text:
How do I fix these glitches in freestyle renders?

My freestyle renders randomly have these glitches in them (circled in red). From what I can tell they appear sometimes where there is geometry in the background that crosses lines in the foregroud - I've highlighted the position of the background lines in yellow in this image to show where they are. To be clear, the geometry in no way intersects, the background object is quite some distance behind the foreground object in 3D space. What could be causing this and how can I fix it?
Edit: Here is a minimal reproduction:

From making this reproduction I learned something. The issue seems to occur when two objects in the background share an edge in the same place. In the example here the "window" is a seperate object aligned to the wall (which has a cut-out hole for the window). Therefore the edges of the window align with the inner edges of the cutout. If an object is then placed in the foreground the freestyle glitch occurs:

Could you share  a minimal version on  https://blend-exchange.com/ ?

Thank you for your suggestion, this lead me to a better understanding of the issue (see updated question).

You're on the case by yourself..
No renderer likes Z-fighting. It's curious that, in Freestyle, the symptom shows in a surface well in front of the Z-fighting in the background.. but coincident surfaces seem to have screwed the whole depth-calculation, all the way to the viewing-plane.
The Z-fighting affects all of your Line-Set discriminators, in EEVEE and Cycles.
So the best bet is to avoid all exactly coincident surfaces:

.. on the right, the background window-frame has been moved forward by 0.001 from the wall-with-hole, which is enough.
Other options would be to use different discriminators. The wall and window could be on the same surface of the same object, with explicitly marked edges, or boundaries between materials, for example.

Thanks for the explanation. I knew that coincident faces cause problems but hadn't realised that coincident edges were so bad. When modeling a simple surface (like a wall) with more complex features (like a window), I cut out holes then duplicate the edges to create a new object. That way I can add more loop cuts/detail to the window without adding extra geometry to the wall. Clearly this approach is flawed. I would be interested to know how more experienced modellers solve this issue. Thanks again.

@John.. I guess that depends on your case,, if you explicitly marked edges, you wouldn't need much more topo, but, yes, that would be a pain. Z-fighting in Freestyle is new to me, too.

I made a further discovery - turning off "Chaining" under View Layer Properties > Freestyle Strokes seems to mitigate the issue. I'm guessing the chaining detection is the part that gets messed up by edges that are z-fighting.

@John Intersting! Feel free to offer an edit to the answer if that's conclusive.


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Array instanced object keeping the same index in Geometry Nodes
In Geometry Nodes, how can I make each group of balls have the same random color pattern repeated nine times? I want to generate an array of equal 3x3 combinations but unfortunately the instances are shuffled for each of the nine instances.

You need to add a random value to the the spheres before instancing them on the main grid:

And in the shader, you use an "Attribute" node to get this value, with an important setting: it must be set to "instancer", otherwise you will need to "realize instances" in the geometry nodes:

Thank you so much Daniel! That's just what I was looking for.

Hello, @Sergio, welcome to stack exchange.
When an answer solves your problem, please mark it as answered so the community knows.

Ok, fine. I can't find the "mark as answered" button.

@Sergio, it's the green check on the left side of the answer

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Trying to use specific color data from vertices generated through a csv file
I've created a series of vertices that were imported from a csv file (each point was read in with x,y,z,r,g,b data). My goal is to create a plane and color it accurately according to the rgb data of each point.
I've attempted a data transfer by first duplicating the vertices, then turning the copy into a mesh via Convex Hull, and transferring the color from the points by mapping nearest vertex. I'm not sure what else to try.

What's the context? What is this? Why do you need this? There might be important requirements and constraints of the problem in the context.

You probably need a plane that has matching vertices. There are probably other ways, but one I can think of would be to:

Extrude the verts up a bit and convert the mesh to curve.

Give the curve some small bevel with lowest resolution(no need for the resulting cylinders to be high poly) and convert back to mesh

Now you can make a plane and use the little 'cylinders' to cut holes in it with a boolean("Exact" algorithm seems to be useless at this(like most of the time), so use the "Fast" one in the boolean modifier if you get problems). You should end up with a plane with bunch of holes in it:

You can select the boundary loop in edge mode, deselect the outer edges of your plane and then scale every hole to 0 with Individual Origins selected as transform pivot point. You probably want to merge the vertices by distance at that point.

Now you can triangulate resulting geometry and run Beautify Faces function on it and you have a plane with the verts on it:

Now transferring attributes should work better since you have matching vertices.

Thank you for the detailed response. Ultimately, I was unable to transfer the color, but this did answer part of my issue, which was how to map pre-defined vertices to a plane.

It is possible to transfer color from vertices based on their position. If you provide more info and some example data, maybe a .blend file, I am sure somebody could help with that in more detail.

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


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Removing armatures in Blenderpy while preserving position
I am running a distributed rendering pipeline to generate some data for model training, using BlenderProc/Blenderpy and data from Objaverse. This pipeline includes normalizing objects to fit in a unit cube at the origin, and I randomly stumbled on this asset which exhibited strange rendering behavior:

When going through the validation report for this asset I noticed the following:

NODE_SKINNED_MESH_NON_ROOT    Node with a skinned mesh is not root. Parent transforms will not affect a skinned mesh. /nodes/27

NODE_SKINNED_MESH_NON_ROOT    Node with a skinned mesh is not root. Parent transforms will not affect a skinned mesh. /nodes/41

I am not at all familiar with blender so I don't really know what's going on, but it's clear the normalization is not able to transform objects associated to bones.
This is how I load the objects:
for obj in objects:
    obj_path = os.path.join(data_path, "glbs", obj["github_id"], f"{obj['objaverse_id']}.glb")
    blender_objs = bproc.loader.load_obj(obj_path)

    # Merge meshes into a single object
    merged_obj = create_with_empty_mesh(obj['objaverse_id'])
    merged_obj.join_with_other_objects(blender_objs)
    normalize_obj(merged_obj)

    merged_obj.hide(True)
    merged_obj.set_shading_mode('auto')
    loaded[obj["objaverse_id"]] = merged_obj

This is how I do the normalization:
def normalize_obj(obj: bproc.types.MeshObject):
    bbox = obj.get_bound_box()
    min_corner, max_corner = bbox[0], bbox[6]

    center = (min_corner + max_corner) / 2
    length = np.max(max_corner - min_corner)

    if length > 0:
        scale = 1 / length
    else:
        logging.error(f"Scale factor for {obj.blender_obj.name} is 0.")
        scale = 1

    obj.set_location(obj.get_location() - center)
    obj.persist_transformation_into_mesh()
    obj.set_scale(obj.get_scale() * scale)
    obj.persist_transformation_into_mesh()

My question is thus, how would one transform this asset to get rid of armatures while keeping the ears in the correct position when transforming the object?
I have attempted removing all armatures to no avail with:
for armature in bpy.data.armatures:
    bpy.data.armatures.remove(armature, do_unlink=True)

I also wasn't able to do so by applying the armature modifiers before removing them:
def apply_armatures(obj):
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj

    armature_modifiers = [mod for mod in obj.modifiers if mod.type == 'ARMATURE']
    if not armature_modifiers:
        print(f"No armature modifier found on {obj.name}.")
        return None

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    bpy.ops.object.visual_transform_apply()
    bpy.ops.object.parent_clear(type='CLEAR_KEEP_TRANSFORM')

    for mod in armature_modifiers:
        obj.modifiers.remove(mod)


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Random faces in render mode
I'm working on making a very basic table design and want to use it to make a reference image using the render mode however when I go into the mode random faces appear in two spots on the object. I tried fixes normal's, and un-hiding invisible objects neither worked, I deleted the top face only to find an empty inside, I don't know what could be wrong since I'm still very new to this please ignore the lighting and various other things needing to be fixed.

Could you perhaps add the file?

I've added the blend file, sorry like i stated above new to this and forgot to put it on, and didn't know how to.

after checking the blend file I added to see if it was the most recent save, it wasn't, I found it didn't load the table top texture and didn't have the faces in the render, I put the texture on again and the faces reappeared

after redoing the texture, annoying but needed fixed anyway, the faces disappeared and it works fine now. so no clue what happened but I know the problem was something to do with the texture, for anyone who might have this happen to them


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Desktop GTX 1070 barely faster than GTX 1050-Ti mobile in cycles
I'm rendering 10 frames of a scene both on a Dell XPS 15 Notebook and my Desktop PC.
Desktop: i5-2500K + GTX 1070 8GB
Notebook: i7-8750H + GTX 1050-Ti mobile

Desktop:
CPU (i5-2500K): 2:34 min
GPU (GTX 1070): 0:37 min
Notebook:
CPU (i7-8750H): 1:24 min
GPU (GTX 1050-Ti): 0:51 min
Though as expected the 1070 is faster, I would expect a much bigger difference, as the 1070 shows around 3x the performance of the 1050-Ti Mobile in various benchmarks.
Is it possible, that the slower CPU in the PC bottlenecks the render speed, although it's not enabled as a CUDA device?

do you have both the CPU and the GPU checked under CUDA in the cycles render device in user preferences? If so uncheck CPU and render again.

No, GPU only, but I have tried hybrid rendering and it is indeed even slower on my Desktop, so I'm not using it. Good suggestion though, thanks.

Might be that the scene isn't complex enough to see larger differences and most of the time is spend loading textures, kernel and building the BVH.

In that case, would it make sense to increase the number of frames rendered to see a bigger difference? Or is loading all this stuff per-frame anyways?

Yes, rendering more frames would reduce the impact of the initial loading on the whole render time (assuming that the time includes the loading).

You need to state which drivers you are using, your motherboard and RAM on each and whether Linux or Windows

drivers: 411.31 on Notebook, 430.86 on Desktop, Windows 10 x64 Home 1903 and 16GB RAM on both machines


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3D Medical implant designing and Printing - Perfect Adaptation to Surface with Complex Geometry
I want to make a patient specific implant for 3D Printing. I have the stl model of the patients mandible and i have designed the basic shape of the implant.
I need the Implant thickness to be 1 mm even thickness.

First and Second picture is the mandible from the CT data made from the 3D Slicer stl model.
Third Photo is the concept implant which needs to be 1 mm thickness.
Fourth photo is the implant adapted to the mandible. I need the inner surface of the implant to adapt perfectly for to the contours of the mandible surface and have 1 mm even thickness after adapting perfectly for 3D printing.
How do i make this implant inner surface adapt perfectly to the surface of the mandible. Then have 1 mm even thickness for 3D Printing. I tried boolean with difference but the thickness become uneven when i use it.

Edited.
the shrinkwarap does the trick. But i only want one part of the implant to adapt to the surface.

You need a shrinkwrap modifier on the plane, targeting the mandibule, then after that you use solidify modifier with 1mm thickness (turn on high quality normal too). Make sure your plane has plenty of geometry to shrinkwrap onto the mandible, do so by adding a subdivision modifier before the shrinkwrap if necessary.
If the shrinkwrap act weirdly try decimating the mandible a little bit with a decimate modifier since it's very high poly and might glitch the shrinkwrap.

Thank you so much for the reply. The shrinkwrap works well after i subdivided the mesh and solidify it later. But the entire mesh get the modification. Is it possible to only shrinkwrap only selected part of the object. Becuase i only want to adapt only one part of the wall. Other part needs remain the same. I have updated my question with a new photo of the way i want this. Please be kind enough to help me in this.

It's possible to to assign only some vertices of the mesh to a vertex group and then use the modifier only for the vertex group.


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Perfect Adaptation to Surface
I want to model a implant for 3D printing in STL format.
I need to adapt only part of my object (implant) to the surface and also maintain the thickness of the object at 1 mm every where. I have tried several methods and noting is working.
Top picture is the basic implant designed i made.

This is the Mandible from the CBCT of the patient. In STL format.

I want the inner surface of the implant to warp or adjust in to the surface of the mandible. Also that part need to be in 1 mm thickness.
Can some one please tell me the workflow that i should follow in this case ? and get the surface well adapted to the complex geometry while maintaining the thickness.
After trying method suggested by Lemon
enter image description here

Shrinkwrap modifier can use a vertex group, so you can choose the part that will "exactly" follow the mandible surface (eventually, subdivide your mesh before doing that: subdivision modifier with "simple" option). Also can consider solidify modifier in order to obtain 1mm thickness.

You should add that as an answer @lemon

@ArthurBlaquart I tried it and the implant looks weird on the affected region. I first apply shirinkwrap and then did the solidify and try it the other way around too. :-(

We can't help without a file or more screenshots.

@ArthurBlaquart i can send the both the stl file and the implant i would like to have the surface adapted. How can i send the file ?

@ArthurBlaquart i have uploaded the files to https://we.tl/t-z6jmJPBWSX if you would like to have a look and help me if possible

Manjula, you should solidify first if your model has no thickness (and apply it). Now create a vertex group for the vertices of the inner part and use shrinkwrap with this group (PS: I can't upload your files as I currently have a very low and unstable internet connection).

@lemon Yes i already tried that way too. I applied solidify and then selected the only the inner surface vertexes and created a vertex group and then applied the shrinkwrap. However still that part of the implant looks weird..... I am very new to blender and i think i might be missing some critical part of this process.


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How to fade-in a render layer in compositor
I am trying to fade-in four render layers and not having much success. I have looked at this solution
Fade a render layer to transparent
but it does not seem to work for me, probably due to my set up. When I attempt this solution I do not get the desired fade-in results. Here's my compositor set up.
I am trying to fade-in the iMac and iPhone layers (4 layers in total). Here's a close up of the two iPhone layers.

Can anyone suggest a way to get the iMac and iPhone layers to fade in over time? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Wouldn't just keyframing the mix factor do what you want?

Regus - thanks for taking the time to make a suggestion. I don't have a Mix node anywhere.  I tried adding a mix node in here and there, but that wasn't working. BUT - your suggestion gave me the idea that maybe I don't have to add anything. And what do you know!!! Adjusting the factor setting on the last Alpha Over node (right most Alpha Over node) in a layer gives me the transparency I can animate. So thanks!

Yeah, I meant the Alpha Over mix factor. :P Glad that worked for you!

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


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Can loopcuts be made when Blender is in background with the "-b" option?
I am trying to make loopcuts on an object in a Python script running Blender 2.77a in the background with the "-b" commandline option. If I don't override the context I get this error:
bpy.ops.mesh.loopcut.poll() expected a view3d region & editmesh
There is an answer for this here on StackExchange:
How do I override context for bpy.ops.mesh.loopcut?
...and the loopcut override works when Blender is in the foreground. But when using the technique in the background, this error comes up:
wmSubWindowScissorSet 0: doesn't exist
...and Blender crashes. Online searches don't help on this, I could find no solution. That leads me to the question - can this be done? How can the context be overrriden so that it will work in the background?
My context override is done like so:
def context_override():
    for window in bpy.context.window_manager.windows:
        screen = window.screen
        for area in screen.areas:
            if area.type == "VIEW_3D":
                for region in area.regions:
                    if region.type == "WINDOW":
                        ctx = bpy.context.copy()
                        ctx["window"] = window
                        ctx["screen"] = screen
                        ctx["area"] = area
                        ctx["region"] = region
                        ctx["scene"] = bpy.context.scene
                        return ctx

Related  Might pay to check on window and screen to see that they aren't None in bg mode.

Can you edit your post to add a minimal script which reproduces this issue (with the call to the mesh.loopcut) ? Thanks

It's actually quite simple:
You can't use operators in background mode.
When Blender is in background mode or you use Blender as a Python module, then the context does not work as usual, because it doesn't exist. There has to be a 3D viewport etc. for the context to work but all of those things don't exist in background mode.
The solution is to use the internal functions of the operator you are trying to use. But if this operator does not use internal functions you are out of luck.
I got this info from a youtube video where the blender devs answered questions (at about 11 minutes in).

Be careful, the context does exist in background mode, and operators are available. But as Bastien in the video you linked explains it is discouraged to use operators in background mode, as many (but not all) of them require a screen, an area or the like to work properly. You can test this in a command line. Enter blender -b --python-expr "import bpy;print(bpy.context)" - it will return something like <bpy_struct, Context at 0x7fa0408afc48>, which is a context object.

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


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How to make Snooker holes with boolean?
I'm trying to create a Snooker table for a Snooker PC game. I use Boolean to make the Snooker holes once, but then I had to make it all again in another project. I created a new project to do that but now the modifier is not working. When I use difference boolean it cuts the pool table and stays just with the cylinder, have no idea why it isn't working. I already saw some threads talking about normals and remove doubles but it is still not working. I put the blender file here

Tables Z scale is negative, so change it from -0.192 to 0.192 and then rotate Y 180 degrees. Also cylinder scales are all negatives (X, Y and Z are all -0.304) change them all to 0.304. After you get rid of those negative scales try again if it works now as it should.

sorry for my newbie question but my scale is 1 1 1, what you mean with z scale is negative and how can i change it?

Added image. This is what i see when i open provided blend file.

you are my hero thanks dude, something changed in my actual file i opened the untitled again and you where right perfect :D

I guess you applied scale accidentally :P That changes values to 1


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Force field set up for gravity simulation
I am trying to create a very simple example where I set a force field on an empty to simulate Earth's gravity. The scenario consist on:

a cube, with rigid body enabled (active), set at an altitude of 10m.
a plane, with rigid body enabled (passive), set at the origin (0m).
an empty, set at a position (0, 0, -R_earth), and with a force field attached to it. The force field has a "strength" of -3.986e+14 and has the gravitation label activated (multiplying the resulting force by the inverse of the squared distance).

One would expect the cube would drop in around 1.428s (at least its centre of mass), but it just doesn't. I am aware that Blender is not perfectly transparent when it comes to physics, but there is the possibility that I am doing something wrong with the fps of the simulation (or the rendering of the simulation), or something else.
I attach the .blend file here so you can see what I am playing with and maybe find out what/if I am doing wrong.

Thanks!

blend file: https://we.tl/t-yBqWYpzyV8

blender physics is pretty great, but not perfect. And setting any value in Blender to very low or very high numbers like e+14 will make trouble - at least because of rounding issues. So i would try to work with a force field nearby and try out the strength until it falls as you want it. Blender is definetely not a real world physics simulation...

I'm totally wrong person to give you some serious advice here ... so just a few notes:

Speaking to @Chris's comment - using microscopical or astronomical numbers causing a lot of problems in Blender. Not only in simulation, but mainly with viewport display ...

Here when you try rotate your Empty object :)

So instead try under Scene Properties > Units > Units Scale ... 1.000.000

It should be connected with general Blender's Gravity, but I'm not sure about Rigid Body World. You would have to test it.
Edit: I just noticed ... you would be trapped since you are in astro scale, but you want to see a cube in 2 m dimension is like micro. Empty is fine, but now the Cube has a problem :)

In this place is probably good to ask you why do not use default Gravity parametr instead of Force Field.

Another thing is, if you really need to place Empty > Force in the center of Earth? From my previous test with Fluid it worked just placed at ground level with Strenght -9.81 ... that is not working at the moment for me with default Cube.

I had to increase under Scene Properties > Rigid Body World > Settings > Speed up to 17 to match blender's Gravity fall time 1.10s ... that doesn't make a sense to me. So there seems to be something wrong.

Tip: Gravity parametr in blender can be disabled for whole scene in Gravity tab or just for RBW under Field Weights


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How to add an image as a single key frame
I am working on a 2d animation in which i had to import images from photoshop in order to create moving bg. I am importing image as planes, but it's applied to entire timeline. I want it to be applied to a single key frame. What should I do?

you can animate the image visibility in the Outliner, put your cursor on the camera icon and press i to create a keyframe, then next frame click on the camera icon and press i again

If you don't need to animate in 3d scene, you can animate 2D in blender's Video Editor too.

If you have a sequence of images you want to display in order, one image per frame in the animation, you can convert your sequence into a movie format "Images as planes" supports, such as mp3; enable "Images as Planes" in preferences; and import the movie using "Images as Planes".  If you edit the material for the plane you can set playback options.  If you don't have other tools to make a movie, you can use the VSE as @vklidu suggests to create the movie from an image sequence.

Having similar problem..do you found the way to do this?

I had a kind of similar problem (2d Animation, grease pencil). In my case, drawing each frame made the last frame of the animation I planned (for example: 45 frames planned, one layer) repeat till the last frame of the playback (for example 100 according to the bottom bar where it says "start" and "end"). What I did was delete with the eraser tool the drawing in the frame that started the repetition (following the same example: frame 46) that I didnt want. Then, no more repetition in the timeline or through all the playback.
I dont know if it exist a more simple way to do it, TVPaint and Adobe Animate have more intuitive option to hold a frame to a certain position  of the playback


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Expand / Collapse all hierarchy in Outliner
How do I twirl down everything in a hierarchy in the Outliner? For example, on armatures it's sometimes tiresome having to click on the twirl down-arrow on every single bone if you want an overview of the armature in the Outliner. Is there a quicker way to do this?

Starting point.

This is what I would like to achieve without having to manually click on the twirl down-arrow on every single bone.
Please note: This is just an example armature and maybe not the best example. Sometimes there's armatures with over 100 bones, and I'm more specially talking about those cases where it actually gets very tiresome twirling down everything.

Or you can just press shift+A :)

Simply click on expand arrow with ⇧ Shift key.
It will expand/collapse everything under it. So if you need to

Expand all (under collection) - click on Collection
Expand only specific bone chain - click on Armature

Example with and without ⇧ Shift key:

Or use "+" / "-" key (with cursor in Outliner Editor) to open / close one level.
More details in Blender Manual.

Also, Home key expands everything.

Hi, thanks for the post. This site is not a regular forum, answers should be substantial, stand on their own, and thoroughly explain the solution and required steps. One liners and short tips rarely make for a good answer. If you can, [edit] your post and provide some more details about the procedure and how it works, perhaps add a few images illustrating some steps and final result. See How to write a good answer?, otherwise it may be converted to a comment.


text:
How to bake multiple materials on a single texture
I can not bake my character's materials to a single texture for export into Unity.
When I have the "selected to active" I get an error message "no valid objects". See bottom right.

When I remove "Selected to Active", I can bake the image however the texture ends up looking like this.

So thinking this is a UV unwrap error, and using the tutorials from others. I created a new UV unwrap image. Did a smart unwrap and I get a perfect unwrap, but no baked textured image :-(....

So I short 3 tutorials later, I can't bake multiple textures from a single object onto a single textured image. I realise I must be doing something wrong ...

In each material you have to have selected the same Texture node with image you want to all bake happen. Selected to Active is a feature that let you bake from one object to another.

I'm not following? I've tried baking in UV didn't work in Shader tab that didn't work either.. I'm obviously missing something fundamental? Thanks in advance

Your character contains several materials, Go to Shader editor and for each material place unconnected Texture node as shown already in your screen. It just has to be done for every material node tree. If it is not clear I will create an answer, but here on site has to be an answer already ...

Cube has attached three separate Shaders (materials) - Pink, Green, White ...

To bake them into one texture ... add Texture node with new (empty) image and keep node selected. Do the same for other materials (like here for Pink and White). Just copy&paste node and keep selected.

In case you want bake only color pass, select Diffuse and uncheck Direct and Indirect Light.

Thanks Mate, appreciate your answer.

Ok I found out my problem, FYI for those behind me.
In the shader menu, A new "Image texture" is required for every material, set that new image material to the UV wrap material in the UV editor..
Here is the video that helped me. Thanks One studio
enter link description here


text:
Proper time to bevel?
I am working on a simple monitor with some thin extrusions that follow the outer rim, If I bevel first before extruding the rim I get weird geometry once I start insetting and extruding.
If I extrude the rim first I lose the ability to bevel the corners as much as I need. What is the best way to do this?
This is an add on question to
this.
This is what I want

This is my bevel being restricted because the holding lines that I will eventually extrude out a little.

This is the weird mesh I get when I bevel first and then extrude and inset to layout the screen of the monitor.

This is what the image looks like, the outer gray part is slightly extruded out.

This is the geometry of the mesh, I know its not good, hence this question.

I am just asking what is the correct way to model this so it has good topology?

"Good" topology can be tricky to define. What is good for rendering (tris) may not be good for other purposes like deforming (quads) and so on... could you define the topology you would like to achieve (a sketch would be very helpful) and specify what of your current result is not satisfiying you?

One way would be to start with a plane.
I like to work with the 'Mirror Modifier' so in Edit Mode press W and Subdivide. Then select 5 vertices and hit X to delete them.

Add a 'Mirror Modifier' and check 'Y' and 'Clipping' in the Modifier pane ('X' is checked by default).

Add two 'Loop Cuts' by pressing Ctrl+R. Approximately where the monitor would be (They can be move later with Ctrl+E > Edge Slide). One horizontal and one vertical.

Select the corner vertex and press Ctrl+B then V. Adjust with mouse and roll the mouse wheel to add vertices/smooth. Keep the number of vertices to an even number in case you want to add geometry later.

Select the outer vertices and press E+S to extrude scale.

Now you have a simple base mesh to work with. Possible result below with some additional extrusion:

Thank you, so much more efficient than what I did.


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How to array with Geometry nodes
Well I'm trying to replicate this image using geonodes in blender

But I cant figure out how to make the arrays and for some reason the array modfier does not work with the geonodes.
I only did this part:

Does anyone knows how to do that? THANKS!

Array modifier is not working in your case because your spheres are still just instances, not real mesh. Add a Realize Instances node at the end, right before Group Output and it would work as expected. You can then use the "Object Offset" option of the Array modifier with an Empty object to easily reproduce your spiral. If you want to do everything in GeoNodes, here's one way you could:

You've already done the first part and created a rectangular array of sphere instances. I simply added a second array using a Curve Line to stack them vertically. Accumulate Field node here makes it so that the first instance in this second array is rotated 0.150rad on the Z axis, the second instance is rotated 0.300, third instance 0.450 and so on, creating a spiral.

Thanks God for Accumulating Field node :) Very nice explained.

Just wanted to say thanks, this is the prefect solution I was looking for, for a different problem

you can get this:

with this node setup:


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Dents on a car surfaces?
Does anyone know if there is an addon to draw dents on the surfaces?
I would like to make dents in the body of a car using procedural tools, done with "modeling" the surface.

thanks

there are no add-ons specifically for dents; although there are add-ons for decals which serve a similar, more general purpose.  You can find those with a google search.  However, this stuff is usually done by creating procedural materials.  There are many good tutorials on that.

I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you wanting to modify the geometry or just bump map a surface material?

modify the geometry

Better to insert some reference image to be sure we all speaks about the same ... Something can be done with geometry nodes or modifiers if you premade some system, but I don't know about any addon as well. BTW how do you expect to "draw" a dent?

http://sindirepamt.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/231748292013421.jpg

Sorry I started to create some example, but had no time to finish ... as mentioned there is not an addon for that (from what I know), but seems like move a few vertices manually and use texture scratches and a bit of details by Normal map texture would be all you need ... this is not like a bullet hole you could place anywhere :)


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Annotation Tool - How to control placement of drawing
Even in orthographic views there is 0 control over the depth at which it draws. you draw a line, then pan even a tiny amount and it's obvious the line is nowhere near where it first appeared. I have even experienced it seeming to draw behind the viewport camera position? Not to mention trying to point to a specific vertex or face, where it will randomly draw in front or behind the mesh. I was wondering if anybody has managed to use this tool successfully. Am I missing a vital setting?
I am in 2.9 by the way.
thanks for reading!

By default the depth is determined by the 3D cursor position.
All the settings are in the N panel > Tool > Active Tool > Placement, you can choose between:

3D Cursor: The annotation is drawn perpendicularly to your view and it is placed where your 3D cursor is.
View: The annotation does not depend on the 3D view.
Surface, The annotation is drawn on the surface of the objects.

Also good to know: Ctrl left click to erase (if you use the D shortcut to draw annotation, the erase shortcut is D and right click).
Click on N panel > Tool > Active Tool > Note to set the thickness and color of the stroke.
CLick on the "+" and "-" button to create or delete an annotation, click on the eye icon to switch it visibility:

If you move in the Timeline and draw again, by default it will create a new annotation that starts at this frame. If you want to keep the previous one, click on the Note > Frame: X (Locked) button. To unlock, click again on this button. To delete this annotation on all its frames, click on the X button.

Oh right I wasn't aware you could directly draw with the D shortcut. Makes sense I guess ?

yes it's convenient, but to set the annotation preferences you need to select the tool and go into the tool panel

Thanks for the detailed response, very informative and helpful!


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Baking a Follow Path acts weird
Once again I come for the wisedome of this forum...
I am doing a 2D GP animation of a pencil writing a letter.
I made a stroke, converted it to curve, parented the pen to an empty and a follow path constrains on the empty for the curve...
I struggled but it is working fine now...
BUT baking is reacting weird, I do get the keyframes (visual keying) but the baked animation "springs" away from the curve..l It is still doing the motion but not over the curve...
I suspect a origin/offset thing but can't figure it out on my own...
I am using blender 2.91
Thanks!
Pyrrhon

Please attach your simplified blend file to see your setup. Use https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com and paste given code into your question.

Did you bake visuals?  Did you clear constraints?  If you did the first but not the second, you're double dipping on your follow path.  If you baked visuals, also clear constraints.


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Textures split up when using "Data Transfer" modifier
I have transferred a texture across objects using the "Data Transfer" modifier. But when the texture is on the new object, the textures are split apart strangely (along the seams). How can I fix this?
Because I'm planning to sell this object, I've uploaded a photoscan file with the same problem (it always seems to happen.)

Your file doesn't have the textures packed.

Thanks for notifying me, I just fixed it!

It looks like the data transfer isn't generating UV seams fsr. Maybe you could bake with clean uv's instead of using data transfer.

Yeah, baking worked for me.

Can you explain the process? I'm not quite getting what your saying.

Delete Data Transfer modifier.
Create a UV map.
Create a new image in the image editor.

In the low poly object's material nodes, click the blue thing to make it a separate material from the original object's.
Unlink the image from the Principled BSDF and select the new image.

In the original material, plug the texture into the Material Output.

Select the original object then the low poly object so that it is active.
Make sure the disconnected image node is selected in the node editor.

In Properties Editor → Render Properties, set up the Bake section something like this.(This section is only available for CPU rendering.)

The Extrusion setting is the one to fiddle with.
After setting the render samples to a low number (1 worked for me), click Bake.

This should leave you with a nice new image texture that will work with the UV map that you created.

When I do everything you said, and try to bake them, I get an error message that reads "No active UV layer found in the object"

Did you make a uv map?

Do you mean the thing you named "whoopee"? If that is the case, then yes I did.

No, a UV map not an image texture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7M-B6xnaEM

In other words, what you're asking is: "Did you unwrap your object?"? Because no, I didn't. And if that is what I do, what type of unwrap do I do? Sorry, I'm really not knowledgeable in the area of baking.

Just go into edit mode and press U then select either Smart UV Project or Lightmap Pack to get a quick and dirty unwrap. To get a good UV map you'll want to manually mark the seams and then use Unwrap.

@HISEROD you don't even need the Emission node, just plug image directly into Surface socket of Material Output node

The problem with the data transfer modifier not transferring seams is that the original model didn't have any UV seams marked.
To fix this, select the original model, change to the UV editing layout, and select Seams From Islands.

Now, in the data transfer modifier of the low poly model, Switch to Nearest Face Interpolated for best results in this scenario.

This doesn't yield perfect results, but it does eliminate most of the distortion around seams.

Also, I wouldn't recommend this solution in a case where the original UV map takes up such a tiny amount of the available texture space.


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Can I render out different passes at one time?
I want to render out 1 pass and not the other in my scene, but when I try to do that, blender renders out both passes at once.
Is there a way to disable some render passes so I can render single one at a time?

Disable unwanted passes in View Layer Properties > Passes ... or did I misunderstand your Q? What "both" passes are you speaking about?


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Why is it bad to Tonemap exterior scenes?
Please excuse my ignorance (still trying to wrap my head around this)
First off, I have watched BlenderGuru, CG Cookie and read the BSE threads from TROY_S and others, and followed this comical thread along with going down the "rabbit hole" . I feel I have an ok understanding of this, but certain statements really confuse me.
In this post,

the OP says he would not use tonemapping for exterior scenes and keep it Linear? Why not for exterior?
how would you render a scene and keep it Linear without tonemapping? Would this be done by selecting "none" in the filmic looks?
I thought if you are using "Filmic" from Troy_S you ARE tonemapping while keeping it linear?
... Sorry the more I learn the more confused I get.

Filmic is both a tonemap and a 3D LUT for desaturation in its initial state. The key point is that Filmic operates on the View. That is, the reference remains scene referred linear, and the transform to view is strictly one-way, non-destructive. Even things such as the basic sRGB OETF or the more sophisticated Dolby PQ are in essence tone maps, as some tones are mapped to different encoded values. The line between a pure transfer function and tone map assignment can become quite blurry.
The reason you don't want to apply the tonemap or any nonlinear mangling inter-pipeline is that without a properly linearized reference space, almost every manipulation you perform on the data is broken. Blurs, smears, blends, overs, etc. are all broken if you disrupt the scene referred linear data by applying a nonlinear transform. Applying your aesthetic / encoding options strictly on the view gives you the best of all worlds.
There are a good number of other reasons that you would want to keep creative choices and such isolated to views and looks as well, but for the large part, the above is reason enough.

If I understand correctly, this explains why tonemapping non-linear color spaces is not ideal, but doesn't have anything to do with OP's original question (tonemapping exterior scenes, as opposed to interior scenes).

If the data is going to be displayed on a display, it needs some degree of mapping of values. I strongly suspect that the original quote was how it happens; on the view or modifying linearised values to nonlinear. Former being ideal, latter being problematic. The quoted individual offered up an entirely questionable suggestion.

It's not.
Tonemapping is extremely common for exterior scenes, even outside the CG world. Before computers and exposure bracketing, photographers used graduated ND filters as a rudimentary way to tonemap the sky which is usually over-exposed compared to the rest of the landscape.
Tonemapping is an artistic choice, there are no rules for when you can and can't do it.

The guy who wrote that (rawalanche) seemed to be a "professional". I am just curious to why he would say that? I feel like I am missing something.

and I did ask him but he hasn't responded, so that's why I am asking here.


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How to create clear plastic? (Cycles)
I am trying to make a clear plastic material.
Here is what I have.

I am looking for something more like this. (but darker)

Everything I try looks more like glass than plastic.
I have tried messing with just the refraction node and with the roughness of the shaders but it tends to look more "frosted" where the clear plastic has more of a soft/blurry reflection.
Plus I found the IOR of clear plastic is 1.4 but from looking at different reference pics it doesn't look like there is much refraction going on at all.
Any ideas?

Either reduce the refraction way down, mix the glass shader with a transparent one, or if you want to keep things realistic add a solidify modifier to your mesh with a very low thickness value.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos ahhhh Adding a solidify modifier with an extremely low thickness seems to definitely make it look more plastic with my node set up. Thank you. I will play around with the settings some more but I think that was it. I didnt realize a solidify modifier would change so much on a closed mesh. I thought it was more for flat planes. I will wait to see if anyone comes up with something then I will answer with my node set up. Thanks again.

@icYou Yeah, you need a solidify modifier.

This is very similar to the thin glass problem.
It can be fixed by giving it a thickness, (i.e. Solidify Modifier, as already sugested), which in some cases raises some topology problems, besides the doubled mesh.
Or by faking the surface thickness by not using refraction at all.
This last approach raises another problem: IOR inverts automatically on backside faces (which in this case should be treaten as frontside)... Luckly we can solve that.

Explanation:
When a light ray hits a surface with a refraction shader, the ray will be bent dued to the difference of the light speed from one side of the surface to the other. This speed difference is represented by the IOR and ruled by the Snell's law. When the ray is exiting that medium, the difference of the light speed gets inverted, and so the IOR. Cycles does this automatically, and treats objects as solid (not hollow).

If we want hollow objects, we need to model both outer and inner surfaces of that object, and most of the times is exactly what we do. But there's a nice particularity from this phenomena: if both surfaces are parallel (at least where the ray enters and exits), the outgoing direction will be the same as the incoming direction; and thought the complete light path is not a straight line, the difference is quite small, sometimes smaller than the pixel size, and we can discard all that refraction calculation. A very good example of this are glass windows. In 3D, we call this the 'Thin Wall' or 'Thin Glass' effect, and some renders even have a shader just for this purpose.

In Cycles we can do something similar (treat the surface as a thin wall and discard refractions), but we need to specifically tell the engine that the IOR from a face when viewed from the objects inside, is the same as from the outside.
The nodes in the 'Fixed Backside IOR' frame do exactly that: If 'Backside' is 0 (False), we get (1-0)*IOR+(0*1/IOR)=IOR; if it's 1 (True) then (1-1)*IOR+(1*1/IOR)=1/IOR. Cycles will invert this backface value internally and in the end it stays equal to the initial IOR.
After having the IOR fixed, we can deal with the Reflective/Transmissive sides of the Fresnel formula. I didn't use a complete transparent shader for the transmissive part, because the greater the angle between the incoming ray and the surface normal, the greater the distortion and absorbtion on the light on that path. I used the translucent shader to mimic that effect, but it's just an approximation.

Your result is awesome, and thanks for sharing the node setup. But would you mind explaining what is happening in the node setup? Otherwise all people can do is copy what you did without really understanding how it works.

@secrop can you plz send me the blend file of the above material.

@atek, I never got to save that file (I don't even use this method, since I've already a python node for this). Anyway, this is something one can rebuild in 5 minutes just by replicating the above setup.

@Secrop yes maybe for u 5min or less im newbie learner so to search and find the right nodes and plug thats confusing

@atek, that should be a bigger reason to make it yourself... You'll learn it faster if you're the one to explore all nodes.. Anyway, here it is: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=47599

@Secrop Thanks for giving that value time for making that nodes. Where can i learn nodes from basic. All the youtube video are on topic. Non of video i found from basic what are nodes and how to connect and where they useful.

@atek, the blender's manual (as with any software!) is a good place to begin.

@Secrio the link's dead btw

pasteall deletes posts after a while... the nodes can be recreated from the above screenshots.

Hello, first thanks for this awesome noise-free plastic material. I to get it bumpy just used the normal output of a bump node for all the normal ins but I do not seem to be able to figure out how I could rough the material up, add roughness to it. Do I have to exchange the Transparent or Translucent shader for a glass one or what am I missing. Thanks for your help appreciate your work :)

@Phönix64 creating a roughness version needs something different from the setup above. You'd probably get a better answer if you post a new question.

@Secrop okay thanks, I posted a new question:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/243183/rough-transparent-plastic-material-with-fake-hollow-inside


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Workflow Question: Texture Painting (after Dynatopo)
I have come across a few tutorials about texture painting. I have a question about the workflow though. This answer doesn't really answer my question.
After sculpting a character with Dynatopo, I then want to texture paint it. I understand that retopo is the best way to go for this and then texture paint it.
However I do NOT want to retopo (wont be animated), I have come across a few professional tutorials that mention there is a quicker way to texture paint WITHOUT retopo, but they dont say how to do it.
So my question is what is the quicker way (workflow)? Its very cumbersome to try and texture paint with the horrible UV's after dynatopo.
I would appreciate any tips you have.
What is he doing here? I really don't want to spend $70 just for this quick tip.

This sounds like Disney Ptex. It is currently not integrated into Blender, though.

YanSculpts is doing a basic unwrap of the model in your link.
From MarkG's answer:

1. Create clothes for a model. You can lay a mesh out on your model, and have it "cling" to the form[...]
  2. Create a better arranged mesh to sculpt on [... Subdivision] creates VERY dense meshes. A better approach would be to retopolize your mesh before scultping so the edge flow of your polygons worked with you, instead of against you. [...]
  3. Lower the density of your mesh so you can animate it.

Retopology is simply creating a similiar shape with different topology. (Usually by snapping new vertices onto existing high density faces.)

To paint your model, you have two basic options:

Texture Painting

A UV texture is a picture (image, sequence or movie) that is used to color the surface of a mesh. The UV texture is mapped to the mesh through one or more UV maps.

PRO works with low and varying density of vertices; this means highly detailed paint jobs on low vertex counts are possible
PRO export: colors are on a 2d image, which can be edited in image editing applications (Photoshop, Krita, Gimp)
CON we need to uv unwrap the image onto a 2d surface beforehand
CON with complex distorsion, can be slow on parts of the model

Vertex Painting

Vertex Painting is a simple way of painting color onto an object, by directly manipulating the color of vertices, rather than textures [...]

PRO no need to unwrap the mesh, can start painting immediately
CON some angles and occlusions will leave lone vertices unpainted (in Blender) unless you rotate/zoom/readjust the view
CON needs a high vertex count, since color data is applied only per single vertex and interpolated in between them

With both methods, you can not go back to dynamic topology (changing the vertex count), otherwise your uv or vertex color data will be reset. In both cases you may edit the mesh in Edit Mode preserving the existing data.
The manual explains both processes, well. I would recommend texture painting. Although texture painting is usually not done with very dense models, its only drawback is speed (as Blender isn't designed to unwrap high density models).
If you can easily go into edit mode, navigate and unwrap by pressing U > Unwrap, without Blender constantly freezing, then proceed to unwrap.
If your model is to dense you can try to decimate it with the decimate modifier, which is an automated form of retopology as well and provides very bad topology. But as long as it doesn't cause visual artefacts, bad topology shouldn't concern you, since your aren't planning on animating the geometry.
Most dynatopo topology can be decimated quite a bit with little visual difference.

From Craig's answer:

as far as I know, there is no way to 'texture paint' without having UV mapping on a new lower poly mesh.

The basic UV unwrapping process can be done with a high density mesh. (It just can get very slow computationally.)

Select your model, go into edit mode, select all vertices and press U and choose unwrap.

This will probably be slow and produce a horrible result. YanSculpts model has 23,000 vertices and he solves the unwrap by only unwrapping small parts at a time. To do this, box/circle select some vertices, then press U to unwrap. You can immediately position them in the 2d UV layout (UV map).

L for island selection. G, R, S and many other hotkeys work as in the 3d view.
Read up on other unwrapping methods.
Once unwrapped you can load an image texture or create a new image texture and save it.

Setting the 3d viewport to textured viewport shading will display the active texture (with Blender Internal).
Now you can edit texture paint mode, set the image as the source and start painting on it.

With vertex paint the unwrapping process is skipped.

Thank you, unwrapping it in pieces is what I was missing (never thought to do that.) Thank you for the time put in this. I will make sure its accepted answer and bounty when it lets me.

You could use vertex paint if you want - as far as I know, there is no way to 'texture paint' without having UV mapping on a new lower poly mesh.


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Speed strip not working when rendering video?
I am using the blender video editor, I'm brand new to it. I have applied a speed strip to my video to slow it down, and when I view it in the editor window, it is indeed slowed down. However, when I render the video, the speed strip is seemingly not applied properly. What am I doing wrong?


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fit nurbs surface to a point cloud
There are many tools and tutorials to go from a surface to a point cloud, but I have a noisy, 3d scanned point cloud that aproximates a bumpy but mostly flat surface, and I would like to find a best fit surface automatically.
There are many commercial products, but I am having trouble finding a open source option for a fairly straightforward problem.

Well... this is not a "nurbs" curve, but it might be useful.
If it's a "height field" (instead of a 3d object) you can either create a grid and make a TIF like DEM (digital elevation model).
You can take min heights, you get a (DTM - digital terrain model - as long as you have filtered the ground points) / max (DSM - digital surface model) / mean or any other statistics.
It's achievable with geometry nodes.
Source cloud
Given an object with "points" to serve as a point cloud like this:

Main geometry nodes
We can take any "mesh" object and add these geometry nodes, which:

Creates a grid (pixels) based on the point cloud size and given pixel size

PS: in this case, the points on the grid are the "centers" of the pixels (this leads to a shrinking of the borders when pixel sizes are big)

Loops each pixel (grid point) doing:

Get cloud points with XY within the pixel
Sets the height of the point (pixel) as the mean of the filtered cloud points (can change it to max, min or custom calculation)
Deletes grid points with no data (no cloud points were within that pixel)

This can be improved further to interpolation from neighbors, but that would be an extra work
Pixel sizes can be increased to have full coverage

Example with small pixel size (and some "no data" pixels):

Example with big pixel size (full coverage):

Cloud Properties node group
Gets a bounding box of the cloud and calculates its size and center to help grid creation. ("Vector mean is (v1 + v2) / 2)

Make Grid node group
Takes the size, pixel size and center and create a grid.
Each point in the grid is the "center" of the pixel (half pixel size is lost at the borders)

Loop Pixel node group
For each pixel (Grid point), separates the cloud poings inside this pixel, gets the mean and sets the grid height:

Get Pixel Points node group
Filters the cloud points that are within the pixel limits:

Gift shader
And a gift shader that shows DEM elevation by color:

File


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DirectX exporter plugin for Blender 4?
Is there a plugin for exporting to .x for Blender 4? I've seen similar plugins for earlier versions but I don't think they'll work on 4

have you tried?

You might try this exporter in Blender 4.0.2: https://github.com/DodgeeSoftware/io_scene_directx It doesn't throw any errors, but I don't know if it works like you expect it to.


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Bake exact world position values to image texture using UV map
Given a mesh with a UV map, I want to bake the exact world position to an image texture. Just like a normal bake, where the RGB value of each pixel in the image texture represents the x/y/z coordinate of the surface normal, but now with the x/y/z world coordinates.
Just to be clear, for the standard cube, the normal bake would look like this:

That's what I want, but for the world position instead.
It is important to me that the position values do not get rescaled or distorted in any way because I need to use them for a downstream scientific application (the mesh represents some object in a volumetric dataset, and rescaling/distortion will mess up the correspondence between the mesh and the volumetric data).
I would like to do this via a script, if possible. Ideally I would be able to access the result as a numpy array in Blender's scripting window.
I have so far tried two things: baking in Cycles with Bake Type "Position" often just results in a black image. Setting up a material with nodes Geometry(Position) -> (Color)Emission(Emission) -> (Surface)Material Output and baking in Cycles with Bake Type "Emit" results in a distorted image. The position values get rescaled in a way that I don't understand and also non-linearly distorted.
I could implement my own position bake "manually" by coding up something, but I think there must be a solution using Blender's own tools?
Thanks!

The second process is probably the correct one, can you show the results for analysis?

For the color values being wrong part, it's probably due to color management. In render properties ->color management, set the view transform to standard.


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How can I smooth the curvature of this shape?
I want to smooth the XY curvature of the following solid shape:

If I add a subdivision surface modifier it gets smoothed in all directions, so the "steps" along the top edge get smoothed out too. If I add supporting geometry (loopcut and slide) to bring back the steps along the top edge I end up sharpening the curve also.
Without the subdivision modifier I can add vertical loop cuts to create more geometry, but then I have to manually move each new loop in the XY plane to a position that smooths the curve which is time consuming and highly error prone. I basically want to add more loopcuts in the vertical plane and have their position interpolated so that the curve becomes smoothed out.
What is the best way to do this in Blender?
Edit: For clarity, these are the "steps" along the top edge I'm referring to:

... And this is the curve that I want to smooth/add more geometry to so it doesn't look so angular.

hello do you have an image of what you want to achieve? what are the steps you are talking about?

@moonboots I've added an image to show the "steps" along the top edge I'm referring to.

You could use this kind of topology:

Which will work fine with a Curve modifier:


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Homogeneous Matrix Wrong Orientation from Blender, come from PyOpenGL
Good afternoon guys, I have an animation in PyOpenGL, which receives the coordinates of a file, and then animates an ROV.
This animation calculates the homogeneous ROV matrix containing its position and Orientation in certain instants of animation, (Ex, 10 seconds of animation are 2000 lines of coordinates "X Y Z").
I'm bringing this simulation to Blender, for working on it creating a more real world for animation.
But I'm having problems.
I have a CAD Object that is an ROV, and when I step at all instants of the animation this Homogeneous Matrix, the position of the ROV is correct, but the orientation of it goes wrong, inside the Blender.
It seems that Phi, Theta and Csi are reversed. The orientation should go to the left, but it appears going right. How can I check this and change the orientation of the object, which is being passed by the homogeneous Matrix:
Would anyone help me understand why this occurs?
Blender work with Matrix Homogeneous different from OpenGL?
Codes:
Sample Matrix homogeneous:
posture =
[ 0.21468954 -0.86920989 -0.4454017  -1.61063969
  0.65986419 -0.20712563  0.72227293  2.18389297
 -0.72006083 -0.44896907  0.52909279 -7.34360504
  0.  0.  0.  1.]

self.owner.localTransform = posture

Result:

Rov should be in the right orientation, with his forehead elevated. He is inverted and with the front pointing down.
Thanks for helping.

You might have to check on your object local axis orientation.

Hi hawkenfox, I put Euler XYZ. If I change to Euler YXZ, ZYX, XZY, ... there is no change in the animation.

Blender uses the right hand orientation and has the z-axis pointing up does that match what you used in pyopengl?

Thanks @sambler , I found out what's wrong, in Blender I have to Z-UP, but I need Z to be DOWN. I tried to change my object by enabling the "Inverted Z depth" option on the property, but I did not succeed, nothing has changed. I tried to export my CAD object as "FBX" and put the "UP" "-Z UP" and "Z UP" option, and import it into blender, but also did not change the animation. It was the same, inverted. How do I invert the Blender to Z = Down, or invert the Z?

Not my thing - the fbx importer uses axis_conversion from bpy_extras.io_utils


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how do i add gloss to, let's say, just over the nose?
I can select the faces(geometry) and assign a different material, but, of course, that's not gonna look very good. I don't want the gloss to cut off sharply at the edges (of the faces.) So, how do i go about doing this? Do i have to use an image with an alpha channel?
Thanks!

Could you add a glossy material just to the nose mesh...? or, wherever you wish?.  You can assign specific materials to specific vertices, in edit mode.

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/44934/what-is-this-type-of-texture-called

I'm only fairly new to Blender, but I believe that if you paint the area you want glossy in Texture Paint mode with a new black image as the base (and the glossy part painted white) you can then save that image. Then create a Gloss Node with your newly created image as the Fac input and use a Mix Node to mix it with your skin node/s.

I hope that makes sense. Unfortunately I won't be able to use my computer for a few days so I can't take screenshots to explain.

Danial is right. Please see my answer here, where I show how to use this method: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/44934/what-is-this-type-of-texture-called

You can use texture paint but for that you would also need additional UVs.
So a much easier way (albeit not as precise) would be to use vertex paint.
You can simply switch from Object Mode to Vertex Paint and find all the brush settings you need in the T panel.


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Why is my Cycles shadow bake all black?
I'm new to Blender and I'm trying to bake the shadows of an object. But each time I do, the bake turns out all black. Every other baking option (Ambient Occlusion, Combined, Normal, etc.) works fine.
thanks!

render passes:

Just covering the basics: Are there any lamps in the scene?

yes, of course. i have added planes with emission materials as light sources. i also tried using the Lamps in add menu. no luck so far. like i said, i'm only having this problem when using Shadow as bake type. every other type works just fine.

Just making sure. :) Can you show a screen capture of your render passes in the properties window?

hey! i've added a screencap of the render passes to the original post. i tried checking the Shadow option (i'm not exactly sure what render passes are) and rebaking - still nothing. thank you so much for trying to help me out :]

The limitation of baking Shadows is the same currently as with rendering a Shadow Pass in Cycles. The Shadow Pass will only receive its contribution from Blender Lamps. It doesn't work currently with mesh lights, which you are using to emit light into your scene. Try adding a sunlamp just for testing purposes and check if the Shadow Pass then bakes as expected. In my tests here it did. If that works, replacing mesh lights with area lights might be the way to go for you.

Here's a potential workaround, based on what @aliasguru said about mesh lights not baking in Cycles:

Save a copy of your .blend.
Make the diffuse material of the bake object white.
Do a diffuse bake.
Use the result as a shadow bake.


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Area lights not rendering on single frame in animation
I have a blender animation that I have been trying to render, but I discovered that for no apparent reason, a single frame consistently renders without any of the area lights in the scene.  I have re-rendered it several times, but it is always significantly darker than the frames immediately before and after it.  Is there any explanation for why this is happening, and how to fix it?
Download the blend file
Frame 86: (How the animation is supposed to look)

Frame 87: (How this one frame looks)

You might want to pack all the external data into the .blend file and then upload it again because we cannot see textures or your baked fluid. To do so you have to go File => External Data => Pack All Into .blend

I packed the texture in, but the baked fluid is 250Mb, so I'm not sure what to do about that

The particle bake is still running for me... but in meantime, I have notice that your fluid material has two chained shaders (diffuse as input for glass)... AFAIK this is not a normal setting

There is only one missing texture in the file and I don't think it will change something significantly even if packed. I wasn't able to repeat that behaviour with UV grid texture assigned to the floor, with frames 77, 86, 87 and 89 rendered (I used lower quality for fluid baking though). The only thing to suggest as of now - do not plug output from Diffuse BSDF to Color input of Glass BSDF; plug a simple color (fluid material)

Rendered frame 87, after a fuid bake from the settings of your file : https://i.gyazo.com/9951a28f0f2420ed6f91a46b06aff33e.png... so there is something else. On which system are you working (OS, Blender version, GPU..) ?

I'm using Blender 2.77a on Windows 10 x64 with a GTX 750ti, but it does the same thing when I render it on any one of my other computers

I am on Blender 2.77a, Windows 10 x64, GTX 980M. So very close to yours. As a placeholder I can render this frame for you if we don't find the solution here (but yes this is not an explanation)


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Very noisy render with emission+glossy shader
I'm trying to learn some basic modeling in blender, working on a long concrete hallway. there are supposed to be fluorescent lights on the ceiling of said hallway, and i made those out of emission+glossy shaders in the mesh itself. but this is resulting in an extremely noisy render, even at 1000+ samples.
I've tried changing clamp, filter glossy, caustics, nothing seems to be effective. might just be my pc, not sure.
here's the .blend file: https://mega.nz/#!LUdUGIaB!QFpdxi3DafcFbm5hpdU-qgo8K-LmMP5TZKD1lagCrK0
pc specs:
OS: windows 10 pro 64-bit
CPU: AMD Athlon II x4 640
Motherboard: MSI 870-G45
RAM:8GB
GPU: MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650
render @ 128 samples:

it might just be too dark i dunno

I suggest you remove the caustics (in the "light paths" section of the render panel). This is not a real solution as you will loose a bit of realism... but...

128 samples is relatively low. Try 250 or more. It is also too dark.

The image looks almost black on my phone, so I'd say you should try turning the lights up a bit.

using the emission shader as a light source instead of an actual lamp object always results in a VERY noisy scene. Always try to avoid it and use lamps.

this is a very complex topic and would be to much for a single post answer. but i am trying to give you a rough understanding about what you have to change:
In the virtual space, everything is about faking. not about recreating the real world. this means that it only has to look real from the field of view, but everything else does not matter.
This means: remove everything that does not matter. you do not need a complete interior, remove the all walls that are not visible to the eye. this way every sample that would bounce against the wall, now flies into infinity and does not produce more bounces (that would slow down your render).
also: do NEVER (if possible) light your scene whit mesh light. mesh light is way slower and produces much noise. again, just fake it! in the most cases nobody will notice that you only put a single spotlight there (make sure that multiple importance is activated in the lights material settings). the bigger the light source, the less noise.
also some technical stuff. set the render settings as followed:
sampling: set "clamp direct" and "inderect" to 9.
light paths: "filter glossy" to 0.5-2 (higher values mean less noise but more blury pictures).

Here are a few things that could help you...you will need to really ramp up your sample count though which will lead to MUCH longer render times.
A nice SE answer:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/18305/28015
This is a fairly simple article on the topic:
https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/7-ways-get-rid-fireflies/
Another option (that REALLY helps especially with animations) is to use baking. You can bake the lighting with an incredibly high sample count (10000 or something) overnight, then not worry about recalculating later. But that's a whole other topic...here is a nice quick start tutorial for baking in cycles:
https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/introduction-baking-cycles/


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Why does my character model bunch up when posing?
I make a fan model of a game character, but when I pose his fingers they bunch up.
I can't understand why it does that, if anyone has an explanation, please help.

Short answer - Weight Painting. If you need more, post your .blend file to Blend Exchange. Also see weird rigging problem.

I used the auto weight setting,and then it scrambled my vertex groups.

It should have. That's kind of the point. Did it not improve anything? If it didn't please consider posting your .blend file to Blend Exchange and editing your question to add the generated link. Notify me when done.

I did it,and it screwed up the vertex groups,so I fixed the groups and sure than enough,it  started screwing up again.

Posted the blend,please send it back to me when it's fixed,no changes to the mesh,just please fix the weights,and no releasing it to YouTube or Steam.

Edited my answer. If it works, please consider accepting it by pressing the checkmark in the upper left-hand corner of my answer. It would help me greatly and make me very happy.

Okay,I didn't mean the entire mesh,I just meant please correct the weights to the finger vertex groups.

The finger has only two segments,I'm gonna add a third and see if it's any different.

It's me again User27033.
I figured it out.
What I did was that I duplicated and separated the hands and hand bones, then I parented the hands to the bones but you have to separate the bones first by the left hand and then the right.
Then after you have used Armature Deform > With Automatic Weights, change the parent on the Armature Modifier in the Modify tab, delete the attached bones to the hands that have been detached from the mesh but not the main bone group and then join the hands back to the mesh and rejoin the vertices.

The weights probably aren't proper. Click on the mesh and press Ctrl + Tab, then click the bone you're moving. The more red an area is, the more it's influenced by that bone. Play around with it until you achieve the desired result.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but the following is my procedure.
I  LMB selected the mesh and then Shift +  LMB selected the armature. I keyed Ctrl + P and chose Armature Deform > With Automatic Weights. I did not do any additional weight painting or anything. I was able to produce the following results.
Mesh:

Rendered, 19 Samples:

.blend file:


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How to copy extrude/bevel data across multiple curve objects?
I have imported 100 SVG objects (curves), these objects all need to have the exact extrude and bevel amounts.
I am not able to use CNTRL + L to link object data or text data without changing the actual object.
Does anyone know a quicker way to do this to all my objects?
Perhaps a python script (or any other way that is quicker than manually doing this)?

can't you join them?

Doesn't "changing value of a property of the active curve while holding the Alt button" working for all the selected curves too?

@UanpisCardada Good Idea I guess I can do that.

@Carlo WOW, I just tried it. Works perfect. I never knew you could do that.

@Carlo if you want to make that an answer, I will make sure you get the checkmark, if not I will make an answer, that is a pretty handy trick.

Yep, it's pretty handy and it works in multiple areas of blender.  Feel free to post an aswer, I'm going to bed now. Here's a related quesition: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/79541/change-multiple-custom-properties-simultaneously

Possible duplicate of How to unset multiple values from Bezier objects?

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/104461/bevel-and-resolution-multiple-selected-curves

I want to thank @Carlo for this handy tip.
This can be used in many different areas of Blender (I will post more scenarios when I have time).

Shift Select all the objects you want to change.
With the last object selected make sure you hold down ALT and change the properties. This should affect all the objects you had selected.

A true life saver!

This is a golden tip!

Made an addon that allows you to copy all settings to multiple text objects in a click (choosing the settings you'd like copied). Also works for SVG and Curves. You can get it here:
https://gabrielmoro.gumroad.com/
https://blendermarket.com/creators/gabrielmoro


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Does render samples matter when using imported images in Compositor?
I rendered out an .EXR image sequence (300 frames) at 2000 samples. I opened up a brand new blend file and imported the images to add a "glare" effect in compositor. When I re render out these images (with the glare effect) does the render samples affect the output? Better yet, What in the render tab effects the image sequence with any added effects?

Samples are a Cycles Rendered exclusive setting. If you are not rendering from a 3D scene, and with Cycles specifically, they should have no influence

Samplings do not count in the Compositing process.
If you don't have any RenderLayer Node in the NodeTree, the 3D scene won't even be rendered, but the nodeTree will so, it doesn't count. You can have strange artifacts in glare if the Quality of the node is set to low.


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Render out an animation from Compositor
I usually use After Effects for my compositing but thought I would try and give Blender a chance (since I really like the glare effect).
I have no clue why my renders keep coming out blank. What am I doing wrong?
I rendered out a 300 frame animation as an EXR. I then created a new scene and loaded in those 300 images as an image sequence. My node setup is below.

This is the outputted image sequence:

Does it have something to do with this node?

@MrZak Nope I get a completely black (blank) image. I think I am using the compositor completely wrong. Not sure what I am missing. I updated with some new images.

Not sure how do you get node without any outputs.. But anyway if you add Image node, point it to rendered .exr (or just drag and drop exr on the compositor window) and connect that to the Composite node you should be fine. If your screenshots mean that you disabled RenderLayer and left it as connected to Composite node then it's obviously nothing will be rendered.

@MrZak Ok now I am really confused. To answer your response, isnt that what I did with the above pic? also I finally got it to render with the image. It looks like I had just one frame in the sequencer and because I wasnt on that one frame it was rendering blank. I just deleted that frame and it renders fine. But now I am having another issue with it re rendering my 3d model instead of using the image sequence I have already rendered. Im so lost. I will go read the manual a little more in depth. Thanks for your time.

Blender will render what is on render layer if RenderLayer node is present in the tree.. regardless whether it was connected or not. I'd suggest using one file for modeling and rendering and another for compositing and not mix them up, this could allow to avoid confusing.

@MrZak  Thank you. I opened up a brand new file and everything is working perfect. I think I will stick to your way for now until I better understand the nodes in compositor. One last (dumb) question. With the new blend file for compositing does render samples matter? I am just adding a glare effect and my original .exr's were rendered at 2000 samples. With the new compositing file what would the render samples be "sampling" how many samples do I need for just a glare effect? Thanks again.

Afaik it doesn't matter; compositor overpasses scene setup so as I tested it doesn't depend on sampling.

Possible duplicate of Render result is completely blank?

I would close this, as the blank frames resulted from a frame in the sequencer. (The third solution in the linked answer.)


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Animation Nodes - Have an effector control the rotation of many objects
I am trying to wrap my head around animation nodes, I have followed This tutorial and it was easy to understand and do. However I am trying to do something a little different and I am completely lost.
In the attached picture all these objects are separated and put in a group. I would like to have my empty sphere control the rotation and falloff of each object. So I can show the tiles flipping over.
The above tutorial is only for making a grid from a single object, I don't need the grid and I have many objects. So I don't know how to convert this to what I need.
Any help with the node set up would be appreciated.

I would of added my original node set up, but I would rather not be laughed off BSE. lol

Not sure I understand what you are trying to do. You just want to rotate the tiles based on the falloff? Isn't that what he described in the tutorial?

Yes it is, but the problem I am having is he does it for a single object. I cant figure out how to get many objects to work. I tried "Objects from Group" node and "Objects list" node and it doesn't work the same. I am going to put a bounty in this in 30 minutes (have to wait the for the stupid bounty timer).

Your Question
We can compose a transformation matrix out of the locations, then generate the rotation matrix using the Offset Matrices Node and then set the objects transformations to this new matrices.

Warning - Make sure not change the locations of the matrices or set the locations of the object by mistake to any value.
Recommended
If your objects are exactly the same, then you can replicate them using the Object Instancer node and set their locations using thew Distribute matrices node (See my answer here: Answer):

Note - If the object has modifiers and you want to copy them, use Copy Full Object option in the Object Instancer.
If you objects are different, then you can replace the Object Instancer with the Object From Group just as you did.

Thank you so much. I don't really understand AN and I was missing the "Compose Matrix" node (will research what this does). I knew someone would find this simple. I have a lot of learning to do. I will make sure I award the bounty but its making me wait 24 hours. I thought I had to use an "object transform output" node this whole time.


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Python API : Which alternative to 'collection.objects.link' for many objects?
I have generated objects to add in a collection using a python script.
When adding about 3500 objects, I have performance issues : it takes about 0.5 second to run the following python loop.
    collection = bpy.data.collections.new('arrDynamic')

    for obj in allObjs:
        collection.objects.link(obj)

    bpy.context.scene.collection.children.link(collection)

I could not find an API that would allow me to add multiple objects at once.
Is there any simple way I could use to improve the performance for adding many objects in a collection ?
Edit I initially had much larger performance issues, which were caused by objects using materials referencing image files with incorrect paths.

That's pretty much instantaneous for me. Maybe give a self-contained example (that shows allObjs getting created).

@scurest Thanks for taking the time to look, I tried to repro from an empty script - I rephrased my question as my huge time values were caused by an another issue (missing images in materials) :}

Re edit a classic case of XY Problem wiki link or on meta   XY Problem Had a doozy once where I failed to see a comma for a period. Re performance  May get a squeak more using a generator. Will depend on  creation of the objects / data.  Have never tried timing it, did notice that eg obs = (bpy.data.objects.new(f"Foo{n}", mesh) for i in range(n)) (surprisingly appeared  to outperform ob.copy() )   Perhaps [edit] in a runnable test case scenario and put up as a challenge.


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How to access geonode generated "instance ID" from Cycles material?
I generate some instances using geometry nodes, each instance has an id attribute.
Here is a spreadsheet snapshot showing generated instances :

My geometry nodes are seen below :

I'd like to use this id from the Cycles material applied to the instances.
So far, I've tried using the Attribute node, Object Info / Object Index, and Particle Info / Index - without success.
My current attempt of shader nodes looks like this :

Is there a way to access the id value from the material shaders nodes ?
I'm aware that using the "Realize Instances" nodes I could create a mesh with custom attributes - but I need to preserve the actual instancing for complex geometry.

AFAIK this is not possible with complex geometries and without realize instances right now.

you can use this node setup:

spreadsheet:

shader:

result:

I'll edit my question to be more specific, but I want to preserve my instances - as I need to have many of them, with complex geometries - so "Realize Instances" is too memory hungry for my needs.

AFAIK this is not possible at the moment without realize instances and with complex geometries. If you would have simple spheres....there are some mathematical workarounds...

I've created the same setup here, now I'm a bit confused... when I use the Set Material node on the original geometry of the cube, the 8 vertices show values 0.000 to 7.000 for myID - and the cube is colored according to the vertex indices. But when I try to do it with the realized instances, the column myID reads 0.000 for all vertices and so the cylinders (or in my case icospheres) get the color for 0. I switched from the Index node I used originally in my setup to ID like you, but nothing changes. The results are exactly the same, the cylinders stay at the color for 0.

what version r u using? If you provide your blend file, i will check it out ;)

so it doesn't work with realize instances and it does work without realize instances!? wow....show me your blend file! ;)

did you change the output value to float? i had problems when it was on integer...although THIS was/is really weird...

3.0.0, and I tried it with 3.1.0 Alpha. Yes, I tried default float at first, then integer and now I'm back to float. No, I didn't say it works without realize instances, no need for "wowing" here. I said it works with the original cube geometry.

ok, then i don't understand what you did...

Me neither. By the way, on the original cube mesh it works with Float and Integer.

as i said...if you provide your blend file, i will give it a try

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

@Chris habe im Chat ein Bild und einen Link gepostet

@Chris I wish this bloody chat would sent notifications that someone posted something ;)


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How to extend lower vertices in model to x-y layer
I was able to get an STL of a racetrack with elevation variation. The mesh is therefore varying in all 3 axes. I want to extend the lower vertices of the mesh to the x-y layer. Is there an efficient way to do this?
I can only think of selecting the lowest vertices of the mesh and setting the z-coordinate to 0 but this means selecting thousands of vertices.
I tried to select by mouse looking from the bottom up but of course this also selects lots of other vertices. I tried to set up a python script to check for similar x-y coordinates and then check if there is a lower z coordinate but this is also very error prone.
Is there some simpler method I am missing?
Here is a screenshot of the mesh to help visualize it

Hello. Maybe check every edge of the mesh. If the Z coordinate of both vertices linked to this edge are more than x units, select the bottom most one and add it to your list.

I haven't found a foolproof solution to only select the right vertices, however I used a script to sort the vertices by x and y coordinates in a list, and then calculate the moving average of the Z coordinate over the next 20 or so vertices. Then only the vertices are selected, which have a Z coordinate below this value.
With this approach there were still a few vertices, which were not selected or false positives, but those could be corrected manually within a relatively short time.

Could also select all vertices that are attached to a face pointing globally downward (face normal z component > -0.9 for instance)


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Pop up notifications are missing
The pop up messages/notifications do not display when I complete actions. I am using 4.2, previously when I saved my project, at the bottom centre of the screen, a pop up message would say 'project saved' or when I merged vertices by distance, a pop up message would say '5 vertices merged'.
But at the moment none of these pop up anymore and I don't know how to get the back. I might have hit a short cut and now I don't know how to reverse it.
Can anybody help me with this?

Make sure you have enabled Show Status Bar in the Window menu:

Apart from disabling it in the menu, you could have accidentally clicked and dragged between lowest editor window and the status bar, dragging it down will hide it.
And by clicking and dragging upwards from the bottom you can get it back, alternatively to enabling it in the menu.


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The gpu usage rate is low, but it's stuttering too much
I'm using a blender and it's smooth to move the screen, but if I move an object with a high number of vertexes for animation, it stumbles too much. And I think it's too low usage. gpu usage is around 1% to 7%. Even though I'm moving the rigging. I wanted to increase usage and reduce stumblimg, so I tried it while searching the internet, such as Nvidia 3D setup and GeForce Experience, but it still stumbles. I bought a computer for the first time, do I need to set it up separately? I don't know what parts should be written down, so I'll write down only what seems important. AMD Ryzen 9 7900 12-Core Processor NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER At the bottom, the blender is running.And I used cuda and checked gpu.

Check this out: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/295284/blender-uses-cpu-instead-of-gpu?rq=1

Thank you for your reply, but I'm not a CPU overheating issue, and I'm using CUDA and I checked the gpu option.

In Blender, you need to go in Edit > Preferences > System, and select a GPU option there. Usually, the Optix option is the best for NVidia. If that isn't available, select a GPU option that is available.
Then in the render options, you must select GPU Compute for the renderer and some other things.
Make sure you have the latest GPU driver installed.

Thank you for your reply, but I'm not a CPU overheating issue, and I'm using CUDA and I checked the gpu option.

And I installed the latest NVIDIA driver. I also installed experience.

You are talking about render settings, while in the question there are remarks like "move an object with a high number of vertexes" and "moving the rigging", which sounds like working in the viewport to me, not rendering.


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How do I have my setting for "Holdout" on one object but not another?
I'm relatively new and I'm working on a cup spilling animation. I have a back plane with my video on it, with then my cup and liquid in front of it.

And now here it is from the viewport rendered camera view.

The problem I'm having is with my cup. In this rendered view, the whole animation looks completely fine. However, when I go to actually render it, the cup is cut-out from the plane behind it, creating a mask in the video that looks like this (same exact setup as previous picture, just rendered).

Is there any way to to cut that part of liquid out of frame while keeping my back video, or is that only possible with masking/compositing? By the way, I also used "Background Images" in the camera, which is what filled in the mask in the rendered camera view. Thanks in advance.

A background image in the camera will not be visible in the real render, so it doesn't fill up the holdout. How is your compositing set up, you're not showing it in the question? You have to alpha over the render over the original footage.

You need to composite the rendered image with the backplate video with an Alpha Over node. Use the compositor workspace

Ok thank you guys. I know absolutely nothing about compositing, and was wondering if I would be able to achieve this without it. I don't know the rules here, but since you guys technically answered my question do I have to do something?

I ended up compositing using the start of this video https://youtu.be/Kw-RRyAXumc?si=YlA3GUcJ1BXjQpFS. Then it worked like I wanted it to.


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How to disable word background transparency only for one View Layer on Eevee
Eevee doesn't have the Environment pass, so I'm looking for a solution to have one View Layer with the World background and another View layer with the background transparent to composite on top of the previous one.
If I activate the world background transparency it makes the sky layer also transparent and if I deactivate it the second layer doesn't have an alpha channel.
Is there any more recent method to do this in Eevee?
The purpose of this rendering is to an animation, not a still.
My world comes from an add-on called "Real-Sky" but you can imagine it like the standard blender sky texture.
This is a rendering with only one view layer, it's just all in one:

Now I'm aiming to a bit more control over the Sky, Background and Foreground and as such I ideally would want something like this:

... This screen was achieved by rendering the layers individually and hand activating and deactivating "world transparency" on the render panel.

Not sure what your goal is, but you can duplicate the scene and set the duplicate to have a transparent background. Then in the compositor add an additional Input->Render Layers and set the scene. Both Scenes will be rendered and available for compositing.

Hey Rob! Thanks for your fast reply! You're talking sence, it may work that way indeed, although I'm a bit worried with time and memory increases. Allow me to clarify a bit too, I'll try to add new pictures on the first topic with further explanations.

Hey again Rob! Your solution of using 2 scenes as worked and solved the issue. I only had to make one new scene and add the same world to it. As soon I change the world in the main scene (the one with transparency activated) it updates to the new scene (with no transparency). Thanks!


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How to model a folded magazine?
The primary part I'm confused about:
The thickness of the magazine with slightly bent pages underneath other pages?
Do I model each page individually?
I would like the edges of the underlying pages to show also.
What is best practice? (going for photo realism, its ok if its high poly)

For simple page deform check this: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/54114/how-to-make-peeling-edges-of-a-paper for the whole magazine, well... I'm struggling with this too. Check also this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBIxcm-T3Oo&t=40s

I would model the profile of the open magazine -

then extrude it to the height of the magazine and add a solidify modifier.

One end can be scaled out to get the variation at the top. Apply the solidify and add a crease to the outer edges, then use an edge split and subsurf modifier to finish it off. Some parts can then be expanded where the pages are separated.

I would then add the "space" between the pages and the page variations to the texture.


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Quickly Save multiple images
I am going to upload a file to be rendered on RenderST. My .blend has a video file in it so I am not able to use "auto pack data" since it does not pack video files.
The problem is I have 100+ images associated with my .blend file. These are pulled from many different files from our work servers and I have no idea where the original files are all located. So I need to save out these images one by one from blender to put in their own folder to upload to RenderSt.
Is there a quicker way of doing this? maybe a python script?
EDIT:
Added pic to make it a little clearer

First, Blender can pack videos.  I just verified it.  But if something is preventing you, can you temporarily remove the video, pack, then unpack the image files to your desktop, then add the video file back later?

That is a good idea, however how do I unpack the images to desktop?  I see something that says "Unpack all files" but its grayed out.

Uncheck the "Automatically pack into Blend" check box then it should allow you to do it

ahhhh, you're awesome! that did the trick. Thank you very much. I know you said you just verified that videos can be packed but everywhere I look it says that videos DON'T get packed. I wonder why everywhere says that? either way you are the man! I appreciate it.

No problem, so glad it worked for you.  I don't know why, maybe there's a filesize limitation.  I used a 110MB video to verify, unpacked it to another directory, and then played it and it worked fine.

I have never been able to pack a video. What kind of asset was it? A texture or a Movie clip from the tracker or a VSE strip?

@3pointedit - a .mov in the VSE.  That was the quickest way of testing.

How did you determine that the file was packed and not just referencing the external file?

Sorry @3pointedit I didn't see your last comment.  If you could, please use the @ symbol so SE tells me.  Just tried it again with a 668MB video w/sound.  Packed the video, saved blend, closed Blender. The blend file was 668MB.  I then deleted the actual referenced video from it's file location.  Reopened Blender, unpacked the video to a different file location and played the video with Windows Media Player... works perfectly.  2.78c  - Can you try it and see if it works?

@bertmoog Ok some tests, using a 10mb mp4 with audio. Packed audio strip via strip properties - worked (10mb increase) // Packed strip via File>External Data - worked "1 file packed" (10mb increase) // Delete audio strip only, leave video strip - can't pack via strip properties // Delete audio strip only, leave video strip // Packed strip via File>External Data -Doesn't Work but says "1 file packed" (no increase in blend file size)

@bertmoog seems like the whole .mp4 is being packed when the audio gets packed, so it's an unintended side effect? I couldn't pack video alone. Probably wouldn't work for Movie Textures either. Haven't tried it with larger files yet, but its a fun cheat ;-)

@3pointedit - Hmmm.  Interesting, I just tried that and verified what you're saying.  Weird.  I can't understand why Blender wouldn't just pack whatever dependencies you have associated.  Why make a distinction between video only and video with audio?

Traditionally Blender has never packed video. I expect that is a legacy decision from when video files where HUGE and internet speed was sloooow.

@bertmoog also note that what you pack may not be accessible as a video file if the pointer is only for sound. Fine if you unpack to folder but no good for distributed renders

@3pointedit - I guess you could always just use video files with a muted audio track if packing was absolutely necessary.

By the time you get the script completed and run it, you may have your files loaded.  Loading them to your computer in a folder with subfolders based on file sizes, then updloading them is usually best. Load from smallest image sizes to largest folder.

This isnt the problem. I need to take the files out of blender and download them to my desktop. Normally you go to uv/image editor and then choose your picture and then save as.. I dont want to do this 100+ times. Hoping someone has a script for this.