tool doesn't seem to have any feature other than freehanding it, which causes lines to come out only on one side and they're never straight, and even then I can't get those lines to "confirm" or whatever the terminology is. I can't get them to stay is my point. I do the cut and anything else I do seems to cancel the cut, making that tool useless to me.
THEN I tried to go into edit mode, snap the 3d cursor to the vertex I want, add a plane that automatically gets insterted at that vertex (glad something's going my way for once), angle it, and then use a boolean operation to subtract that plan from the original object, which results in a cut at 45 degrees that I had originally wanted to do with the pain in the butt knife tool. I then delete the vertices, fix the weirdly missing faces that disappear for no reason, and voila. Angled pipe cut. Rinse and repeat on another object, then set the 3d cursor again to the point I want, use that to change the original, reset the 3d cursor to the vertex on the other object and use that to snap the first one there. Join parts, remove duplicates and boom, jointed pipe.
An extremely overly complicated process but whatever. At this point I've stopped trying to solve my problems and instead do whatever it takes to get around them.
HOWEVER... something is going wrong now. I inserted a boolean modifier into my object and when I used the tool to select the plane as the thing to subtract from the model, the model freaking disappears entirely, leaving a plane oval where the cut was supposed to be. Almost as if the software was like "hey, I'm gonna do the opposite of what he wants because F this guy"
I did a google as best as I could and the only results that made any sense was to recalculate normals. So I did. Didn't fix it.
Which leaves me at a stalemate.
Update - Thought I had a solution with the plane extrusion into a cube, didn't fix it. Just fixed it for that one boolean operation. Problem persists.

You can also:

Start with a cylinder with one face rotated 90 degrees. Do so each extremity is at the same distance to the future pipe corner.
Make a loop cut and let it at the center.
Bring this loop at the corner place.
Scale by 2 except for the axis that is in front of you (in my case was Y so SShiftY2).

As Dale Cieslak explains, the Shear tool is very convenient. But you can force a 45° with the knife tool. Press K to activate it, press Z to cut through the mesh, and press C to cut orthogonally and 45°. So now go orthogonal top view and use it.
After that, delete, dulicate, mirror, snap with merge vertices, etc.

Shear might be your friend.

Mesh->Transform->Shear, with a value of 1 (or -1) will give you a perfect 45 degree angle:

One downside is that it only works in X and Y, so you'd have to shear first, then rotate to get a shear in Z.
Sheared pieces should snap together perfectly:

Hope that helps you avoid boolean madness.


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Make selected edges equidistant, like you can in Inkscape?
In Inkscape there is a tool where it will make selected objects equidistant. In blender I am trying to find a similar tool. In the example below the tool would make the selected edges equidistant on the y axis. Does it exist?

You may use Loop Tools specials to do it. Select one edge of your mesh (Alt+RMB), then press W-->Loop Tools-->Space.

You can enable the Loop Tools in User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U).

Awesome. For mine I had to select both edges because it spaced only the vertices on one side.


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Objects follow each other on a curve path
Similar question but answer does not work. - Animating a series of objects along a path independently
I am trying to make the human objects (which are seperate objects) all follow each other on a path kind of like the stars in the "Paramount Pictures Intro" like below

So this is my setup right now

So I have about 28 people that I need to follow a path.  They will not have moving arms or legs all I need is for all of them to make a nice curvy path around a globe and then end up around the earth in a circle.
When I made one person follow path then tried to offset follow location and follow rotation of object in front of it, did not work.  Also tried both methods in the question above.
Does anyone know how this path can be follow to imitate a similar animation as Paramount Pictures.

You can create one object that follows a path the way you want by following the instructions on the other page. Then just duplicate the whole set-up as many times as you have objects and change their offsets.

You can use a "clamp to" constraint.
This will make the mesh follow the curve when transformed.
Or stick with the curve modifier

Can you add more explanation? the images are clear, but if the reader doesn't know how to use these modifiers or constraints, he won't be able to do it.

words are such a chore though

Can I add color variation within the array of stars(people) like in my image above..

yes, if you apply the array modifier (and switch to cycles render) then setup this in the node editor http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=352092&d=1419776765&thumb=1       and here is a video of something similar in action. https://youtu.be/pau2HJsIF7U?t=5m40s But if you dont want to apply the array modifier then you will need to make a custom texture and do this http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?322015-UV-Map-with-Array-Modifier-Question

I tried making a gif but it wont really work because its too big https://gfycat.com/UnrealisticDelightfulCoot


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Dark artifacts when rendering CAD-type model
I'm new to Blender (but I've known Maya for years), and any help y'all can offer would be greatly appreciated!
I'm having a problem similar to the ones in these posts, but the solutions offered there haven't solved my problem:

[SOLVED] Weird shading bug and rough render (CYCLES)
Shader artifacts rendering in some spots of the mesh

I'm working with this model that my company bought for a project:

Full Kitchen Scene 3

The mesh seems to be generated with a CAD program. It's not pretty; lots of long skinny triangles and whatnot.
I'll focus on one example of the artifacts I'm getting.
Here's what I mean about ugly geometry:

When I render it with Cycles, it has dark areas:

The mesh is ugly, but the normals are all pointing out and I've removed duplicate vertices.
Has anyone run into this before? I could really use a hand!

Adding edge split modifier should solve your problem

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/734/599

Thanks Denis! (I can't comment cause I'm new.)
I think I've got a good solution going:

With the object selected, I went to the the Object Data tab of the Properties Panel, and unchecked Auto Smooth.
Then, like Denis suggested, I added an Edge Split modifier. I checked Edge Angle and set it to 180 degrees.
This will work for me. Does anybody have any other suggestions for future reference?


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Render view does not match final render (Cycles Render)
I have a shot put together with a model that is textured to my standards and lit to match my scene and I like the way it looks in the render view.
My issue is that this does not match what shows up in the render.
(The positioning is a little different, but you get the idea).
Anyhow, I've been tinkering around in the settings and can't get it to look right. I'm pretty new to this program and was wondering if I may just have some of my settings messed up or if it's an issue with my laptop rendering. Any thoughts?
Thanks, Joel
Here's my node setup for the material.

Could you post your .blend file using Blend Exchange

One of the possible causes is the fact that you have some hidden lamps (so they don't cast light) but enabled when rendering. Could you post the dinosaur's skin node setup too?

Check for hidden lamps using this answer.

I updated my post with my node setup and also the file.


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Unable to edit individual objects made by the Array modifier
I created an object and multiplied it with an Array Modifier, but the problem is:
X - original object
X X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 ... Xn - final object (array size = n)
I'm only able to edit X, and if I do, all the others Xn will change as well.
How can I reverse this? If i want to edit only, for example, X4 face or vertex.

This is intended functionality - it is supposed to work like that. An array modifier makes an array of a single object so if you change that object, all the array is supposed to change as well.
You can apply the modifier and edit the generated geometry as you wish or if you wish to have multiple objects you can duplicate them with Shift+d. If you perform the transforms with the duplicate operator(move or scale or rotate the object right after pressing Shift+d before confirming it) you can then repeat the action with Shift+r to make an array quickly.
I assume that by 'edit' you mean going into edit mode and changing the geometry. You can still influence, deform or even change the geometry of parts of the object that is generated with the Array modifier by using other modifiers without editing the actual original object:

But there is anyway to do it the way i did?

No. You need to do it the way it is done, and cannot do something else and then order the result to be as you wish, I am afraid. The functionality is the way it is intended to be. What you want to do is simply done another way.

A Particle System may suit you..

Create a Group CtrlG of variants of your panel, ensuring the geometry of each item is aligned with respect to its origin.
Assign a Particle System to a guide for the collection of panels. (Here, the guide is a mesh with six vertices on an edge)
Set the Render to Group, as shown, with 'Pick Random' to randomly distribute variants.

You can get more control of the order in which the panels appear by using the 'Count' mechanism in the same panel, which allows you to fix a cycle of choices from the group repeating internally if wished.
A Particle system also allows you to add small random variations to the relative locations and rotations of each instance, for added realism.
You can edit any of the panel variants, and the changes will be reflected in the collection.
A strip of faces, or an array of another object, may be a better guide, depending on the sort of control you want.

You can make the panels real instances by pressing 'Convert' in the guide's Particle System modifier.


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is there a way to blur the edges of the holdout shader
I'm currently working on a VFX scene where I add volumetric fire to parts of my scene but in my footage I have objects that move in front of the camera I modeled each object in Blender and decided that the holdout shader would work great for masking out these objects since blenders z-depth pass doesn't work for volumetrics.
The holdout shader works perfectly but the problem is the edges of the mesh with the holdout shader create a very sharp contrast between the alpha and the fire.
Since I don't think it's possible to do blur the edges of the holdout material in compositing is there a way to create a node based holdout material that smoothly fades to alpha on the edges of the mesh removing the harsh edges?
here is a simplified blend file of the issue the holdout shader would be used to mask out 3d geometry with camera tracking but the edges of the holdout where the orange flames are behind the suitcase are too sharp I could blur the alpha channel but this would also effect the blue flames in front of the holdout
heres an example with images from a project i'm working on:
the flames are volumetric materials and the holdout shader would be used to mask out 3d geometry with camera tracking but the edges of the holdout where the orange flames are behind the suitcase are too sharp I could blur the alpha channel but this would also effect the blue flames in front of the holdout

"Since I don't think it's possible to do blur the edges of the holdout material in compositing" It is https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15449/how-to-mask-animated-objects-so-they-arent-visible-past-a-certain-area/15450#15450

I was able to blur the edges of the holdout object mesh using renderlayers to correctly blur the smoke behind it but the problem is since it uses the holdout material as a factor for adding blur this holdout material is also visible behind the smoke in front of it causing the smoke in front of the holdout mesh to also be blurred I'll add a blend file with an example of this issue

thank you for the suggestions but unfortunately dilate erode node would work well for this if there was only volumetric behind the object mask or holdout object but since there is volume in front of the holdout object eroding the holdout also effects the orange volume in front of the holdout where it should only effect the blue volume if I seperate the two volumes in two different render layers I can do this but I was hoping to avoid this especially for more complex scenes

From your screens it seems to me like you want to smooth part of an edge that is (in reality) optically smoothed by Bloom Effect.
If you can’t use bloom effect in post-production directly, try this … take your mask object, blur its alpha, invert and subtract it from alpha of fire object.
There are two issues to solve ...

ad First - your example material setup use for Volume - Emission shader, that is visible in viewport render, but invisible in render (F12). Material is rendered, but alpha for this material is not generated. From developer side the bug is viewport vs render (F12) inconsistency, but F12 is as designed = emission without alpha is correct. This can be solved by adding Volume Scatter shader.

ad Second - in blender wasn’t a way to get ID pass (or Cryptomatte) of object with volumetric material. From 2.82 beta build, blender use AOV that can output any state of material node tree. So I used AOV to separate specific alpha for Blurring.
(Properties Editor > Layers > Passes > Shader AOV, create one. Go to Shader Editor, add AOV Output node with proper name and set white colour. For more about AOV see Blender Manual or Blender Today #86.)

Note: I had to add Transparent shader to Surface (feeding only Volume didn’t object pass as well). Pass of this volumetric object get object shape, not volumetric texture.
Since your scene consist only from fire I blurred mask object (cube).
To get "fire" pass you can use Alpha socket ...

Show before/after. Sorry for poor render (6 samples only).

... or convert render with ColorRamp into black&white image. That is not mathematically accurate, but gave me nicer result.

(I created also pass for orange fire, but in this comp was not needed.)

awesome this solution seems to be working perfectly one thing I wondered is if It will still work if the blue fire is partially in front of the cube and with only the part of the blue fire behind the cube getting blurred

Check the last (edit) blend, I will explain later (if needed).


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Animation attached to objects instead of Armature?
I don't understand why a few of my animations are showing up under objects in the NLA editor instead of the armature. I don't know how I messed this up or what the implications are.
Any wisdom is greatly appreciated!

You probably assigned animation Action to these objects.
If you switch to Dope Sheet editor and in header switch from Dope Sheet to Action Editor - there you can assign any animation (listed) to what ever object you have selected.

If this is not your case, you should attach simplified blend, only with one issue example to let as discover more (https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com).


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Making a model out of cubes, can't fix overlap
I'm working with a Minecraft model, and am using hand places cubes as extrusions for the hair of the character, as I am unsure of how to extrude pixel sized "blocks" from the mesh. The problem I have arises with a tiny bit of overlap with some of the cubes, causing a weird look. Is there a way to fix this overlap without having to go back and hand scale/rearrange the cubes, or an easier way to achieve this extrusion? The cube's aren't perfectly aligned, as I did it all by hand. Is there possibly an easier way to align them?

Are the cubes perfectly aligned? If so that may make solving the problem easier.

I think you could use another approach, see http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/58200/how-to-color-particles-based-on-the-texture-of-the-object-from-which-they-are-em

@Bradman175 They aren't. Is there a way to make a grid they can snap to or something like that? How else can I align them perfectly if I'm doing it by hand?


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How can I "pack" an image sequence?
I'm using an online renderfarm to get something rendered out, and one of the textures in my scene is using an image sequence. I can't pack this in the traditional way, so I thought I could put the frames in a separate folder inside the folder with the .blend, and zip the main folder. When I go to upload it, it says that the frames are missing, and if I open the .blend in the ZIP file, the image texture is purple. I tried to re-open the frames by hitting the "open" button in the image editor, but I can't get see/get into the .zip! Please help!

Possible duplicate of Why is that when I open up my file in blender, the reference picture is gone

@10Replies That question is simply asking how to pack an image. Mine is an image sequence, and won't pack like that.

If you zip only the folder with sequence it won't see it. Zip whole folder with the project (a way to that is to put sequence into subfolder and point Blender there) and then once it's unzipped the sequence will be there. Note, it won't see images if unzipping only the file.

@MrZak I didn't just zip the sequence, I have the sequence in a subfolder within the zip. I can't point Blender to it because I can't see or open the .zip file when I go to add the images.

I meant to point Blender to sequence before zipping the folder with both .blend and sequence. After unzipping that back Blender recognizes the sequence because it didn't change location relatively to the file. Check if paths are set to relative in File > External Data.

Why not packing your image sequence in the blend file and save your .blend with "compress" option checked?

I just have this problem today, and I found the fix for it. I use concierge render and it has the option to upload a folder and you can also connect your dropbox to their website. All the Image sequence textures were fixed.


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bge character stops moving when it jumps
My issue is this: I am making a simple game where a cube moves around in a big field.  The problem is, when the cube jumps, it stops moving forward.  Now I would like it to keep the forward velocity.  If there is no other way, I could make it so that force is applied to the cube while running in the air, but that would be unrealistic.
Here is the .blend

could you post a picture of your current logic setup?

I added the .blend

If you enable "Add" on all your motion actuators, you will get behavior closer to what you'd expect. With the logic how you have it now, when you push W, A, S, D or Space, the corresponding motion actuator sets the new location of the cube, based on the old location. The differences in location is what you have in the motion actuators. Because of this, only one can run at once - they are all trying to run at the same time, and they are all trying to set the cube's new location based on what they have filled in, which is different for each object.
However, if  you set them to add, each one will add or subtract from the cube's location, instead of trying to set it. When you press Space, while holding forward, instead of the BGE taking the cubes location, adding to it along the Z, and setting the new location, it will simply add to the cube's Z location, creating the expected behavior.

In addition to having your cube able to move and jump at the same time, if you enable the "Add" setting on your other motion actuators, your cube will be able to move diagonally.

Once you get enough (15) reputation, you can also upvote this answer :)

I can upvote it now, it just doesn't show.  It's still recorded


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How to fix an animation project from overuse of particles
I am working on an animation and I have a scene where I needed to have one character blow snow at another character.  I tried using a particle system to do this, but I  made so many them blender became unresponsive.
I managed to deal with it at first, and when I was done with the work for a while I closed the animation and quit blender.  However, now when I try to open it it won't respond at all. How do i fix this?
I tried using the recover button but unfortunately it saved the blend file that was broken.

I'm not sure about it, but is your cache file still in place
(can you move it somewhere else), maybe computer has a problem loading a huge cache file.
Another way of rescuing might be to create a new blend and import stuff from the other blend file that you like to rescue, if the file is really broken I'm afraid there are not many options left.


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Install blender on Windows XP
I want to install blender on my old computer running Windows XP. I have installed the 2.76 version, but it did not install. I tried to remove it, but it is giving me an error again:
"The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package. this may indicate a problem with the package. the error code is 2753"
I have a PC Dual Core with 4 GB ram.  Which version can i install?  It must be near the latest and support Windows XP. Please have a link to download.

32 bit or 64 bit? The last version that runs on WindowsXP 64 is 2.70a, further info: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57454/why-wont-blender-run-on-windows-xp

XP support was removed in 2.77:

Support for Windows XP and the SCons build system was removed.

2.76b was the last version to support Windows XP.
blender-2.76b-windows variants are available from download.blender.org/release/Blender2.76/.
There might be installer-related issues, so I recommend the .zip versions.

thanks for replying i got this message the procedure entry point gett.logicalprocessorinformation could not be located in the dynamic link library kernel32.dll and i click ok the installation fail. what should i do?

So, even with the zip version, starting blender.exe gives you errors like that above? If yes, I guess your kernel32.dll could be damaged or else... can you try the zip on another pc? This seems to happen also using Skype (https://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-desktop-client/GetLogicalProcessorInformation-Kernel32-dll-XP-SP2-Workaround/td-p/3454981), which Service Pack have you installed? Based on that, I guess SP3 is needed...

yes sP3 but i dont use skype i use bluestack

yes, that skype reference is just showing the same problem... I would try to reapply sp3. Or, try on another pc. It is a low level, operating-system level error which causing the issue... not blender, imho.


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How to illuminate the edges of an object in the bge

First of all, I don't know if this is what I should call that effect. I'd like to illuminate an object's edges once the object is detected by a ray sensor in the game engine. For example, I'd like the edges to turn red when the ray sensor hits an enemy. Ive been looking up tutorials, but I haven't found anything. Please help.

There is no build-in option that provides you an outline effect.
But there are other options. E.g. via GLSL shaders.
Additionally you can create an similar outline by

duplicating the mesh,
scaling it up a little,
assigning it green shadeless color

(This will not result in a one pixel outline.)

authors: Елена Шеляпина


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Reset rotation direction of mirrored object
I need help regards of reseting rotation of mirrored object.
I duplicated eye object of my character and wanna to rotate them (both eyes) via action.
I wanna use one action for both eyes, but: eyes are rotating in different direction even if the values of axes is the same.
Please for one quick kick.
Thanks a lot.
Updated with screenshots
Left and right eye rotated by 40 degrees Z-axis (same value but different direction)

This is what I expect

How did you duplicate those eyes objects (via Mirror modifier ? if yes, did you apply it ?) and what kind of "action" do you use to rotate ?

I just duplicated the object, mirrored - no modifier, and applied transformations to reset axes.

Do you mean rotating objects individually ? It depends on pivot point then. Not sure what was meant to be "reset rotation" though.

see updated with screenshots

Ok, so we have a scene with a pair of mirrored objects. I am using arrows because they have a clearer direction than spheres.

Supposing that they are created with a mirror modifier, you will have something like this in your modifiers panel:

Now, if you rotate the eyes in edit mode, you get this:

To spin the eyes differently, you will have to separate them from each other. This is a destructive operation.
(Personally, I would first back them up to another layer. To do that, duplicate (Shift + D), then cancel the grab (right click). Then move the copied object to another layer with m.)
Apply the mirror modifier by hitting apply here:

Then, in edit mode (Tab) hit P and select By loose parts. Now you have two objects, but their centers are off:

Select one of the eyes and hit Ctrl + Shift + Alt + C and select Origin to Geometry.
Now you can happily rotate the eyes independently. To make the eyes move in synch, go to constraints:

There, Add Object Constraint > Copy Rotation (second row, second collumn). Then pick the other eye as Target:

Now the objects rotate in synch:

You can also make it so that the eyes look at a point in space. First, add an empty to be that point (Shift + A > Empty > pick any you want.) Put it where the eyes look. With one eye selected go in Constraints and add Track To. Select the empty as the Target. If the eye points the wrong way, play around with the To: and Up: parameters until it works. Repeat for the other eye. Here is the result:

I hope this helps.

authors: Алёна Безкровная


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How to toggle renderable on/off for objects in the 3D View
How to select multiple objects in the 3D View window (not the outliner) and toggle their renderability on/off?
Want to select them in 3D View because it's much easier to isolate them quickly there than in the outliner.
Is there a keyboard shortcut or hotkey to restrict rendering in Blender Cycles?

You can do this by selecting the objects in the 3D Viewport and pressing Ctrl+H. This will hide the selected objects during render operations. To clear the restricted render property from objects, simply press Ctrl+Alt+H.

Brilliant, thank you. Do you also know the shortcut keys to toggle visibility?

@sliver Yes, that would be H and Alt+H. Alt+H makes all objects, regardless of selection become visible iirc.

What property does ctrl h correspond to please? I can't see anything change anywhere on the screen when I push this.

@Richard That changes the Render Visibility (which is the same as deselecting the camera icon in the Outliner)


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When rotating, objects jump around the screen

I don't know if this is related at all, but before when I was rotating the object strechted while rotating. Like the z axis scaled higher but everything else didn't. While rotating.
The half of an arm I'm manipulating has multiple children and is a child to the upper half of the arm.
EDIT: It was jumping around because some parts of it were overlapping with the main body mesh and collision was enabled so it jumped around. I'm still having the problem of scaling when I rotate the mesh. I can't find anything online, so I think I'm gonna rotate it so I have the scale I want then join all the different meshes together into one character mesh.

Verify you have no snapping enabled.

No, but I sort of fixed the issue. I added an edit above.


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Creating a wavy dot pattern in a Cycles shader
[Solution at bottom of question]
I'm trying to create a shader to draw dots in a wavy pattern. I have the dots, and I have the waves, but I'm not sure how to combine the two.
I create the dots by adding together 2 wave textures that are 90° apart from each other, and use a Less Than node to draw each dot with a hard border. (Fun fact -- if you rotate the overall dot pattern by 90° you can switch between staggered and non-staggered dots.) This results in a grid of dots.
The "wavy waves" pattern is a combination of two wave textures. One base wave with another wave being added to the X-coordinate of the base wave to create the variation.
Every time I've tried to combine the dots with the waves doesn't work out... the waves always end up squishing or stretching the dots. I don't want that -- I want to keep the circular dots, and only adjust their placement to match the wave pattern.
Any advice? Intended end-result below.
.
Shader nodes to draw plain dots:

Resulting plain dots

Shader nodes to draw wavy waves:

Resulting wavy waves:

End goal:

================================================================
Solution
(thanks to @RobinBetts below)
Using Robin's clever method of UV tiling, I made a small change to achieve just what I wanted. (note - you need 2.81 to open Robin's .blend file)
I wanted to be able to adjust the spacing of the dots in the X and Y, which I think is the next step after Robin's answer. To do this, I changed the Fraction node into a Modulo node, which lets you adjust how quickly the UV space is repeated. Note that the modulo coeff in the X direction must always be a positive integer to keep the correct dot shape. The modulo coeff in the Y direction can be any positive number. And that's it. Adjusting the Scale, Freq, and Amplitude does all the rest.

Yay! Much simpler than I thought. If you posted that as an answer, we could UV it...

Here are a couple of tweaks you might consider to make your solution a bit more general / goofproof.

Very cool. The sawtooth mod is new to me. Nice additions. I had modified my object UVs to make up for the negative quadrants but that's kind of hacky -- your solution is more robust.

'Sawtooth Mod' is only my name for it.. it's the way GLSL implements mod().. different from Blender's, for negative numbers. I'll replace the .blend in my answer with your solution.

This tree divides the UV space into XY cells, and samples the sine of X at every cell to stagger the position of the Y cells.

This results in a modified UV space which looks like this: (X->R, Y->G, 0 at the center of each cell)

This space can be used to tile any UV-dependent texture in a sine-wave pattern.
In this case, we use the output vector as the 'Vector' input of a procedural dot:

With this sort of result:

It's actually quite tricky to adjust the frequency and amplitude so the cells sample the sine wave at the right rate to maintain the 'wavy' look, but I don't think that can be constrained to make it easier.. unless we fixed it to make every other row black, or something, so the right dots are associated with the right dots, perceptually. We could tweak it to do that, or something like it, if you like.
EDIT: @natedogg has improved the answer, to make it easier to see the pattern. (See OP) The attached .blend includes the improvement.

This looks great! Thanks, I wouldn't have thought of this method. I see what you mean about the sensitivity to adjustments. How would you enable controlled dot spacing in the X and Y directions? E.g. the same wave pattern but with different dot spacing in the Y?

@natedogg  ..same thought occurred to me.. actually quite a dig-up, but I'll have a go... just checking which way you wanted to go.

I figured it out -- changing the Fraction node to a Modulo node enables adjusting in X and Y. As long as you mod against integers (in the X) you'll get a nice complete pattern. Modding in the Y is not constrained only to ints, decimals are OK.

@natedogg.. scaling OK?  .. also beware of modding negative numbers ... Go ahead and answer your own question with your version.. I'd like to see it.


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Why isn't the Loop tool add-on turning the selection into a circle?
I'm trying to do a circle in a cylinder, I unchecked flatten as it was explain in the forum but it does nothing. I probably forget something.

It doesn't work if I put 100% influence, see the result:

Currently the Influence is set to 0%. If you increase it to 100% the selected vertices will form a circle.

it doesn't work. I re-edit my question with a screenshot of the result

There seems to be something wrong with your mesh or your selection. Perhaps you've selected more than just the front facing faces or there are other issues with your mesh, e.g. duplicate vertices or internal faces?

I don't understand, I only selected the faces you see in the screenshot...I created a cylinder, then I added loops cuts and subdivision surface modifier, finally I selected faces.

Maybe the faces have to be real squares. Maybe I have to subdivide instead of add loop cuts?!

I've created a cylinder, used CTRL+R to add the loop cuts, selected the vertices and then applied the circle tool from loop tools.

It works when I create the cylinder, loop cuts and applied loop tools directly. But if I scale Z before creating loop cuts, that does what you see in screenshot.

I couldn't reproduce this in a quick test, but you could try to apply the scale first using CTRL+A > Scale.

doesn't work...

How exactly are you scaling the cylinder? In object or edit mode? Where is the Z axis in your screenshot (is it scaled in the direction of the caps)? What is your scaling factor (maybe it's negative)? Do you have proportional edit enabled?

Perhaps it would be the easiest if you could share your blend file https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

THAT's IT!! When I scale in EDIT MODE, it works! Thank you

Great! If my answer solved your problem, please mark it as accepted by clicking on the checkmark next to it.


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Blender 2.8 fails to load using NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
I get the following error message when trying to launch blender 2.8.
I have checked and i am running the latest drivers and my GPU says it supports OpenGL 4+

Please run dxdiag and check if your graphics card is listed in the display tab.

Also try to update the nVidia drivers

I have NVIDA Geoforce experience and it says i have the latest driver installed. I get the above information from dxdiag


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problems with subdivision surface
right now im modelling some glasses, and im having a problem with the "subdivision surface" modifier, basically it connects points i don't want to connect...
without subdivision surface:

and with subdivision surface:

here the blenderfile download (mediafire)
i would really appreciate some help :)
edit:
Thanks to Paul,
i got it working by removing the exchange the big face with smaller ones:

your topology is bad, why all these ngons, try to extrude with quads only, then you'll create some additional edge loops to sharp the angles you want.

You have this huge n-gon (a face with more than 4 vertices) which is a problem when using subdivision surface (and more generally, it's a problem for pretty much everything else too).

From looking at the model I think you had a picture of the profile of the glasses, you then extruded a plane following the profile, then extruded the plane inward to get the thickness and then you just pressed F to fill the remaning hole. That's not going to work. You need quads everywhere. You can either fill each quad manually or try to bridge the loops, but this model is a bit messy.

N-gons are not always bad.

ok thank you for the help, i will try it later and tell you if it worked :D

it worked, thank you...


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How to use a Color attribute with a Geometry Proximity node to change vertex color based on depth
The set up here is pretty straight forward. Take a shape, get its volume, generate leaves within that volume and set the vertex color based on how near the surface the leaf is.
My solution was to use geometry proximity node to measure the instance's distance from the original volume's surface. When I plug the output of the geometry proximity into a map range node and then into a Scale instances node, I can see its working correctly with surface leaves being smaller. However, when I plug that same output into a color ramp I do not get the expected output. Instead each leaf seems to have the same vertex color regardless of where they are in the volume.
I feel I am missing something here and any advice would really help me out. If I can solve this problem then I can start generating all sorts of low-poly optimised bushes. Thanks!

If you want to color vertices you should color it under material nodes ...
Use your set "color" atribute in Attribute node of material nodes and than ColorRamp to Material Output or what ever ... don't forget to use Realize Instances node.


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Help with low poly hair modeling!
So I am trying to model the hair for this design ...

... and am running into problems getting the basic form of it just to start. Any suggestions for the best way to go about modeling? Should I start with curves or meshes or both?

I'm far from an expert, but with a hairstyle like that, you may be able to get away with deforming a cube or icosahedron +/- subdivide modifier. (I usually use Curves method myself, and so know little of the method I an suggesting.)

I don't know much about low poly but I would have just add a cube and deform it with loop cuts with a that reference image on background .


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How to create an equal size window on the wall around the corner?
I am a Blender beginner.
I am attempting to recreate a building from a photo.
I have created a window on one wall (1 in the image below) and would like to have an identical one around the corner (2 in the image below). I would like it to be the same size exactly and not just an approximation. I know how to make the window itself. Not certain how to achieve equal size.

How do I achieve this? Thanks for you help!

Pretty easy to do this with a mirror modifier, using an empty as the mirror axis, with bisect turned on.

Make sure the mirror object is aligned exactly with the edge on the corner you want to mirror across. If you just used a regular bevel operator it should be exactly 45 degrees.
These are the mirror settings I used, you might need to fiddle with yours a bit.

Result:

If your building is not perfectly square then you might need to adjust the back edge to meet the mirror axis more perfectly.

Thank you.
Just to be certain, as I am quite new to this.
By "empty" you mean an empty object that has no mesh, correct? So that's the axis of the mirror.
Do I understand correctly that in your images this is placed where the 3d cursor is?
In the settings screenshot, is this also the object mentioned in the "mirror object" field, or that does that contain the geometry I am actually aiming to mirror around the corner?
Thanks again!

Correct, that is what/where the empty object is. You can use any object to mirror this way, but an empty is easiest.


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Shape Keys act differently after exporting a .blend file as .glb
I'm importing a .blend file (that has been exported from CC4) and then converting it to .glb  but the shape keys in the .glb act different as compared to the ones in the blend file. How do I get the shape keys to act exactly the same in .glb?


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Randomise seed of distribute points in volume for instanced volumes
I'm trying to generate a piled stone wall that follows a curve with geometry nodes. Currently my approach is to generate points along a curve, then instance volumes along that curve. From there I use a Distribute Points in Volume node to generate points in each volume instance along the wall so I can instance geometry on each of those points.
The issue that I am having is that the points generated by Distribute Points in Volume are the same for all the volume instances along the curve. I would like for the distribution to be random for all the volumes but I cannot work out how to change the seed per instance.
How can I vary the seed per instance? Or if there is a better way of achieving this please let me know. Thanks

As I said in my comment earlier, the instances are basically clones of a single object, so all of them get the same points distribution in the volume. What I incorrectly said was that plugging the Index into the Seed input would help.
Although each instance has a unique index and this should work, the Seed on the Distribute Points in Volume node only accepts a single value as input, not a field of values - so what I suggested does not work. The node expects one large volume to distribute points in, not multiple volumes.
To make them all individual objects, you could use a Realize Instances node. However on volume objects this works differently. If you realize the instances you do not get multiple volume cubes along the curve, only one large volume at the start.
So as a workaround you should instance regular mesh cubes on the curve, then realize them and use a Mesh to Volume node afterwards. This results in one single volume as well, but separated into the individual cubes.

That's worked perfectly for me. Many thanks.


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Shade smooth render looks like Shade Flat
View-port model has smooth shading:

Look-Dev mode looks smooth shaded:

But the Final Render has noticeable edges:

Is there a reason as to why it's like that?

Do you have a subdivision modifier on the object set to Simple that is only active for rendering and not for edit mode or the viewport?

@rjg  ... could also be different viewport/render subdiv. levels, in the modifier, simple or not..

@rjg That's doesn't seem to be the case. It's set to cat mull-Clark, Rendering and view-port icons are checked and the rendering & view-port subdivisions are both set to 1.

I have some ideas of what could cause this, but I'd like to see your blend file first if possible, with textures packed in (to do this, simply use the menu File→External Data→Pack All into .blend, then File→Save as, save as a new file with "packed" in the name, and eventually check the "compress" option before saving so you file remains as light as possible.

@L0Lock I've updated my question with the link. If the file crashes upon opening, then try opening blender and use the open function or ctrl+O

Nice model, btw. (Though I have to say I've never seen one painted blue before.)

Changing the color space of your normal map from sRGB to non-color in the texture node should fix your problem.


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How to use bridge edge loops to make a pipe bend in Blender 2.8/9
I'm trying to bridge two edge loops in Blender 2.8 to make a curved pipe. I was able to do this in 2.79 but I cannot get it work in 2.8.
After setting profile to 0. Setting it to -1 makes it look crumpled. Either way I cannot seem to make a nice arc.
Is there another way to bend a pipe?
Same settings as Robin Betts

Hello :). It seems your profile factor is rather high, have you tried setting it at zero?

I set it to zero and it's a little better. I tried -1 but then it gets worse again.

Probably you have non-uniform scale. Apply the scale with Ctrl+A in Object Mode, then try again.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/79697/connect-two-walls-with-a-curve/79701#79701  https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/66733/how-would-i-smooth-a-90-degree-pipe-angle/66735#66735

Scaling fixed it! Thanks FFeller and others

These settings work for me..

You certainly don't want a profile factor if you want the diameter of your pipe to be constant along its length.
It's only trial and error that gets me to go with 'Blend Surface' and this 'Smoothness'.. maybe someone who knows the code can tell us what the maths is?


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Render Image renders, closes, renders again
I have run into an issue where "Render Image," that should render a single image, is rendering, then closing the render, then rendering the same image again.
I only run into this odd behavior on one Blender project (Anvil Tutorial), and my other projects render correctly (single rendered image).
I have looked as carefully as I can at the settings, and they seem identical on each project. Only the Anvil wants to render over and over.
Is there some hidden button that I may have accidentally checked that could cause this behavior? See my render settings in the image --
I would appreciate any information on this. Thanks for helping a total noob who is trying to learn!

In the Properties editor, Render Layers tab, you can click on the plus sign under Scenes, and then Render Image will render once for each layer.  Could you have been in there and clicked on the plus sign, creating extra render layers?

Hi Susan - I am using Blender 2.8, so my interface looks very different than yours. I don't even see anything that says RenderLayer.I've added an image above that shows my settings ( I don't know how to post an image in comments)

I don't have 2.8.  Can anyone who has downloaded it please help Joe Gideon find where the Render Layers are?

Hi Susan, you were right - however in 2.8 a "Render Layer" is  now called "View Layer." I had somehow clicked on the "View Layer" button that creates additional "View Layers." By deleting these copies, I can now do a Render Image, and Blender works correctly, giving me a single render. Thank you for your help!


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How do I fix irregular surfaces
enter image description hereI already read some post related to this issue, did what they say but I still having the same problem. As you see in the picture the surface of my mesh has many irregularities (cheeks). I tried fixing quads so I did delete all the cheek area and modeled again but the irregularity still appearing, It is a rigged mesh so I don't think is a problem with doubles. Can somebody help me to fix this ?
enter image description here

Could you share the wireframes, I suspect these irregularities are poles.

Hi Samir. Sorry I'm not an expert on this. Can you tell me please where can I find such wireframes?

In the viewport change the shading mode to wireframe and take a screenshot.

this is what happened when I applied wireframe. All the mesh is a disaster. Picture above

Do not use the wireframe modifier, delete it. Change the viewport mode from material to wireframe this is found in the viewport header.

To change the viewport mode click on the little sphere at the bottom of the viewport to the right of the "Object mode" button.

Sorry. I just posted the picture again.

No problem. It seems the artifacts are indeed from poles. A pole is when more than 4 edges meet at a single point. If you want to get rid of a pole you have to think of a different way to model that area or move it to a less visible place.

To show the topology of the mesh please enter Edit mode of it, set the shading mode of the viewport to Solid and take a screenshot. It's really hard to see what's going on there as the back of the mesh and the front interfer with each other. As to "irregularities" it could be everything starting from bad topology and up to wrong weights (as this is rigged model).

Hi Mr. Zak. Picture just posted as you ask above.

Well, that looks like topology problem. See face topology on polycount for references and guides. There are a lot of edge loops which don't follow the curvature of the face muscles which will eventually show artifacts (either when animated or even without that). You might want to retopologize that, at least that area.

Yep. I can see what you mean. thank you. do you think  this (I mean retopo)  will not affect the rig?

It will as you'll change vertices which had weights applied which is used by rig (this means you will have to paint weights there once more, hence I wrote *only that area"). I don't think I know any workaround - to avoid that when topology isn't good enough and rig is already done.

I did retopo but imperfections still. Very frustrating.

I see one vertex on each cheek with 8 edges going into it, that's just bad modelling. I recommend CG Cookie's tutorial: https://vimeo.com/3835507

Try to add more substance to your answer besides the link. If think link goes down, your answer will not be as usefull

Thanks for the CG Cookie tutorial. For 10 replies: I'm new in this Forum. Still hard for me figure things out yet but I will look into your recommendations. Thanks


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How to drag rigid bodies with a rigged mesh?
I started the animation of my project and I want to carry stones from one place to another. I am using rigid bodies on the stones so each one of them is an individual object. Here in the first picture are they in the initial position.

But when I move the loader in a diferent frame the stones stay in the initial position like in picture 2

How can I move these stones with my rigged mesh (front end Loader)?

are you using BGE?

This is blender cycles. This is what I did: in the first 50 frames I let the rocks fall on the truck and the loader by simply animating with rigid bodies as there are hundred stones and I didn't wanted to place them one by one. Then I made the animation of the loader. I thought the stones will move with the loader but nope... I don't have a clue what to do right now.

Could you provide your file on blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com to be able to have a look and help you

Sorry I don't want to post the file. But thanks anyways.

Rigid body objects only interact with other rigid body objects. To make the loader bucket "pick up" the rocks it will need to have rigid body enabled. As you are using an animation to move the bucket you should enable the animated option. You also need to set the collision shape to mesh so that the bucket will be hollow to allow the rocks inside it.

You will also want to use similar settings for the truck.

Hi Sambler.Thanks for your answer. I did what you say but is not working for me. I will post the pictures on the post. They just move until they touch the bucket and then they (stones) stop movin while the bucket keep playing the animation alone

I don't know if it is because when I am animating the bucket I don't select the bucket but only the armature which is in pose mode and the rocks works maybe only in object mode. Is there maybe a way to apply the armature position to the loader in object mode, so that the stones maybe get the movements applied too?

I selected the deforming option and  put friction on 1 and made the animation a little slower and is working a little better although some of the stone still falling to the floor. Picture on the post

Ok, I got it. The stones have to be very big to keep the movement with the truck. Thanks Sambler and Tak.


text:
reflection on surface
I want to get some light coming through the window but At the end of the render, just after the first denoised tiles, I notice that there is some undesirable reflection on the floor surface that I don't see on the rendered display as you can see in the pictures.

in the rendered mode this reflection does not appear

Somebody help me to solve this please.
Thanks in advance

The camera doesn't appear to be the same used for preview and final renders. There's something strange seen through window, like the nature through the left one and another room - through the right one. The reflection on the floor can be something like hidden object which seems to have emitting material

Ok Yes some objects are linked but not the camera. That's why they are different. I will reduce the strenght of the enviroment texture and will let you know in about 5 hours because it takes that long to render. Thanks.

I reduced the strength of the enviroment image from 10 to 1 and it didnt work, but Yes, you were right. It was some extra faces hidden around the window. I just found them and deleted them. Thank you very much.


text:
Why bones IK change positions by itself?
I am done with the rigging on my mesh with bones parented with empty groups. But, when I start creating the keyframes in the animation. the bones position change very oddly by themselves.
This is the keyframes I have created

And this is how appears automatically in the animation

After this I have to apply Alt+G+R "TWICE" to reset them.
Does anybody knows why and how to solve this?
Thanks in advance

When an IK chain change position in weird ways, it's because of one of this problems:

the ik traget location is modified by the movements of one bone of the chain itself: so there is an endless circularity. Check if it has constraints related to any bone of the chain, or if it is child of a bone related to the chain.
some bends have a flipped position that can resolve the IK request, so you need to establish a pole target to have full control of the behaviour of the chain

Hi Josh. Thank you.Yes I think it has to be something related with the constraints because The machine has three arms holding the bucket, so I tried to parent them to the bucket which is like three different bones parented to one vertex group. I will post images in the post (bottom) so you can see what I am talking about. I think those bones are causing interference to each other. Do you know a better way to parent those three arms of the machine to the bucket? How can I Make this three arms (right arm, left arm, last central arm)  get attached to one single vertices group which is the bucket?

Right and left arm should have the same dynamic of movements but the central arm is different. this should rotate the bucket in its own axes.

If you need more help I think you should upload your .blend file: it's difficult to understand the rig from the pictures


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BGE Snake Game make objects follow the leader exactly?
I have a basic BGE snake game, with the parts of the snake being spheres. It works, except I can't get the tail spheres follow the head... I have the original sphere moving and spawning spheres when it collects the red spheres, but I don't know how to make them follow in the exact path which the original sphere took...
Here's a link to the file:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6_5f6jmSaHOWThxMHQ2MkJnWFk

As in your previous post I suggested using module mode if you are going to use global vars. snekfollow(controller) can be used as an entry point in Snake.py (ie could put all code in Snake.py). If you make a simple global list snake = ["Sphere"] (head only) and append the tail to the list every time you collect, eg after first snake.append("Sphere.001") in Snake.snekfollow(cont) then list is ["Sphere", "Sphere.001"] Each tail in list can be given the location of the previous in Snake.main() before you set the new location of the head.

I'm really confused by your comment, but only because I'm a noobie. So what you're saying is that I can put all of the code in Snake.py and then I only need the python controller in the Sphere object's logic area? I'm also confused about the method of updating location... Would I have to abandon the own.applyMovement() function? Or am I missing something? Instead of the own.applyMovement() method, I'm thinging I could have two location variables and change the x/y by .2, then update the location. But then I don't think I can use this with the tail without having a bagillion variables...

No need for a  bagillion variables?..No need to abandon the own.applyMovement() method?  Instead of a separate script file for each of your game controllers you can use an entry point eg Snake.add_tail(controller) eg def add_tail(controller): function in the Snake.py module.  All your global vars would also be available to it.   Check out https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?249757-Prof-Monster-s-BGE-Guide-to-Python-Coding


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Can blender game engine detect if a character is falling and play an animation?
so I have a character in bge and I want to play an animation of him falling when he falls. I've tried using a collision sensor and enabling invert, but whenever the character jumps, it plays that animation, instead of the jump animation. I also have an always sensor connected to the idle animation, and the game engine just plays that instead of the fall animation.
Any help is appreciated! Thanks!
Edit:
Is it possible to detect the velocity of the character and play the fall animation when greater than a certain value?

You could check its position on the z axis and compare it to a stored value that changes when he climbs or descends normally. If the position is less than the stored value, you play the animation.

KX_GameObject.worldLinearVelocity
On a Physics object the Z-axis of the coordinates would be negative.
As static objects do to move (via Physics engine) this attribute will remain (0,0,0). This will be the case on physics types Static, Occluder, Sensor, Navigation Mesh, Character. This is a bit strange as this types (except Static) have not really much to do with physics (it is more a purpose type). Changes in location (which is basically a teleportation), can only be tracked by recording the previous position and comparing it to the current one.
Here is an example:
import bge

PROPERTY_LAST_POSITION = "last.position"

gameObject = bge.logic.getCurrentController().owner
currentPosition = gameObject.worldPosition
lastPosition = gameObject.get(PROPERTY_LAST_POSITION, currentPosition)
gameObject[PROPERTY_LAST_POSITION] = currentPosition.copy()
positionDifference = currentPosition - lastPosition

isFalling = (positionDifference.z < 0)

controller = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
for actuator in controller.actuators:
    if isFalling:
        controller.activate(actuator)
    else:
        controller.deactivate(actuator)


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Appended or Linked Hair Particles not like original Hair Particles
The hair of my character changes radically when brought into a new file, as either Appended or Linked - see images. As a work around I have created a new copy of the character and then rather linked the set and props into the same file. While this works it will become cumbersome when adding more characters, and seems to go against the concept of optimizing workflow. Is there something I am missing, or are hair particles not designed to link/ append at the moment?

About the process: The Hair Base is just one vertex group on the Head Object - which has two particle systems - the vertex group controls the density in both particles systems. It also has a black & white UV texture that defines the hairline.
The brows have two vertex groups - one for density and the other length - with two particles systems. The second vertex group only uses the density.
The lash have a simple vertex group with one particle system.
Some progress: I have an older file with the model and hair setup - without animation - that I have been able to both link and append without problems. It seems obvious now that somehow the rigging, and or animation is interfering, though the hair itself is not animated.

After a simple test on a cube with hair particle (edited particles), I'm not able to reproduce the issue you have. Could you add some more details about the way you've created this hair particles?

Added an update - with some progress news, but still looking for a solution. Thanks for looking....

I discovered that although my character only has one rig, it is also linking/ appending a 2nd rig which is indirectly connected via animation = the boy rides a bike. The 2nd rig when deleted from the file, causes the head object to re-scale and restores the styled hair.
It would be easy to conclude the problem is with the scale of the rigs. The 1st is scaled 0.1 to fit into the environment. All other objects, including the 2nd rig, were scaled 1:1. In the initial scene this presented no problems and indeed should not. I have performed simply tests with differently armatures in different scales, added a few animations and none of them have changed the representation of the hair particles.
In this case Blender has not been able to reconcile the different scales and my solution is to sacrifice the animation - this gets destroyed when the second rig is deleted - if my priority is to get the characters hair restored. Unfortunately at this stage I cannot Apply Scale as this also causes strange results. For future reference I will of course do this before animation just to rule out the possibility that this could contribute to Blender confusion.
Regarding the disappearance of my Vertex Groups in answer to Dimali's suggested answer and my comment: During the (pitchipoy) rigging process I had to re do the bone placements a number of times and each time the cleanest way to reset the weights was to delete all groups and start again. My hair particles being hidden at the time survived the purge, but the groups did not. While not a documented function, it appears similar to applying a modifier group and not being able to return to the edit stage. As I do not need to edit the groups I do not consider this a problem.

The result will be different if the objects have different vertex painting. The pictures seem much like this is the case. The hair only refers to the vertex groups, but does not copy them when you append the hair.
It looks like in the first image, the original weighting is present, and in the other two they have been flattened to zero and one.

While I believe the solution might be the scaling, I did go back and check my vertex groups to be sure. My 'original' file is not showing the vertex groups but clearly using them - otherwise there would be particles all over the face. The original is actually is a 'save as' copy, now distant relative of the file I did the particle editing in. That said, the ' original' is only showing the rig vertex groups, not the hair weight groups - which I do think odd. I will look further into it. Thank you for your thoughts.


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when using track to contraint to billboard sprites, how do i prevent them from being rotated?
I'm trying to do billboarded sprites that always face the camera, and for the most part it works, but i wish they were forced to to be straight up and down, not rotated at all (which happens near the sides). Is the possible with track to contraint?

here is my setup:

EDIT: with lemons suggestion

What's your setup? A copy rotation constraint would probably acheive this as you can pick which axes you want it to follow. Track constraints need more finessing as objects are orineted to the camera's origin rather that it's view plane.

PS: it works if you want up down toward the Z axis... but the question was about up down along the screen...
Just add another constraint limiting their rotation.

Axis to be used depend on your objects initial orientations.

tried this and it's a little better, but still not perfectly straight (pic in top post)

@stackers, could you share a file with the issue you just shown.

@callmepro had the right answer, copy rotation works much better than track to

ah... you meant up down on the screen... not up down on the Z axis... right?

yeah, sorry for the confusion

no problem, that's the game ;)


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Why do my materials, assigned to different faces, only show in edit mode?
I downloaded an animated model.
I went into edit mode and assigned different textures, which look fine, but when I leave edit mode, it all turns to a single material. If I go back into edit I can see the colors again, but they show up wrong in the viewport/renders.
Edit mode:

Viewport , every frame, and renders:

Where are my materials going?

Showing that the render mode is selected:

EDIT: It appears the file I uploaded was broken, it does not animate. I think it is because I didn't pack the file, which seems to use data from the original abc file.
It seems to be using a modifier called "mesh sequence cache" to animate it.

I tried to pack the blend file for upload, but it said no files were added, so im not sure its possible to pack it.
Anyway i think the problem is that this cache is loading different verts for each frame, making it impossible to do what I'm trying to do? Unless someone knows a way. I tried applying the modifier, but it removed the animation.

I see colors in object mode in 2.93 and 3.0, probably a bug.

weird, i tried opening in both and it's still all yellow

Can you add a screenshot showing the 3d viewport top bar?

it works fine here, are you sure you've shared the latest version? what happens if you create a new object and give it another material? is it yellow as well?

@stackers if moonboots' idea about sharing the wrong file is wrong, it's quite likely you have hardware (or operating system) issues.


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How can I get a tinted highlight without tinting the entire piece?
I want to give my highlights a little more color, such as in this image:

But using an environment map gives me pretty flat colors:

Is there a way to get this greater hue range, especially if I can get it just on a single object?
I tried adding a second light, but it really doesn't look good with environment lighting.
I also tried it without the environment, but any colored light tints everything that color, which I don't want. I want the shadows to be unaffected.
Compositor is fine too.
Edit this works, but the screen step seems too yellow:

I used what you gave :) If you have a problem to tweak nodes, post your blend https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com  with all textures that cause the yellowish result.

First you can check Color Management, by default its set to Filmic that has a flat look (but for a good reason). You can switch to Standard, but probably better is to add a few nodes in Compositor - like Glare node.

Yeah ... separate effect for gem you can use ID mask of object or newly Cryptomatte feature.

this looks good, but my screen step adds a ton of yellow, and even if I turn it down, the brightest part is still yellowish (it should stay white)


text:
Two objects with same materials, modifiers and lighting are different
What the title says. I have multicolor bubble materials in one project that look like bubbles. I have another project where I'm trying to recreate the material and it kind of looks like a clear bubble with some dark in the middle and it won't change color. I've tried comparing and redoing the textures a dozen times by now and they won't match up.
Can anyone spot the difference?
Broken Bubble

Multicolor Bubbles

You can append the material from one file to the other and see if that helps.

Thank you! That did help. I'm still gonna try to get an answer to my question, but this will at least help me to move on.

Hello, we shouldn't have to download multiple blend files to answer your question, it should stand on its own. Please add screenshots of your interface instead of links to your work files

@MartinMarino Yes (agree with Gorgious) please next time add screens of issue and how it should looks like ... blend files are very helpful, but screens gives as quick understanding what are you looking for and they can speedup issue hunting. Your time / Our time. Thank you.

@Gorgious Almost everytime I add screenshots, people ask me for blend files. But sure...

Material Properties > Settings > Blend Mode > Opaque change to Alpha Blend

Opaque

Alpha Blend

Thank you! This works


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Knife Project mesh without faces
Is there a way to cut these dome shaped edges with another mesh/curve?

Knife project, Bisect and Booleans only work with meshes that have faces.

No, isnt from my knowledge. For co-planar edges you can use Tiny CAD addon, but it is not your situation. For this specific case I would use Bridge loop to generate faces, use Intersect (Knife), after operation delete previously generated "bridge" face loops.

why do you need edges and not faces on the object?

I'll try to set all Z coords to 0 to make them coplanar for TinyCad, then reset to old value. After that I'll try to set some temp faces and delete all new edges and faces after that, if that's easily possible, don't know yet.


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fence mesh duplicates along mountain plane
I want to have a "picket fence" go along a slope, like this picture kind of:
I have a pre-made mesh for the ground (a.k.a., I don't want to remake it / automatically make the fence follow some kind of path, my actual mesh is an ANT terrain).
I can easily make the fence mesh from any number of tutorials (and duplicate it using the array modifier), but I'm not sure how to make it go around a mountain mesh / keep the same height etc. My mesh looks a like this:
I want the fence to run in a complete circle all the way around the mountain on it's slope.
Any ideas?

You can use Animation Node to create a spline that follow the surface of the terrain and then deform the mesh on it just as you described.
First, create a curve that define the path of the wall, sample some points on it, ray cast them on the terrain, create a new spline from those projected points:

The same applies for the any spline, a circle for instance:

Thanks for the technique but I'm kind of a beginner and trying to do it now, but how do you get to that first node setup? After first creating the curve, nothing shows up under the basic node editor and it won't allow me to add any (probably because material is selected, but what else do I select for the node editor?)

Also just searching in the available nodes I can't find any of those, are they from some kind of external file or an addon? I'm using blender version 2.79

nvm I didn't realize the first sentence where you mentioned Animation Node (found here btw for others: https://github.com/JacquesLucke/animation_nodes/releases/tag/v2.0) thanks!

Actually I'm kind of at a loss I have the plugin with the exact node setup in the picture but I don't see the black outline ?

@Yaakov5777 Can you show me your node tree? maybe provide the blend file so that I try and identify the problem.

You could do something similiar to the image you showed with a bezier curve and a "bevel object" like so.

- Start by making the cross section of your fence
For this step I created the T shape you see above, then converted it from a mesh into a curve.
- Create a Bezier curve as the "Path" for the fence
As you can see here I made a curve, then added some points. I put all the control points flat like that to make sure the "top" of the fence didnt bend a ton but you can do it however you like
- Select the cross section as your Bevel object.
"Plane" was the name of my cross section so i just changed that. When I edit its shape, it automatically applies to the fence.
Caveats
If you want to texture the "head" of the T and the body of the T Independantly you may have to duplicate / split up the bevel object because you have to apply the material to the curve object and not the bevel object.
If you want to do that you could make two seperate curves that occupy the same space, and split your cross section object into two pieces, assigning one cross section to each curve to allow them to have different shaders.

Thanks but using this technique do I have to manually adjust the bezier curve for every part of the mountain? I would prefer the fence to follow every height point exactly and that would take forever to do this way if the mountain has tons of rigdes

you could select a "line" of vertices then duplicate it (shift  + d) then make a seperate object (p) then convert to mesh with the little menu on the window. I dont know if you want to do that since you have an answer you accepted already.


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How do you use the GPU offscreen render API in 2.8?
For a while now in blender there has been this GPU Off-screen renderer; however, I think it has changed a bit in 2.8, and plus, I never even knew how to use it before.
Basically I want to be able to render a video animation using the offscreen rendering API, specifically the "3D View into Texture" example, here is the code from the docs on the website:
import bpy
import bgl
import gpu
from gpu_extras.presets import draw_texture_2d

WIDTH = 512
HEIGHT = 256

offscreen = gpu.types.GPUOffScreen(WIDTH, HEIGHT)

def draw():
    context = bpy.context
    scene = context.scene

    view_matrix = scene.camera.matrix_world.inverted()

    projection_matrix = scene.camera.calc_matrix_camera(
        context.evaluated_depsgraph_get(), x=WIDTH, y=HEIGHT)

    offscreen.draw_view3d(
        scene,
        context.view_layer,
        context.space_data,
        context.region,
        view_matrix,
        projection_matrix)

    bgl.glDisable(bgl.GL_DEPTH_TEST)
    draw_texture_2d(offscreen.color_texture, (10, 10), WIDTH, HEIGHT)

bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add(draw, (), 'WINDOW', 'POST_PIXEL')

Although this works great for making a texture, it doesn't explain how to use this to save the image, I want to eventually implement an interface that will save the image, or store it into some kind of base64 image buffer (To send to a server) to render faster / real time, but even more importantly: it doesn't explain how to change the resolution of the output, so:
How exactly do I render (e.g. save onto disk OR store in buffer) a simple animation (I.e, image sequence) using the GPU Off-Screen Render API, at any given resolution (even 1920 / 1080) in Blender 2.8?

Isn't there an example on same page that creates a texture image of circles?

@batFINGER yes, there is and it gives some important insights - I managed to write the 3D view into an image. However, I can not execute offscreen.draw_view3d(...) without bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add(draw, ...), which makes my current state a bit messy ...

The following code shows the essential steps to write the 3D view into a Blender image.
The main caveat is that the currently offscreen.draw_view3d() is called within draw() using bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add.
This has a few consequences:

one must ensure that the 3D view is redrawn, for example by clicking onto some object in the 3D view
the function is called multiple times

When moving offscreen.draw_view3d() outside of draw(), I received  the following error message: TypeError: expected 'SpaceView3D' type found 'SpaceTextEditor' instead. So currently, I'm stuck setting the correct context. Any help would be highly appreciated - I'll update the post correspondingly.
import bpy
import bgl
import gpu
from mathutils import Matrix
from gpu.types import GPUOffScreen

def draw():

    print('draw: bpy.context.area.type',  bpy.context.area.type)
    global write_view_3d

    if write_view_3d:

        # Write the image into the offscreen buffer
        offscreen.draw_view3d(
            scene=scene,
            view_layer=bpy.context.view_layer,
            view3d=bpy.context.space_data,
            region=bpy.context.region,
            view_matrix=view_matrix,
            projection_matrix=projection_matrix)

        buffer = bgl.Buffer(bgl.GL_BYTE, width * height * 4)
        bgl.glReadPixels(0, 0, width, height, bgl.GL_RGBA, bgl.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, buffer)

        if(image_name not in bpy.data.images):
            bpy.data.images.new(image_name, width, height)
        image = bpy.data.images[image_name]
        image.pixels = [v / 255 for v in buffer]

        print('write_view_3d', write_view_3d)
        write_view_3d = False
    else:
        print('write_view_3d', write_view_3d)

image_name = "Result"
scene = bpy.context.scene
render = bpy.context.scene.render
width = bpy.context.region.width
height = bpy.context.region.height

offscreen = gpu.types.GPUOffScreen(width, height)
view_matrix = scene.camera.matrix_world.inverted()
projection_matrix = scene.camera.calc_matrix_camera(
    bpy.context.evaluated_depsgraph_get(),
    x=width,
    y=height)

write_view_3d = True
current_draw_handler = bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add(
    draw, (), 'WINDOW', 'POST_PIXEL')

interesting, any way to get the resolution to 1920 x 1080 even if the 3d view window is smaller than that?

resize the image.

@batFINGER how would one do that? and does that change the quality of the scene itself?

No it resizes the image IIRC its Image.resize(x, y) of a blender image instance. Wont be the resolution just the size.... previous comment needed a question mark.

Another option would be to use bpy.ops.render.opengl

@batFINGER if so, then that doesn't answer the question

@Mr.EpicFail that is no where near real time rendering

The reason for this is the line image.pixels = [v / 255 for v in buffer]. The reason for this is stated here. So I guess it is not possible to do this faster at the moment. Quote: Currently almost all of the execution time is spent in the last line. In the future this will hopefully be solved by implementing the Python buffer protocol for bgl.Buffer and bpy.types.Image.pixels (aka bpy_prop_array)

If you need a specific size for your output, I recommend to use bpy.ops.render.opengl. This should be faster as well and can be used outside of the draw method above.


text:
Create a depression in a circle
I am new to blender and trying to create an iPhone like model. This is what I have done so far:

Sorry about the black background I don't know why it exists :/
I have successfully added:

The white body (mesh cube) of the iPhone.
The blue screen as a mesh plane.
The volume button (mesh cube) on the right.

I want to create a circular button on the iPhone body near the bottom. As you can see in this image:

the button is slightly depressed towards the bottom. I want to achieve similar effects.
So, I first inserted a Bezier curve and then converted it to mesh object using Alt+C. I have tried using Extrude (both individual and region) but they didn't work. This is my wireframe (without extrude):

My question:

Please explain how to depress the circle towards the bottom in the z-index?

Solution: Better way, Easier way

Start with a plane and add loops around the general square area that will contain the button.
Add additional loops to subdivide the square.  These loops will provide additional vertices for our circular button.
Use Inset Polygon to create a smaller square area.  Use LoopTools Circle to turn the insetted quads into a perfect circle.
Move the central vertex of the circle down in the Z-axis.  This will create the depression.
Add definition by creating further edge loops around the circle.
Add a Subdivision Surface modifier and your done.

The resulting topology is all quads and neatly subdivides.

Hi, your solution is a bit complicated, but it seems a better way to do this thing. I will accept your answer - but also add my answer which I felt is a little easy. Thank you!

Create a UV-sphere, and remove all vertices you don't need. If you want you can lessen the depression by scaling it in the z-axis. Then rotate so that it aligns with your model.

Thank you! The only problem with this solution was that the UV bowl was casting its shadow on the iPhone body. I have added my answer to take it further and remove the shadow problem.

Ok, so I finally understood how to do this project:

Create a UV sphere. Remove its top vertices in edit mode.
Change its depression by scaling in the z-axis.
Position it over the iPhone body, on the place where you want the depression to be.
Use the Knife Project tool to create a hole in in the iPhone body.
Translate in the z-axis to make button completely fit in the hole.

The result is a neat button with shadows also!


text:
lighting problems, sun isn't working on render
I am trying to create an indoor enviroment. I made two windows, added a sun and rotated it so that it could go throug the window and lighten the sofa and part of the wall.
But I don't see the sun light anywhere.
I checked on settings and is not invisible to the render but it just not reflecting any light. The only light I get is from the image background.
This is the picture with sun

and this is when I delete the sun

Can anybody tell me please why is this?
Thanks in advance

Hello cegaton. I did that but as I didn't see any results I just deleted the window and it didn't work either.

Here is the file. I had to delete some objects because it was too big.

Your sun is working fine but the size is huge, it is making shadows very soft and blurry.
Reduce the Size parameter to something below 0.1 units if you want hard shadows.

I had it on 0.1 as preset but then I tried to follow a tutorial but it didn't work for me. I will try this again anyways. Thank you very much

@NATURUNATURYU If the answer solves your problem consider marking it as accepted