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color halftone effect with cutsom shape instead of circles
I'd like for my image texture to repeat and taper off similar to a color halftone effect, here is a crude example of what I'm thinking I'd like to do with a cross shape image. Thanks!!

This answer is somewhat related, but what makes this one interesting is how to preserve the shape of your custom dots, when scaled to various sizes depending on input tone. You say 'color halftone'. In printing, that is done using 4  screens, rotated and offset with respect to one another, stencilling C,M,Y and K.  That would obscure your dot shape, where the dots overlap. Is this what you really want?

Thanks for the link! But yeah I think I might've used the wrong word, color halftone was really the closest I had in mind to describe what I was thinking. What I simply want is to pretty much get that look I put in my example image, so pretty much control the scale of a repeating so that it tapers towards one end. I hope that makes sense haha

Do you simply want to produce the example image starting off with a single cross image, or do you want the effect to apply for more elaborate examples? In the latter case, what's missing is some logic based on which the crosses are positioned: as I understand it, the logic is to decrease glyph size while keeping the distance between centers of the glyphs. However, in your example the vertical distance decreases - what gives? Just an imperfection of the example or it has a direction? If so, you need to give a shader the info on that direction...

You could take the approach in this answer, substituting a blurred version of your dot-shape for the procedurally-generated square-cell distance-function. Depending on how your original is blurred, it will change shape when thresholds are taken on the intensity of the blurred shape.
Here is a method which scales the dot according to the intensity of the underlying image, instead. You may find, though, that in order to get dots which are sufficiently dark in some cells, your dot-shape would have to be clipped.

This version allows variation between a regular grid pattern for the dots, and a scattered distributuion, by changing the 'Randomness' field in a Voronoi node..

The nodes colored red allow pretty good control over the input contrast curve, base scale, and scale-multiplier. They may seem partially redundant, but I've found the combination easy to use.
As you can see, it's tricky to get dark-enough areas without clipping or overlapping your dot-shape..


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My friend can't see the textures of my mdoel in the viewport while using eevee
I have packed the textures into de .blend file, but when he opens the file he can't see the textures on the model (If he switches to cycles then he can, but I can see the textures in both eevee and cycles).
my specs: AMD Ryzen 5 2400g, 4096MB ATI Radeon RX 570 Series.
My friend's specs: AMD Ryzen 5 2400g, Radeon 580 8gb.
we're both on ver 2.9 of blender
I will post pictures of both what my friend sees vs the model.

Does this answer your question? AMD GPU Material in "material preview mode" and "rendered mode", is entirely gray as background. Only outline is displayed  Others recently closed with this issue https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/204297?sort=active

Can he see textures on other models in eevee?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Can't export a mesh to .fbx
I've built a bird for a game I'm working on, and when I tried to export the beak mesh as a .fbx file it gave me this error.
I've applied all the modifiers to the mesh already.
Here's the file https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ah650tjjbcC3zb4Rw8fqIuto7U9OsTLZ/view?usp=sharing

I've solved the problem, you have to smart uv project the mesh before exporting.

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


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render area around the camera
I have been working on a project and when I started using the camera I noticed its view did not go very far, any way of increasing this?
here is what I mean, you can see the view is curving around the Minecraft blocks and not showing the scene.

Does this answer your question? Where can the viewport clipping parameters be changed?

no it did not work I even tried

:( thanks for trying tho

The same settings can be found in the camera properties.

ok so the camera properties clipping worked but the view clipping didn't but thanks anyway for the answer


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How can you use one object to delete the same 3d space on another object?

Hello!
I made a 3D logo a couple years ago and want to update to how it should've been made in the first place. I want to take the logo on the left and make it like the logo on the right. Does anyone know the best way to do that?

The easiest way to accomplish this would be to use a Boolean Modifier set to Intersect

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15687/making-holes-in-a-mesh

As Christopher Bennett says, if you use Boolean modifier / Intersect mode it will work fine:

Thank you! That helped so much! Took just 5 minutes instead of 5 hours the wrong way haha.


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How to Visualize Temperature data usign color map
I have a simple plane (in x,y cordinates) with 25 vertices. I have temperature data of each vertex of the plane.
Now, I want to apply this temperature data onto plane and trying to get visual representation of  it, like higher temperatures represent red color and and lower temperature represents blue color.
I'm able to visualize this data by transforming the plane in z- direction according to data and using some nodes like geometry node, seperate xyz node, map range node and color ramp node, as below.

I have done this through python scripting(below). It is working pretty well. But, I want to visualize data without transforming plane in z-direction.
I didn't find out how to do that,
Please suggest a way to do that through python scripting.
Thanks.
Code I have Developed
import bpy
import bmesh
import numpy as np

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_mode(type = 'VERT')
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action="DESELECT")
object = bpy.context.object
mesh = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(object.data)
mesh.verts.ensure_lookup_table()
verts = mesh.verts
# Temperature data will be stored in this list, data
data = []

# Generated temp data with in the blender
for vert in verts:
    vert.select = True
    v = object.matrix_world @ vert.co
    x = v[0]
    y = v[1]
    data.append(np.sin(x)+np.cos(y))
    bpy.ops.transform.translate(value = (0, 0, z[i]))
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action="DESELECT")

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

# T -> Temperature
T= bpy.data.materials.new(name= "Temperature")
#Enabling Use Nodes
T.use_nodes = True
pbsdf_node = T.node_tree.nodes.get('Principled BSDF')
pbsdf_node.select = False
T_output = T.node_tree.nodes.get('Material Output')
T_output.select = False

#Adding Color Ramp Node
colorramp_node = T.node_tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeValToRGB')
#Set location of node
colorramp_node.location = (-350,0)
#Setting the Default Color
colorramp_node.color_ramp.elements.new(0.5)
colorramp_node.color_ramp.elements[0].color = (0, 0, 1, 1)
colorramp_node.color_ramp.elements[1].color = (0, 1, 0, 1)
colorramp_node.color_ramp.elements[2].color = (1, 0, 0, 1)
colorramp_node.select = False

#Adding Range Map Node
maprange_node = T.node_tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeMapRange')
#Set location of node
maprange_node.location = (-600,0)
maprange_node.inputs[1].default_value = min(data)
maprange_node.inputs[2].default_value = max(data)
maprange_node.inputs[3].default_value = 0
maprange_node.inputs[4].default_value = 1
maprange_node.select = False

#Adding Seperate XYZ Node
seperateXYZ_node = T.node_tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeSeparateXYZ')
#Set location of node
seperateXYZ_node.location = (-900,0)
seperateXYZ_node.select = False

#Adding Geometry Node
geometry_node = T.node_tree.nodes.new('ShaderNodeNewGeometry')
#Set location of node
geometry_node.location = (-1200,0)
geometry_node.select = False

#Creating Links between the Nodes
T.node_tree.links.new(colorramp_node.outputs[0], pbsdf_node.inputs[0])
T.node_tree.links.new(maprange_node.outputs[0], colorramp_node.inputs[0])
T.node_tree.links.new(seperateXYZ_node.outputs[2], maprange_node.inputs[0])
T.node_tree.links.new(geometry_node.outputs[0], seperateXYZ_node.inputs[0])

bpy.context.object.active_material = T

Hello, you can apply the temperature as a color to each vertex in code and then access the vertex color layer in the shader editor with a "Vertex Color" node. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/911/86891

Another approach is to use animation nodes. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/182674/how-to-animate-vertex-colors-using-animation-nodes


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How to write unittest to test Add-on
How to write unit tests in blender and how to compile them to see there are running perfectly.
note: unit tests to test add-on. Thank you.

Here's one example of a Blender addon's unit tests : https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/tree/v0.7.0/src/blenderbim/test

If what you want to test is independent of bpy in any way, then you extract what you test into its own method and use @pytest as normal.
If you want to test it with bpy (calling operators, setting properties), then you'll need to install pytest into Blender's library (need pip too), run Blender headless, and run the unit tests through Blender. I used blender-addon-tester on github to handle most of this, however it's not the smoothest experience and there's lots of setup that still has to be done manually.


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Some ways to affect manta flow with rigid body
While making a lot of fluid simulations, I wondered why Flip Solver, Realflow with flip, can interact with rigid bodies, and mantaflow no. Are there some ways to affect this? Thanks in advance.


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How to import file with .bdc format to Blender?
I wanted to import from realflow file with .bdc format, but I didn't find this option in Blender. What can I do? Thanks in advance.


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How to make particles move with object?
I have a problem. I want to particles stuck with object and move with it. But, when I keyframed object particles didn't move at all. What can I do? Thanks in advance.

You have set Frame Start and End to frame 1000. I'm surprised you can see the particles at all at frame 13. Just tested it with blender 2.92 and the particles become only after the start frame visible. Maybe it's cached?

no, Blunder, whey are emitted in 1 frame and keep its positions in next frames. Ivan, try to use Hair type, instead of Emitter.

oops, sorry, it's '1 dot 000', not a thousand / Once emitted the Emitter particles fly around on their own. They follow forcefields like wind, etc and you can make them follow a leader (boids) but they are not bound to the emitter.

Thanks. Hair is a solution.


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How to make vortex fluid simulation?
Good daytime. I'm trying to achieve this type of fluid form, but unfortunately I can't do similar. Do You know some techniques to be more realistic? Thanks.

i would start with creating a domain, fluid and then add a force field and see whats happening...

Have a look here: https://youtu.be/WBk7YSfJLOw It's about how to create a tornado. It's an emitter particle system raining top-down and affected by force fields. The particles control a smoke simulation which is finally the tornado.

Thanks! Fluid simulation combined with particle system is a choice.


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Problem with texture
Good daytime. Problem with applying texture, how can it be fixed? Thanks!

hello, you need to check your uv map in the UV Editor

Hello, I have checked nothing special.

maybe select these faces in Edit mode and unwrap again?

"Nothing special", but definitely there is something wrong since the side top parts are infinitely stretched - which should not be with a correctly unwrapped mesh. Would you mind sharing a screenshot of the map in the UV Editor?

So, basically the problem was in "correct face attributes". It should be turned on to fix that kind of bugs. Thanks!


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How to different object do not fall apart in blender soft body?
I have a model of Minecraft wolf, which I wanted to fall down like a soft body. But, it has inner 7 parts, how can I join them to make a ballon soft body simulation? Thanks.

You can delete the intersecting faces and join the objects with the Bridge Edge Loops tool. If you want to join one face with multiple others like the chest and the legs you have to subdivide the chest.

Thanks, but too less vertices, also it is unwrapped very tightly, so in this case this method won't be useful much.

I'm not sure if that's gonna solve your problem but try selecting all the differents parts and then pressing Ctrl+J to join them togheter into a single mesh.

Thanks, I have been tried, no result.

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.

This solution can be useful, if mesh has a higher amount of vertices, that do not intersect much.


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Weird with mesh deformer
This error occurred, when I wanted to mesh deformer apply. How can I fix it? Thanks.

Hello could you please share your file? https://pasteall.org/blend/

https://pasteall.org/blend/2e242a54063344b68aa4e37e681edd6e

Here is a file.

your cage needs to be bigger than your character, maybe make a new one that contains the body properly

Thanks, I will try!


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How to render only mist layer?
I rendered in png sequence animation. How can I render only mist and than composite it together. Image. Thanks in advance.

https://i.sstatic.net/Z0oP1.png read https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/187997/how-to-make-distance-fog/188248#188248

how to render mist pass

is it possible to re-render a single pass and not the whole scene again?

Thanks helped a lot!

You can't just render the mist pass on its own. Blender always renders the combined pass (even if you check it off on the Data passes for the view layer).
You will need to render again.
Enable mist on the data passes for the view layer

Then use the Mist ouptut of the render layer to save your image.

What you should do in the future:
Avoid PNG and save as OpenEXR multilayer.
Use a File Output node, set the output to the desired format and create all of the inputs you need:

That way you can save the image with other different passes. Think of EXR as an exact copy of the render layer.
Then import the file back in blender and the layers should be available for you in the compositor.

One time more thanks! I didn't know about exr, but I will know.

Now read: https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/someone-answers


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Why does the scale of an object change while rotating it?
I am making a "Digipak" CD enclosure that is made of a few separate parts parented to one another.
I intend to rig it later on, but at this point I only move the parts manually (rotate them on the Y axis). That's all.
The problem is, when I rotate the cover, it's scale changes.
To go from the opened to the closed position, I rotate the "spine" portion 90° and the cover also 90°. But when I rotate the cover, it's width increases by 2,3 cm. It doesn't mater if I rotate the spine first than the cover or the other way around, when I get to the cover's rotation, it's scale changes.
I'd like to know why that happens and how can I keep it from happening.
Thanks

try applying the scale first. If this doesn't help, pls provide blend file

Thanks Chris,
The scale was applied on the cover and the parented booklet and most of the parts... but not on the "spine". That solved it.

Hi, Dehen, Glad it's fixed!  Your question is nicely constructed, I appreciate the work that's gone into it. But I think we can 'close the case' on this one. The archive already has other posts representative of this problem, and we try to avoid duplicates. Nothing personal :)


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Keyframe disappears to actions?
I have downloaded a blender file (2.9) and it seems that something is set so that the keyframes of animations I create are automatically converted to actions in the nla or I am doing something wrong? What could be the problem?
I have to constantly go into the nla and manually convert the actions to keyframes, I do not need actions, how can I disable this?

you must not push down the action into the NLA if you don't want to create any NLA strip

I do not push anything into the nla it happens automatically after a while, no idea if i press something by mistake


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is there a way to get the final object space normal (with normal maps applied)
Im trying to create a light source within a shader, this light source needs to be in object space.
I have created a node network that does this well, but only uses the mesh normals (in object space), i thought adding the normal map would be simple but im struggling to get something that works correctly and have with help over engineered several solutions including recreating a TBN matrix (think this didn't work as the tangents didn't appear as i would expect them)
however im thinking there must be a simpler solution that im missing? get pixels normal (mesh + map), transform to local space, do stuff?...

its very simple, the normalmap output in tangent mode does exactly what i was looking for, i was being dumb, i had refactored my node networks into a bunch of nested groups and one of the inputs had set the normal intput to a float instead of a vector...
it took me to recreate the entire normal tbn matrix in nodes and debug the out put vs the normalmap node to realise ;)


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Object -> Edit / Change of position
I've modeled an object, rigged the body and was going to rig the face when I noticed that when i change between "Object mode", "Edit mode" and "Pose mode", it changes position.In "Object mode" and "Pose mode" it is on 0,0,0 but when I change to "Edit mode" it suddenly moves out of location in all three axis.Attaching an image for better clarification.
Moving the object in "Object mode" to the position it is in "Edit mode" also changes it in that tab, and vice versa.How can I reset it so it stays on the supposed main location as it is in "Object mode"?
Thanks in advance

When you edit the pose of the armature rigged to a mesh, it shows the changes in the Object and Pose mode, while in Edit mode shows the original undeformed mesh. Could be that? Check by selecting all the bones in Pose Mode and Pose>Clear Transform>All, and look if it changes between modes.

Thank you for your help, I did that and although it all stays in the same position which was what I was looking for, they stay on the position it was in "Edit mode".
I would like to have my character aligned with all the axis.
How can I do that?

Thank you for your help, I did that and although it all stays in the
  same position which was what I was looking for, they stay on the
  position it was in "Edit mode". I would like to have my character
  aligned with all the axis. How can I do that?

You have to align it in Edit Mode.
Edit mode is like if it was more important than the other modes, it goes something like Edit Mode > Object Mode > Pose Mode. This is like this because in edit mode you have the information of the mesh, in object mode the information of where is the mesh (and it's rotation) and in pose mode you have the information about how is the mesh deformed.
So use blender with this hierarchy in mind and you will ready to go.

Hmmm okay :)
In "Edit mode" I select the armature and move it around but the mesh doesn't follow, when I go back to "Object mode" the position of the armature is changed aswell with the mesh staying on the same place it was, misaligning my armature>mesh.
What is the correct way to fix this?
Do I need to rig the character again?

First move the Mesh in Edit mode to the location you want. Then move the armature in Edit mode to match the mesh. No need to re-rig or re-skin.

Thank you Mike!


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Characters in text editor are overlapping each other
I am using blender 2.8, and started using Python scripting recently. But characters in the text editor are overlapping each other, and it is hard to see them. Just like this:

I looked preference settings but found nothing, settings in Themes>Text Style do not affect them.
Did anyone encounter this problem before? Or have idea about how to fix it?

Are you using a custom font? Check it in Edit>Preferences>Interface>Text Rendering.


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Is there a way I can randomize the sample seed?
I want something so that when I hit Render, I get a certain noise pattern but then when I hit render a different time, without changing anything, I get a different one. Is there a time-based randomizer for the sample seed?
I'm using 2.8.
PS The clock button isn't useful for me because I want something where I can be on the same frame and get a different noise pattern

Let's put it into an  add-on that one can install once and forget about it:
bl_info = {
    "name": "Random Render Seed",
    "author": "Martynas Ziemys",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "CyclesRenderSettings",
    "description": "Random Render seed EVERY TIME before rendering",
    "warning": " ",
    "wiki_url": " "
                "",
    "category": "Render",
}
import bpy, random
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def RandomSeedHandler(scene):
    bpy.context.scene.cycles.seed = random.randint(10, 1000000000)

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(RandomSeedHandler)

def unregister():
    bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.remove(RandomSeedHandler)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

If this is copied to a new text block and saved with .py extension it can be installed as an add-on.

Disclaimer: I can't code, but can copypaste snippets.
This script changes seed on every F12 render in 0-1000 range. Viewport update is laggy, so the number will change only on mouse hovering:
import bpy
from random import randint

def change_seed(scene):

    bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].cycles.seed = randint(0,1000)

bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(change_seed)

Why is it render_post? Would it not make it possible to reopen a file if it's not saved after render and render with the same seed? That is so annoying when you render to EXRs in order to combine them later and forget to change the seed... It should be render_pre so it randomizes the seed on every render.

@Martin Z, Didn't think that deep, but I'll edit. Thanks for precaution.


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When trying to render my objects will not turn out in the render view
I have tried the Ctrl+Alt+H shortcut and in the first picture everything is supposed to render. Any help is appreciated and if there is any need for clarification I will answer as soon as possible.
Here is the render view for reference

I figured it out though the solution wasn't in that link. I was using the wrong renderer Blender Render when I should have been using Cycles Render.


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how to separate uv maps
I started with one mesh and then separated it later on.
When I now try to paint on one, I paint on both.
How can i separate the uv maps or do something else to prevent that?
thank you for all the tips and ideas.
the head and the body are 2 different objects.

I know the map isn't very clean. learning to do that these days.

your 2 UVmaps must not overlay on the Image Texture, otherwise when you'll paint on one part it will also paint on another

Either pack UV islands on the UV maps so that they don't intersect (comfortable to do when both meshes are part of one object to edit at once or with Mutli-edit option in 2.8) or use 2 separate images

thank you for the help you two :) is there no way to make it its own uvmap?

UV map will be shared between meshes of one object. If you separate meshes into different objects you will have different UV maps. Note though that unless you paint on 2 different images this won't necessarily solve the problem - even 2 different objects with different UV maps mapped to one image still can have
overlapping on paint as UVs still will be mapped to one image

Are you using the same material on both meshes?

i was using the same material. i was not aware of it. thank you everyone for your help! i finally know why now :)

Dont give the same material to both meshes, since you are painting on the same image it will affect the other one.


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remapped shift key not working
My shift key is not working anymore, so I remaped it on the little "2" key just under the escape key using keytweak . The remapping worked in all programs I used but not in Blender apparently .. I can't use shortcuts using shift . Thanks for any suggestions .

Hello Nathan! Sorry for your loss (
What do you mean by «the little "2" key just under the escape key» ? On my keyboard under the escape key settled ~
Have you tryed to remap some shortcut in blender keymap to «the little "2" key»? What happened?

hi, well it's the key with the "square" symbol , square as in "three squared equals nine" . I did not remap any shortcut in Blender because I don't want to do it manually every time I need a shortcut . But I found kind of a solution actually . Thanks for your answer !

it's not on a desktop computer first , and second why throw away an object which can still do the job ?

With AutoHotkey, I was able to remap my shift key, and it works with Blender. I couldn't find the "squared" key, so I remaped shift to the "left window" key.
To do it you must download autohotkey then create a new script and put in :
LWin::LShift


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How does Blender take advantage of normal RAM vs GPU VRAM?
I tried searching but could not find a definitive answer on blender stackexchange.
I'm looking to upgrade a rendering Rig, and the RAM is a bit old... I know for most of my work I use cycles which relies on the GPU for rendering.
My question is that, Is there any benefit to upgrading the normal RAM i use? e.g. If I have 16 GB of 2000 mhz ram, is it worth to go to 32 GB of 4000 mhz ram?  Does blender only care about amount (GB) or does it take advantage of the Mhz as well?  I've read the Mhz are useful for high intensity gaming, but what about blender usage?
Does it make sense to leave normal RAM by the wayside and focus all cash towards buying an expensive and powerful GPU with the most VRAM ?

There's a setup procedure that happens when you render (subdiv/displacement, BVH calculation, etc) that is heavily CPU bound and uses system memory until it settles on the final scene data which is then copied over to the rendering device.  There's a balance to be struck.

tl;dr = Quantity matters a lot; speed matters almost not at all.
Blender does "care" about system RAM quite a lot. Until the point that you're actually rendering, the whole scene resides in system memory. The amount of system memory you have will limit what you can make. Also, although Cycles is 100x faster on GPU, it can run on CPU.
Regarding quantity:
Everything you make resides in system memory. If you have an enormous model that you want to decimate, you'll have to load the whole thing at some point. If you do any video editing, the more RAM you have will mean that more of your video can be cached, which helps with playback. Simulations tend to require a lot of RAM; more RAM means more options available to you.
As I alluded to above, although Cycles runs much faster on GPU, it will run on CPU. I have encountered cases where the scene simply couldn't be simplified, and I HAD to render it, but it was too big for GPU vRAM. Switch Cycles to CPU rendering, and although it took FOREVER, it did work. The CPU could use system RAM, and even virtual RAM to render something that occupied 40GB of memory. I.e. having enough system RAM might mean the difference between being able to render very slowly versus not being able to render at all.
Regarding speed:
All software will benefit from faster RAM. This is a very "low level" attribute, which means that none of the software on your system needs to be aware of nor specially coded for faster RAM. It will just be faster.
It's worth at least saying out loud that 10yo DDR2 will make your system noticeably less performant than the latest DDR5. I'm assuming that we're talking about choosing from among current-generation specifications.
That having been said, the difference between "slow" DDR4 and "fast" DDR4 is something I've found to be negligible and unnoticeable except for the most time-sensitive operations. (I mention DDR4; higher specifications are still new enough to warrant a lot of scrutiny; you'll want to do your own research at that point). I would recommend looking up benchmarks for the RAM you're considering, and compare their results. Blender Cycles is a common enough benchmark that you may even be able to find examples comparing various RAM speeds in the exact implementation you care about. My investigation shows that it's really not enough of a difference to notice, except for highly demanding real-time applications (games).

Cycles on my GPU is only 3.5x faster than my CPU.  It entirely depends on the CPU/GPU being used.

RAM matters with ( in my experience ) with regards to simulations. For rendering the biggest bottleneck ( and in many cases direct crashes ) is VRAM. I would look into getting video cards with the most VRAM you can justify paying for. 8GB or higher ( ideally 12+ GB ) for heavy high poly count sims. I am on 64GB of RAM and heavy fluid sims are no go as my dual card system is 2x 4GB VRAM cards. I am hoping to get a 3090 to have 24GB of VRAM to solve this issue.

Lol, 24GB will solve a lot of problems for you. It still blows my mind that you can now get a GPU with twice as much RAM as there was total system memory in the computer I just upgraded from.

This is true not only of sims, but simply subdividing, e.g., when using adaptive subdivision and shader displacement.  I can't even count the number of crashes that I've endured with only 2GB VRAM...


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how to permanently remove a modifier from the UI panel?
I always click the "Skin" modifier accidentally which freezes up my program, i never use this modifier. Is there a way to permanently remove this from the GUI so i don't have to bother carefelly moving my mouse around it?

i had the same issue. unfortunately its not possible within blender. you would have to remove the button from the blender source code and recompile the code.


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Snapping FK to IK for whole action instead of single frame
I used Blenrig 5 to rig a character. I am applying a mocap animation to it. It was succesfully done. Now to cleanup the data, I want to use IK legs. Since mocap data is applied to FK bones, I need to switch to IK bones. In blenrig, there is an option to snap FK to IK for current frame but not for whole sequence. I tried baking animation too. Is there a script to solve this? or any other way?


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What is wrong with this cloth?
I'm trying to put cloth on a goblin model. Why is this cloth not working?
If I open another blend file and add the cloth exactly the same as this one, the cloth simulates, but this one refuses to. Please help.
My Blend File

Did you subdivide the cloth?

yeah, not a lot, but when I press play animation it doesn't fall like it should. Just stays stationary. Since this I remade the cloth and it works but it still bothers me, why would this work sometimes and other times absolutely nothing happens?

You do bake the simulation, right? Sometimes baking fixes it.

yeah i tried that too, still nothing. I guess I'll just pretend it didn't happen. starting over worked. I just know if I had have worked really hard or making a piece of clothing and then it just wouldnt simulate I would have been really annoyed.

Don't worry! We all make mistakes sometimes.


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Hard edges on sculpted mesh
I'm sure someone else has asked this question but I'm not sure exactly what to search for.
I am trying to sculpt a tin-box kind of thing with smooth beveled edges around the corners. When I go into sculpting and try to add a simple raised part around one of the corners, I end up with these hard-looking verticle edges, I could go around the smooth out all of these manually, but I'm sure there is a simpler solution.
Also, in the image, you can see that when I bake a normal map of this, those hard lines appear on the normal map and look terrible on my low-poly model. Does anyone know how to sculpt around an edge without getting these artifacts?

I think you are going to need to upload the file so people can better understand what is going on in your scene. For a box like that why not just use sub-D modelling instead of sculpting?


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Face that doesn't exist is being rendered
I'm not sure if this is the right place to be posting .blend files and asking people to help figure out problems with it, let me know if it's not allowed.
I am making this fire extinguisher, and I have run into a problem with the gauge portion. Blender is rendering a face that doesn't exist, if you look in solid mode there is no face:
But, when rendered, a red face appears out of nowhere, I can't see the face in solid, or wireframe mode, I'm clueless as  to what is happening:
Here is my .blend:

 Thanks in advance!

actually your face exists but you hid it, in Edit mode press alt H and it will appear

Oh my god. Noob here. Thanks a lot for the help!


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Blender for online human-movement visualization
I would like to know if I can use Blender to visualize human motion in an online manner.
In my setup, I will have motion capture system which will provide the position of some arbitrary marker (attached to a human subjects).
My goal is to use these marker position (given that I know where they are placed on the human subject) and use IK and visualize the human model on the screen.
I know that in Blender, we can import human models (made by MakeHuman) and play around with FK and IK.
My question: is it possible to run Blender continuously (for visualizing purposes) and use python script to send IK constraints (continuously) to the human model?
I know Blender/python allows for Socket communication. This way I can pass the position of the markers from motion capture to Blender. But I don't know (if possible), how I can set IK constraints.
I would appreciate it a lot if you guys could share with me some simple examples.


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blender audio frequency detectionrange limit 1000000khz
i want to use blender to detect frequency, but it only has a limit, i need it to detect frequencies of upto penta herdz or above. no limit. the frequencies are usually used for audio visualization and audio spectrum.

An audio file can’t contain frequencies higher than half it’s sampling rate. So it’s hard to imagine where you are expecting to find petahertz frequencies.

Audio generally isn't considered to go above 20 kHz, you wrote 1000000khz which is 1 GHz, 1 petahertz is $10^{15}$ cycles per second and is an order of magnitude above gamma radiation?

there where it says, bake sounds to F-curves it goes up to  100 000 on highest frequency, excuse my mistake. i think if i get the frequencies of color, with python i could use the values to arrange them in a 3D environment, that should give me a view of the place where the microphones are placed. at 100 000 there is movement as i have tested it before. now i need sphere mesh to react to the frequencies of color. that way doctors can scan your body for things.


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Why is my distorted noise texture not giving me it's correct bump normal information?
below I added an image of what I mean.
My noise texture gets distorted, but for some reason when plugging in the Fac or Color output into another bump node, The distortion is gone..
I'd love to know why this happens, have I maybe overlooked something?
How can I make this work..
Thanks for reading

Hard to tell what is going on without seeing the entire node setup, especially what you are plugging these nodes into?

Hi Scottywood, the output of the nodes in both setups go into a viewer node that goes into the material output of the material.
In the upper setup I'm 'viewing' the fac output of the noise texture node.
In the below setup I'm 'viewing' the normal output of the bump node

I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish? Plugging your bump map into the material output only outputs a color, not a bump. You also have two bump map nodes in your nodes, which isn't really how you're supposed to use them. Take a look a look at this post, this is how you're supposed to use the bump map node,  It's plugged into the Normal socket of a Shader node, which is then plugged in the material output. https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/179668/blender-bump-map-not-working-applying

Hi thanks for your reply. Basically in the above pics I distorted the noise texture using bump normal information to get a height based 'accurate' distortion of texture. For some reason though, when plugging that Fac/Color output of the distorted noise into another bump node, the bump node ignores the distortion I did to the noise's object coordinates. It doesn't matter anymore though since I found a work around using the displacement input (set to bump only). Thanks a lot for the responses though

I basically found a workaround that kinda gives the result I was looking for. With the below setup you can distort texture based on height and get correct information for bump mapping

why do you mix texture coordinates ? :D

To influence (distort) the object coordinates of the noise texture based on what I fed through the displacement socket input


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How do I parent a single bone from a rigify metarig to a cube without it parenting the whole metarig?
I'd like to parent a single bone within a Rigify human full skeleton metarig to a corresponding cube [which contains animation information], however I can't select a single bone for parenting without selecting the whole skeleton. Is it not possible to parent individual bones within a metarig?

Yes, I don't think you can parent an individual bone to a mesh object. You can constrain it tho, so maybe that could solve your problem.

thanks - that worked!


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How do I make a curved solid line?
I'm a newbie to blender and I'm trying to make a curved solid line. I want it to be perfectly curved, as half a circle. I want it to have thickness and be round on the tips. Think of a sausage.
I've tried multiple ways, but couldn't do it.
Thanks for the help!

What way have you tried and why were you not satisfied? I don't think there's any easy way to do it with a bezier curve, you'll need to stick 2 half-spheres to each end of the curve, if you work with mesh you can use Skin + Subdivision Surface modifiers

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/55302/rounded-caps-on-a-bezier-curve-pipe https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53523

Set up a Bezier Curve to be a hemi-circle like this:

Building a "Hot Dog" shape by deforming a UV sphere (the red tube) and then applying a curve modifier to it should get what you asked for (the blue tube)


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Mirror sphere on the X axis

Hi! I made the above sphere which is supposed to be a shoulder. I want to mirror it exactly to the other side of the X axis. I would also like that every changes that I make to the sphere are also made on the mirrored sphere. I've tried to use the mirror modifier but it didn't work, as I believe it only mirrors parts of an object, not the object itself.
Thanks!

There are several solutions. By default the mirror will always consider the origin of the object as the center of the mirroring. if you want to mirror the sphere at the opposite side of the Y axis you could give your sphere a Mirror modifier, enable the Affect Only Origins option, then select the origin and press AltG option so that the origin goes at the center of the scene, then disable the option. You could also join the sphere to the other object and give the Mirror to this object. In that case delete half of the object so that the half doesn't overlap with the mirrored mesh.

Thanks! It worked perfectly!


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Space bar shortcut
I can't change space bar shortcut from preferences after I made my own panel, space bar shortcut has disappeared.

Could you please elaborate on "I made my own panel"

I mean that I have made my own shortcuts then I saved the changes for ex, I changed rotate instead of middle mouse button to be "Alt + right click mouse button"
once I saved that changes, space bar shortcut disappeared.


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Blender 2.92 Beta. Sculpting mode. Tools panel doesnt show brush options
I recently updated to 2.92 Beta to start playing with some of the new options.
Is it there a reason the Tools panel in the properties panel doesn't show the brush properties.
As you can see in the screenshot I am in sculpt mode with one of the Draw Brush selected and nothing shows in the properties panel.

Possibly just a glitch with the beta but whenever a panel doesn't appear scrolling up or down on it can reset it sometimes.

Thanks for that.
Scrolling up and down doesn't seem to work but it worthed trying.
I will report the bug/glitch.
Thanks @NascentSpace.


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Hide FaceSets Visivility
Is there a way to hide the colours of the facesets we have created without hiding the geometry that belong to them?
A sort of a.... Shift +F in Zbrush Equivalent. A toggle to hide or show the mesh with the facesets.
Thank you.

Nevermind.
Viewport overlays > sculpt > face sets slider / toggle.
Found it.

In 4.0 moved to Sculpt > Face Sets slider, toggle directly to the right.


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Images as planes in Solid View Shading
I was wondering if there is any way to load images as planes in a way that they are visible in solid view to use as a reference.
We know that loading images as planes make them easy to scale so it helps when we want to use those images as reference for modelling or sculpting. The problem is the texture is no visible in solid mode where modelling or sculpting is easier.
Loading the image as a reference is not as easy to manipulate.
If there is no way to do it at the moment is ok, I will just add a request in the Right-Click Select Discord Channel.
Bonus question. Is it possible so see through the back of an image as a plane or reference images so it doesn't interfere when we move the around the viewport looking for another point of view? I am thinking that setting up the mesh we are working in as SHOW->In Front could be a possible workaround.

Just gotta turn on textures mode in solid view.

That is a nice workaround, hahaha. So logical and simple.
Thanks for that, I should have thought about it.

Before any requests read the manual on using images in empties.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/empties.html?highlight=image%20reference#image

If you want images as reference, don't use images as planes, use Add > Image > Reference.

This tool allows you to create an empty with an image associated with it, that ist is visible in Solid mode. It is not really an object with vertices or faces, and it will not render in the final image. Such image will appear in front of the geometry.
To have an image that shows behind the geometry, then use Add > Image > Background
You can always change how the image is displayed:

To resize the image to an exact size use  the Size controls for the properties of the empty.

Or use the sliders for scale to change the aspect ratio in whichever axis you need.

Images as planes is meant to be used when you need a plane with actual vertices and faces, that has an image mapped into the material.

This is a much better, more complete answer than mine.. wish I could pass over my UV's. I may delete mine, after a while.

Thanks for that. I might not explain myself properly.
I know the feature use image as a reference. The problem is that this creates an image using an empty ( as you point out ) this makes it hard to scale the image to an accurate scale. With planes this is a way easier. That is the reason of my question.
That Size 5 metre I can see in your GIF doesn't work really well according to my tests.
Thanks so much anyway.

@ManuelGPz you can set the size of an image as empty with absolute precision using the size slider shown on the last image.

Thanks for that.

I do BOTH, image as reference and image as plane, I place the image as plane behind the Image reference and then duplicate the reference and place a second one behind the plane. This way you have 2 references and a image as plane between them. Now when you switch between solid, material, wireframe or rendered you will always have something to reference. At least this helps when I am working on an object and being accurate for color and needing to move between modes and adjust the mesh in edit mode, scultpt, object mode, and back to texturing.


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UV, Modify UV island when modifying mesh
I saw somewhere that there was an option in Blender that allows you to modify the UV map at the same time you modify the topology of the object.
I remember seeing a video where a box working as a wall had some faces extended to make the wall larger. In that video, the UV islands for those walls extended at the same time so the texture proportion wasn't affected.
I can't find how to do it?
Apologies if I have just dreamed it but I remember clearly and it is really frustrating I cant find how to do it after googling for a while.

Maybe you're talking about the Correct Face Attributes option which will change the UV as soon as you change the topology:

Also, when you slide an edge, make sure you have the Correct UVs option enabled in the Operator box:

It was just that.
Thanks so much :)


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Brush tool menu.... Missing?
I am following a tutorial by Flipped Normals and in their video, they use some options available in a tool menu ( Brush ) that I cant find in my blender 2.91
I don't think they are using any addon so... Am I doing something wrong.

What options are you looking for?

It is all good. Apologies for the late reply....

There is a small arrow > on your left side, drag it, it will expand the menu for you.


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UV Editor, Blurred vertex, edge, face UV selection
Is there any reason when I select vertexes, edges or faces in the UV editor, the selection marker blurs to extends to its surrounding elements? I am not aware of having touched anything to get that. Apparently, it doesn't affect the way the selected elements behave, but It is visually very annoying.
Thanks so much.

This is normal. The blur is to indicate what edges the vertex is (and more importantly isn't) connected to. This can be very useful when two vertices are on top of each other for whatever reason.

It is weird though it doesn't happen to me on my previous blender setup, in 2.90.1
It happens to me in my current working version of blender 2.91

Hmm, check user preferences. Sometimes I've forgotten I changed something and then the settings didn't port.

Yeah... that's is precisely my problem. I think there is something changed in user preferences but I don't know what is it.
That is what my question is about pretty much...


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Blender 2.91 UV Editor. Rip edges keeping them in the same position fails
I am trying to rip edges or faces from a UV map and keeping them in the same position to move the whole created island afterwards.
If I try to do that by Selection the edges or faces I want to Rip, press V and then press RMC the ripping process doesn't happen. This operation works well in edit mode. You can click any edge press V and then RMC. The geometry remains in the same place but the "cut" has been done. After that, you can select the whole polygon island by clicking Ctrl+L.
However, in UVedit mode if you press RMC instead of moving the edges and you try to select the UV island you can check the whole UV island is still joined to the whole group and everything is selected.
Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?

Indeed it seems like a bug, sorta, I tested and the rip actually works, but once the selection changes, the UV vertices gets joined again (because they are at the exact same place)
tested and worked workaround is to move it a very small amount, like .0001, but not too small so that it doesn't round to zero

Thanks for that!
The work around will certainly help.
Is there a way I should report this bug to be fixed in upcoming updates?

You are welcome, sure here's where to report bugs: https://developer.blender.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/1/
and a video guide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTD0OJq_rF4&feature=youtu.be

Perfect!
Thanks again :)


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Normal Map Breaking Glass Material in Cycles again?
I faced this problem when the normal map breaks the glass material messing the whole reflections up. For what I have been reading this was fixed long ago so I guess I am doing something wrong but I dont get to see what it is.
Using Cycles in Blender 3.0 in Windows 10.
Glass Material working well with no Normal map.

Refractions get messed up after adding the normal map.

You can download the Blender file from here if that helps:
https://we.tl/t-imDWLkh2JW

The Normal Map Image Texture should have the Color-Space set to Non-Color (you currently have it set to sRGB).

There you go. That was it.
Thanks so that. I know I was missing out just in the basics.
Thank you!

Although Christopher is right ... there is zero pixel difference in your screens ...


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Snap selection to x-y component of 3D Cursor
just starting off with Blender, and wondering what the easiest way to snap a selection to part of the 3D cursors transform would be.
(TLDR: question below last pic in bold)
For example, if modelling something like a below using a boolean shape to cut out detail, it is probably necessary to align the shape with some existing edges of your model to avoid the boolean function from adding unnecessary geometry.
The below is looking from the xz plane.

Marked here is the corner with the correct xz for an edge, but a different y.

If the 3D Cursor is set to this, and we snap selection to cursor while preserving our offset, we see the xz are correct, but the y component of our selected edge is averaged about the cursor.

TLDR
So the question here is, how would I be able to move this edge to the x,z of either this vertex/the cursor, while ignoring changes to the y component of my selection?
I have looked around online in similar terms for a solution to aligning edges as so, but have struggled to find anything other than manually entering the x,z of the 3D cursor from the world properties (tedious, inefficient), or building the cut out from the point that is going to cause an issue (tedious, prone to breaking with too many points).
I am however a blender noob, so I might be missing something incredibly simple or using the wrong jargon to search. If any of you know of a work around for this, or a better method of aligning edges in general, please advise, as this seems like something that should have a simple solution.
Cheers!

You can use 3d cursor as pivot point. It should be quite posible to switch pivot point to 3d cursor, then scale to 0 by an axis you need to scale (sounds like X axis in your case)

Probably the simplest solution is to press Shift + A, then S, then A to create a single vertex, then select the edge and move it with vertex snapping enabled (and Shift + Y to lock Y axis). Just remember to remove the vertex afterwards.

I don't know of a way to snap directly to the 3D cursor itself. Usually you're snapping to a vertex. In your case you can use the preexisting vertex at the 3D cursor's location. Failing that, you can always set your pivot point to 3D cursor, duplicate any existing vertex, and scale it to 0. This will move it to the 3D cursor.
In Blender you can constrain most transformations to either a single axis, or to a plane, including when snapping. If you hit G for move, and then hit Y, you will only be able to move along the y-axis.
In your case, you want to prevent movement along the y-axis, so you would hit G, then SHIFT+Y. This will constrain movement to the x-z plane.
As for the snap tool itself, I usually recommend using the active element setting. This way you have more precise control over what is snapping to the target (the highlighted white vertex, instead of whichever vertex is closer.
Here is how I would solve your problem without even needing the 3D cursor:

Select the vertex that you want to line up to your target edge. This will set it as the active element.

Select the rest of the mesh that you want to move. You can either hit A to select all, or L to select only the contiguous parts of the mesh.

Hit G for move, then SHIFT+Y to constrain movement to the x-z plane.

Move your cursor to the vertex you want to snap to, and click.


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How to hide edges/viewport after import from Warehouse (Sketchup/Collada)
I'm trying to use models from 3d Warehouse inside my Blender scene. So I'm downloading them in Collada (.dae) format instead of Sketchup formats since Blender can import dae.
Problem is that they are included with weird black wireframe, even that I have wireframes hidden. I cannot find way to hide it. In render they look ok, just not in viewport.

Object Properties > Viewport display > Wireframe

@Gorgious It's disabled bad lines are still visible. Also it does not look like Blender's wireframe, because lines are cropped and not straight lines like in normal wireframe.

Have you disabled it for every one of your objects ?

@Gorgious it's disabled by default. Enabling this option is adding another wireframe on top of it.

It is due to Sketchup... bad geometry and hard to clean up. But dae export from Sketchup standalone solves the issue. A sketchup importer can be found on the internet but it does not work well with materials.

I can confirm that the answer given by Coladrop for .dae files does work. If you have a complex model with many parts and don't mind joining them all together first that can make it easier. Also, if you convert the .dae to a .obj, then re-import it to your blend file, you can simply uncheck "Lines" from the "Include" section of the import screen to accomplish the same result.

I had same look with my model when imported .dae
In my case it was textured mesh+ wireframe. So just go to edit mode, and in material properties click on your material and press select (do this with all materials).
After that you should have selected all mesh without wireframe (you can press ctrl+i to invert selection to wireframe and delete it)
Hope this will help you.

I do not need this anymore and I cannot check it, but thanks for answer :) My solution at the time was editing .dae in text editor to delete all wireframes whatever they were named in source. I also typed regex for faster search & replace.

Import the file enter Edit Mode, at this point Blender automatically selected all of the wireframe as the first thing, just delete it and it's gone.
Alternatively enter Edit Mode, select an edge and move it, if it's wireframe you selected then it will stretch without affecting the solid mesh, at this point  Click it press X > Delete Edges.


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Why is the Particle effect like this? .....(see pic)(I followed every step as shown by BlenderGuru Tutorial (Donut).)
I tried multiple times but I am not getting what is wrong with the particle effect even though I followed the steps as shown by Blender Guru.
Here I am getting an effect like this:
Can you guys tell me why is this happening?

could you please share your file? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Yo have moved the object away from its origin point in edit mode. Select your particle object (the one you used to make the particles) select the whole thing in edit mode and move it around. You'll see how it changes the position of the particles relative to the donut.


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Normal maps gives me a weird shade

Hi! So today I've been working on a hair mesh that is part of my personal project to my character that I've made. When I was checking on it's normal maps, I've noticed that some part of the NM have been darkened or even flipped and it all had to do with the normal maps I've created in Zbrush. For when I've looked into the hair with the highest subdivion and some points/vertices of it were raised on the other side, thus causing an unsymmetrical mesh. So what I've attemted to do was to smooth out those wrong incorporated vertices and tried to symmetrize them by using "Smart Resymmetrize" button. The Hair was perfectly symmetrized, I've created new normal maps with perfect symmetry and imported them to Blender. And here's where the problems kicks in:

When I've inserted the new normal maps for the hair, It gives of this weird and unbalanced shadow on one side, while the other was brighter. And I've mure that the point light was facing towards the frontal part of the hair (which is where the human face is located). I couldn't for the life of me figure out what's causing this problem. So If there's anyone who knows this, let me know. And here's the fixed normal maps:
I know some of you will be confused by this of what I'm talking about, because I've been working on the mesh and writing this post almost at 12 pm. So i was kinda tired. But hopefully some of you will understand this to what I'm saying.

I recently experienced a similar issue. I found that, by default, images textures are set to sRGB;

Setting the normal map's image texture's color space to "Non-Color" should correct the issue;

Oh, thank you so much! I really needed that information so badly. Really appreciating. To think iv'e forgotten one simple thing. Oh, silly me.

Don't feel bad, I've been using blender for decades and A: didn't know that until last week, and B: took me forever to figure out. Please mark this as the accepted answer for future users :)

@NMachado Please don't add thank you as a comment, upvote the answer instead. If you feel it completely solved your problem consider marking it accepted


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Unwrapping gives out the wrong symmetry
When I was working on UVs of the lotus flower, I noticed that the some of the vertices are not aligned well when unwrapping, because of the rotations I made in the 3D viewport. For example, if I try to rotate a cube 45 degrees, then uv will not only rotate, the vertices are being unaligned when unwrapping. And at the same time, three of the vertices were pinned by me by having the top vertice 1, middle .05 and bottom 0 and are all aligned in the x-axis. And still the vertices are unaligned next time I've unwrapped it. For example the left vertice recieved the cords of U: 0.653 & V: 0.445, while the right vertice got U: 0.653 & V: 0.455 instead. Can someone help me and explain why the rotations ALSO effects in UV-Editor?

Hello :). Could you please add some images to your post? So it's easier to understand. Thank you.


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I'm having a UV map problem
I need some help with a UV-mapping problem I've stepped into. When I exported the lowpolied mesh from zbrusch to blender, I was going to create UV-Maps there because it thought it would be much easier to create seams than in zbrusch. But after I've created seams and unwrapped the mesh, the faces on one side of the unwrapped mesh is bigger than on the other side. The meshes should be unwrapped on an equal scale, not individually. So, what did I do wrong? Please, help me.

You should add more seams. Make seams to separate: tail, legs, torso, arms, head...

I tested out on the tail and it worked! Thank you so much!

If this has answered your question, please consider accepting the answer

@Derrick I fully accept my answer for now, until I've encounter an error that I cannot figure out how to solve it. Solidly swear.

My mistake - I forgot that you could not accept an answer without one being posed (eg can not accept @NMachado comment) :)


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How to find the timeline index of a keyframe_point by script?
I know you can get the frame_range of an action, but regarding individual keyframe_points, what property signifies their place in the timeline?

To find the frame number of a keyframe_point:
keyframePoint.co[0]


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How do you find the y_axis of a pose bone in specific keyframes in a script?
How do you find the y_axis of a pose bone in specific keyframes in a script?

# Go to the specific frame
bpy.context.scene.frame_set(your_frame)

from mathutils import Vector
# Y-axis in bone's local space
y_axis = Vector((0, 1, 0))
# Y-axis in armature space
y_axis = arma_ob.pose.bones[your_bone_name].matrix @ y_axis
# Y-axis in world space
y_axis = arma_ob.matrix_world @ y_axis


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When would I want to use a factor vs color output?
Suppose I have a noise texture and I want to take the output as the input to a color ramp.
I've seen tutorials where the factor is inserted into the color ramp's factor input, and I've seen tutorials where the color of the noise texture is used instead.
Why would I want to use one over the other? What are the use cases?

On the Noise texture node, Factor is a number from 0 to 1, whereas Color is a three number set, all of which range from 0 to 1. If you input Color into a Factor socket like the one on the Color Ramp node, it will average the three color channel numbers and turn it into greyscale. If you wanted to get three semi-related random values together, you could use the Color output and split it with the Separate RGB converter node. Or if you wanted semi-random “fluffy” color, of course, you could use it without splitting. For one Color Ramp node, however, I would just use Factor.

Note that specifically for the noise texture, the Fac output is the same value as the Red channel of the Color output. You can test it by using a Separate RGB node after the color output. That's why using Fac or Color yields a different result. The Color output is a mix of 3 noise values using different seeds.

@Gorgious Oh? Huh, I believe you. I did not know that.

And just to add to this, the reason to prefer a fac to just casting a Color to a Value is that casting casts luminosity, which gives greater weight to green and less weight to blue (because green is perceptually brighter and blue is perceptually darker.)


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Why is it important to align bones to view axis?
I'm watching a tutorial on Youtube about leg IK rigging and this menu gets pulled up to align bones to view axis.

What is this menu called and how can I access it without hot keys?
Why is this important?  Are there additional resources I can read to better understand? It was difficult to google.

The operation is "recalculate roll."  It can be accessed from the armature menu, via armature-> bone roll-> recalculate roll-> whatever.
You don't necessarily have to align bones to the view axis specifically.  What you want to do, though, is make sure your bones have appropriate tilts.  Using the recalculate roll option to do so is the easiest way to control your tilt.  (I tend to recalculate to cursor myself.)
Why?  Think about a lower arm bone.  Your elbow rotates in a single axis, more or less, and if you animate a model where its lower arm rotates outside of this axis, it's going to look broken.  So you're either going to use angle limits, or transform locks, or IK angle limits, or expect the animator to animate in specific bone-local axes.  Doing any of these requires that you set the tilt such that the unlocked axis corresponds to the way you actually want the elbow to bend.
In the case of Euler transforms, this is even more important.  An XYZ Euler interpolates well with X rotation, but once you start combining it with Y and Z rotation, you can get some funky, counterintuitive interpolation.  So an Euler bone should be set such that its X axis rotation corresponds with the most likely, most extreme rotation with which it's going to be animated.

I believe that the tutorial in question took pains to create some major rotational axes that just happened to be oriented to the global, world axes.  My evidence is that the character looks simplified and probably has a perfectly vertical joint chain for a spine.  The arms are orthogonal to the view, too.  In that context, aligning to view ("world") would be the standard and why they said it was "important".  Now imagine a natural humanoid in an A-pose.  The hand is tilted at an angle and so are it's fingers.  How now, brown cow?
Re-calculate roll to the rescue.
I've used this feature to align to "active bone" on occasion.
My use-case was this:  I had fingers on which I had adjusted the joint positions.
(I translated them in space to be at specific locations)
This led to their orientations becoming out of plane with one another.
That is, a finger's rotational axes were no longer parallel to each other.
Here's an image of a posed index finger with it's bones in plane with each other: Note that they pivot on X and that those X axes are all parallel.

I needed to re-align the joint rolls without changing their positions.
Entering Edit mode, I adjusted the knuckle-joint's 'Roll' until it's Z-axis was pointing, visually, "up" from the knuckle.  "Recalculate Roll" is the tool I needed to make sure that the two child joints have their Y-Z planes along the same plane as the knuckle joint.  Like in my example image, the bone direction is along positive-Y and I want them all to rotate in the same plane when pivoting on X.
Still in edit mode, I selected all three joints, making sure to select the knuckle last,making it the "Active" selection.
I invoked the Recalculate Roll (SHFT-N) and choose "Active Bone".
The second and third joints adjust their roll to be in plane with the Active Bone.
Mind, you can always eyeball this kind of alignment, but the Recalculate Roll function does it fast, easy, and mathematically precise.
Hope this is accurate and helps!

In Edit mode, select the bone and in the header menu > Armature > Bone Roll > Recalculate Roll. If you don't have any reason to align the bones with the axis, don't.

Thanks – can you help explain why I would want to do this? The tutorial mentioned its really important.

I guess for example if a bone has a Copy Rotation constraint with a particular axis, it's better that both this bone and the bone it copies are correctly oriented, same thing if you want to limit the rotation of a bone etc?


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How can I download the Unreal 4 mannequin into Blender with materials?
I found this model over here https://www.renderhub.com/rip-van-winkle/mannequin-from-unreal-engine-4
But the model is imported without its materials.
How can I import it into Blender with its proper materials so it looks as it does in UE4?


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How can I fuse two meshes together and remove the inside faces?
I have these two meshes (helmet body and the lower pipe).
I want to fuse them together so that the outer edges all connect but the inside faces are deleted. Is there a way to do that?

You can enable the "Bool Tool" addon and press "Union" button to merge the meshes selected.

Here is the documentation of "Bool Tool" Addon.


text:
Why can't I champfer this edge more?
Something is blocking me from extending the champfer more than I can in the images. I'm trying to extend it further but I can't.
What is the problem?

^ Trying to bevel

^The edges I want to bevel

Try turning off Clamp Overlap (shortcut: 'C' while in Bevel mode).
This might have something to do with those small vertical edges on the top and bottom part of the circlular edge, so expect unexpected results.


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Can’t select vertices on torus
I am very new to blender and can’t select vertices on any shapes/objects. I am in edit & vertex mode. When I click on the torus it doesn’t turn grey, it stays orange. When I click on a vertex with the pointer, nothing happens. My torus is the only thing selected on the grid. I am trying to shape the torus but can’t because of this conflict. It won’t let me select any edges when i’m in edge mode or faces when i’m in face mode either. I have tried to press control & tab but when I do and switch my mode & then click the vertexes, edges, or faces,still, nothing happens. Please help me!

Please use a proper screenshot tool rather than taking photos of your screen. Also could you show more of the UI so we can see what settings you may have on/off etc?

Orange marks everything that is selected. You can press Alt + A (Blender 2.8) or A (Blender 2.79) to deselect everything and then click on whatever edge or face you want to select. Keybindings have changed between these two Blender versions, which can cause some confusion.
Fully selected torus, press Alt + A to deselect
Select faces by left clicking (Blender 2.8) or right click (Blender 2.79)


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How can I export baked fluid simulations that work in Xcode?
When I export a baked fluid sim to Alembic, it imports back into Blender just fine, but in Xcode, it's just a static mesh.
I've tried a few dozen different combos of bake and export options, and they all seem to work fine for Blender but not Xcode.  The coder for this iOS app downloaded random Alembic files that use a Mesh Sequence Cach Modifier just like my file and they played back their animation inside Xcode with no issues.
We did notice that it seems like the animation node needs to have an empty parent node, but even after doing that we still just got a static mesh.
So we're at a loss.  I've spent the past ~10 hours looking back and forth in Blender at the random Alembic file that works and my simulation that doesn't and I can't find a difference that would matter to Xcode.  Only that the random Alembic tends to make Blender crash if I poke at it too much.
We're not dead set on using Alembic, we just want a solution that gets the animated fluid into the iOS app.

I'm new to posting on SE, so I'm not sure if this is allowed to share. If you are experienced with using Blender ➡ Alembic (or whatever works) ➡ Xcode, my partner has offered a job on Upwork to get paid for your expertise and create a training video for us to get this working ASAP.
Of course, the answer would be shared here too in case others need to know.

It appears that the Alembic files originally thought to be moving in Xcode weren’t using the mesh stream as thought before. I don’t have a Mac, so I couldn’t actually see the result. My partner saw the object translating in Xcode and thought it was working, but the mesh stream I was seeing in Blender was not actually running in Xcode.
This means that we have no working example files of a mesh stream playing from an Alembic file in Xcode.
We’re going to move away from Alembic and give OBJ streaming a shot.


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Can't do loop cut or ring on my mesh
My problem is that I can't ring or loop-cut a set of polygons that are co-planar.

This is the sort of thing that's happening, as you can see I can only affect 2 faces at a time. I've cleaned up the mesh, welded all vert's and made sure there aren't any holes in the mesh in the area that I was to cut a ring/loop.

Thank you. I was completely unaware that we could only cut quads.  Thank you for your help. :)


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Cookie Cutter from SVG
I am new in Blender, decided to finally give it a go when 2.8 was released. I've only been working in Tinkercad up till now and watched a few beginners lessons on Youtube, but nowhere is there a decent tutorial on making a Cookie Cutter from a SVG file.
After I import it, I set the Geometry to Origin, use the Solidify Modifier. Change the thickness a little. From here I've been stuck. I want the model to turn into a solid (If I click Apply in Modifier) it shows me a lot of vertices when I go into edit mode. I would like to do the "offset thing inwards and make a "hole".
I am such a noob at this... can someone please help.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71137/how-to-extrude-x-and-y-axis-on-a-traced-object-flatten/71139 and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/92632/creating-an-bevel-inset-on-an-imported-svg/92635

Thank you so much!!! Can't wait to try this out!


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Grease Pencil - How do I hide the system cursor?
How do I hide the system cursor while sketching with Blender in Grease Pencil mode?

Under the overlays tab (top right of the viewport screen) press the dropdown arrow and uncheck 3D cursor


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Trying to add a scene in the video editing mode I get "No Items Available" [Blender 2.8]
I'm trying to add a scene created in the 3D viewport to the video editor.. this works in Blender 2.79, but in Blender 2.8 it doesn't work.
When I try to add a scene created in the 3D viewport to the video editor (video editing mode -> add -> scene) it appears "No Items Available".
P.S. I know that I can do the same by adding directly a text in the video editing mode.. I'm just adding a text here to make it easier to understand.

Solved!
You just need to add a new scene and add to the new scene the text instead of adding text in the default scene.
Once done that if you go to video editing mode -> add -> scene you will see the new scene appearing as an option.


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How can I make both sides of this mesh bright in material mode?
I have recently been started to model a fairy in blender but when I got to the wings I realized I have a problem... you see I don't want to give any width to the wing, so wanted to solve it with a two sided polygon like this:

But the problem is, the back side of the poly is always dark, and it makes the teyture darker too in material view. I want this model to be a game character, and I don't know how Unreal Engine will handle the backside culling.
Any alternative ideas how I should  solve this?

Every face has a normal- a direction that shows where "outside" is. By this I mean that when multiple faces are joined into an object, it tells blender that the rest of the space is outside and inside the object is inside. Blender shows the inside portion darker so you know  where your normals are facing. Unreal engine will make backside normals invisible, so I would suggest a solidify modifier with a very thin thickness. The wing will remain very thin, but not have any normal issues.

Thank you, I will try.


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ocean modifier glb exports as white plane
I am using blender 2.93.1 and need help in exporting ocean modifier to glb.
I read all the questions related ,no mention of glb export solution .
Would really appreciate ur help!


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Nothing will unwrap, even after applying seams
Absolutely nothing will unwrap, on any layer, at all. I have no idea why. The E hotkey doesn't seem to do anything, and neither does pressing the unwrap function its self. I'm at a loss.

Choose the UV Editor, not the Image Editor, or choose Paint mode instead of View. Also, use U to unwrap, not E.

thankyou! I figured it was something very simple, but i couldnt crack the case

Also you use the 'U' key not 'E' to unwrap!

oh yes I also saw that


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Bake matcap from material

This is all my data I used to make a material like MatCap , any way to bake and export material as MatCap ?

like this MatCap that I exported from Zbrush even I don't know how to use it in blender :)

Matcap is about giving color information relatively to the normal of the faces.
It is spherical to encode all the possible normal orientations smoothly.
So, if you render your material onto a sphere plus a plane that cuts the sphere at its middle, you can obtain the desired image texture.

To render a square texture, change the settings is the output properties:

The camera is placed on top, on the middle, and its focus length is adjusted so that the sphere fits the view:

I've placed all the shader nodes in a group.
For the sphere (the node group contains your shader settings):

In order to reuse it for the plane with a tangent input as we want the plane part to continue smoothly from the sphere at 90° angle:

Once all this is done, you can simply render F12 the image and save it.
To reuse it in Blender, you can setup a node tree as indicated here for instance.
You may also want to add it in your preferences to use it in viewport rendering:

Result:

thank you for great answer


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How can I make these circular edges smoother?
I punched holes into a mesh and applied a solidifier modifier to it. The outside looks smooth but the inner circles look slightly faceted. What would be some strategies to make the inside circles smoother? Tried adding sub division + auto smooth but it makes the shading look pretty bad.

hello, how does your topology look like? maybe check my tuto here (it's in french but I think it's pretty easy to understand): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2zZ0JV_qqA

Maybe try a Bevel Modifier before the Subdivision Surface . Set the bevel angle to 90deg or just short of it, use at least 2 or 3 segments, and reduce the bevel size to pretty small (so the edges still look "neat" and not rounded).

A quick route to this kind of surface:

Add Mesh > Extra Objects shipped add-on enabled
'Honeycomb' created and adjusted, rotated to stand in XZ, CtrlA > Rotation applied.
Simple Deform > Bend  about Z, eyeballed to connection (more than 360)
Weld modifier

Those modifiers applied, then ...

Top and bottom edges EZ extruded and  SZ0 (about 'Median' pivot) flattened
Subdivision Surface
Solidify, and Bevel (by angle, 2 segments, Shape: 1, or near 1)


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Is this technique bad practice?
I notice in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGAwLwfA0gQ&t=648s
the artist is using multiple meshes to make an object instead of carving it out of one mesh. This means that there are internal/conflicting faces.
Is the method the artist is using bad practice? Should they have carved everything out of one single mesh by extruding and modifying vertices/edges?

Whether it's bad practice depends on what you want to do with it.  How do you want to render it?  Do you want to use for booleans?  Do you want to edge line it?  Do you want to use CC subdivision?  Do you want to use the meshes for physics?  There is no such thing as a general bad practice; there is only, not going to be able to handle problem x in the way you want.  But if you don't need to do x?  Then do whatever gets you your picture fastest.  Voting to close on "needs more info" because somebody's going to vote to close on "opinion based" and it's not opinion, it just depends on things.

Got it, thank you for the feedback. Can you help me understand a situation where this WOULD be bad practice? What problems could arise from modeling this way?

Sure, to a situation.  If you draw an extruded hull edge line, you won't get an edge line on intersecting planes.  You want all possible problems that can arise?  Sorry, I can't do that.

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

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos sorry and thank you. I'll make sure any future questions are better formed.

@Nathan thank you.


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How to create a kinetic depth effect illusion?
I am trying to create a 3D object with a texture of white dots on a black field (like stars). I also want the background to have the same texture such that, when static, the object appears invisible (the kinetic depth effect). How would you recommedn doing that?

Can you provide image samples of the effect? What have you tried so far?

At its simplest, something like this?

Create an environment-sphere, and put the camera and target object inside it.

Give the sphere your desired star-field texture in its object space, something like this:

Give the target a copy of the material: you will change its texture-scale manually to match the background as closely as possible.
Give the camera a reasonably long focal length. (Here, 100mm.) The more closely the camera approaches orthographic, and the more distant the target from the camera, the less apparent variation in texture-scale there will be between the near and far points of the target, but you sacrifice some perspectival visual cues.

For this sort of result:

I guess you could automate the scale of the texture according to the distance of the shading-point from the camera, but I'm not sure the resultant 'swimming' of the object through the texture would help.. I haven't tried it.


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Normal map editing as ordinary image
After baking from the photogammetry mesh I've got the normal map wich has areas that need to be corrected. Can I edit the normal map in Photoshop as the ordinary image - apply patching, bluring, clone stamp and other similar tools?
I'm worring about the fact that the normal map encodes the normalized vectors and after editing these vectors will became denormalized and any artifacts can be appeared...

yes you can, just use the good colors, use the eyedropper

@moonboots The using of eyedropper tool is understood, but what will be happened if I blure some part of the normal map or use the clonnig with soft borders? Nothing will be broken?

if you blur then the 3D relief will be softer, if you put other colors than the normal spectrum you'll have dark spots

You can edit the normal map as much as you want, just use the good spectrum of colors, so use the eyedropper. If you blur the image then the 3D relief will be softer, if you put other colors than the normal spectrum you'll have dark spots:


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Blender 3.0 assignes None to the object when choosing it in the Boolean modifier
Nowaday I'm trying to learn the Blender scripting and already have a trouble in my Blender 3.0.
The problem is when I choose object in the Boolean modifier there is None assigned to the proper class field in the corresponding Info panel's Python line. Why?

This looks like a bug in the eyedropper tool. It does that in 2.93 as well. Selecting from the dropdown gives the expected result.

@Ron Jensen It's sadly. Is there way to report this bug to the developers? Although I think we will see this bug (or maybe some another) in the version 4.0 and higher...))

To file a bug, use the Help Menu from the top bar and select "Report Bug".  I can't find it now, but based on a previous report I suspect this will be closed as "works as designed".

I wouldn't say it's a bug. It's just that only clicking on the eyedropper is logged (and at that point the object field is cleared), the only eventual bug here is that clicking on the object is not logged. Not even with debug_wm set to True, in which case only bpy.ops.ui.eyedropper_id() is logged.


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How to use a rig
I am new to blender, and I was just wondering what I am doing wrong. I have downloaded a model to use in a game I'm making, and I don't seem to be able to control the rig that was downloaded alongside it. I have tried clicking on the individual things but nothing words. I have attached a picture of what it looks like.
Please don't downvote this post for being simple, it's just that I am new to blender and could really use someone's help.
Many thanks in advance.

Do you have any knowledge at all about rigging

That looks like a reasonable rig.  Provided that the downloaded version already has the rig parented to the model, you need to put Blender in pose mode before you can start moving the bones.  It looks like you already have the armature selected, so all you need to do is type CTRL-TAB.
Rigging and animation are fairly complicated topics, so I recommend that you go to youtube and follow one of the rigging tutorials there to learn more.  I personally think that humane rigging is a very good course for beginners, even though it is very old.

You have access to your rig widgets if you switch from Object Mode to Pose Mode (drop-down menu in upper left corner). I can say for sure that your rig is a rigify rig. Rigify is a really powerful addon for blender (already as build-in). You need a little bit to know how to handle rigify rigs, especially that parts of your rig can be hidden or shown in the side panel on the right (if you press N, it shows up). As beginner it could be a little overwelming but if you get it how it works it's a pretty handy rig.


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Eevee - Renders Black in "Animation" but fine for single frame
I'm a fairly experienced Blender user, but this one is new to me. Running Windows and an RTX 3070.
I'm building a Lord of the Rings animation comprising of multiple scenes. All my cycles-based scenes work fine. I have one that I'm using Eevee for (contains volumetrics).
The viewport works fine:

If I render a single frame, it also works fine:

As soon as I go to animate the full sequence though, falls apart and crashes or just shows solid black:

I haven't got any objects with subsurf mods on them - I do have a fair few bools on the go, but given it's working in the Image Render, not sure they're the issue? No motion blur, just bloom enabled for Eevee.
Any ideas are most appreciated.
Thanks!

Okay, small update in that it does actually seem to be rendering correctly to the file system, but the Render preview panel is the bugged part. So, it's functional, but any insight into why this might be happening is still most appreciated!

This may be just because there is a black render layer, and it doesn’t have time to show the rest of the layers.

when looking at your animations, I see that your animation frame and your render frame are on different frames... Potentially something could be moving in front of the camera, lights can be blocked or dimmed, motion blur, the camera could move...? If you tried rendering the still image on the frame you show of the animation you might get the same black screen...

Sometimes blender can just give up with lighting calculations, this happens with me sometimes. If you restart blender it recalculates and works again which may have been the case here as well...

@object "Potentially something could be moving in front of the camera, lights can be blocked or dimmed, motion blur, the camera could move...?" - this was just because I wasn't fast enough capturing the screenshot! The black is on every frame when animating, but fine for a single frame.

@object I'd also tried several restarts, but consistently happening unfortunately.

Okay, so, two things for the answer:

The frames were in fact rendering to the file system without any issue, but the render preview looked broken (black) and the frame rendering rate was incredibly slow, especially for what is a simple scene.

I found that my ground had two sets of Geometry Nodes on it, one to render the paper and one to render the rocks. I think the Geometry out from the Rock generator was then feeding into the Paper generator and the "Distribute Points on Faces" was having a field day. I've combined these two generators into a single Geometry Node set and the viewport performance has improved drastically. It also now animate without any issues at all, and much faster.

So, I think the actual issue was likely linked to Blender just losing it's mind on  the Geometry Nodes clashing.


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How to Make Semi-Transparent Edges Opaque?
The edges of a mesh show up as semi-transparent when rendered on a transparent background. Using the Set Alpha Node makes the edges opaque but fills them with black. I want the transparent edges filled with the same colors similar to GIMP's Threshold Alpha filter. How can I make those semi-transparent edges fully opaque with the color intact?

I'd use a set alpha, connecting the original image's alpha and color, and then add a color ramp onto the alpha.  Then you can adjust the white to whatever level you want to be absolute opaque.  You can change the interpolation to "Constant" as well.


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Images added with image_strip_add not orientated correctly. Any idea why?
I am adding a number of images to a video editor strip using image_strip_add according to this answer: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/286951/75609
However, my images are not orientated correctly, some being rotated 90 or 180 degrees. I've tried different values for fit_method, but this seems to be ignored. I don't see any other relevant options in the API docs. Any idea as to what might be the reason?
I've also looked at the EXIF orientation data of the images but this doesn't seem to have any bearing on how they end up in the strip.

One solution to your problem can be to orient the strips properly after adding them. As described in Documentation, object of SequenceTransform bpy_struct has rotation property. Regarding your question, there are several possible code samples you might be interested in:
Rotating active image strip:
bpy.context.active_sequence_strip.transform.rotation = 0.0

Rotating all images strips:
for seq in bpy.context.sequences:
    if seq.type == 'IMAGE':
       seq.transform.rotation = 0.0

Rotating only added image strips:
strips = []

for i in range(n):
    strip = bpy.ops.sequencer.image_strip_add(directory = 'imgs/')
    strips.append(strip)

for strip in strips:
    strip.transform.rotation = 0.0

Hope it helps!

Hi - I tried the last of these, but image_strip_add does not return an object with a transform property, but a set containing the word 'FINISHED'

I also tried the 2nd of these, but the transform rotation is already set to 0, so it makes no difference


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How do you work with low-res footage and render with high-res footage in the video editor?
It is choppy using 1080p footage on my computer. I would like to downscale everything beforehand to even 320 x 180, do filters and picture in picture and have it applied later to the big files for rendering.
How to do that?

The internal proxy generation is very slow in Blender, but what you do is to add all of your clips to the timeline and select them all(A).
Go to the sidebar, hit Set Selected Strip Proxies.
Choose your Proxy resolution.
Hit Rebuild Proxy.
Wait.
In Preview open the sidebar, in the View Tab, select the Proxy resolution.
(the proxies will stay even though you remove all of your footage again)
Or use this add-on for faster batch rendering of proxies:
blendervelvets.org/en/velvet-revolver

After importing in Blender 2.8, where do I find it? Velvet or revolver does not show up.

You need to scroll down the Velvet Revolver Page for instructions: http://blendervelvets.org/en/velvet-revolver/
This is where you find VR in the menus:
https://i1.wp.com/blendervelvets.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/velvet_revolver01.jpg


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Automatically optimize texture files and materials, to be able to sculpt and paint
I used meshroom(photogrammetry software) to create models. Importing them into blender, I notice many texture files and every time I try to use clone in Texture Paint, Blender crashes.
How do I automatically optimized texture files and materials, to also be able to sculpt and paint?

As far as I know there is no easy way. You can try to automatically Remesh the model (in Data Properties) to reduce the polycount, unwrap the low poly model, then bake the original textures onto it at a lower resolution.


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Unsupported Radeon VII eGPU rendering on MacOS and Blender 2.8 beta
I installed a Radeon VII into the Razor Core X eGPU, hoping to increase rendering speeds in Cycles on a 2018 15" MacBook Pro (i9, 32gigs ram). The beta 2.8 2019-6-12 version shows the message, "No compatible GPUs found for path tracing. Cycles will render on the CPU." The stable 2.79b 2018-3-22 version allows me to select "AMD Radeon VII Compute Engine" in the OpenCL tab of User Preferences ... -> System, set Device to GPU Compute under Scene -> Render, and optimize my tile settings to 256x256 in Scene -> Render -> Performance. Will we have the same options with 2.8 when it's out of Beta. I'm a Blender newb, but a long time Maya user excited to switch to Blender 2.8, but I'll be stuck on 2.79b if my eGPU setup isn't supported :*( ... will it be?


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How to fix strange rendered texture?
i recently purchased the realistic nature asset pack and realistic tree pack from CG Geek, however when I append them and look at them in a rendered view they show with weird pinks, blues and purples instead of the normal textures. Can someone help me fix this or should I refund them.

are you sure this is not the normal maps that you've plugged into a diffuse node?

Also check File menu -> External Data -> Missing Files you might not have the texture images in a the right place.


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Pink material when using 2 x PBR (Principled BSDF) materials into a mix shader w/Eevee
When I combine two PBR materials (with Principled BSDF Shaders) in Eevee through a Mix Shader, the output is pink?

Alone, each Principled Shader works, even if I pass one material through the mix shader, that works. As soon as two go through, it's pink?
I've tried re-creating in a fresh scene with two Principled Shaders, some basic noise textures for color/roughness/normals, but unable to recreate in that case. Seems to be linked to the use of images possibly?
Any help is most appreciated. Thanks!
Have tried the materials on their own, and they work fine:

Top Principled BSDF Shader works fine on it's own:

Bottom Principled BSDF Shader works fine on it's own:

Running a single BSDF Shader through the Mix Shader works as expected

The mask I am using (for context):

Further investigation seems to show that this happens whenever there are more than 7 textures/images in use within the material node editor. Any combination seems to trigger the pink output.
A limitation of my hardware or Eevee? Or a bug?

Hello, are there a lot of nodes before the BSDFs ? Eevee has a limitation on the number of nodes

Thanks everyone, I didn't include the rest of the nodes as at the time, I wasn't sure that was the issue. They were simple PBR shaders (albedo, AO, roughness & normal) from textures.com, into a Principled BSDF. I wanted to check there wasn't an obvious mistake I was makin, but appears I'm just hitting hardware & Eevee limits.

@ChristopherBennett please feel free to post that as an answer, and I will accept it.

Ok. I'll do that

I also sincd found this other thread for anyone else in the future that may want to dig into this a little more: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/177385/how-to-avoid-pink-in-eevee#

I believe the limit for EEVEE is 24 textures per material. In cycles, you can get around the limitation by enabling "open shading language", but I think in eevee, you're stuck. In the end, it doesn't matter what the "theoretical" limit is - If you hit a point where adding a new texture to the graph causes it all to turn pink, you just have to find some other way around it, such as using a texture atlas.


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How to Parent a Mesh Deform Modifier to an Armature
I'm using a Mesh Deform modifier to simulate belly wobble on a humanoid character. However, when I parent the deforming object to Big Boy's armature and bind, I get this crazy effect where the character moves and his gut stays pinned behind and stretches, like it's parented to itself or backwards or something.
From looking around online, it appears to be that this is caused by the Mesh Deform modifier "double dipping." It's parented to the armature, but at the same time, it's deforming the armature.
The only solution I've found is to make a clone armature that shadows my main character's animations, and parent the mesh deform object to that skeleton instead. It works perfectly, but it's clearly a hack. I was wondering, does anyone here know a more efficient way of parenting a Mesh Deform object to the armature it's deforming?

Your mesh deform is deforming your mesh, not your armature. I guess it's just a problem of weight painting, you need to unparent the belly from the armature so that the mesh deform cage is the only one to act on it, and parent the cage to the armature. But maybe share your file? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

I'll need to redo the file to upload it... should be able to get to it tomorrow.

Okay, so I've been messing with this for a little while trying to recreate the error I was having yesterday... and it's not happening anymore. I think I just wasn't properly keyframing my animations (or not keyframing them at all) and it made me think my animations were somehow broken. Also, there's a brief lag in the mesh deform object snapping to the parent armature, which may have also been playing tricks on me. But it looks like the armature deform is working the way it's supposed to when parented. I genuinely do no know why I was having problems with it earlier.

actually I think mesh deform may not work because if you move the cage the mesh it is bound to won't follow, maybe it's better to use one of the 2 methods I explain here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/190827/best-way-to-achieve-floaty-bouncy-physics/190848#190848

It works pretty well. Wiggle bones are a good option for hair and some other things, but using the mesh deform gives met that gellatenous "Santa Claus" effect, with movement in multiple directions on lots of different vertices. It follows fine, and then I just save the effect as Shape Keys to animate later.


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Rigify can't generate my rig
Rigify can't seem to generate my rig because of an issue relating to the nose. It says "bpy_prop_collection(key): key "ORGnose" not found. Which is weird if you ask me because there are nose bones placed on Van's face (The character)

You probably deleted bones from the face. Rigify needs all of the facial bones to generate the rig.
Or you may have disconnected some of the bones that need to stay connected.
I have made a video about the face rig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8aCBKjPJRE
There is also a whole playlist of videos where I tried to explain how to avoid most of the annoying errors that Rigify throws at you.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdcL5aF8ZcJv68SSdwxip33M7snakl6Dx


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My rendered image is still showing black after applying alpha clip and using an alpha
I'm using cycles and trying to get the background areas that don't have any texture to be transparent. Here's my shading nodes and the rendered view, along with the texture tab open on the side. Any suggestions?

What are you trying to get by connecting as volume?

I was actually following a tutorial, I think that may have been the way you got rid of the black stuff in older versions of blender?

Remove everything except the image node and the output node. Add a principled BSDF node in between. Connect the color output of your image to the base color input of the principled BSDF shader. Connect the alpha output of your Image to the alpha input of the principled BSDF shader. Connect the principled BSDF output to the surface input of material output node.

Thanks! That worked great. I'll play around and see if I can still get the same effects, but so far this is better than nothing