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How to join or articulate a group of bones?
I am rigging with bones and parenting with empty groups but when I want to join more that two bones as one unique articulation or when I move then in pose mode each vertices goes apart.
This is the mesh in rest position where you can see the bones joining together

And here when I try to move them

Does anybody knows what can I do?
Thanks in advance

Use a trackto constraint. See this answer. If you search youtube for piston rig you will find some tutorials.

I have already tried with empties and then using constrains. It looks very easy and simple in the YouTube videos but it didn't work for me as I expected. Maybe because of some previous settings I have made in the model. After trying for a while I decided to do it with bones. As I didn't get an answer soon in this post I decided to make some changes in the model. I deleted the piston that is not attached and add some modifiers. It seems it is working but now the bucket is making some resistance to go down. I still working on it. Thank you Sambler

I don't know if I am right but it looks the tail of the bone can be only joined to a head and no tail to tail. So, I thought that the best way was to make some changes and try to build a new logic of articulations of the bones and that way I made the armature move as I wanted to. I will post the picture in the answers.

A trackto constraint can make a bone point to another without parenting, it can point to any part of the bone.

Yes you are right. I have that constraint on the bucket where there is three bones holding it.

My approach would be to have one bone as root to move the whole thing around, a second bone is then attached to the arm to control lifting it up. I placed a Limit Rotation constraint on this so that it can only be moved within a reasonable range of motion.
For the hydraulics lifting the arm, I have two empties (shown as circles), one is parented to the arm, the other to the main chassis. A cylinder is then made as a child of each with a TrackTo constraint that keeps it pointed at the opposing empty.

As the arm is raised and lowered, these piston pieces imitate the hydraulic piston.

The bone for the "pivot" arm that is used to rotate the bucket is simply an unconnected child of the arm bone, again I have a Limit Rotation constraint to keep it sane.

For the bucket I have another unconnected bone that is also a child of the arm bone. To this I have added a Transformation constraint. While this constraint can be hard to grasp, it takes an input transform and maps it to the output transform, the input and output do not have to be the same type or axis, but in this case I use it to vary the ratio of movement. A little experimenting and I found moving the pivot bone between 20 and -20 degrees and having the bucket to move between -28 and 28 degress gives a close to static length in the connection between the pivot arm and the bucket. Note that I inverted the angle values so that the rotation happens in the opposite direction.

Similar to the arm hydraulics I have a cylinder with a TrackTo constraint, but here I only have the one.
With this setup you animate the main arm bone to raise and lower the whole mechanism and animate the pivot arm bone to adjust the bucket position.

I have parented the various parts to the bones, the same constraints could be applied directly to objects without using an armature.

Sambler, thank you very much.I have been trying to make this thing work all the week and you made it very simple. You are the best!

I deleted a piston on the bottom. The one that was not joined and added a couple of bone constraints to move them the way that I wanted to.


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How to fix Hair strand - texture

Working on the retopology of this mesh I lost the info about the hair. If you notice the strands in picture 1 looks non linear and picture 2 look linear. I don't know if blender updated and change this or  I just don't remember where to change it. ... I think the issue was in cycles hair rendering-> primitive-> line segment / Curve Segment but I don't find it anymore in the new update. how can I do then to get a more defined strand?Can somebody help me?
Thanks in advance

The dolls looks scary - the hair system has been updated lately .. how old was your model?

Yes. This is why I am working on retopology of the doll. I think the issue was in cycles hair rendering-> primitive-> line segment but I don't find it anymore in the new update. how can I do then to get a more defined strand?

After experimenting around I found a solution for this problem. Cycles Hair settings is not in the last blender update but the texture of the hair from linear to curve can be improved just by changing steps from 2 (settings default in the hair properties) to 6.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Hair renders different than the preview
I made the eyelashes for my mesh and though it will be fine as it looks in the picture

Particle Edit
Object mode
but after I render the eyelashes look very messy
like this

What I am doing wrong?
Here my Hair settings

Thanks in advance

The subdivision surface setting on the mesh was different and view/render. the problem got solved by changing this.

Look for normal editing (blendforweb or inner blender normal edit modifiers)for your curves/meshes or try edit normals at Paricle/advanced hair/Velocity shelf

Sorry, do you have a link about?. I don't undertand where specifically is this whay you say. Do you mean the issue is in my mesh not in the particle settings?

Is this an add-on?

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


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How can I offset the noise texture on a generated grid by the position it eventually gets instanced at?
I created a grid, then used instance on point to place a grid of grids, which I want to adjust the heightmap of, into what looks like a connected landscape.
Right now the instanced grids are all identical:

How do I offset the noise texture use for the heightmap by the position it eventually gets instanced at?
Position+vector math lets me adjust the position, but it's still identical on every grid.

EDIT: Attempt using Chris's setup

(still all look the same)

If this one doesn`t work either, then the error is somewhere else.

This is a simplified version of @Chris's solution, because the nodes Attribute Capture are really not necessary.

with this node setup:

you will get this:

You have to use the realize instance node that it works. I add the positions of the grids to capture the "real" position and add it, so that it is one big fitting landscape.

I couldn't immediately see why all the capturing and adding was needed.. @stackers wants to move the tiles about and have the texture stick, I guess?

You are free to answer with less nodes…but I think this is the result he wants…

i tried copying this setup but still got every chunk looking the same

show me your node setup or better provide blend file, then i will have a look

and i don't know whether this matters...but i am using Blender 3.3 alpha....

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


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How to get hair particles to face camera (billboard)?
I'm trying to do simple trees:

I created a plane which then has a track to constraint to it which points at the camera, and that works fine.

But all my particles still face the same direction. They don't all face the camera. If I move the camera, the original one moves to face the camera, and the particles all move by the same amount.
How do I make them all track to the camera individually?
(also not sure why the angle is weird, I'd prefer to make them always stick straight up)

EDIT

Here is an edit of the below .blend where I tried to do it myself:

Notice the above platforms trees dont follow the camera properly. If you change the particle system from "badtrees" to "goodtrees" it works fine. They seems to have identical settings to me.
My process:

add a new ground plane
adding particle system to plane
change to hair
render as object
instance object tree
check off object rotation

You need two things:

The Render Object that you are using needs the Track To Constraint, not the Plane with the Hair.  Although perhaps this is what you did and your question muddies this in your explanation;

In Render as, you need to check Object Rotation

Enable Advanced Hair that allows you to play with Rotation, but it
is not needed here.  I just want to point this out:

Here is an example

Again with your edited file:

Yes I add the track to constraint to the "tree" plane, and have the rotation checked. I tried again from scratch and got the same problem as the first time, though your example looks fine. Even If I try to do it in your file by adding a new ground plane > adding particle system > change to hair > render as object > instance object tree > check off object rotation, it still doesn't work and looks like my images above. Am I missing a step?

It seems like they're rotating the opposite direction they're supposed to when rotating the camera

added a gif and blend file download to my post

@stackers -- Actually it looks like you do need to also use "Advanced" Hair, enable rotation and set to None.  Sometimes you just gotta play with these things.  I guess I used Advanced, and then disabled and had the same result and so put this as my "other info".  I have edited my answer.

Yup, that finally solved it, thanks for your help.

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


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Is there any way I could render an image plane so the texture is at an exact size on the final render?
I want to create particles that are 2d, and always drawn the exact same size, no matter where they are in the scene, or at what angle, OR what size the final render is.
So if my particle texture is 8x8 pixels, I want it to show up as 8x8 pixels exactly on the final render.
This can be done with an alpha overlay in the compositor, but I'd like to apply it to moving particles, and other objects. It would also be nice if they respected the depth of other objects (so if another object is in front of it, it obscures the particle).
EDIT:
I have found a way to do this with geometry nodes by scaling objects depending on their distance from the camera:

Unfortunately its not quite right, and the sprites frequently get stretched or squashed by 1px, which looks very distracting, especially in animations:

Here are the nodes / .blend
https://blenderartists.org/uploads/short-url/5qs6SVA0ARB0jijR0EDvTBhPTCX.blend

If anyone can figure out how to avoid this, it would be great.

Something to do with the “Window” texture coordinate?

i would guess the reason are rounding/precision issues

okay, how to fix

The reason is that even for a perfectly aligned plane, in perspective projection various "pixels" (understood as regions translating to a pixel) have different area depending on distance from the camera, which is not constant (it would be constant only if instead of a plane you used a part of a sphere (where camera's pinhole sits in the center of that sphere)

@MarkusvonBroady i think i see what you're saying, like the top right corner of the render is farther from the camera than something in the middle. the sphere idea is interesting, though not sure exactly how it would be calculated. Surely just a normal sphere would have far too much curvature. Perhaps I could generate a grid and bend it with geonodes, probably based on the camera perspective.

I finally got some time to play around with this and as soon as I opened Blender the practice brutally defeated the theory... What I said would be true for a human eye, but is not true for a flat sensor that Blender simulates.

in "theory" i could imagine if you use a bigger image with more resolution, it would flicker less....

yes, if I render at a higher resolution there is no flickering, but I want to render the rest of the scene with pixels of the same size as the texture

If your camera is aligned to axes, you can separate XYZ to easily get the distance between sensor and an instanced plane along a ray perpendicular to them (the middle camera ray, center of camera's frustum), and use a formula from Gordon Brinkmann's answer:
Why does reducing Resolution X increase my camera's FOV and increasing it reduce FOV?
If you can't afford to have the camera aligned, you can create a vector representing camera's direction when it has no rotation (0; 0; -1), rotate it by the camera's rotation, and calculate Dot Product (a.k.a. projection product) with the difference of camera location and a given point location.
But since then you still need to similarly calculate sensor's XY coordinates, I decided to just rotate the coordinates to where they would have been if the camera looked down, then snap, and then rotate back.
The oddness/evenness of a given axis has to be the same for the image and the render, otherwise the center of an image is between pixels (on pixel boundaries), and it's snapped to a pixel center or vice-versa. The node setup could be improved to deal with that, but it would clutter the main solution.
Likewise, I only use Resolution X, because I assume either horizontal sensor fit, or auto fit with the horizontal dimension being bigger.

Wow. I really thought this was impossible. :)

im amazed, it seems like you actually solved it. still trying to understand it all. the camera distance from a plane rather than the center of the camera makes sense, I actually tried something similar but it didn't seem to work. By "having the camera aligned" did you mean pointing at 0,0?

@stackers I didn't mean location but orientation. If your camera rotations are 0;0;0, then you can use my setup without the 2 Vector Rotate nodes. If your camera has some rotations but is aligned to axes, for example 90°;0;90° rotations, Then you just need to treat the XYZ components differently (sensor Y becomes world Z, sensor X is still world X, distance to camera becomes world Y).

Ive just noticed the textures are actually upside down (a bit hard to tell with my crappy texture). I tried to add some rotation at different points in the nodes, but it seems to move the points or rotate it to an incorrect angle (if i put vector rotate right before rotation on instance on points). any ideas?


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How to completely nullify rigid body bounciness
A simple question for which I have not yet found a simple answer: why two colliding rigid body objects still bounce if I set both "responce > baunciness" to "0.0"? How do I completely nullify the bounciness in a collision? I'm not using gravity, I have a force field applied to a passive object and another active object hitting it . I don't want them to bounce. Not at all. Never.... I need all physical properties except bounceness ... Is it possible somehow? Thanks.
p.s. I have basic knowledge of Blender, take it easy...

Probably better if you can attach your simplified blend with issue. Use https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com and paste given code into your question. This topic is quite case sensitive :) and not always there is a solution.

Here with Cubes

Collisions > Shape > Box
Surface Response > Friction > 1 (Bounciness > 0)
(probably also for small Cubes > Dynamics > Damping Translation > 0)

Important - Apply Scale Ctrl+A to all objects.

Edit according to the given file:

You didn't set Collision Shape to Box.
Also one very important aspect is set Geometry to Origin for proper simulation. If collision box doesn't fit to your high-poly mesh, move vertices a bit closer to border in edit mode.

Sidenote - Is it OK to have object dimension just 4 mm? On my computer it starts flicker that can be fixed in 3Dview's side panel (N) > View Clip Start = 1 mm End = 100 mm.
I'm asking because part of problems can be a size. Simulation on these micro values is not too much stable in general. But here works without bouncing with RB Active object > Mass = 0.0001 mg and RB Passive object with Strength = -10000.

First of all thanks for the help. I am a bit confused because even in your example I see bounces. In fact I tried to use your settings but my objects keep bouncing.
This is my test project.
https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/rmaGYQxV/
The biggest problem, as you will see, is that the passive object is very, very, very complex because it comes from photogrammetry.

I asked to place given code into your question, not into a comment, so I move it. I see a bit of a bounce for my left cube. You probably expect too much from blenders possibilities :) Others are just colliding with corners in sequence since they are rotated. Anyway I checked your file and edited answer. From your file I 'm not sure what is goal of your simulation.

Thanks for moving the file to the right place. Your suggestions, especially the size one, allowed me to have a much more regular physical simulation. My biggest problem in this project is that my passive object comes from photogrammetry and I have to leave it as complex as it is, surely too much for a stable simulation. Anyway, forget my crazy project. I'm not here for that. I am only interested in in how to stop bounciness. Even with your suggestions and much simpler objects seems to me is not possible to completely cancel the bounceness.

As I said it is case sensitive, there are a big differences in result with various force strength vs weight. You already noticed the weight has influence on force strength. Even you have complicated mesh from photogrammetry in your example is not a problem to use a cube collision shape that is much stable than Mesh type. And I asked about your project because there can be other ways to get desired result. Good luck with your project :)


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Cycles Volume Scattering with Voxel Data
Problem
I am trying to visualize the electron density of some simulations. The data would consist of a file with the density of electrons at each point in space. From reading documentation I have found that the voxel data structure would be great for this kind of data and allows for multiple frames as well.

Is it possible to use voxel data or something similar to apply a material with volume scattering? Currently I cannot find a way to use this kind of data (only image textures are allowed). Resources I have looked at typically mention that it is only possible in the blender renderer.

Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/14995/voxel-data-in-cycles

Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/62110/using-image-sequence-of-medical-scans-as-volume-data-in-cycles. Do you have some sample data file?

So I actually stumbled upon those posts and what was disappointing is that they only offered work arounds. It looks like the community is just waiting for a voxelnode to be implemented. My hope was that a straightforward solution would be possed. It's fair to mark this as a duplicate.

Support for voxels still isn't here, but support for point clouds has since been added. You could try using such a point cloud, but I'm not sure how well it would work for this.

It looks like the holy grail is once openvdb is fully implemented in Blender. Not ideal but I will try out point clouds.

For those wondering since there are not really any supported volume formats (as of spring 2016) supported in Blender Cycles hacks must be used. I settled on a solution that used the answer posted in a related question. It is important to note this solution is a general method to create 3d image from a 2d image and is gpu accelerated. I was able to use this method to create 3d volume scattering.

Here is an ugly but fully working one that I produced with the following python code to create the input image. I found this approach to also be very memory intensive as expected since each image was 200x200x200 pixels.
import numpy as np
import png # using pypng

n = 200
x = np.linspace(0, 10, n)
array = np.zeros(n**3).reshape(n, n**2)
for i in range(n):
    for j in range(n):
        for k in range(n):
            array[i, j+k*n] = (np.sin(x[i]) * np.sin(x[j]) *
np.sin(x[k]))**2 * 2**16
array = np.floor(array).astype(np.uint16)
image = png.from_array(array, 'L')
image.save('hello.png')


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Eyebrows not fully rotating with head
The eyebrows and the rest of the body is one object. The eyebrows, eyelashes and eyes are not connected to the body. The eyebrows is the only part that doesn't fully rotate with the head when moving the head bone, where the eyes and eyelashes does, even though the eyelashes is fully weighted on the head bone like the other loose meshes. It seems like the eyebrows rotates around a different axis as the head when moving the head. This only happens with the head bone, the eyebrows rotates perfectly with the neck bones. I used rigify. Thanks for the help. Much appreciated!
The head bone I mention is "spine.006" in the blend file.

File on Google Drive

select them in Edit mode, in the vertex groups list click on Remove From All Groups, then select the group to which they are supposed to be part of and click on Assign

Hey. I did what you said, but unfortunately it doesn't fix it.

yes it fixes it, select the eyebrows, on the right of the Vertex Groups list there's a dropdown menu > Remove From All Groups, then assign to the group called spine.006

Thank you. My problem is fixed! :)

Select the eyebrows, on the right of the Vertex Groups list there's a dropdown menu, click on Remove From All Groups, then assign to the group called spine.006.


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Bake an Object Animation.Deformed by Modifier
I have an animated lattice that I'm using to deform a page animation, and I'm wondering if I can bake the deforms to the mesh somehow. The Bake Animation operation ignores the lattice and applying the lattice as a shape key only works one frame at a time.

Try export as Alembic and Import back ... also there are other options how to animate page if you are interested https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/192079/2214

Baked can be only object transforms (loc/rot/scale) or any parametr, but not vertex (as shape keys that provides linear transformation from loc to loc). For such thing you would have to use some format that supports Mesh Sequence like Alembic (.abc)

Just select your object go to Export > Alembic.
Import > Alembic - imported object gets automatically assigned Mesh Sequence Cache modifier were you can tweak few parameters

Note: I cant pack .abc into blend so just delete my object Plane.abc and Export-Import again.


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How to clean linear f-curves to keep only peaks/valleys
How to clean f-curves that have linear lines so that the only keyframes that are kept after the cleanse are the peaks and lowest keyframes where the curve's slope changes.
What I have tried:

The Decimate (ratio) command - after a certain percentage seems to change the keyframes interpolation to not linear and doesn't keep the peaks and valleys but tries to form an arc between the two points.
The Clean Keyframes command - seems to remove keyframes in a constant interval betweeen keyframes but after a certain threshold it doesn't keep the peaks and valleys.

Is there a way to clean hundreds of objects that have similar animations of their location data? Attached is an image illustrating the keyframes that should not be removed.

Context: these objects are from a particle simulation that had its particles motion converted to keyframes using the script given in this answer: Convert particle system to animated meshes

The function Key > Decimate (Allowed change) seems to work pretty well in this task, both with "Error margin" and "Ratio" behaviour.

+1 ... how could  missed there are two decimations :) Thanks


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Why can't i place loop cut on certain faces of my object?
I'm trying to model a gun in blender, using loop cuts to allign my object with a reference photo in the background. After modeling for a few minutes i realized that there are certain faces on the gun that i can't place loop cuts on.
Why is this happening and how can i fix this?

hello you can't create loopcuts across faces that are not quads, so you either need to correct your topology, or use the knife tool to create your edge loop (K to activate, A to cut orthogonally, C to cut through)


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Why isn't my mirror modifier working when importing my fbx file into Unreal Engine?
For some reason when i'm importing my model of a knife as an fbx file into Unreal Engine it's halved. I used a mirror modifier when i modeled the knife and i made sure to both apply it and check the "Apply modifiers" box before exporting it as an fbx file. Despite my efforts the knife is still halved when i import it.
Does anyone have a solution to my problem?
Here is a picture of the "halved knife":

It looks like your normals are inverted, which gives this x-ray effect on the surface towards camera. You can flip the normals with :

Go to Edit Mode Tab
Select all faces A
Alt+N > Recalculate Outside
Or alternatively Alt+N > Flip if the previous action didn't succeed


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Augmenting a mesh
I am quite new to Blender and I wonder if the following is possible:
I leveraged Photogrammetry to create a 3d mesh with texture of my office plant:

However, now I want to augment my plant to have many of them, but in different compositions (later on randomly create a version of this plant). How can I approach this problem? Currently it is one fixed mesh, all leaves, branches etc. stick together. However, I want to organize them differently in the 3D model. What is the right way to do this?
(I already started to separate the mesh such that every leaf is a single object. However, it is extremely time consuming and then for rearranging the leaves it needs a lot of manual work as well - as e.g. the leaf does not stick to the branch for instance.)

Probably the best way would be to model it using your photoscanned plant as a reference.

Well, the simple answer is without creating a completely new object: since a 3D scan only gives you a single mesh with more or less complex/messy geometry, you have to do it the tedious manual way. For just slight variations you might not even have to separate it. Select some faces of a leaf, then with Proportional Editing enabled move, rotate or scale them to create some variation. The Proportional Editing should take care of a smooth transition between the edited and non-edited parts.


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How to paint imported obj or fbx model?
I have helicopter obj or fbx file which is I will use in Unity 3D. now what I want to do is import those obj or fbx helicopter model to blender and paint the surface to white or black color.
here are URLs of model in grabcad: https://grabcad.com/library/sikorsky-uh-60-black-hawk-1,
https://grabcad.com/library/sikorsky-uh-60-blackhawk-1
and this youtube video is what I watched to get an idea how to paint model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjS_zNQNVlw.
I imported model to blender but I can't texture paint on my model because there is no texture selection window.
I need to paint the surface so that is loos like color of helicopter similar to the one seen from IR camera.
I would be really grateful if you provide me help.

Grant says in his tutorial that it is not for complete beginners... sorry no offense, but you sound like an absolute beginner if you have no idea how to get an image texture to paint on. I would highly recommend watching beginner tutorials on texture painting or even materials and shaders in general (if your goal was just to get a fully white or black surface, there will no painting be necessary anyway). This site is to help with specific issues where you got stuck, not to give full walkthroughs on texturing techniques.

And as it stands, it is unclear what materials your object has, what textures and why you cannot locate them or why you cannot paint on them... I actually do not think the model comes without any of these, but since I have to create an account there with full name, email, phone number, company name, position etc. which is data I'm not willing to give for my private voluntary help here, I cannot download the model to check for myself.


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Alpha Transparency not working for mesh in Cycles Render
I created a text object and then converted it to Mesh (Alt+C).
What I want to do? Achieve a fade-in animation. Insert one keyframe for transparency when it is fully transparent, and another when the object's opaque.
What's the problem?
I am stuck at the first step. I can't seem to make it transparent. Here's a screenshot:

The transparency works in the solid view but not in rendered mode. If it matters, I have some keyframes related to scale attached to that mesh text object.
I had followed one tutorial that led to me the above step. I have also seen this question Alpha transparency not working but it did not work for me.
Question:

Why is my method not working?

It works in viewport because you adjusted alpha transparence only for viewport (Material > Settings > Viewport Color ); for rendering shader should be present

@MrZak Oh, it was a silly mistake! :P

To render transparency in Cycles you need a transparency shader.
Setup your nodes in this kind of configuration, and set your key frames on the "Fac" value of the "Mix Shader" :


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Geometry Nodes - Billboards (similar to track to constraint)
I'm trying to make flat planes that face the camera (billboards) using geometry nodes.
It's pretty easy to do with particles, you just add a track to contraint pointing at the camera.
I started with this thread:
via Geometry Nodes' points tracked to camera
But it rotates them all, hard to see without changing the texture:

Here is my attempt at using it for billboards:

Trees do not stand up straight, and rotate around when you move the camera. I've tried playing with different settings, but nothing looks right.
Ideally they would always be straight up and down relative to the camera.
Another nice option would be if they were always straight up and down globally, so the top always was going up the Z axis, but the first one would be preferred.
I would also prefer to use current blender nodes and not the 3.0 ones, since they would be more backwards compatible (but b3 would be interesting too)
Here is my file:

This answer is given using Geometry Nodes (Fields), using Blender 3.0b. I would recommend that, if possible; the system has changed quite radically.
However, the principle remains the same: 2 Euler alignments are required to establish an orientation:

The Point position is subtracted from the Camera position to give the vector from Point to Camera (All positions, vectors in the modified object's, the ground's, space)
This arrow-object's Z axis is along the front-facing normal of its face. First, that is aligned to the camera, around an arbitrary axis.
The arrow-object's Y axis is along the arrow. We now know its Z is facing the camera, so it's safe to spin around that, to get it to point up the ground's Z axis.

Hi Robin, this is an amazing solution! May I use this in one of my YouTube (SouthernShotty) tutorials if I credit you and this post?

@Shotty Sure thing, no problem. Same goes for anything of mine here on BSE,, thanks for asking. :) Check solutions out thoroughly for yourself before publishing!

Thank you so much!

I believe you can just set the pivot on the first align Euler to vector to z and not need the second one

Hi, @shumel..  that doesn't make sense to me..  trying to align an axis to a vector by rotating about itself? Are you doing something else as well? I've played around, attempting to figure out what it could possibly be.

Im doing this that way. It does not create any unwanted rotation.


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How to create a wireframe with pixelated lines
I want to create a wireframe on top of my model that is not anti-aliased, and is only 1 pixel thick all the way around, like this:

Is this possible in modern blender? Freestyle and wireframe modifier both add anti-aliasing:

This can be remedied somewhat with some compositor tricks to limit it to 2 colors, but then the lines aren't an even thickness, which really bothers me.
This was possible in blender 2.7 and earlier, but it seems impossible in 2.8-4


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what is going on? my workspace texture going wrong

Does my GPU cause this? Because I got an issued with my GPU, there is something wrong like sometimes it just not responding. How can I fix it?
My laptop spec is Geforce 1050 4gb, 8gb ram, 1tb disk split d and c, Intel i7 8750h.

Hello and welcome. Please use a descriptive title that sumarizes te content of the question

owh oke im sorry


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Loop at intersection of two objects (script)
I'm looking for a Script or Add-on for Blender 2.79 that creates verts and a lines where two objects intersect.
Practical example:
I need loops where the mountains intersect with the grass and where the grass intersects with the water for many purposes:

Hitboxes around everything preventing player from leaving level (Extrude loops upward)
AI boundaries where Ranged AI should not walk (Water)
AI boundaries where Melee AI should not walk into / see player
Boundaries for generating Vegetation using the Particle System

Image below is a part of the scene.
Some people recommended boolean and knife tools. It doesn't work out of the box, but I figured out a way and put it in a seperate answer below.

This is very similar to other question.

welder addon seems to work only for 2.8x. I didn't learn python or scripting for blender. Can't anyone just test/repair the existing script?

@vklidu Seriously the other answer has 31 upvotes and I used to work with the script. Why doesn't it work anymore? What's going on?

@vklidu I tried learning a bit of python and analyzing the script and yeah you're spot on. I just realised myself it's the wrong script. No idea where the right script went, I've looked online, my harddisk, back-ups, everywhere. Either I'll get lucky with the bounty here or I have to script this thing myself :\

@vklidu This question is an absolute mess already. Right now it's literally: "I've lost my script guys pls give me a new one"

@AzulShiva Thank you, great work on question. I just adjusted the title to something closer. You can change it back if you dont think so. Also you can delete comments here as well to let others to follow this page. Thank you

Script of Witold Jaworski generates intersection of two selected meshes.

Select two objects
Press W (in 2.79), for 2.8x search Intersection
Press P (Separate) > Selected

Version for 2.79
Version for 2.8x

For more detailed instructions visit his site.
For future broken links – blend with script for version 2.79

For complex mesh like terrain is better select roughly vertices in intersected area to get script calcutlat faster, and I did quick cleaning of result (not perfect):

in Edit mode select one of the longer edge than ussual
search Similar > Lenght > Greater, Delete X
than Select all and Search Remove Doubles (in 2.8x Merge by Distance)

(In tool properties you can increase minimum distance limit, it depence on how precise final intersection has to be. Higher value clean it better but in cost of preciseness (detail). Three gaps I had to connect manually. Pink line is the intersection object, converted into curve just to be visible in the image better.)

Thanks this is precisely what I am looking for. However I will leave the bounty open as there are some issues with it: 1) It's extremely slow (However it is possible to calculate the speed: Roughly 2 seconds for 1024x1024, 8 seconds for 2048x2048, 100 seconds for 50k x 1024, time will increase if the two objects's tri count deviates drastically) 2) Only works accurately with tris, so Ctr+T the mesh before Intersecting 3) It creates gaps and holes if two intersecting vertices are on the same spot. It can intersect two lines or two faces but not two verts.

If you preselect vertices in area of intersection, calculation is much faster. See blend.

If noone posts a better script the bounty goes to you. Thanks a lot. I also managed to get it working using standard boolean modifier, see my answer below.

Bmesh bisect plane.
Here is a script that bisects one mesh with a plane and creates a new  mesh object with the intersecting edges.

In test example

Grid is a 100 x 100 grid displaced with a cloud texture via a
modifier (not applied).
Plane is a single face default plane, named "Plane".
Move plane to desired location and run script.
New object "Bisect" has the edges of the bisection only.

Still of result, since I hit stop on gif to quickly
2.8 version
import bpy
import bmesh

context = bpy.context
dg = context.evaluated_depsgraph_get()
scene = context.scene
ob = context.object
plane = scene.objects.get("Plane")

if plane and ob:
    pmw = plane.matrix_world
    face = plane.data.polygons[0]
    plane_co = pmw @ face.center
    plane_no = pmw @ (face.center + face.normal) - plane_co
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_object(ob, dg)
    bmesh.ops.transform(bm,
            verts=bm.verts,
            matrix=ob.matrix_world)

    x = bmesh.ops.bisect_plane(bm,
            geom=bm.faces[:] + bm.edges[:] + bm.verts[:],
            clear_inner=True,
            clear_outer=True,
            plane_co=plane_co,
            plane_no=plane_no,
            )
    # new object
    me = bpy.data.meshes.new("Bisect")
    bm.to_mesh(me)
    ob = bpy.data.objects.new("Bisect", me)
    context.collection.objects.link(ob)

2.7x version

Result of running in 2.79 on modified grid, using a one face plane object named "Plane"
import bpy
import bmesh

context = bpy.context

scene = context.scene
ob = context.object
plane = scene.objects.get("Plane")

if plane and ob:
    pmw = plane.matrix_world
    plane_co = pmw.translation
    face = plane.data.polygons[0]
    plane_no = pmw * (face.center + face.normal) - pmw * face.center
    bm = bmesh.new()
    bm.from_object(ob, scene)
    bmesh.ops.transform(bm, verts=bm.verts, matrix=ob.matrix_world)
    x = bmesh.ops.bisect_plane(bm,
            geom=bm.faces[:] + bm.edges[:] + bm.verts[:],
            clear_inner=True,
            clear_outer=True,
            plane_co=plane_co,
            plane_no=plane_no,
            )
    # new object
    me = bpy.data.meshes.new("Bisect")
    bm.to_mesh(me)
    ob = bpy.data.objects.new("Bisect", me)
    scene.objects.link(ob)

I get "Python script fail, look in the console for now..." Can you give precise info on which object to select? I'm using 2.79

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\AzulShiva\Documents\Unity\Blender Files\blend_Levels\Level6.2_Terrain.blend_Intersect.txt", line 5, in
AttributeError: 'Context' object has no attribute 'evaluated_depsgraph_get'
Error: Python script fail, look in the console for now...

Clearly was for 2.8.  See edit for 2.7x

No error message this time, the script did something. Not what I wanted though: https://www.bilder-upload.eu/upload/00c1a2-1580229796.jpg

I selected the hill mesh instead and I got this: https://www.bilder-upload.eu/upload/4c7671-1580229878.jpg

@AzulShiva might have issue with transform space, will fix later it's late.

Sorry mate but your script seems to cut the active mesh along the x-y plain. I want two objects to intersect with each other. This is definitely not the desired result: https://www.bilder-upload.eu/upload/7aa4e4-1580419801.jpg https://www.bilder-upload.eu/upload/2291ce-1580419924.jpg

"Mate"  I understand what the script does. Assumed the water object can be represented as a plane.  "I need loops where the mountains intersect with the grass and where the grass intersects with the water for many purposes"  then this is the logical way to do where the grass intersects with water part.   Have a nice proof of concept going akin to photoshop lasso projected (shrinkwrapped) back onto objects. (unfortunately it's for 2.8).

"I need loops where the mountains intersect with the grass" It's not possible to achieve this with your script.

Just a reminder of Bisect tool in Blender 2.8x (as native tool) that can do similar kind of job (cut by plane).

Duplicate your object
Search Bisect
Enable Clear Inner and Clear Outer in tool properties in left-down corner
Adjust cut position (can be set numerically in properties too)

Done

For horizontal cut set Plane Normal values to 0/0/1 and move only Z axis of Plane Point parametr.

Thanks but I don't need to cut by plane, I need to intersect two objects with each other. And I'm using 2.79

Sorry my fault, batFinger's script also works as a plane cut so I felt in mistake you are OK with that kind since I thought water surface is cutter. BTW 2.79 has the same tool I see.


text:
Disable reflection on mesh
Is it possible to turn off the reflection on the meshes?

you can turn up roughness and turn down metallic value of your material....this is one way

This is the setup to disable reflection... ;)

We can only see objects because they either emit their own light, or they reflect light from another light source. What you mean, however, is probably the mirroring ability of a surface - which is caused by consistency of the surface, simulated by the roughness input of Principled BSDF shader:

In some cases decreasing metallic may actually produce an opposite result...

Thanks Chris and Markus, with the explanation from Markus, a light came on again, the principle of light and how we see things

Might be nice to have such gifs in the manual... great!

@MIck Another thing might be, if you maybe want sharper reflections (so turning up the roughness is no option) but not so predominantly visible, you can turn down the Specular value.

Actually, decreasing Metallic is not really producing an opposite result. When you increase the roughness, the specular reflection gets blurred until it's looking completely diffuse. But decreasing the Metallic value doesn't make it any more or less rough. The metallic property of an object tints the reflection with the base color, so the only reason the reflection seems to be less or not visible with a black metallic surface is caused by coloring the (still sharp) reflection with black.

Thanks Gordon Brinkman I will try that

@GordonBrinkmann I were only referring to the end result - which is that less of the world is perceptually visible on the Susanne (at least to me). I honestly never investigated the actual algorithm behind Principled BSDF. This answer clearly could be improved by a lot.

@MarkusvonBroady Well, I sometimes think it would be interesting to investigate why things are behaving like they do and would like to explain more in-depth... because some special cases that come up in questions might lead to a solution but not give an understanding of the general function or use. But after all this is no tutorial site and there are so many tutorials out there...


text:
What's the value of sensor width for a default 3D View?
I'd like to calculate FOV in degrees of the default 3D Viewport (not a camera). According to this link the formula requires me to provide sensor width and focal length. Focal length can be seen in the view tab:

I don't see the value of sensor width though. Where can I find it? Or perhaps is there a way to get a value in degrees on radians straight away (perhaps from the Python code...?)
Edit
To clarify furhter, the value I'm interested in should allow me to replicate what I'm seeing in the default 3D Viewport in a separate rendering engine. For example, with OpenGL one can create a perspective matrix using following code:
glm::mat4 projection = glm::perspective(glm::radians(FOV), (float)screen_width / (float)screen_width, 0.1f, 1000.0f);

How is 3D Viewport Focal Length translating to this FOV value? For a Viewport size equal to 2115x1180 sensor width seems to be equal to 40 mm and I can generate a matching image of the default cube in OpenGL using the value of 43.60281897270362 (from math.degrees(2 * math.atan(40 /(2 * 50)))). If I resize Blender's 3D Viewport the cube generated in OpenGL and cube as seen in Blender no longer match. So what's a correct formula...?
For the reference, Viewport size can be obtained with
view = next(area for area in bpy.context.window.screen.areas if area.type == 'VIEW_3D')
window = next(view for view in view.regions if view.type == 'WINDOW')
(window.width, window.height)

Edit
To illustrate the problem further: if I resize my Blender Viewport to 1376x894 then to generate a matching image in OpenGL I need to pass down an angle of about 37.75, meaning that for constant Focal Length equal to 50 mm I have sensor width equal to about 34.19. So given these three input parameters (width=1376, height=894, focal_length=50), how do I obtain this output value of 34.19?

The view tab corresponds to the viewport's "camera" used to view the scene (not a real camera object).  Click on your camera object and check the green camera button in the bottom right pane.

Sensor width is in the camera properties (Properties Panel > Object Data / Camera Icon > Camera > Sensor Size). The 3D viewport doesn't have this value though. It seems that the stock camera has a sensor width of 36mm.

Please see my edited question. I don't care about cameras, what I want to achieve is replicating of what I'm seeing on Viewport with OpenGL and I'm not sure how to obtain the FOV value to calculate my perspective matrix depending on Viewport resolution.

I think you may have to calculate that yourself, my intuition is that it's not exposed to the API. you may find interesting things there https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/250935/86891 on rapid inspection the window_matrix prop seems to update when the area is resized.

The formula that works for me:
min(width, height)/max(width, height) * 72

My C++ code is looking like this:
float Renderer::calculate_fov(uint16_t width, uint16_t height) {
    float aspect_inverted = static_cast<float>(std::min(width, height)) / static_cast<float>(std::max(width, height));
    // 72 is a default value for 1:1 aspect ratio in Blender
    float sensor_width = 72 * aspect_inverted;
    float focal_length = 50;
    return 2 * atan(sensor_width/(2*focal_length));
}

void Renderer::init(uint16_t width, uint16_t height) {
    // ...
    glm::mat4 projection_matrix = glm::perspective(
        calculate_fov(width, height),
        float(width)/float(height),
        0.1f,
        1000.0f
    );

    // https://stackoverflow.com/a/19532463/1542900
    // view = next(area for area in bpy.context.window.screen.areas if area.type == 'VIEW_3D')
    // look_at = view.spaces[0].region_3d.view_location
    // location = self.camera_position(view.spaces[0].region_3d.view_matrix)
    // up = view.spaces[0].region_3d.view_rotation @ mathutils.Vector((0.0, 1.0, 0.0))
    glm::mat4 view_matrix = glm::lookAt(location, look_at, up);

    // ...
}

According to source, default sensor size is 36x24:
https://github.com/blender/blender/blob/594f47ecd2d5367ca936cf6fc6ec8168c2b360d0/source/blender/makesdna/DNA_camera_types.h#L173
Width is used to calculation viewport camera:
https://github.com/blender/blender/blob/594f47ecd2d5367ca936cf6fc6ec8168c2b360d0/source/blender/editors/space_view3d/view3d_utils.c#L1188

Interesting! But you can easily see that resizing the viewport is somehow affecting this value (you can see the default cube getting smaller to fit nicely in reduced space). I'm trying to figure out either what's the final result or how to disable this effect.

Well, Blender takes the biggest side of viewport (width or height) for calculation


text:
How can create an armature or rigging with mocap data in Blender 4.0?
In Blender 4.0, after importing a mocap file, the object file (which includes the mocap marker points), pose, and animation are combined into a single hierarchy. I would like to know how to bake the animation into each individual object so that I can apply it to an armature.


text:
Weird UI element
What is this bar? Is it some addon? Can anyone explain?

It's from the Blenderkit addon which you must have installed at some time.


text:
Disable geometry node for Shrinkwrap objects
I have a bottle and i put some drops of water on it with geometry node.

But when i want to use Shrinkwrap modifier for put stikers on bottle, geometry node affect on those too.
How can i fix this?

Use the little dots in the top right corner of the modifier to grab it and drag it above the drops one so it puts the stickers on first.

Spawn the bubbles in a separate object that uses "Object Info: Geometry" instead of "Group Input: Geometry"


text:
Missing objects in the collections
I'm having a problem with objects showing up in the collections I can add a new object just fine and it shows up. I've added a cube however it isn't showing up here.

Not sure what I've done so I don't Know how to fix it and I can't find a solution online. Can anyone help with this please.

Hello could you please share your file?


text:
Is it possible to make make a longer animation from shorter clips?
Is it possible to make multiple shorter animations (like loops and transitions) and stitch them together as a longer animation? I often need to do loops in my animations (eg. walking or running), but copy/pasting keyframes feels pretty inefficient way of doing this. Is The picture below illustrates a similar concept from another program:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/64904/what-is-the-nla-editor-used-for


text:
Is it possible to extrude a bone only from either head or tail but not both?
So, when I try to extrude a bone, it does so from both the head and tail of the bone. Is it possible to extrude only from one of them?

Hello, it should extrude from the tail, could you please show a screenshot or an animated gif?

Here: https://i.imgur.com/tzR93yV.gif

oh ok so why don't you select from the tail or the head only?

It looks as if you've selected the whole of the bone rather than just the tail in which case you'll get two bones extruded, one from head and one from tail.

because clicking on the head or tail doesn't do anything

Extrusion takes selection into account.
If a tail is selected, a connected, child bone will be extruded from the tail. If a head is selected, a sibling bone will be extruded from the head. By sibling, I mean the new bone will be at the same level in the hierarchy as the bone from whose head it was extruded. It will also share the same connected state.

If a bone is selected, a connected, child bone will be extruded from its tail.

If the selection includes multiple elements, a bone will be extruded from each element following what was mentioned above. Note that selecting a connected bone implicitly selects the head of its parent.

In summary, yes, it's possible to extrude from the head or tail individually by limiting the selection to one of them.
Note that selecting the head or tail works in all armature display types; it is just not properly shown in the Stick display type (which is most likely a bug).

Blender version 4.2.0

@MrA Okay, your edit seems to make it unnecessary complicated talking about siblings, hierarchy levels etc... would you mind editing your own answer?


text:
Rigging issue, novice
I've been getting this error: "Bone Heat Weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones", with no answers working from previous threads. I'm receiving this while trying to weight the model I'm rigging for animation automatically. It might just be user error due to inexperience with the software. help would be appreciated.
I also am unable to select specific bones while in weight paint mode to view where the software suggests that the weight should be, in preview.

That sounds like two questions, one on getting the auto weight painting to work, and the other… blender doesn’t ever “suggest” where weighting should be, but to select bones you have to switch to pose or edit mode on the armature.

hello please share your file: https://blend-exchange.com/

Hello and welcome. Please use a title that matches the content of the post. It should read like a question, be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the problem so that anyone searching for similar issues is likely to find this. Remove anything superfluous, avoid using words like "this", "help with", "issue" or "question about", instead describe what "it" is. Remember, your title is the first thing visitors see, answers you get depend heavily on it. See What is the problem of asking “How do I do this?"

To fix the "Bone Heat Weighting: failed" error, select your mesh and go into Edit Mode. Press A to select all vertices/edges/faces, then go to top menu Mesh > Clean Up > Decimate Geometry and set the ratio to 0.98.
When you want to select a specific bone in Weight Paint mode, hold down Alt and left-click on the bone you want to select.

thanks, that did it, but now there is a vertex group that isn't bound to a bone, but is correctly selected.


text:
Why does some of my models keep randomly going to the blender origin?
Many times when working in blender I see that some of the models I make go back to the blender origin. I am not sure why this happens, but I assume its some setting i keep pressing by mistake. It's getting pretty annoying now and want this to stop. I am not setting the objects origin to "geometry to origin" so not sure what else it could be.
Help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Are you doing Ctrl + A > Location when you're applying rotation or scale ever? Because that's what that does specifically. If you do Apply All in the Apply Transforms menu it will do that as well in addition to Scale and Rot.

Also are you saying your models keep going to the World origin or is your model staying in the same place and you notice that only it's origin is at the World origin?

the models keep going to the world origin. And I always apply all transforms to all my objects.

If you apply All transforms the object's Origin will be reset to the World origin so don't do that! Normally you would just apply the Scale and Rotation. However applying the Location shouldn't change the object's position. I think we'll need to see a simple Blend file where that has happened. You can share it via https://blend-exchange.com/ following the instructions there to copy the full link on that page. Then edit your question here and paste the link into it.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/78371/a-model-jumps-back-after-i-move-it


text:
Objects being deformed in render
I am doing a close up for a detail of my scene, but when i get the render, some objects of my scene get distorted to get into the render, and I don't want those objects to appear in my render. And the material or the floor got deformed too. What can I do?
This is the view that I want ...

But this is what I get, As you can see the Table and the towel warmer get distorted to get into the scene.

Hi. I suggest adding images to illustrate your problem.

Maybe glass shader is a culprit? And check if there are any unwanted shapekeyes or difference between modifier's render/viewport settings.

@SergeL Yes! It was the material of the glass door. I would had never thought that, thank you!!!

In the outliner, you can set objects to be disabled in viewport and separately disabled in render. Have a look at the "filter" button.


text:
Coral reef - How to blend scattered instances
I'm trying to recreate the surface of a coral reef, and I would like to experiment a little with geometry nodes.
My result so far, I just do a Distribute points on face, and Instance on points.

My main issue is that I want to preserve the green area of an instance, and cut/merge in the red area, so it doesn't obstruct the green area of the instances. But I didn't found a workaround to do it.
Any tips?
Source file
Best regards, Samih.

Very interesting question! There is definitely no simple solution here. Maybe someone (me?) has a little more time to take a closer look... Would it be possible to share your blend file in the meantime so we don't have to recreate the shape somehow?

@quellenform I edited my question with the blend file, thanks a lot

but you know that you can increase the distance min of the poisson disc so that it won't happen?

@Chris As I understand it, this is about the transitions (cut edges) of the individual corals. Or not? (https://st4.depositphotos.com/39212402/41061/i/1600/depositphotos_410610182-stock-photo-coral-texture-brain-coral-taken.jpg and https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/harte-koralle-85967451.jpg)

i have no idea.... :D

@quellenform I want to recreate the same effect.

@Chris By doing that, I get empty space, and if I fill it with something, it doesn't look organic.

@SamihELSAKHAWI ...Yes, I understand, and i really like that idea! I just do not know yet how best to solve it :D ...as I said, the answer is not easy, if you really want to get it just so. Maybe I'll have an idea about it someday. ...or someone else who is capable enough.

@quellenform I know lol And i'm not in a rush, so it's okay for me if I don't have a workaround immediatly

So I decided to take part of the idea of Vklidu. But the idea with material looks viable I think.
From the voronoi pattern, I instantiate points on mesh faces, and I scale the size of instances based on face area. Also, I adjust my model a little bit to avoid overlapping.

We can still see some overlapping, but since it's outside the camera, It's okay for me.

It would be great to merge vertices only where instances are intersecting, so it gives a more organic look.

Instead of deleting overlapping parts that results in heavily calculated mesh (the boolean version) ... could be more efficient to start from scratch - build base pattern structure and model coral element from cell by extrusion.
I was aiming to quellenform's reference ...

Here a quick test based on Voronoi pattern ...

The core of this pattern is based on Fill Curve node and Dual Mesh. Object border and way of points distribution can be done in many ways. Usually I would use Distribute Points on Face > Poison Disk, but here I used more even pattern from Grid + Random offset.

To keep just cels un-cut by object border disable Keep Boundaries in Dual Mesh node.

Than you can set several nodes Extrude and Scale to shape coral element ...

Subdivide, Distribute Points, Shade Smooth, ...

To animate egg release (mentioned in comment) you can probably easily animate last Scale node value. To randomise it probably ask a new Q (I'm not sure about good solution.

Just don't forget to add Delete node with Top socket of Extrude node as Selection.

Very cool! I like this approach! I think this is another important step towards the solution.. Since you can select certain areas (rings) by extruding here, it may be possible to transfer the fine structure to the mesh in the process. ...just as an idea.

@quellenform Yeah :) I like it too ... but it seems to be over my primitive skills ... it is waiting for you ... when you wouldn't be far, far a way :) Thanks

Now, of all times, I'm actually far far away from a Blender-enabled computer again. Thanks to D. Trump, everyone knows that Austrians live in tree houses in the forest :D I'll spend the next few days harvesting some vegetables and looking for mushrooms (no kidding) and maybe then I'll have the bright idea how to solve this. ;-) cu soon

By the way, thinking about it, I wouldn't really call what you're showing "primitive skills". In my opinion, it's a pretty decent piece of creative mastery. Just saying. Thumbs up!

@quellenform ... lucky you :) Enjoy. By "primitive" I mean -the math part, to be able use it effectively the GN power in your way, but my brain is not :) Thanks anyway for couraging me :) For the "dotty" surface I wanted to extract extruded edges and by Resample control distance in radial lines separately ... but I wasn't able to figure it out ... at the end I reused Subdiv ... works probably the best and the simplest here :)

Ingenious! I probably couldn't solve it any better! The fine structure can (and should?) certainly be done well with an appropriate shader. If I had asked the question, I would accept this answer because I don't think it could be done much better. Good work!

@quellenform Thanks ... I see - too much mushrooms :) ... but I would have a few Q, like if there could be a way to shape coral element by curve object (aka profile) or Vector Curve node (instead of extrude-scale) ... how could be generated such dotted shader (I was able in one version to generate Height map from Points proximity, but I have no idea for such dotty lines) ... how to isolate extrude and scale just edge (for this I will ask probably a new Q). Anyway - I see a lot of space for you here :)

Stunning work. Perhaps some variation on this for your q. re. shaping with Float Curve ?  i.e Extruding by 0 height, and then making Z some function of [distance from dual mesh before extrusion]

really great work and answer, well done mate!! +1

@RobinBetts - Float Curve - in general yes :) Thank you for help. I just forget this node cant get "concave". Also it is hard to shape it for me ... probably Map Range issue blend ...probably I will ask a Q. Anyway ... thanks for the "gesture" :)

Thanks a lot your a magician! I decide to take a part of your solution for my project!

@SamihELSAKHAWI ...Wait a bit, I'm working on another interesting variant right now.... ;-)

@quellenform I will wait lol but feel free to share another idea.

I just want to show you the current progress, so that you don't think I'm just talking nonsense.
Of course, this is not yet a full-fledged answer to the question, but only a small teaser.
...Please have a little patience with me, the task is a little more complex than I thought.

But this much I can promise: It will be 100% procedural and super flexible (I hope):

...yes, and the node tree will grow big

...and yes, even the fine structures can be created here with Geometry Nodes. I'm curious myself how this will look with a good shader.

Due to the low number of upvotes, I unfortunately see no reason to complete this answer, and as usual publish the blend file.... So this time these screenshots will have to suffice as inspiration.

version Boolean
You can try create a coral without a hole and Boolean hole after distribution.

Just since Boolean it would be probably calculation heavy :)
Note: Min Distance for Poison Disk distribution helps prevent overlap inner(higher) ring.

version Material-Transparent
Much lighter would be to hide those obstruct parts of mesh by assigning Transparent shader to those faces.
Before

After

Factor saying what faces will be transparent ...
You can use Circle object (filled with tris), scattered at the same places as Corals. For that purpose I created node Group from your node tree and duplicate it. Like that it is easier to keep scattering corals and circles synced when you change some scatter parameter.

Node Group (your scattering setup)

Use Circle object as Target in Geometry Proximity node. This node assigns values (attributes) to each scattered coral's vertex depends on Circle's face distance (at Spread Sheet window you can see those values under Mesh > Face Corner).

These values can be translated into Black&White mask and used as factor for mixing Solid and Transparent Shader.
Plug Distance socket into Group Output node. I call it "Hole", but can be anything. Under Modifier Properties expand Output Attributes and name it this attribute (I used "Mask").

Switch to Shading layout. In Shader Editor add a Material and add Attribute node. Use the same attribute name used in GN (in my case "Mask"). If you plug Fac socket directly into Material Output > Surface socket you can see darker color at centre of each coral., but since this color is generated by Circle object, darker are also obstruct outer parts of coral lying in area of circles. To contrast this factor I used Math node > Greater Than

... but now we have transparent also whole centre of coral element. To avoid it I created a second material and assigned it to this centre part of coral that we don't want to be affected by transparency. For this simplicity and better illustration I used just bright pink color.

Anyway ... even you solve obstructing parts corals elements wouldn't be blended seamlessly as seen on screens). So, you should consider to start from some pattern or low res to be be able blend it in a process.

Hi, the thing is that I want to animate the center area (like eggs that pop out from holes), and I can't achieve that with mesh booleans.

I can check that issue, but main Q still remains -Would your computer handle boolean calculation? Isn't the Material version with Alpha better choice? Also Your Q is aiming to parts inside a holes, but quellenform's reference reminds me another issue your approach cant handle  -blending parts of cells out of holes. It sounds to me you should start completely from different side ... like some voronoi pattern? Probably would helpful real image of your goal. Thanks

I'm far, far away from a computer with Blender right now, so I can't work on this wonderful question any further, but I think you're absolutely right: you'd have to approach this from a completely different angle. I was also thinking of a Voronoi pattern, and you would have to work more from the outside in towards these shapes, but the more I think about it I come to the conclusion that Geometry Nodes or Blender are not the right choice for the task at all. This is more a task for Houdini because of the complexity...


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Text filled by balls
i am new to Blender , and in C4D ,i know it is very convenient to use motion graph to generate such kind of effect , Besides it is very convenient to adjust text content , and i discover Blender for a while and google stuffs , but there seems no relative tutorials .
some similar methods are feasible ,but you cant change text content anymore after you convert it to mesh!
Any one know specific or probable solutions or tutorials?

there are tons of very tutorials on youtube https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+tutorial , for example Blender Guru has many good tuts for beginners.

If no one ... classic

add Text convert to Mesh
add Balls, set in Collection, add Physics > Riggid Body > Active
add Particle system > Source from Volume, Render > Collection
enable addon Copy Particles to Riggid Bodies, run operator (take some time)
disable particle system for Text (Mesh) object and add Physics > Riggid Body > Passive

To change letters - type a new text, convert to mesh, assign Particle system, run addon, set Riggid Body.
I know almost the same, but still just a few clicks now, that you would have to in C4D as well (if I checked tut right).

Note: Particles were quite jumping out (because I did them too big), so I did a duplication of Text mesh and inset the shape, so they are generated from object inside collision Text mesh.

(Naming of the addon could be improved cross UI, but awesome it exists and still working in 3.4 even written for 2.8 :))

Very nice! you should share the blend file. that can be helpful for the OP.

I can't find this add on "Copy Particles to Rigid Bodies" in blender. Could you please let me know where can I find it or anything similar? Thank you in advance.

@sahil The first thread found by google ...addon for 2.8 still works for 3.4 ... don't forget to enable RB for balls used as instances in particle system before you run the operator.

I managed to do that also. You don't even need the add-on.

Run the particle simulation for a short while (space)
Convert it to objects

Go to Object > Rigid Body > Add Active
Shift-select one ball
Go to the Rigid Body tab and put shape to Sphere
Right-click it and 'Copy to Selected' to put it to all selected spheres
Continue playing (space), let the balls settle
Stop the simulation
Select one ball > Shift+G > Collection
Object > Rigid Body > Apply Transformation
Scrub the timeline so nothing is moving anymore
Remove the overflown balls by hand

Ha ... nice :) I used addon for two reasons - create "filling" animation and also don't let particles explode when becomes riggid because they'r initially intersects. Your way has a big advantage - work with much more particles with less computations. Congrats. BTW would be good to mention Gravity OFF and Velocity is probably not needed. Apply Transformation just get current position as default and has to be used several times. If you wan to stop anim isnt it better Bake to Keyframes (start on last) so Riggid is applied. Or you wanted to keep Riggid active?


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Umbrella fabric material
I am trying to make a material for the umbrella cloth. They have a specific sheen and reflective nature almost like silk and they tend to stand out from other type of clothes. I've been trying to achieve such a look but, I am not very good at materials and no matter what I tweak, it either looking rubbishly rubberish or not like an umbrella cloth material.
Here's one with general reflective surface which looks too smooth and not umbrella like:
I used IOR of .95 for this:

I searched up that umbrella was made of nylon and it's IOR was 1.5 so I put that and, well:

The first one obviously looks better, but not close to an umbrella material but unless we view it from a reflective angle:

Please provide me insight on creating this umbrella material which looks most realistic and physically correct.
I've attached the .blend file with the hdr.

If the Sheen effect is not enough maybe you should plug an Input > Layer Weight > Fresnel in the factor of a Mix between a Glossy and a Diffuse (or a Principled BSDF). To give transparency mix with a Translucent node before the end, the fabric will only seem transparent if you face the light source. Also maybe you should use a Wave node to create a discrete polyester fabric texture (just some parallel stripes).

although, there is no transmissive factor here, the umbrella wouldn't transmit? Do you have any suggestions on how to add the transmission without affecting the texture?

OK you are right, I've edited to give it a bit of transparency (translucency in that case)


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How to bake a normal map on to a mesh
I have made my retopology model and transfer the sculpting details trough a normal map node and now I want to add materials to my new low poly mesh. My fear is that if I move or change the previous unwrap to create the final material for my mesh the previous baked normal map material will get distorted.
So my question is how do I add material to my new low poly mesh (with normal map included) if there is an active normal map already?
Is there a way to permanently bake the details obtained to a normal map material node so that I can continue working on textures?
Thanks in advance.

Is it necessary to unwrap again? If so, you can create a second UV map in the Object Data panel, use the new UV map for the new texture?

Hi, thank you for your reply.  Can you be more specific please. I did create a second UV map as you said but to it seems that to activate this second UV I need to deactivate the first? I don't know what I'm doing wrong.  I attached a picture in the post so you can see what am I talking about.

From what I understand you want to create a second Image Texture that you'll plug into the Base Color of the Principled BSDF? You don't need to create a second UV Map, you can use the same for both the normal map and the texture that you'll paint. If you really need to use a second UV map, then create an Input > UV Map node, in this node select the second UV map, and plug it into the Image Texture

You are right. I didn't need to create a second UV map. I added the texture with its respective normal map and the I added the sculpt mapping to displacement and it works. Thank you very much!!

You don't have to change the existing unwrap, use the same UV map for the texture that you want to paint.


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fire simulation start frame
I'm trying to do a fire simulation that should look like a meteor. I have applied quick smoke, then smoke and fire on the physics tab but the fire appears right after 100 frames, too late for what I am trying to do.
How can I control the exact frame where the fire should appear?
I want the fire to appear right on frame 1.

Just start your animation frame 100.

And keep the domain start frame at 0.

Thank you very much! At first I tried changing the start frame as you said first, but that didn't work, so I did put it back to 1 and notice that the domain frame start was in 1 and "Is Resumable" was not checked as you show in your picture. So I put it on 0, checked Is Resumable and just got fire at frame 1. thank you again!

You are welcome!


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Rotoscope mask has different shape after rendering
I am rotoscoping a scene and it looks fine in the compositor: the mask is bordering all the figure as in the picture 1
But when I render it the mask appears in a different location as shown in picture 2 (look left hand, up)

Can somebody please tell me what am I doing wrong? Node in picture 3

Thanks in advance.
Here is the file

In the current node settings, the size of the mask depends on the size of the settings for the resolution for the project. Is the video the same size as the project? Is the resolution set to 100%? Else you should switch the mask node from scene size to fixed/scene and input the size of the source manual. Also, you can evaluate the mask (or any other node) by plugging it directly the view node. And last question, what format are you using to save the image? make sure that is a format that supports alpha channel.

I made the clip on Iphone 11 on vertical position 4k, so as resolution I put 3840X2160 to 100% I also switched the mask node as you said but the problem still not fixed. Im saving the image as PNG RGBA 16. Please tell me how can I upload the file for you.

File has been added. Thank you.

Sorry. Here https://www.justbeamit.com/jq3zu

Can't reproduce the error. See answer.

If I render your file I get no problems with the mask being misaligned:

As for the rough edges by the armpit, those are part of the key from the green screen, they are not part of mask you are using as garbage matte.
The keying needs to be refined, so that you get better separation.

You might want to try blender.2.92 so that you don't have to convert from straight to premultiplied.
Read: How to put animated background to keyed video?
I suspect the issue could related to the kind of video compression, or how the image is being decoded by blender. Sometimes, depending on the codec used, blender fails to read the correct frame, and reads one frame ahead or one frame late.
Try prefetching the video, or rendering the video to an image sequence first, and use that image sequence to generate the key.
Please report back if the issue persists
See: Render is duplicating random frames when loaded into 3D tracker

Thank you very much for your interest. I just downloaded 2.93 version but was still having the missaligned mask. Then rendered it as image secuence as you said but still having the same problem. I also notice that it renders fine when I render only the current image but the problem appears when I render the whole animation. At last, I was thinking of what you said about "reads one frame ahead or a frame late", went to the dope sheet and moved the mask animation one frame ahead and that solved the issue.  Thank you too for the keying advise.


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How can I make eyelashes and eyebrows to follow rigged mesh to work after reconecting all
I have created and rigged my character. I disconected eyelashes and eyebrows before parenting the rig to de mesh. . As you can see the are still in place.
After I connect all again nothing happens, It doesn't follow the movements of the rigged mesh but when I check the "user modifier stack" they  are not in place anymore, they dissapear or are located somewhere else where they should be.

This is what happen when I apply (CTRL+A) Rotation & Scale (picture 3)

How can I fix/solve this please?
Thanks in advance.

Check if the particles modifier is after the armature modifier in the modifiers stack. Apply (Ctrl A) all rot and scale, both to meshes and rig.

This is what happen after I apply (CTRL+A) Rotation & Scale => picture 3


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How can I script a driver that randomly selects between multiple variables?
I'd like to create a driver that in essence change the Z position of a large group of objects. Think of heads in a stadium crowd bobbing up and down. In order to make this easy I'd like it all contained in one driver, that unites 5 or so variables which all have their own motion. I'd like the driver to randomly assign one of the 5 variables, so that I am not tasked with assigning the driver to each object individually, but only have to control my 5 variables.

This sounds like a XY Problem. Please explain what you are trying to achieve instead of how, I suspect there are better solutions than drivers. Like Geonodes.


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How can I keep each objects gradient transition co ordinates when joining all?
I have a color gradient on multiple objects origin so colors mix in the middle but when I join them the origin sets gradient to new mass object which makes sense but I need it to remain centered on each panel. First screen shot is what I need it to look like after joining, 2nd screenshot is what actually happens when all is joined. 3rd screen is my shader node set up.


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How to wrap fingers around a cylinder (handle)?
I'm fairly new to blender, and have tried this answer already, but it's actually warping the blue selected polygons. I'm trying to warp / bend the fingers adjacent to the selected polygons. My issue:

I am trying to get those 4 fingers to curve around the handle:

Well your going from simple mesh editing to armature's.
its not ehm the most simple thing to do for a starter.
but here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYiAd_08-0k

Search for "blender rigging" in google and the answer will come :)

Also note that your mesh wont deform nice because you dont have good topology; you have tris and you need quads in order your mesh to deform better

You can rotate portions of the mesh around the 3D cursor. The position can be established by first selecting a ring of vertices in Edit Mode, and then ShiftS and choosing cursor to selected. Press the period key . to choose the 3D cursor location as the rotation point. Select the rest of the mesh you wish to rotate and ...rotate.

Perhaps later you will want to rig to accomplish the same thing - in which case you will want to create your mesh from quads to avoid distortion. In this case I used ALTJ to convert the tris to quads and re-distributed the vertices. The rotation also has proportional editing enabled. While bones and weight paint can achieve the same thing, this is a good way to test bends.


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Blender Old UV applied on top of new UV
I've been doing something that may seem weird.
My workflow has been separate objects using loop cut into separate faces. I then use UV to apply a texture to all of these faces. It has been working fine for 2 different maps I've done, but now it's glitching in a weird way. In the photo you can see the outer wall, and a glitching inner wall. The inner wall is not any different than the outer one and was copied from it pre-uv and loop cuts. The outer walls are overlapping in the same way as the inner ones, and everything I do with the inner walls, they keep breaking the textures and applying both a Unwrap and (unwrap) reset texture simultaneously.
This is happening whether the inner walls are overlapping each other or not. So it is nothing to do with the face that they are intersecting as far as I can tell.
Anyone care to explain to me what is going on? Only certain walls are refusing to apply the uv map correctly and there is very little difference between the ones that are and the ones that aren't.

I've added the file here. This isn't the one I took a picture of, but the house in the middle has a wall that is doing the same thing as the the hedges.

Without the Blend file very difficult to guess. But do I get the problem right that when you modify the UV map of the inner wall, you also get a modification of the UV map of the outer wall, which you don't want? If so, check if those meshes are instances of each other. Select one of the walls, activate the Mesh Data tab. If there is a number written in front of the 'F', then this mesh is an instance of another. Click the number to make them unique.

I've added the blend file. Different map, same problem with the structure in the middle. I looked at the Mesh Data tab and there is only one listing under UV Maps and it doesn't have an F...It doesn't look like it's a duplication issue. But then again I have no idea what it could be.

It looks like something is wrong with how blender is resetting the uv map and it's putting the whole face as a plane as well as every separate tile? Is that even possible?

When uploading, please remember to pack reference images into the Blend, otherwise the model is going to be all pink. Anyways, we are talking about the house or the maze? The maze seems to be ok, on the house you have a modelling issue which can be fixed easily.

resetting UVs means to take each polygon and unwrap it separately so it fills the whole UV space. It's a bit different to other applications, but can be useful in some scenarios

Sorry about that. Blend file should be packed now. I seperated the uv map and found there is one face that overlaps the others on the wall with an issue. The maze is okay now since I redid it differently, but I'm having the same issue with the house wall in the middle.
Shouldn't the UV map not redo a face it has already done?

I've added an answer now showing what the modelling issue is I spoke about before.

I assume the problem is this:

This flickering can have a few reasons, in your case it is an accident that happened while modelling. You duplicated that wall and left the duplicate in the same place. It has a different UV Map than the original, so both walls try to show their (different) texture to the viewer, resulting in a heavy fight.
To resolve it, delete one of the walls. Select one arbitrary face, and run the Select Linked command. Then delete those selected faces:

Do this for all problem walls, and make sure to check the ones that seem right as well. As long as the UV Map is identical, you might not spot the issue at all.

Thank you for your help! I did change how I was duplicating walls so this all makes alot of sense.


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Difficulty with multiple overlaying textures on one material
I feel like this is quite a long winded and complicated issue but I really appreciate any help I can get!
(I have included the blender file at the bottom for reference.)
I am making a cloth object which has lots of different sections and textures. To keep the geometry as simple as possible I am attempting to paint on the textures using multiple image masks on the same material and UV mask in order to keep the geometry intact. Here's where I am at so far to give you an idea of what I am going for, I have made decent progress but it's getting quite complex:

I'm fairly new to the node editor and blender in general so this is already getting over my head. The main difficulty I am having at the moment however is firstly where to connect my displacement outputs in my bump maps. I connected the first one to the displacement input on the material output node which had an effect (although I feel it might have had an effect over the whole object instead of just the painted map)

but now that slot is occupied I don't know where to connect my other ones:

The second problem is fairly related. I want to have some of the patterns that are "printed" on top of my cloth to be slightly raised. I am guessing this is probably done by applying a bump node to the mask but I'm not really sure how to achieve it. Here for example is the image texture node containing the black and white mask I used for one of the yellow patterned sections at the top of the cloth:

I would like to have this raised very slightly to make it a bit more dynamic but can't figure it out.
Thanks for bearing through that explanation, I hope I have explained it with enough clarity and again I appreciate any help that can be offered!
Here is the blender file:

There are several choices to make multiples bumps on one object.

Make it via the different shaders.
Not relevant in your case because Chocofur fabric shaders don't have input for normals/bumps, so you would need to modify all shaders.
Make it via different materials.
Would need more work at this step.
Make it in the material by combining several bumps maps.
The picture explain it well I think:


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How to solidify?
I'd like to solidify and bevel this object, but I can't seem to get it right when I apply both those modifiers. The back face seems to get messed up. I need this exact shape. How do I go about doing this?
I've attached the .blend file here

I don't see what is messed up here? Could you add details?

Hi. Did you have a look at the .blend file? When I apply the Solidify and Bevel modifiers, in that order, the back portion ends up looking distorted, as in the third image. I don't know how to adjust the topology of the mesh in order to get it to look clean when the modifiers are applied.

You mean at the fold corner?

Oh ok... you mean some part is not straight as in the original mesh, but there is an angle from the corner to the inside, that's is?

A possibility is to invert the thickness value... but that depends on what you want to do globally about the mesh dimensions.

Yes, when I apply the solidify mod. a part of the mesh at the corner fold doesn't solidify symmetrically. I've tried various combinations of options available in the solidify mod but nothing seems to work. There's no doubles at all. No clipping. I figure the issue is with the topology of the mesh. I just don't know how to rework it.

I've tried inverting the thickness value as well, but that still doesn't fix the issue. It'd be great if someone could take a look at the .blend file because it'd be much easier to understand the odd deformation I'm getting. Also, I'm relatively new to Blender, so my apologies if I'm not being more descriptive with proper terminology.

I've downloaded the file. It's more complex than it seems, using the modifiers. am wondering if there is another way than modeling it manually.

well, it seems to be a normal problem (don't know why I have not seen that sooner...). In edit mode select all and ctrl+shift+N. Though, thickness will overlap.

Even if there is a normal issue in the original file, solidify modifier can't work properly (it seems) in this situation, as either thickness will overlap or solidify modifier will give unwanted geometry.

So I think the solution is to model manually what should be given by the solidify modifier and use the bevel modifier on it.
The easiest way can be to start with the main profile and extrude it, and use a mirror:

The corners are made by squares of the wanted thickness (unfortunately, you cannot tune the thickness afterwards).

The background part is done in a second step, extruding only what corresponds to it:

The result, using the bevel (with angle) seems to give the wanted straight geometry:

It looks like it's doing that because the vertices aren't attached.
The point circled in red is only connected to 2 edges, not the 3rd one that runs across the entire length of your object. The ones circled in blue, I'm not sure if you wanted those attached as well or left hanging. There will be a gap if you leave them be though.

To fix it you can subdivide it to add another vertice, then merge that vertice with the one circled in red.


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How do I recreate this shape?
I've been at this shape for a while now and still can't seem to reproduce it. :( A helping hand anyone?
A fellow Blenderer gave me these instructions but it doesn't seem to be working. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. :s

"Here's a rough guide for the general shape.  You will have to play around with the faces to get it to look just right...
Add Mesh: Math Function - Regular solid. (Add-On : Add Mesh Extra Objects)
Dodecahedron: Vertex Truncation 1.0
• No Snub
• Dual OFF
Remove extra edges inside pentagram faces:
select one edge, then Select Similar: Length - RMB: Dissolve edges
Select Pentagram face - select similar for all
Inset faces : I , slightly to create a corner support for the subdivision.
Inset faces again for the inner circle.
subdivide edges 1
vertex mode: Smooth Vertices 2.5,  steps 1.   (to create a circular face)
Face mode: inset - slightly, extrude out, scale in, inset (edge loop to sharpen the edges)
Select a triangle, then Select Similar: Area
Inset slightly to firm up the outside edge,
Inset again and scale in by Median Point
You'll have to play around with the triangles to get the shape right.
Apply a subdivision modifier set to 2."

EDIT: This is how far I've managed to come with the instructions given. Smoothing 2.5 with a Repeat of 1, as suggested doesn't create a circular face.

How far are you able to get? Can you send a picture of what you have so far? (preferably in edit mode with no subdivision modifier active)

I've added an "edit" above so you can check out what I have so far.

@ObscureGuy could you please edit your post and use a ore descriptive title. Thanks

Edit: The 'mesh mode view' is actually viewport wireframe view and does not display all the edges and vertices you should be able to see in Edit mode. I would suggest opening the attached blend file to take a closer look.
I've made this visual guide which I hope helps more than the explanation you provided in your post. The mesh is displayed in three states; edit mode, with the subdivision modifier visible and without.
(Since I'm not using the Math meshing addon, I'm using an ico sphere with an extra step to generate the required shape).
I've also attached the blend file, so you can see how it's set up precisely.
As a general guideline, you'll likely want to use insets only. Smoothing in edit mode isn't required since the Subdivision Surface modifier will display all edges as smoothed, unless you either crease them or add edge loops close by. Both options will sharpen your edges.
Using insets also means that your mesh topology likely will be (almost) quads only. This makes it easier to later edit mesh features, like changing the scale of edge loops or moving things around. You can make complex shapes with subdivision surface modifiers, while still having a relatively simple mesh.
As for scaling the inset faces, you're generally going to use Median Point and Individual Origins. Controlling their depth can be done using median point and scaling; the size of the faces themself perpendicular to their normals uses scaling along individual origin.
My resulting shape:

Thank you loads!! Really appreciate the amount of work you put in trying to explain this as clear as possible. :)

Start by adding an Ico Sphere with Subdivisions set to 1. Then add a Bevel modifier with the Only Vertices checkbox selected, and increase the Width.
Apply the Bevel modifier.
Go into edit mode (Tab), select all vertices (A) and merge by distance (Alt+M, By Distance).
Go into face select mode (number 3).
Select a triangle, then select similar polygon sides (Shift+G, Polygon Sides).
Insert new faces into selected Faces (I), then move the mouse to make the new triangles a bit smaller, then click to confirm.
Change the Pivot Point to Individual Origins.
Extrude (E) the newly generated triangles, and move the mouse to move them inwards, then click to confirm.
Select a pentagon, then select similar polygon sides (Shift+G, Polygon Sides).
Insert new faces into selected Faces (I), then move the mouse to make
the new pentagons a bit smaller, then click to confirm.
Extrude (E) the newly generated pentagons, and move the mouse to move them outwards, then click to confirm. Go into object mode (Tab) and add a subsurf modifier (Ctrl+1).
Shade Smooth (F3, Shade Smooth)

Hi. The edit I posted above is not a reply to this, it's just to show how far I've managed to come with the instructions given as detailed in my first post. I'll try yours now and see how it goes.


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Image Texture Darkens Entire Glass
When I add an image with a transparency layer on the bottle, it darkens the entire bottle and I have no idea what's going on. I followed this guide to the word but can't seem to figure out what I'm missing.

This is what it looks like with the text image.

This is what it looks like without the text image.

Here's a screenshot so y'all can see real quick what the setup's like.

There's still residual color information in the alpha area of your png. The better way to fix this is to get rid of the color mix node. Create a seperate shader for your screen-print ink material and wire that and your glass shader node into the mix shader node. Now drive the shader mix with your alpha channel.

This also allows you to modify the material properties of the ink without the need for a much more complex setup.

You could also achieve a result with minimal effort using the following node setup:

But this might not be physically correct, depending on the exact production method for the label, of course.


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How to copy objects in Blender without copying their materials?
Need to copy objects from one layer to another in the same scene, but sometimes also one scene to another.
I use Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V for this a lot, but problem is now there are 5 copies of around 20 materials.
EG:  Material1, Material1.001, Material1.002, Material1.003, Material1.004, etc
Another post said to duplicate the objects instead, then move them to another layer.  But couldn't see how to do that for scenes, and prefer using Ctrl + C/V. Is there a setting or way to stop copying the materials but still copy objects using that method.
Don't want to link the objects either.  Want unique, standalone copies of the objects.  But only one instance of each material.

See this http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57960/how-to-append-many-objects-without-appending-materials/57984#57984

As far as I know there is no native direct way of doing this through the UI alone, only through scripting

Don't know the first thing about scripting so not workable for me, at this stage.  Your link above explains how to at least clean up the problem, if no one else knows how to prevent the problem w/o scripting.  Thanks.

You can create linked duplicates instead of full ones of object (Alt+D); then make linked dupe use different object and mesh datablock. Same with moving them between scenes. No way to do what you want using exactly Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V.

Possible duplicate of Disable Material Duplication

Sorry @MrZak not sure how to make the duplicate use different object and/or mesh datablock.  Can you please explain?

As a confused beginner. I thought it was copying edits to the object, but that was because I was editing the material that it shared with the other object.
I realized this and created a new material. Hope this helps another newbie on this same track.

To copy objects without copying materials create linked duplicate of all adjacent objects; they will use the same material (along with other data). Then in order to make linked objects independent from each other (sharing only material), make them single-user via Object > Make Single User menu (or press U while in 3D Viewport) and choose Object & Data.
You can do the same between different scenes by linking them to that scene; press Ctrl+L and in Objects To Scene dropdown choose scene to link them to.
Make sure to make them single-user after linking if you want them as independent objects.

The linked duplicate url is broken in your answer, here's a working one https://www.blender.org/manual/editors/3dview/object/transform/duplication.html?highlight=linked%20duplicate#linked-duplicates

new link: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/scene_layout/object/editing/duplicate_linked.html


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Blender Cycles Procedural Cut Aluminum (Cut Aluminium)
Photo rendering aluminum extrusion profiles in Blender Cycles.  Tried achieving this using image textures, but doesn't work very well.  It's so reflective, you take a photo at one angle, and your object always has that same reflection, even when you rotate the camera.
How could the same be achieved with procedural texture?
It's very shiny, highly reflective, with saw marks that reflect light at different angles.  Also has a rainbow reflection in the metal at certain angles.
Rainbow part not necessary, but would be a bonus.  I've noticed other metals have similar effect.

Sounds like normal maps would be handy.  I think Blender has a built in way to do it, but I haven't used it.  There is a normal map plugin for GIMP (that is Windows only), which I have used though, and that gives you the photo powers of GIMP.  Perhaps a tutorial from Blender Guru covers what you are looking for?

Normal maps would add depth to the cut I'm guessing, but not sure how to procedurally generate the lines required for the normal maps.  Want proper lines rather than the typical Voronoi texture that's been stretched out.  Blender Guru used an image made in Photoshop for the lines.  I don't know how to do that in Photoshop/Gimp so I'm hoping to create them in Cycles somehow.

I could achieve something like this. Remeber to have UV map with 45 degree rotation, or as much as you want.
I've had better results using PBR shader (not diffuse/glossy mix) from CynicatPro but you can find him on YouTube and whole PBR tutorial here will be too much.
I couldn't do this rainbow reflection at angle but Noise Texture mixed with... Light Path, Camera Data??? could be the thing.
EDIT:
Here's the .blend file:

Thank you @LukeD.  I tried but could not quite recreate your look on my part.  Will keep trying though I think you're right.  Will be better with PBR.  Will work on PBR next, then report back.  Thanks.


text:
Blender Online Product Configurator - Dynamicly Updates Geometry
Is it possible to make an online product configurator using Blender Cycles rendered models that dynamically stretch and grow?
As user enters their custom dimensions (height and width) could their product's 3D model update to that size in real time?
Bonus: could objects be added as the product gets bigger?
Like a ladder that could be any custom length, but for every extra 12" it adds another rung.  Then re-spaces all rungs equally apart.
Couldn't find any configurators like this.  Usually they only change color and swap parts.

Related: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24723471/three-js-scale-model-with-scale-set-or-increase-model-size

Yes, Blend4Web offers JavaScript API which you can use to modify the geometry in run-time.
Additional objects can be added too.

Do you have any examples of this, which I could show to the client?  That would help convince them to use this tool.  Otherwise they plan to use only 2D images for product configurator.  Thanks.

https://www.blend4web.com/en/demo/furniture_3D_configurator/
https://www.blend4web.com/en/demo/3d_ring_boutique/

Thank you, very nice examples.  With the furniture example, it has pre-set dimensions to choose from.  Do you have any examples where the user can type in their own special dimensions and see it update the model to any size they want?