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Collada import crashes in 2.76
I have issues with some Collada files.
When I import any of the problematic files, Blender doesn't show anything on stage. There are new objects imported in the scene hierarchy, though. My model has some geometry and a skeleton, and I can see them in the hierarchy. But when I click on the geometry, Blender just crashes.
Both files that work and those that don't work, use the same schema version, 1.4.1,
<COLLADA xmlns="http://www.collada.org/2005/11/COLLADASchema" version="1.4.1">

I checked that the schema is valid (with ruby nokogiri), and I can open the file with other viewers (Open3mod).
Anyone knows if the importer expects a certain ordering of the XML nodes? Where's the source code?


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Extruded faces from cylinder not being treated properly in Boolean
The setup is pretty simple. I start with 1 cube, two cylinders:

Create a thick rectangle (Shift+A > Mesh > Cube > size to fit)
Create a cylinder (Shift+A > Mesh> Cylinder > size to fit)
Copy first cylinder mesh (Right click first cylinder > Duplicate object > move laterally)

In top view (Numpad 7), delete half of the second cylinder, leaving an array of faces. I then select all faces of the half-cylinder and extrude them (Tab for Edit mode > Delete half of the vertices on top and bottom, leaving a semi-circular face, A to select, E to extrude)

After exiting Edit mode, I drag both objects down through the surface of the cube. Using the "Boolean" modifier twice, I first find the difference between: (1) Right cylinder and cube, and (2) left..half..cylinder thing and cube, pressing Ctrl+A after each operation to execute the modifier:

The modifier clearly works with the unmodified (right) cylinder, while it does not work with the modified (left) cylinder. However, something is happening, because the top surface of the cube shows the outline of the modified (left) cylinder. Furthermore, if I zoom "into" the cube to look around the inside, there are no other faces there. I've tried right-clicking the modified cylinder and converting to a Mesh, but this still doesn't work.
What am I not seeing? How can I fix this?

Recalculate the normals on both cutters. It sounds as if one of them has inverted normals which can happen when extruding. You can check by turning on the Face Orientation overlay in the Viewport Overlays menu. Red means inverted, Blue is ok. In Edit mode on the red object, select All then use Shift-N to recalculate the normals. See my answer here.

Thanks! This is exactly what I needed, resolved my issue.

Good! That seems to be quite a common problem with Booleans especially when the cutter has been shaped by extruding.

The default cylinder has its faces oriented like you would suppose, pointing their outside outwards and their inside inwards. When you delete half of the cylinder and extrude it towards where the inside was, you extrude the faces to the opposite side of their normals and thus inverting them, so that the the object is now flipped inside out. While extruding you will see the amount or distance how far you extrude (let's assume e.g. 1.5 m) showing "D: -1.5 m (1.5 m) normal". The minus sign indicates that you are in this moment flipping the normals.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Scripts: Converting Quaternions to Pre/Post Rotations
An issue that I've noticed while working on models for a specific game engine, is that when using exporting FBX models or BVH data comes the fact that you have two different rotations formats, with both being Euler: You have either just Lcl Rotations or a set of three rotations, Pre Rotation/ Rotation /Post Rotation (Pre/Post).
Blender takes these account when Importing FBX Models but it doesn't add the opportunity to add them back in when exporting: This is what I think has been causing many of the issues with cross-suite animations not working within games (animation done in one app, while blender user for modeling, or vice versa)
Id like to improve the FBX exporter in Blender to allow for Pre and Post rotation values would be applied to the exported model, so that it would behave like exporting in Maya. Currently It does not seem to do that.
From what I've gathered they are rotations that are in order added to each other to get the final rotation, and must have something to do with the order how rotations done in every other 3D app and Engine, except Blender (blender seems to be using quaternions behind the scene if I understand correctly).
However to do that Id need to know some math on this:
How would I go on converting Quaternions into Pre Rotation, Rotation and Post Rotation? I can implement the rest into the fbx export script for experiment.

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


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How to seperate meshes that are rigged to an armature
I have a model I downloaded from Models-Resource which came with a static mesh (.obj) and a rigged mesh (.psk and .dae).
With the OBJ, I can split the mesh by material like usual and texture it, no problems.
However with the PSK & DAE, if I try to split the mesh, it just removes the two that should have shown up, leaving me with only one part of what would have been there with the OBJ.
The reason why I need to split the meshes instead of just applying the materials to the joined mesh is because Blender only shows the first material, resulting in a really messed up model.
Any help? I'm happy to try and provide more details if you need them.

What you can do is, separate the mesh as well as the armature, to separate armature go here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/28456/separate-convert-bones-into-their-own-armature

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


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Increase depth percept of upside-down cup
I'm trying to obtain a top view of a upside-down cup, with the camera displaced at an angle from the centre of the cup. However, the depth percept looks weak. I'm not able to tell that the base of the cup is nearer to me than the rim. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Could you add some screenshots of your settings or upload your .blend? There a several things which could be going on here, and there's no way to tell which without more information. (For instance, are you using an orthographic camera? Are you using a shadeless material? is AO enabled? etc.)

A screenshot of the material you use would be helpful. Also an overview of the scene. What lights do you have?

Assuming your model geometry is good (I can't really tell from the screenshot), it becomes mainly a lighting, material and environment problem.
Lighting:
If you are going for a photo-realistic look, use Cycles for rendering. It will handle lights and shadows in a more intuitive way.
Material:
Is it suppose to be a styrofoam cup? A porcelain cup? Glass? Set up the material for the cup accordingly. Styrofoam would be almost all diffuse, with a Sub-Surface Scatter component. Porcelain would be diffused white, with an added layer of highly glossy top coat. Glass would be, well, the Glass material node.
Environment:
If the cup material is reflective at all, you will need to set up the environment so that there is something to reflect off. After all, a mirror ball in a perfectly grey world will only look grey.  Multiple Plane Emitters is a good starting point, they can mimic lights shining through a windows.


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Selection of Rigged Characters
I got a .blend file which containing only rigged characters, now I am copying the whole character to another .blend file to combine it and animate it. The problem is when I am working on multiple characters on the 'another' blend file I can't select the whole rigged character but just left clicking it. Can anyone tell me how to select rigged characters with their body at once? Thanks!

Select by left clicking if not the default keymap setting, are you sure you didn't customize it?

It can't be selected by left clicking, do you mean right clicking it? I right clicked the body but it didn't select the rig and the elements.

What about using Shift+RMB and click on both?

What is the RMB Key?

@user294928 RMB=Right Mouse Button

That may depend on how you are 'copying' to the second file. If you are linking then you need to make a proxy of the armature to animate it.

I press A to select the whole character on the character file and copy selection to buffer.

Generally speaking you will use File> Link to bring a mesh into another blend file. You then navigate to the .blend file, which will open up like a directory in the file browser. If the rig is well-designed, there will be a Group directory inside. Go into the group directory and select the group.
If there is no Group folder, navigate to the Object folder and Shift + LMB the objects that you want.
Linking provides several advantages. Not the least of which is that you can edit your rig without requiring any changes in your asset file. Invaluable when working with other people who are your modelers. However you could also Append which makes it so it points to the file, instead of copying it. This is useful working with other people, or when you what to change the asset directly.


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Copying objects in 3D view along with nodes and other stuffs
while I am trying to copy a object (with nodes) (e.g. cube) to another blend file. The object that I am trying to copy was modified with nodes and I can't copy the object with nodes or manually copy the nodes. Can anyone tell me how to copy the object with nodes and other properties? Or copy the object to another blend file with all of it's modifiers and stuffs. Thanks!

Yes, I'd like to know how to merge blend files too.

It appears you can use Append and Link to do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIJ5n21J3EY

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Data_System/Linked_Libraries

I am assuming you are talking about material nodes etc. If you append the object into the new file, it will bring over anything attached to it automatically such as materials and any node setups associated with it. Use ShiftF1 or go to File > Append and navigate into the blend file as you would a folder, open the Object folder and select the object that you want to copy.

See How can I reuse existing materials, objects, etc from an existing .blend? for more info.

Alternatively, a much faster and easier way is to just copy paste the object directly into the new file by using CtrlC (Copy selection to buffer) and CtrlV (Paste selection from buffer). This will also bring over anything associated with the object.

Hello! Thanks for a quick reply. I am sorry that it's my mistake that the item is not containing nodes but the scene is containing nodes. Can you tell me how to copy the scene with the nodes?

@JimmyJommy Sorry I didn't see this. I'm busy at the moment but will post an update as soon as I can.


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Need to re-render every time I change something in the compositor because of full sample
Not long ago I have discovered the full sample feature on Blender.
The feature is great and helps a lot. The problem is that whenever I render a frame with Full sample, the image is anti-aliased, but if I change something in the compositor, the image becomes aliased and remain jagged unless I render the entire frame. It is slowing me down because sometimes it takes several hours for a frame to render. Is it just like that, is there any way to avoid re rendering?
Thank you!

It's not ideal, but one way to avoid the rerendering is to save the render output (without compositing) as a multilayer EXR file. Then apply the compositing using the EXR file, this avoids re-rendering.

@MikePan Care to put that in an answer? Comments aren't really the right place for answers..

One simple, however not ideal, is to save the final render to an external file; then loading it up and applying the composite to that.
I would recommend using a multilayer OpenEXR file; these however take up quite a lot of disk space.


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What is multiple importance sample option
What is multiple importance sample option.
And the main question is Can It be simulated via OSL shader or in particular glossy shader?

As far as what it is, this question has an answer that provides a visual example of the effects of MIS http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/8039/area-light-vs-emissive-polygon/8041#8041

It is related to how decisions are made as to where rays are sent to get information for the final image. It is a core feature of the render engine and can't be simulated in osl.

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/5309/599

Multiple importance sample (MIS) basically helps guide rays towards light sources, reducing noise
MIS only applies if the material has an emission node. (world materials and lamps behave a little differently).
From the wiki:
Material

By default objects with emitting materials use both direct and indirect light sampling methods, but in some cases it may lead to less noise overall to disable direct light sampling for some materials. This can be done by disabling the Multiple Importance Sample option. This is especially useful on large objects that emit little light compared to other light sources.
This option will only have an influence if the material contains an emission node; it will be automatically disabled otherwise.

Here's an example with a bright light source (a sphere) and a weak light source (a plane above the scene, you can see it reflected in the seconds sphere)
Without MIS on the low strength plane:

With MIS on the low strength plane:

The bright sphere has MIS enabled in both examples. The second example seems to have slightly more noise (look at the shadow of the second sphere and the reflection of the floor plane)
World

By default lighting from the world is computed solely with indirect light sampling. However for more complex environment maps this can be too noisy, as sampling the BSDF may not easily find the highlights in the environment map image. By enabling this option, the world background will be sampled as a lamp, with lighter parts automatically given more samples.

Without MIS:

With MIS:

The wiki really says it all here.
Lamp

By default lamps use only direct light sampling. For area lights and sharp glossy reflections, however, this can be noisy, and enabling this option will enable indirect light sampling to be used in addition to reduce noise.

Without MIS only rays that bounce directly to the lamp are sampled (camera > surface > lamp):

With MIS rays that bounce indirectly are sampled too (e.g. camera > surface > surface > lamp):

In particular, is MIS a magic bullet that should always be on? Are there any cases where its better left off?

@PythonNut See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/5309/599


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Difference between compiled version and downloaded?
Is there any advantages If I compile blender from source by default then download it. Faster build? Faster render? More stable? Etc?
Thx =)

@someonewithpc I'm not sure if it's totally off-topic. The OP is asking why build blender, not how to do it.

The main reasons to build blender yourself are:

If you build from the latest sources, you get the very newest features. You'll also get the latest bugs, so save early and often, and keep the bug tracker open ;)
You can apply patches such as this one, and get features which aren't even in the official sources yet.

There are also some hardware-specific optimization tricks you can do depending on your compiler, but these can potentially make blender unstable. Also see the wiki.

You could also add as a bullet point that one could gets the latest bugs ;-)

Thx a lot man  -))

@user2439 if you compile for your own architecture, you don't need backwards compatibility, which might run faster


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Sculpting effects not showing until I switch to edit mode?
I'm not very experienced with blender. I imported an .fbx-model and tried to sculpt in a few changes, but I can't see what I'm doing, because while in sculpt mode, it appears that nothing is changing at all. Only when I enter edit mode afterwards, the vertices get updated and I can see the effect. Please help!

Could you include a screenshot, if you can

Are you using the multiresolution modifier?

I had this same issue and was caused by joining 2 objects together which had shape keys, after removing the shape keys sculpt mode returned to normal.

Yay, had exact same problem, and this fixed it!

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


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Illumination without HDRI (cycles)
I would like to create a nice outside light for my interior scene, but without using hdri image (the rendering time increases a lot on my computer and most of all I can't find the way for correctly positioning the sun from hdri).
What's the best solution? Should I use a jpg image or sky background and then positioning a sun light source?

Yes, the way you described in last sentence is correct.

The problem with your question is that you are erroneously thinking that there are areas with lights and some without in a JPEG or other display referred image.
In reality, every single pixel is an emitter of light. As you may guess, with all of the crazy math involved in a ray tracing engine, all of that light ends up with a very complex interaction series in any image. This means that it is impossible to simulate real-world lighting without using some form of IBL.
Worse still, a JPEG is what is known as a display referred image. That is, the encoding of the image takes all of the data of a scene and maps it into the display referred range of 0.0 to 1.0. During this transition, you are losing a tremendous amount of the information in a scene.
The most ideal format for IBL is of course EXR[1]. This format permits storage of scene referred values from zero to infinity, which helps to encompass the complexity of most captured scenes.
[1] For those interested in the nerd stuff behind this statement, there is a great discussion of encoding quantization here.

You can use portals to reduce your render time and get rid of noise in your scene while using HDR images. Here is a tutorial about using portals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oveSskhIEAc.
If you want to rotate the image you can use the following node setup

Otherwise the description in the last line will work fine.


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Objects change position in a frame but their infos about location don't change
I want to make a video of about 1200 frame of a camera moving along a path inside a house, but when I go to frame 1 there are two objects that are not in the position they should be and I don't know why. If I move to frame 37, they are in the correct position and from that frame they stay there, but before frame 37 they change their correct location (I don't why this is happening because I've never animated them).
I've thought about copy the location they have at frame 37 in frame 1 and so on, but when I go to the location informations to change them in frame 1, they are the same I have at frame 37, even if they're not in the same position!
Is there a way to fix this? For now I've just modify the frames that have to be animated to be from 37 to 1237, but I would like to understand why it's doing like this.

Have you a keyframe for those objects on frame 1? you could try to delete the keyframe, or simply update it (go to frame 1, and insert the keyframe again)


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How to scale multiple UV face in proportion?
I have a mesh unwrapped which I need to ensure that each face of same size occupy the exactly the same texture space (pixel-perfect).
This holds true when I simply use the basic unwrap option.  However, when I select the concerned faces in the UV/Image editor tab and scale them at once, the resulting faces loses proportion.
I think the problem is that I can only scale the faces based on one pivot point, hence the faces are scaled differently depending on their respective distance from the choice of pivot centre.
So, I am wondering if there is any option available so that each face is scaled using their own centre as the pivot point? Otherwise, does anyone know how I can achieve what I want?
Many thanks!

The problem is that by scaling you are sacling also their own location coordinates, right? You have a group of faces that you would like to have theur uvface scaled in position while the other stay still. This will create a non-uniform margin in the uvmap, is that what you want to achieve?

inevitably yes, the UV coordinates also get scaled at the moment when scaling them normally.  Ideally however, while I want each of the faces' area in the UV space be scaled uniformly, I would prefer them to stay attached.


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Exporting fonts?
I was just wondering - Does Blender currently have any way of exporting meshes into a font file (such as .ttf)? And if not, are there any known plugins that allow this?
Otherwise, I think this would be a great suggestion, because a lot of the text in logos that I make is actually hand-drawn, and even though I am experienced at drawing text in Blender, I can't seem to properly make a font in actual font softwares (such as FontForge). My avatar is a good example of what I can do in Blender without fonts.

Blender doesn't really enable you to directly export to fonts, but you can integrate it into a font creation pipeline by rendering your creations to SVG using freestyle, then using inkscape to import the SVGs and export the fonts. Here's another method that utilizes Inkscape and a font creation website.
The video in the 2nd link also mentions some rules your SVG paths have to obey to work well as font type.

Alright, interesting - I'll actually be saving a link to this somewhere for safe-keeping and for later reference. Very helpful! Although, it would be nice if Blender did come out with a plugin that allowed font exports... Someone should send a message to them.

@ob103ninja It would be best to have a independent dev do it (official devs have higher priority/greater difficulty), but yes.

@NoviceInDisguise Who would you suggest I'd have a better chance at contacting, maybe?

@ob103ninja I really do not know. You will probably have to ask around a bit. Make sure you have a good, clear, well thought out proposal. It will help a lot.

@NoviceInDisguise Thanks - I will consider making a YouTube video about it. Someone might see it if I share it around.


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BGE: How do I setup camera collision?
I'm trying to make a game, and the camera goes beyond the walls of the room. Is there a way to stop the camera from doing that? Also, if it cannot be done without logic bricks only, can I please have a thorough explanation of the code used?
I'm basically trying to implement a system where if the camera collides with a wall, it moves a little forward.
Here's the .blend: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1cRCpiEAXrtOGxWYmRNS3c5RTg/view?usp=sharing
I understand how this is a "noob" problem; but quick searches online either revealed methods that did not suit my needs, or methods that did not work.
Thanks.

This can be done with a  very simple script. I've been using it out of a question asked earlier, but I can't find it anymore, so kudos for whoever made it.
Essentially, this script uses a ray of variable length and moves the camera to the position that the ray hits at. Your going to need to add an empty that points toward the place you want the camera to be, and then put your mouse-look logic on the empty, not the player (at least for the up/down axis)
from bge import logic

def collision(cont):

    own = cont.owner
    scene = logic.getCurrentScene()
    replace = scene.objects['ReplaceEmpty']
    target = scene.objects['Camera.001']
    ray = cont.sensors['Ray']

if ray.positive:
    target.worldPosition = ray.hitPosition

also, (I'm not a code monkey) you'd probably need something on the end like
else:
    target.worldPosition = replace.worldPosition

then, simple rig that up to a TLT always sensors, and Viola! cam-collision!

Thanks! While this does look like the solution I'm looking for, could you please make a .blend file demonstrating the script, or point me to one? I'm having problems in setting up the script.

hokay, kinda busy today, but maybe later.

http://pasteall.org/blend/37664


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Adding Modifier via Script Node
How to add/remove a modifier to the object(s) via Script node when "Always" is enabled?
UPDATE:
Just make it finally working with KristofMeirlaen's solution:
Code:
obj = Object
UseCutter = GenerateCutter
cuttername = 'AN Boolean Cutter'

if UseCutter is True:
    mod = obj.modifiers.get(cuttername)
    if mod:
        obj.modifiers.remove(mod)
    mod = obj.modifiers.new('AN Boolean Cutter', 'BOOLEAN')
    mod.object = Cutter
    mod.solver = 'CARVE'
else:
    mod = obj.modifiers.get(cuttername)
    obj.modifiers.remove(mod)

Hi Leon, Is your problem that your modifier is added each time the script runs, resulting in lots of modifiers?

@KristofMeirlaen Yes, exactly.

How about something like this: basically, we first check if the modifier is already existing. If it is, we remove it.  Afterwards, we add a new modifier and set its parameters.

code:
# get the "Simplesubsurf" modifier
simplesubsurfmod = obj.modifiers.get('SimpleSubsurf')

#remove if it exists
if simplesubsurfmod:
    obj.modifiers.remove(simplesubsurfmod)

#add a new "SimpleSubsurf" modifier
mod = obj.modifiers.new('SimpleSubsurf', 'SUBSURF')
mod.subdivision_type = "SIMPLE"
mod.levels = 3
mod.render_levels=3

# get the "Subsurf" modifier
subsurfmod = obj.modifiers.get('Subsurf')

if subsurfmod:
    obj.modifiers.remove(subsurfmod)

#add new Subsurf modifier
mod = obj.modifiers.new('Subsurf', 'SUBSURF')
mod.levels = Subdivisions
mod.render_levels=Subdivisions

Cool, I think I get it working in this way. Could you also add the remove solution? And how to make sure the new modifier is always adding as the last modifier? For example, if I add some other modifier after excuting it, the modifier order will change. How to make sure it will always be at the bottom?

adding a modifier will always do this at the bottom. I will update the answer to have it remove the modifier first before adding it again. This way, it will always be at the bottom.

Thanks man. I've updated my code. Can you help to check if there can be some improvements?


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How to find and focus an existing node?
The title says everything. Sometimes in a very complex nodetree, I want to quickly find where an existing node is by it's name/label. (I don't mean the "Search..." in Shift A menu)
I remember we used to have such feature, but cannot find it. Or something wrong with my memory...

Just got it. It is by hitting Ctrl + F in node editor. (I know the answer is a very short one, but there really is no need to extend it with nonsense)
And thanks to the dev who ever developed it.


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How to make text tracing animation?
How to make tracing animation for texts using arbitrary font? Basically I want to do something like below:

As shown in the image, I want to trace the strokes, NOT outlines.

So it would be acceptable to have some letters to be on one baseline and other characters to be on another?  The A is taller then B and C.  GIMP can stroke curves.  Perhaps Inkscape do more more.  Blender can deliver the outlines itself.

Oh the taller A is just made for illustration. What I really want is to "extract" the stroke paths for making sort of painting-along-stroke animation.

related ? http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/28672/how-can-i-bake-an-animated-and-extruded-curve-to-a-mesh-animation

Use bezier curves to trace the letters and then use a cylinder (brush) with follow path attached and Dynamic Paint plane is the canvas. Create a paintmap down bottom of dynamic paint. I just made a cursive hand witting one other day

You can try to use offset (bevel, extrude area ...) or to look for a font similar that does it, but I think the result will have to be edited a lot anyway for direction, points etc.
If you want to use this as paint/mask for a writing effect, I would do it this way:

grease pencil, manual place the strokes in order and direction that is convenient. (I doubt that you can actually get that too out of a font/offset)

I think is the most controllable way.. and grease pencil is kinda made for animated strokes

I use poly for convenience, may further use convert/bezier or so, you'll have to test your way
convert to curve with lots of options
use curve with options, with dyna paint or use it with addons (btrace, animation nodes etc) to generate your Alpha/mask...
if the text is very, very long (many lines) may want to make these into a blender font and then convert again to curves. But the process is worth only if you will use this template many times, for lot of text, imho.

An example. Note that for tracing, my path is not quite following your proposal, but more the way the paint will go.

PS: I post this as per comment where you say you use it to trace the text. Maybe that should be in the question too.

Yeah, I think heavy manual tweakings have to be done for every character unless we have a ready-to-use zero width font (even it's 0 width, some of them have to be seperated, because of more than one stroke...). (I just added an illusration image to show what I want to do. AN way? ;-] )


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bind camera to marker via python
I'm developing a script that exports and imports timeline markers with binded cameras. Printing marker info and exporting are working fine. The problem is the last step of the import script.
This is the XML I'm trying to import:
<?xml version="1.0"?><root>
<timeline_marker name="F_00" frame="0" camera="Camera.003" frame_time="-0.04"></timeline_marker>
<timeline_marker name="F_335" frame="335" camera="Camera.005" frame_time="13.92"></timeline_marker>
<timeline_marker name="F_616" frame="616" camera="Camera.003" frame_time="25.62"></timeline_marker>
<timeline_marker name="F_1214" frame="1214" camera="Camera.001" frame_time="50.54"></timeline_marker>

The goal is to recreate the markers, the marker's name and binding the marker to the respective camera.
I got everything to work except the binding of the camera. Blender insists of using only the last camera. Here's the code I'm using:
for c in range(len(markers)):
    for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
        if area.type == 'TIMELINE':
           bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern=markers[c].attributes['camera'].value)
           override = bpy.context.copy()
           override['area'] = area
           bpy.context.scene.frame_set(int(markers[c].attributes['frame'].value))
           bpy.ops.marker.add(override)
           bpy.ops.marker.rename(override,name=markers[c].attributes['name'].value)
           bpy.ops.marker.camera_bind(override)
           bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

Cameras are being selected and deselected, but the binding is done only to the last one, for some reason.
My only clue right now is that the select operation is slower than the script and when the first select operation is performed it just catches the last camera. But if that is true, what is the code i should be using to select the camera?
Thanks!

You can do this quite simply without the bpy.ops.  For testing I made a py dict from some of your xml data.
import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
markers = {
            "F_00": {"frame":0, "camera":"Camera.003", "frame_time":0.04},
            "F_335": {"frame":335, "camera":"Camera.005", "frame_time":13.92},
           }
for name, m_data in markers.items():
    # add a marker
    marker = scene.timeline_markers.new(name, frame=m_data["frame"])
    marker.camera = scene.objects.get(m_data["camera"])


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Using joint angles to animate a character
I work on modeling of human locomotion, I have a physical model of walking that runs on a gazebo like software (ODE based). I extracted the joint angles of a walking cycle in a file and want to use that to animate a body in blender.
I have an already rigged model in blender and I would like to animate the model using the joint angles extracted from my model. I need some hints, because I am new to blender and don't know where to start. I guess it should be possible to directly access the armature from python for example and specify the orientation of each joint. Is that possible ? Is there any tool or example showing that ?
Many thanks

Yes it can be done, no I don't know any existing examples. The best I can think of is the bvh import script or the Motion Capture tools addon.
Blender's python api is available online but you may find it easier to use the autocomplete feature in the python console.
As a hint to get started -
bpy.data.objects['metarig'].pose.bones["head"].rotation_mode = 'XYZ'

bpy.data.objects['metarig'].pose.bones['head'].rotation_euler[0] = 32

bpy.data.objects['metarig'].pose.bones['head'].keyframe_insert(data_path="rotation_euler", frame = 10)

I can't say if this is the best or correct way to pose armatures by script.


text:
Cycles: Export each light into separate files
Sorry in advance if this has been answered.
Is there a way to set each of my 3 lights (key, fill, rim) up in such a way that Blender will render them all individually?
I have looked into File output in Compositor, and have thought of Render Layers, but have come short of a solution?
It should be mentioned that my lights are not lamps, but planes with emission shaders.

You may noticed, that Cycles is lacking a certain Blender Internal functionality which would help this. Mesh lights don't have a This Layer Only option.
My suggestion would be to use a python script.
Reserve one layer each for your specific lights. Store the specific lamp objects on each layer. You mustn't have other objects in these layers, but the scene should still be intact if either of the layers was switched of.
In my example case I will place a key, fill and rim object respectively in layers 0, 1 and 2.
These settings are specified in an array at the beginning of the script.
import bpy

lightLayers = [
            [0, "key"],
            [1, "fill"],
            [2, "rim"]
            ]

layers = bpy.context.scene.layers
filePath = bpy.context.scene.render.filepath

for i in range(len(lightLayers)):
    for j in range(len(lightLayers)):
        layers[j] = 0
    layers[i] = 1
    bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = filePath + lightLayers[i][1] + "/" + lightLayers[i][1]
    bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True)
bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = filePath

My render output is set to: "//images\".
Pressing Run Script will execute the script.
Each Light Layer is switched on, the others off (none Light Layers will not be affected), then the scene is rendered.
This will produce the following.


text:
Cycles GPU Rendering support for GTX 1060
I have just built my new computer with a GPU bought to be specifically compatible with GPU rendering in Blender. I made sure it was on the list of CUDA cards and it has at least 2.0, (6.1 in fact).
Yet when I try to render I get the following error:

CUDA binary kernel for this graphics card compute ability (6.1) not
  found.

I have tried downloading and installing the CUDA toolkit, but it didn't help.
Anyone have any idea why this is happening?

Well, wouldn't you know, .77 as a matter of fact. Thanks! :)


text:
Using difference modifier on two objects doesn't always work
I want to use the difference boolean modifier to stamp in shapes on this lime. However it does not work for some of the characters. Only some of the radicals (pieces) are cut out. The picture shows one such example: the lower right J shaped piece is missing.
Is this the best way to approach this? The end result I am seeking is Chinese characters written on it.

Select the text object, go into edit mode. Remove the doubles using W -> remove doubles, than recalc the normals (make sure you are in edit mode) Ctrl + N

The problem persists. It's not a text object but a curve. It says Curve.004 in the list in the upper right. It said removed 0 vertices when removing doubles. I recalculated both outside and inside normals.

can you upload the blend file?

Sure! https://www.dropbox.com/s/21gajqvyfuzlg46/NaotanLemon.blend

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/5140/599

For the boolean operation to work properly you need to fix the mesh first.

Select the text object
Go into edit mode, Tab
Select all, A
Remove the doubles, W -> Remove Doubles
Fix the normals, Ctrl N

Once you do this the boolean operation will work properly

I was so excited to see you did it, but it doesn't work for me. Why? Are you running Blender 2.7?

I am using blender 2.7

Hmm the only thing I can think of is that the "select the text object" stage went wrong. When I remove doubles, I always get the message 0 vertices removed. How many vertices are removed when you do it?

about 600 vertex were removed.

@SwimBikeRun you need to select all vertices before running the remove doubles command

Ah I got it now. Thanks. The 3D print turned out great :)

I found that applying rotation, scale and location to the object that you're trying to apply the boolean modifier to fixes this problem.


text:
Is there a way to use another languages for scripting on blender?
I don't have anything against Python and think it is an awesome language. But I, personally, am used to be much more productive with functional languages in general. Thinks like map, fold and first class lambdas help me a lot when programming. Python's support for FP, while acceptable, is far from ideal. With this, I ask: is there any way to use another language for blender scripting? Something with a Haskell-like syntax would be great, but even JavaScript/CoffeeScript/Etc would help me a lot already.

The answer you are looking for is no.

I don't think the "duplicate" question really addresses the same scope as this, but in it ideasMan42 suggested this possibility, "You can also use languages which are supported as Python extensions - So you can for example use a lisp variant called hy."

He doesn't explain how that could be possible, though.


text:
How to access the window width/height inside a GLSL Shader?
Inside a Python script defining a GLSL shader used on the game engine, how do I access the width/height of the game window?

It depends if the shader is set as an actuator "Filter 2D" or not. Then you can use the predefined uniform floats bgl_RenderedTextureWidth and bgl_RenderedTextureHeight. If it is just an arbitrary shader you would need to pass the values yourself as uniforms e.g.:
// glsl
uniform float ww;
uniform float wh;
...

And pass the values via the python api like:
# python
shader.setUniform1f("ww", float(bge.render.getWindowWidth()))
shader.setUniform1f("wh", float(bge.render.getWindowHeight()))

To set up the shaders you usually use code like this:
cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner

vs = """
// vertex shader code here
"""

fs = """
// fragment shader code here
"""

mesh = own.meshes[0]
for mat in mesh.materials:
  shader = mat.getShader()
  if shader != None:
    if not shader.isValid():
        shader.setSource(vs, fs, True)
    shader.setUniform...


text:
How to do multi-pass rendering on customised shaders?
I'm using customised shader to achieve a specific aspect. I'm confused by the fact it is dealt with by the game engine, not the rendering engine (??), but my actual question is: how do I do multi-pass rendering? I need to access the depth, color and normal buffer from previous passes to do a toon-outline effect. I couldn't find how to invoke the shader directly on the involved Python script.

Are you using the game engine? Or BI/Cycles? (I noticed that you included a [tag:game-engine] tag, but your second sentence is confusing me)..

I'm also confused. You should add more info including any tutorials that you are making use of.  Usually for game engines you'd probably want to render each pass to an FBO then load them all into a shader that is attached to a screen aligned quad and do whatever you want with the shader code.  For BI or Cycles you can use the Compositor to render multiple passes then use nodes to do what you want to do.  If you are using GLSL then you might want to check out the following page http://prideout.net/blog/?p=22. It shows how to build up a toon shader in stages and only requires one pass.


text:
Blender is running terribly!
I like Blender and I had some experience with Blender. I updated to the newest version of 2.76. And now when I launch it, it works fine for a few seconds maybe a minute. Then it starts go in into "Not Responding" mode and back to normal. All this happens in a matter of a second and repeats until I close Blender. This is very annoying, I can't do anything about it. I tried adjusting settings but nothing helps. I don't want to switch to something else like Cinema. Please tell me if you have a similar problem or if know a solution. Any info is appreciated.

Please give us a little more information about your setup, especially your operating system and anything that might be unusual about your computer or how you installed Blender.

I havent downloaded blender 2.76 yet but maybe the problem is your pc, it might also depend if you installed it in 64 or 32 bit (which i dont think it is, blender doesnt require a lot of things to run) but for now you could uninstall blender 2.76 and install bleder 2.75 (which i have and havent found any bugs in yet) and you could update a next month when they fix some bugs. Hope this helped.

Worst case scenario, you can just switch back to Blender 2.75. There's no need to switch to an unfamiliar program if you're already familiar with Blender.

As per the usual suggestions, have you updated your video drivers and grabbed all your OS updates? After that, try removing your prefs. Other than that, I'm not sure; I'd need to know more about your hardware.

Try going to File > Load Factory Settings and see if that solves it. Could be that one of the plugins you have installed is not compatible with 2.76, so loading factory settings will put all your settings back in their default state (temporarily). If you think the problem can be reproduced by others then consider filing a bug report including your system specs.

Make sure your system meets the minimum requirements, and that other processes are not taking too many resources

I installed 2.75a. Its a little better, doesn't happen as much. Now I know its a problem with The computer. Thanks.


text:
BGE: How do I make a sensor of one object trigger an actuator of another object?
For example, let's think about a scene where there are two objects: "Door", and "Button". "Door" has an animation which makes it transform and "open" itself. Now, is there a way to program "Button" in such a way that if it collides with a particular material (for example, the skin of the player), it triggers a "Collision" sensor, and a controller attached to the "Collision" sensor activates an actuator in the "Door" object that makes it play the animation?
I hope the situation mentioned above is clear. Thanks.

Add a collision sensor in the button. There are 2 options there:

collision with the material of the player and
collision with a property that you can add to a player.

Then add an action actuator to the door. Remember that you should add the animation actuator to the object that is gonna get animated.
At last, connect them by dragging the "noodle" from the end of the sensor of object 1 to the start of the actuator of object 2. Remember to have them both selected so you can see both their SCAs.
In case those 2 can't be connected add manually a controller "And" and drag the noodle from the sensor to the start of the controller, and then drag the noodle from the end of the "And: controller to the start of the actuator.

I had tried the same before, but the "noodle" wasn't connecting the sensor and actuator. Manually making a controller and connecting the sensor to the controller and then connecting the controller to the actuator was what worked for me. Thank you for the help.

In general you can't connect sensors with actuators. You can connect them to controllers which are always in between. ----There is a little helper in the Blender GUI that automatically adds a controller of the last added type when you try to connect sensors and actuators. This will fail if the bricks belong to different objects, as Blender can't decide what object should own the controller.


text:
Is there any way to have more than 10 million particles being emitted?
I have a scene where 10 million particles are emitted over 900 frames. I like the way the simulation looks and wanted to extend the time of the animation, but it appears that the number of particles is the amount generated in the set time span (in the original case, 900). If I extend the emission end frame to a value larger than 900, lets say 5000, then there will still be 10 million particles generated over the course of the 500 frames.
Whenever I try to set the number of particles higher than 10 million, blender automatically reverts the value (after being unresponsive for several minutes) to 10 million.
Is there a workaround which will allow me to generate more than 10 million particles in the particles system?
Would applying multiple particle systems with the same settings to an object allow me to add the amount of particles emitted?

Add a second particle system with identical settings that starts emitting before the previous one ends.

Also your use-case might benefit from less simulated particles and enabling child-particles.


text:
Add Glare to Equirectangular Panorama Without Stitching Issues
I made an equirectangular panorama in blender, and I added a glare node to emulate glow on the objects. When I view the rendered image, the glow does not stitch properly. Is there a way to fix this, or add the glow in a way that will allow the image to stitch properly?

You can see that glow is cut off when the image is stitched. To combat this problem, some of the glow should be visible on the other side of the image, as indicated below...

I know that the blur function recently had a boundary function included so that it could blur outside of an image's boundaries. I don't think that the same occurred to glow. The Translate Node does have a wrap function so that when you slide the image left to right it will wrap around the other side. Perhaps with masks you could perform the glow twice then (with and without translate wrap) then composite them together?

As 3pointedit suggested in the comments, you can use the Translate node to make it seamless:

I set the Mix to 1 in the Glare nodes so they output only the glare, which I mix using Lighten.


text:
Move objects toward center
If I have multiple objects surrounding the center of the scene, how would I move all of them toward the center X units?
Example:
I have 4 gears in my scene lined up 3 units from the center in each direction. I would like to move them all towards the center without changing their size/proportions X units, until they begin to touch.
How would I go about moving all of these objects the same distance towards the center without distorting them?

Check Manipulate Center Points, select all, press S and scale them down.
You can change Pivot Point to 3D cursor if you want.

Could you just watch this gif to the end?


text:
Is there a way to display the radius of fluid control object?
I wonder if there's a way of showing the radius, because it's pretty hard for me to guess what size it is after i adjust it

You can do this through a driver with a few simple steps.

Right click on the "radius" setting and select "Add Driver".
Add an object as a visualizer for the size of the radius.
Select your control object again, and go to the graph editor.
Switch to driver editing mode.
Select to driver you created, and open the properties panel with n.
Scroll down to the variables section and select the visualizer object you created earlier.
Now change the type to X Scale. (we will scale x and y uniformly)
As the expression to be used, type your variable name.

Finished! You can now select your circle, and  scale it to adjust the radius value.
You can also change the steps a little to edit the value and have it change the object.

Instead of adding a driver to the "radius" value, add it to the scale of the circle.

Change the transform channel of the driver to single property.

Make sure the type is set to object.

Set the object to your fluid controller

Right click and copy the data path to the radius property.

Paste it into the RNA path section (ctrl+v)

You can now right click on your driver to copy and paste it for the "y" scale as well.
Notes:

These tips work for any object, such as a sphere.

You may need to change which frame of the animation you are on for the changes to take effect. Otherwise, Blender may not reload the data.

I hope this helps. Check out this little gif I made of the steps.

Do you saggest me to create a circle at origin of my control object and set it's dimensions to radius size?

What object do you want to measure? What is your "fluid control object"? Is it a circle, a forcefield, or a setting somewhere?

Whatever object has the physics for fluid control on it, select that, and it will show the dimensions in the properties panel.

It's a smaller double of a letter. And I was talking about some graphical display of the radius setting. It's dimensions wont help i think

Sorry it took me so long. I have the answer here. I will post it soon (I hope).

Not sure if this will help: In the Properties panel click on the little box, the one between World and Constraints and there's a Display section.  In that try ticking the Bounds box and/or changing the Maximum Draw Type to Bounds.

That is an awesome solution, Uncle Snail. Thank you very much for your time and answer!

Okay, great! If you have any more problems, please let me know.

Yeah, looks like I have one. =) Well, the first way works fine, but the second doesn't affect circle's  scale.

Did you try changing frames? It may not show the results until you switch to another frame, because it does not reload mesh data.

Yes, I did. But still nothing happend

Hmmm.... I don't know what's happening. Perhaps you missed a step. I don't think I put all the steps in the second method, just the ones that are different from the first method... but I don't see any that are missing. Try undoing whatever you did, and starting with the scale of the circle at 1, and the radius (value) at 0.5. These "default" values will maybe help.

Hmm, at the 5th try on clean project without changing any steps it finally did it, of course after moving to another frame. Thank you) But now I'm also interested in auto-updating the size with changing the radius. How can it be done?

It can be done through a script. You need a more expert person to know what script though. :) You just need to tell Blender to update the mesh information every time a value is changed. ATM, blender is only updating the meshes when it knows there could have been a change, and that doesn't include drivers atm, but it does include frame change. It helps save performance so that it isn't recalculating the meshes constantly. I don't know of a way to do that without a script. Doing other things will recalculate as well. That's my understanding of the situation anyway.

It's sort of like having to change the number of particles on a particle system to reset Blender's cache so that you can start fresh. Otherwise it just remembers what you had before. So if you add a physics object or something you need blender to recalculate that system, so you change a value in the system that requires a recalculation. If Blender recalculated every time you added or moved a physics object though, even particle systems not affected would reload, losing data you wanted to keep and causing performance loss.

authors: Аркадий Чумаков


text:
How to visually rotate uv/image editor's canvas?
I'm asking if it possible to rotate uv space same way as canvas in photoshop or alike drawing software, only to make drawing more comfortable in some cases, not actually rotating texture

No, this is not possible. I would suggest editing the 2D images on another application as you mentioned.

You can paint it on a plane in the 3D View

The UV/Image Editor is not intended to be a full fledged 2d editor like Gimp, Krita, or Photoshop, but to be a tool toward small editing and basic texture set up that might then be opened up in a better 2d editor. HOWEVER, I am somewhat of a blender addict and fell in love with the paint tools as they have been added through the GSOC a few years ago, and with some help from some pretty good friends worked on an addon to use the 3d view as a 2d editor. Result ended up being the Artist Paint Panel, and then evolved into the EZDraw panel. Coupled with the Texture Paint Plus version on my github as well as the EZdraw popup, there is a lot I do with 2d painting in the 3d view now - I almost only go to the 2d editor window just for the isolation of a single texture image versus the multi layer effect in the 3d view. FOr now it only works with Blender Render, but we will adapt it to Cycles as it becomes possible.


text:
How to change animated object's origin without ruining animation?
For example: I have a character and a spoon which he is holding and moving thanks to child of constrain. My character releases the spoon a little bit above a plate. So I came up with idea to use rigid body on both to get realistic spoon falling to the plate animation (yes, I could animate it myself, but that seams to be more of a time wasting). But here is the problem: my spoon's origin was at its center for the whole time obviously, and now to get a correct rigid body simulation I need to move the origin, but that will ruin all of the animation!
So I thought that to keep the animation I need to add to each axis of keyframed movement for the spoon after changing its origin difference between corresponding locations of both origins. Hope I managed to describe it clear enough.
Though, the idea is very simple I don't know how to realise it, so that it would do the thing throughout the whole timeline, Somehow via scripting maybe? It could be some addon for auto "solving" new origins animations.
P.S. first I'd bake action for the child of I guess and then do all of the above.

Have you tried duplicating the spoon, and using the second spoon for the rigid body simulation, and toggling the visibility of the spoons to make the transition seamless?

No, i know I could do that but it's just not what I want, considering that the answer to my question could help someone in similar situation


text:
Cannot render animation? Panel issues?
I can't get my animation to render, the panel doesn't look like the tutorial's.

The bottom one is what it's supposed to look like, but the top image is what it looks like for me. This is probably an easy fix I just need help.


text:
Blender Game Engine - Mouse Click Location
Does anyone know an easy way to have blender spawn particles based on the mouse's location in 2D space on screen? I want to have the user click the mouse and create bubbles that float upwards from that spawn location.
Thanks.

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/2112/599

A point in 2D is a line in 3D. Therefore you need to tell what the third coordinate of the desired position is. e.g. at the object under the cursor, at a defined distance to the camera ...


text:
Cloth not touching surface
i'm trying to get a tablecloth on a table but it kind of stays above without touching, how can i fix that please ?

Change the collision distance. There are distance settings in the Cloth, and also in the collision object. The total distance will be the two combined. Try adjusting both.

Thanks, that's it, just found out before reading your post )))


text:
Baking cloth simulation use only 20% of cpu ressources, how to get 100%?
Baking a cloth use only 20% of CPU, inactive process of cpu is 78%, is there a way to use those extra 78% ?
Blender 2.75
Windows 10

See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/27316/599

Blender physics are not multi-threaded. You can use Houdini for FREE for non-commercial stuff or $200 licence for commercial, which you will get back soon through time this app will save doing your simulations.

Do you have a quad core? Simulation calculations are not multithreaded, and so cannot use more than 1 core at once. If it's using up a single core of your quad core, that'd be your 20-25%. There is no way to increase this unless someone gets a multithreaded physics algorithm into blender (these exist, but they are complicated and there are caveats. The program Marvelous Designer has multi core cloth sim, and maybe some other expensive programs.)
However, you could run multiple entirely separate physics bakes, or bake physics while rendering or performing other tasks.

Thanks again @Drudje )))        yes i use a i7-4980HQ CPU with 4 cores (8 logical cores).    But ive been reading a few post here with the opposite problem, they where using 100% and wanted to lower it to 50% or so...did they had a single core ???

It's impossible to know what their issue was without knowing their setup, but perhaps?

@Drudje  my mistake, it was for rendering and not baking (((                               http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15247/how-to-configure-blender-so-that-it-uses-only-50-of-total-cpu-when-rendering


text:
Blender animation different when imported to Unity
Animation in Blender: http://gph.is/2aCbBB4
Animation in Unity: http://gph.is/2affwlR
Anyone know why the entire model moves in unity but only the vertex group i created moves in blender? Thanks

Solved: the solution was to animate the rotation of the bone instead of the location


text:
Is it worth reducing my poly count?
(Disclaimer: Although I've worked with Blender on and off for a few years now, I consider myself a novice in many areas, as this is just a hobby for me)
So I'm currently creating a library scene, and before you ask, yes, the books and bookshelves have been made together and turned into low poly models, however I have a number of models that I've had a significant amount of trouble in reducing the poly count.
I was thinking about using these models in a game, so I know the importance of actually reducing the poly count, but it's just not working out as planned. I was almost considering giving up on the game aspect until I read that some models in games have 10k poly counts (which is very achievable for my models)
So my question is now, how many is "too many"?
an additional point of information is that lighting & texturing is all baked to the models, there isn't a great deal of dynamic lighting even in the game - so would this allow me to get away with higher poly models??

what engine are we talking about and what device do you plan to port your game on?

I was going to make it on Unity or Unreal (as they are free) and for PC

Then if you keep it under 300k vertices per frame you'll be fine.

Thanks, where did you get that benchmark? and are there ways I can increase that further?

It's a rough lower estimate what I think would run smoothly at 60fps even on an old hardware or integrated gpu. For better estimates I suggest look in Unity or Unreal forums or best benchmark your scenes, as the framerate depends on other million things.


text:
Attraction between 2 rigid bodies
I want to make two rigid bodies attract one another.
But I don't want them to attract the other rigid bodies.
In other terms I want in my scene :

Rigid Bodies A and B attract one another and get closer and closer.
Rigid Bodies C and D attract one another and get closer and closer.
But A has no influence at all on C and D.
B has no influence at all on C and D.
C has no influence at all on A and B.
D has no influence at all on A and B.

How coud I achieve this ?
Chears

If you don't have a problem with multiple layers you can put them onto separate layers and then just composite them together.

Forces only have an effect on rigid bodies on the same Layer - so use separate layers for each set of independent objects and forces.
Essentially you need to do the following :
On one layer, create objects A and B. Create a 'Force' force field at the origin of object A (select object A, press Shift-S and select 'Cursor to Selected', then Add/Force Field/Force) and parent it to object A. Create a 'Force' force field at the origin of object B and parent it to object B. Set each of the force fields to a negative strength (eg, -50). You should now find that A and B are drawn towards each other.
Swap to the next layer and repeat for C and D.
Running the animation (with both layers selected) should now result in two pairs of objects attracted to each other but not the other pair.

It just works ! Thank you ! Unfortunately 20 layers will not be enough for what I had in mind, but I learnt something new about force fields being limited to their layer only.

I hope this limitation will disappear with Blender 2.8's new layer system.


text:
Inheritance of objects
With bpy, how could I make a subclass of an Object and use it ?
I made a subclass of bpy.types.Object, but I don't know how to add it to my scene. The only way I know to add objects is using bpy.data.objects.new.
But I don't see any way of adding a subclass.

As the Blender Documentation states:

Those of you familiar with other Python API’s may be surprised that
  new data-blocks in the bpy API can’t be created by calling the class.

As you stated, that makes bpy.data.objects.new the only way to create new objects.
For my purposes, I created a new class which did not inherit from bpy.type.Object but defined a self.object property and initialized it with the new function. I then wrote all the methods I needed and modified self. object inside them.
I defined one base class, and then one additional class for cameras, lamps and objects:
class ExtendedObject():
    def __init__(self,name,  obj, loc):
        self.name = name
        self.object = obj
        self.object.location = loc
        # additional properties

class ExtendedCamera(ExtendedObject):
    def __init__(self, name, loc):
        self.data = bpy.data.camera.new(name)
        super(ExtendedObject, self).__init__(name, bpy.data.objects.new(name, self.data), loc)

# classes for lamps and 'normal' objects.

I don't know if this is the best way to do it, but it worked out for me.
Hope that can help you. If not, try to describe me the purpose of your class.

Thank you. The goal was to make an armature specialized in folding hard surfaces, and which builds its bones alone by analyzing the object. I ended doing something simalar to you!


text:
How do I create a right column when I have a 2-rows layout?
Suppose I have 2 windows under the following layout:
 _____
|_____|
|_____|

How do I create a right window so that it becomes:
_________
|_____| |
|_____|_|

Without disturbing the open ones?

In your ascii art you change the total size of the window. Is this intended? Or are there other surrounding editors that are not shown?

It is not intended, sorry. Edited. You already solved the issue anyway.

Split the two editors separately, but make sure the splits align vertically:

Note that once the vertical splits are aligned, they become locked.
I actually wrote a feature request on the wiki a while ago asking to improve this behavior.

May I just ask you an additional question, so I don't need to make another one? If I have three windows in a row, and a single window on top of those 3, how is it possible to remove that upper window?

@Dokkat Unfortunately no, not directly. But there is a workaround which works in some situations. Generally asking more than one question per post is discouraged, but you are encouraged to ask as many questions as you have (for related questions you can include a link to the related post). Could you ask this as a separate question with a screenshot of your screen layout? Thanks :)


text:
I lost bottom and side scroll bars in my logic editor
rel 2.70 in Blender Game mode
I lost bottom and side scroll bars in my logic editor panel
Can anyone help a Newbie? thx.

Could you upload a .blend where this is occurring? This will help us narrow down whether it's an issue with your setup/version of blender or a setting.

I placed the .blend thats missing scroll bars at github.com/marvosh/a_blend_test although I found a solution; when I eliminated all the windows but one, I rebuilt my GUI with the one that was a 3D window to start with. This caused the trouble. Now note if you create a layout from Game Logic you get a special window that has Templates - you cannot access this window type from Editor type. So to make a long story short I rebuilt my windows from this window and everything works.

Glad you got it working :) It seems to me like this should work though, you might want to file a bug report..


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Cycles sky : Sun disc appears only in reflections
Here is a render example of my problem.
A plane with a glossy material will reflect the sun disc, but the sun itself doesn't appears in the sky.

Any idea ?
(i've used the "Sun Position" addon to help for positioning the sun, but even if i don't use it, the sun didn't shows itself)
I'm currently using Blender 2.7 on PC, i've try on a Mac, the problem is the same.
Regards,
Arno

Could you upload your .blend? There are many possible things which could cause this, and it's hard to do more than speculate without more info..

Hi Gandalf,
Thank you for your concern :)
Here it is :
http://www.labellelumiere.fr/temp/Blender_Cycles_Sky.rar

your blend file works fine for me.

Oops, i guess i've send you the wrong file with a tweak, i've created a disc with emission to simulate the sun. Here is the right .blend file : labellelumiere.fr/temp/Cycles_Sun_problem.zip Sorry about that...

Lamps in Blender Render
In Blender Render you can turn Halo on, and the light will be visible to the camera.
Lamps in Cycles Render
You can't see lamps if you are using Cycles Render. That's one of their defining qualities. Here is a quote from the Blender wiki:
"Next to lighting from the background and any object with an emission shader, lamps are another way to add light into the scene. The difference is that they are not directly visible in the rendered image, and can be more easily managed as objects of their own type."
(Source: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Lamps)
So, if you need a visible light source in Cycles, use either mesh lights (i.e. meshes with an emissive material) or for example an HDRI with a studio lighting setup.
New Experimental Cycles Volume Scatter Feature
The only other way you can see the light source in Cycles is with the new Volume Scatter:  http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Materials/Volume
Just to give credit where credit is due, all the information I've listed here I have gotten from the Blender Developers and members of BlenderArtists.org, which also is a great knowledge base for everything Blender-related. Here's the question I asked about lamps:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?331453-How-can-I-see-a-lamp-in-a-scene&p=2607054#post2607054

Oops, i guess i've send you the wrong file with a tweak, i've created a disc with emission to simulate the sun.
Here is the right .blend file :
http://www.labellelumiere.fr/temp/Cycles_Sun_problem.zip
Sorry about that...
Arno

Thank you very much Thom for your investigations, i'll try to fake it with a disc mesh.
Merci beaucoup !

Lamps are never visible to the camera directly.
You could try faking the sun with a mesh constrained a good distance behind the sun lamp, but other than that I'm not sure of the best way to handle this.


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Modeling Offset Issues
I was running through a tutorial I found and for this tutorial, the bone that is supposed to rotate the entire foot is wrong. The instructor cleared the parent for the bone that protrudes through the heel and reconnects them using the keep offset option.

Is there a way to reverse this?
Thank you!

your could try select foot first, then select the foot col, then "keep offset". ---the sequence you select make the result different.

The difference between a parented bone with and without offset is that when using keep offset the two bones don't join together, they just follow the same rules as object parenting.
In the bone properties this is represented by the connected property.

Enabling or disabling the Connected property is the difference between choosing connected or keep offset when setting a parent.
Simply enabling connected will rejoin the two bones as if you had chosen connected to start with.
Unfortunately when enabling connected, the base of the child bone snaps to the parent bone and there is no record of the location used before enabling connected. So if you enable connected, unless you undo at the time you will need to manually place the end of the bone back at the position you want it.


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Mirroring Mishaps
I was playing around with the mirror modifier and I found that when I turned off the mirroring, my model turned form this:

to this:

Is there a way to turn the body of the model to the other side so when I turn off the mirror modifier only the right side of the model is shown?
Thank you!

I think this is because your geometry actually is positioned that way.
To reposition your geometry all on the same side:

Position your cursor in the center of the scene (ShiftC or ShiftS> Snap Cursor to Center)
Set the pivot point to the 3D cursor by pressing . (period)
Select the part(s) of your model that are on the wrong side (hovering and pressing L to select linked geometry might be helpful)
Press SX-1
Remove double vertices (W> Remove Doubles)
You may also need to recalculate normals after this (A> Select all CtrlN)


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Mesh hair goes through body
I was playing around with some MMD models I downloaded and I found that whenever I tried to pose them, its hair would go through the face.
What should I do to prevent this form happening?

It's possible the hair is not moving along with the rest of the model when you move it. If this is the case, then see this answer and see if it helps. If not, please leave a comment and we'll see if we can help you more. :)


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How to change to spherical Axis
I was wondering how you change the way the axis to become spherical?

Thank you!

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/6394/599

You have changed the manipulator widget to rotate mode, to return to the default (translate) mode, select the pointer icon as selected below.

There are many options for using the widget, detailed documentation can be found about its usage on the Blender Wiki.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/3D_interaction/Transform_Control/Manipulators#Manipulators


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Blender UV vertex limit
I have a small texture that I want to repeat over a big area. 100x100 times to be exact. To be able to do this, I edit the UVs for a plane, and try to extend them far beyond the image bounds. This works, though I can not manually enter values more than 10 for the UV vertices, when using normalized coordinates. I would like to enter 100 here, but that seems not to be possible. This is how it looks:

My question is why this is the case, to have such a limit? Am I missing something, and can it be bypassed som how? I can actually scale the UVs beyond 10, but that is not very accurate. I am using Blender 2.77.

Please specify Blender Internal Render (BIR) or Cycles Render.  Both can repeat the texture in the UV coordinates.  The BIR has texture panel entries and Cycles can manipulate UV coordinates in nodes.  Both can do this with keyframes in case you are interested.

Blender Internal Render.  Material Texture Panel.
Size XY 8, 8.

Size XY 2, 2.

Size XY 1, 1. Mapping Extension Repeat. Default.
Adjust offset values to suit you.

The plane has a simple UV Unwrap.  UV Coordinates not further modified.


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Blender file keeps crashing - how do I open it in safe mode?
I'm making a blender video using the VSE and compositor, with multiple scenes. I noticed that it's a bit buggy when I'm using blender scenes in the VSE editor, but so far everything was working.
Now all of sudden, I can't even open the blender file without it crashing. Please help! Is there a way to run it in safe mode, or disable something so that it will open?
I'm on a macbook pro running blender 2.76b. I don't know how to view the console so I can see the error message.

You may be out of luck for that particular file. It might be time to start trying the various backup files saved automatically. If possible, you might consider filing a bug report (with the corrupted file) so the devs can find out what happened and prevent it from happening in the future.

You can find the terminal in Applications/Utilities and you can start blender by typing the following into a terminal window (this is the default so you may have to adjust folder names if you have altered them)
/Applications/Blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender

This may only give a simple message like Segmentation Fault
A few things you may want to try -

Turn off Load UI when opening the blend file - this will leave you in the default screen layout and not take you straight into the VSE where you where last time.
Turn off Trusted Source when opening the blend file - this will only help if you have drivers/scripts setup to run automatically
Use File->Load Factory settings before opening the blend file - this will disable non-default addons that may be causing an issue.
Also turn off Load UI and Trusted Source after loading factory defaults.
Start with a new file and import objects/animations from the bad file.

Thanks. I will give those methods a try. And good point about starting a new blend file and importing the objects. That didn't even occur to me!
and sambler, you are correct - I started the Terminal window and it gave me this error:
"Writing: /tmp/30_Second_Political_Ad_Template.crash.txt
Segmentation fault: 11"

sambler - I turned off Load UI like you suggested and damned if it didn't open. Thank you thank you!!!

So I'm still not quite sure what was causing the original blend file to crash on startup, but I have a few suspicions. I think there's a bug with the VSE editor when importing blender scenes, as opposed to outside clips.
Blender must assume that the 3D scenes have to be rendered first, in order to display them in the edit layout. And because I had one scene that was composited overtop the other, it might have been too much calculation work that Blender was forced to do and crashed.
When I disabled "Load UI" in preferences, the default layout opened no problem, which leads me to believe the error occurs in the VSE only. I also think the fact I was using the compositor to tweak the colours for the 3D scenes, before they were imported into the final VSE scene might have been too much of a memory hog.
I will of course submit the file to developers to see if they can further isolate the error.


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Rigging A Character With Boolean Modifier And SubSurf?
How do I apply the boolean modifiers without interfering with the sub-surf? Is it possible to rig the character without applies the modifiers?
I do not have a very powerful computer that can handle high-poly meshes, but I need to rig this character. Here's the .blend file.

Part 1: You Can
You can leave the modifiers on without applying them, sure. You would need each of those pieces of the object named "Cube" to be separated into individual objects. Then you would parent each of those objects to your armature bones.
I would disable the Boolean Modifier for the viewport only, because it's killing your viewport performance.

Then you should be able to navigate and rig smoothly.
Part 2: But in this case you shouldn't
I realize it is tempting to try to carve out pieces of a mesh using Booleans because if you were sculting in the real world with clay or something you would carve away at your shape. But mesh modeling doesn't work that way and Booleans don't create pretty topology. They are very useful and appropriate for certain cases, but this is not such a case.
The best thing to do would be to model your character's topology to have cuts in those places, using quads instead of tris to the best of your ability. The subject of topology is broad, but worth studying if you want to animate characters.
If the places where the Boolean cuts into the mesh are only for a specific scene - like if this character is going to be cut into a bunch of pieces - then after you've modeled your finished character, duplicate a copy of the character and cut that one apart.
Without knowing exactly what your plans are for animating this character, that is the best advice I can give.
On a final note, it looks like you are using an Edge Split Modifier to fix a shading issue, however this is only adding to the heaviness of your scene by creating more geometry. It would be better to fix the ugly shading at Boolean intersections using Auto Smooth, like so:


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Is there any manipulator Shortcut?
is there any shortcut for manipulators (move,rotate,scale) ? i want to use single axis with manipulator handler. i do not want to use key combinations like G, X.

I'm not sure what you mean... If I understand correctly, you want a shortcut to call a manipulator, then specify a single axis on which to manipulate. How is that different from G, X?

No there is no single hotkey, you need to use combination of 2.

i want to change manipulator from Move to Rotate with one key. When i animate something i need this.

See this answer:http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/19352/hotkey-for-selecting-transform-manipulator-type


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Problem with incorrect Freestyle rendering
Can anyone help with why the area red is rendering incorrectly? The middle and back objects are duplicates of the front mesh. Object 1 & 2 rendered fine.
Thanks, JohnS

Check your properties.
If you have crease or any of the contours enabled, this could be causing that.
Can you upload the blend file?

MasterHolbytla: Which properties specifically should I be looking at? I didn't set any crease or contours, that I know of. Here is the link to the blend file:

cegaton: which settings do you want to see? I uploaded the blend file, if you want to check it out. See the link in my reply to MasterHolbytla. Thanks.


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Creating clock cogs?
I want to build a clock and I need to generate the cogs and pinions. I have seen a great tutorial here, but I want to do something slightly different than fiddleware. For example I want to round the teeth ends slightly to reduce the grinding and also reduce the tooth width while increasing the gap the teeth go into.
Although I forget where it is at this exact moment, I noticed there is a screw creator script in Blender (I'm currently using 2.7) and I was wondering if there was any kind of script that would generate a cog given some of it's defining characteristics?

For creating a good gear simply, my advice is to create a little part of your gear an then use an arraw with an object offset wich is rotated. With that you can simply change the size or the form of your cogs

I found this to do it like you suggest, not sure how current it is. http://www.rab3d.com/tut_blen_gear-1.php

The plugin is too old (2.42 version) for the current version of blender. I'm preparing an answer for explaining my methode but it is a bit like with this old addon.

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/36675/how-to-model-a-ridged-dial-or-gear-shape

Use Mesh Extra Object addon to create gears.
Gears and extra objects are added from Shift+A menu
The Addon adds the following;
Gears ,
Worms ,
Diamond ,
Gem ,
Star ,
Polysphere ,
Torus Knot
and many More.
Here is a simple usage gif.

Perfect, thanks. Any idea how I can close the inner hole that it leaves? (Without selecting each 4 vertices and adding a face.

Sorry, I mean the gap between the top and bottom faces, not the hole in the top face and the hole in the bottom face. Hopefully that makes more sense?

@NigelJohnson Select the two loops at the rims of the holes and press [Alt+F] to connect them. This will give you triangular faces, but you can try to convert them to quads by pressing [Alt+J]. This does not always work perfectly, but it did a good job on the gear I tested.

@NigelJohnson Select the upper hole edges and lower hole edges, Press W for specials menu and select, Bridge Edge Loops.

@dukejib - perfect exactly what I needed, a bit of a mission for a 64 tooth gear, but MUCH better than the alternative :) maddin45 - thanks, but that fills the hole in the top surface. Thanks guys.

For creating a good gear simply, my advice is to create a little part of your gear and then use an array modifier with an object offset which is rotated. With that you can simply change the size or the form of your cogs.
You can easily do this if you follow this step:
First you need to fix the number of cog that you want. For the example I choose 45 cogs.
Then add a circle with 4*numbers of cog vertices. 4*45 in my case. So now we have a circle with 180 vertices.

Add an empty at the exact place of your circle. Rotate your empty of 360/number of cogs degrees in the Z axis

Now add an array modifier on your circle. Put the number of cogs in the count parameter and put your empty in the object offset.

Now, in edit mode, you can extrude all your circle and delete all the faces except 4 of them.
Now put your 3d cursor in the origin of your object, change the pivot point to 3D cursor, select to vertices on the top of your 4 faces and scale them. You should have this:

If you pass to object mode, you have your full gear.
Now you can edit your cog and all the gear will be like the cog that you have done. Here is a little example:


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Torus creation in 2.8
I really want to like 2.8 but every time I get into it,  I find something I don't understand. Today is creating a torus. I want to create a jump ring for a piece of jewellery. I want an inner radius of 1.5mm and an outer radius of 4.7mm, When I create the Torus, the smallest I can make either radius setting is 10mm for either of them. Set it to 1.5, you get 10. Set it to 3, get 10. Interestingly, setting it to 10 and 10, gives you a torus with an internal radius of zero not 10. What am I doing wrong?

You first need to change your working units because this operator won't let you input values < 0.01 meters (10 cm) in the fields if you keep working with meters.

The easy way

The hard way
For the sake of maths ..?
So, the major radius is the radius of the middle section of the torus, and the minor radius is the radius of the circle section of the torus if you cut through half of it radially.
We have

RM : Major Radius
rm : minor Radius
Re : Exterior radius (in your case, 4.7)
Ri : interior radius (1.5)

Ri = RM - rm
Re = RM + rm
<=> RM = 4.7 - rm = 1.5 + rm
<=> rm (minor radius) = 1.6 and RM (major radius) = 3.1
But you need to set your units correctly for this small a model.

This is a better way around the bug than scaling, and I never could work out that major/minor thing. Thanks for the info.

I actually didn't notice the Exterior / Interior choice but it is way simpler ! I'll keep it for the maths :) The reason it didn't work in your case is because as the other answer mentioned, this operator imposes values > 0.01 in these fields. I don't consider this as a bug but as a way to force users to work with units fitting to their models.

The "Length" choice is just what is displayed in the dialog boxes. Internally, Blender is still using 1 unit = 1 meter. Change the "Unit Scale" value to 0.001 and Blender will make 1 unit = 1 mm. Then the Torus dialog will work as expected.

Why
That's a bug. For some reason they put random limits on the size of the properties. It's a Python operator, that you can find in C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.82\2.82\scripts\startup\bl_operators\add_mesh_torus.py Around line 161 there are some float properties defined with some random size limitations:

I found out by right-clicking on the repeat last panel and choosing Edit Source after creating a torus:

What can be done about it
You should definitely report this as a bug by going to Help menu -> Report a Bug:

As far as the problem goes, it's not the end of the world - you can just make the ring 100 bigger and then scale it down by 0.01 and apply scale. If you are planning to be creating hundreds of small toruses one by one in the future and this bothers you, you could also edit the file and just delete the min=0.01, max=100.0, for minor_radius, major_radius, abso_major_rad and abso_minor_rad properties starting from line 165 in the file and save it and then restart Blender(on Windows Blender might not have permission to write to Program Files, so save it elsewhere and copy it to the location manually or start Blender with administrator privileges).

Raised a bug, thanks. Thought I was going 2.8 nuts :D


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particles blown away from impact?
so I have an object that I have animated to fall onto a plane, and I want to have dust-like particles that are blown away from the impact like in a way that dust is. I don't know how I would achieve this effect, any help?

You want the particles to fall on the plane and poof away, or just poof away as the emitter object falls?

The Idea would be that the particles are already there. Like debry that gets blown away from the impact @PGmath

Consider adding Collision objects and applying a force in the Physics tab.
Particles are affected/moved by a force.

In the image above the blue cone has Wind Force attached in the Physics tab.
Particles are being moved to the right.
Experiment with the forces as suits you.

Cyan Plane is collision object in the Physics in the image above.
Particle system from large yellow sphere.

authors: Пул_ коркуни дар интернет


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Soft body hook onto an object?
So I'm trying to achieve an animation in BI where there is a string that is attached at both ends to 2 separate objects. But I can't find anything that lets me take my string and attach it to them. The string is an elongated cylinder that has had a lot of loop cuts in the middle. Help please?

Okay, this is what I'm looking for, but I dont see the vertex tab while the curve is selected.

I'm not sure what you mean..

So in the duplicate that you found (thanks for that) the answer includes taking the two end vertices of a curve, and making them into a vertex group. however, I cannot do this, as the toolbar doesn't give me that option.

You don't need a vertex group for a curve, select a vertex and press Ctrl H hook to new object to create a empty and hook the selection to it.


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uv image editor alpha?
So I made an image in the uv image editor thats really simple (really just a line) and when I made the new image I checked the alpha box. but the background is simply black. Is there a way to make a new image in the uv editor that is nothing but the alpha to start with?

possible duplicate of Using alpha channel of generated images for cycles

When creating a new image in the UV Image Editor, change the Alpha channel of the Color to be 0. Then be sure that the Alpha check box is checked.

Thanks! I feel like a noob for not knowing that.

Wait, nevermind, I made a new image, and where the color is originally black, I see theres an alpha slider.

good for you, you figured it out before I finished my answer.

:) the answer you gave was a LOT more easier to understand


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VSE animated mask with scenes?
Ok so in a nutshell, I want to make a video that has 2 pictures that overlap eachother, and the overlap is animated, like this:

The clips are in the VSE:
And the blend file(with photos): https://www.dropbox.com/s/xiztxtvxtzmvm5n/Unicycle.zip?dl=0
But I want to add in a black line right where the 2 clips meet.
Help please?

There is no hard edge built in to the wipe effect. Only blur width. You could make a  black bar .PNG then use the Transform effect to rotate it at the same time. You could use this addon http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?280731-VSE-Transform-tool it makes interacting withe the VSE transforms much easier.

So what I want to do is make a black line as an object in a different scene, and have the line have the same animation as the mask

Thats right. But you could make the line with the transform effect applied to a color strip, by scaling it down vertically then rotating it.

Ohhhh. Ok that makes sense. Thanks for the help!


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Giving lettes an individual node
First of all. Im a total noob at blender. I only have a few days of training.
I am working on a logo for an animation. Im trying to bake the scene, but my text is too long for only one bake map (or texture or what ever) So I have seperated each letter so they can be baked one at a time. But they all still share the same node ?
How do I give them one each ?

Do you mean material by 'texture'?

Kind off. All the letters need to be the same meterial, but when I need to bake it and add the texture from the baking, they need one each that is not the same.

So after baking you have the same amount of materials as the amount of letters right? And now these letters share the same material, but you want each letter to have their own baked material? :)

yes. I bake the shadows for each letter because they cant all be in one bake. S And the shadow of one letter is not the same as the next, so they need their own bake

First go to Material Tab, then click the + button next to your material, now press the 'Brows Material to be Linked' button and finally press the 2 button next to the material name. Now you have to go to edit mode and click the Assign button at the bottom of the materials list while the letter you want to give the particular material is selected.
By adjusting the new material you will now change the previous
Just see the Gif.

I'm sorry for the GIF quality, first time I'm doing it, hope you understand.

Why is the 2-button necessary? :)

to make sure that when you change this new material the changes don't apply to the default material

And then I apply a baked texture to each material ?

well, pretty much yes

and by "pretty much" you mean ?

I mean yes, sorry for my structure

it works, but it did not fix the problem :S
I get this when I try to bake the first letter. The letter is all white so it does not make sense. http://imgur.com/Dcvs94T
I have baked everything else exept the letter. I tried to render to see how much faster it was now, but the letters is all dark, like if the light wasnt there. is that because everything else is baked ?


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Why do people not connect all their cycles nodes?
So I downloaded this blend file to figure out how to bake out textures. In the process I see that he has some very complex node set-ups all to end up seeing them not connected at the end. Why have such complex node systems just to not connect them?
This is not the first time I've seen this. Please someone explain this logic to me.

Thanks just confirmed what I expected to be true. Not knowing was driving me crazy.

The only possible way I can think of for disconnected nodes to be used is baking. However this only utilizes a single texture node. Probably just leftover nodes as cegaton said.

Since scripts can access and edit nodes I wonder if nodes that are disconnected at the moment are 100% guaranteed in all cases to be forever unused? Of course not likely, but maybe it's possible somewhere in the universe.

the disconnected nodes are the original materials (textured, with normal maps, diffuse and glossy shader), the connected nodes are the baked materials (baked texture plugged to emission shader)


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Alphas are "blurry" when sculpting?
So all my alphas when I apply them to a model with plenty of multi-res levels just come out looking "blurry". I've used Zbrush before with these alphas, and they turned out awesome but in blender they aren't working so well. So any help on how to resolve this would be great.
I've already messed with the strength, but that didn't seem to help.

Default uv-sphere with 5 multires level should let you achieve a result similar to this: http://i.imgur.com/Jic6dI1.jpg that looks quite good. Perhaps you have enabled some particular option. I would suggest to open a new file and try without changing any default parameter. (enable smooth shading to your object)

Still getting terrible results maybe its the alpha's I'm using. Here is another one I tried that also gives me terrible results. http://www.filedropper.com/weave01

Ok I might have a breakthrough here. Okay so the terrible results I was getting was from an un-uv mapped cube that I multi-ressed. I got some good results now by just using a circle, uv unwrapping, and multi-ressing now its pretty good looking. I'll experiment more, but I think I got it.

Here's the link to my blendfile: (blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/443) see if you can work with it.

Yeah as far as I can tell Carlo after looking at the file you uploaded it works just fine :)

Edit - After reviewing comments it was just a weird occurance that I cannot re-create. Multi-ressing a cube and than sculpting it works just fine!

In which sense "need to have some geometry" ? Why a cube is not considered geometry? This is the default cube with multires and it still looks fine: http://i.imgur.com/KghlTIa.jpg I think that the reason must be somewhere else...don't know, maybe you have mirror/polar sculpting enabled...did you check that?

Hm I must of done something I double checked to make sure and your right things are working fine now. Well I guess I shouldn't jump to conclusions and just restart Blender, and check myself.

No problem! Anyway it would be interesting to discover what setting led to that particular situation. I would suggest to upload it on http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Well If I can somehow re-create it I'll upload it to that site. Otherwise things seem to be working a bit better. http://i.imgur.com/GBINh1z.png

Good, anyway you don't need to unwrap or assign texture to the geometry tu be able to sculpt on it.


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Setup for a wine bottle with multiple labels
I have modeled a wine bottle and created various wine label designs for a client. The labels were created in Illustrator and so I have PNGs. I want to present a render of the same bottle with each label the client. The labels are not simple rectangles.
Should I:

"model" each label and wrap it on the bottle, or
try to map each label image to a portion of the bottle's surface?

I've seen lots of tutorials showing option #2, but something is telling me that the glass of the bottle should be separate from the "paper" label.
Also, with #1, couldn't I use the same bottle blend file and use a different layer for the each label, then turn on a different layer for each new render?
Maybe there's an even better strategy?
thanks,

You can use the second way, but first model that paper label (by duplicating bottle surface and positioning it adjacent) and mapping image with label on that. Also it'll be a bit easier to map image then

Are the labels the same size? How many labels?

@Mr Zak Thanks, I did as you suggested in my first version. It worked, but I got some distortion at the edges of the label. I eventually went with the solution suggested by cegaton.

@NoviceInDisguise There will be 3 versions to start and then revisions of the final label. Cegaton's solution worked out. Thanks!


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How can I invert the areas covered by my diffuse pattern?
I'm new to Blender, so I'm sorry if some of this is ridiculously wrong.
I've been trying to place a diffuse texture over a bump map, reflection map and a displacement modifier not taken from the same place as the diffuse texture. To be more clear, I've been trying to get a pattern taken from one picture to realistically be placed onto the bump map, reflection map and displacement of a different picture.
This is what I have so far.

I want the inverse of this outcome but more exaggerated so that the chipped parts won't have any of the pattern.

I'm thinking maybe I need to edit my starting pics in photoshop so it's more of what I want to begin with, but I was hoping there was an easier way just in Blender.
( I would have put more pictures to explain more clearly, but I don't have enough "reputation")

What do you mean by "inverse of this outcome"? Probably adding Color > Invert node connected between your mask and Mix Node can help?

Or you could perhaps just swap mix node shader inputs, so the fac should act reversed?

By inverse I mean that I want the pattern to only show up on the parts that are raised instead of being covered by them. Thanks for the suggestions.


text:
Is it possible to auto generate and superimpose Frame# over images imported into video edit?
I imported a series of images into the video editor and I would like the rendered output to show the frame number, or better yet the file name of each image, on each image. Is there a way to automatically generate that number?
Why do you ask? The still images are used in reports and frame numbers or file names would make it easier for my customers to find the desired image.
  Thank you,
    Paul

Yes it's possible.
You just have to open the Metadata section in Render Tab of Properties panel, check Stamp output, adjust the size and colors, and check the Seq. strip box (uncheck all other if not needed), and it will print the filename of the current rendered image on the top right corner of the output.