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From *3ds-file Imported objects have no extensiveness and are all locaed in the origin
Dear StackExchange Community,
I am currently trying to import a 3ds file into blender. The Problem is, that all the objects get imported into the origin of the coordinate system and have no extensiveness whatsoever.
The file I am trying to import is a 3D Model of parts of the city of Berlin, which is available for free.
http://www.businesslocationcenter.de/berlin3d-downloadportal/
Does anyone have a suggestion as to what could solve my problem?
Cheers Luke

Welcome LHC :)  3ds is a deprecated file format.  First, please check if this answers help to solve your issue: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5405/objects-transformations-wrong-when-importing-from-3ds, http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/24481/how-to-properly-export-scene-to-3ds-max, http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/14808/how-to-import-a-max-model-into-blender. Anyway, enjoy blender.se!

Could you post a link to your downloaded 3ds file please? The download site from your link is a bit awkward.

I Tried the proposed threads and none of them contained a solution to my problem.
@ronald8 Here you can find the 3ds file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iu35em4s1cdtphy/FME_502A2C70_1438272925398_2307.zip?dl=0

Basically it is a problem with scale and geometry to origin offset and so its easy to fix:
Start with a new blender scene ctrl + N and move the camera, cube and pointlight to another layer. In your scene properties you could set units to metric if you want.
In your 3D View go to top ortho view with numpad 7+5 and toggle on the 3D view properties panel with N.
Import the first of your .3ds files and set "Size Constraint" to 1000 (maximum) in the import options (down left).
After import just hit home (View > View All) and you should see your objects. Problem is they are very far away from the center and you are not able to view both the center and your objects at the same time with the default viewport clipping values.
In fact your objects are several million blender units away from the center while their origins are at the center. This is a bit impractical to work with ...
To fix this I would do this:
After importing all .3ds files as described above just hit home to bring them all to view. Place the 3d cursor where you want to have your new coordinate center. Select all objects and set their origins to the 3d cursor. Next shift + C to center cursor and shift + S >Selection to Cursor. Finally home again and all should be fine.


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Simplify Dyntopo and it's methods
Can someone please explain Dyntopo in Sculpting beacuse so far it's kinda hard to understand:
-Which Detail Refine Method to use and when
-Which Detail Type Method to use and when
-How many pixel details to put and when
Also,WHY to use that specific refine/type method in that specific situation
I did some research but I either couldn't find what I was looking for or even when I did I couldn't fully understand it

This is the best tutorial on DynTopo.

Some things just need time spent playing with them to get a good feel for yourself. Remember (especially in sculpting) this is an artist's tool!

Hi eiipaw well the way to simplify why dynotopo is the way it's is all about the quality of the detail plus their is a limitation for what your current geometry can and cant do.
So without dynotopo you are just using the current geometry of your mesh and moving it around to create detail, this can cause serious artifacts and distortion if you plan on baking normals, Dynotopo for the contrary it adds small polygons by extraction or addition, so it adds more topology to your mesh instead of only moving it around.

That detail was done by dynameshing the anvil, I would have never being able to create that sharp detail without dynameshing, So i would said rule of thumb if your model is not that detail, and only moving around the geometry gets you the detail that you want; go for regular sculpting is easy and less taxing to your computer, but if you are doing like ultra detail crevices or damage with some grunge. Or a character with a lot of detail like a porous skin, go for dynamesh. You can also simulate detail by painting directly on a model. That's what blizzard does, although they use sculpting to bake on normals for specific things. Just look at blizzard atist portfolios sometimes they show you the maps that they used.
Finally remember that if you use sculpting detail on a mesh, think what is the purpose of your model, if your model is for games or animation you want to bake the normals (you dont want to have millions of polis on an engine or huge render times to render a scene). For the pixel size think about how close is that object or character in realation to the camera. And experiment experiment, Experiment!

It's not clear what "dynamesh" is mentioned here; if Dynamesh from ZBrush then the second to last paragraph makes little sense. There are different ways to create highly detailed geometry; both dynamic topology and regular sculpting with Multires modifier in Blender will give the same result in the end. They just need to be used properly, without increasing details too soon.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


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Fire+Smoke Domain
This may just be a minor error but I cannot seem to get rid of the glow within the domain. I realize that in the Compositor, i copied the Attribute node from the Quick smoke and added an emission node to make the fire have some color. But I do not understand how to have the mesh/particle system emit without the domain cube containing it to look like the glowing box it does.

Plug the flame attribute into the emission strength.

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


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Return an image's dimensions
How do I get the height and width (in pixels) of an image that's been imported in Blender?
bpy.data.images['myImage'].???

Suggest use the python console to figure out such properties: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/python_console.html

thanks. I used it as well as the tab function and thought size may be it but didn't find how to return the x and y values from it. @aliasguru's answer clear it out for me.

You can use the size property to get the X and Y dimensions of an image:
width, height = bpy.data.images['myImage'].size
# the variables width and height will now contain the pixel size

Thanks! How come I can't return the values without assigning them?

@ChameleonScales Well, you could. the size property is simply an array, you could access the values like bpy.data.images['myImage'].size[0] and bpy.data.images['myImage'].size[1]. However, I tend to find the given answer to be more Pythonic. See https://note.nkmk.me/en/python-tuple-list-unpack/ for a deeper explanation

oh, of course, where's my head

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


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How to access triangle vertices and their attributes in shader nodes
Is there a way to access the attributes of a triangle or face associated with the currently processed fragment? I see that we can get barycentric coordinates for each face using Geometry node -> Parametric output but I would like to further get for example and ID or at least color value or whatever attribute of each adjacent vertex.
I guess I can do something like using the Position output to get a world-space coordinates and then get the closest vertices to this but that's not ideal.
For example here:

I would like to also know that the barycentric coordinates of the red point are also corresponding to the vertices 1,4,3.

I've only managed to get this far... with OSL.  From there, I guess you could get the UV coordinates at the triangle corners, and, from there, any of their function-of-UV, or baked, attributes.. but we need an Attribute node that takes a coordinate input.

@RobinBetts Hmm nice approach! I will have to experiment with it a bit. Thanks!


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How to close my model in a proper way
As on the image, I want to close his back and front but I don't want to look like a cube or plane.
I want how to it's details like belly,nose,mouth,eye and so on.
However I try, I can't add the vertices/lines so I can create details.
I just want to make a low poly orc, if you can help me out I would appreciate it a lot.
Thanks in advance and hope you respond. :)
(Sorry if I posted wrongly or something else since this is my first question)

You can use the Grid Fill option to create many faces.
Select the edge loop (Alt + RMB), key Space, type Grid Fill, and select the option.

Example on a cylinder:

The question is duplicate of one already asked and answered. In this case do not add equal answer rather than mark question as a duplicate / add comment to question proposing link to the answered question. See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled and http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104227/is-it-acceptable-to-add-a-duplicate-answer-to-several-questions

@MrZak I did flag immediately. I also decided to answer it, as to provide an easily accessible answer.

Answer is accessible via a linked duplicate. It is meant that nothing should be done except for flagging / commenting / voting.

@MrZak I just read those two meta questions. Two things: first, my answer on the linked question was not quite good enough, and you might notice that I improved upon it. Second, this is just kind of funny, it occurs to me that those questions are, well, duplicates.

I am sorry, I just didn't knew there was a question that is the exact like this one.
I couldn't find a question, I didn't knew how to search so I tried my own one.

@RenekThrope It's okay. Many, many people make that mistake. Just try not to make it twice. :) By the way, if my answer helped, please consider accepting it by selecting the checkmark in the top left of my answer. It would help me greatly!


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What mirror download does UK need?
I am currently looking to download Blender to make 3d objects for use in the Unity 5 Game Engine, but when having a look at what version to download, there is no version for the UK. Also, is there any difference between the .msi and .zip, or is it just that one is manual and one is automatic?
Thank you.

I dont think there is any difference, both for mirror locations or install packages

It doesn't matter if you choose Germany or Netherlands as both are right next to each other but US is far further away if you live in the UK. As far as I know there is no major difference in speed when using the Netherland mirror 1 or 2. MSI is the installer and the zip has the actual program in it thus using the zip will mean that the Blender won't show up in your program files.


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How to Name Node Groups
According to the docs when I select some nodes and click "Add Node Group" there should be a green bar at the top where I can name the node group, but I don't see that anywhere. I am in cycles. Am I missing it? Also, I can I remove node groups from the list permanently?

You can name your node group after exiting node group edit view, by selecting the Node Group and editing the text in the name box directly, or on the Properties Tool Shelf > Properties Panel to the left, while the group is selected.
Your Node Groups will be automatically erased once they have no users in your file, that means it is not used in any material and they have no Fake Users (pressing the F button to the right of the name.
Have in mind that in Blender data isn't truly deleted until your restart Blender.
That means Materials, Node Groups, Mesh or Object data, and everything else.
For Blender 2.79 and older if you press the delete button it will stick around during that session with a Zero number in front of the name stating that it as no users. It will only be truly deleted after you restart Blender.
For Blender 2.8+ you can check unused data in the Outliner, by setting the Display Mode to Orphaned Data from the dropdown menu in the header. There you will be able to purge unused data manually.

when I deleted the material completely (so that node group wasn't being used) but the node group still showed up. Do I misunderstand the term users?

Oh my material isn't being deleted. That's a separate problem

Have in mind that in blender data isn't truly deleted until your restart Blender. That means Materials, Node Groups, Mesh or Object data, and everything else. If you press the delete button it will stick around during that session with a Zero number in front of the name stating that it as no users. It will only be truly deleted after you restart Blender.


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How do I delete these vertices? They are only visible in face selector mode
So I'm in Blender Render, and I need to delete the extra points on the edges of themiddle left plane. I'm contructing the abdominals for a man, and everytime I try to subdivide this plane blender crash/closes. I think it has something to do with these extra points. How do I delete them? Disclaimer: this is my first blender project.
                          P.S.- Any other tips? Criticism? I know so very little.

Wyatt, welcome to the site. You might want to take the tour, and study the help center, paraticularly the bits about asking ahd answering questions.

Note that vertices are only visible in vertex select mode, and faces in face select mode. If you're in face select mode, and see what appears to be a vetex which is only visible in face select mode, it's not a vertex.

Generally Blender shouldn't crash regardless of what are you doing - removing doubles or subdividing. If it crashes only because of subdividing it's a bug and should be reported.

Those are not vertices, they are faces with a very small area.
To delete them you either:

Select all and remove doubles by pressing W then Remove Doubles;
Or manually remove them and join the vertices by pressing Alt+M.

You could just press W in Edit mode and choose Remove doubles to remove extra overlapping vertices.

Note that this was already proposed in another answer.

ah sorry for that, i haven't seen the other answer yet :o
thank you for the notification though


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Why can't I intersect these 2 objects?
I've created these 2 objects and want to create a new object that represents the area where they intersect. I'm really confused as to why I cannot do it. I practiced on a cube and a cylinder in a new file and it work as expected. How do I find the issue with these objects?

You can check out the file in question.


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Blender 2.8 How to rotate viewport 90 deg after Shift +7
It is in Blender 2.8
Hello , I want to work perpendicular to the surface in orthogonal view. After I press Shift +7 I get that view BUT I want to be able to rotate that view in 90 degrees increments. How do I do that?
Thank you!

You can use the navigation options under View > Navigation and their corresponding hotkeys to pan, orbit and rotate the view in 15 degree increments.

If I understand your description correctly, what you are looking for is numpad 4 and 6 to orbit.

Thank you very much!!!! Works great.


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How to export selected objects using three.js exporter
I can find there is an option to export a single object or the entire scene, is there a way to export only the selected objects

What exporter are you using? Seems like one of them only exports selected objects anyway: https://github.com/satori99/threejs-blender-export

To export multiple objects please check the answer made by @poor found here very helpful and useful and you can edit the script to fit your needs.


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Showing mouse event in blender info panel
It is interesting to see that the api for all operations happening in blender is shown in the info panel. Is it possible to show the mouse operations also, such as stocking with mouse during texturing painting?

Finally i could find that there is an option in blender called "debug_wm" which can be enabled by typing
bpy.app.debug_wm=True

in the python console which lets you see the those function calls linked to the mouse. Make sure that you launch blender from the terminal as the logs are written to the terminal on which blender is opened.


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Child - Parent positioning
I'm working on a script that will add several child objects to a single parent object. One child each time the script is run. I want each child to be moved over and placed next to the previous child on the x-axis. I'm having trouble positioning the children relative to the parent.
How can I set the exact position of a child object relative to its parent object?

It should be as simple as
child.location = (x,y,z)

If this does not work, post a stripped-down minimal version of your script so that we can run it and see what goes wrong

Thanks, Mutant Bob. That solved it. I'm new to this, so bear with me and my silly questions.


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Ugly stripes when rendering with GPU, even with high samples
I came across a problem which I couldn't find any solution through google.
With my new GPU (R9 390X) I get when rendering with it, distinct stripes, especially in darker areas.
Does anyone know the reason for this?
Thanks a lot!

I uploaded the .blend file here:

I guess you activated OpenCL which is an experimental 'config'. Like discussted in this Maniphest for blender-problems https://developer.blender.org/T30886 there is not much that can be done now.

Yes It´s a Radeon R390X. It looks like AMD screwed up the driver.  ... OpenCL rendering is broken with latest Crimson drivers (16.4.1) ...


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A way to combine a vertex shape with a pose?
I have been doing some rigging recently on a character I made, I was trying to make the fist pose and found out that the only way to having a realistic fist pose is by moving some mesh vertices around while keeping the bones at the fist pose (bone deformation almost gave me a heart attack)  is there a way to retrieve the fist pose from the pose library along with the shape key of the adjusted vertices automatically so they form a total fist shape? I dont think drivers will be of help for me, cause this involves many finger bones and the shot is not worthy of this setup.
Thank you.

Per hand Driver Approach,
Add a custom property (for example sake "prop") to the hand bones (assuming names "hand.L" and "hand.R") of your armature.  Use this property to drive your fist shape-keys.
Hunt down the hand bone as the variable target, make it a single property variable type,  with pose.bones["hand.R"]["prop"] the data_path.

Each bone custom property is saved with the pose.

Perfect, I guess shape keys is the only solution for this, having it switched on and off with a custom property in the hand bones is the most efficient in my case, thanks alot.


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Can't convert the Ruler/Protractor into any Geometry type
So I clicked on "Ruler/Protractor" button, drew a 3-meter line, and tried to convert it into a curve or poly but no joy. The options are inactive before you go into Ruler mode, and when you actually go into the Ruler mode and draw the actual line, the mouse cursor changes into a crosshair shape and does not allow you to click on any button in the UI. And when I hit enter, I'm out of Ruler mode, the line disappears, and the "Convert to Geometry" 3 drop-down menu options are inactive again.
Is that a bug in Blender or am I missing something?

Thanks, I did exactly as you said. The menu was active indeed, but it gave an error:
"Current Grease Pencil strokes have no valid timing data, most timing options will be hidden!" The exclamation mark was in the actual line

That isn't an error, it's a notification that's Grease Pencil layer doesn't have any data related to movements of the pencil when drawing it (as it's drawn procedurally by Blender itself it won't have any). Timing is related to cases when you drew a sketch with GP with a pen of graphic tablet and want to save data about how fast was your hand moving when drawing it etc for further use. So it looks like error but you can just skip that

This isn't a bug. Once drawn ruler gets saved into a Grease Pencil layer specifically created for it. However this layer will be hidden so that's why it seems that ruler disappears. With it visible converting a ruler into geometry is the same as for converting GP strokes into curves.
After hitting Enter to store the ruler, open Properties shelf with N, scroll it to the Grease Pencil layers rollout and enable visibility for the layer with the ruler/-s (it should be called something like "RulerData3D"). Make sure to select the layer itself. Then options in the Toolshelf > Grease Pencil > Convert to Geometry will become active.

Note that as Store ruler is used after drawning it to pass it to Grease Pencil and then - to geometry, if you press Ruler/Protractor to draw another one, the one you drew before will be still there (it is saved as ruler regardless).


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Python: Select faces of a certain size?
I have a complex mesh that I want to select its "large" faces only, as the mesh has considerably large faces and much smaller ones. Is there a way I can write a script to select faces that are larger than a certain amount in Blender, Imperial, or Meter units?

There is an existing operator for this: Select Similar (Shift-G).
Select one of the larger faces, then do Select Similar > Area. Then press F6 to adjust the threshold until all the faces you want are selected.
If you need to do this with Python, one option would be to just call the operator directly, though finding the exact threshold programmatically may be tricky.
bpy.ops.mesh.select_similar(type='AREA', threshold=0.5)
Note that calling operators in python is not really best practice. If you want to do it properly, you'll have to get all the faces and coordinates of their vertices and calculate the area yourself.

Bmesh Version
Simple test script, run in edit mode. Rather than a particular size, which is a little tricky once scale is involved, for example sake, selects faces 6 x larger than average face area.  ... find the max, and select all faces over a certain percentage of that or.... use the sorted list to select n biggest etc etc.
Note this doesn't take into account mesh deformed by modifiers.
import bpy
import bmesh
context = bpy.context

FACTOR = 6
ob = context.edit_object
me = ob.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
avg_face_area = sum(f.calc_area() for f in bm.faces) / len(bm.faces)
print("avge face area: ", avg_face_area)

# biggest is last member of faces sorted
#faces = sorted(bm.faces, key=lambda f: f.calc_area())

for f in bm.faces:
    f.select = f.calc_area() > FACTOR * avg_face_area

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

A run on Suzie

I appreciate this input greatly. Time to get some hands-on scripting!


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Mantaflow fluid does not take the shape of a sphere (Blender 2.8)
I created a sphere and set it up as a container for Mantaflow Fluid. I created another sphere and set it up as an inflow object. No matter what I do and how I play with the values, I can't seem to get the fluid take the shape of the sphere, it only takes the shape of a cube. Seems that it only takes the shape of the bounding box of the container.
Attached are the parameters I'm using, if ever needed.

Are you trying to get regular fluid inside a rather spherical container or .... rather fantasy water sphere with a more magical effect?

The container/domain will always use the bounding box of the object (the cube/rectangle that enclose the object), you can see it by changing the object display to Bounds:

If you want to have the liquid stay in a shape that's not a rectangular box, you have to use a separate object set to Effector to act as a container.
For example, if you want the sphere to act as the walls of a container:

Duplicate it
Set the fluid type to Effector
Go into edit mode, and flip the normals so that they face inwards.
Back inside the simulation settings, set Is Planar, and turn up the Surface Thickness until things stop leaking

Put your flow source inside the sphere.
Bake
???
Profit!

You should get something looking like this:

Here's the blend file:

Worked beautifully! Thank you.

Consider using older versions of Blender. Older versions of blender may have shape preserving features. This effect would be for more fantasy scenes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WruTNnF6Ztg
It is not clear that this one does.  It appears you have a domain and a source of fluid.  The fluid does not retain the shape of the source of the fluid.


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What is thie cube around my meshes
I have a model edited with blender. I selected all my meshes and made CTRL-A to reset scale and location. Since then, 8 of my meshes have some akward kind ob cube around them. What is it and how can I hide these cubes? I must have done a bad manipulation here but I don't know when and how I made it. Google is not helping me there neither.

Looks like texture space visualization. Head over to the properties panel -> Object tab -> Display -> turn off Texture space.

Like Jerryno said as comment, it is a texture space visualization. that can be hiden in object tag -> Display


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how do you render falling snow (particles) in cycles render?
I can't get the snow I made to be visible in the final animation.

See my answer here on how to render particles.

Particles are just points in space, by default have no geometry or anything for light to interact with so they do not render.  There are several ways to render particles, but for your case I would use Object particles.
First create the object you want to use for the snowflakes.  The level of detail depends on how close and in focus the snowflakes will be, but for most applications a simple circle with 8 vertices should work fine.
Next go to the Render rollout of the particle system and select Object and select the snowflake object to use for the particles.

@aoifec250  Glad I could help!  To mark that this question has been solved you can mark it as accepted by clicking the checkmark under the voting buttons.


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Render coloring question
So I made a platform like you would see in a tron game. There's an outline of the object that I colored orange and the rest is black. My problem is that when I render the object with f12, all I see is the black color. Is there a way to make the render show the orange outline too?

Please place an image your question.  Show your outliner and objects.  Blender Render or Cycles Render?

Make sure you have multiple lights in the scene.


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Selection of bones to selection of tails of bones
I have an armature with a bunch of bones with zero length, and I can select one and do Select > Similar > Length to get all of the bones with no length, however I'm unable to scale bones since they have no length, or increase the length since the whole bone is selected.
I would like to be able to just select only tails of bones, or select a bunch of bones then change the selection so it only affects the tail.

I did actually figure this out, I'm just making this post in case other people need it. I select the bones i want the tail of and run this python script.
import bpy

bselect = bpy.context.selected_bones
bpy.ops.armature.select_all(action='DESELECT')

for bone in bselect:
    bone.select_tail = True

I could have done bone.select = False and bone.select_head = False however it just didnt work to deselct the head. so not sure.


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Tiny geometrical irregulatities in model imported from Rhino
Im migrating an assembly with over 300 parts as .obj to blender to animate it.
Some of the gaps of the rhino geometry get filled with extremly tiny polygons. The resulting surfaces are well connected and dont overlap. The marked gap-filling surface has a width of 0,0001mm:

Yet those surfaces have extreme effects on the shading of the object:

In the left is a high-poly, in the right a low-poly version. The surface from the first image is still selected, but too small to be seen. Even though the whole surface is really smooth you can see strong shadows.
My question is: What do you think is the most effective way of dealing with such exporting artifacts?
I know there are many different approaches, like other export options, rebuilding the rhino surface, changing the smoothing of the surface, simplifying the surface etc, but Im new to this program and dont know which is the most elegant way.
Its a bit annoying that such small features have such a big impact. Since I have a lot to export, Im expecting to see this problem over and over again.

Thanks cegaton, that is a good idea. Now I have the problem that the surfaces I want to get rid of are SO small, that they are being ignored by box or brush select. Madness.

If geometry is beyond recovery, but the shape of the object remains intact (like in your case), it can sometimes work to regenerate the object using a combination of the Remesh modifier (with as many levels your machine can handle), and then using the Decimate modifier to simplify the resulting mesh.
In more detail:

The Remesh modifier will approximate your geometry by fitting it to a grid of voxels and connecting them to reform the mesh - a technique which will only approximate your geometry, but can get quite close at high resolutions. The key part here is that once "remeshed", your object will have uniform detail everywhere.
The high level of detail on the resulting mesh will then need simplification (as big flat surfaces will have been created out of many polygons instead of just one or two), which can be achieved well using techniques posted in other answers to this question: using Limited dissolve on the mesh in Edit mode, or applying a Decimate modifier (which has a few more options, but can accomplish the same result).

Note that this strategy will require you to reapply materials, remake UV maps, seams, sharp edges, etc. and is thus to be used as a last resort, or as the first step in your workflow if you are going to perform these steps afterwards.

that's a common importing problem.
The easiest solution I found was to remove doubled vertices and to quadrangulate the object.
In simple steps:
Edit mode > Vertices > select all > Mesh / vertices / remove doubles.
Then:
Edit mode > Faces > select all > Mesh / faces / tris to quads (or Alt+J)
This should result in an acceptable mesh object that can be nicely subdivided.
If you need hard edges, try the Edge Split deformer before adding a Subdivide.
Hope that helps.

Thank you for sharing your experience.
In my case it unfortunately doesnt help. The tiny surfaces survive the "remove doubles" as well as the "tris to quads". The result looks even weirder. http://imgur.com/mc5OAyW
Limited dissolve makes it worse as well.
My own solution with the minimum edge length didnt get rid of the tiny surfaces either.

Another idea:
select your mesh, choose X > Limited Dissolve and execute Degenerate Dissolve from Mesh > Clean-Up menu. Just an idea though.

Okay, I just realized that I brought this problem upon myself.
The solution to avoid this problem forever is just entering a "minimal edge length" when exporting.
EDIT: This does not work. There are still surfaces with a width way below the given limit.

authors: Дмитрий Черников


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UV map not rendering properly
I rendered my car with an unwrapped UV map, and it worked fine (see result image top right hand side).
But afterwards the UV Map seems to be misaligned. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks
Agatha

Hard to tell from the images alone. Could you post a screenshot of your material's node setup, or perhaps upload your blend file? Have you tried explicitly attaching a n UV node to the images vector input socket? Anyway, this all seems very unnecessary, you model seems to be using simple solid colors alone, this could be easily achieved with a few different materials and a bunch of material slots.

When we UV unwrap a model, blender knows the image and uvmap that we are working with and helps us by using it in the viewport shading to make unwrapping easier.
The uvmap that blender uses in the viewport also needs to be setup in the material before the render engine will know to use it. It may be that you had it setup before but inadvertently removed it by mistake.
Under your image details you have a Vector input that you need to connect your uvmap to. Click on default and select UV under Texture Coordinate.

If you were using the node editor, it would look like this -

If you have multiple UVMap's setup on your model you can use a UVMap node instead of the Texture Coordinate node to select which UVMap to use.


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UV-place the same trim sheet evenly on several objects
TL;DR
It's not about creating the best possible trim sheet, but about how to cleverly place a trim sheet on different objects in such a way that no transition can be seen. Almost in such a way that each UV corresponds perfectly and analogously to the placement of the previous object.
Details
For my project I am building a modular kit with Blender.
I have several individual pieces and would like to texture them using a trim sheet.

The problem is that (not least due to the different details like doors and windows) I’ve had trouble getting the UV mapping done accurately so that the individual pieces fit seamlessly with one another.
I wonder if there are more clever and efficient ways to unwrap the individual pieces.
Currently I select a single wall, UV-Unwrapped it and then draw the UV shape by eye so that it roughly fits. What is good practice here? Is it possible to use a kind of “snapping” or other options so that the UVs fit together despite their different shapes?

This isn't necessarily snapping, but the UV Editor has an panel that display the UV coordinate. You can enter values to move selected UVs. That can be helpful if you know the exact position of the texture seam. It's under UV Vertex, in the Image Tab.


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Animate which faces a material is assigned to
I have a sphere with various materials assigned to different faces. I want to animate it, so the materials get assigned to different faces while the animation is running. Of course, I could always create a different material for each face manually and animate each one separately, but that is boring and repetitive. Is there any easy way to achieve this, maybe built-in or using AnimAll?

What is the desired end result? Because if you just want to change the color you can have one multicolored texture and animate it using the Hue/Saturation/Value Node's Hue slider to cycle through the color wheel.

How many faces? How many colors?  How many frames before a color change. How much randomness?  Cycles Render.  Blender Internal Render.

Needs more info. Probably need to rethink the material itself rather than change materials.

Two preliminary animations. Top with constant color. Lower with linear interpolated color.  2 Samples [only] per frame with Cycles, thus graininess. The OP can deliver more exact visual requirements.
import bpy
import datetime

print(datetime.datetime.today())

def object_id_mark():
    m = 0
    for s in bpy.context.selected_objects:
        m = m + 1
        s.pass_index = m

object_id_mark()

In the Python above, the object index is assigned values to coordinate with the materials nodes.  Those objects are the faces of a sphere with a parent for grouping.  Extrude Individual Faces and Separate Spare Parts.  Those objects have the same parent. They can be easily selected and the script above is executed.

Material Nodes, note the group. Image above.

Detail of Group.  Image above.
Material Nodes.    The color ramp interpolation can be set to constant or linear.  Click to see larger image.

Correct RNA path.  Image above.

Be especially careful on the node named [Datablock Careful].  This value is the current frame in a material node which requires Datablock Driver. The 3 Panels are intended to stress the necessity of navigating a deep heirarchy in the Data-Blocks Mode of the Outlner Window.
ObjectName/MaterialSlots/[MaterialName]/Material/[MaterialName]/NodeTree/ShaderNodes/[NodeName]
then
Outputs/Value/Node/[NodeName]/DefaultValue
This list is quite long and my path may not meet exactly your reading of the path. Changing the value manually will verify you have correctly navigated the hierarchy.  The Outliner Data-Blocks window interface may help you reduce clicks by automatically opening a single choice when present.
Image Above.

Just to look at a different way of doing this, I thought I would use bpy.app.handlers to do the material changes.
If we were starting from an empty scene we can create the sphere and a material with a random colour for each face.
import bpy
import random

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_uv_sphere_add(segments=12, ring_count=12,
                                    size=1, location=(0, 0, 0))
obj = bpy.context.active_object

# clear any existing material slots
while len(obj.material_slots):
    bpy.ops.object.material_slot_remove()

# create a random coloured material for each face
# adjust this number to have less materials if desired
# eg for f in range(10): will only create 10 materials
for f in range(len(obj.data.polygons)):
    mat = bpy.data.materials.new('randomColour')
    bpy.ops.object.material_slot_add()
    obj.material_slots[-1].material = mat
    r = random.random()
    g = random.random()
    b = random.random()
    # mat.diffuse_color is also used by cycles for viewport colour
    # and as a fallback if nodes are not active
    mat.diffuse_color.r = r
    mat.diffuse_color.g = g
    mat.diffuse_color.b = b

Now that we have a material for each face, lets make a way to randomise what material each face uses.
import bpy
import random

def randomise_materials(scene):
    obj = scene.objects['Sphere']
    polys = obj.data.polygons
    if scene.frame_current == 1:
        # by setting a seed on frame 1 we can get
        # a repeatable sequence during playback
        random.seed(5)
    m_idx = []
    i = 0
    for x in range(len(polys)):
        # we want a list matching the number of faces
        # it can only contain indexes matching available materials
        if i >= len(obj.material_slots):
            i = 0
        m_idx.append(i)
        i += 1
    # after creating a list of indexes we can shuffle them
    # and then copy to the matching poly.material_index
    random.shuffle(m_idx)
    for i,p in enumerate(polys):
        p.material_index = m_idx[i]

# set materials on first run
randomise_materials(bpy.context.scene)

Then to use this for an animation we append this function to the handlers list.
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(randomise_materials)

And if you want to disable it
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.remove(randomise_materials)


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Subdivide a face into smaller faces
Here is my sphere:

I want to subdivide the face I'm selecting into four, like I did with the other ones. But, when I go to W->Subdivide Smooth, the surrounding dots just move closer to the face, and the face doesn't subdivide in four. Why is this and how can I fix it?

the faces you're subdividing are NGons, not quads or tris, because you subdivided the surrouding faces. Subdividing them adds vertices but no edge.

What you can do is dissolving the non desired vertices with X

Then joining them to make edge and faces, select 2 vertices and hit J

subdivide smooth on the new edge and join


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Animation add mesh part
For my project I've make an human animation with a first Mesh and Rigify Addon. THe animation works fine, and now i would like to add to the first Mesh an head to become more realistic. How can i do that without restart my animation ?
Thanks for answers,
Theo

Assuming there is head-mesh there already, you can subdivide the head-mesh further and start adding in details.  The weights get interpolated into the subdivisions, so you won't have to re-animate, re-weight-paint after sub-dividing.
How to sculpt a realistic head is out of the scope of this question, but suffice to say there are plenty of resources on learning that.


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How to get rid of triangulation in STL glass
I've imported an STL file from a CAD program the the object in Blender is to be a smooth glass item. Unfortunately, when I render, it comes out very jagged.
After importing, I implemented an Edge Split and Smooth shading. Despite these additions, the object looks like what is attached. Considering that it's basically a modified disk, it should be smooth through the object. Any suggestions on how to rectify this issue? Thank you!

Can you upload a .blend file?

I'm afraid I can not. It's for my work.

If you have the option use .obj, .fbx or .3ds for transfering data. That doesn't quarantee good results but you will want quads always. the jagged surface is probably originally an n-gon, you could select the jagged area and start cutting appropriate lines fromedge vertex to another with K.

The STL from a cad program is not going to have good topology. Topology is important for smooth shading and even more so for a glass shader.
It is kind of hard to tell from that one picture, but your mesh may have more issues then just bad topology.
A quick and easy way to possibly fix your mesh is to add a Remesh modifier.

That modifier will make a completely new mesh (out of evenly sized quads) that closely matches the shape of the original.

Thank you! I've had this issue many times and the remesh was the best option so far. It doesn't work so well for really complex shapes but it certainly handles most very well.

You can try to repair you mesh with some tools.
As i don't know your topology, let's use a simple cylinder with NGons as an example.

Here you have the views of the cylinder with a subsurf, smooth shaded and the rendered view.
1 : the supposed original mesh, with NGons
2 : the same mesh triangulated, as your imported mesh is supposed to be.
Now let's quadify it. Select all with A and then Alt+J. This might be enough to fix your mesh if there was no NGon in the original one.
3 : quadified mesh
If there was some NGons, select the face loop around the cylinder (possible with quads) with Ctrl+Alt+Right Click.

Invert the selection with Ctrl+I

Use F to make the faces NGons. NGons are supposed to be flat.
Now we're at step 4, or back to 1 : the original mesh.
Select your NGons, use I to inset, move your mouse to place your edges and left click. Do it again if necessary.
5 : repaired mesh

Thank you for this answer! You gave a very nice and detailed response and I appreciate that!


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Adding multiple colors to an object without assigning them
I want my object to be able to have multiple color choices to choose from, but I don't want to make it multicolored by assigning the colors to different faces. Like, say I made a ring, and I wanted people to be able to choose what color they want it to be. How do I do that?

You can add as many material as you want and change the active material whenever you choose.

You click the + button next to the material name to create a new material.
You will want to make sure you click the F so that is highlighted, this creates a fake user that ensures the material is saved with the file. Normally unused materials will not get saved.


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How can I get rid of all this noise
I want to render a scene where light shines through a ball with holes so I get a dot-pattern similar to a disco ball. (see pictures) The problem I have at the moment is that my render is very noise and I just can't find a way to get rid of it. I tried quite a lot of different "solutions" that are supposed to fix it but with no success. Using more samples also doesn't really help. (I'm using 500 samples) I hope someone can help me with it.
I uploaded the pictures here: https://i.sstatic.net/pOo7C.jpg
and the .blend file here: http://koncake.bplaced.net/blender/wasserglaubich.zip
(I couldn't use blend-exchange because the file was to big)

500 samples is really a small number for most scenes. Turn that up to 1500 or 2000 and see how it looks then. There are ways to make more samples render faster, but the only way to really get rid of noise is more samples.
The issue of noise in Cycles has already been covered well in other answers, so I won't duplicate that here. Search the site, and you will find all the information we have to offer.
This answer is the best place to start: How to avoid noisy renders in Cycles?


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Blender Doesn't Permit Indices in Drivers?
I have a variable in a driver that I would like to be able to "switch on and off". To do this, I figured I could give this variable a power, another variable that would link to a custom property. I can then make the custom property 1, for enabled, or 0 for disabled - as a number to the power 0 is 1 and 1 multiplied by another number is just that other number.
I.e. x^y*z .
However Blender doesn't seem to support this. Here is the error from the console:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for ^: 'float' and 'float'
Any ideas as to why this is? It seems like pretty standard math to me. If not, any ideas how to get around it?

simple python syntax error, use ** for power of.

not strictly a Blender issue either...  this would be equally well at home on stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34258537/python-typeerror-unsupported-operand-types-for-float-and-int

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it pertains to the meaning and effect of default operator symbols in Python.

Or just use x * z  if y else x as your driver expression.

As I said in the comments
Raising a value to a power is pretty standard math, something python can defiantly do.
Your trouble comes from a simple python syntax error. You are using ^ when the syntax in python is  ** for power of (^ is the bitwise XOR operator
).  As you can see here in the python docs ** is the the correct form.
You could alternatively use pow() function.


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High poly mesh slow in blender?
trying to animate highpoly mesh about 1 million polygons even slower when I try to apply physics like softbodies is there a way around this?seems like I really got to lower the polygons in order to run smooth.

Are you aware of the technique of generating a normalmap from a highpoly model and applying it to a lowpoly version of the same model?

Looks like you'll have to retopologize your model to make the topology less dense and then bake normals from the high poly model to the low poly one. Search for RETOPOLOGY and BAKING NORMALS tags.

You may retopologize your model and then bake normals from the high poly model to the low poly one. This will save all the details but the geometry won't be as dense, so it will be more animation friendly.

First you have to retopologize your high poly model (take a look at these answers: How to easily make mesh retopology? and How to convert from high poly to low poly).
There are two models pictured below. The high poly one with a very dense geometry on the left and low poly one with a simple retopologized geometry on the right. With your retopologized model you'll be able to bake the details from the high poly model to the low poly one.

Here's how to do it. First unwrap your low poly mesh and create a new texture with the desired parameters.

Next select (with the RMB) the high poly model, then select the low poly one.

Go to Render data header and under Bake panel change the mode to Normals, check the Selected to Active checkbox, then press the Bake button. After Blender finishes baking save the image to your computer.

Now give your low poly model a material, go to Texture header, open your previously saved image and set the settings as pictured below.

To see the normal map in action change the viewport shading type to Rendered and set the GLSL option in the Shading panel of Properties Shelf (N).

I showed the normal map baking in Blender Render engine. If you want to do it in Cycles engine please check out this topic: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/55680/how-to-create-normal-texture-with-node-setup

now I have a better understanding thank you for taking the time and explaining it.


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rigging mesh deformed
trying to rig bvh armature to mesh but as you can see makes the mesh severely deformed first I have the armature in rest position then I switch to pose position is there a way to fix this?tried adjusting the bones in edit mode no difference.

Note sure with just these two pictures, but this looks like a rotation problem. Try to apply the rotation on your mesh (ctrl+A then rotation)

Definitely looks like a mesh without rotation + scale being applied. Maybe position, too?


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Snapping Pose Bones to Vertex 90 degrees Off
I'm trying to snap the tail of a pose bone to a vertex in another mesh.  When I hit R or G to start moving the bone, it snaps just fine, but rotates the bone approximately 90 degrees away from the point it's snapping to.  I would like the dotted line it's using for snapping to go from the head to the tail of the bone.
Pre-snap

During snap

Desired snap (simulated by holding "Ctrl" while rotating)

I'm sure this is a coordinate system feature, just not sure how to work with it.


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Triangles in object mode, how to make them disappear?
I have tried hundreds of times and different ways and no luck.
See my geometry , it  is a little door with round corners in another object.
No overlapping  vertices, set shaded to smooth, mesh looks OK but in object mode I see these ugly lines .
Please guide me in the right direction on how to make it look smooth.
Thank you!

If you show more of the screen with the mode .. then it will be easier to work with your question.  There is a user option.  Show all edges.  Please turn it off.  Sometimes a person may want to see all edges.  Apparently not you.  Of course the edges do not appear in the render ... Correct?

In the object panel you can choose Viewport Display ... there is a choice Wire and Display all edges.  Your exploration there should turn off the edges.

maybe share your object? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

You see all edges in both objects and then third screenshot shows both objects in object mode. All Edges are are not clicked in Vieport display and it has no effect on what I see in object mode


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Edges looks sharp in smooth mesh
Why do I see edges in my object? It is smooth, has enough vertices , has Edge Split Modifier.And shading is set to "Smooth"
Any idea please?
enter image description here

Probably obvious, but always good first things to do is make sure to check for/clean up any dupes (M > By Distance), and recalculate normals (Edit mode > Select al > Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Outside)

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/208676/92768


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Network Render recognizes both computers, sees the job, but is STUCK ON QUEUE
I am running 2.78 on two identical Macbook Pros. I've setup 1 to be the slave, one to be the master, and they seem to be connected and able to send jobs... however, when I try to start the render, it just remains stuck on "Queued" when I check on the Master Monitor.
I'll try to summarize what I've already troubleshooted:

Both Slave and Master are on the same network with their TMP folders changed to both point to the same location (a folder stored on my Google Drive)
I tried unchecking all of the "Tags" under Slave/Slave Settings on the master computer
I've tried exporting my files as separate PNGs to be combined later, rather than exporting 1 Movie file.

No luck still. Anyone have help? :)

Offtopic rant: Never ever ever render animations directly from 3D into movie files, always to image sequences


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When Rendered In Cycles Lamps Seem To Disappear
When I render there seems to be no lighting in the scene.
Here's a link to download the files
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4y9dqUn871TdnhGVzg3czFGY2s

Check your objects visibility and renderability in the outliner

If there were no lights it would be black, it looks more like you need to turn up the lights to make it brighter.

An area lamp in your scene is restricted from rendering.

Open an outliner.
Select the lamp with the Render icon turned off and enable rendering.


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Movie set as image texture not playing in cycles?
So, I set a .mov file as the image texture of some shapes and when I try and scroll through the timeline, the preview/render just stays as a single image. It should be changing accordingly, right?
I've been trying for hours figuring out and searching for answers—I think I did everything right setting the thing up, but surely something somewhere has gone wrong.
Here is a screenshot of the different views I have:

Thank you for your help!

It looks like you've already done this, but for it to update (at least in textured mode) the object needs to be selected.

There is nothing wrong with your setup, it just not well supported to update animated textures under the viewport at the moment. Textures will update correctly once you render.

Well, you should enable auto-refresh in the image texture node so the image is refreshed every frame. Other than that I have made the experience before that I additionally had to set the frame range, start frame, etc. in the image editor for the corresponding texture.

Okay, so I tried your suggestions (I did them right, right?) and it doesn't seem to be working! Whenever I scrub through the timeline, the whole video doesn't play, only maybe a few frames at the start but it doesn't reach the end.
Here's a new screenshot of the changes that I did! link

Ooh also! How about the nodes? Do the nodes look alright or do they also affect my problem?

It looks like you did it exactly right.
It could be file related. Maybe your video file is somehow corrupt.
I think in any case it would help if you used an images sequence instead of a .mov file though. Try converting it and set it up the same way you did before with the converted sequence.

My video file is alright and plays fine, also converted it to different file formats but ultimately, using an image sequence instead of a movie file did the trick for me!!! Thank you very much for your help.

To update the image in the viewport, the only solution I've found is to have a window open with the UV/Image Editor (this has to remain open the whole time), select your movie texture, press N (or use the little plus sign at the right of the window) to get some more options. Once there, you need to update the frame count according to your material node, and also check "Auto-Refresh". Once you do that, do not close the UV/Image Editor, and you can now scrub the timeline and it should update your movie in the viewport.
Also, click the refresh button. You may then see the frame count get updated.

Hope this made sense. I guess blender treats the images differently between the viewport and the actual render.
I doubt you still need this solution, but for future reference I wanted to post this.

This worked for me in 3.2

In version 2.78 I found that clicking 'match movie length' resolved the issue.
*I was running a background image-movie ( you can see in the left panel ) as well as a texture image-movie on a flat surface. If you only have a texture image-movie, then I would try matching just it.

This answer is describing a setting for the internal renderer, the question is referring to cycles though.


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Using Walk Navigation like Unity and Unreal
I'm using Blender 2.8 and wanted to change some settings on the viewport navigation.
I always wanted some way to navigate in the 3D world like we can with Unreal and Unity. In this new version, I could changed the Walk Navigation mode shortcut to activate when I'm pressing the RMB. (You can do that by going to Veiw >> Navigation, Right clicking on Walk Navigatio >> Add Shortcut, and pressing the RMB)
That works extremly well, but when releasing the RMB, you lose the movement and the camera resets to where it was before. I can press the LMB, so it stays at the same place, but it's anoying to do that all the time. I think that happens just like you cancel an action clicking the RMB.
So, is there a way to cancel the canceling of camera movement by pressing the RMB? Or, is there any other better way to move the camera like that?
Thanks.


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How to remove visible seams between joining objects
I have a single object that i have separated into many objects due to sizing issues (level of detail/triangles bla bla) and since separating them there are now seams between each new object in blender.
here are some examples:

https://gyazo.com/10a8c9008a8419b6499ac17f865e06d9
https://gyazo.com/ed704c4f3d8463b0fb7c1d476940c507
How do I get rid of these. I know it's do-able, however I have not done it in, many a year.
Cheers

It's due to normals: separated objects have their own and they can't be "aligned" with other objects, even if you make them absolutely adjacent or overlapped. I can't understand the need to split an object due to its levels/triangles (splitting objects gives more geometry, not less), but imho that is the cause.

see this question/answers also (there was another one I saw, can't find it now, though): http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/67629/how-to-make-a-smooth-mesh

Hey there, I needed to separate the object as it is being imported into SL and it had too many triangles and too many face per material or, whatever lol I can't remember how they worded it. So I have the object split into left arm, right arm, torso, legs etc... I don't understand how to apply the solution in that link to my project as the open ends of the now split object isn't flat and to creat a face on the ends to cap it off would cause clipping

See here (for basically a duplicate of @user230574 's answer)

As someone mentioned in the comments, this is caused by how normals are calculated for each mesh you split off. The normals at the vertices along the edge of your split meshes are now pointing in slightly different directions. To fix this, transfer the normals from your original un-split mesh to the parts you split it into. You can do this using the Data Transfer modifier.
Comprehensive steps to fix:

Create a copy of your original un-split mesh and place in the scene. You can hide this mesh.
Split your original mesh into the pieces you want.
Add the DataTransfer modifier to the split pieces with the following settings

Source object - this should be set to your original un-split mesh copy
See screenshot for other settings

I have had the same problem, if tried going into the wire mainframe and deleting the conjoined messy parts ect, i guess helps or optimization as well. However, the main reason it was bugging me when when I go to paint, the seams are all messy, however I found a solution for this.
In the UV editor section when painting, in your UV section to paint on, find the part with the seam, and paint and clean up the seam from the UV editor. I have made my seams almost impossible to recognize with a little bit of blending and art.


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Issue with smooth shading

What you'll see is flat shading then smooth shading. It is splitting the object down the middle in a disection for soem reason, in regards to shade and lighting.
This effect carries over into other programs when exported as well.
I made this object from a cube and used a boolean to make the cutouts.

Hi. Can you show a screen shot in edit mode (in order to see what has been done by the boolean)

Hi lemon, here you go : https://gyazo.com/894fd40ceb65481b88e900c894169afc

ok... so... big bad ngons... have a try (on a copy of your object) : in edit mode, select all, then ctrl+T. That will show you the "real" geometry. Please again, send a screen shot of it

Here you go lemon : https://gyazo.com/bc6a81c591ccfce20433385be9e9c3fb

ok... I am not able to explain it technically speaking, but what you see here is the cause of your problem. Rendering systems (SL or even Blender) does not like such ngons because the inner geometry is not regular at all. So AFAIK, you need to correct it manually or model it from scratch respecting as far as possible some topology principles. To say it differently, boolean seems to be an easy way but it has such consequences.

What you can try (but not sure it will work) : start with a more subdivided cube and then apply the boolean with your "cutting shape". That will localize the holes a bit more and you can hope to have less distortions.

other possibility (simplier if it works here) : in edit mode, select the inner "ring" faces and set smooth only on it (so not in object mode but in edit mode : you find that in the shading/UVs tab of the tools panel)

Thank you lemon, just to clarify, when you say fix it manually, do you mean to remove as many of those many inner edges as possible?

I mean having ideally quads only (faces of 4 vertices) and as regular as possible. Some technics here (or other equivalent) can help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc52fcrHvAA

Thank you lemon, just one more question, if I try and dissolve or delete an edge and it says "invalid boundary region to join faces"
Does that mean that particular edge is 100% needed for the object to stay in it's current shape?

my answer will be : "probably"... (I am not sure in fact)

No worries lemon, just an update on my work so far. I decided on the manual rout as im not in the frame of mind for really, learningand don't mind the length of time it takes... This is what I have ; https://gyazo.com/c53305a78d4217612c279f48defe005a
Everywhere else looks great on that side (to me anyway) bar those three edges coming from that lower right corner. I cant delete two of them and the one I can creates ... this : https://gyazo.com/9d694807a7c043316d5e36c7513cfafe
I think i JUST figured how to fix that actually.

Hey lemon, for some reason, after I ctrl T to see the teleometry, it messes some parts up, like, removes and edge here and there and I found whilst fixing those, any edges I had removed, all sprung back up again... So in the end I just tried a little bit at a time and whilst the odd shadowing went away on the outside it stayed on the decorative bits.
Also, this only seems to happen, when i view materials and rendering.
I'll take a look at your YT link soon.

probably you went back to object mode and ctrl+Z. At object mode level 'undo' will step back to the last state in object mode. So what have been edited (edit mode) in between is undo'ed'

A possible approach to do it with quads only :

Start with a square and subdivide it W then subdivide
Extrude E and scale down S
Make a copy and round it to sphere (Alt+Shift+S then move the mouse to the right)
Keep only the wanted vertices it each
Move back the angular part and align it : set the cursor as pivot point, select the vertices then scale S+Z0 and for the other part S+X0
Remove doubles

Concerning the shading, that may be dependent on your target system (sL ?)... so you may need to give it a try.
Possibilities :

Global smooth
Inner edge loop smooth
Global smooth + edgesplit modifier


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UV Layout for texturing - stretched areas
I have made myself a simple enough pillar. (gif below)
https://gyazo.com/f0a73328a9e2b69d51f092e56f9c9c5d
The issue I am having is with the UV. I have tried unwrapping faces separately, in various groups and, as you see it in the gif, one side of the pillar at a time.
The issue is that whilst the more compact faces look amazing with the texture, the larger areas look stretched out.
How do I make all areas of the UV map work, so that the texture doesn't stretch?
Idealy I'd like to be able to slap a tileable texture on the bake map in PS and it all look amazing in world (this is for sl)

related http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/58971/how-to-get-rid-of-stretches/58972#58972. But with a difference as SL allows UV to be larger than the texture : so you can stretch the UV maybe here in one direction if you dedicate a part of the texture for that.

Hi lemon, so based on that link... I would need to separate the longer parts of my UV map, and stretch them until the texture fits properly?

Yes. Just select the corresponding face in the 3D view so that only this face appears in the UV map view. Then place/stretch the UV as needed.

Hi lemon, Thank you, that works exactly as I need it to.


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UN Parent armature but keep the pose
I am asking this question as I cannot get this to work using the suggestions in other peoples posts.
I am trying to un parent my mesh from the armature, whilst keeping the pose and the corresponding weights.
Before applying the armature I have :

I have attempted to set the pose to the rest pose
Attempted to set the rotation and scale and location (this makes my mesh do weird things)
Attempted ctrl P > armature deform
I have attempted baking the action and clearing the parent

None of these have worked. They either retard the mesh, or, when the armature is applied, the mesh loses the pose.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Apply the armature modifier. Then unparent.

Hi Jerryno, when I apply the armature, I lose the pose.

I managed to figure out what my issue was. The above answer's did work. However what I failed to mention was I couldn't just 'apply' the armature and was using the 'apply using shape keys' button.
This was due tot he file I imported coming with shape keys (unbeknownst to me as I don't know blender very well). In order for me to have baked my shape, I needed to delete those shape keys under the 'objects' tab and then the 'shape keys' drop down part.
After this, it was as simple as applying the armature, and then deleting it.
Thank you to those who offered their help and advice.


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Add outline to object
When you select an object in blender a yellowish ring appears around it. And no matter how much your rotate your view or the object, the outline will only appear on the visible outline of the object. It does not appear on every edge.

How can I get this effect on any object like an object modifier(but it doesn't have to be of course)? I also want to be able to change the width and set the material. I will be rendering this with openGL as an animation. Some objects rotate in my animation and I want them to be able maintain an outline.

http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/562/how-to-get-silhouette-with-contour-rendering-in-cycles

You would have to render a Freestyle pass with the Line Set Silhouette selected on the left and Crease selected on the right, and change to Logical AND on the right.
This would trace a border stroke around the visible perimeter of the object, like tracing the alpha edge.
You'd have to composite this over your OpenGL render, as you can't generate Freestyle render passes when doing OpenGL renders.

In order to make it easier to composite over your OpenGL renders, it would be helpful to make the background and cube the same colour (let's pick pure white), and then make the stroke a black colour. To do this uncheck Transparent in the Film panel of the Render settings section. Make the world a solid white colour and the cube an emission shader with 100% white. Then make the stroke colour in Freestyle a 100% black.

It worked, thanks, but how do I get it show up in OpenGL? I know you explained it but confused on how to composite it over! I've went into the compositor and clicked use nodes, before rendering it. Now what? p.s. does this also work for cycles?

You'll have to render out 2 separate image sequences. One with OpenGL and one with BI or Cycles to get the Freestyle pass. For the Freestyle pass, just set the material to a simple white emission, just something that renders fast, and then try to output a black and white image (black stroke on white background, or white stroke on black background). Then you can comp them together after that. If you keep the stroke black or white, it's easier to colour to taste in comp.

This is the closest workaround to get a 2D mesh of the outline or silhouette of a mesh object. in response to the duplicate question that links to this question Obtain 2D Mesh Outline from 3D Mesh.
1) in render panel tick Freestyle and Freestyle SVG Export
2) in freestyle panel untick border
3) render
4) look for /tmp folder (or Output folder)
5) import the svg as curve in blender (you must have the SVG to curves plugin installed)
6) Convert all the curves to mesh
7) Join all the meshes
8) Remove doubles
9) Outline mesh ready
As you can see this method it's pretty cumbersome and not useful when there's lots of objects you want to get the outline of
.


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Limiting the amount of frames a mask is active
I am following the tutorial
http://www.aryanwisdom.com/action/study/video-editing/blender-tutorial-overlay-a-video-of-a-head-onto-another-video/
I created a mask where an image will be walking through a door. It seems to work but the mask is active beyond the frames that it is used for. I need to keep using key frames to move the mask out of the frame. How do I limit the amount of frames a mask is active. Same for motion tracking as well.
Thanks
Andy

You can keyframe the position of the mask at the last frame, and then advance one more frame and key a new position out of camera - and as long as you have no more keyframes on the mask after that, you should have no problem keeping it out of the way.

It is frustrating one can't just "delete" the spline and key it in.


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How do I animate fire?

So I created this soul orb using fire and now i want to animate it as a character but I've got no clue what to do. I'd like to try and move it around but I don't know what to do. I moved the emitter and domain and tried to animate it's position moving but the flame stayed in the center where it was originally created.
How to I animate the orb moving around with the flames following it?

Don't move the domain. Make the domain big enough so that the smoke can travel as far as you want it to. Then move the object through the domain.


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Determine which particles are visible on an opaque object from current camera position
I have an object with a particle system (hairs).
I'd like to work with the hair's point location on the surface of a mesh to do stuff.
Suffice to say, I only want to work with the visible hairs, so that I don't have to deal with the hairs on the other side of the mesh, which are not visible.
Here's what I have so far:
import bpy
import mathutils

from mathutils import Vector
from mathutils.bvhtree import BVHTree
from bpy_extras.object_utils import world_to_camera_view

# Get context elements: scene, camera and opaque  object.
scene = bpy.context.scene
cam = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
obj = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

# Create a BVH tree and return bvh, particle locations.
def BVHTreeAndParticlesInWorldFromObj( obj ):
    particleLocations = [p.location for p in obj.particle_systems[0].particles]
    bvh = BVHTree.FromObject(bpy.data.objects['Cube'], scene, deform=True, render=False, cage=False, epsilon=0.)
    return bvh, particleLocations

# Threshold to test if ray cast corresponds to the original particle location.
limit = 0.0001

# Get a bvh tree for opaque object and particle locations
bvh, particleLocations = BVHTreeAndParticlesInWorldFromObj( obj )

for i, p in enumerate( particleLocations ):

    # Try a ray cast, in order to test the vertex visibility from the camera
    direction = Vector(p) - Vector(cam.location)
    location, normal, index, distance = bvh.ray_cast( cam.location, direction )

    if location and (p - location).length < limit:
        print ('This is a visible particle.')

del bvh

Now this isn't working and I cannot figure out why? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!


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Cycles Render passes: Glossy Direct vs. Indirect
What are the differences between the Glossy > Direct and Glossy > Indirect passes in Cycles?

As you might know, Cycles is a Path Tracer, which calculates light "rays" shooting out of the camera, bouncing around, and then finding a light source. This, however, is the opposite of reality, where a light shoots out photons, which bounce around and make their way to our eyes.
Glossy Direct
A Glossy Direct pass produces a black and white result (a fac, or factor) that shows exactly what part of a scene is made up of visible Glossy BSDF materials.
In the following scene, there is a plane with a Glossy BSDF shader that is reflecting a blue-hued Diffuse BSDF shaded cube. It renders like this:

The Glossy Direct pass shows this:

Note how it excludes the background, the part of the plane hidden by the cube, and even the reflection of the cube. What it shows is only the rays that hit the Glossy BSDF and go directly to a light source.
These rays:

Not these rays:

Or these rays:

Or even these rays:

Glossy Indirect
A Glossy Indirect pass produces an in color result; at least partially. It is black everywhere except for any reflections.
In the same scene as above, the Glossy Indirect pass renders like this:

Note how it shows only the reflection of the blue cube. This can be especially helpful, because it can first be turned into an alpha mask pretty easily (see the Matte > Color Key node), which allows for compositing on reflections. See how it is used in gandalf3's answer on Post-processing Lightsabers in Blender. It can also be used just by itself. You can edit out the floor of a scene and leave yourself with just an object and it's reflection, which can produce a very cool result:

Above result composited like this:

These are just a few of the possibilities.
For the technical side of things, a Glossy Indirect pass shows these rays, which bounce off the glossy, hit any obstructions, bounce back to the glossy, and then find a light source. They indirectly touch glossy and find light:

Hope this helped and happy Blending!


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Voronoi Cracks Fac?
I am familliar with Blenders Cycle's Voronoi Texture and have fiddled with it for a while. I am trying to get a result that is not like Intensity or Cells, but more like cracks. I tried the node setup from Image 1, but it came to Image 2 (not good!). I would prefer something like in image 3. So basically what I am asking is:
Is it possible to create the result from Image 3 purely with nodes in Blender.
Image 1:

Image 2:

Image 3:

I would also like to know an answer to this, as I've tried to recreate that effect myself before. As far as I know there is no way to do this with materials without resorting to image textures. Would a geometry based mesh solution work for you? I can show you how to achieve a similar effect using nodes but it is not very flexible and you won't be able to control the "thickness of the strokes"

Thank you for replying! I was, after a bit more searching, actually able to find an answer via Blender Artists. I am answering the question myself now.

Let's use a Laplacian kernel filter for this:

The Laplacian is a 2-D isotropic measure of the 2nd spatial derivative of an image. The Laplacian of an image highlights regions of rapid intensity change and is therefore often used for edge detection.

Here we go:

What is inside the group:

How this works:

Image convolution is a filter operation where you sample the source image with a Convolution Matrix (Kernel) to get the output. Different values inside the matrix yield different filter results:

You can see some other kernel examples here.
In green frame we get 9 mapping vectors. This determines the kernel size.
In blue frame we sample 9 different values from 9 different places.
In pink frame we apply the convolution matrix to the samples.
In white frame we get the value of output pixel.

Here is a .blend so you don't have to build that:

This could be further improved to work on all 3 axes (so you can have volumetric edges) or with enhancing this to canny edge detection.
Limitation is the kernel size - the bigger the less accurate result and also the bigger the lines. A Dilation should be used to drive the edge thickness, I can add that if you need. Also with procedural blurring and thresholding you could add those little round corners, I can add that in also.

A bit complicated, but very nice.

@ShadyPuck it only looks complicated but is pretty straight forward. If Cycles had more node options it could look very clean but this way there must be a lot of duplication :(

Love it!  Could you please add some explanation as to the actual math going on there though?  I don't know that I have the patience to mentally untangle that spiderweb of node wires.

Just played with it. That's truly fantastic. Did you invent this, or if you didn't, where did you find it?

You also could groupify - never used this word before :D - some of the inside of the main group and use that smaller group. Groups can be nested. :)

@ShadyPuck no didn't invent it, this is used in image recognition and filtering. I just implemented it in Cycles.

@PGmath Yep added more info and organized the nodes picture with some framing.

Funny what Google can turn up. After a bit more searching, I was able to find an answer on Blender Artists.

This node setup will work, and you adjust the size of the cracks by increasing the rotation values in the bottom mapping node. The text that the guy posted on BA was this, if it helps anyone:

You can try something like this ...
  Use two identical Voronoi textures with cells
  Then rotate one with repect to the other, where the variation in angle determines the size of the cracks
  Mix these to find the difference
  Saturate the result to a simple black/white or factor value
  Use this as a mix factor or whatever
  It does not give a nice blurred edge, but you could add something for blurriness too
  Not perfect but reasonable
  Hope this helps
  Martin
  This is with a 0.1 deg rotation of XYZ`

Yeah nice one. It's not perfect, it's hard to control the crack thickness, and they they are not very even, especially for larger width, but it works relatively well. Thanks for sharing

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Agreed, but you're welcome.

for sheer simplicity and speed this is a great solution

Node Setup
These are basically the sum of the absolutes values of the partial derivatives of the voronoi function (more accurately the finite difference approximation of them).
2D texture version:

Better suited for 3D:

Matrial setup:

Rendered result:

Additional Notes
There is some similarity to the rotational version, but that would produce non-uniform crack thickness (zero at the origin of the texture coordinates and infinitely increasing by the distance of the origin).
You could also achieve these by using only one additional voronoi, but that would result lower quality (actually, the more additional voronoi vectors you use, the better will be the quality, but that depend on how well the coordinates are shifted for each of them).
The laplacian kernel method also shares some similarity, but (du to more calculation of the voronoi funcion) has higher quality (at the cost of performance).
This is simpler and faster, and quality is acceptable if not zoomed in too much. If you want to get uniform crack strength, add a grater than node before the output of the node group.

Well done! I really like how the cracks are different sizes. It doesn't quite work for me now, but it might well in the future. Thanks!

Could you tell me why it does not work? Maybe I could help.

It does work, it's just not quite what I wanted. Sambler did something similar to yours. I was looking for a more uniform set of cracks, like in my or Jerryno's answers. However, as I said above, I might yet find use for it in the future.

Actually, the variation is less crack size and more strength of the white (see my edited versions last sentence). Well, I guess I was just too late. :)

Based on the cracks with worn edges material by CGMasters, using the portion of the material that makes the cracks leads to the following node group.

The idea is to move multiple voronoi textures by a certain amount and mix them together. By using SeparateXYZ/CombineXYZ nodes we can add and subtract the same amount on each axis with only one input.

Great! Only reason I'm accepting Jerryno's is because this is a little bit too random. Still fantastic tho.

At Blender 2.8 the Voronoi includes additional features - including a 'Crackle' mode which effectively provides the 'distance' from the edges of cells rather than from the center. This can produce the following result :

Cell Fracture

Margins have control and achieve constant width goal.

Cell Fracture results in one plane then extruded
Boolean difference with a Cube, yellow
Triangulate, blue
Detail in large

Result of Cell Fracture after steps below.  Click image to see larger version.

Simple Cube in Layer 01 with the Cell Fracture Add On showing settings. Above image.

Particle System Modifier used on Cube.

Cube scaled rather flat
Particle System attached to Cube.  Settings above.
Cell Fracture add on used with settings above.  Note Margin settings. Adjust to suit your needs. Add on installed in user preferences.  See Cell Fracture tutorials if needed.
Switch to next Layer 02 to see Cell Fracture Results CFR.  CFR multiple objects joined Control-J.
Edit Mode. Vertex Mode. Select Vertices on Bottom Side. Delete Vertices.  Face Mode. Select Top Face. Select Similar by Normals. Vertex Mode. Selection Inverse. Delete Vertices.
Only top flat faces remain.
Render Image.  Use image in Compositor or as Texture.

This isn't answering the question at all. The question was how to create the described texture using blender nodes only.

Thanks for replying, but this isn't the question I asked.

With a small edit marking this as an alternate backup solutions to the nodes (with steps on how to add it as an image texture, I think this answer would be alright,


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Rubber Material
I am working to create a rubber material (not car tire rubber but more like a muted-yellow rubber band rubber). Something similar to this:

It does not not have to be crazy complicated and realistic, but I've currently just got a Diffuse BSDF and a Glossy BSDF mixed with a Layer Weight > Facing at .2 to soften it. It works, but I think it can probably be improved upon.

My current nodes.

Maybe add some Subsurface Scattering and some textures?

An attempt... I used a translucent shader (which seems to be better then SSS). The other nodes are yours.
Concerning the irregularities both Voronoi and Noise could be used.

Very nice! And it requires very few samples! After some more toying around, I came up with a more complicated setup that utilizes SSS and may look a tad more realistic, but takes infinitely more samples and CPU to look nice. Thanks much for this very practical, cheap, and realistic solution.

Here's what I came up with. Mostly a combination of all the advise.

I came up later with a more complicated solution that requires more samples, but I thought it was worth posting anyway. Kudos to @lemon, though, for his efficient and realistic design.
Node Setup:

Final Result:

Brief Explanation:
The crazy values in the Mapping node are specific to the rubber band mesh I created (you will probably need different ones). The Subsurface Scattering BSSRDF and Diffuse BSDF combined with a Voronoi > Intensity fac to create small surface irregularities and give it a translucent feel. The Glossy BSDF at 0.1 with the Layer Weight > Facing at 0.3 softened the edges and made it more rubbery without making it hard and reflective (this is a very widely known and used method for leather, rubber, and anything soft in general).


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Creating Identical Materials for Multiple Objects
I have a bunch of keys on a piano that all share the same White Key material. I will eventually be animating values in the material to make the keys glow at different times. Now, obviously, if I animate the value, it will affect all the keys. Splitting all of the materials by clicking the + button each time for every key could understandably take a while.

Is there a Python script or feature that I could utilize to give each object that uses White Key its unique copy of White Key (White Key.001, White Key.002, etc.)?

sorry, not an answer, but sometimes, often times, brute force is faster. Your keyboard is not a full 88 keys, so I'll bet assigning a unique ID will take less time than trying to figure out how to code that. Although the code would be interesting. What about approaching it differently ? Have a parallel set of keys with the glow, but all hidden, then show each key(s) when pressed?

@HowardPautz Brute force would be faster for the time being, but since I have a few days before I actually have to separate these things, I thought I'd look for a way to do it faster. This would also, of course, help me do it faster in the future. The multiple keys idea is interesting, but I was hoping for the light to fade in, and at that point, I'd still have to separate the materials. Thanks for replying, though!

Hey YW, I'm paying attention to things like this as I'm ramping up to do some coding myself. Probably could do your way by having each key # be stored simply in an array for indexing when it's pressed, then just a simple toggle that resets the previously pressed key to white, then they pressed key set to the glow material. If you want to do more keys at once. e.g. a chord, then it gets a tad more complicated. For that, I'd use a list object.

This post looks very much on track: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/30622/assign-one-material-to-multiple-objects-via-python?rq=1

Suggest using a note octave naming system. C4, A5 will all be white keys, and G#5 or Ab5 for black.

You can of course use scripts to duplicate the material around, but I have the feeling this will create a trap for you in another corner: When animating, you somehow need to animate every single material, and this I cannot imagine to be comfortable.
I suggest a slightly modified approach: Use one single material on all white keys, and create a node setup in Cycles which will hook up to an attribute of your object. In essence, you can tell the material:

hey, if the attribute of the object which I live on has a value of X, do this. Else, do this.

In other words: If X == 5 (given that X is the value you animate), and attribute Y on the object == 5 as well, glow. Otherwise, stay non-glowing. A simple Blend file showing this approach can be found here:

Edit
Animated ID value in the Blend file can be tested here:

In this Blend file, each cube has a different Object Index, starting at 0 and going up to 6. I'm using the Object Index Node to get my source value to check against:

But you could also generate a custom property on each object and read that using the Attribute Node. Whatever you decide, the next step is to generate a node tree similar to this:

The framed part is the IF X == Y expression. It works like this: Say we want to check if the Object Index is 3. Set the value of the top input to 3. Now, the top half of the IF expression will deduct a threshold (0.1), giving you 2.9, and then feed that into a Less Than node. So, for all Cubes with Object Index 0, 1 and 2, this will be 0 (=False =Black), as their Object Index is not less than the ID we're checking against. The bottom half works reversed, now the cubes with Index 0, 1, 2 and 3 will output white. You can preview the node outputs of less than and greater than nodes to see what I mean. The multiply nodes will multiply the results together. Since only the Cube with ID 3 received white in both cases, and only 1 * 1 = 1, it will be the only white one in the end.
The rest is 'normal' shader switching as you've done plenty of times. Now, the only value which you need to animate is the ID value in the Node Tree. You could even create an expression on it (enter #frame into the field for instance to setup a driver which links to the scene frame).


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Search for a Material
I have a material that belongs to some objects, but I can't find those objects. Is there a way to search for objects that have been assigned a certain material?

Yes. What you can do is use the Search engine tool in the Outliner. Since various aspects of each object's Object Data (including materials) are listed in the Outliner, the Search engine tool will turn them up as results. Note that you may have to  MW scroll to bring the search bar into view.


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Using Relative (//file) paths, Make All Paths Relative doesn't work
I am looking for a way to use relative paths in Blender to link to external image, movie, etc... files. I assemble all of my .blend files on my MacBook (OS X Yosemite) and link to the images I've selected by connecting my Finder to a downstairs headless Xubuntu server, through which Blender can then create an absolute path. I then render using this server. However, I have been looking for a way around linking Finder and creating an absolute path, as I must be at my house to connect Finder. I've read that if I use a relative path (//file1), as opposed to an absolute path (Users/.../file1), I should be able to easily send an entire folder, assembled locally on my laptop, to the server, but I haven't been able to get this to work.
In an attempt to create relative paths, I remapped all of the paths in one of my existing .blend files to correspond to the same image textures locally in the folder on my computer where I store said .blend file. I then tried to use the File > External Data > Make All Paths Relative option, but all of my paths were still absolute. Any thoughts?

How Relative paths work:

If you are working on COM 2
Your .blend file references paths on COM 2 relatively
If your same structure & content then exists over on COM 1

THEN:
When you copy your updated reference content & .blend from COM 2 over to COM 1, everything should work fine.

If what you are really doing is:
Working on a .blend over on COM 2, using all of your references from COM 1 as something like: //COM1/A/HDPE_Plastic_Texture_001.png
Then relative pathing will not work inherently.
To give you a sense of how you could get it to work, I will demonstrate a few use cases, and it should help you understand what you would need to do in your particular case.

Use Case #1 (The best case):

Your .blend exists at the root of COM 1

SOLUTION:
REPLACE: //COM1/A/HDPE_Plastic_Texture_001.png
WITH: ./A/HDPE_Plastic_Texture_001.png

Use Case #2:

Your .blend exists in a sub-folder of COM 1 - such as //COM1/B/myWorkingFile.blend

SOLUTION:
REPLACE: //COM1/A/HDPE_Plastic_Texture_001.png
WITH: ../A/HDPE_Plastic_Texture_001.png

If you have your blend file in a folder, let's say "my project" and have put all your textures inside the folder "textures" located in "my project" with a hierarchy like this :
my project > test.blend
my project > textures > [texture1].jpg
my project > textures > [texture2].jpg
my project > textures > [texture3].jpg
You can use this script (working in blender 3.6) which will replace all the paths to redirect to your "textures" folder
You can change its name to suit your need, just edit textures_path
import bpy

textures_path = "textures"

def find_nodes_by_type(material, node_type):
    node_list = []
    if material.use_nodes and material.node_tree:
            for n in material.node_tree.nodes:
                if n.type == node_type:
                    node_list.append(n)
    return node_list

material_set = set()

for object in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    for material in object.material_slots:
        image_nodes = find_nodes_by_type(material.material, "TEX_IMAGE")
        if len(image_nodes):
            material_set.add(material)

for object in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    for material in object.material_slots:
        if material in material_set:
            print(f"Object {object.name}, uses material {material.name}")
            image_nodes = find_nodes_by_type(material.material, "TEX_IMAGE")
            for image_node in image_nodes:
                if image_node.image:

                    filename = image_node.image.filepath
                    pos = filename.rfind("\\")
                    filename = filename[pos+1:]

                    print(f"\timage {image_node.image.name} has file '{image_node.image.filepath}'")
                    relative_path = "//" + textures_path + "\\" + filename
                    print(">>",relative_path)
                    bpy.data.images[image_node.image.name].filepath = relative_path
                else:
                    print("\tEmpty image texture")

the blender file (.blend) and the other files (videos, textures, pictures) should be in the same folder and then "make all paths relative".

This option is not ideal, especially when you are using the same resource libraries over and over again.

it worked on linux, interesting some paths were ignored as they are not pointing to files, like the renderto path


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Edit triangulation
In 3dsMax I can edit the triangulation for every Ngon separately. After I leave the "Edit Tri."-setting I can keep working with the Ngon. Is there a way to do the same in Blender?

Nope, but apart from selecting one face vs multiple faces, what other benefits do you seek?`

A clean looking mesh in planar areas.


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Ambient Occlusion with Cycles
So far I've been using the following setup to render the pure object-shadow in a studio environment. Rendered with BlenderRender and than composed in Photoshop.

But since the fact BlenderRender will be removed in 2.8 I'm searching for the same result in Cycles. There is this new Shadow Catcher option but I'm missing settings for factor and distance. Rendering an AO Pass only gives me a gray object color with shadows.

Look at: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/51751/emphasizing-cycles-render-ambient-occlusion

@cegaton: I'm not talking about realtime-AO. I want to have full control of AO in a separate image.

@JakobSachs: This method doesn't give me settings like factor and distance.


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Command Line Rendering - "cannot render, no camera"
I'm rendering a few scenes with command line and it works fine with most of them. But there is one scene where I get the following error: "cannot render, no camera". I can manually render it because there is indeed a camera in the scene.
I erased everything that could cause trouble ending up with only a cube and a camera. And all properties match with the working scenes but it's still not working with this file.

to be sure to reproduce, share your CLI command arguments...

cd "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender"
blender -b C:\Users\me\Desktop\batch\01.blend -o C:\Users\me\Desktop\batch_01_ -f 1

Second answer on the question linked to, above.

@RayMairlot is right, the scene properties show no camera selected...


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How to align local coordinate with global axis?
I want to know if there is a way to align the local axis of an object to its global axis, without actually rotating the object. Please help me out, thanks in advance !!

Press CtrlA to bring up the Apply object Transformation menu and select Rotation.

From the blender manual:

This will make Blender consider the current rotation to be equivalent to 0 degrees in each plane i.e. the selection will not rotated, the current rotation will be considered to be the “default rotation”

If you have the object selected in Object Mode then press: Ctrl+R , it resets the local rotations to the global rotations without manually rotating.

You should use the description of the function rather than the shortcut. What is Ctrl R in your case? None of the current shortcuts is related to resetting the orientation.


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edit the sound used in f curve
Hey is there a way to edit the sound that are baked to f curve. I have baked the sound av it works like I expect, but there are parts of the time line where I like the value to 0, but the sound is at a different value. I know I can sett the main lower, but that effects all the values. I need to set 4 or 5 part with 2 or 3 frames to 0 in the middle of baked sound.

Hi reinert welcome to Blender SE.  By 'value to 0', do you mean setting the volume of the sound, or the actual F-Curve-baked value to 0?

@MikeBelanger At some point, there isn't much of a difference. That being said, I think he means the latter, due to "I know I can sett the main lower."

Despite the name, f-curves can contain either curve data or sampled data. The sampled data that is used when you bake a sound to an fcurve is not editable.
There are methods available in python to convert between curves and sampled data but blender does not provide a way to do this through the user interface. There is an addon that adds this to the graph editor here.
After installing and enabling the addon you can convert the baked sound to curves which you can then edit as you wish.

Oh, that's a good question...
Good answer to it, though!
Solution
From your question, I assume that you have already Bake Sound to F-Curves-ed and know how to do that. If you don't, comment, let me know, and I will add steps on how to do it.
You can set the value to 0 at any frame or length of frames with an F-Curve modifier (similar to the concept of an Object modifier found in the Properties panel). With the sound F-Curve selected, key Shift + Ctrl + M and click on Envelope.
Add F-Curve Modifier menu:

Key N to toggle open/close the Graph Editor Property panel. Scroll down to the Modifiers dropdown. Make the panel bigger. You should see options like the following.
This modifier setup will set the F-Curve value to 0 between frames 100 and 105, inclusive:

The top three values are default. The next three, I got by clicking the Add Point button. The Frame: value should somewhere between the Start: and End: values in the Restrict Frame Range dropdown, although it doesn't really matter. As long as the Min: and Max: Control Point values are equal, that is the value that the F-Curve will be set to between the Start: and End: values.
Curve. Note the 0 value from frame 100-105: