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Texture Paint doesn't work in 3D view
Problem: I'm trying to paint roughness and later different colors on a car body. I clicked 'Unwrap'in the UV editor and went to Texture paint. I've created a texture for the roughness and connected it into the material. When I started painting in 3D view, nothing happened except a few huge transitions at unwanted places. Although, when I painted on the unwrapped mesh it worked (however, there's still some problem at the rear). I am relatively new to texturing / unwrapping so I'm not sure what am I doing wrong. Usually in tutorials after unwrapping and setting the texture it's possible to draw/paint directly on the model.
If it makes any difference, the model has subsurf. modifier, boolean and mirror on it.
Question: How could I paint on the actual model so that I can see what I'm doing? Which step I am missing?

hello, please pack your images and share your file: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

hello.  I have answered a very similar question in the past.  check out this link to see if my past answer helps: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/200366/missing-texture/200374#200374

Double check normal direction as well as uv island overlap for starters. In the 3d view, zooming out with a decent brush turns it into a huge brush area which then will slow you down because the computer needs to process a large number of pixels per paint dab/stroke, so important to reduce the brush size in relation to the number of pixels under the cursor in view.

Thanks!! I recalculated the normals, same issue. I also followed the steps in the previous answer but still doesn't work. I guess I might need to check on a simpler file if still keeps happening. for now, I have no other idea.

It's because the model is not unwrapped correctly. I think the different parts of the model are overlapping in the UV Editor. That's why when you paint on one area, it shows on several parts. To fix this, you have to unwrap it correctly by marking seams at specific loops or just hit U in Edit mode and select Smart UV Project.

Go to Edit Mode > Mesh > Normals > Flip. Your normals should be facing the outside.
To check normal direction in 3D Viewport > Overlays > Normals > Display Normals.


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Vertices in a straight line without distorting mesh
I have vertices that I'd like to straighten into a line without scaling to 0 on all but one axis. The vertices are part of a mesh and need to retain their position in at least 1 axis. The blue annotated line is the line angle that I'd like for the highlighted vertices. Pic 2 shows the vertices at a different camera angle to give you an idea of the vertices' position in relation to the mesh, so that hopefully you understand what I'm aiming for.
I've tried Loop tools and it hasn't worked exactly how I need it to. I know a little about scaling solutions, but not much. And I've tried some things based on my research of old posts, and that hasn't worked either. So I come seeking advice from the pros. Thanks guys

i would provide a blend file with just that mesh so that we can tell you how it could be fixed - else presumably you will say: it won't work and that might be right (because we couldn't test). I think looptools can solve that...

and one more hint: you should also click on "accept answer" (which is the checkmark left to answers) so that other people also can see that the answer you got is useful and (!) to show the people who answered here for free in their spare time a little gratitude. You did never do that....[1]: https://i.sstatic.net/TMwWCdTJ.png, else there would be green color in that image.

thanks for the heads up on the accept answer thing. I overlooked that. but I'm sure people knew that I was grateful, but only through the words of my post, not the official way, as you've let me know.

you can still accept answers of your old questions. That is still possible - would be even more grateful.

Yaroslav Im going to try your suggestion. I've tried so many scaling and snapping solutions that I've got them all confused. AND thanks to Chris I'll be sure to mark it as the answer if it works. But how can it be so simple? I could have sworn I tried what you're talking about. I'll be back. Thanks for the reply.

The easiest solution is to scale these vertices along Y normal :
1) Make sure you've selected ONLY vertices you need to fix and nothing else
2) Set pivot point to median point (press . > Median Point)
3) Set orientation to normal (press , > Normal)
4) Scale to zero along Y normal axis (press S>Y>0)
That's it :-)

commented as an answer below since I don't know how to post a pic in comments. And it feels more in the flow of the information, since you answered here, I don't feel it's natural to ask a follow up question by adding or editting the original post. Rather I should ask the follow up question..... following your explanation. don't get mad at me mods

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How to detect and repair errors in mesh?
I downloaded a video game model. The problem is that although it appears to be a valid mesh, there are many many errors. For example, the mesh is not intact or manifold, or sometimes there's double faces, and double edges. There's many types of errors here, I think. Again it's not detectable by glancing at it. Just manually seeing what's wrong with a particular vertex, edge, or face would take forever, let alone repairing it individually. Is there a more efficient or systematic way to fix this mesh? I have attached pictures of 2 errors in the mesh. Thanks very much guys.

The operator is called Select Non Manifold in Mesh menu. It should help you  to find out weird mesh. With further configuration, you can choose what you want to inspect.

After you select those vertices, you still need to clean up them by hand or using operator again:

But don't rely on these method to fully fix your mesh since if your mesh is broken in some degree, that mesh will probably been so weird that algorithm can not figure how to fix it.

Thanks HiakriTW! After using the select non-manifold option, it seems that a huge part of my downloaded mesh has problems, even after I tried all of the options in the Clean Up menu. Anything else you or anyone else might suggest? Thanks again!

If the download source dose specified what 3D program they use to create that file, then go using that program instead of Blender. Since most of the model in commercial product will probably use thing instead of Blender, and the file format will poorly support by Blender importer function

You can also check your import option, there should be a lot of option in the bottom left hand side corner when importing.

I came up with a solution. There were too many errors of different types in that mesh, so I exported the model as an STL. Then I went to Netfabb.com, which offers free STL mesh repairs, which has always worked for me. I uploaded the file and then Netfab corrected it for me as an STL, and then I went back to Blender and imported the fixed STL. And it worked. No more non-manifolds, double faces, double edges, or any other errors. Netfab has always worked for me in CAD, and now even in Blender.

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


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Adding material/mass to a mesh
I have a blend file that I would like to add mass/material to.  I want to add 4mm of thickness to this hollow model. My goal is to 3D print the model, once it has some volume, so that I can glue the shells together to make a body for a custom action figure. How do I do this? I've attached pictures of my file. Thanks ever so much!

You need to use solidify modifier.
Here is its effect on a cut torus.
A positive thickness value adds a layer inside the model, while negative value adds to the outside.
Read more at: blender 2.82 Reference Manual

Shantanu, thanks! It worked!


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Assigning Edge Loops and Merging Uneven Loops
Is any set of edges that form a ring continuously considered an edge loop? I'm asking because I have a ring of edges that connect end to end to form a loop. However, I'm unable to select this edge loop in any method. Now I'm not sure how the ring of edges was originally created (maybe it wasn't Extruded classically, maybe it was assembled by connecting the edges in some manner, etc) but it surely is a continuous loop of edges. It seems Blender is not recognizing my edge loop as an edge loop. Is there some way to designate my edge loop so that Blender can recognize it as an edge loop?
My goal is to "dissolve" extraneous edge loops, (as an example, in my picture, dissolving/deleting/merging/etc so that the result is as if you were to merge the highlighted middle loop to the B loop). By the way, can this be done if the loops are not uniform in shape/size as in my pic? It should be noted that the vertices, however, are consistent of a loop in terms of number and how they connect they connect in relation to each other, only it just isn't even).
Thanks guys!

your mesh is triangulated. Look at the faces. They are all triangles (tris). This prevents you to select an edge loop. In Edit mode, select all verts (A) and use the viewport menu Face > Tris to Quads (Alt+J) to convert the mesh to quads. Then try again.

For Blender to recognize the features you want to preserve automatically and generally, it would have to come up with an unambiguous topological definition of a loop.. for any vertex, which exit  to choose. On an arbitrarily triangulated mesh, this is unlikely to find the path you want. On a ring of quads, it is much more likely.. the second exit every time finds the principal curvatures of a mesh that is well-formed for deformation or subdivision. You could do this by hand relatively quickly.. would that be acceptable?

Blunder thanks for the answer, and thanks Robin Betts for the explanation. I know Blender a little better now because of you guys!

Robin, do what by hand? I'm about to try what Blunder suggested, to convert the mesh to quads with the Tris to Quads option. Is that what you're talking about? But in general, by hand is ok for a few instances, but when things are numerous, it can get cumbersome. it's better for me if there is a non-tedious solution. Thanks again!


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transparency issues with denoisers
When rendering an image of an object set unto a transparent background, it is observed around the edges of such object that small pixel-sized artifacts appear beyond the 0 opacity boundary. Color is being written to such pixels even though they are transparent- and the color being written is wrong even, with pixels appearing to be colors they should not. This issue only occurs when a denoiser is used.

What could be causing this and how can it be avoided?
Blender version 3.6

It would be helpful if you formed an actual question in addition to just presenting an issue. Also you should describe how exactly you are rendering the image, share screenshots of your render settings, include a .blend file with minimal setup to reproduce the issue if possible.

To replicate: Add a plane, solidify it, add a bunch of subdivisions. Enable the denoiser, turn on transparency in the film settings, crank samples up to 512. Render, open image in editing software(e.g gimp), observe results.


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Create List of Activated Addons and 3rd-Party Installed Addons in Blender
Sorry if this has been asked before but I certainly couldn't find what I was looking for!
I just want to be able to locate or create a file that clearly shows me which native Blender Addons I have "activated" and what 3rd-Party Addons I have installed.
Ideally I want a text file so that when i install a NEW version of Blender I can reinstall (or re-activate) the Addons that I like and need!
Regards and thanks in advance
Ivan Flack
Cookstown, N. Ireland

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2797/how-can-i-get-a-list-of-the-installed-addons-using-the-api?rq=1 any good? - Note that installing a new version of Blender will pick up the settings from a previous version automatically including activated addons. (This assumes that you haven't deleted the settings from the previous version of course!)

Thanks John...I looked at that but am none the wiser...can't seem to get it to work at all!

Its' possible that the python code needs to be changed for more recent Blender versions since that posting was last updated 10 years ago but I'm afraid I don't know Blender's API so can't help with that one.

There's a more up to date posting here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/166371/how-can-i-get-a-list-shows-which-add-ons-are-enabled-by-user

This is taken from the posting I mentioned in the comments above:
Click the Scripting workspace in the top toolbar then click the New button in the R/H text editor window and copy and paste the code below into the window.
import addon_utils
import bpy
enablist = [addon.module for addon in bpy.context.preferences.addons]
for addon in addon_utils.modules():
    if addon.__name__ in enablist:
        print ('{name} {ver} {mod}'.format(
            mod = addon.__name__,
            name = addon.bl_info['name'],
            ver = ''.join([str(v) + '.' for v in addon.bl_info['version']]).rstrip('.'))) if 'version' in addon.bl_info else None

If you click the right-facing Run Script triangular icon in the window header you can then Use Blender's Window > Toggle System Console menu to see the active addons in the console window.

Many thanks once again John...I'll give it a go when I am next on the PC!

Thanks again John...works just fine...now I just need to put it into Serpens and get it to print out a list! Fun, fun...fun!

Glad to hear it! As one of the other posting says there's probably no way to differentiate between built-in and external addons but at least you have a list of enabled ones now! Please check the option beside my answer to flag it as correct. Thanks.


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How to set the Object local axis as Global Axis
I am following a tutorial of rigging a car in blender for UE5 in that he told me that all parts of car should be oriented to global x and y axis can anyone give me how to change the axis step by step i have tried using transform option intools but cant align it perfectly step by step video would be highly helpful

So do you want to do something so that the x and y axis of every object is the same as the global x and y axis?

Apply the rotation (Ctrl A)?

Hello and welcome. Rather than take screenshots of camera apps taking photos of your monitor post actual screenshots instead, see How to take a screenshot. Photos are harder to read because we have to look past external interferences (like reflections, smudges or Moiré patterns) and guess if we are looking at hardware issues such as a malfunctioning display or connections, a software level issue like driver malfunction or glitch, or actual artifacts or issues with the model itself.


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Drawing double helix structure
I just started learning Blender. It might be a silly problem. But I will appreciate any help on this.
I am trying to draw a double helix structure. I have found some structures online. But they are all for DNAs. But I don't want to keep the bonds in between the two strands. I just want to have the double helix with the final ends of the strands extended. Similar to the following image.

If you have 2 vertices on each side of the origin and you use a screw modifier with these setting it will give you a double helix.

You can add a skin modifier to them or start with squares or other shapes instead of single vertices to have them be 3 dimensional.
To have the ends like that you'd need to a apply the modifier and extrude them manually

I have used the screw modifier before to draw a single helix before. But how did you draw these 2 vertices on each side of the origin?
to extrude them manually, what modifier do I need to apply? Do I have to do it in edit mode?

I just put 2 vertices in edit mode. You can duplicate one and rotate it 180º. You could also have only 1 vertex and use a mirror modifier before the screw modifier. That would duplicate it on the other side

That worked by using the mirror modifier! But the problem is if I try to extrude the ends of the helix, it just changes shape. How can I extrude only the ends and not mess up the structure?

You have to apply the modifiers to further modify the mesh.
Either that or duplicate the object, apply the modifiers, select the end vertices of the spiral in edit mode and delete everything else and then extrude them how you like them. You can then join both objects with a boolean or geometry node but the easiest way is to just apply the modifiers to begin with


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Create terrain from vertices
I'm trying to create terrain from a bunch of vertices I have exported from a real DEM map. I created a script that converts DEM data to a .obj file. But it creates just vertices, no edges and no faces.
I tried to connect them by hand, but it's seem like a crazy idea to connect 46110 vertices that way.
Is there a way to create terrain (plane) from all those vertices that I have?

You could create a plane above it with the same number of subdivisions and then use a shrinkwrap modifier aiming at the vertices

Depending on the height difference of those vertices you might have to scale them down in the Z axis or manually move around the top plane so they don't shrinkwrap to the wrong vertex

Thanks! Worked out perfectly, exactly what I needed.


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How do I get rid of these ridges?
I am trying to create a curved surface at the bottom of the object but when I use the subdivision surface modifier in conjunction with an edge crease, these ridges appear on that edge as shown in the screenshot. Any ways to prevent this?

Can you provide the model. I might be able to solve this. It's pretty common. But before that please check things on youtube. This happens quiet often when creases are used with subdivision. So the answer is already there.

3 steps to try: 1 M merge by distance, with all selected. 2 Alt-N  (Normals) > recalculate outside. 3. H Hide the big face, check for internal faces and delete.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/23596/smooth-shaded-model-has-odd-shading/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1684/what-is-the-technical-difference-between-an-ngon-and-a-bunch-of-triangles/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/186849/why-are-my-objects-shadows-so-janky https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/118128/how-to-fix-ugly-lines-in-my-mesh/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/63903/how-can-i-smooth-a-triangle-fan


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Weird "distortions" in renders but not in the viewport preview
First of all, I would like to say that I am not an expert at all, so I might not know something very obvious and I might even use the wrong words.
I am trying to solve this problem: I like what I see in the viewport render preview, but once I render, I see weird "distortions" (I am attaching pictures of both the viewport preview and final render). You can see them at the edge of the shadow, just under the windows and on the door.
What am I doing wrong?

Can you clarify 'distortions'?

In the second picture that I attached (the final render) you can see how the edge of the shadow is not smooth like in the viewport render preview, but it's kinda "jagged"... English is not my first language I hope I still made myself clear.

Those might be artefacts from whatever you do in post processing

What do you mean? The second picture is straight out of blender, I did not do anything to it...

are you using denoise?

@tommaso Straight out of Blender doesn't necessarily mean no post processing... Frederik means processing done post rendering - and there you clearly did something since it looks like you used a Glare node in compositing...


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How do I get the geometric dual of a mesh?
In geometry,a polyhedron is the dual of another polyhedron if you can turn one into another by swapping the vertices and faces. If a vertex has N lines, its replaced by a face with N sides. For example, a cube is the dual of an octahedron. Each vertex has three lines connected to it, so they’re replaced by triangles. The square faces are replaced by vertices with four lines attached.
Is there an operation in blender that lets me select a mesh and get the dual?

Add the Geometry Node modifier, then plug in the Node Dual Mesh.

... Or.. the add-on Mesh:Tissue includes it in its many features.

OK, let's make a short answer from the comments...
The easiest way seems to me (as a big friend of Geometry Nodes) to just use the node Dual Mesh for this:

You just need to add a modifier of type Geometry Nodes and put the node Dual Mesh in between.
The advantage: it remains procedural.
Unfortunately, I could only achieve insufficient/unique results with the addon Mesh Tissue, but maybe it's just me.


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My background image is purple
Every time I add a image background, it appears purple.
I even tried re-adding it.
It started happening yesterday and when I came back to blender again today, the problem is still there.
And I also realise that all my blend files are also effected. Last time, i could see the image, now not anymore.
im kind of a beginner so I might have done something wrong or is it just a bug.

The File > External Data menu has two operations for helping diagnose missing or broken file paths. It's unclear from your description "what changed" from "last time", but try the 'Report Missing Files' option for starters to see where Blender is looking for the images.

It sounds as if you may have changed the location of your image and texture files outside Blender if it's happening with other files too.

... or have you moved your blend files/folder? Blender stores the path to the images relative to the blend file (e.g. ../../../textures/texture1.png). If you have moved the main folder of the blend files or the textures or have renamed the "textures" folder then the path is breaks.


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A specific type of extrusion
My model is easy, a cube scaled from top (left image)
I want to extrude edge x, but willing the result like in the right image
Thank you for reading

You can:

Duplicate the side face with a ShiftD
Select the top edge and slide it with GG, press C to extend:

Only keep the top edge of this new face:

Fill the face:

Well it is smart of you to use clipping while moving the edge instead of extruding, this is how i did it.my question is(since i know all 4 types of extruding): if I click 'e' to extrude is there any shortcut that does it while extruding is locked?

I don't know how you can make it work with extrusion, you could create a custom orientation from the face, but you won't have the reduction you show


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I have a problem with adding surfaces

Hi I'm trying to make the surface of the object smooth
I tried 'shade smooth' on both object/edit mode.
However, I couldn't get the result as I wanted.
just like the illustration on the right,
I want the head piece to be smooth
it's polygonal and rough at the moment.
I also tried 'bevel'
but it still left the existence of the original edge
and lastly, the 'subdivision modifier'
gave me the closest result that I want.
but It also modified the surfaces that I didn't want them to be.
to make it smooth, do you have any suggestion?
just like bevel, I think if there's any other technique for adding
surfaces, that might help

hello please share your file (at least the part that you want to smooth): https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Thanks for your aid. I have sent the file. please take a look

the url of the blender file you mean? So rry I'm new to this community. All I did was just go to the link link you shared and upload the blender file and the link of this question

yes then it gives you a URL that you need to copy and paste here

Alright! so I've sent the file just the headpiece cuz the original file was too big that it didn't send me the URL

So what you need to do is give a Subdivision Surface modifier, then add some edge loops close to the angles that need to stay sharp

I tried subvide modifier. What's left to do is to add edge loop but..... I'm not so sure how to keep some edges sharp

The best way to do it is to give your object a Subdivision Surface modifier. As it will round the angles that you want to keep sharp, you'll have to add some edge loops close to these angles.
To make things easier you must try to keep a good edge flow. This site (topologyguides) gives some good tricks but in my opinion the more you'll try the more you'll succeed.
Here is a quick example of what you could do:
Before:

After:

I think this will work! much obliged

There's no magic trick for sharp edges, each case will be different and sometimes it's hard to solve, but that's the way to go


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my Project is too heavy that it stops the computer

So this is the picture of my small project
and bc it has so many faces that the file itself is over 5.2 GB
My computer stops sometimes for about 10 minutes.
and this is really frustrating.
Is this understandable in most cases?
like, does most blender project normally goes over 5GB?
if there's any way to prevent the computer stopping
or decreasing the project's capacity tremendously, please let me know

Well, 5 GB is too large compared to normal file sizes....you might be having a lot of vertices, or too much baked animations and rigidbodies....still I think 5 GB is tremendous comparing it to your given screenshot

Try enabling Compress File from Edit > Preferences > Save & Load > Compress File and save the file again, and see if the file size gets reduced

Does this help you? - https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/218229/110840

I'll try using simplify as suggested

to be honest, in most cases you don't need so much faces/vertices as you have. Even without loosing any quality in rendering. So you should also think about retopologize your model or unsubdividing/remeshing. Lot's of beginner (and i made that too) make the mistake to make more subdivisions than necessary just to be sure it looks good. Often even just a "shade smooth" is enough.

How many vertices has your scene? You can check it in the statistic overlay or in the status bar (right-click it if the statistics are not displayed). Have you used a Subdivision Surface modifier or a Multires modifier? The Simplify feature only helps you if you haven't applied the modifiers. To give you some numbers: Blender's Rain character is in a 25 MB file + 193 MB textures. The file of my human-sized model with a Multires modifier (600k vertices) is about 52 MB. If yours is 100x bigger there is something wrong.


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Deformated mesh after exporting model from Blender to Substance Painter
I am trying to learn substance painter with blender. Until today i have not got problem.
Today i was working on my model of heater and i was trying to export it from blender to substance painter. Problem is in Substance painter when i have deformated mesh and i do not know what to do.
I was trying find solution at google for it but i did not find it.
Mesh faceing is fine.
Transforms are reseted.
I tried OBJ and FBX exporitng same result.
BLENDER : https://i.sstatic.net/oIFu8.jpg
https://i.sstatic.net/Z7Eco.jpg
https://i.sstatic.net/ofctF.jpg
SUBSTANCE PAINTER : https://i.sstatic.net/aqrgl.jpg
https://i.sstatic.net/7DzeV.jpg
https://i.sstatic.net/V9R9j.jpg
Thanks for answears !!

what happens when you import the model into blender does it come up with the same issue? also have all modifiers been applied

When exporting to OBJ format, use the triangulate option.

Thanks - Lemon
When i exported my model via triangulate option everythink is fine!( without deformeted meshes)


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Meshes pushed other side when sculpting
I'm new to sculpting, and i've noticed that the mesh is pushed when sculpting and not compressed.
So for exemple if I have a wall, and if I dig some holes with a brush on one face for exemple, at a certain point I will be able so see all the mesh going outside behind the wall at the opposite face..

So i wanted to know if there is a way to avoid this ?
Thank you !

Maybe first check if the Front Faces Only option of the brush is enabled:

You can also use the Mask brush. Paint on the face that you don't want to deform. To erase the whole mask, press AltM. To erase some parts, press Ctrl while you paint:

Then sculpt, the maskded area won't be affected:

Thanks a lot for your help !!


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Cycles refraction on a plane glass is not physically correct?
I was trying to see how glass refracts light. I set up a scene with a conical light source facing a wall with a pane of glass in-between.

Theoretically, the glass plane should refract to show an illumination on the screen (wall) with a lesser area. The schematic of the same is shown below.

However, Blender goes the other way and increases the area illuminated on the screen. This is not a physically accurate render for refraction. Am I doing anything wrong?

I have set up the node for the glass pane material as follows:

Transmission 80??

Well, I just assumed glass would transmit about 80% of the light. However, even at 95% transmission, the result is qualitatively the same.

It's a 0-1 scale :p

Oh damn! Results still look the same, oh well :/

I'm gonna say this is just another case of crappy caustics in cycles (fixed soon?).  I have a number of posts on glass, here's a post with a bunch of info and testing, and a potential solution for you at the bottom - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/219303/glass-casting-shadows-and-not-looking-real/219957#219957

Refraction is the bending of light rays when passing through a surface between one transparent material and another. In your case - it is a plate of glass ... What do you expect to see in your render?

@vklidu, I expect to see the lit area to be smaller, however on the contrary, the result is having a larger area.

Oh sorry for my blindness ... Try to use LuxRender as engine, it is also physically based but from what I spotted it could work better for this specific thing. You are right with Roughness zero the diffuser effect is weird.


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How to "lock" Location in Object Info for shading particles?
I made some particle simulations and want to add a pattern to the particles.
The only way I've found to project a texture properly onto the particles is via Location in Oject Info. The problem is, that of course when the particles move, the color changes. Is there a way to "lock" the pattern of the first frame for example, so that the particles stay the same color no matter where they are?

Replace Object Info node with Mapping and set Location X, Y, Z to be as Object's in the desired frame - this should help

Unfortunately this doesn't work, since every ball renders as one icosphere, so every ball is the same color.


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How to group mesh and vertex group
I'm a new comer of the forum.
I have a question regarding mesh and vertex group. I tried to find solution but couldn't.
[What I'd like to do]
When the avatar swing his right hand, the sword is also swung with attaching his right hand.
[Current status]
Sword is not attached right arm. (See the gif)

The avatar is generated by Ready Player Me.
Most of elements of the avatar are vertex group.
I can use "join" feature of Blender. But as you know I failed to join the sword mesh and "Right arm" as vertex group. The picture is before joining the mesh and vertex group.

I guess "join" is not an appropriate option in this case but can't find any best option.
I have basic blender knowledge but not so much knowledge of animation, bone, and vertex group.
Any help or tips are welcome for me. Thanks in advance.

What you want to do is use a constraint.  If the sword is weighted to a bone, a bone constraint; if it's not, an object constraint.  The most appropriate constraint here would probably be a child-of constraint.  https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/constraints/index.html is the manual on constraints if you've never worked with them before.

Hello @Nathan
Thanks for your rapid and kind reply. It's great help for you! I'll try it.

Additional post. I could realize what I'd like to do by using Constraint. Thanks for your help again!


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Limiting the effect of Copy Rotation constraints on a single axis. Having issues with axis flipping
As part of a larger rig, I'm trying to achieve the effect where a deformation bone copies the location of a root bone, and the rotation in the Y&Z axis, but when rotated on the X axis only copies the rotation by 25%.
I'm having some very strange behaviour when the root bone goes beyond 180, the axis flips.
I've tried both a Copy Rotation with limited influence, and also a Transformation constraint where the X axis is mapped from -360/360 to -90/90. Both have the same issue. I've also tried different rotation modes changing between Quaternion and Euler, no change. Hoping someone can help!

I'm not sure you can fix it, so maybe look into drivers instead?

Is there a reason copy rotation is in world coordinates? Getting the rotation from 1 bone and transforming the rotation relative to that bones as well might be causing this behaviour.


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Different Viewport angles of the same object
I have reference pictures of Iron Man that I'm modeling. The pictures are angled. So I have modeled the object at the same angle. However, I would like to have a straightforward view of the object AND the angled view of the object at the same time in different windows. Any change in the object is seen in both windows since the object is the same, only the viewport view angle is changed. I know this is possible, but I don't know how to do this. thanks.

I'm not sure what you mean, just split your 3D view? You could also link-duplicate your object with an Alt D, this way you don't have to split the view, if you work on a copy of the object it will change the other one

How do you split the 3D view? and how do I set the one of the views to the same angle as the top object (in my picture)

put your cursor at the corner of the view until you have a cross, left click and drag, to collapse you just need to have the cross and drag towards an existing window. By default the new window will have the exact same view

btw just tried your Alt-D idea, and it's more or less what I want to do. But I want to try the viewport way. Btw can I set the viewport at a specific angle? For example, if my object is at +5 on the X axis, then all I have to do is set the viewport view to -5 on the X axis, and then I would have a straightforward view of the object, even though the object is angled.

Yes Iunderstand what you want now and I guess Alt D is the best for your purpose

I just edited my comment, so can you check that? Thanks again, and btw moonboots, are you an AI, because I see you often answer questions, which requires a lot of dedication (which I and probably everyone else appreciates!).

Thanks, yes I'm the last generation of AIs

Last comment cuz I dont want stack exchange to get mad and move this to chat, but if you are serious, I am in awe. This is my first personal interaction with an AI. But just checked your profile. You've been here 7 years, not sure any generation of AI would be registered here 7 years ago. In any case, thanks for your help!

I am 7 year old and you are talking to version 3.0.1, you're welcome

If you want to keep a front view in order to keep a front view of your reference image, the best is probably to link-duplicate your object (AltD instead of ShiftD), rotate it so that it is rotated as your reference:

If you want to split the windows, put your cursor at the corner of the view until you have a cross, left click and drag, to collapse you just need to have the cross and drag towards an existing window. By default the new window will have the exact same view:


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texture nodes: question of alpha!
I added this fence texture to these poles.
(link:https://ambientcg.com/view?id=Fence007A
They look alright in separate views of the poles,
but with all the environments and everything apparently I don't know what goes wrong with the left one.

Thanks!!

I don't have your blender file or outliner screenshots to know what's there, but it looks like you have some object behind the pole. Delete or move it and it will be fixed.

thank you it's fixed and idk why...it just disappeared......

@coffeeblood You mean that it fixed automatically? I think you might have some material preview thing or something going on, at least you're back in business :)


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particle system: why the hair is not getting the thickness?
I want to make a fluffy carpet with long and cute fur like those selling in nordstrom...
Here are my settings..
It's not getting any kind of thickness not matter what number I type in under the hair shape section.
And I wonder what other values should I change to get this style I want.
Thanks!!

I think it's only appear on the cycles render image.

i'm using cycles

Are you sure this is the Rendered view (key Z) and not the Material Preview view? The Material Preview mode uses Eevee's settings. By default Eevee only displays a very thin strand. Go to the Eevee render settings, and switch Hair > Hair Strand Type from Strand to Strip. Then you will see the same hair size in Material Preview that Cycles will render. Don't forget to switch back to Cycles. Also, make sure you have applied the scale to the carpet (Clrl+A in Object mode) and that it's not oversized but real-world size (Your stands are 1.4 meters long!)


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Emission gloom with transparent background
I'm trying to render a model using emission as it's shader and i'm using gloom node to get some glare of the emission, it looks fine in the viewport but as soon as i render it using cycles, the gloom is gone. What should i do?

In eevee, there is a feature called bloom you are using. But unfortunatley cycles doesn't have such an option , unless you use compositing. I recommend you watch some compositing tutorials on making lights glow in cycles. Here is the short summary of the process: select the objects you are using as a light, and then go to object properties: pass index to 2 on all of them (Remeber to set it to two on all the objects that have emmision shaders or are covering a lamp underneathe.). Then in the render layers tab enable object index (Make sure you are in cycles to find this option.). Then render your image, switch to the compositing tab, and follow the compositing setup in the image below.

If you have added your effect in compositing, your problem probably is that you have checked off compositing here:


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Why does 8 bit .png exported cycles render shows as 32bit in properties?
I'm working on some renders and try to minimize file size. Since I need alpha channels, I'm using PNG. I always save the render as 8bit with 15% compression. but after when I check the properties in windows it shows as 32bit. then after I import it into photoshop it's again as 8bit and I can't lower it anymore.
What is the best way to keep alpha and minimize file size? (about 10 to 20% quality loss is ok)

8 bits per channel x 4 channels per pixel (RGBA) = 32 bits per pixel. Windows is telling you about the pixel while Blender and Photoshop are telling you about the channel.

Oh thank you soo much!


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Bake to target with SimpleBake is too pixelated
I'm using the SimpleBake addon to bake from a few higher poly pieces to a single lower poly model, but for some reason the results are more pixelated than they should be.
I started off baking at 4k to a 4k texture, I did the UV unwrap and packed everything as best I could, only to find the results don't look good at all. I looked at the images of the bakes (specifically normal map) and saw they were very pixelated. It's almost as if it's being baked at 1k or something and then saved as 4k.
Original
vs
Baked 4k

I tried upping the bake resolution, and it improves the result some, but it's still not entirely acceptable and I've hit the memory limits of my PC at 12k bake and save to 4k.
Normalmap 4k and baked at 4k
vs
Normalmap 4k baked at 12k

I've fiddled with every setting I can think of, but I must have missed something. This is the first time I've had this kind of problem baking things to one target or baking higher to lower poly up until now.
Simplebake settings:

Does anyone have an idea of what could be causing this problem?
Thank you in advance.
Blender 4.1.1 and SimpleBake up to date.


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Objects in Array Stretched and Deformed with Curve Modifier
I have a chain object, and I have a curve it follows. I got it to work for following curve, but chain object are not circles but both parts are more like stretched circles (ovals).
Object I made with two toruses one rotated 90 degrees and then joined them together. I tried single torus too, but same issue persists, on a curve it just looks like a stretched oval.
What is the issue?

can you upload file? http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Dont use the curve modifier directly on the torus. Use the torus as dupliface on a plane with the array and curve modifiers instead

I forgot to say that that i have 2 active modifiers. One is array and other is curve.

The curve modifier distorts the objects, that is the intended behavior. If you want an undeformed array use  either by Instancing (Duplifaces before 2.8*) or a particle system instead.
Add your Array+Curve modifier stack to a simple plane mesh instead.
Create a new plane mesh, parent one single chain link to it and activate Object Properties > Instancing > Faces (Duplifaces pre 2.8*)on the plane's object properties.
Then add the Array modifier, use an empty object rotated $90º$ to introduce rotation to each link. Activate the Object Offset option and pick the empty.
Adjust spacing and settings as desired, and then add the curve modifier exclusively to the plane object alone.

Alternatively use a particle system instead of Instancing > Faces feature with one particle per face if you wish to hide the original link independently. Manually adjust particle count to match the number of arrayed links.

ok i followed this animation but when i use array it only multiplies the plane

But I thank you for taking your time. i will see some tutorials and info about dublifaces and hopefully can figure out what to do. Thanks a lot

You have to parent the torus to the plane

How do you stop the plane from being rendered?

Which part didn't work for you in 2.8? I just managed to follow along just fine. Also if you search you will find what you seek https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/118835/eevee-particles-hide-mesh-emitter-at-render/118841#118841

Thanks, this works but I don't understand the purpose of the plane and parenting the torus to it.  Once I got it working, I deleted the plane and nothing changed.  Is the plane there to reduce deformation of the torus?  In my question https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/295991/simple-array-along-bezier-curve-3-5-1-not-working-the-way-i-expect?noredirect=1#comment510208_295991 I had significant torus deformation but did not use the plane.

The faces determine where the torus will be placed preventing distortions

For modern versions of Blender with Geometry Nodes available, a friendlier approach can be used.

Add a Geometry Nodes modifier to your bezier curve.
Use a Curve to Points node set to Length, and adjust the Length as desired.
After that use an Instance on Points node
Add whatever geometry you like to the Instance socket. In the illustrated case I constructed a torus (from a curve circle and a Curve to Mesh node, but you can use any bespoke object instead)
To rotate every other instance you can use a Rotate Instances node
Under the Selection socket connect an Index node to identify which instances to rotate
Between the to add a Math node set to Modulo of $2$, to only select every other instance

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


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How to unwrap a drink can
I have applied smart UV unwrap to this beverage metal can, but as you can see its all over the place in UV editor mode and I can't apply texture to it properly. How can I fix it so that its better to work with?

Don't use Smart UV Project for this case, use Follow Active Quads it will yield a lot better results for this.

For this to work make sure you select one single face with mouse click to make it active (active quad) prior to unwrapping or it wont work


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How to render a scene faster in Cycles?
I have a scene of an office. It has chairs, tables, computers, and so on.
I would like to know how I can render this scene faster as I am planning to make animation inside the office and don't want the render to take forever.
I know of sampling, resolution and most things in render settings. I have also heard of render passes or rendering using layers.

As one might expect, you can't just "render faster" for the most part, there are really no shortcuts or magical tricks. You can optimize your scene, tweak settings, and adjust parameters. While these can under certain situations make a significant difference, they will most often lead to marginal speed-ups compared to the total duration of the rendering process. These can add up frame upon frame when rendering long animations, yielding more significant benefits though, but don't expect miracles.
Rendering is by definition slow. It takes time, a lot of time and resources, rendering animations even more so; so be prepared to wait.
As a wise man once said

Match your expectations to your hardware, or match your hardware to your expectations.

Time is money, if your are serious about rendering, if work depends on it, if you are making money from it, or you are interested enough in your hobby invest in better hardware. If you can't front the cash or prefer not to own it, rent computing power (a render farm, web services etc.). Otherwise you pay with your time, by waiting.
Final rendering speed is mostly a sum of variables like the processing capabilities of the infrastructure (computer, farm, available devices, among others), available resources (how busy your computer is, available memory), performance level (faster components, higher end hardware), desired level of quality and scene complexity. Faster renders always come at a cost of one of these, you either sacrifice image quality, artistic quality, or money.
That being said, for Cycles (and path tracing in general), there are a few setups that are slightly faster to calculate, and additionally there are numerous ways you can optimize your scene so it generates less noise. With less noise you require less samples to achieve the same level of quality, hence taking less time to calculate, which may result in faster rendering.
Rendering Settings
The most obvious ones are technical settings that lower objective image quality you can sacrifice in the name of speed. Things like lowering sample counts, shrinking image size, reducing number of light bounces, rendering at a slower frame rates, which all come at a cost of objective digital quality.
Also make sure you are using the correct devices (available GPUs, connected farms, etc), they are correctly setup and actually being used. Use an adequate amount of samples and quality settings for your scene and desired goal.
3D Scene Setup
Others are more nuanced and come at a more subjective cost of "artistic" image quality.
Rendering with Path Tracers like Cycles, is vaguely akin to target practice, where you have to hit a bunch of targets with a limited number of arrows. For the rendering metaphor, light sources would be the targets to hit, where the "rays" (from the Raytracing namesake) would be the shot arrows that have to hit the light targets. These are fired from your camera, and travel through your scene ricochetting around multiple surfaces until they hit a light source like a lamp object, the environment sky, or an emitting surface. Arrows are scarce and expensive, for the computer each ray shot and each surface it ricochets on cost a lot of processing power and accurately predicting the trajectory to hit a target is very hard.
For the sake of this answer I'll try to stick to this target practice metaphor for the examples.
Generally speaking Cycles likes big and easy to find light sources (targets). Smaller, harder to reach or hidden lamps that are "hard to hit" produce noisier output that needs more samples and takes longer to render. Things to avoid:

Lights

Very small light sources (spots, point lights or area lights with
a small size or Radius property)
"Hidden" lamps, occluded behind objects, in crevices, holes, or contributing indirect light to a scene
Lights behind or inside glass objects or refractive surfaces whose light contribution to the scene is distorted causing caustics (scattered by refraction). Using the previous target practice analogy these are crosswinds bending the path of the arrows and making their trajectories harder to predict.
Very high number of lamp objects. In target practice analogy the equivalent of having too many "targets" to hit with few arrows and a limited number of shots. Many light source objects may cause increased noise and require higher samples because more rays are needed to hit them all uniformly (Equivalent of requiring more arrows to hit more targets). This has been ameliorated in recent versions of Blender 3.6+.

Geometry

Very highly subdivided meshes
Mesh with Subdiv modifiers with adequate subdivisions for the viewport display but very high Render Subdivisions value. This may also cause very long BVH trees building times ("syncing" time before actual render starts).
Hidden or secondary objects with unnecessarily high quality meshes (Generally speaking keep subdivisions and mesh density to the absolute minimum required for the desired quality, proportional to the objects importance in the overall scene, its visibility and its proximity).
Very dense meshes with poor topology, resulting from sculpting, 3D scans or importing from CAD software.

Shaders and materials

Very complex materials or long shaders trees
Unnecessarily large image textures sizes
Disproportionate texture size and scene protagonism relationship, that is using very large textures for small, distant, or otherwise secondary objects with little visibility
Abusing the number of individual image texture files
Lots of glossy materials and reflections (which cause fireflies)
Abusing bump maps
Small or numerous objects with emission shaders or illumination (hard to hit targets)
Volumetric effects, like translucency, sub-surface scattering, volume materials, fog, fire, smoke, etc.

Hardware

Slow or low end processors (for CPU rendering)
Slow or low end GPUs (for GPU accelerated rendering)
Low amounts of system memory, like RAM or Video Memory, especially if insufficient to fit the whole scene. Having more RAM doesn't make your renders faster, but working close to the limit may lead to filling available memory, which causes "swapping" (the Operating system moves excess data to storage devices like Hard Drives) which are considerably slower, hampering rendering at best, or completely failing at worse.

Resources

Keeping the computer busy with other tasks while rendering. Especially heavy tasks like gaming, video encoding, dealing with archives files (zip) or other demanding tasks.
Warm environments, poor cooling or insufficient ventilation. Hot computers tend throttle performance to prevent hardware damage when they heat up, slowing things down without warning. Laptops due to their size constraints are particularly prone.

Other tips
Try searching the internet for "Reduce Cycles noise" or "Optimize Cycles render" and you will find plenty of tips about it like the ones bellow as an example:

How to avoid noisy renders in Cycles?
How to reduce fireflies in Cycles?
Will increasing samples reduce fireflies?
Blender Manual about optimizing scenes and reducing noise
Blender Guru tips about reducing fireflies
Noise reduction techniques YouTube Tutorial
..and more...

Modern versions of Blender also have multiple built-in options for denoising renders. Denoising is not a miracle tool that solves all problems, if used incorrectly can cause blurry images, splotches, artifacts or pastel like effects, but if used properly can help reduce the needed amount of samples save some rendering time. See:

How to properly denoise renderings?
What are the differences between different Denoiser options built into Blender?
Which denoiser is better?

How about moving some objects/mesh toa different  layer, and rendering each one separately and thrn compositing them together with a node later? Will that not make things faster or is it the same?

Never tried that myself, but as far as I know each layer will render faster but overall both together would take longer than just a single render, I think. Plus composting time on top of that. Separating layers is generally done for the purpose of composting or memory management, since each layer could potentially require less memory than the full scene, not for increased speed

Hi :). Since this answer doesn't mention denoising, it might be useful to link this one: Type of Denoiser built into Blender

@JachymMichal Good point, added. Thanks

You could try baking your textures. By baking your textures you get cycles to render one high quality texture and use it with one sample in the final animation. One limit is you will want to use a static light source. See the results of this blenderguru tutorial.
Depending on how you want to animate, you could render one  static image (or several from different angles) of the office, then render an animation of just the characters moving and composite them onto the static image/s. The render of only the characters will be very fast in the transparent areas around the characters - 70-80% of the image?
You can even combine the two ideas. Use the baked scene to quickly render a fly through animation of the office and then use it like a live video and composite the character animation over the top. Rendering the two separately allows you to render shadows with the characters and composite them onto the background. You can find several questions here about shadow only rendering and compositing.

First off, BlenderGuru has some good tips in his 4 Easy Ways to Speed Up Blender Cycles article. The tile size mod is especially effective. In addition, if you make the edits in 7 Ways to Get Rid of Fireflies In a Blender Render, you will be able to drastically reduce the render samples (speeds up render).

Turning up exposure can help along with lowering light passes but it will depend on
what results you are after


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Weird line between mesh connections
I'm new here, but this thing is annoying me for at least a whole month. I've searched everywhere and didn't find anything.
If I join 2 body parts, for example the arm and the torso of my character, there will be a kind of line between both, and this happens not only on Blender but on game engines like Unity too, even if the material and the texture are the same.
How can I fix this?
To show an example of this, I split the arm off my character and re-joined it, and there is a division where the mesh was divided. The effect is visible.
Before:

After:

This has nothing to do with textures or materials, this is self intersecting geometry. How did you joint the two objects? Have you removed doubles or welded vertex from the two chunks together afterwards?

Without seeing the mesh (or a blend) it is hard to guess. Be aware when you join two meshes the vertices will not be joined. This means that "smooth shading" will shade the edges as flat (= hard edge) due to the missing "continuation of the mesh". Beside of that changing the topology of one of the meshes (at the contact edges) will make them not fit together.

I removed the doubles and it worked, thanks! (Saddly the other part just weidly spazzes A LOT, but thanks anyway!)

It seems that it is due to the flipped surface. So try to go to the edit mode with face selection mode, then select the face and then click on "Flip Direction" option as shown in screenshot below.

This is not due to flipped normals. The seam is visible likely because of different vectors orientation of the normals' vertices on the junction but it is not and should not be fixed with flipping their orientation as will make things worse.

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


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Armature modifier deforming mesh slightly
Whenever I add a Armature modifier to my models, the mesh for the arm and legs shift, but just a little bit.
When I uncheck the Bind to vertex groups box, it restores to it's normal position but as soon as I check it again it shifts.
Not binded:

Binded:

I know there's barely a difference but I've worked too hard on this model to and I can't let there be a mistake like this. The mesh for sure shifts every time I check vertex groups on.

It's hard to say without checking the file, but usually, when I encountered similar situation, it was because wrong alignment of controlling and deforming bones. It causes bones to move a little in pose mode from it's initial position, so check it out.

@Mzidare thank you for your input but I fixed the bone roll for the Metarig before hitting "Rigify" for all bones. Provide me a email address or something and I'll share the Dropbox link with you when I get home as long as you promise not to share the link or the .Blend file. I am taking these precautions because I worked very hard on this model.

It sounds like an issue caused by IKs with wrong poles. Without further information this question can't be answered.

In blender 2.8+ there is a new Save as Shape Key which keeps the modifier in the stack and allows you to config the shape key to have the power of -1.

Could you elaborate on how to do this? Perhaps describe the steps and show some screenshots of the results

So I have (Kind of?) found a way to fix this issue using Shape Keys, but it's very impractical. First you apply armature modifier as Shape Key with bind to vertex groups box checked on then you go to Shape Key and set the range's minimum value to -1.00. So now when you add a new armature modifier the mesh expands to it's original position because of the -1.00 Shape Key range value.
Unfixed:
Fixed:

I had to zoom in really close to the mesh so you guys could see the difference. Could someone please please PLEASE tell me a way to avoid this problem all together without going through all that hassle?

This strategy adds a bit of lag also so if someone could find an alternative that would be great.


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How to create faces of cubes missing their top and bottom faces in Geometry Nodes?
I'm still working on a way to create modular houses with geometry nodes. This is the result I have and the input geometry I use.

I'm currently getting stuck at creating floors. Here is the geometry I manage to isolate (left image), which is the outside visible part of my floor. I am simply trying to add top and bottom faces to this geometry (on the right image, done manually as an example). I tried to Z-scale faces to zero and create curves from this to fill curve, but didn't manage to get it working...

If anyone has an idea that could be explored, I would be greatful !!
Thanks

How exactly do you create the input geometry?

Hello again ! You mean the right part of first image? I do it manually : I create the base edges to shape the house I want, and then extrude the height of my first level. Finally, I extrude again the height of my floor, and so on.

This all looks like a fairly simple task, but it's actually quite tricky.
There are two basic hurdles here:

The node Fill Curve only produces usable results if the individual curves are flat and not overlapping. As soon as they lie on top of each other on different planes, you get unusable meshes.
The normals of the faces must be correctly aligned, and in this specific situation these cannot be derived by a logical analysis of the indexes.

All in all, you need a lot of nodes to do all this, even if the task is relatively easy to solve:

So I suggest the following solution:

Separate the parts that are crucial for this project from each other (You seem to have solved this part of the problem as well):

Separate the roof and the ground from your mesh.
Separate the walls from your floors. I do this here using the edge length (Adjust this according to your needs).

Then separate the vertical from the horizontal edges of your floors.

To be able to align the orientation of the faces correctly afterwards, I save the position of the lower point of the vertically running edges in each case.

Now comes the real part: First I convert the horizontal edges into curves.

So that I get closed meshes with the node Fill Curve which can be used further, I move these curves first temporarily to far away positions.

Then I apply Fill Curve and move the points of the meshes back to their intended positions.

Now that I have these layers neatly separated at the correct positions, I only need to correct their orientation, and I do that by comparing them with the previously saved position of the lower point of the vertical edges.

Finally, the points are just joined into a closed mesh, and your floors are done.

Well, I am once again astonished by your answer. Thanks a lot, I was indeed blocked by the fact that "Fill Curve" was giving me only one face whereas I expected multiple for stacked floors. Very smart to offset them temporarly, that's what I missed. Many thanks again !!


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The mirror modifier isn't projecting the object in the place I want it. What am I doing wrong, and what can I do to fix it?
The imagine below shows where the object is being mirrored, it should be on the other side of the UV sphere though. Any way I can fix this???

maybe apply the rotation of the object first?

yes you should apply the rotation with CTRL A then Rotation

The mirror modifier doesn't work as you first might think of. But if you once understand how it works, it is working pretty logically.
First the basics:
Every object in Blender has an origin (or pivot) point. This point can be anywhere. It doesn't have to be "inside" the object (mesh).
You can see the origin point if you check "origins" here:

Example: origin outside of the object

Example: origin inside of the object

Why is the origin so important?
Because a lot of calculations depend on that point, like rotation as you can see here:

So the pivot point is the center of the rotation.
You can e.g. change the pivot point (relative to your mesh) by going in edit mode with "TAB" and then moving the mesh (this just moves the mesh, not the pivot point, but of course this will change the rotation behaviour of it) or you click on "options" and check "origins".

If you select an object and press G you will only move the origin point.
The mirror modifier does exactly the same as the rotation: it takes the pivot point as "mirror position" (as long as you don't choose a mirror object - then of course that point will be the mirror position).
So here is the result:

If your object is rotated before using the mirror modifier, this will also taken into account. So you have to apply the rotation before using it so it looks more "logically" how the mirror modifier should work (although the result is still right without applying).


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How to get Circumference of Corners or Outer Edges? (Geometry Nodes)
I want to ask if there is any geometry node for getting the circumference of the corners or "outer edges" of a mesh.
I'm very new to geometry nodes and have been trying to make cake where the icing's scale adapts to how big the circumference is. My current set up is
icing scale = (face area/2)
However, this doesn't work since the area gets smaller when I create an inset (for a new cake layer), making the icings scale too much. So I think that the value for the circumference would be more suitable.

Do I have the right idea? Thank you in advance!

I assume that the parts are made of cylinders created in Geometry Nodes. In that case, you would have the radius. Then the circumference would be 2πr.

@quellenform oh the part (cake base) isn't made with geometry nodes unfortunately. I was trying to make the icing adaptable to a mesh so I can create different shapes of cake. by modifying the mesh.

Check out this answer. The problem might reduce to how to select the right edges.

@RobinBetts Thank you! I'll try to study this. I didn't know that it was possible to make the weight as an input!

@softsurface I've added an answer aimed more directly at cakes.

Geometry Nodes:

What this does is:
First, it captures the normal of the mesh as an anonymous attribute, that way we have access to the original normals after the Delete Geometry node.
Then it deletes all edges with an angle equal or close to $0$ and converts the resulting geometry into a curve.
Now we have access to the length of the edge loop that a point is currently in and the original normals. These values is what we use to determine the rotation and scale of an instance. The scale is the spline length divided by the product of $2\pi$ with Base Radius.
Base Radius is an input that can be use to control the base scale of the instances:

Since edges with an angle close to $0$ are deleted for the calculation, additiional loops will be ignored:

Note: This method assumes that your mesh is circular or close to circular, if it isn't, results may be weird.

Nice icing! And yep, that's the way to do it!

Woah, yes! This is the answer! I'll be trying it out in awhile but I understood your logic, and it's pretty spot on. Getting the angle is genius. Thank you so much for this, it's a great help!

Please forgive me, my icing looks terrible.
...but it tastes good, I think, because the solution could look like this:

Here I use an existing mesh (cylinder).
I have created a vertex group for the upper edge and the lower edge.
I pass these vertex groups directly to the geometry nodes via the Group Inputs.
There I split the mesh based on the vertex groups with the node Separate Geometry, and convert the remaining edges with Mesh to Curve into curves.
I then divide these curves with the node Curve to Points into single points, for which I also get the corresponding rotation. As you can see, I also provided the number of subdivisions as Group Input with the attribute Count.
This rotation is again individually adjusted with Rotate Euler (do this as you need it), and with Instance on Points the icing is instantiated at the respective points.
Enjoy your meal!

And if you still want to know the circumference of the upper or lower part (assuming that the mesh is really a circle here), you can calculate it like this: $2 \times r \times \pi$

Thank you so much for your answer! But if it's reliant on the vertex groups, would that mean that I have to keep making a vertex group for each "cake tier" ?(ex. I create an inset and extrude that inset to make another cake layer/tier like in the post's picture).
I was hoping to find a procedural way where the icing will scale down on the new "cake layer/tier" but the scale will stay the same in the original base "layer"/"tier".
Sorry, I hope that I'm making sense! :(

@softsurface Yes, in this case. This method is based on you creating the vertex groups yourself. I wasn't quite clear on how you set this up and didn't solve it optimally. But Hulifier has the right answer for you!

That's alright, thank you so much! I learned something new from you and I think this would be very very useful in future assets (I actually think that it would be suitable for this one other thing I'm working on). Your nodes are also way cleaner. Many thanks for the help, I really appreciate it!

@softsurface Glad you were able to take something for yourself anyway! And, Haha, I just find it very funny that you find my nodes "way cleaner" ;-) ...I'm discussing this difficult topic with a few others right now, who probably due to the fact that they have little to do with young people personally, see things quite differently than you and me: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/266334/how-can-i-structure-my-node-tree-better-and-also-make-it-look-great/

woah, that's a lot of nodes! But I meant it when I said yours are way cleaner than mine! Hahaha you managed to do it with 7 - 15 nodes, while it took me around more than 20 hahaha. Still gotta get used to it like Substance Designer nodes, though I think structuring nodes are similar for both softwares. A lot like to make use of the "dot" that helps clean lines, groups, and finding more optimized nodes. My professor also liked to structure nodes by groups and that go "upward" so it's also easy to see the process of creating a material :o

It does sound as if you'll be wanting to handle non-circular cakes. You could let Curve to Points > 'Length' do the maths for you. Select the edges of your cake-mesh you want piped, assign their vertices to a vertex group, and use the group, along with your 'piping' object, as inputs to this GN modifier:

Which might be a more convenient workflow for a variety of cakes, including circular ones.

Oh yeah, and the next answer will be something with colorfully distributed smarties, some fireworks and a dancing figure at the top :D

Thank you so much this is wonderful! I actually did try using curves as well, but I still have to learn more about this since I just started a day ago. But this will definitely come in handy in the future! Thank you for the help :)

Gotta sell it, @quellenform, gotta sell it. Besides. just letting my fem-flag fly. :D


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How to inset edges without using an array modifier, or a premade "plank" object?
I have previously made models using Maya to get the intended look but I've forgotten how to actually do this in Maya and prefer Blender when making models anyway. I'm trying to get a planked look for a crate by using inset edges on a high-poly version of the crate to high-low poly bake when texturing. The intended result is shown in the attached image, on a barrel.

you can use the array modifier and the curve modifier for that as well

Add a plank object, then give it an Array modifier.

In edit mode move the plank some distance away from the origin. This is going to be the radius of your barrel.

Then in the same location as the origin, add an Empty Object, rotate it on the Z-axis by the number of degrees equal to 360/ your Array count.

Then just set the Offset type to object and pick the empty object.


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How to export animated curve from blender to unity
I needed to make an animated scroll for a project, so I followed this tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOZ-LYFtCGI, I followed all the steps and got decent results in blender, but when I tried to export the model as an fbx file for unity, the animation gets messed up. Only the scroll handle moves and not the plane. I don't understand what mistake I have made, if I could get some insights, I shall be delighted. Thank You.
I have uploaded the model on sketchfab, so maybe someone could check the model itself and tell me what's wrong.
Model link - https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/x-3-02cb1a27a0f143928aad001507ef8f2b

From what I can see (and what I know from having completed a Blender to Unity project recently) the root of your trouble is the active modifiers that you're using for the effect (the mirror and the curve modifiers).
To my knowledge, you cannot export a Blender Modifier via an FBX. It will either ignore it and erase any other modifiers below it on the list or (if you have 'Apply Modifiers' ticked in your FBX export settings, under Geometry) it will apply them. I found this out when I had a Subdivision modifier on a rig I was using and it caused a lot of trouble for a short while.
My limited advice would be to try using an alembic cache export instead of an FBX, because that will cache all the animation data to the mesh.
Otherwise, you could try and apply your modifiers before your export, but I presume that will undo the effect you're going for?
If you're simply looking for the scroll to stretch out in the middle and the two ends to move apart, I suggest animating the middle section in a different way, e.g. using shape keys or through an 'Anim All' Add On which will allow you to animate vertex points; or just by using two joints.
Hope that helps. Sorry I don't have a straight answer!


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Mesh default when I try to texture it
First I'm sorry, because I'm going to talk about other software...however, I know that the original problem should comes from the way I've used Blender in order to make this mesh (but I don't know why..), so here is my problem :
I've made an asset and I'm trying to texture it in substance, however things not working as usual and there is what happen for this time :

There is like black shadows lines and I really don't understand why.. this "artefacts"? happens in high poly & in Low poly.
Do you know why guys ? And how to fix this ?
Thanks a lot !

Are these '' lines '' seen only in rendering view? Upload a screenshot in edit-mode view or else try to upload the file, maybe looking at it closely we can solve your problem. However, if you haven't done it, I suggest you proceed with the usual basic precautions: check if the object has double faces, double edges or vertices. Are there any lights? let us know.

Hello @Albizz thanks a lot for your answer. I'm sorry if my explanation wasn't clear enough, but this "lines" are not visible in Blender (however not as far as i know). But visible in other softwares, like Unreal Engine 4 & also in Substance Painter. So I think that the problem come from the model itself and how i've made it. Regarding faces/edges/vertices i've not found anything wrong. If needed, i can send FBX. Again : Thanks a lot

So the screens you put on, are they about substance and unreal? I am not an expert in the sector, I hope you can answer whoever is competent, but I am not sure that the error could be due to blender. Let's say it is possible that you did not export the file correctly or that something is missing from reading by other software. However, I advise you to upload the file again, so those who read and understand export can take a look.

Exactly, the 2 first screenshots comme from Substance painter. I've tried to export it again, I will try different way to do it..for now, still searching ! Thanks again for your help & support @Albizz


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Real Snow Addon not working well
I have a problem with the built in addon "Real Snow", I have a really bad result when I'm using it.
I've tried on many kind of mesh, and I've enabled or disabled experimental cycle renders.
I'm using Blender 3.0.
Thank you a lot for help !

could you please share your .blend file?

Go to Edit > Preferences > Viewport and deselect the GPU box under Selection and Subdivision.

Hey, sorry didn't see your answer 2 years ago..
Of course project finished long time now, but still want to thank you for answering. :)


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Camera acts like it has a child of constraint, when there is none

My camera acts like it has a child of constraint when it doesn't. It has a track constraint but that shouldn't (and doesn't look like) it affects the position of the camera. It is under the armature in the collection tab but there's no constraint, am I missing something?

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/130575/why-cant-i-parent-objects-in-my-blend  https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/127105/the-outliner-doesnt-show-parent-child-relations-in-blender-2-8

Its position in the outliner indicates that it is a child of the armature (possibly, of some bone in the armature.)  Not a child-of-- literally a child.  Select the camera and use a clear parent operation (alt p for me) with keep transformation.


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Cloth does not follow hook
I have an animation of a cloth sim where the ends are being moved with hooks(and pins) and it works for like 80% of the animation until the cloth just stops obeying one of the hooks and that end stays still. (and no its not just in the viewport, it shows up in the final render also)

Cloth sims are always super buggy for me, would adding more ram to blender help solve?

hello, please share your file (share the link it will give you once uploaded): https://pasteall.org/blend/

figured it out, it was the cache


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Can you invert a noise modifier
I just want the waves made by the noise modifier to be flipped on the x-axis

I figured it out, just make the strength number negative.


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Use a simulation on a armature
I am trying to animate a person falling down the stairs, but that would be a lot to hand animate. Is there any way to simulate them falling with all their limbs moving?

I guess the best way would be to create a ragdoll. But that's a question better to be solved with a tutorial rather than a simple answer here. Google "Blender ragdoll" and there might be some solutions, for example this YT video How To Make Any Rig Into a Rag Doll in Blender or this site Blender Secrets: Ragdoll (the easy version) and there are also addons: Ragdoll Tools


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Splotches on baked normal maps
Not sure why but when baking normal maps I sometimes get these strange splotches of color that are incorrect. It's not due to any modifiers because it happens with multiple models & it still happens when the modifiers are removed.

If anyone knows the cause of these/how to fix them it would be greatly appreciated!

hello, hard to say, maybe share your object before the baking?

These are places where the low poly intersects the high poly (even with any ray extrusion used) or where the high poly self-intersects.


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Rendering a specific set of frames at different time
Good day, I am looking for a way to tell Blender to render a set of frames, stop and render another set of frames using python. For example, my project has 500 frames and I want Blender to render the first 100 frames (from frame 1 to 100), stop, then move on to render frames 101 to 200, stop, then move on to render frames 201 to 300, up til frame 500. Of course, Blender needs to save all the rendered images in .png format.
I know there is a way to render a frame like
bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = '/home/user/Documents/image.jpg'
bpy.ops.render.render(write_still = True)
but that only tells Blender to render one frame at one time. I know I can incorporate this into a for loop but since I have little knowledge in python and in programming in general I had a difficult time putting it together.
The reason doing so is that I've encountered a weird problem in Blender Render recently that Blender will freeze when rendering 144 in a row. So my approach to the solution is to try to programmatically render 100 frames at a time then move on to the next 100 frames until all 500 frames are rendered.
Do you have any idea?
Thanks.

Somewhat related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/108562/how-to-list-the-frame-numbers-which-contain-keyframes-in-python  ie render from command line, well explained in answer here https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/131052/how-to-render-in-command-line

Do you have persistent images on?


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Awful FPS When Video Editing
When using the Video Editor mode of Blender 2.82 (I have not used other modes) I get 1-3 FPS max when previewing the video. My processor, GPU and RAM are all no where near maxed out: GPU is at 5%, processor at 30%, RAM around 3 GB out of 8 GB. I can run any game that I download, including heavy games like Assassin's Creedy Odyssey so while my computer has it's limitations, 3 FPS doesn't feel like the ceiling. When I actually render video (not just preview) I ALWAYS get 0.3s to render a frame, regardless of the changes made. There's also a huge lag when dragging videos along the timeline, the actual drag animation lags by up to 5 seconds sometimes.
What I've done:

I've gone into Preferences and increased Sequencer Cache Limit to 8 GB, but the ram is still not fully utilized.
I've set system to use OpenCL and use my AMD 5600 XT graphics card, and I've gone to Render Properties and set the Render Engine to Cycles with the supported feature set, GPU compute mode. I've changed tile sizes, experimenting with 1 tile / frame, and using auto tile size. I've used the Eevee render engine as well. All of these changes have absolutely no effect: I still get 1 frame per 0.3 s.
I've installed the latest drivers for my graphics card.
I've observed my GPU usage from AMD Radeon software: so I know my GPU is actually at 5%.

These are all of the suggestions I've seen, and none of them have done anything for me whatsoever. Obviously with free software you're going to experience problems but I don't think it should be unusable on a relatively expensive computer.
As an additional experiment, I've noticed that if I just load a video in on it's own, and do absolutely nothing to the video, I start with about 18 FPS for under a second and then drop to around 4 FPS for the rest of the preview. The bottom line is that's still way too few frames without anything being maxed out. What settings can I change to resolve this?

The VSE does not use GPU(yet), so you'll need to render proxies to your files. Set up and render in the sidebar and select preview resolution in the preview sidebar.

In preview mode of the Video Sequence Editor open the properties panel by pressing N on the keyboard. Then check Prefetch frames under the view settings tab. You will see an orange line under track 1 of the sequencer growing until the video has been pre-loaded. Large clips may need more RAM allocated in settings as VSE fetches the video frame by frame.

Blender is a great 3d app, but a lousy video editing one. The video editing section was designed long ago and has not grown to meet the needs of today's video editing. It doesn't use the capabilities of modern hardware (multicore CPUs or advanced GPUs), and has issues handling current video formats and frame rates. My advise is not to waste any more of your time trying to make it work, and use a different app. Blenders VSE does not have the capabilities and flexibility of most modern dedicated editing software.

Still some changes have been made to VSE to make it more up-to-date

Long way to go still. Why suffer when there are more mature tools? Even the most basic editing programs are much more responsive than the VSE. It might not be worth updating.. Maybe it should follow the same fate as the game engine.

Sure thing, large studios seldom use open source. Yet, for the editiing 99% of people does it's enough to make Blender the alternative to free online video editors.

99% of those users can use tools that are better  alternatives to blender, and are free as well. As I stated, blender is wonderful for what is good for. It is not great for every task. Video editing is one of the weakest features. In my opinion it is a disservice trying to convince new users otherwise. A system that has the resources to run blender should be able to do smooth playback and editing in other software.


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Blurry textures in the viewport
I tried to create a Minecraft animation using blender. When I'm in material mode I see this, but when rendering it shows normal.

Please can anyone tell me what should I do to fix that? I have no idea where that problem is.

Welcome to the site! Which part of your screenshot isn't as expected by you ? The most important mode is Rendered, that's how object will look like when imported somewhere else. Material mode is approximation and might show some setups not totally correct.

In the material nodes, on you image texture change linear to closest. This should fix it. Then also try going into material view mode.

I tried that and it was already set to closest, then I tried to change few other settings but it didnt work. Any other ideas ? Thank you for help.

authors: Алексей Патрикеев


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Why can't i render smoke with my AMD graphic card
When I try to render smoke one GPU it just gives me an OpenCL error, on the CPU its just fine.
I have a ATI HD 7850 2GB ddr5 OC (gtx970 just fried) and since I installed the graphic card I can't work with smoke.
Can someone tell me if Blender supports smoke rendering with AMD GPU?
If so then what is happening to me??
Thank you guys in advance

Not currently supported, I'm afraid.
You can see the list of supported features over at the Blender manual
As of Blender 2.78a, October 2016:
Feature                    CPU                 CUDA (NVIDIA GPU)   OpenCL (AMD GPU)
Basic Shading              ✔                   ✔                   ✔
Transparent Shadows        ✔                   ✔                   ✗
Motion Blur                ✔                   ✔                   ✔
Hair                       ✔                   ✔                   ✔
Volume                     ✔                   ✔                   ✗
**Smoke / Fire             ✔                   ✔                   ✗
Subsurface Scattering      ✔                   ✔                   ✗
Open Shading Language      ✔                   ✗                   ✗
CMJ sampling               ✔                   ✔                   ✗
Branched Path integrator   ✔                   ✔                   ✗
Displacement/Subdivision   ✔ (experimental)    ✔ (experimental)    ✔ (experimental)


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Why is my game expanding my text on play and can I fix it?
So I have made games before, but have never seen this happen.
I create text somewhere in my game in the camera, and when I play it, it always grows and sometimes pixilates,  but this doesn't happen with anything else I create, and I can't see where my text is going to show up.
This is what it looks like in object mode:

But when I run the game in the embedded player or the standalone, I always get a clipping like this:

I've tried resizing the window, all it does is leave black space where the window has changed. Tried restarting Blender, the computer, the graphics card. Nothing is working.
Why is this happening? Should I add more screenshots, is this possible to fix? If so, how?

You should probably post your blend file to get any quality help

Thanks for the tip! Here's the blend file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9vWE-S-Y1FXUzlOaEZNc2xWVjA     I can't put it in the answer because I'm new and don't have hardly any rep points.


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How can I link two meshes with many vertices together to prevent lagging?
I was recently asked to make a terrain in Blender. I thought, "no problem. I could just make a very large grid and use proportional editing to make different hills and cliffs. Simple".
The problem is my computer crashes, the number of required vertices was too large, so I decided to create multiple different objects, with same amount of vertex, so it had less to compute when in Edit Mode.
If I put the squares right next to each other, it made the same amount of area I wanted before, and the computer woundn't crash.

However I cannot join them together and enter edit mode for both at the same time; it crashes Blender. But when I edit one, the other stays exactly the same, and it looks like separate planes. I want it to look like one connected ground.
Note in the picture above both planes are exactly the same.
What I need to find out is how I can connect these vertices on the plane next to it, without requiring they enter edit mode together, as if one object. I just want them connected at certain locations, not joined and merged.

I was wondering if it would be possible with the Hook operator (which I don't know very well), or if it would require something else.
I just want it so when moving one vertex up one one shape moves it up on the other so it's not only rising on half of the ground.
Please tell me if this isn't well enough explained.

I think you mean Topography (as in terrain), not Typography (as in text fonts), right? Having the same amount of geometry distributed for more objects is generally worse for scene performance, even if it makes entering edit mode easier in that particular object. If it crashes you are exceeding your computer capabilities, you have to lower the number of subdivisions, there is no way around that. Using hooks and tricks will only make it worse.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Yes I did mean topography (stupid autocorrect). Thanks for the info, I guess my next question would be is it my CPU or RAM (or both) that would need upgraded to do more of this?

Before you spend any money that you may regret make sure you are not hitting Blender's performance limitations themselves. Some times even with an unlimited amount of RAM there is only so much software can handle. How are you making said terrain, sculpting, displacement, manual modelling?
Have you tried using modifiers to subdivide your mesh instead? Do you really need that high number of divisions, have you tried lower? You could probably get away with a lower poly mesh then add a Subsurf modifier afterwards for smoothing.

That may help: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/75704/how-to-create-a-seamless-low-poly-terrain-with-displace-and-multiple-planes/75712#75712.


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Is it possible to attach a point light to a single vertex?
I have a scene where I'm deforming a model of a hallway with a Twist modifier. My goal is to attach point lights to the mesh so they will change their position when the twist is applied.

Is this possible? If not, is there a workaround to achieve what I'm going for without having to keyframe each point light individually? I want to render this in eevee, so going the route of an emissive material isn't ideal.

yes it works, select your light, shift select your mesh, switch to Edit mode, select one or 3 vertice and press Ctrl P in order to parent, but of course you need one or 3 vertices close to the light

Brings back memories of LoZ-OoT ;)

Select your light, shift select your mesh, switch to Edit mode, select one or 3 vertice and press CtrlP in order to parent, but of course you need one or 3 vertices close to the light.


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I'm trying to make a petal fall animation, but I'm not sure where to start
I wanted to make a video just like this of rose petals falling in blender but i'm not sure what to do physics-wise. I tried making an explosion with the rose mesh but it resulted kind of uneven and not that great to look at. I was thinking maybe to subdivide the rose into individual petals and then give those a rigid body, but how would I go about the "bounce" that you see in the video? the petals in the video deform and look like they have weight, and I'm not sure how to achieve that. Does anybody have any ideas?
Here is the video

thank you in advance!!!

You'll probably need a soft-body on the petals, as well as collision set up with the ground

focefields perhaps?


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Question about animation using different bvh files
I want to create an continuous animation from 3 different bvh files. For example, my human character runs, then rolls, then jumps. So I guess my question is about combining bvh files into one animation. What is the best approach, animation nodes? Python coding approach is also an option but I haven't done animation this way before. I need some advice.

Investigate the Nonlinear Animation editor in Blender. That's what it's for!  This tutorial is about using the NLA in Blender.

Thanks that is exactly what I was looking for! I tried it out but I'm having trouble transitioning between animations. One animation will be performed and then my armature will suddenly teleport to the starting point of the 2nd animation. Still working on a fix


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Transition Between Animations (NLA)
I'm trying to create a smooth transition between two animations (using the blend in/out feature in the NLA). However, after performing the first animation, my armature does a bunch of flips and weird rotations before reaching the starting point for the 2nd animation. I don't understand why this is happening or how to fix it. ** How do I perform a smooth looking transition between two animations? **

Don't know whether this video about combining Mixamo animations in Blender helps?

Thanks for the reply, but i'm still having trouble. I followed the video but the animations are facing different directions still. When I rotate the empty, both actions rotate.

I'm afraid I've not done much with the NLA editor so far so someone with more experience may be able to help.

hello, maybe share your file (keep it as simple as possible): https://pasteall.org/blend/

I think there is something wrong with my bvh files as I can get a good blend with other mixamo animations. @moonboots have you ever seen that behavior before, where the armature rotates/does flips while blending two animations?

I don't know, please share your file


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Shrinkwrap constraint has no effect on some objects
I struggle to shrinkwrap objects to the surface of a mesh. It works well with the default cube.
But it doesn't work with objects in a collection although I have the same settings. These objects were imported with blender-gis from a .shp file and extruded based on a field value. The objects are separated.
Here you see it works well for the default cube:

But not for an object from the collection. It is still hovering in the air:

Try this: Object → Set Origin → Origin to Geometry.

Damn, that worked! Thanks! Little detail I did not pay any attention to.

It's because you have hided object centers. This is useful information in some cases.


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How do I make a material an image?
I want to take a texture that I made using texture paint and add it to my object. I found that it's best add it as a material, and I found a question that showed me how to do it but it's a little confusing and outdated, so does anyone know a good way to do this? Thank you.

I don't see anything outdated about it. Even today it's still the same process. Just add a image texture node in the shader editor and select your image in it.

Or rather, it's using the properties editor to add nodes, but it's the same end result as going in the node editor and adding nodes there.


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Why does adding a subsurf modifier cause top face to stay flat?
My very new to blender not sure what is going on. I'm yet to round of the corners as it doesn't seem to affect the main edge. Here's my current model

Screen shot of the other side

But once I add the subdivision modifier it doesn't work on the top face but does on everything else. I've also made sure to make everything 4 points but that doesn't seem to help.

What would you suggest to improve my model? Thanks for the help!

Hello and welcome. Can you share your blend file https://blend-exchange.com

"What would you suggest to improve my model?" - A, M, B keys (select all, merge by distance)

It looks like you may have an interior face in there. Go into X-ray mode and delete it if that's the case


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Exporting to a .obj file skips duplicate values
i have encountered a strange problem when exporting an .obj file. Some portions of info is missing entirely.
All i did was create a cube, add a texture, align the texture mapping to my liking, and exported as an obj file with normals enabled.
I had to use an online converter to convert the file into a text file because the platform i was working with 3D models on has no way to load obj files, let alone any file. The converted text seemed fine with no corruption.
What i mean by removing certain info is duplicate values, specifically for normals and texture coordinates. It appears to not include any values that are the same, but i need these values for the software i am using.
The export window had nothing about removing duplicate values, not even a checkbox to enable or disable it.
Is there a setting i am missing that i can’t see, or is there a bug in the program? Thank you for any help you can give me.

What version of Blender are you using? The reason I ask is that Blender 3.5 and 3.6 have two versions of the obj file exporter on the Export menu (legacy written in python and a new faster version in C++) so it might be worth trying both versions and comparing the results to see if there's any difference. If the legacy version is ok and the new version has your duplicates missing you should report it as a bug.

I am using version 3.6 of blender. I have tried both new and legacy export options. I assume i should have 36 texture values, 3 for each triangle. The new version only gives me 4 of the texture values, while the legacy version gives me half of them. I believe i should have 12 normal values, both export options give me only half, removing the duplicate values. I could just copy and paste to double my normal values, but for the texture coords i’m not sure if that will work correctly. I will be working on trying the copy and paste part here soon. Where do i go to post a bug report? Thank you.

Since it sounds as if you have a problem with both the old and new versions of the exporter I'd use Blender's Help > Report a Bug menu and give a full explanation saying that you've tried both the addon and built-in version of the exporter and explain the differences you've found. (There is a Report a Bug button on the addon's entry under the addon's Edit > Preferences > Addons entry, but that's just for the legacy version.)  See this posting for further details about bug reporting.

Thank you. I will get to that as soon as i can.

I was just about to make a bug report, but i was thinking, am i doing something wrong and just wasted making a topic? I have another question before i make my bug report, how are the model indices designed to work like in the .obj file? There are 9 index values per triangle, are 3 for the triangle points, 3 for the normal values, and 3 for the texture coords? Thank you.

I'm afraid I've no idea having never used the obj exporter.. There are no blender developers here either so I suggest you still submit a report and see what happens. - I know that other bug reports have been triaged within a day or so, so you should at least get feedback pretty fast.

Ok, but i might put off making the bug report for now. I managed to get my project working with the given values. I am not a developer with this stuff either, but i want to learn so i can become one in the future. Hope you have a good day and thank you again.

Glad to hear it, but see my comment below.

I have figured out the problem, there are no bugs, it was just me misunderstanding some things. Yes the program is skipping duplicate values but for a reason, the use of index values or indices, one for the triangle points, texture coords, and normals for each vertices of each triangle. I was writing my own obj file reader using arrays in a program that can’t read files, and i had to iterate through the values using the indices to generate each triangle. One day i’ll make a guide on how i did this and link it here.

Would you be so kind and post your solution/workaround? "I solved it kthxbye" is one of the worst things you can do in the internet :(

Yes. Please post an answer explaining your solution for the benefit of anyone who may come up against the same problem in future.

There’s not really a good solution for this, nothing was wrong, i was just confused at how something worked. The skipped values is deliberate because the program includes an index value for each point. I think i wasted this post, i will be deleting it soon. But really the trick was i needed to learn how to use indices to generate triangles. But for now i will edit my answer.