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Crash trying to delete object or particle system
I have updated a project from 2.79 where there is a plane with a particle system on it.
Every time I try to do anything to the plane it crashes Blender right away. Sometimes even selecting it makes it crash. When I try to go to Edit Mode, it crashes, I try to G  move or R rotate, it crashes.
I tried to delete the particle system that's on it but it makes it crash too.
Basically I cannot do anything with it and cannot get rid of it.
Any idea what could be the problem?

"Any idea what could be the problem?" > "Converted" projects between major versions

Hi Duarte, thanks for your answer. And is there any fix to it? Is there any way to get rid of the plane or particle system when I already updated to 2.8?


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How to make christmas lights? A tapered coil of balls or a wrapped cone?
Three years ago, I first tried to create a string of Xmas lights using a tapered coil. It "worked", but the results were ugly (and incredibly difficult to texture.) The texture was applied to the outside of the coil, causing the image to stretch & wrap. And applying the UV map requires a degree in Differential Calculus. So now, I'd like to do it right.
What I'm thinking now is a string of "beads"... a coil of balls tapered at the top but w/o resizing/reshaping the beads/lights themselves. I don't know if that's even possible since the number of "beads" would have to increase top-to-bottom.
Maybe there's a way to "wrap" a string of beads around a cone then delete/hide the cone? Dunno. Just spit-balling.
Any tips or am I asking too much? TIA :)

Here is a possible way.
You could use geometry nodes to create the spiral.
You change some numbers to get the height and taper you want.
Then you attach some spheres to the spiral curve and randomize the color of them.
Here is the result:

Here is what your node tree might look like, but you can customize it to have other ornaments other than just spheres, maybe even a collection of objects.

If you set up a material that uses the instancer option, it can use a range of colours instead of just one.

Oh wow, that's awesome. I'll give it a try. I made need to follow up with questions on using the Node Tree as it's a feature I've never quite understood.

@Mugsy, This is a good example to start experimenting with.  It suits geometry nodes pretty well.  That being said, if you have any questions I will reply.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Hinge with Bones
I am trying to rig up some landing gear and am having trouble trying to incorporate the door. On this particular airframe, there are three doors for the nose wheel: one in front of and attached the nose wheel strut via pushrods, and the other two are on each side of the wheel well that close hydraulically (so those are easy and not the issue). The nose wheel fairing (door) is hinged at the top and attached to the top of the nose wheel strut. When the gear retracts, the door is pulled shut via the attached pushrods (no hydraulics, just simple attachment).
I can get the pushrods to follow the upper mount, but the fairing will not stay attached to the bone. I have tried setting the fairing up as a rigid body with another mesh object (which is the wheel well bay, not shown) with a hinge constraint, which works as it should, other than it ignores the bone. I have also tried parenting the fairing to the bone so it pulls up with the bone, but it ignores the hinge.
So, it's like one or the other (with what I know of rigging). It doesn't have to be rigid body (meaning, it isn't a requirement, I was just trying to get anything to work).I just need the door to follow the bone/pushrod up but stay hinged. Any ideas/direction?

I would look at a file and offer my thoughts if you provided one.  Otherwise, I can't really understand the exact problem you're having from the question.  Preferred hosting here is https://blend-exchange.com/ .

Honestly, I am not sure if the file would actually help. I realized I should have said the second picture is what it is supposed to look like. Essentially, I need to know if it is possible to hinge/anchor the door at the top ("hinge pt") and have a bone pull it around the hinge pt.

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


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Script to morph between two objects in Blender
I am trying to write a script that will morph one of my object (say a sphere) into another object (say a cube). As my sphere and cube have different number of vertices, I tried to downsample the object with more vertices using decimate modifier so that the two matches. Then I interpolate between the original vertices coordinates and the target vertices coordinates to control the degree of morph between the two. However, in this way what I get out is a half sphere and half cube thing instead of a morph between the two. Any one has any idea what's wrong with my method? Or does there exist scripts/functions that can do morphing between two objects in blender?
'''
 original_verts = bpy.data.objects[x].data.vertices #get the vertices of my original object x
 target_verts = bpy.data.objects[y].data.vertices #get the vertices of my target object y
 original_vert_range = range(0, len(vertices), 1)
 target_vert_range = range(0, len(new_verts), 1)

 obj = bpy.data.objects[x]
 dm = obj.modifiers.new('Decimate', 'DECIMATE')
 dm.ratio = len(target_verts)/len(original_verts) #no.vertices in target is smaller than in the original object
 bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(apply_as='DATA', modifier='Decimate')

 for i in original_vert_range:
       vertex = original_verts[i]
       origin = vertex.co.copy()
       vertex.co = origin.lerp(target_verts[i].co, 1)

'''
Thanks so much!

Ref: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/262094/how-can-i-transform-my-coffee-cup-into-a-torus-as-seen-on-wikipidea/262174#262174

Sphere and cube seem OK, but what do you do when you have a sandal and a pineapple?.. I don't think you can write a script for that.


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How to scatter objects on a deformed surface?
I am making the surface of the moon and would like to scatter rocks on it. It works with large stones, but small stones do not adapt to the surface and remain "floating" above or below the surface. How should I make them adapt? I use the scatter objects tool.

You can see the big stones in the right place (but I had to move them up a bit) and the tiny rocks down below the plane.

I used these nodes to create the surface.

You're using a Displacement node, the bumps you're creating are visible in Rendered mode but they don't displace the topology for real, that's why when you put some instances on the surface the relief is not taken into account. I don't know if the displacement can be taken into account. What you can do is bake your Displacement map and use it in a Displace modifier for example, this way the bumps will be real and taken into account.
To bake your texture, create a Texture > Image Texture node in your material, click on New to create a new image, keep this node selected, plug the whole chain that goes into the Displacement node into the Surface input of your Output node (in my case I just use a Noise Texture node but you need to plug the last node of your chain, the Add node). Then in the Render panel, under Bake, choose Bake Type > Emit and click on Bake. It will make a bitmap picture of the texture you're using as displacement, and you'll be able to use it in a Displace modifier (you'll easily find tutos on this modifier).

Sorry, I'm just a beginner, but what does "bake map" mean? And how can I add it to the displacement modifier?

I've edited, I hope it's understandable

I understand a lot more now, but one last thing (I hope), when I click on new, a new window called new image appears, with information about the width, height and color, and I have to confirm it with the ok button, so that I can plug the whole chain in the output . At the same time, this unselects the node image texture. This probably leads to the fact that I have an active color space on the image texture node, while you have it inactive. I'm probably doing something wrong there and that's why it's not working for me.

Create the new image in the Image Texture, choose the size, then click OK, you don' have to plug this Image Texture node in anything, just keep it selected to make sure that it will be the image that will receive the bake, that's all. Then plug the whole chain you've made into the Output, bake, and you'll see in the Image Editor window (or you can temporarly plug the Image Texture in the Output) that the image you've created has baked the texture created by your node chain. Now you can unplug from the Output, you'll need the bake image in the Displace modifier.

Thanks a lot for the great help, it works for me now. I would just like to know if there isn't a better way to model the landscape than this complicated way.

If you already have a b&w image you can directly use it in the Displace modifier, you don't have to bake and so on, I just wanted to explain how to recover your current height map. You could also use procedural textures in the Texture Editor, or directly model the ground (in Sculpt mode for example)


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help with a gold sparkling shader
I need some help with a shader I'm trying to make. I made renderings of darts (don't ask me why) and I'm trying to find a way to make a shader to look like the grip of this dart:

I tried a way of adding noise and the such (like making it look like glitter), but the speckles are fairly small, and it doesn't even remotely look like this.
I'm using cycles render, any idea on how to do this? Keep in mind I'm not super experienced, so if the solution is a fairly complex one, some screenshots or a step by step would be helpful.
To help you, understand the grip is supposed to have small diamonds in it, thats why it is so sparkly.
thank you for any help you provide!

I would go with a more PBR based set up, but since you mentioned you are fairly new to Blender I don't want to get to involved with the node set up.
A simple node set up could look like this. (It's not exactly right but maybe it is close enough for you. If I have more time I will try to do a more advanced shader)

To get those sparkles to really shine you may need to do some post processing. Although they show up a little better when you move the camera around.
I am just mixing between glossy shaders with a noise texture in the displacement to get that grainy texture.
Try messing the with value of the multiply node to get the shine that you want.
Also maybe darken the tan glossy shader some more, so the white sparkles pop better.
W/O displacement:

Displacement isn't doing anything in this setup, It's better to just use it as Bump Map connected to Normal slots in Fresnel, Diffuse and Glossy.

Sure it is (although subtle). I attached am image with disp turned to zero. I was going to do normal maps but didnt want to have too many nodes for someone who is new to blender.

Did you use microdisplacement for this?

No I did not, and I agree with you though normals would be better. I was just trying to think of the simplest and quickest way.

Well ok then, I didn't used displacement before microdisplacement shows in Experimental Features but somewhere in my mind was statement that it's doing nothing :) My honest mistake :)

You are correct in your thinking though. From what I understood it didn't do much of anything before microdisplacement but it was fixed to work as it should even if you don't use microdisplacement. So its a fairly new fix from what I gather.

this is actually almost exactly what i was looking for.im not new to blender,just new to more advanced shaders,since i was doing mostly modeling.
i dont really like useing displacement,and normal maps since my computer is fairly slow,and displacement maps dont really help on that end :). I will try what you posted,and i will get back to you for more help if needed.
thank you for taking the time to build and post this!
PS:what basic postprocessing options would i have to get this to look even better than it allready is?

Adding a glare node in the compositor can help. Not sure what you use for post processing.  Feel free to mark my answer as accepted if it helped ;) thx

allrighty done!again thank you very much for your help,and for showing me some stuff,that will definetely be helpful to me in the future!take care!

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


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How to select vertices belonging to both faces of two-sided plane?
I have an object of zero thickness - a two-sided strip, composed of doubled faces, the duplicates with normals switched. It's already textured on both sides, and I need to animate it now.
And I have problem with its two-facedness. Be it vertex select by right click, face select, edge select, box select, brush select C, only one face is being selected.
When I press G to move the end, they split apart, like below. Only then can I select the other face's vertices and try to duplicate the prior move, which I'm not always able to (never mind doubling my workload).

How can I assure all (including duplicate) vertices at given position are selected?
"Doubled" edge or face selection info would be sufficient too. Also, this is for exporting to external tool, so I can't use Blender's built-in two-sidedness.

Turn of Limit Selection to Visible on the 3D View header while in edit mode to select occluded geometry.

You can also select all geometry by default if you switch from shader modes to wireframe mode.
Selection info shows on the Info Editor header, by default above the 3D view, giving you precise scene and selection statistics. It tells how many vertex/edges/faces/objects are in your scene, current object, and how many of those are seletcted
Also if you accidentally/intentionally  move only one at a time, you can then use snapping to perfectly match the first transform by pressing Ctrl while transforming, ensuring a perfect coincidence.

Thanks. I had 'Limit Selection to Visible' disabled and it would help in other cases but not this. Enabling the wireframe mode did the trick though.

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


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2.8 - Duplicating in Edit mode isn't working
I'm trying to duplicate and move part of an armature in Edit mode, but it isn't duplicating.

Go to Edit mode
Click on the part of the armature that I want to duplicate
Press ⇧ Shift +  D

And nothing happens, there is no menu pop-up, and moving the armature moves the one that I want to duplicate rather than a copy of it.
I've also tried using the menu to do it, but it gives me the same result.
It can be duplicated in Object mode, but then it's the entire armature.

Hello, that's weird, can you show some screenshots or share your file? https://pasteall.org/blend/

https://pasteall.org/blend/76cc1cf29018447eb798cf93b2ff12fe

it seems to work, have you tried with different Blender versions? https://zupimages.net/up/21/29/i2ji.gif

Thank you for the image! It got me to try clicking the center of the armature bone and duplicate, which worked. For a moment, I thought I'd have to install a new version of Blender.


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Adding 3D object to Video Clip
I have been a long time dabbler with Blender (back in the NaN days) but I've never really become proficient at it. Thus I am finding it difficult to do everything I need for this one project using tutorials. I am trying to:

Motion track a single point on a video - Done
Add a particle stream at an offset point to the motion tracked point - Done
Match the duration to a mouth movement. - Done
Render that all back out. - Fail

This fails because of my lack of knowledge. What I have tried:

render out with a background image of the video clip - fail, only get the particles with a black background.
Setup nodes with the movie and the render as inputs - fail, either only get the video, or the particles with a black background.

I have tried various iterations of this but I have never been able to get the video to render out.
Blend File
Any assistance would be appreciated.

Your problem is in the Compositor - you don't have your render layer hooked up to a Composite output node, in fact I didn't find any nodes when I switched on 'Use Nodes' so I rigged up a simple set up. Your scene didn't have enough light so I turned on AO, and I set your Shading tab to use alpha instead of render sky. I hooked the render layer alpha to the mix factor of the color mix node, and plugged the image node into the other color as a background(this is wher eyour video footage goes). The file should help a little to fix the original file hopefully. redone file


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Problem in generating multiple metarigs
Whenever i generate a rig a character using rigify and generate it, the generated rig works fine but when i rig and generate the another model in the same file. The selected rig does not generates but the first one does. How to solve this problem. Help will be appreciated.

After you generate a rig, rename it. The armature generated is given the name rig, when you click generate on the second metarig the first rig is updated because of it's name.
This only applies up until 2.78, the about to be released blender 2.79 includes an updated rigify addon that makes this easier. The new version has options to overwrite or create a new rig, as well as choosing which rig to overwrite.


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Why does my rig make my arm skinnier?
When it's in the normal position with the arms down, the arms are normal and muscular.  But when I make it into a t-pose, my arms get skinnier but everything else stays the same.

I guess something is wrong in the weights.

Be sure to apply (CTRL+a) scaling, before you assign your bonen armature to the mesh. This is a common fault, which people forget todo when they start with rigging.
If after you still have such a problem, it might be caused by the weight paint of the bone, the more easy way to solve that might be (depending on mesh) to add some helper bones to keep things in place how you want it.


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reverse photogrametry
I am new to all 3D graphics and I am not sure If this is the correct place for this question. Kindly refer me to the correct place if I am wrong.
I want to automate a reverse action to photogrametry, that is, take a 3D '.obj'\'.ply' file and produce multiple images of it covering many directions. I need to take ~200 images per ~10 objects so I would much like not to manually capture the images. Is there a solution?
Again sorry if this is not the correct forum.

so you want to take a 3D object in blender and render out about 200 different views of it? Yes that is very possible.

Create a camera animation orbiting around your object:
How can I animate the camera in a perfect circular rotation around a fixed position?
You can also easily vary the height of the camera when it has TrackTo constraint. This animation should have as many frames as you want images.
Render this animation (CtrlF12) as image frames: Output options, see Workflow > Frame Sequence


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How do I re-Load Fluid Sim Cache?
I baked a fluid Simulation and it saved the fluid cache above the blend file in a folder called: fluid_cache. But when I closed blender and reopened the project, I had to re-bake the simulation.
Is there a way to load the old cache files so I don't have to re-bake the simulation?

Hi, I just tried with 2.79rc2: I create a new default file, and saved it. Then used "quick fluid" on the default cube: it set the cache folder to "//cache_fluid" (that means a subfolder in the current file folder). Then I baked the fluid sim, and at the end, saved again the file. Then closed Blender, reopened last file, and the bake was already there, playable without needing to bake it again.... Also I tried to move both the .blend file and cache_fluid subfolder to another new folder. It worked again.

hmmm interesting. It didn't do this for me. I wonder if I have my output dir, set to the same folder as the blend file. I will check....

Yup that was exactly it. I had my Blend file and the Cache folder in two separate folders lol

At least part of the answer to this question is:
Make sure that the .blend file you are opening is located in the same folder with the fluid_cache folder.

If this answer resolves your question (which I'm guessing it did since you added the answer after your comments back to @m.ardito) please click the 'Accept' button to accept it so the question is marked as accepted. You can accept your own answer and actually get a small amount of reputation for this.

In the 'Preferences' tab, go to 'File Paths' and set the path of the 'Render Cache' to (a folder) where your .blend files are stored. Then the cache should persist between loads.
Just make sure that you move the cache folder with the .blend files.

Go to the Simulation Cache properties, change the cache location to a new folder
Bake the 1st frame, then stop the bake.
Go to the Simulation Cache properties, don't free the bake but change the cache location to your old cache folder.

Blender should catch it.


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I don't know how to use flipanimation correctly
I have an issue with "flip animation" add-on, I flipped my animation, but it doesn't flip it well, it's kind of deformed, like the X axis is rotated off 90°, just look at this image... this is before and after I used flip animation add-on...


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is there a way to add foam around an island?
I'm trying to create a shader that creates a sea foam around an island, is there a way to make it with just the shader?, i'm using an ocean modifier for the sea, and I want to make a factor in the mix shader that mixes by considering the intersecting line between the sea mesh and the islands.

Something like this? I know it's very toony, but the same principles may apply to your problem

I achieved the following result.  Apologies for the "before" shot, it's the only thing I have:

I have this "gulf" scene where my beaches are just planes sticking into the "ocean".  That's a plane with a big Ocean modifier and a 20m Solidify modifier.

What I found was that in your ocean's node tree you can use an Ambient Occlusion node set to Inside and that appears to make it aware of intersections through the final mesh after all the modifiers are calculated.

I used various methods to add noise to this and used it as the factor of a Mix Shader for the surface material.

Are you saying the last pic is not a photo? Damn! :)

Thanks Jachym!  I'm really happy with it from a distance but I'm half tempted to ask a question of my own to seek some help on a detail or two.


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Simple question, how to smoothout faces?
I'm a veteran of 3dsmax who hasn't modeled anything in half a decade trying to get my head around Blender.  So simple reproduction of what I am seeing, I create a cylidner, I add autosmooth, I then add Edge Split modifier but my render still has flat shaded faces.  I am surely missing something?
Thanks!

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/55975/what-is-the-role-of-auto-smooth

To make an object smooth, you either go to the left panel>Tools>Edit>Smooth or press space and type "shade smooth".
Then if you want to make the top faces flat shaded, use auto smooth or Edge slplit modifier, but they are essentially the same so one should only use one of them not both.

Thank you, everything I found through search was past that particular step!


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Object Particles not rendering
As the title says, I'm having a hard time rendering my particles in cycle (but they do appear in Eevee and viewport)
I checked the layer, the items visibility in render, the cameray ray, the emitter checkbox in the particle settings, and by all intent and purpose I think they should render?
But they don't, so I obviously missed some setting, and I'm now pulling the "help me" card
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b0sh0ppfl08s7mk/WIP.blend?dl=0
Can anyone tell me what I've missed, please? Thanks in advance!

You use Emitter particles for your static particle crystals ("sprinkles"). For static particles that don't change their position like grass, trees, sprinkles, sesame seeds on a burger, ... it's better to use Hair particles. They are static and always dead.
Emitter particles are used for animation mainly. For birds, fishes, moths, dust, and fluid. They have a lifetime and die.
Looks like you knew that and have made the settings accordingly: Only 1 frame animation and set Frame Start and End to 1, lifetime 1. Unfortunately, it does not work because in frame 1 the particles are still unborn and not rendered by default. The nasty thing is that you see them in the viewport.
Possible fixes:

use particle type Hair. You need to apply the scale of the instance object and scale it up a bit. For some reason, the particles are smaller when rendered as Hair.
or set Frame Start and End to 0
or tick the checkbox Render > Extras > Unborn in particle settings
or render frame 2 and tick the checkbox Render > Extras > Dead in particle settings
or use particle type Hair ;-)

OMG thank you! That's going to be useful for so much more than this file too!!!


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Cycles Render settings for Bake Texture for Game Assets
here I'd like to find out how to set Bake Texture settings for baking interior with the light path in Cycles Render. I have an interior and several objects that I'd bake the texture on this scene:

As u can see, I'm using several light paths and several emission materials on a certain object. Below are my current settings for sampling and the light paths:

And also here are my node editor settings:

After I baked it, I got a terrible result like this:

There are a lot of noises, and not recommended for game assets. So what should I do to get a realistic baked texture by using cycles render to solve this? Thank you.

Hello :). Your Render sample count is only at 512. Perhaps doubling it could help?

I do for 4k samples, it much better but there're still noises around


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Cloth Simulation deforming strangely
Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NJgEU3oITAyUqQu0f6W2y9treeCZ2Fhb/view?usp=sharing
I'm trying to make a parasol (outside umbrella thing) in blender, so I decided to use a cloth sim for the bit on top so that it would rest nicely on the top of the frame. The video shows you what is wrong.
I created a plane and then used the knife tool to create 2 diagonal edges across the plane, and to create a vertex in the middle. I then moved the 4 outside vertices down. I set that plane to a cloth sim in the physics tab and the frame to a collision.
Quality steps: 20
Quality (collisions): 20
Enabled self collision.
Frame start and end 1 to 30.

Sorry for the low quality screen video.
Thanks for your time.

Firstly, 'Apply Scale' to each of your objects - this is important for any simulation.
Secondly, in your particular case you don't need to enable self-collision since the cloth isn't looking to be at risk of hitting itself. The self-collision will slow down the simulation and can cause its own problems if its parameters aren't appropriate.
Thirdly, 'Apply Scale' on your 'frame' objects and check the direct of the normals - you need to ensure they're pointing 'out' of the faces, not 'in' (otherwise the collision will be in the wrong direction). In your case the bars of the frame are quite thin - reduce the 'Inner' setting in the Soft Body And Cloth collision settings - you currently have it set to 0.200 and this is quite large for a "thin" structure such as this as it can result in the 'back face' affecting cloth at the opposite side of the bar.
Fourthly, ensure there are no overlapping meshes at the start of the simulation as this can cause significant problems as the simulation attempts to eject the vertices out of the collision mesh.
Don't forget to clear any baked simulation and re-run it to see if this helps. If this helps you can then start tweaking the simulation by re-enabling self collision (if needed) and potentially increase the 'Inner' and/or simulation quality. If this doesn't fix the problem, please post a video of the new behaviour.

Thanks for your speedy response!
Video: link
I have set the Inner setting in Soft Body and cloth collision settings to 0.05, made sure that all the normals are facing the correct way (the frame's weren't correct so I changed them), and that self-collision was turned off. I re-baked it and it seemed to look fine, but I was looking for more of a stretched fabric look to the top of the umbrella rather than a cloth just lying on top of it.
Thanks very much @RichSedman

@neptunestar999 There is still something going wrong with collision - you can see with the first movement of the cloth being to be dragged down to the supports.Try reducing Inner and Outer right down to the minimum and see if that changes. For stretching you need to have pinned your cloth (set up a Vertex Group and assign the vertices you want to pin to that group and then set the cloth pinning property to that group) - this lets you fix certain points. You can then stretch it by either moving those fixed points or having your cloth shrink as the simulation runs (animate Shrinking Factor).

Thank you again @RichSedman.
video
I put Inner and Outer right down to 0.001, and I ran it again and seemed to be a little better, but when I assigned the vertex group for the four corners and enabled pinning, you can see what happens in the video.
Thanks

I think that's looking a lot better. Now try increasing your Cloth 'Quality Steps' setting (it defaults to 5). That sets how many calculations per frame are performed in the cloth simulation. Larger values result in smaller steps - increasing the chance of the collision preventing the cloth passing through surfaces. Don't increase way too far though as rounding problems can cause the simulation to become unstable. Also, you could try slightly increasing 'Inner' and/or 'Outer' - but change one thing at a time only and check the result and revert back if it makes things worse.

Thanks again. I had already set the quality steps to 20, so I increased it again to 30.
1
2
3

That looks a lot better. It’s still tearing through which could either be that it’s starting off too close to the collision mesh or that you need to increase the quality steps further - try more drastic increases such as 125 or 250. If you start pushing it too far it can cause problems but it should be fine for a good few hundred or so.


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Black Final Render
As in the title above, when I make "Shift Z" to go to the Render Mode, every thing look great, but when I make the final render it's just blank and nothing appears.
Note: I've tried most of the answer for the similar questions but it didn't work.

I've already tried all of them but I'm still facing the same issue, and I'm very sure it's something silly I've change when I was trying things, if there's a way I can upload the file that wold be great.

Your render layers (in the scene tab of your properties panel) are not properly set up. Create a new render layer then disable the other two or delete them.
The render should proceed normally after that.

I don't know if this is your problem, but it could be a compositing issue. Open a node editor, select the Scene tab on the bottom (looks like two stacked pictures), and make sure that either Use Nodes is off, or the Render Layers node is connected to the Composite node.

authors: مهند باحويرث


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Part of Blender UI Windows disappears
l have been creating a scene for sometime now. All of a sudden, the part of blender that has the File, Render, Window ,Help  you know, the part of the blender interface that allows you to switch between blender render and cycles and stuff..
It just vanished and was replaced by a programming window. Now, all I see are codes instead....
Any help?

Just use the white cross on a dark background in the upper right of your image (partially hidden by the line you drawn)

ohhhhh.that worked perfectly. thanks bro.

reallly appreciate your help

Also a bunch of your objects have inverted normals, so watch out for that.

On the far right of the part of the screen you circled you will see a little plus sign. Click that and you will restore your view.
Somehow you pulled down the menu to hide it. The plus sign in the interface lets you know you have some of the interface in that view hidden.


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What should I do to save the final image in a .png format?
I couldn't save my rendered image in a .png format. When I press F3 key it only increases my PC screen brightness.

On the Render result screen, Please follow the menu Image -> Save as Image, as shown below:

Seems that you are using a laptop, you will have some combination, you may try
function key + f3 or function key + shift + f3
If you share your laptop model number, I may pin point alternative for you!
Thanks

Please accept the answer as true if it worked for you, as it will be useful for others too.

Below the render view, you can click Image and select Save As Image.


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Create new actions without being influenced by NLA
I'll start of by saying that the action- and NLA- editors are both pretty new to me.
I have so far been able to create a walkcycle that I can loop through as the character moves around in the scene. Now I want to add a new loop for when he is stading still. It's really just going to be him standing in place breathing, not anything more.
I created a new action that I called "Idle" and I would now like to make the new animation. This becomes tricky when the character keeps moving around the scene as I have previously made him do.
My question is this;
Is it possible to create new actions without being influenced by all the stuff I've already done?
Like maybe have a seperate scene for creating new actions or an option to temporarily disable all animations and setting the character to the center whilst I make a new action. something like that.
The only other way I can think of is if I had made all my actions before I started making the actual animation but that is a bit too late at this point.

In the NLA editor you have nla tracks under your rig and there are speakers icons that allow you to mute your tracks.
I'm making the same thing right now with my character.

Oh... I honestly thought those had to do with sound. Like for when you need to time sound to your animation and the other way around. Thanks a lot :)


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How to create vacuum rocket engine plume
I would need to create an animation of a rocket engine in a vacuum. It doesn't look like what most people imagine exhaust from a rocket engine to look like. It's like a "quick, slightly luminous fog". Here are some examples of what I would like it to look like:

Does anyone know how to do this? I did a few tutorials on atmospheric rocket engine exhaust and it didn't help me much, I'm just a beginner.

You could try it with a procedural material:

Create a cylinder, subdivide horizontally, deform, unwrap with the Cylinder Projection option:

Give it a material that is a mix between Emission and Transparency, that is stretched on Y (as it is using the UV output of the Texture Coordinate), create a transparent gradient on Z, also make the periphery more blurry with the help of an Input > Layer Weight:

You could put a second cylinder inside the first one to create more gaz, emit a bit of particles, etc...

I'm sorry, but I didn't quite make it. I didn't know how to unwarp, but I kept going. I managed to create a cone that is luminous at the top and not at the bottom, but the transition between luminosity and non-luminosity is very sharp. I also didn't quite make the longitudinal dark stripes. I also don't have the location X, Y and Z boxes in the mapping node green (I know it's some really stupid problem, but I can't figure out what's causing it). And then when I start the animation, it doesn't move. Anyway, what you created looks really great.


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Simulation of dust from landing on the moon
I'm doing a moon landing animation and I need to simulate dust. The lunar module lands and as it approaches the surface, the rocket engine blows dust in all directions. The lunar module lands and the dust settles. Something like in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbvesj72CWU
Or at least this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqEBAcoz6gE
I got some results with quicksmoke, but it's not quite there. I especially couldn't get the dust to settle and the whole thing looks weird. Any ideas how to do this?

maybe wanna ask NASA how they did it? :D

I doubt anyone there can still remember! :^)

I'm thinking particles rather than smoke.  Here's my attempt:

I set up a fluid simulation (quick fluid) on a cube that I set to Inflow and animated "use flow" for some 40 frames, with initial upwards velocity to counter gravity:

In the domain object, for the particle system, I chose a simple ico-sphere as the rendering object (pebble).

and in the Fluid Domain I did not add liquid mesh (keep as particles), added sluggishness with viscosity and diffusion, and animated gravity from low to high values after the particle inflow up-shooting stops.
.
I added a plane as a Collision surface for the particles, heavy on stickiness  and damping:

And I gift my example
... and ignore Chris and John_E: they must be high on spring pollen today!  And I would use the same solution for Elon Musk landing on Mars, except for the color scheme.

Thanks for the reply, it definitely pointed me in the right direction. Finally, I used smoke as fine dust and particles as small stones. I blow it all off with force.


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How to make a picture frame with geometry nodes (from 2D profiles)?
A friend and I are trying to model a frame in order to make a 3D video featuring one of his photos.
After seeing this tutorial: https://youtu.be/hJZRfTAOgk4?t=30 we agreed that it would be easier to work with 2D extruded profiles to form the frame (screenshot 01).

However, in order to be able to iterate several designs, I would like to create a modifier able to generate a solid frame with the proportions [w 5.83 x h 7.77], using a simple 2D profile obtained from points/vertices.
I know this may seem tedious for the simple task of modeling a frame on blender, but it is also a way for me to practice with geometry nodes.
Here is what my first attempt did.

I used the most basic functions and I would like to know if any of you know how to create a mesh from these 4 profiles, once well positioned.
As you can see I simply rotated and translated the original shape from it's origin, then joined it with it's symmetrical copy. (This may lead to nothing but...)
Thanks in advance for your help. I know there are a hundred ways to do what I have in mind and my first experimentation must be one of the worst, but if you know how to proceed, or how to simply do this task and want to help me, I would be very grateful.
Thanks again

Hello and welcome to Blender.SE! Try Curve to Mesh with a Quadrilateral as Curve.

@quellenform Thanks. I'm currently trying to figure out where and how to place these nodes. Thank you very much for your help.


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Blender scripting: Object intersection does not work after using spin()
I'm new to Python scripting in Blender, and trying to intersect two objects.
One of those objects is complex (spun/extruded multiple times), and when I try to call the intersection routine (intersect_mesh() at the last line of code), the intersection is empty (nothing appears on the screen).
I suspect it has to do with using mesh commands in edit mode (mode_set(mode='EDIT').
Any help would be appreciated,
-Alex
import bpy
import math, mathutils
import os, sys

QUALITY = 8
SPHERE_DIVS = int(QUALITY/2)+2
CYL_DIVS = 100 * QUALITY
MAJOR_S = int(256 * QUALITY/10)
MINOR_S = int(16 * QUALITY/10)

def intersect_mesh(a,b):
    mod = a.modifiers.new(b.name+"_isect", type='BOOLEAN')
    mod.operation = 'INTERSECT'
    mod.object = b
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = a
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier=mod.name)
    bpy.data.objects.remove(b, do_unlink=True)

R = 25.4 /4
STRING = 25.4 * 3/32
LEN = 25.4 /2 + 25.4 /4

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(
    location =(-STRING,0,0),
    vertices = CYL_DIVS,
    radius = STRING,
    rotation = (-math.pi/8,0,0),
    depth = LEN)
bar = bpy.context.object

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
STEPS=8
for z in range(1,1+STEPS):
    frac = 1/STEPS
    vec = mathutils.Vector((2*STRING*frac,0.0,0.0))
    bpy.ops.mesh.extrude_region_move(
        TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":vec}
    )
    bpy.ops.mesh.spin(steps=1, angle=math.radians(-45)/STEPS, center=(0,0,0), axis=(1,0,0))
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(
    location=(0,0,10),
    size=20)
box = bpy.context.object
#intersect_mesh(bar,box)

```

It's definitely slower, but I got it to work after adding mod.use_self = True into your intersect_mesh function.
From https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/generate/booleans.html , It says that enabling self intersection is needed if one or both of the operands have self intersections. When you spin your cylinder around, you're creating self intersections within the cylinder object.
I also got it to work somewhat using mod.solver = 'FAST, but it left behind a messy edge sticking outwards.

That's very helpful, thank you kindly.. I think it will speed things up to make separate objects and then combine them instead of creating self-intersections by toying directly with the vertices in edit mode.


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How can I fix a wrinkle?
I did this image from a plane and fill it in.

I didn't do it well so when I fill it in I have a wrinkle.

I tried to fix it with Sculpt mode but I can't. I saw an answer from here. I tried to fix it with Physics but nothing.
Can someone help me? Thanks

Blend File Download
Blend File Download

There are some topology issues which won't be corrected neither with sculpting nor boolean modifier nor marking edges as sharp. Please upload your file on the blend-exchange and edit your question / add a comment with the resulting link; this will allow to look at your file

I found a hidden mickey

After filling you might want to triangulate faces CtrlT). Fix the topology by moving vertices. Then you can dissolve unwanted faces (press Space, write dissolve, select "dissolve faces").
Another way (the easier and faster way) is to build an extra cube, and with the boolean modifier, you perfectly cut the face of your model by the face of that extra cube.
To fix the current topology, you might also try to "mark sharp" some of the edges, and or, to bevel or create extra loopcuts near areas you want to be sharper. That way the subdivision modifier won't round up as much on those areas.

Thanks for your answers. I don't want to cut the entire face just some edges that are not vertex or faces. You can see it above. What can I do?

Thanks a lot. This is what I got (above)  I shouldn't do it well I think. Thanks again.

can you provide the blend file? I'll see what I can do

Thanks a lot,  the file is  : Ratoncito dulce super chulo5.blend

you have to upload the Blend file to somewhere and provide the link, so I can do the download

under Dropbox, you have to create a "share link", then share it here

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


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Mesh Gaps & Bone Properties
Can't say I'm too experienced with modelling or Blender in general.
I've now been left with a problem, the torso is displaying a lot of blue lines in the mesh, sharp edges I believe their called, and when I try to pose the model the torso forms gaps where the sharp edges are as if there not attached. Anyone know how to resolve this?

The other issue I have is with the bones. This model it basically a reference tool, a manikin for me to use in Clip Studio Pro. Problem is that some of the bones in the hand are showing up as selectable for posing/distorting the model once exported and yet these bones should not be used at all. The same bone layout exists in some official modelling files I've used for reference, and those do not appear selectable in CSP. Does anyone know how to completely disable these bones/make them unselectable?

As you may have noticed in the last set of images, the armature has these bones - Bone.001, Bone.002, Bone.003, and Bone.004. They do not appear to be anywhere in the rig and I cannot seem to delete them. Anyone got any ideas how I can remove these seemingly redundant bones?

With the sharp edges/splits, it looks like the problem is that you are using an edge split modifier, and it is above your armature modifier in the modifier stack. Try using the up/down arrow buttons in the top right corner of the modifier to move the edge split modifier below the armature modifier.
As for the hand bones, I don't know enough about the export process here (are you using fbx or some other format?), but the bones may exist on a different bone layer in the armature. You could try looking through each layer under the armature tab of the object properties (the tab with the symbol that looks like a little man) by clicking on layers to toggle their visibility.
The other alternative is that the bones may have been hidden using ctrl-h or similar. You can unhide everything in a particular mode (armature edit mode in this case) by using alt-h.

Select the entire mesh using A and then use Ctrl+V>Remove doubles.
I suspect this is caused by an improper import.


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Can I use cycles renderer for a game?
I'm currently working on a project with Unity 3D, and my plan is to design everything with Blender. But I didn't know until today that Cycles renderer is meant for animations and HD images.
Can I use Cycles for a game in Unity as well?
I've heard about baking, but I don't know how it works, other than creating a UV image with light impact to the mesh of an object. But would this mean that moving an object around the scene will make it look like the light is till glued to the object?
This doesn't sound that good if objects in a game are supposed to move around.

You'll have to bake the cycles materials.  Ray tracing is way too computationally intensive to perform on the fly.

But won't baking the materials result in static shadows? If I want to move objects around the shadows will still stay in place on the object.

Typically you do not bake dynamic lights as they add their own shading.  You back shading that does not change or in a way that it is not noticeable if it would. Games are illusion. You are allowed to use tricks to let the audience think they are seeing real things. When you combine backed static lights with a few dynamic shading you can get impressive amazing results (with the according artistic skills).

I see, I didn't know there were other kinds of baking, but I'll look into the ones I need. Thanks!

Yes and no:
see this for "what is baking"
and this for "how to bake in cycles"
I say "yes and no" because no, you cannot use a complicated raytracing render engine realtime in a game (unless you have like, some sort of super computer :D)
But yes cycles can improve your games visuals and even make them appear like they were rendered in cycles if you do it right.
Also yes the light will look "glued" to the object, but no, with specular maps and only baking a diffuse pass it does not have to be, and can be 100% dynamic.
Since I know next to nothing about Unity (game engine or otherwise), we will discuss this in terms of blender.
First of all, you want to only bake certain passes for a game texture.
I only use "Diffuse Direct" and "Ambient Occlusion"
you can change the pass in the little box "Bake type"

This will ensure that no reflections/lights will be baked into your object, especially if you only use Ambient occlusion
If you want to get really fancy, you can bake out or paint a specular map, which will make your object only reflective on certain parts, and usually makes games look better. :D

Okay, I get it now. I never knew that there were other kinds of baking. Yeah, unity and blender firs well together, but I don't really expect people here to know anything about it, but I think I understand. Thaks you!


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How to scale a side of already subdivided prism?
How can I go from this:

To this?

How can I shrink one side of the prism and/or enlarge the other side after a subdivision?
So is there a way of proportional scaling the edges?
I didn't apply sub mod, what I mean is I just added a bunch of edges by using subdivision

Why don't you just undo subdivision, scale the prism and apply the subdivision modifier?

@JanDvorak I think you misinterpreted me, sub mod is not the matter here, it's the subdivision of faces. So yeah i can undo subdivision that, but let's say i already set all the geometry etc., it'd be inconvenient

Two solutions (at least) :
Using proportional editing

Activate the option, on the bottom of the 3DView
Choose the proportional mode (maybe linear for your case)
Scale the face
Eventually adjust the size of the proportional editing using the mouse wheel or minus / plus of the numeric pad

Mesh deform

Add a cube (or other shape but the cube is good here)
Edit it and make sure it bounds around totally your mesh

For facility, make your cube appear as wire only

Add a mesh deform modifier to your mesh (1, 2)
Set the created cube above as deform object (3)
Click 'bind' (4)

Now you can edit the cube, resize it the way you want, and your mesh will follow

There are various tool that can help you in this kind of operation. Here's four that come in my mind:

Proportional edit:

Proportional Edit is a way of transforming selected elements (such as
  vertices) while having that transformation affect other nearby
  elements

While in edit mode, enable Proportional editing with the faces to scale selected. Choose "linear" interpolation type, scale on the wanted axis and than adjust the influence radius with the mousewheel.

Lattice modifier

A lattice consists of a three-dimensional non-renderable grid of vertices. Its main use is to give extra deformation capabilities to the underlying object it controls

While in object mode, add a Lattice object to the scene and set its' vetex number to 4. Position the lattice upon the starting mesh and scale it as it would be the obect's bounding box. Add a Lattice modifier pointing to your lattice to the objecte. Then enter in Lattice's edit mode and move the top vertices toward the center.

Simple deform modifier - Taper

Linearly scales along Z axis.

Add the modifier to your obhect and choose Taper mode. Lock X scale (or Y) to prevent deformation on both axes and adjust other parameters on your need.

Shear (or scale on axis) the whole face

There are few options:
1: proportional editing - press "O" or little circle between layers and snap tool. Here you can switch to "linear" mode.
2: just remove unnecessary loops: "X" - "edge loops"
3: use "Lattice modifier"
The best option is modeling rough shape and after add details. Try avoid applying subdivision modifier always if possible. Or make back up copy of object before you apply subdivision.
Edit: I thing the best option in this case is 2. Is fast and give you better control like options 1 or 3.

I didn't apply sub mod, i meant i just added a bunch of edges by using subdivision


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Hierarchical particle system for a forest
I have two tree objects, each consisting of a trunk, and a particle system with leaves:

I would like to instance them as a forest on a mountain (a separate object). When adding a particle system there, none of the options seem to cover my use case:

When I select Render As > Object, and choose Ahorn tree, only the trunk (and not the child leafs.001 are rendered.
When I choose Collection and choose a collection that contains both trees, I get each object (two trunks, two leafs with particle systems, and leaves) separately.
When I choose Collection and choose a collection that contains only one tree, and then Whole collection:

I still don't see leaves, and the trunks are placed all over the place:

Is there an easy way to make a hierarchical particle system? I don't want to make leaf instances real, as this will crash blender due to resource usage. I suspect I'd see the same with the Particle Instance modifier.
I saw this question about a particle system for a forest, but it doesn't consider the problem of the tree using a particle system itself.

i tried my best to get this work with geonodes, but...for me...it looks like a bug. Because as soon as i just add a material, the particles were....gone. check this out: [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/gJWeT.gif maybe this is worth a bug report...

but as solution for you i would go with geonodes (and won't work with particles) because geonodes are (at least with the latest versions) great and forests should be done with that (just my opinion) and you will find tutorials about building forest/trees on yt (e.g. erindale...)

Thanks, Chris! I managed to make it work with geonodes, not sure why it doesn't work for you :(

I managed to make it work with the use of geometry nodes, like this:


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Decimate particle instances
I am trying to make a pine tree. I used a sapling tree generator to create the trunk, created a needle model, and used particle instances to populate the needles.
As the needles are relatively small, the tree starts to look well only when I use hundreds of thousands of needles:

I would like to populate the landscape with these trees, creating a couple of hundreds of them. This is infeasible with so many particles each. I would like to create a low-poly version of the tree that I generated.
I tried adding the decimate modifier after the particle system, but it only affects the (relatively low-poly) trunk (emitter). I tried instantiating the particle instances to merge them and apply decimate after, but this is already infeasible.
Is there a way to create the decimated mesh without realizing the instances first?

i think the "pro's" do it like this: they have very low poly trees in the far background (which might even don't have needles), high poly trees only in the absolute foreground (like your tree) and another "mid - poly" tree a bit away from foreground. (and maybe they even have more tree models for different distances).

Maybe these youtube tutorials can help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72LPW4S8bns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf5dho10OfI

@Chris: sure, the question is: how do I generate these low-poly trees, other than downloading them from the internet (where I didn't find ones matching what I'd like to have)? :)

@YousufChaudhry: in both of these tutorials the part between creating a particles system and baking it into a single mesh is skipped. :(

@sygi it's not skipped, and as to what I remember, just apply the particle instances, Shift select your trunk, and press Ctrl+J to join. Done :)

@sygi see some youtube tutorials on how to make a low poly pine tree if the tutorials plus my comment doesn't help you.


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A.N.T landscape erosion: weightmaps only
The built-in A.N.T Landscape generation has an Erosion option, which applies the effects of water erosion to the landscape.
It generates useful vertex groups showing where the water would go, etc. Is it possible to only generate the vertex groups, but without applying the erosion effects (ie. in a way that doesn't change the mesh)?


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Single hotkey for multiple options
From time to time, after pressing a hotkey button corresponding to an action (eg. V for "Set handle type" in edit Bezier curve mode), I get to choose from multiple options, but they all have the same hotkey assigned to them:

How do I tell Blender which option to choose with just the keyboard? Is there a way to tell "always choose this one (eg. Toggle) until I choose something else (without going to preferences and changing the binding).

Open User preferences → Keymap. You can find key-building by key name or navigate to 3D-view → Curve → Curve Global.
Expand Set Handle Type and select type that you want:

If you want to add a new hot-key, copy-paste the name of the operator from the text field in the new keymap item: curve.handle_type_set

Thanks! That doesn't entirely work, as I cannot set V V as it's already chosen by "Vector": do you know if there's a way to change these second-order keybinds?
Ideally, I would like the behavior to be like this: V opens the popup and another V repeats the previous operation, and there are other letters (or click) to choose others.

I just learned that the underline in the text of the hotkey defines the second hotkey to choose the option, so, e.g. V V corresponds to Vector, V T to Toogle, etc.
I still don't know how to change it, though.

Underlined letters in menus are "access keys", a Windows convention. While I wouldn't correct someone for calling them "shortcuts", it's important to note it's in the very least a different category of shortcuts than those globally accessible.


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How to debug blender freezing the whole computer?
I am trying to use Blender on a laptop with the following specs:

Intel Xeon E3-1200
HD Graphics 520
16 GB RAM
Debian (linux) OS

I don't expect it working fast nor handling big scenes (I'm just starting to learn), but that seems above the requirements. Despite that, I am observing Blender freezing the whole computer every 15-30min. When it freezes, it often flickers with the previous frame or two of what was shown in blender.
I don't see a correlation between what I'm doing and when it crashes: I saw it crash both when using Eevee and Cycles, doing heavy stuff (generating fire) or duplicating a small mesh or increasing the size of the brush.
I looked at things like RAM, CPU usage, and free space on disk, but all seemed fine. I also looked at the forums didn't find any solution. I tried using both 2.93.1 (downloaded as a binary from blender page) and 2.83.1 from the repo.
I ran blender with --debug-all and --verbose 1 but the generated logs didn't tell me much. Here are the logs: debug, verbose, glxinfo.
How can I debug this issue further?

There are some Debug files that when run just print logs/errors/etc into some text files.
Go to your blender's directory:

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.93

(or whatever it is)
These should be located there:

blender_debug_log.cmd

blender_debug_gpu.cmd

blender_debug_gpu_glitchworkaround.cmd

Open them and Blender starts by showing a prompt to you that opens Blender's environment just after pressing a key.
Blender now saves a log file in your temp folder after your exit/crash

C:\Users\ username \AppData\Local\Temp\blender\debug_logs

I hope these help.

Thanks, these don't exist in a linux OS

Is the whole OS crashing? If so, does Linux have OS crash logs?


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Array modifier working, but not doing what I need
I am working on a subway in blender inspired by a Blender Guru tutorial, and when making the stairs, I used an array modifier.
But, I had to eyball it to make sure that the relative x,y, and z values were making it aligned.
Is there a way to just tell blender that you want to make them joined up?

actually if you use a value of 1, the vertices of the instances should stick to each other, the Merge option make them merge, so maybe the difficulty here was that your stairs were not aligned with the axis? If it's not the case if makes things harder, you'd better begin with an object that is aligned with the axis if possible

The object isn't aligned the axis to start with because the stairs are going away to the right

Array will use the object local axis, if it is rotated in Object mode il will work fine, if you've rotated the stair in Edit mode, it makes things harder, but maybe show a picture of the stairs you want to achieve

Thanks,
image I am trying to achieve. I duplicated an edge and then made it its own object, extruded it upwards and forwards. There was no rotating involved.

the stairs looks like a regular one so you should not meet any difficulty, maybe share your file: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

You want your stairs to follow the corridor orientation (I put the origin to the geometry so that we can see the XYZ local or global orientation):

The Array will use the local XYZ to duplicate the instances (here the object local orientation is still aligned with the global orientation).
For example if you set 1 on the X axis in the Array modifier it will mean that your mesh will be duplicated on the local X axis and that the duplication will perfectly stick to the original mesh (and if you enable the Merge option, once you'll apply the modifier, the vertices of the original and of the duplicationss will automatically merge).
If you rotate the mesh in Edit mode, like you're trying to do currently, it will make the work a bit more tedious than if you kept it aligned with the local axis, because the values that you'll need won't be 1 anymore, you'll need to find them visually. In some cases you need to work that way, but in your case it would be much simpler to do that:

In Edit mode, align back your stair with the global axis (or recreate it):

Use values of 1 for YZ:

Go back in Object mode and rotate your stairs on the Z axis so that they follow the corridor orientation, to be more precise you can press Shift after having pressing RZ to rotate:

Also, this method has another advantage, if you need to make some changes to your stairs, you won't have to change the XYZ values, the instances will automatically align correctly, as they are still aligned with the local axis.

Thank you for the explanation, but how would I align the stair to the global axis?

do you mean you want the local axis of the stairs to be aligned with the global axis? In that case you need to apply the rotation (ctrl A > Apply Rotation in Object mode), but the Array won't work correctly anymore, so you'll also need to apply the Array. But why do you need to align local with global?

Your first step, the one that says "In Edit mode, align back your stair with the global axis", I was wondering how you aligned the stair along the global axis, so the object is going straight along the x-axis. Thank you

I just rotated your stair in Edit mode, and flatten the faces and edges with some S X 0 and S Y 0 to make sure they were aligned with the axis, but maybe redo if from scratch

Fantastic thanks for your help and explanation


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Glare Node not act as Expected
Do not understand why Only 1 part of my Emission Tube glow via Glare node in Compositing Tab.
Thanks in advance.

You might need to crank up the brightness on the blue light tube or else lowering the threshold on the glare node.  As for the dot on the bottom of the green tube, I would probably have to see the blender file to find out what's causing that.  You can upload blender files here: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

The glare node works based on a threshold value. Meaning only the pixels that have values larger than the set value will be affected by glare/bloom/glow.
Use a lower value until you get what you need.
Also, keep the mix at $0$. If you set it to $-1$ you are actually cancelling the effect completely.

Mix
Value to control how much of the effect is added on to the image. A value of -1 would give just the original image, $0$ gives a $50/50$ mix, and $1$ gives just the effect.
Threshold
Pixels brighter than this value will be affected by the glare filter.

(Form the blender manual)
Read Control light halos in the compositor based on emission level


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Texture Maps Downloading Option Details
When downloading a texture from any site there are plenty of maps option. Now how can I know which maps I need? In other words, What are the difference between each and every maps?
If there is any tutorial then plz suggest.
Thanks in advance !!

Maybe start here - https://www.cgbookcase.com/textures/how-to-use-pbr-textures-in-blender. However, this only describes a metal-roughness workflow, the other is specular-glossy, which appears to be what the maps you are downloading are for. They are just 2 slightly different ways of doing the same thing. You can read more in detail about it here - https://marmoset.co/posts/pbr-texture-conversion/. Oh, and for the most-part you don't need 16-bit maps.

Hello :). Your example is from poliigon.com. They have an entire page about using their materials in Blender. They also offer a converter addon, which does most of the work for you.


text:
Exporting UV Edit
So I'm very new to Blender and need help with an issue. I made a model and used an image to texture it. I went into UV Editing and moved some stuff around. The problem is, I don't know how to export the model with the changes I made to the textured areas. Again I'm not very experienced so the answer might be something obvious. Also, the model is a rig.

if you want to make sure that the image textures you use are part of the blend file, go into the File menu > External Data > Automatically Pack Into Blend

If you export in .fbx or .obj formats it packs UVs automatically.


text:
append image from files browser to selected image texture node by just one or double click

how can i append image from files browser to selected image texture node by just one or double click (without dragging it from file browser region to shader node editor region)?

Hello :). Why not just use the [ Open ] button in the node? That will open a new file browser.

For quick and direct access to files without repeating the process of opening the file more than once. I try to adjust the user interface and settings in Blender so that it facilitates new users, especially novice ones, to deal with Blender, as well as the same for users who have moved from other programs such as substance painter, I see that Blender is not much different from substance painter as many people think, and in order to prove this, I configure Blender in various ways such as using ready-made addons and also writing python script  even though I am a beginner in programming

I want to do this from the file browser region that is already in my user interface without opening a new file browser window


text:
How to assign different materials to different colors in a texture?
I just started using blender a few weeks ago, and am almost completely new to the node aspect of it, so I am not even sure if this is possible.
One of my objects is meant to have blood on it, and while I am not going for photo realism and this will be fairly far in the background, scribbling red on it in texture paint makes it look horrible. My main problem is that the blood is metallic and sparkly just like the steel material:

Is there any way that I can have a differing material depending on what color the texture is?

you need to create a b&w image that you will use in the factor of a Mix Shader and that will separate 2 nodes chain, the one with your main material, the other one with the blood material

Let's say you have a simple black and white mask texture to show which parts should be steel and which should be blood. For example, white is steel, black is blood. Then you can simply use this texture with just one Principled BSDF node to switch between those two.
If you connect the mask texture to the "Metallic" input of the Principled BSDF, then automatically the steel parts will have a metallic surface and the blood parts will be non-metallic.
For the color: let's say the steel should be a blueish grey and the blood a dark red. So you connect the mask output to a ColorRamp node, set the left slider to dark red, the left slider to blueish grey and plug it into "Base Color" of the Principled BSDF. You can set the interpolation to "Constant" since you only need black and white.
A similar thing for the "Roughness" input: if you want the steel in a matte finish with a roughness of maybe 0.30, and the liquid blood should be glossy, maybe 0.01, then you plug the mask in another ColorRamp, set the left slider to R/G/B = 0.01/0.01/0.01 and the right slider to R/G/B = 0.3/0.3/0.3, than you've got the roughness.
I once made an example with a mask with different color values to create a material that was a mix of metallic, non-metallic, transparent and translucent parts just with one mask, by splitting RGB-values etc.

... not to be misunderstood: the translucent part had to be mixed in with its own node of course, but that mix and all the variations of roughness, metallic, transparency are made with the colored texture and one Principled BSDF node.

You can make a mask texture. This kind of map is black and white, where black means 0, and white means 1. So if you plug it into a Mix Shader node with your blood and steel materials like so:

The black areas of the mask texture will indicate steel material, and white will indicate the blood material. So paint the steel portion of your mesh black and paint the blood portion white, and they will have separate materials.


text:
Iterate with python on vertices created by subdividing an edge
I want to subdivide an edge that is sedected in edit mode and move the newly created vertices after computing position in python.
I can easily create the new vertices with
bpy.ops.mesh.subdivide(number_cuts=self.nbcuts)
How can I retrieve the list of the newly created vertices ?

I was able to find the solution with these two answers this and this
obj=bpy.context.object
# Get the currently select object

if obj.mode == 'EDIT':

    bpy.ops.mesh.subdivide(number_cuts=5)
    #cree de nouveaux vertex avec subdivide

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
    # Go into object mode to update the selected vertices
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

    for ind in [i.index for i in obj.data.vertices if i.select]:
        # Loop over each currently selected vertex
        v = obj.data.vertices[ind]
        print('Vertex {} at local position {}, world position {} is selected'.format(v.index, v.co, obj.matrix_world @ v.co))
else:
    print("Object is not in edit mode.")
return({"FINISHED"})

Use bmesh
To keep tabs on mesh elements recommend using bmesh
Most mesh operators have their bmesh equivalent.
In this case bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges
The bonus of bmesh operators is they return new geometry.
Test method, 1 cut subdivide on all edges.
import bpy
import bmesh

context = bpy.context

ob = context.object
me = ob.data

bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(me)

print(me.name)
print("Before subd")

for e in bm.faces[:] + bm.edges[:] + bm.verts[:]:
    print(e)

ret = bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges(bm,
        edges=bm.edges,
        cuts=1,
        use_grid_fill=True)

for k, v in ret.items():
    print(k)
    for e in v:
        print(e)

bm.to_mesh(me)
me.update()

Result of running on default "Plane" mesh

Before (left) 1 face 4 edges 4 verts and after 4 faces, 12 edges and 9 verts.
Plane.001
Before subd
<BMFace(0x7f3c16a24010), index=0, totverts=4>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3010), index=0, verts=(0x7f3c1232f080/2, 0x7f3c1232f010/0)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3060), index=1, verts=(0x7f3c1232f010/0, 0x7f3c1232f048/1)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b30b0), index=2, verts=(0x7f3c1232f048/1, 0x7f3c1232f0b8/3)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3100), index=3, verts=(0x7f3c1232f0b8/3, 0x7f3c1232f080/2)>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f010), index=0>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f048), index=1>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f080), index=2>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f0b8), index=3>
geom_inner
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f0f0), index=4>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f128), index=5>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f160), index=6>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f198), index=7>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f1d0), index=8>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3290), index=8, verts=(0x7f3c1232f1d0/8, 0x7f3c1232f198/7)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b32e0), index=9, verts=(0x7f3c1232f128/5, 0x7f3c1232f1d0/8)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3330), index=10, verts=(0x7f3c1232f1d0/8, 0x7f3c1232f0f0/4)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3380), index=11, verts=(0x7f3c1232f160/6, 0x7f3c1232f1d0/8)>
<BMFace(0x7f3c16a24048), index=1, totverts=4>
<BMFace(0x7f3c16a24080), index=2, totverts=4>
<BMFace(0x7f3c16a240b8), index=3, totverts=4>
geom_split
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f0f0), index=4>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f128), index=5>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f160), index=6>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f198), index=7>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3010), index=0, verts=(0x7f3c1232f0f0/4, 0x7f3c1232f010/0)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3060), index=1, verts=(0x7f3c1232f128/5, 0x7f3c1232f048/1)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b30b0), index=2, verts=(0x7f3c1232f160/6, 0x7f3c1232f0b8/3)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3100), index=3, verts=(0x7f3c1232f198/7, 0x7f3c1232f080/2)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3150), index=4, verts=(0x7f3c1232f080/2, 0x7f3c1232f0f0/4)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b31a0), index=5, verts=(0x7f3c1232f010/0, 0x7f3c1232f128/5)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b31f0), index=6, verts=(0x7f3c1232f048/1, 0x7f3c1232f160/6)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3240), index=7, verts=(0x7f3c1232f0b8/3, 0x7f3c1232f198/7)>
geom
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f0f0), index=4>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f128), index=5>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f160), index=6>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f198), index=7>
<BMVert(0x7f3c1232f1d0), index=8>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3010), index=0, verts=(0x7f3c1232f0f0/4, 0x7f3c1232f010/0)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3060), index=1, verts=(0x7f3c1232f128/5, 0x7f3c1232f048/1)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b30b0), index=2, verts=(0x7f3c1232f160/6, 0x7f3c1232f0b8/3)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3100), index=3, verts=(0x7f3c1232f198/7, 0x7f3c1232f080/2)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3150), index=4, verts=(0x7f3c1232f080/2, 0x7f3c1232f0f0/4)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b31a0), index=5, verts=(0x7f3c1232f010/0, 0x7f3c1232f128/5)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b31f0), index=6, verts=(0x7f3c1232f048/1, 0x7f3c1232f160/6)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3240), index=7, verts=(0x7f3c1232f0b8/3, 0x7f3c1232f198/7)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3290), index=8, verts=(0x7f3c1232f1d0/8, 0x7f3c1232f198/7)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b32e0), index=9, verts=(0x7f3c1232f128/5, 0x7f3c1232f1d0/8)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3330), index=10, verts=(0x7f3c1232f1d0/8, 0x7f3c1232f0f0/4)>
<BMEdge(0x7f3c127b3380), index=11, verts=(0x7f3c1232f160/6, 0x7f3c1232f1d0/8)>
<BMFace(0x7f3c16a24010), index=0, totverts=4>
<BMFace(0x7f3c16a24048), index=1, totverts=4>
<BMFace(0x7f3c16a24080), index=2, totverts=4>
<BMFace(0x7f3c16a240b8), index=3, totverts=4>

The only 4 elements to survive unscathed from the operator are the original four corner verts.  They appear not in the return geometry.  All other geom has been altered in some way and is spread across the three options geom_inner, geom_split, geom.  I leave it to you to decipher what each is.

look nice but how do I extract the initial edge I want to work on?
  everything seems selected when i iterate on bm.edges.

Yes, bm.edges is all edges in the bmesh. Can feed any subset list of edges into operator.
Another example, run in edit mode, make sure you are in edge select mode, have an active edge selected.
If so, Makes 5 cuts in edge, loops thru and prints return geometry as above.
import bpy
import bmesh

context = bpy.context

ob = context.edit_object
me = ob.data

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
# selected edges
selected_edges = [e for e in bm.edges if e.select]
# active edge (from active selection)
active_edge = bm.select_history.active
# make sure active element is edge
assert(isinstance(active_edge, bmesh.types.BMEdge))

ret = bmesh.ops.subdivide_edges(bm,
        edges=[active_edge],
        cuts=5,
        )

for k, v in ret.items():
    print(k)
    for e in v:
        #e.select = True
        print(e)

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

look nice but how do I extract the initial edge I want to work on? everything seems selected when i iterate on bm.edges.


text:
Mesh doesn't follow the armature
I'm trying to rig this 3D astronaut model, but I'm having problems. The mesh doesn't follow the armature, I tried all the fixing steps. but nothing happens. A strange thing also happens when moving a bone. blender starts to lag for some reason. Can someone help me out?
Here's the link to the blend file:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=11ujtoCIPFT7M03eqsOH_TQPPsYmUkmr5

Your mesh is very high poly, I guess you need to work with a lower poly version, you should retopologize it

I think so... it has like 1.9 million tris

btw I never did it, do I have to use the QuadriRemesh or Voxel Remesh?

Now I'm trying the QuadriFlow Remesh and I get this: QuadriFlow: The mesh needs to be manifold and have face normals that point in a consistent direction.

I don't know a lot about those, you need to create a second object (plane) and begin to snap its vertices on the original mesh, then extrude etc... if your high-poly is too heavy and makes the work too tedious you may consider using this kind of destructive tool, yes

Now I'm using the decimate modifier and stopping only when the mesh is not looking good

Ok, I reduced the number of tris from 1,9 million to 390K, without any differences!

so now you can either try to use the new mesh or retopologize it (which would be better)

If you can answer this question, like saying reduce the polygon count, so that I can close this thread

The problem is that your mesh is too high in polygons, it will make rigging and animation tedious if not impossible, try to reduce the amount of polygons and, if possible, retopologize it.


text:
GTX+Radeon in Blender - It's possible?
I'm a long-time Blender user and my projects are becoming more and more complex and I was thinking in buying a new GPU. Now I'm using a GTX 970 V1 Windforce and a Intel Xeon X5660. A lot of people suggested me to buy a HD7870 Triple Vent since I will use this machine also as Hackintosh, is it possible to use the GTX and the Radeon together? I heard that you can combine the two by using OpenCL or OpenGL

Hi and Welcome. Unfortunately questions about hardware are off-topic... Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/68257/does-blender-support-dual-gpu-rendering-if-the-two-gpus-arent-the-same

Ah okay... do you know where I can ask this question?

Reddit, Blenderartists. Not sure whether that's worth it, for cycles you want nvidia anyway...

Can you suggest me a cheap nvidia card?

I was thinking in a GTX 770

Depends on your budget: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html


text:
How can you make a beer simulation Blender 2.83 (Mantaflow)?
I saw a lot of fluid simulations that look gorgeous thanks to the foam that Mantaflow adds, could you make a beer with foam simulation with it?

Does this answer your question? How to make beer foam

Not so much, I'm talking of an actual simulation, not a static photo


text:
What is the way to get location of the animated object
I have an object animated using "Transform cache" constraint.
It is moving around the scene, but it's world location and rotation always stays the same.
I assume this happens due to some root empty inside it, that is not moving.
I am trying to get the exact world location of the animated object.

I tried to connect second object, and set "Copy location" "Copy rotation" constraints, it is following the first one, but location values are staying the same as well.
I tried to set cursor to the object - that way I can get location, but rotation is missing.
Could you please help me with that?

Ok, I think i got it.
Apply visual transform (select object Ctrl+A - Visual transform) for the second object, and then remove constraints.
Location and rotation transforms from the animation will apply to the second object.
Second answer in this question helped:
Is there a way to convert a constraint to a keyframe?


text:
Smooth Shading on Cube looks weird
I am not that good with blender and I noticed whenever I create a cube and enable smooth shading, I get some very weird results.

As you can see, some very weird results appear. The lighting of the cube is light in some areas, and darker in other areas. Why is this occurring and can it be fixed?

Hello :). The angles between faces are too sharp. You have to make the edges more round using something like Bevel modifier.

You can also just activate the Object Data Properties -> Normals -> Auto Smooth option and it will look fine even if Shade Smooth is used. Works with many cases where there are sharp angles between faces.

The short answer is that your result is the expected from smooth shading. Forgive me if I cover info you already know here.
A normal vector is a vector that points directly away from a surface. They are used to determine which way a face is 'facing' in terms of how it interacts with light. In Blender, these normal vectors don't always actually point straight away from faces.

The leftmost cube has flat shading. What this effectively means is that each face is acting as though it is detached from the other faces. At each corner of the cube you see three normal vectors, each pointing directly away from the face they are a part of.
The middle cube is smooth shading. The normal vectors of the vertices at each corner are the average of the normals of each face at that point. The normals across the surface of the face are interpolated between these vertex normals. So you can imagine at the exact center of the face, the normal is pointing straight out, but the closer you get to one of the edges, the more the normals are pointing sideways. In terms of how blender is lighting the smooth cube, it looks like a sphere.
The rightmost cube also has smooth shading, but more geometry. The vertex normals are still the average of their surrounding faces, but because there is now geometry confined within each flat face, those internal vertices have normals pointing straight out, and the smooth shading is merely creating the illusion of rounded corners.


text:
How can I get rid of these two vertices without faces being deleted
I am trying to delete these two vertices because I do not need them:

However, when I remove them, it's like the faces of the mesh are deleted:

I am not sure how I can remove the two vertices without the faces of the mesh being deleted.

Please search see ngons versus quads tutorials.  You might want to explain what you gain by deleting the vertices.  So many New Contributors.

You may also want to see [dissolve] or [edge split] in edit mode with edges

Welcome to Blender Stack Exchange!
When you choose to delete vertices, it will not only delete the points themselves, but also any faces or edges that the vertices are part of. That's why part of the mesh disappears. Any face that the vertices were part of are now deleted.
Because of this, Blender has a number of dissolve options, that will delete your selection but keep everything connected.
The option in the delete menu that you'll want is dissolve edges or limited dissolve. Since two connected vertices form a edge, dissolving that edge will remove the vertices too. Limited dissolve will remove vertices, edges, and faces, but only if removing them won't change any angles in your object by a certain angle (5 degrees by default).
I highly recommend testing out the different options so you know what they each do, so that when you have a task to do, you know what tools are available to use.


text:
Wireframe and Solid viewports are not showing anything correctly
So I have an issue where when I change the viewport to Solid or Wireframe, nothing shows up apart from one small segment of my object as if its being cast towards by the camera.
Below is a screenshot of my model in the workbench renderer where it is all rendering correctly, but when I switch it to solid view the second image is what I see.

To me it looks like the camera is projecting some kind of small ray that is only rendering the part of the model that is in that area but I have no idea how to fix it. Wireframe view has the same issue as you can see on the image below.

I would like to suggest to consider putting some question into the title instead of a clearly false statement. The viewport works correctly in solid and wireframe modes. You pressed alt+b and defined clipping region. Press alt+b again to remove it.


text:
Lag with subdivision surface
So I started working on Master Chief in Blender and once I got to the point when I needed to make things smooth and realisitc, since that's how he is in the video game of course, everything started lagging. And it's not just for Master Chief. I went back to one of my other files that worked perfectly fine before I got 2.8, which is the version when this started happening, and that file was laggy also. Can someone please explain what is going on.

So you have a file from 279 that is lagging in 28x? You can post it on bug tracker. Or post the simplified blend that still lagyso we can check.


text:
How to join empty to mesh?
I'm not sure how to explain this so forgive me for not not being able to explain it correctly, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to join the empty I've made with a different mesh of mine?

I need the cylinder that I made with the empty to be joined with my s4studio mesh, but any time that I try to join them it ends up looking like this (left is whole mesh, right is after I joined it):

I hope I'm making sense here! I've tried searching for this question many different ways and haven't been able to find answer to help me, but if I missed one on here I apologize for the inconvenience!

I think it would help if you explained why you want to join your empty to the mesh. You can't, but if we understood your reasoning we could potentially figure out how to help. It looks like you're using the empty to drive an object offset array. What more are you trying to accomplish here?

@Rekov Yes, so sorry, I'm using the array modifier to create the many rounded cylinders. The reason why I need them together is because I'm making an object for a game (The Sims 4) and I'm uploading it into a program that will only read the one mesh and not anything else. So it has to be together somehow because atm it's only showing the top and bottom portion in the program I have to use. I hope this makes sense! This is the only thing left I need to do for this. The object needs to be low poly so that is why I'm using the array modifier.

Gotcha. The array modifier is creating polygons. All it does is take your existing mesh and duplicate it depending on how you've set up the modifier. If you want to join up your various objects, you'll have to apply that array modifier first. The polys are there regardless of whether the modifier is applied or not, if you manually duplicated that element around. If that's too high poly, your best bet would be to have a simple cylinder as your mesh, and bake the bumpy surface onto the normal map.

@Rekov So sorry for this super late response! I was so dumb and didn't realize that I didn't apply the modifier first and that's what really stopped me form moving forward. Thank you for the help!


text:
Is there a good UI layout/style for laptop screen?
I've settled into using Blender on my big 2xmonitor PC setup, but every time I try to use Blender on my laptop, when travelling or holiday, I end up with barely legible side-panels, and/or small work-area.
Is there a good UI Style/Layout that works well for the modelling aspect for a smaller screen? The resolution of the laptop is very good, but it's the screen size that limits things.
As for uses, I'm mainly wanting to do modelling/texturing - I may need rigging, but I won't need animation.

You can create your own and save as a preset. If it is really good or not is pretty much a matter of personal taste.

What I think you actually need, is to adjust the font-display size.

There isn't a single layout that would work for everything.  Different parts of the workflow require different windows to be available. Blender comes with a set of layouts, called screens that are a good starting point for customizing your own.  You change layouts in the screens drop down on the Information header.
After the workflow, the size of your laptop screen matters.  I have a 17.3" screen, so have a good deal of space available. Pick the screen that goes with the work you're doing and customize the UI to suit your workflow.
To save space, use the TKEY and NKEY to toggle the two side menus on and off.  Also, SHIFT-Fn will quickly switch between windows.  I use this sometimes to avoid having too many windows open at once.
An example: When I'm working on lighting in cycles, I tend to switch back and forth between the Node editor (SHIFT-F3) and the 3d Scene (SHIFT-F5) rather than splitting the screen between the two windows.
Beyond that, it is really a matter of taste.

Another good-to-know aspect here is when opening a blend file inside blender, you can tick/untick Load UI. This way, you can setup your blender on your laptop the way you need it, and when opening .blend files from your PC, just untick Load UI and Blender will keep your local UI.


text:
Is that normal to have larger render time with GPU?
I am using Blender 2.79 on Ubuntu 16.04.2. I have gtx610M(closed source drivers installed) and Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3210M CPU  2.50GHz processor
I have a very simple scene. A cube placed on a plane.

I've rendered this scene with 128 samples. 32x32 tiles. With CPU I got it rendered in 25.56 seconds. But when I switch it to GPU I get it rendered in 1 minutes and 7 seconds. I tried increasing the tile size to 256x256 and then I got it in 54 seconds.
Can that be natural? 1 minutes of GPU rendering time for this scene is obviously larger than normal, how about the CPU? Is 25 seconds ideal?

Gtx610M is a low end card, so it is totally plausible

GPU's are generally a better solution for your renderings. They offer more processing power and that can be harnessed to render your scenes.
Here your GPU might not be supported or your drivers not in place, If its not any of these, then its your GPU that is and. Get a newer one and it should work :)


text:
How to append a Rig with a python interface at the same time
I'm making a rig that has a python interface and I was wondering if their was anyway to append the rig and the script at the same time so the script runs as soon as it's appended.

If you do this manually, you need to run the script after it is linked. The script auto-runs only on file open/reload (if it is registered).
You can write an addon, that will link your character, create proxy rig from it, link the script and run the script:

Here is how you link stuff with python
You make proxy rig like this:
# get your linked group object
objects = bpy.context.scene.objects
group_ob = objects.get('Character')   # <- you probably have this from linking already
# create proxy rig
objects.active = group_ob
bpy.ops.object.proxy_make()
# get the proxy object if you need
proxy_ob = bpy.context.active_object

Running the script is easy:
script = bpy.data.texts.get("rig_script.py")   # <- you have this from linking
exec(script.as_string())


text:
How to tile texture a curved model?
The ground in this video is exactly what I'm trying to achieve:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XPgRnLRxlJM
I'm currently just using simple materials which has a nice low poly look, but it's not very diverse.
After I saw that I decided I wanted to texture my models just like that as well, so how would I go about doing that?
Whenever I try to UV unwrap, I just get terrible results, the shapes seem far too complex for me to even get a idea of how to do this.
Is there any easy way to do this?
So far, UV unwrapping has just been fustrating me.

Could you tell me what I might improve about my answer to make it right?

If I were you, I would try to look at the mesh from the top by pressing 7 on the numpad, and then U > Project from view. Then, scale down or up the parts of the mesh that curve the most.

I just made probably THE worst mistake one could probably make,.. I deleted all code from my game. So i havent had time to test your suggestions yet, i really appreciate it though and run some tests as soon as i can and get back to you

This seems to do the trick just fine, thank you so much! Allright now i can do some propper level design :D

Hey cool! If you don't mind, could you accept my answer for internet points?

@dude sign up for a github ac and backup your code

Try this: select one quad face, then use "Follow Active Quads". I would suggest "Loop Average" for best results.


text:
IK/FK Snap code crash after undo
I write code to set IK/KF Snap, and code source from
http://dskjal.com/blender/ik-fk-snap.html
code is work,but when i click the button to run the script,and CTLR+Z Undo, the code crash.
code:
import bpy
import mathutils

#When Selected bone in list,show VIEW_3D panel
showButtonBoneList = [\
'C.IK.L',\
'C.IK.R',\
'C.handIK.L',\
'C.handIK.R',\
'C.shinC.L',\
'C.shinC.R',\
'C.forearm.L',\
'C.forearm.R',\
'C.Legtag.L',\
'C.Legtag.R',\
'C.upper_armTag.L',\
'C.upper_armTag.R',\
'C.head',\
'C.head.Tag'\
]

#ikBones is a dict for selected bones IK relation
#Key = selected bone name
#Value =
#[
#name display on panel,     0
#IK Bone name,              1
#constraints name           2
#IK count,                  3
#Pole bone                  4
#Pole bone connecter bone   5
#IK target                  6
#]
ikBones = {\
'C.shinC.L':['L Foot IK:','C.shinC.L','IK',2,'C.Legtag.L','C.LegtagC.L','C.IK.L'],\
'C.IK.L':['L Foot IK:','C.shinC.L','IK',2,'C.Legtag.L','C.LegtagC.L','C.IK.L'],\
'C.Legtag.L':['L Foot IK:','C.shinC.L','IK',2,'C.Legtag.L','C.LegtagC.L','C.IK.L'],\
\
'C.shinC.R':['R Foot IK:','C.shinC.R','IK',2,'C.Legtag.R','C.LegtagC.R','C.IK.R'],\
'C.IK.R':['R Foot IK:','C.shinC.R','IK',2,'C.Legtag.R','C.LegtagC.R','C.IK.R'],\
'C.Legtag.R':['R Foot IK:','C.shinC.R','IK',2,'C.Legtag.R','C.LegtagC.R','C.IK.R'],\
\
'C.forearm.L':['L Hand IK:','C.forearm.L','IK',2,'C.upper_armTag.L','C.upperarmTagC.L','C.handIK.L'],\
'C.handIK.L':['L Hand IK:','C.forearm.L','IK',2,'C.upper_armTag.L','C.upperarmTagC.L','C.handIK.L'],\
'C.upper_armTag.L':['L Hand IK:','C.forearm.L','IK',2,'C.upper_armTag.L','C.upperarmTagC.L','C.handIK.L'],\
\
'C.forearm.R':['R Hand IK:','C.forearm.R','IK',2,'C.upper_armTag.R','C.upperarmTagC.R','C.handIK.R'],\
'C.handIK.R':['R Hand IK:','C.forearm.R','IK',2,'C.upper_armTag.R','C.upperarmTagC.R','C.handIK.R'],\
'C.upper_armTag.R':['R Hand IK:','C.forearm.R','IK',2,'C.upper_armTag.R','C.upperarmTagC.R','C.handIK.R'],\
\
'C.head':['Head LookAt','C.head','LookAt',1,'C.head.Tag','C.head.TagC',''],\
'C.head.Tag':['Head LookAt','C.head','LookAt',1,'C.head.Tag','C.head.TagC',''],\
}

amt = bpy.data.objects["ActorMetarig"]

#IK/FKFunction
'''
def set_ik(data_path):
    set_ik_influence(data_path, 1.0)

def set_fk(data_path):
    set_ik_influence(data_path, 0.0)
'''

def set_translation(matrix, loc):
    trs = matrix.decompose()
    rot = trs[1].to_matrix().to_4x4()
    scale = mathutils.Matrix.Scale(1, 4, trs[2])
    return mathutils.Matrix.Translation(loc) * (rot * scale)

#UI
class UIPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "Actor Rig IK/FK Snap"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    #Check Selected and show bottom
    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        selectedBoneCount = -1
        try:
            selectedBoneCount = len(bpy.context.selected_pose_bones)
        except:
            selectedBoneCount = -1
        if selectedBoneCount == 1:
            return bpy.context.selected_pose_bones[0].name in showButtonBoneList

    def draw(self, context):
        seletced = ikBones[bpy.context.selected_pose_bones[0].name]
        l = self.layout
        l.label(seletced[0])
        l.prop(amt.pose.bones[seletced[1]].constraints[seletced[2]],'influence',slider=True)
        l.operator('my.iktofk')
        l.operator('my.fktoik')

class IKtoFKButton(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "my.iktofk"
    bl_label = "IK -> FK"

    def execute(self, context):
        #Set Selected

        selected = ikBones[bpy.context.selected_pose_bones[0].name]
        ik_bone = amt.pose.bones[selected[1]]
        if(selected[1] != 'C.head'):
            ik_target = amt.pose.bones[selected[6]]
        ik_pole = amt.pose.bones[selected[4]]
        ik_connecter = amt.pose.bones[selected[5]]
        influence_data_path = ik_bone.constraints[selected[2]].influence

        #copy fk matrix
        #set_fk(influence_data_path)
        ik_bone.constraints[selected[2]].influence = 0

        #pose update
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE')

        if(selected[1] != 'C.head'):
            #set ik target
            ik_target.matrix = set_translation(ik_target.matrix, ik_bone.tail)

        #set pole target
        ik_pole.matrix = set_translation(ik_pole.matrix, ik_connecter.tail)

        return {'FINISHED'}

class FKtoIKButton(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "my.fktoik"
    bl_label = "FK -> IK"

    def execute(self, context):
        #Set Selected
        selected = ikBones[bpy.context.selected_pose_bones[0].name]
        ik_bone = amt.pose.bones[selected[1]]
        influence_data_path = ik_bone.constraints[selected[2]].influence
        num_bones = selected[3]

        # copy ik matrix
        ik_bone.constraints[selected[2]].influence = 1

        #pose update
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='POSE')

        ik_bone_matrixes = []
        it = ik_bone
        for i in range(num_bones):
            ik_bone_matrixes.append(it.matrix)
            it = ik_bone.parent

        # set ik matrix to fk bone
        ik_bone.constraints[selected[2]].influence = 0
        it = ik_bone
        for i in range(num_bones):
            it.matrix = ik_bone_matrixes[i]
            it = it.parent

        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module(__name__)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()
#bpy.context.active_bone.matrix.to_quaternion()

Bug reproduce:
1. Run code
2. Select Bone name "C.IK.L" and click "FK->IK" button on VIEW_3D Panel
3. Ctrl+Z to Undo
4. Select another bone just like "C.shinC.L".
5. crash
Maybe my browser js some question,i can't upload image.
so can see image and download project file from here:
http://bbs.blendercn.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=3734&extra=page%3D1

Just got the Ctrl Z crash on a Mac, I was using Blender on Yosemite, upgraded to Sierra and boom, ctrl z crashes all the time.