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Letter by Letter Animation
I'm working in blender, to animate a piece of text for a game I am making. I intend on giving the text multiple animations. For example, one animation has each letter in the text rotate along it's x axis, from first letter, to last. As you can see, this involves rotating each letter individually. I have tried using each letter as a separate object, but this seems to generate an individual action for each letter...which would be cumbersome to implement into a game.
I have also tried rotating each letter, while keeping the word as a single object, but I can't find a way to add key frames, for changes to the mesh of the word.
I am new to blender, so I know i'm probably overlooking something...any help would be great!

You may achieve it adding a Copy Rotation Constraint to every single letter and setting an Empty as a target.

Set the separate origin point to every single letter and add an Empty.

Select a letter, go to the Constraints header, choose Copy Rotation and set an Empty as a target. Repeat the process with every other letter.

Change the pivot center type to Individual Origins. Select an Empty and rotate it. Every letter copies the rotation of an Empty now.

Of course you may add a rotation shapekey to the entire object, but as you can see below it may cause some letters' deformations so I don't recommend it.

Use an armature to animate your mesh.
Above image is a weight painted mesh.  The red submesh (letter R shape) is controlled by the bone with a corresponding vertex group.  The fine connection lines of the armature are hard to see.
Below is the mesh reshaped by the armature in pose mode.

Animation to follow.  Perhaps you can show an animation for me.
Multiple meshes or single mesh.  If an armature can animate a body mesh it can animate your mesh.  Each letter can be assigned to single bone exclusively via vertex groups.  All meshes can have vertex groups.  The armature is a sequence of controllers for your sequence of mesh/submeshes.
Bones of the armature can be disconnected so they operate independently in terms of rotation and position, yet are a convenient collection of controllers.
We assume your 3d text type has been converted to a 3d mesh type.   Thus I will only use the word mesh.
Bones can operate on an entire object, or an entire mesh, or parts of mesh, and share influence.  Those features are intentional.   The parts of the mesh can be designated with vertex groups.  This often automatically happens with ... parent to armature.  Then weight painting creates modifications.
Each mesh or submesh (visually looking like anything including a letter) can be in it own vertex group assigned to a single bone.  Bones which control the head of a body mesh do not control the toes, there is independence.
I will submit a picture in a few minutes.  You can submit one in addtion in your question.
You would edit position in pose mode of the armature, and have access to all armature features.

This is interesting, how would you apply each bone exclusively to one letter?

See above note.


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AutoCAD User Converting Rectangular Joints to Curves
I have made a bunch of rectangular joints which i want to convert to curves please see attachment. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks]1

are you looking for a Curve Object (a spline with control points, or Bezier) -- or is a polyline (vertices+edges connecting them) OK? because ctrl+shift+B bevels two edges if they share a vertex. To get a fillet use mouse wheel to add segments, during that operation

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How do I distort a mesh like fabric?
I have mesh model of a shirt that I want to reshape as if it were being put on - with the surface rumpled and bunched up - but I don't want the mesh to lose its overall shape while I modify it, as if it were real fabric. Is there some way to do this?
I have tried the proportional editing tool but it is inadequate.

What you're looking for is a cloth simulation. Here's a good tutorial to get you started: http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/make-towels/

That's fine but it was not what I was looking for. I want to model someone putting on a piece of clothing, like a tee shirt. There isn't much draping - but it should wrinkle and cover the arms etc.

What would be really good for this type of task is a plugin tool  that allowed only a certain amount of stretch or bend at any vertex, with those two properties being adjustable: then you would distort the mesh as desired and have the software "correct" it according to those limits.

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


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Make a spherical background image
How do I make a spherical background image from a Blender model, for example a city at night, rendered onto the inside of a sphere for use as a background?

Why do you not want to use a skybox? It gives you the same result http://math.hws.edu/eck/cs424/notes2013/webgl/skybox-and-reflection/skybox.html and is easier to setup.

This can be achieved with a Cycles equirectangular camera. I'm on a phone now—will post more info when I get to a real computer if this question is still open.

This is similar to the question asked here: How can an equidistance, spherical panorama image be generated from Blender Cycles? See the answer for information on setting up a Cycles-based equirectangular camera.
As Leander mentioned: If you prefer to use Blender Internal or the Blender Game Engine, a Skybox is probably your best bet (simply render six 90º FOV square images, then make a cube out of the results and use that to surround your scene.


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How do I seperate two faces by shared vertices?
I want to split two faces exactly where the vertices lay as seen below. How can I do this?

Select the 2 vertices you want to split and press v to Rip the edge. You'll have a result like that

(from the blender manual)

Rip creates a “hole” into a mesh by making a copy of selected vertices and edges, still linked to the neighbor non-selected vertices, so that the new edges are borders of the faces on one side, and the old ones, borders of the faces of the other side of the rip.


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rendering out a mesh from rhino3d - problem with camera
im trying to render out a mesh that i have created in rhino (drawn in meters, the expoerted as obj.
I do a simple clay rendering - but if i want to align my cam to the current view (top view - ortho) the camera shows nothing - can this be due to clipping settings ?
cant figure it out - is there a way to show the viewing cone of the camera ?
thank you !

Can you be a bit more specific when you say 'the camera shows nothing?'. Was the render black? White? Grey? Did you get an error?
It is extremely likely your problem can be easily solved, but we'll need a bit more to work with.

In the Camera Tab, Display panel, you can find the "Limits" options. Enable it to make the viewing cone's extremes points visible.

hi there, now with orthographic scale set to a huge value it works. i wonder why the values for the clipping are not the same ? please see screenshot

http://de.tinypic.com/r/2ajtjlj/8


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Baking textures produces white edges
(Blender Render)
I'm just practicing baking textures and normals for game development.
Can anyone tell me why I'm getting these white edges?
Both my objects are the same size (should that even matter - it seems to). The high poly one has more detail, materials textures and a few bumps in geometry. I want to transpose all the detail onto a simple elongated box, but these white edges appear. I don't get it. They do appear on the low-poly mesh, so I can't ignore them.

High poly original

Low poly with texture applied (not yet done the normal)

I have discovered that if the low-poly mesh is slightly bigger, even by a tiny amount, this can happen. But it's ok if the mesh is smaller. This doesn't make much sense to me, as the low-poly mesh is always going to be quite different in dimensions. Do people use cycles instead for baking (with cages etc).

authors: Егор Степанов


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Decrease Movie from 60fps to 30fps
Ok guys here´s the deal, we have recorded an video interview with an client, but we forgot the camera settings on 60fps.

This started as a question but how I ended up finding the answer I think I should share since I didn´t find anything related to this subject here.
There´s a way of decreasing from 60fps to 30fps. Today if the movie file is  imported straight on VSE and use 30fps the video will be on on slow motion "off course it´s divided by two times right?".
So the first thing it´s import the file using 30fps:

Now select your movie strip and apply an Speed Control and on the setting use the values:

That´s it now your 60fps file it´s at 30fps and you can continue the editing.

You really you should consider frame blending as Blender can only drop frames. Duplicate the strip with speed effect on top, then advance the Start Frame by 1. Place these above the original strip and effect. Then mix between them by 50%.

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


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Import external txt with phyton
Guys I'm trying to import an external .txt file with some paragraphs, I know I will have a lot of work ahead of me to split that file into the texts I already have animation.
But for the moment how can I import an external .txt that is in the same folder as the .blend and replace the content from the text object that has already an animation?

Try this (I am using Blender 2.81a)
import bpy
import os

# This gets text from file
filename = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(bpy.data.filepath), "info.txt")
f = open(filename, "r")
text_data = f.read()
f.close()

# Get your text object (object name here is 'Text')
obj = bpy.data.objects['Text']
obj.data.body = text_data # set text

```

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


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Dope Sheet Key Automation/Effects/Preset
I have all this elements that are going down on the animation I would like to automate the all the keys one after another so that they follow a standard of creating the elements one after the another:

There´s any kind wihout using some addon?

I've written this script to shift all the keyframes at once.

Select the objects
Open the script in the Text Edit
Set the amount of frames, eg: step(10)
Run script (Alt + P)

import bpy

def shift(step):
    interval = 0.0
    for object in bpy.context.selected_objects:
        interval += step
        if object.animation_data !=  None:
            fcurves = object.animation_data.action.fcurves
            for curve in fcurves:
                keyframepoints = curve.keyframe_points
                for point in keyframepoints:
                    point.co.x += interval
                    point.handle_left.x += interval
                    point.handle_right.x += interval

shift(10)

The script will loop through the fcurves of the selected objects and will increment the x value of each point.
Caveat:

the script doesn't allow to set the order of the objects.
the script will shift ALL the keyframes

Damn m8 wIth all respect! your devilish!


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FFMPEG from Inside Blender
Can I use FFMPEG straight from blender instead of using the available formats and codecs? Can someone show me an alternative for that?

I don't think so, but using ffmpeg independently is not that difficult. Are you trying to render straight to video, are you using an image sequence, or combining video in the VSE?

Todd I want to reduce my workflow steps, render straight to codec mp4v decoded to Planar 4:2:o YUV and my needs are, codec mp4 avc (part10) (avc1) using the same decoder.

Are you rendering out raw animated/composited image data or mixing video in the VSE? If it's the former, I would strongly recommend rendering to an image sequence and then using ffmpeg to convert the sequence to the video file you need. You might be able to trigger the external ffmpeg call from python in Blender following the render event.

possible duplicate of Render to Adobe Captivate from Blender

Here's a solution to launch ffmpeg automatically following Blender's completion of rendering out an image sequence:
import bpy
import os

bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True)

ffmpegPath = "YOUR-PATH-TO-FFMPEG-APP"

imgPath = "YOUR-PATH-TO-IMAGE-OUTPUT-FOLDER"

#frame filename format assuming "0001.png"
imgNamePattern = "%04d.png"
vidOut = "test.avi"
vCodec = "mpeg4"

ffmCMD = ffmpegPath
ffmCMD += " -start_number 1 -i "
ffmCMD += imgPath + imgNamePattern
ffmCMD += " -vcodec " + vCodec + " "
ffmCMD += imgPath + vidOut

print("launching ffmpeg")
os.system(ffmCMD)

Ok, let me know how it works. Getting the file paths right will be critical. What OS are you on?

Im using unfortunately windows 7 64.

Should still work, just find the path to the ffmpeg.exe file. On OSX, you have to look within the app file to find the actual executable, which is the reason I asked. Have you been able to get it working?

I´m going to finish a few motion graphics stil to try it later, but from what I´ve seen on the code everything should work, thanks!

I'd suggest using subprocess.call instead of os.system.


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OPENGL Blender Transparent PNG on top of video
I´m using a lot of OPENGL render animation for the sake of the rendering time, some motions quite simple that doesnt need any kind of raytrace like this one:

First I´m using Blender Internal, cannot use Cycles because the movies used as materials on the planes do not play on OPENGL.
My problem is on the stars, they are a PNG file with a movie on the bottom, and they are getting those edges around the transparency, have tried a few things, like premultiplied and straight options on the material with no success, if I select the object on the viewport displays correct:

Someone knows what can I do to fix it?

You'd be better off doing this in the compositor. Use a Mix node with the blend mode set to Multiply. In addition to getting rid of the white edges you will also lose the specular highlights on the top of the stars, but it's a trade off. You can play with the node sliders and hopefully get an acceptable result.

I´m trying to achieve this, but I couldnt set the image as a texture on blender internal, the same way I would do it in Cycles, about the specular lights, they are not there, it´s a png image.

I know, I didn't mean it like that. Maybe I should have said "the shiny parts of your star image". Anyway, I'm glad you got a solution.

@andrepazleal, I've had no problem placing one movie (with transparent bkd) over another and find OpenGL handles this well.
The edge effect you're describing I've also experienced and have solved that as described below...
Flame Video with transparency, stacked in front of another, all done in the 3D window by texturing planes and rendered in OpenGL -

As to the edge artifact problem, I take it that you are rendering with OpenGL and that the stars are a png file with it's own alpha layer (transparent background), being used to texture a plane.
The effect you're describing around it's edges can be the result of the plane's "Transparency" box (see below) being either ticked or unticked when in fact it needs the inverse.  i.e. tick it if it's unticked and vice versa.
The edges will show when not selected and disappear when selected, just as you described.  Changing it's Transparency tick should fix your problem.
If there's a plane or object behind that again, the background object's own transparency box may also affect the outcome.  When the first box doesn't help you can try different combinations in both.  I've experienced this problem frequently and those tick boxes have solved the issue every time.
The box is found by clicking on the plane's properties at the right, (little cube icon) going down to it's "Dipslay" tab and opening that to reveal the "Transparency" box.
You may also find that reducing a textured plane's "Specular" settings to zero, can also assist in removing artifacts.
Both Specular sliders can be found under the plane's Material properties.  The main one is in the Specular tab, the other in the Transparency tab. (immediately under the Opacity slider)  If both the Opacity and Specular sliders are not at dead zero, unwanted effects may occur.
The previous paragraph refers to planes being textured with an image containing an alpha (transparent) layer.

What fix the whole thing for me was tick the Object\Display\Transparency option, thanks a lot mate, I can continue to use OpenGL rendering, thanks!

A fast solution might be to actually just model a star with a 5 point circle that you subdivide the edges so you can select the 5 points and scale out, and the others scale in to get the shape to match. This way you can map the texture to the simple geo and avoid the need for alpha in such as small asset. If I understand you , the stars are a png with transparency and a movie on the bottom (actually behind) - and if the stars are not part of the movie file, then this should be a work around to avoid the white edges.

To use Cycles for videos in OpenGL, you need to check the box marked 'View As Render' in the N panel in the node editor with the image texture node selected

I´m avoiding modelling but thanks for the suggestion in cycles id didnt work, the movie dont auto-resfresh when scrolling thru the timeline or in the OpenGL Render Animation.

Share a screen shot or two of your cycles settings then, because here it works like a champ.

Ok I´ve seen what´s going on, I must have the node editor opened with the Properties tab open and also the plane with the movie material must be selected on the viewport, so it´s no  possible, in this motion I have two videos so theres no way of openGL render both of them. So I think that my last choice is to model around the star and lost the soft shadow around it.


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Group objects in blender
There´s a way of grouping SVG objects in blender like in Illustrator or Inkscape, where when I have to move the object the entire group move´s on together, without having to append that object to the main object?

You also can just parent them together. Select all Objects you want to group and than press Ctrl + P. All selected objects will now follow the object which was active during the Parenting process.

When I click on control + P it asks me "set parent to:" with a list of options. What do you recommend?

Usually you use Object Parent (Parent to: Object) the other settings are useful if you want to connect something without enheriting the rotation.

I think that the concept of parenting the objects in blender is quite better than the group because when you need a group you want to click and element of that group and move all the others together without the need of hitting shift+G or something similar.

Sometimes, it doesn't make sense for the objects to be grouped under any particular object. For example, if you had three columns, they should be at an equal level in the hierarchy for better organization. I like creating an empty to group them together.

Thanks for this. Took some tweaking (mainly the necessity to select the Parent lastly, in order to make the Siblings conform Parents movement), but I got it to work based on your advice.


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Render different frames
How can I create a automatic render setup, for example, I need to render with the same settings to an mp4, from the 001 to 10 one file, than from the 011 to 021 another and a few others.

Like a batch rendering but straight from blender.

Do you need to change video format between the files or would you just end up with multiple MP4 files?

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/17839/599

Here's a quick script to render out separate frame ranges of the animation. The script assumes you've set an output folder correctly as well as setting the video format settings as you want them.
import bpy
import os

frameList = [
    [1,50],
    [51,100],
    [101,150]
    ]

scn = bpy.context.scene

for fr in frameList:

    scn.frame_start = int(fr[0])
    scn.frame_end = int(fr[1])
    bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True)

That's weird, didn't happen to me with my test file. Are you getting any errors?

Is your scene really memory intensive?  Could Blender be reloading all the scene assets for each render without releasing the memory for the previous render?

With your current settings, can you manually render a file with no issues?


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I think I pressed something by accident, and now my regular movements are jittery.
Normally when I press the "g" key everything is smooth. But suddenly as I was working on my model. Everything is moving very jittery and I cant control anything that is happening. The vertices would jump around the point but wont land at the specific area I want. Is there a way I could fix this?

You might have accidently turned on snapping tool. Check if the magnet button on the botton of 3D View is not turned on. Otherwise, please provide .blend file for better feedback.


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How to connect armature to mesh?
I created a simple armature, parented all the bones properly, named them and made sure they import to Unity perfectly. The armature seems to be working great. I also have a collection of Meshes, under one object, a humanoid. It's basically just a 3D model with hair, teeth, a dress, etc.
Here's an image:

I am trying to parent them together, with automatic weights (And I tried all the other options as well). They do parent in the hierarchy but other than that, they're not connected in any way. Moving the bones doesn't move any parts of the model. What am I doing wrong?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9hNLLWHRcw
Looking at this tutorial I'm doing exactly what the person does at 6:07, but in my case the character doesn't move.

Could you share your blend file?

Are you selecting the Armature second?

As you are performing the parenting, look at the top of your window, towards the middle. I am willing to bet that you will see an error message of some kind when you do so. The proper solution to your problem almost definitely depends upon what that message says. If it happens to be the trusty Bone Weight error, good luck... I have been trying to solve that particular issue through DAYS of research, but perhaps you will have better luck.


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Distorted .obj Export
Whenever I export a mesh, wich is just a tiny bit complex from blender to an .obj file, some parts of the mesh are ending up wierdly distorted. The only solution I found is to check "triangulate faces" at the export options.
But shouldn't it work without that?
The mesh in blender:

The mesh in Marmoset Toolbag:

Here the .blend file:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/b8xga0wnsmwew/blender
In other programs, the same.
Any help is appriciated
Nightfox3

The problem with your mesh are Ngons; Blender can process and show them correctly but once exported you get unexpected results because they are treated in a different way by another program.
This is what model looks like:

The reason why it worked with Triangulate faces checked is because there were no Ngons any more, all them were converted to tris. You can use this way, however you won't be able to control how it will triangulate faces.
Hence I suggest to start with changed topology of the model (note: it may be a bit complex to redo for all the model, however it will save time further on):

Only thing I can think of is that most render engines can only render tris, Cycles included. It could have to do with the way Toolbag imports...


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What does it mean when a property is highlighted in green?
I'm trying to edit a template I downloaded for a personal project.  I have specific axis values from a previous version of the template that I wish to add to the updated version.  However when I do, and I move the timeline cursor to review it, the properties revert back to their previous values.  The fields that I'm trying to change are highlighted in green for a reason I'm not entirely sure about, but presumably it's connected to the trouble I'm having.
So my question is twofold; what does it mean when properties are highlighted in green and, if the two are not connected, is there any way I can correct the issue?
I'm running Blender version 2.62 on a Windows 8.1 64-bit operating system.  I've attached a couple photos in case they will be helpful.

Green means a property has a keyframe applied, but not on the current frame. (yellow means the key is on the current frame). Your changes aren't sticking because it's reverting to the keyed values. You can set a new key if you'd like by right-clicking the field and hitting "insert keyframe", adjust the key values in the graph editor, or just clear them all by right-clicking the prop and hitting "clear keyframes"
Also, for the sake of completeness, a purple property is one that has a driver set.

Just to be clear, a Keying set is distinct from a Keyframe, which is the term I think you want. On second reading I think I see that I just mis-read your answer, but for clarity you might want to re-word it so "keyframe" and "set" aren't right next to each other ;)


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How to call python animation node operator?
I have a problem i can't resolve.
Here is the context :
I have a blender file, i am using animation node addon.
I have a animation node tree with a empty string list node.
The elements in the list should be created programmatically with python.
When i call the create animation operator in a python console inside blender, the execution works:
Here is the create element operator :
bpy.ops.an.invoke_function_1(invokeWithData=False, confirm=False,
                                 callback="#('executeNodeCallback', (('NodeTree', 'summary_list'), 'newInputSocket'))",
                                 passEvent=False, data="None")

But when i call this operator from calling blender in the command line with a python script like so :
blender 'my blender file.blend' -P 'my python script.py'
Creation Operator is called in 'my python script.py'
I get this error in the command line terminal and the element is not created:
AttributeError: Calling operator "bpy.ops.an.invoke_function_1" error, could not be found
Any ideas of how to solve this error?
Thanks.

For Animation Nodes I developed a system that automatically generates operators for certain functions on nodes. Otherwise I would have to write a lot of overhead code all the time. This is why the operator has a weird name like invoke_function_1. It also explains why the operator does not exist when you run your script at first. The operators are only created when needed.
Those operators are only should only used on the UI. In all other cases you should call the underlying functions directly.
In your case you have to do something like this: bpy.data.node_groups["NodeTree"].nodes["summary_list"].newInputSocket().

Thank you and again thanks for your work on this adddon it saved me a lot a time.


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Is it possible to programmaticaly render video from a blender pattern animated scene with images and mp3 as parameters?
I would like to build an automatic generated video engine on a server.
The process would look like this :
renderblendfile (images on server disk ,Mp3 file on server disk) ----» video
The blend file would be a pattern animated scene where only the images and soundtrack would change.
I would like to know if it would be possible to build such an engine by using blender programmatically using python api?
Thanks.

Yes.
You can load a blender instance from command line and pass it arguments, and execute a script inside blender to change images / audio files, and then render.
Your scenario describes it adequately:

make a template blend file with placeholder audio file (a click track, whatever..)
add placeholder images (test screens for example, with numbers to allow you to debug
write the script that takes arguments (location of images, location of mp3)
execute from command line

I'm sure if you provide such a representative template .blend file one of us would probably give you a hand writing the script to change out the audio and image files.
Alternatively you can script the entire animation, while starting blender from console with an empty .blend file (but with the script preloaded to accept a directory of images / audio ), this is also easy enough if you know Python.
See this answer for an introduction to commandline blender (no gui needed)

Thank you zeffii. Just 1 question. Is it possible to do it all through code even load a blender inst.I d like to run a code on server that implements a scheduled job (6am, 3pm) that launch a blender inst & render videos automatically. Do u suggest to launch a blender inst manually on server & then the code with scheduled job calling that instance ? Or do u think doing everything in code is a better solution?  I ll use a ec2 Amazon instance to host my code, as Amazon charge on usage i think i ll have to start and stop a blender instance to use it only during rendering to optimize billing.

yeah you can set a scheduled Task, to lauch a bash or python script os.cmd() or os.Popen() and pass the blender.exe + script + arguments. You would only be running Blender for the duration of your script process + render time. See this answer

Ok great now i have to create my template file. Do you suggest any books or sites dealing with blender programming besides official documentation?Thank you very much zeffii.

Do a search on this site (top right) for 'blender resources'. Also you might try your luck doing a search for the thing you want to code (or divide the problem into parts and search those separately) . If you really find nothing ask a new fresh question. Someone will answer, or suggest a related link/question to read.

Ok thanks a lot zeffii for your help and info.


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How to calculate image as plane position to the camera in order to render the whole image or a part of the image?
I am trying to build a python script that places a image as plane object (add-on) programmatically in function of the resolution of the camera.
There are two cases :
1- The image ratio and the camera ratio are the same so i want to place the image as plane so that when i render the scene the image takes full space of the frame.
2- The image ratio of the image is different so i want to place the image as plane so that the camera points to the center of the image and takes a part of the image so that the rendering takes full space of the frame.
If you have any idea of how to do it, i ll be great help.
Thanks.

Thanks for the link, i tried the addon, it is almost what i am looking. Nevertheless it does not use image as plane addon so i get a plane that is not with the image aspect ratio. I will study the script to understand how the distance is calculated.


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Auto-Resizing objects in BGE when I press play? How do I fix this
I was trying to make some custom guns for a little game project in BGE then when I would press "p" to play the guns re sized themselves. I have no clue how to fix this or if its even fixable.

Select the parent and hit CTRL + A and select "Scale"
EDIT: An explanation: This only happens when using a a vertex parent.
An ordinary parenting causes the child to follow scale translation and rotation of the parent's Origin point.
A vertex parent in blender game engine copies the same information, but from a vertex, not the objects origin point. For reasons i do not know, if you edit the location of the vertex in edit mode, the child doesn't appear to notice while when you press play, and only appears to update when you apply the location of the parent. That is a best of an explanation i can give, if you know more, then please edit this post and add your knowledge.


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Mask single object
I have a text object that I want to mask behind another object. However in order to do this, I need to use render layers, where they become separate and I have to recombine them later on. Is there a way for me to mask certain objects out but still normally show the rest without using render layers?

Hello. Which renderer are you using ? Can you provide a picture of the text and the masking object ?

I'm using blender render. I can easily use different render layers to mask the text but I have to combine the two render layers afterwards in another program and I'm too lazy to do that. I am using a default text object and a plane. The only thing I'm doing with the text object is changing the font and the font size. The plane should not be visible in the render since It's only meant to partially block the view of the text object but not the rest of the other objects.

and the final result is for rendering in Blender only or is it to export after that into another program which will have to reproduce this effect ?

It is for rendering in blender only.

I have a solution but this is not with a plane. This is with nodes in which you can vary coordinates "like if" it is a plane. Can that meet your need ?

If by using nodes so I can animate the text coming out from nowhere (below a specific axis) then yes please put that down. I don't need the plane.

This can be done using Cycles, by giving a Holdout node to the material of the object you want to mask.

@Georges it will take way too long to learn cycles...

You can obtain this effect with nodes :

Here is the node setting (blender render) :

On the left, position and size of the faked plane (use these coordinates in place of a plane object)
Combine RGB node are here to create vectors from these previous coordinates
Just below we use the global coordinates of the text object
'BetweenVector' is a node group explained below. Its aim is to test if the text coordinates are inside the fakes plane coordinates
Next two nodes 'substract' and 'multiply' are here to invert the previous output which comes from 0 to 1 and becomes 1 to 0
All this is connected to the alpha socket of the output
Above, the material which can be the material you want

BetweenVector node group :

Uses 'separate RGB' as if it was 'separate XYZ'
Position and Size are added in order to calculate the coordinate limit
Then each coordinate is tested to see if it is in the limits (Between node group does that, see below)
The two 'multiply' on the right are here to have '1' if all the coordinates are between the limits or '0' if not

Between node group :

This group tests individual values in order to see if they are in the limit
It determinates min and max limits
Then tests the input to see if is it in the limits

@Bradman175, yes but if we read the question, he does not want to use layers, or I did not understand well ? (I may have misunderstood, english is not native for me)

Actually you are right. I did state that I did not want to use layers because I was oblivious of the fact that compositor nodes to combine layers exist. I will mark you as correct. It actually would be useful if you got a lot of text and you don't want to use up your layers

@Bradman175, ok thanks... you should give the correct answer to Selman as he learned you about the compositor.

Although I did use his method, he hasn't fully answered the question as I had to figure out the rest myself. And your way would come in handy if I ever needed to save the amount of layers I use.

Hi @lemon , great job, what if we would like to another shape say triangle or circle or an animated shape? How in your opinion it could be done?

My first thought was to use the compositor and render-layers (and recombine in compositor), should be easy enough?
But maybe its easier to set the material of the covering object to transparent, mask, and alpha 0. Should hide the text, right?

What is a compositor? You should outline how to combine 3 render layers into one output.

I figured it out now but you should have said something like "Go to nodes, go to composite mode, make sure your scene(first option in properties menu)>shading>alpha is set to transparent, tick use nodes, get all the render layer nodes you need, use mix nodes>set them to add and add all the render layer nodes (image to image node connectors) and output them into the compositor, then when you render you click the composite layer."

So you went from not knowing what "a compositor" is to understanding that in 12 minutes, you sharp!
Tried the second suggestion using materials?

Well I have used it before, I just never knew what it was called. Just add in more specific details on how to do what you said otherwise people who legitimately do not know what a compositor is will be confused.

Oh whoops. Don't colour add the layers. Use alpha over.


text:
Keyframe between frames
How do I set a key frame between 2 frames? The reason I want to do this is because I want to render in different frame rates without needing to change every time and some objects start and stop between frames. Do I have to scale everything up by increasing the frame distance between key frames, change the output framerate scaling and finding the lowest common denominator?

If you use Time Remapping then I don't think you'll  have possibility to control animation in between old frames; values in new ones will be created as fractions of original values. Either changing some parameters of animation or scaling frames should work

I don't think that's possible.
What you can do, however, is scale your entire animation to create more frames in between the existing ones.
Enter the graph view and move the time cursor to 0. Then select everything and press . (to scale relative to the cursor) followed by S X 2 to scale by a factor of 2 in the X direction (i.e., along the time axis).
You can then adjust the project's frame rate, modify the frame steps (in this case double it) and etc. to get it playing at the right speed.

And also finding the common denominator... Awwww.


text:
MakeHuman Mouth keys
I have a MakeHuman model imported into blender. In the armature, there are bones that control many different parts of the mouth. However, there were no shape keys that predefined the positions of the mouth when pronouncing words. Is there a way for me to create shape keys or something similar by adjusting the positions of the bone and record them along with being able to adjust them from the pose position to the rest position?
This means I can set the mouth poses from a, e, i, o, u and have some in between multiple poses. I'm not asking you to do them for me, I just do not know how to make shape keys with bones.

You could setup the pose, then apply the armature modifier. This only works once though.


text:
Is Linking Files Good Practice?
I have a scene of a large animation that is split up into many different files. They all share the same static objects in the same places, just that characters and moving objects are changed in every file, as well as a camera angle per blend file.
Now I've come across a problem that I'm consistently changing the background props as I go along. It becomes annoying as I have to fix all the files one by one.
However, blender has a link function on the file tab that I haven't used before. It seems like this could fix the inconsistency risk between scenes.
Is it safe and normal to have a blend file that has all the objects in the right place without any animation and all the rest of the files using that same scene containing the animations alongside it link back to the original file? Is there any catch?

The biggest advantage of linking is that it makes files easier for Blender to compute. It also makes it easier for you to manage - provided you have a coherent structure. The Linked Library Addon can be considered essential for workflow.
Setting the background in one file that you linked in, should give no problem, and you will probably wish you did it sooner.
Where things can get a bit more challenging is linking in files with animation, especially if they have to react with objects in another file. In such case you might leave empties to mark placement but that is not always ideal.
I highly recommend keeping your files consistent. In particular I have run into trouble in the past with textures that are saved relatively in some files and absolute in others. Because I have the auto-save on my linked library, Blender would create a new folders with Textures and not reference the original texture folder that I had with the original file.
As a resource: there is an excellent explanation on - Jason's Blog

Well of course, the objects that are going to move and change are not linked.


text:
In UV map can't move shared vertices independently
After I unwrap my model, whether or not I set seams.  I can't move each vertex independently on the UV map.
I was able to on the first model, but now when I open that model, this no longer then case.
It seems to be that when I select a vertex, it selects the same vertex in another seam on the map.
How can I stop this.  Is there a separate or un sync option I'm missing for this?

Not that I'm aware.  I'm fairly new to blender but I can't imagine I turned these on by accident.

It was fixed for me when I disabled proportional editing.

@MarkAven I thought I already asked this, but if you post as an answer with instructions and/or pictures, it may be helpful to people looking for that answer.
I wouldn't know where that option is offhand, so the instructions may really help someone.

This happens because you have the "Keep UV and edit mode mesh selection in sync" button enabled, the selected vertex in the UV editor, is on a seam, so in 3D view, it is shared by 4 faces - assuming you are working with quads- so when selected with the sync option enabled, it will select all related coordinates in the UV editor, disable it by clicking the button, in the image below, it's the button in the lower right corner.
As you can see, I have it enabled, here.

Now check the image below, I disabled the Sync button.

Hope this helps, happy blending.

Edit:

When you have the Sync button disabled, you can only see in the UV Editor, the faces that you have it selected in the 3D View in Edit Mode, so make sure you select all the faces you need to have it available before unchecking the Sync button, or use the 3D View to select the faces/edges/vertices you need, and tweak them in the UV Editor with the Sync button unchecked.

Update:
In Blender 3.2 (I believe it's the same since Blender 2.8) the Sync button looks like this.

What you are showing is EXACTLY what I need.  I kept finding stuff about that, but when I go to click it, all the vertices disappear and reappear when I turn it back on, so I assumed I was doing something wrong.
I take it I have to re-unwrap it with sync selection off then.  Thanks so much, I can't wait to try it out.

They disappear because they are unselected in the 3D view, make sure you select the faces you are working on befote unchecking Sync button, then select the vertex you need to transform in UV layout.

Or you can alternatively reselect the faces in 3D view, so you can edit them in the UV layout

If this answered your question, please mark it as answered.

yes, I believe it did, I just want to get home where I can test it before I mark it as answered.
But I fully expect you've solved this and will get the credit.  Thank you again.

Marking a questioned as answered removes it from the unanswered category, this way we can keep things organized in BSE, if it doesn't work for you I will be glad to help, I also benefit from it, because it helps me learn too ;)

Where is this button in Blender 3.2?

@AaronFranke answer updated

It didn't worked for me because Sticky Selection mode was enabled (shared vertex or shared location). So we also need to disable Sticky Vertex Selection to move only one vertex.

Another cause of 'sticky behaviour' is having Proportional Editing (O) turned on.


text:
Is it possible to do pic collage (compositing nodes)?

I would like to build a python script that takes in entry a list of pictures, set them into a layout like in the above pictures, animate the pictures (ken burns effect) and render.
I would like to know if it is possible to something similar in blender?
I would like to know if the layout could be animated too?
I guess it could be done with the compositor and creating and manipulating masks but i don't know how to do it, so some resources would be welcome.
Thanks.

I doubt you could do that with the compositor alone, or at least it would be unnecessarily challenging; but it might be possible to do directly in a 3D scene

it's totally possible, but not very comfortable. Is there a reason why you want do do it in blender? there are a lot of programs that can do that task easier and faster.

Hi guys, thank you for your comments. The reason why i want to it in blender is that i want to create a template and a script so i can call it automatically to render videos. I think it could be easier to do with after effects but i am on ubuntu and prefer to use blender which can be scale out on a cluster of machine for free. So if you have any suggestions it would be very helpful even if i have to use different features of blender.


text:
VSE : two scene camera strip alpha over not working
My scene is composed of two cameras. One camera points to an image plane and the other points to a Text object. In the VSE i added two scene strips
with each camera. I want the first strip i.e image one to be overlayed by the second one i.e text object one with the alpha. I set the text object strip blend option to alpha over but when i render the alpha channel is opaque. I would like the text object to overlay the image. Here are some pictures :

By the way some may wonder why he doesn't put the text object in front of the image plane, well this is because ultimately i want to create in the vse a slidehow with multiple image camera strips and one text camera strip that is in the foreground.
Thanks.

Under render tab -> film, make sure the transparent check box is checked. Ultimately I wouldn't recommend you to do this kind of job in blender, unless you're just testing blender's capability.

Thank you very much SVAFnemesis, it has worked. What would you recommend instead?

for professional choice of video editing, choose either adobe premiere or final cut. For casual fun project, I'm not sure. Perhaps someone else can fill in my blank.

In fact i am writing a python program that creates slideshow automatically that's why i am using blender.

Have a look at the Dynamic Slideshow addon for Blender that also uses multiple cameras and the VSE https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?360518-Addon-Dynamic-Slideshow


text:
Error rendering on ec2 : Specified pix_fmt is not supported
Here is the context, i have a amazon ec2 micro instance with ubuntu 14.04 and with blender 2.78 installed, i have a custom blend file with in output : file_format is H.264, color_mode is RGBA, in Encoding format is AVI and Codec is PNG. The problem is that when i launch rendering by the command line, the render fails and in the log i get this message :
Error: Specified pix_fmt is not supported
It may be a ffmpeg problem which i installed prior to blender following this :
http://www.faqforge.com/linux/how-to-install-ffmpeg-on-ubuntu-14-04/
When i render it locally (Ubuntu 16.04, ffmpeg, blender 2.78) it works just fine.
Has anyone any idea how to resolve this?
Thanx.

Chances are your remote FFMPEG is missing one of the legion of codecs when it was compiled. You will need to use a version compiled with the codec required.


text:
How change text of text node in animation node at different frame?
I have a list of texts of different length.
I have an animation node tree and i have succeeded at showing my text list iteratively at a constant rate (example each 120 frames) in text object output node.
My problem is the constant rate because my texts are of different length.
I would like to show in the text object output each text in the text list but with a different duration (example : text[0] = 120 frames, text[1] = 258 frames, text[2] = 76 frames).
I am wondering if this is achievable with animation node tree.
Thanks.

I can think of two ways to do it -

the manual way is to add an Integer List node and type in the length or offset you want to use for each string. The advantage is you can adjust the timing to taste for each string.

The automatic way is to use a Text Length node to use the length of the string to calculate the offset.


text:
How can I use several computers to speed up rendering?
Is it possible to set up and use a number of mac minis to speed up rendering, if yes how do I set it up? I am working from a Mac Pro and have 5 additional Mac minis.

You can use Netrender  for that.
It's a bit tricky to set it up and get it working.I managed to get it working at one point, but not lately.
Another option is to open the blend file on each computer and render it with the same settings, BUT with fewer passes and different seeds. You can then manually merge the layers in an image editor.

Netrender is an option, but it's exceedingly tricky. Described here is a much better option.
Modifying the Blendfile
Always make adjustments 4 and 6 from this page. Make the others as possible. I've found that by making these adjustments, you can reduce the render samples by a good bit and still get a crystal clear image.
Also change the tile size to 16x16 for CPU (what a mac uses) as per this other page. Consider the other modifications if they fit.
Rendering
Open the .blend file on all of the computers. In a 120 frame animation with 6 computers, have computer 1 render frames 1-20, computer 2 render 21-40, and so on and so forth. When finished, stitch all the video files together using Blender's built in Video Sequence Editor.


text:
Cycles baking image sampling
Does anyone have an idea how to improve quality of this Cycles bake? Using image as source for material color, amount of samples has no effect on how accurately this image is reproduced on baked image, samples only make the lighting more smooth.

100 samples produce same quality image sampling as 1 sample. Also I've tried different image interpolation in the node, gaussian filter width, branched path tracing... nothing seems to work.
With procedural pattern the results are similar:

Internal renderer seems to do the job perfectly:

Hmmm... What are you referring to as sample, the type of samples one refers to in image editors (like photoshop) or the kind the Blender samples setting refers to (path tracing samples). I am a little confused with what the problem is, and what the desired result is.  Sharing the blend file could help. Perhaps check the size of the image you are baking to, and your UV unwrap. How did you have the texture in BI, as the two engines use different material setups? Did you simply recreate the material for BI? Perhaps there was a mistake recreating, as some options react differently in cycles?

When you click new image before baking, up the x and y pixel amounts. The more pixels the higher quality the bake.

I'm refering to how original image is being read. Yes I created material for internal renderer separately. I am very familiar with internal and cycles. But still I'm interested if anyone manages to make a node or render setup on cycles that downscales input texture image properly as internal renderer does.
Inceasing the image size of course increases bake quality but my issue is that for each bake texture pixel the diffuse color is only sampled once or all samples are identical.
I don't want to bake 16k maps on cycles to get smooth 4k results.


text:
Change User preference properties via script
I'm trying to make a script to change the size of the manipulator, but I get this error from console:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/addon_widget_size.py", line 30, in draw
TypeError: UILayout.prop(): error with argument 1, "data" -  Function.data expected a AnyType type, not int
I have very limited skills at coding, so this error says nothing to me.
my code is:
bl_info = {
"name": "WidgetSize",
"author": "Ed-Hernandez",
"version": (1, 0),
"blender": (2, 79, 0),
"location": "View3D > properties-panel",
"description": "fast change witget size",
"warning": "",
"wiki_url": "",
"category": "3D View",
}

import bpy

class WidgetSize(bpy.types.Panel):
    """creates a panel for the addon"""
    bl_label = "Widget Size"
    bl_idname = "WidgetSize"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'

    @classmethod
    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        col = layout.column()

        row = col.row()
        row.label(text = "WitgetSize")

        row = col.row()
        row.prop(bpy.context.user_preferences.view.manipulator_size, toggle=True, text = "size")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(WidgetSize)

register()

You have to pass the property name as a string as second argument:
row.prop(bpy.context.user_preferences.view, "manipulator_size",
         toggle=True, text="size")

Thanks! it had another error, I gess the @classmethod wasn't needed, but after removing that line it worked fine :)


text:
How do I select a vertex in edit mode
I've imported an stl into blender, and I'm trying to create morph targets. For some reason, when I go into edit mode, I can't select the vertex. When I click the window it just moves the crosshair with a circle thing aroud, but does not actually select a vertex. What am I doing wrong ?

Blender, by default, uses the Right Click to select things.

You're left-clicking.  Blender uses Right-Click to select. if you don't like this, you can change it in your user preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U), though there are some advantages to just getting used to it so you can follow what everyone else is doing with Blender.

User Preferences Keystroke is useful


text:
How do I start motion on a curve on a later frame?
I have my camera parented to a curve using "Follow Path", and it travels just right, I just need it to start moving on a much later frame, not frame 1. I tried to key frame the Evaluation Time but I get the error message seen below.

Here is the scene. I typed in "1" for the Evaluation Time.

I pressed "I" over the Evaluation Time and got this -- Report: Error. F-Curve with path 'eval_time{0}' cannot be keyframed, ensure that it is not locked or sampled, and try removing F-Modifiers
What am I doing wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated.

It's pretty easy... once you know what you're doing.

Switch to the graph editor.
Expand the "bezierCurve" object, and select "EvaluationTime".
Press n and scroll down to the "modifiers" section.
On the "generator" modifier, edit the "coefficient for polynomial 'y'"
Lowering this value will make the animation start on a later frame. You can see this by looking at where the line intersects the 0 point.

You can edit the path using "restrict frame range". Simply set the start and end frame, then use the in and out to control the easing.

This is almost perfect! I got the camera moving at frame 2291 but I now realize I want it to ease in and ease out. How do I do that?

There are a few ways to do this. One (probably the easiest) is by using the "restric frame range" feature.

Simply click it, set the beginning and end time of the move, then change the ease values. You should check out this link for more details on other methods and in depth explanation. http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/21046/20428

How you'd do this depends on what sort of control you need over the object's motion along the path.
The method suggested in Uncle Snail's answer may work for you. But if you want to directly keyframe that motion with detailed control over interpolation, there's an easy option: just delete the generator. (Click on the 'X' next to the Generator header, visible in the screenshot in that answer.)
Then, you'll be able to keyframe the path's Evaluation Time and manipulate the curves in the graph editor.


text:
How to create a glitter texture?
A pretty simple question, how do I create a glitter texture? I was thinking about a car's paint job, but it could be used for ornaments, fancy dresses, etc. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Use noise tuned into speckles.

Thought I would update this answer a little, This works for 2.79 (Cycles) and 2.8 (EEVEE)
This is also partially taken from Rich Sedmans wonderful answer.
Sorry for so much bloom (but I love the way it makes the glitter sparkle :P)
The trick is to have the incoming geometry node plug into a glossy shader, with a very low roughness value.
This is just copying and pasting the Geometry node, glossy node and use the factor input of the mix shader to control the small speckles.
Be sure to change the scale factor on all to Voronoi textures so the speckles show up in different spots.
Just change the color of the glossy shader to whatever color you want the flakes to be.

EDIT
I created the node in a more user friendly group, I also attached the blend file.

Man that looks amazing


text:
How to get original height and width of video strip in python?
Here is the context :
I call blender by the command line like so :
blender -b -P myscript.py
In the python script i am doing something simple, i add a movie strip with no sound and then print orignal size of the video:
bpy.ops.sequencer.movie_strip_add({'area': area},filepath='/tmp/file.mp4',frame_start=1, channel=1)

active_strip = bpy.context.scene.sequence_editor.active_strip

print(active_strip.elements[0].orig_height)

print(active_strip.elements[0].orig_width)

The problem is that i always get 0 for both height and width which is not the original dimension of the video.
When i execute this inside blender python console i get the right original dimensions.
Any ideas why it does'nt work by the command line?
Thanks

I've found that you have to show strip in the VSE viewport to get dimesions to work. Since there's no viewports in background mode, Blender can't update information about a strip you added. So you're getting zeros.

Pity we can't get it from blender in the background. Thanks. Finally I just used moviepy to gett hese data  and then send it to blender through the command line.


text:
Is there any tutorial on creating a slideshow with transition and with images of different sizes all done from python script?
I would like to create a python script for blender that takes in paramater a set of different images of different size and create a slideshow with transition. When the image doesn't fit the camera view size i would like that the image would move with a ken burns effect. I would like to know for example how to fit the camera bounds to the size of a an image if possible and if not to fit the camera bounds to a portion of an image. All scene setup and rendering has to be done with a python script.
Thanks.

Don't know if it helps but take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcjJLhdeBz4

Thanks a part of the idea is there, i will try to replace text with images and see what is the result.

Based on a concept tutorial that i made there is this addon from hapit at blenderartists forums http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?360518-Addon-Dynamic-Slideshow basically you use the inport images as planes then place an animated camera over each image. This animation is editable per camera and occurs simultaneously in the scene.  Then in the vse each camera gets its own strip to mix as tou like. This allows you to rearrange the order of playback easily.
The main point here is retaining the full image resolution which the vse cannot do as it always conforms source to project dimensions or crops at 1:1.

Thanks a lot, i think this is what i needed to get started.


text:
Python call of import image as plane
I am building a simple python script that creates a plane with an image (image as plane addon). I call blender by the command line :
blender -P pattern_blender_smartphone.py

Here is the content of pattern_blender_smartphone.py :
import os
import bpy

def initScene():
    file = os.path.abspath('C:/Users/John/PycharmProjects/untitled/cowboy_bebop.jpg')
    bpy.ops.import_image.to_plane(
        use_shadeless=True,
        files=[{'name': os.path.basename(file)}],
        directory=os.path.dirname(file)
    )

initScene()

When i execute blender by the command line with this script i get these errors :
========================
   SCRIPT STARTING
========================
Error: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 320, in execute
    self.import_images(context)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 333, in import_images
    self.set_image_options(img)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 449, in set_image_options
    image.use_alpha = self.use_transparency
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'use_alpha'

location: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py:189

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 43, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 11, in initScene
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 189, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Error: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 320, in execute
    self.import_images(context)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 333, in import_images
    self.set_image_options(img)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 449, in set_image_options
    image.use_alpha = self.use_transparency
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'use_alpha'

location: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py:189

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 320, in execute
    self.import_images(context)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 333, in import_images
    self.set_image_options(img)
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons\io_import_images_as_planes.py", line 449, in set_image_options
    image.use_alpha = self.use_transparency
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'use_alpha'

location: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py:189

location: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py:189
Read new prefs: C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\config\userpref.blend
found bundled python: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\python
Saved session recovery to 'C:\Users\John\AppData\Local\Temp\quit.blend'

Blender quit
AL lib: (EE) UpdateDeviceParams: Failed to set 44100hz, got 48000hz instead

I have already tried to execute a blender instance and run the script with the GUI and it works but when i launch it by the command line i get errors.
Have you guys any ideas why it doesn't work?

Yes thanks, i know this. Maybe i was not so clear. I am already using the addon but i am aiming at using the python call of the addon which is here bpy.ops.import_image.to_plane.

The python docs for os.abspath() says

os.path.abspath(path)
   Return a normalized absolutized version of the pathname path. On most platforms, this is equivalent to calling the function normpath() as follows: normpath(join(os.getcwd(), path)).

that is it is adding the current directory (from os.getcwd()) onto the start of the absolute filepath that you have entered. This causes the load image to fail which then gives an error when attempting to set the use_alpha property.
The simple solution is to remove the os.abspath() call.

authors: Евгения Горбатюк


text:
Is it possible to create an own object data type through Python?
In Blender, using Python you can create objects via:
import bpy
obdata = bpy.data.meshes.new('name')
ob = bpy.data.objects.new('name', obdata)

This would create an empty mesh, which could later on be linked to a scene etc.
But what if one would like to extend the possibilities a bit, and generate something like a custom mesh type? Something like:
import bpy
obdata = bpy.data.my_custom_mesh_type.new('name')
ob = bpy.data.objects.new('name', obdata)

where my_custom_mesh_type is defined via:
class MyCustomMeshType(bpy.types.Mesh)
    ...

Is this possible at all?

I believe it's not possible because you try to change the syntax of the python Api itself.

@Brain I don't quite understand your comment. What do you mean with 'You try to change the syntax of the Python API'?

@aliasguru can you elaborate on "why". How would this mesh be different from a mesh?  and you'd need to have a new object type too, because data.objects.new("name", data) expects to be one of the known data types, or None for an empty object.  You can certainly "enhance" the mesh type with inheritance using my_enhanced_mesh = MyCustomMeshType(mesh)  but I believe you would still need to pass mesh to data.objects.new(...)

@batFINGER I was thinking about abusing the system. I have an existing self-created Add-on, which stores a bunch of properties (a mid number I'd say, so a few hundred or a lower thousand number of items - strings, integers, enums, etc). Currently, I store that in a scene. However, the drawback is that we're using multiple scenes, and I always need to reference a specific one of them. Also, one of the users expressed a wish to be able to link that data into an empty file and use it there, while still having the link intact. So the source file changes -> target file updates.

@batFINGER So my thinking was to attatch those properties to one of the object types, and never even link them to a scene. Just have them in bpy.data with a fake user. But: I don't want all of those to show up in EVERY mesh or empty or curve or whatever type I'm abusing for this task, to avoid slowdowns for other users. Thus, I thought "hey, just invent a new data type, which no one will ever use". Plan B is to attatch the data to something else, like the Speaker type, which we never use. But I'm curious if there's a solution to the riddle.

How about bpy.data.texts ?

@batFINGER would certainly work, but text objects we're sometimes using for other stuff, so accidental deletion is not unlikely. That's why I was thinking about the Speaker object type. But I'm not too fond of the idea, because in 6 months no one will get why the heck those props are on every speaker.

Python is just a way to access Blender data. You can of course extend Blender itself, but that requires changing its C code.
Of course nothing is stopping you from creating custom Python classes, but these won't be part of the blend file.

I was afraid that would be the case. ideasman gives a similar indication in his answer here https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/81818/is-it-possible-to-create-a-custom-object-type-with-python-api?rq=1 Thanks for clarification.

One can extend the objects in Blender (if you want to make your own).
For example take a look at BoltFactory, IvyGen etc, many addons add objects.
However keep in mind that Blender Python is implemented as an API
Adding stuff by inheriting from a base class is possible in python however the rest of the program will not know it, ea dont suspect that cycles or eevee or fluidsims or particles will understand your custom object attributes /methods.
If its only about adding some extra valeu property (maybe fro some other script) then in the normal view of object properties you can add custom attributes as well, perhaps thats usefull to you.
(object tab => add custom properties)
You might not even require python to do so, but if you want to that in code:
bpy.ops.wm.properties_edit(data_path="object", property="demo", value="1.0", min=0, max=1, use_soft_limits=False, soft_min=0, soft_max=1, description="this is demo tool tip")

Interesting approach, it only has one flaw for me unfortunately: Properties attatched to Objects in the way you described can only be of type int, float, string or arrays of such. I'm using collection properties in my backend implementation, so I can't really remap that to simple object props.

not sure what you do, a string usually con convert to arrays and visa versa While collections can usually be described in XML or Json, and can be turned into a string as well (a xml without line breaks).
Perhaps this is usefull for you : https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/python_xml_processing.htm

@aliasguru I store any data (collections also) as strings in objects without issue. It's probably the best way. The data just has to be encoded/decoded into/from strings.

You can extend Blender data types by defining custom properties like that:
bpy.types.Object.my_prop = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=bpy.types.Object, name="My prop", description="this is the description")

obj = bpy.context.active_object
obj.my_prop = another_obj


text:
How can I transfer UVs from a source to a target using Animation Nodes?
I'm trying to manipulate mesh data of an object using animation nodes. While the manipulation of the data works just fine, I always lose the UV maps when generating the output object. I've provided a simplified Blend file here:

This is a screenshot from it:

So basically, all I want to do is preserve the already existing UVs from the source object, and add them to the target. Even the Data Transfer modifier does not provide a solution here, as AN constantly rebuilds the Target object.
A solution where I could easily generate new UV coordinates on the target would also fit my needs.

The feature is not available in Animation Nodes 2.0 and before. But it is available in 2.1 through the construct mesh node. (2.1 is still under development).

@OmarAhmad I'll try compiling 2.1 and report back if that works out for me, thanks!

@OmarAhmad I've compiled it successfully and threw in the 'construct mesh' node. Use UVs is checked. Under 'UV Map Names' I can also see the correct name of the map when using the 'Mesh Info' node. But how do I set it on the output object? 'Combine Mesh' and 'Mesh Object Output' both don't offer any UV related settings.

I added an answer.

@OmarEmara I am using AN 2.2 (B 2.83) and i do not see a construct mesh node?

After constructing the mesh while using UVs. You just have to output it using the mesh object output node.

thank you very much for this answer, it opened up a lot of possibilities! I'm impressed by the performance of the replicate mesh node.

I can't find this node, I see the load uvs option in the "mesh object input" But is a boolean socket. In the docs there is not much info.

@JuanManuelLynch This node was removed in recent version. So just use the Mesh Object Input node.


text:
Call a modal operator from Python and keep its interactivity
I am trying to run one of Blenders modal operators from within an addon / self written operator. Is it possible to do this in a way so the user will be able to benefit from the modal style of that operator? Example: Within my own operator I would like the user to add an on the fly python defined node group in the node editor. When you do this the standard way (Shift A + click on a node) Blender attaches the node to the mouse cursor and allows to drop it in a specific location which the user can decide by moving the mouse and then clicking. Can I call the operator bpy.ops.node.add_node() from Python in a way that it will add a custom node group I created, but remain in the modal function until the user clicks? Is this possible at all?

Adding a node and moving a node are two different actions. You will find that the two operators invoked when adding a node are bpy.ops.node.add_node() and bpy.ops.node.translate_attach_remove_on_cancel()
Using an example from a small addon I wrote a while ago -
def execute(self, context):
    if context.active_object.type == 'ARMATURE' \
            and context.active_object.mode == 'EDIT':
        bpy.ops.armature.duplicate()
        for b in context.selected_bones:
            b.parent = None
    else:
        bpy.ops.object.duplicate()
        bpy.ops.object.parent_clear(type='CLEAR')
    return bpy.ops.transform.translate('INVOKE_DEFAULT')

you can see that the object gets duplicated, with a different operator used for armatures that are being edited, then the parent info gets cleared and the translate operator is called at the end.

thanks man, your answer made it clear. The fact that it is two different operators was known, but the bit that makes it work the way I wanted is the ('INVOKE_DEFAULT') part.


text:
How can I simplify or resample a Bezier curve?
When I use the Grease Pencil to draw out quick curves in the 3D Viewport, and then convert the pencil to a Bezier curve, the result is always consisting of very dense geometry and handles which are not aligned very well:
too many control points:

strange concept of handle alignment

Is there a Tool / Addon which can simplify these curves, so they become more smooth, and easier to control afterwards?

There is an addon called simplify curves, you can search for it in settings, the only problem with it that you need to change the curve shape back to 3D before exiting the edit mode.

@Denis thanks Denis, found it a few minutes ago, but feel free to post this as an answer, explaining a bit more in depth what the options are. I'm happy to mark it as answered then, the solution works for me.

Convert to mesh and limited dissolve... and come back to curve

@lemon interesting approach. After doing both, setting the limiting angle to something high like 15 degrees, and converting back, I do not see any more curve handles, everything became kind of sharp. Am I missing an option?

@aliasguru, no I think you are not missing an option. You may set the curve to bezier and the handles to auto. But effectively, in some cases, the result stays sharp. So this way is ok, but not "all the time".

You can simplify the curves with an addon called Simplify Curves that can be found and enabled in the settings.
When the addon is enabled you need to select the curve that you want to simplify, then hit Space bar button and type simplify curves in the search field.

Once you selected the function, by bringing operator menu with F6 button or in the operator panel you will be able to change the amount of smoothing.

Once you get the desired result, change the Shape of the curve to 3D in the Curve Settings panel.

Original:

Result:


text:
Is it possible to set Blender Selection Mode to left click selection via Python?
I was wondering if it would be possible to change Blender to left click selection mode via Python. The tooltip in 2.72 says the Datapath is UserPreferencesInput.select_mouse, but I am a bit lost on how to get there. Is it part of the keymap definition? If so, can it be changed via Python at all?
I am working on an add-on that changes quite a few hotkeys of Blender around in conjunction with Pie-Menus.
Any help here is greatly appreciated!

The full path to the current user preference is
bpy.context.user_preferences.inputs.select_mouse = 'LEFT'

fantastic! found it myself a minute ago, but in fact your answer even came before that!


text:
Can Python Operator Presets be shared between Operators?
I am currently working on an Add-on that makes use of the Preset system. As outlined here, Presets in an Operator can easily be defined using the bl_options = {'PRESET'} set. Those presets are then stored in BlenderPrefsLocation\scripts\presets\operator, named after the operator they refer to. Fine.
What I'd like to do is: Operator A has created a preset called file.A. From operator B, I'd like to re-use said preset. The property structure matches, so technically it would be possible.
At the moment, my only way of achieving this is to duplicate the folder file.A, and name it file.B, but I'd need to repeat this every time a preset is created.

Leveraging the preset system
A while back when doing some addon maintenance, changed the preset code for the add curve extra objects addon for 2.7x.  In particular add curve spirals.
Can leverage off the existing preset code to emulate the 'PRESET' option.  This way can choose what goes in the preset, what folder to save in, the menu and the operator to execute the preset.
Code snippets from /2.79/scripts/addons/add_curve_extra_objects/add_curve_spirals.py
Firstly there is an add preset base base class to inherit
from bl_operators.presets import AddPresetBase

The operator that creates the presets, notice can set the subdir here, defines in the script,  and what properties to save in the preset.  It is also associated with a menu.
class CURVE_EXTRAS_OT_spirals_presets(AddPresetBase, Operator):
    bl_idname = "curve_extras.spiral_presets"
    bl_label = "Spirals"
    bl_description = "Spirals Presets"
    preset_menu = "OBJECT_MT_spiral_curve_presets"
    preset_subdir = "curve_extras/curve.spirals"

    preset_defines = [
            "op = bpy.context.active_operator",
            ]
    preset_values = [
            "op.spiral_type",
            "op.curve_type",
            "op.spiral_direction",
            "op.turns",
            "op.steps",
            "op.radius",
            "op.dif_z",
            "op.dif_radius",
            "op.B_force",
            "op.inner_radius",
            "op.dif_inner_radius",
            "op.cycles",
            "op.curves_number",
            "op.touch",
            ]

its associated menu class. The bpy.types.Menu class has a 'draw_preset(..)` class method that draws the menu from the files in the presets folder. The default preset execute operator, which runs the code within the preset file setting the props is assigned as the operator of each menu item.
class OBJECT_MT_spiral_curve_presets(Menu):
    '''Presets for curve.spiral'''
    bl_label = "Spiral Curve Presets"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_MT_spiral_curve_presets"
    preset_subdir = "curve_extras/curve.spirals"
    preset_operator = "script.execute_preset"

    draw = bpy.types.Menu.draw_preset

In the draw method of the operator that the presets are for
def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    col = layout.column_flow(align=True)

    col.label("Presets:")

    row = col.row(align=True)
    row.menu("OBJECT_MT_spiral_curve_presets",
             text=bpy.types.OBJECT_MT_spiral_curve_presets.bl_label)
    row.operator("curve_extras.spiral_presets", text="", icon='ZOOMIN')
    op = row.operator("curve_extras.spiral_presets", text="", icon='ZOOMOUT')
    op.remove_active = True

With this set up  presets are being saved to or loaded  from the defined folder. This way if your operators A and B have similar (same) structure can draw their presets from the same folder.
Also Look for code in addon prefs in __init__.py to convert from the old preset locations to new presets.

nice, will test this hopefully today

this almost works. The functionality is there, the presets are shared. The only problem I face is that this preset system seems to ignore an environment variable I set (BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS) on Blender 2.80. It saves and loads the presets from C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\scripts\presets instead of my custom scripts path

I've tried using os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)) , 'my_addon') to work around it, but absolute paths are not allowed it seems. Is there a magic flag I missed?

Rusty on this.  Pretty sure all the pertinent code  is available as python in bl_operators.presets  . Is expected path set via EV same as bpy.utils.script_path_user() and or showing in bpy.utils.script_paths("presets") ?

Was just browsing class AddPresetBase: from release/scripts/startup/bl_operators in the Blender source code. There they construct the file path from bpy.utils.user_resource('SCRIPTS', target_path, create=True) which technically would yield the correct path (it does so when run from a blender console). Not sure why this fails on inheritance.

ahhhhh... now I see it: bpy.utils.user_resource('SCRIPTS', create=False) yields the correct path. bpy.utils.user_resource('SCRIPTS', 'test', create=False) defaults back to the AppData blah blah one... Must be a Blender bug?

Both bpy.utils.script_paths("presets") and bpy.utils.script_path_user() work, but the first one returns two locations as a list, having the one I want ordered last. I've created a bug report https://developer.blender.org/T62736 to see what the devs think about this.


text:
How can I access, edit, add and remove Metaballs in Edit Mode with Animation Nodes?
I'm working on a rather complex animation where I plan to use Metaballs to shape a certain geometry in combination with Animation Nodes. I have managed to get what I want by using the Object Instancer node, and the result looks just fine. But the Viewport becomes unbearable slow because of the high amount of Objects in the scene. The Polycount thanks to Metaball merging would not be an issue though.
To improve that interaction performance, I'd like to place, add and edit my metaballs in Edit Mode instead. Is this possible? Merging the Object Instances into one new target mesh would by the way also work for me, I just couldn't find a node that does this.

You can use a simple script as follows, you access the required metaball data block by name, clear its balls, and add new metaballs and edit their attributes like location and radius:

mball = bpy.data.metaballs[name]
mball.elements.clear()
for v, r in zip(locations, radii):
    ele = mball.elements.new()
    ele.co = v
    ele.radius = r

The API describe the possible attributes per ball.

Fantastic answer as always. I've improved it slightly by adding a target socket and filling the metaball data with mball = Target.data, so I can interactively set it. The speedup is enormous, funnily also concerning generation of a solution in general.


text:
What's the best output and encoding for 60fps animation?
I'm rendering an animation and I want it to be at 60fps. I plan to upload it to YouTube. So which file type format should I use: AVI JPEG, AVI Raw, H.264, MPEG, or Xvid? And what codec should I use?
So far I've used AVI format with H.264 codec. That seems to be working, but my computer isn't the best so I don't know if it's a format that actually supports 60fps. Any advice on this is greatly appreciate!

related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/24724/how-can-i-upload-blender-videos-to-youtube


text:
Adding a loop cut between a vertex and edges on a sphere
I have a UV Sphere projected at the pole and the UV to a single point smear issue

I read that this is because blender does not properly map the triangles at the poles. I found that I can "fix" the UV vertices (ouch):

Or, perhaps a much easier way is to add a loop cut close to the pole to the VU has a quad instead of a trip to work with. The issue that I an having is; if I try and add a loop cut I can't seem get it to show up between the last edge loop and the pole.
For example I want to to place a loop cut where the arrow is:

Is there any way to fix this?

Edit geometry there a bit, like beveling that vertex or alike.. If your quesiton is about adding loopcut between triangle fan and edge loop then see http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/33501/need-a-way-to-do-a-loop-cut-on-a-triangle-fan

Vertex Bevel! i knew there must have been a way to skin that cat. Thanks! now do I mark my own question as a dup :)


text:
"Add driver" not on menu
I'm trying to add a driver to a shape key but when I right click on the value line, the menu skips "Add Driver" and goes from "Insert Keyframe", "Clear Keyframe", to "Add to Keying Set".  I have Blender 2.74. Thanks.

Welcome Bob :) If the answer solves your issue, please mark it as solved (checkmark below the reputation arrows). You could also start with the tour: http://blender.stackexchange.com/tour to get your first badge. Thanks

Thats because you are already controlling the value with keyframes. Drivers and keyframes do not mix.
Select Clear Keyframes from the menu and then add driver.


text:
Mesh coordinates
I have created a cube in blender and I have resized it. When I use the following code to print the coordinates, it prints the coordinates for the original cube (not the resized one). Could you let me know how I can get the coordinates for the resized cube?
for item in bpy.data.objects:
    print(item.name)
    if item.type == 'MESH':
        for vertex in item.data.vertices:
            print(vertex.co)

I think you should apply transforms for the cube first (assume you haven't already)

I have already transformed the cube by pressing 'S'.

Applying transforms (Ctrl+A) is another command, as I assume you scaled your mesh in Object mode

what you get are coordinates in object space you can avoid applying transformation and  calculate the world coordinates instead

As others have mentioned, you need to apply the scale transform you performed. I would do something like:
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT') # deselect everything to avoid a mess
for item in bpy.data.objects:
    print(item.name)
    if item.type == 'MESH':
        item.select = True # lets select every mesh as we go
        bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(scale=True) # apply transform
        item.select = False # we're done working on this object
        for vertex in item.data.vertices:
            print(vertex.co)


text:
How can you sync Blender configs between multiple machines?
I run Blender on several machines, it is a hassle to copy configs around, in order that you don't have to configure everything from scratch every time.
Is there a sync functionality that does this?

You can also try a portable install https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/78121/can-i-change-default-folder-to-save-startup-file-startup-blend-and-userpref-ble

Yes, this is in fact possible:
This is part of the Blender Cloud functionality is called Blender Sync.
And guess what: it is completely free!
This will sync your Blender Startup and User Preferences to the Blender Cloud and you can then retrieve it from any new install. It works even cross plattform (I use it on Linux and Windows)
First, create a blender ID here:
https://www.blender.org/id/
Then download the blender Cloud addon and install it:
https://cloud.blender.org/services
Then log in via the addon and bingo, your settings will be synced up to the cloud.
See here for all the details:
https://cloud.blender.org/blog/introducing-blender-sync
I have noticed that some people have heard of this before, but assumed that it was only part of the paid Blender Cloud. But it is in fact free. I hope this will boost your productivity and make sure you can save time only having to configure Blender once.


text:
Blender 2.80 Objects have sound attached to them?
I want to create a simple grease pencil animation, but don't want to have to add sound later on, but would prefer for example an object to have sound attached, like a cloud rain and thunder. The sound should them be picked up by the camera, in stereo, depending on where the object is in relation to the camera, being louder or softer, left or right. So if the camera gets closer to the object, it the sound gets louder.
I know that there was a functionality in the Blender Game Engine, which is no more as of 2.80. This is possible at all anymore?

Add a speaker object to your scene.
The speaker object has just the functionality you are after.

Speaker
The speaker object is used to give sound in the 3D View. After adding the object, the various settings can be changed in the
  Properties editor.

Add a speaker to the scene Add > Object > Speaker
Add sound and fill in the properties accordingly.
Image from 2.83

The speaker object can be animated as other objects.

This is from Blender 2.79, not from 2.80 like I asked. I have obviously found this documentation, but how do you make it ACTUALLY WORK? I get no sound and neither any info how to make it sound.

Changed link to 2.8 which since there is no great change from 2.7x is exactly the same.  Reading question again: It is not so "obvious" you have found this documentation.  What have you tried?  Do you get sound after adding sound to sequencer.  What audio device are you using?

@nigratruo It should work without doing anything, maybe you are using an unsupported codec for your audio?

@melMass If you wish to communicate with OP please add commentary under question, so I don't get notified. AFAIC this answers the question as asked.

Well yes, I’m confirming your answer being the good one so it does belongs here.


text:
My vertices disconnect
I posted this a while back but no one has replied in months so I am reposting.
When I click on a vertex it moves one "triangle" (I'm new ok idk what the proper word is) and the rest stay in the same place. I'm trying to lips sync and it's proving to be impossible at the moment, due to the vertices being unconnected.
Here is my blend file: http://www.mediafire.com/download/8nt27wz1lc414g0/newtester.blend
Any help would be largely appreciated ^^
I have tried:
right clicking and then pressing G
Pressing H
Pressing C

Try going to edit mode, selecting all vertices with A, then click W and select remove doubles.

your original post is here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/34472/i-cant-select-multiple-vertices-and-move-them-blender-2-75

That's because each triangle in that model is 'disjointed' , it is not joined to any other triangle. You can join them using Remove Doubles.
In Edit mode, hit A until Blender selects every polygon (Triangle). Then look for the tools menu, and press Remove Doubles.


text:
Is there a way to draw a pattern onto mesh and then extrude?
to clarify, I'm attempting to model a Kylo Ren (Star Wars Ep 7) helmet in Blender. As you can see in this picture, there are metallic patterns on his cheek area.
I am fairly new to Blender, so I was wondering if there is a way to trace the pattern with something like the knife tool, or a grease pencil type drawing tool that actually cuts the mesh, and then extrude the pattern to desired thickness.
Or if there is a simpler way to extrude the pattern, I'd be thankful for info on that too.
Thanks in advance.
JB

It might be useful to show your work or some simplification of you work as a 3D model so some people know where do start assisting you.

Both Knife tool and Grease pencil (converted to geometry) do the job pretty good. The difficoult part is tracing the contour! As the lines are evenly spaced, I woud suggest to work with a "smart" topology and use loopcuts to define the areas.

Hi atomicbezierslinger, I don't have anything to show yet, but a subsurfed cube. I thought I'd work out how to do the detail work first so that I can model the helmet to suit whatever base it needs.

Thanks Carlo. I am going to try loopcuts, as I'm struggling with the converting grease pencil to geometry part. I appreciate the suggestion.

You may use use a Bsurfaces addon and then the Knife Project Tool. Go to User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U-->Add-ons) and enable it.

Add an object you want to draw the extrusion pattern on, then add a Plane (or any other object you like), enter the Edit Mode and delete it (X). In the Properties Panel (N) add a new Grease Pencil layer, then go to the Tool Shelf (T)-->Grease Pencil and change a stroke placement to Surface. Now go to the Tool bookmark in a Tool Shelf. Draw some strokes on an object (hold D, then press LMB [ How to draw grease pencil on a surface (blender 2,75)? ]). When finished, click on Add Surface in Bsurface panel. Change the settings below as you like.

Now (being in Object Mode) select a mesh you created using a Grease Pencil, then your base mesh and enter the Edit Mode. Go to the Tool Shelf-->Tools-->Transform-->Add-->Knife Project. Now the only thing you should do is to retopologize your mesh a bit.

Thanks a lot, Gonzou! I followed your directions and was able to get it to work with straight lines, but when I tried curved lines, or cul-de-sacs, the geometry that was generated was all askew. Do you know why this would be? I'll try to upload a picture of what I mean.

You can use a displace modifier with the texture to get some low relief effects.  It will not be equivalent to full 3D model.
There are ways in Inkscape to trace edges, import them into Blender as curves, convert to mesh. (Text objects are often converted to mesh objects) Then extrude and duplicate.

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. Is there a way to project the traced edges to the surface of the model, so that the design is formed over the cheek ridge before extruding?


text:
Atmospheric lighting in cycles
How would I go a about making volume light beams?
I have have tried  various tutorials, but they must be for a older version. as applying them does seemingly nothing.
A link to a functioning tutorial would be greatly appreciated as well.
I don't have a picture or .blend to show, as my problem with atmospheric lighting does not pertain to any specific scene.


text:
Need help moving the origin to center
I got a logo in blender and im trying to rotate it 360 degrees. But when i rotated it i realized it isnt centered. I found out that the logo got some invisible edge or something, because when i do "Origin to Geometry" it still isnt in the middle. (Sry for my bad english + second project in blender)

You could put the 3D cursor where you think the origin should be and transform "Origin to 3D cursor" or parent it to an empty and rotate that (easier to tweak).

If you can use some vertices to find the median point (such diameter, diagonal...), you could follow these steps:

In edit mode, select the vertices to find the median point and press shift + s to move the cursor to selected

In object mode, press ctrl + alt + shift + c to set origin to cursor


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setAngularVelocity does not work
I run the following code in Blender Game Engine:
ball.setAngularVelocity((0,0,0),1) #or ball.setAngularVelocity((0,0,0),0)
print(ball.worldAngularVelocity)
So I expect to see Vector (0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000) at each iteration, but the output looks like the following:
Vector (0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)
Vector (-1.1090, -0.8872, 0.1430)
Vector (-0.8303, -0.6629, -0.4372)
Vector (5.1094, 1.9519, 0.2987)
Could someone help me how I can set the angular velocity to zero?

I found the solution. It is a bug in Blender and it does not accept (0,0,0) as angular velocity. It should be a small number instead of 0 for example (0.00001, 0.00001, 0.00001)

It is not a bug. It is a "feature". This comes from the motion actuator. 0.0 values are interpreted as "no change". This allows to combine different motion vectors. While this feels nice in the GUI it is pretty annoying in Python.


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How to compute image coordinates from projection matrix?
I get the projection matrix from the Camera object (projection_matrix) and it is a 4x4 matrix. I have an object in the scene whose "worldPosition" is known (x,y,z). Now I want to project the 3D point (x,y,z) to an image using projection_matrix. My question is how can I compute the image coordinates of the 3D point?

The answer to your question can be found at: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/38009/3x4-camera-matrix-from-blender-camera Have a look at the script provided.


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How to project a point from 3D to 2D in blender?
I know how to obtain the 4x4 projection matrix of the camera in Blender, but it seems its format is different from the standard camera projection matrices. I would appreciate it if someone explains how I can project a 3D point to 2D (image coordinates) using that projection matrix.

related, possible duplicate: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/882/how-to-find-image-coordinates-of-the-rendered-vertex

Thanks, but I need to know how projection_matrix in the camera object works. In that question, they use world_to_camera_view.

did you read the answers?

read my answer to the question @zeffii refers to. its a relatively newer one, you missed it.

see also http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/38009/3x4-camera-matrix-from-blender-camera/38210


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How to prevent the objects from going through the floor?
I have a cube and a plane in an inactive layer. I copy them to another layer by using addObject and change their vertices by setXYZ. The plane is static and the cube is a rigidObject. When I start the simulation the cube goes through the plane, while it should not happen since the cube is shown right on top of the plane. Could someone let me know what I am doing wrong? Below is part of the code that I wrote. I wrote it in a way that it runs just once and it doesn't add a cube and plane at every cycle of bge (I removed those parts below):
tmpobj = scene.addObject("Cube", "Empty", 0)
tmpobj.worldPosition = box_world # box_world is a variable that specifies where the cube should move to in the active layer.
mesh = tmpobj.meshes[0]
nvert = mesh.getVertexArrayLength(0)

cc = 0
for j in range(nvert):
    vert = mesh.getVertex(0, j)
    vert.setXYZ(box[cc:cc+3]) # box is a 1x72 array that contains the new coordinates of the box
    cc = cc + 3

tmpobj2 = scene.addObject("Plane", "Empty", 0)
tmpobj2.worldPosition = floor_world # floor_world is a variable that contains the world position of the plane in the active layer

mesh = tmpobj2.meshes[0]
nvert = mesh.getVertexArrayLength(0)
for j in range(nvert):
   vert = mesh.getVertex(0, j)
   vert.setXYZ(floorcorners) # floorcorner is a variable that contains the coordinates of the floor plane

You need to set up physics properties at your Cube as Ridgid Body or Dynamic and at Plane as Static so that they can interact...

The first thing I see, is that you are loading both objects at the exact same point, "Empty". If it's the default cube and plane primitives, then you're spawning your cube halfway below the plane. Then your changing the vertices of the object, not the global position. This is basically saying "render the object at one location, but render the mesh at another.
This image shows, the collision box offset from the mesh renderer, because the vertex positions where modified, not object position:

So, chances are, your collider is still halfway through the plane, while the mesh is offset the distance you specify.
If you remove the part of your script that moves verts, and just adjust the global position, the box will rest on the plane.
Is there a reason your moving just the mesh(verts) and not the entire object?
If you need help seeing what's going on, you can turn on 'Collision Bounds' in the 'Physics Tab' of 'Properties Panel' for both the Cube and Plane. Also, enable 'Physics Visualization' in the 'Render Tab'.