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Rotate HDRI image only?
Is it possible to rotate an HDRI background without rotating the lighting it gives off? I know that you can go into shading, world, and then add a mapping node and that rotates it, but that also rotates the light, I wanna keep the light in the same place but rotate the background. Is there any way to do this? Thanks!

@brockmann Ello! Thanks for your suggestion, but that seems to have changed since then, I can't even find the Alpha option under Render Properties. Thank you though! :)

EZ. It's still the same principle and nothing has changed really. If you are using cycles just enable the Transparent checkbox (Render Properties > Film > Transparent). Also the link points to another cycles answer as well. Otherwise I'd recommend to provide more details.

@brockmann Tysm! Works perfectly! :D

Just made an edit to: How to use multiple HDRIs ... both options in one pretty nice answer (IMHO).

This is possible in EEVEE and Cycles without compositing by using the Light Path Node>is Camera Ray output.
A node setup like below will allow you to do just what you are asking:

This produces the following result in the EEVEE viewport:

Notice that the background rotates, but the lighting does not.


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How to achieve cake crust material?
I'm making a Victoria sponge in Blender, and I'm not sure how to make the outside texture of the sponge cake. If a picture of a node setup could be provided, that'd be amazing. Thank you! :)

You could try something like this.

What I did was combine a Musgrave and a Noise texture and used that as a mix factor for the "Cake colors". I then took a lightened (softened) version of this mix and used that as a Bump Map of sorts. I also took the normal values from the Bump map, and the color data from the Noise Texture to provide the values for an Ambient Occlusion Node which I then colored dark brown and mixed with the original "cake color" to make the "darkened baked bits".
Lastly, I isolated the Z vector of a Gradient Texture (so it would lay flat) and "shaped" it with a ColorRamp to make a "top cap" mask which I would then use as a mix factor to apply the whites of yet another Noise Texture to the Cake by using a MixRGB node set to lighten. This makes the "icing sugar" on top.

Thank you Christopher Bennet! Looks great! :)

I've also given a try, I've created the basic material, I've only used the Noise Texture for both the diffuse and the bump effects. For the basic material I've mixed two tones of orange, and created some bumps with the combination of 2 sizes of noise. The sugar is pure white, to create the sprinkle effect, I've mixed 2 sizes of noise. To keep the sugar in the desired area, I've used Vertex Paint and painted only the top of the cake, then used an Input > Attribute node, with the vertex paint group loaded, as a factor to mix with the basic material:

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How do you fill empty spaces in a UV with the existing textures?
I've recently been making meshes for Roblox, but my latest one (an apple,) has these black seams, and I believe it's because of the empty black space in the UV. I saw a video a while back where I remember the person in the video clicking this button and it sort of stretched the already-drawn textures to touch each other and fill in the gaps. If this makes any sense, does anybody know how this YouTuber did it? Thanks!

maybe in the UV Editor > header menu > UV > Pack Islands?

@moonboots Thanks for the recommendation! I actually found the answer, all I needed was padding (you can see what I did to get padding in my answer,) which allowed me to sort of extend the texture to fill most of the empty parts of the image. Thanks! :)

ok, interesting

I found out what it was!
All I needed for the texture to be fixed was padding.I got TexTools (a free plugin for Blender, found here: https://github.com/SavMartin/TexTools-Blender/releases/tag/v1.4.3) and added it to Blender. I then went to UV, selected the resolution (in this case I used 2048), and used the "Padding" slider to change the padding on the image. There's different values of padding for different resolutions, 16 being the recommended value for 2048, but I ended up doing a higher value for this particular mesh in order to fix the issue.
I'm not sure if there's a way to do this by default in Blender, but I'd still recommend getting TexTools anyway, it's a great addon! Thanks for reading, hopefully this helped if you had the same issue! :)

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


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Remove transparent mesh face from boolean object?
This one's a bit confusing, but as show in the image below I have an invisible cube and an apple. The apple has a boolean modifier on it so as I move the cube into it it removes more and more of the apple. However, the face of the cube which is hitting the apple still seems to be visible (that's the black glitchy part,) and I'm not sure how to fix that. If you know how, please help. Thank you!

To me, that looks like shadow banding caused by low shadow bias values.

Figured it out! Select the cube object, go under Object Properties, scroll down to Viewport Display and change Display As to Wire. :)

If it is just a viewport method you are going for... You can also use the CTRL+H hotkey to hide the selected object(s). ALT+H to unhide all hidden objects.

@RandomPanda Hi! I tried hiding the cube but then I couldn't move it, thanks though! :)


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Material baking as black?
I'm not sure why I can't bake this. I've unwrapped it, I tried baking it as glossy when it had the Principled BSDF, deleted the Principled BSDF and tried baking again, but every time it baked as just a black texture. Does anybody know how to fix this? Thanks!

I found the answer! Apparently it won't bake when I have an HDRI, so I ended up deleting the HDRI and bringing back the default world background, and it worked! :)


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Best tactic for creating complicated 3D patterns?
I really want to be able to create a fancy piece of furniture like the armchair below, but the gold parts are what elude me. I've never really been able to come up with a great way to model complex patterns like that in 3D whilst keeping it fitting to the shape of the chair and still have good geometry. It's ok if the pattern is just on a flat surface like a wall because then I can just make an image and plug it into a bump node for the wall's material, but I have no idea how to create clean 3D shapes like that with loads of detail. If anybody has any tips as to what method I should use/how to go around creating something, please let me know. Thank you! :)

maybe use bezier curves? watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJsxKWxAhMk

Sculpt, retopo. What have you tried so far?

@moonboots Thank you for the suggestion! I'm watching part 1 and part 2 right now and it's a pretty awesome method. I actually tried using bezier before but never knew about that custom profile thing for some reason so that was an amazing find! :)

@brockmann I haven't tried sculpting yet since I'm unfortunately not the best at it, but I have tried bezier and shaping using a sub-divided cube. :)


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How to export MTree to UE4?
I'm using a plugin called MTree which basically allows you to create your own tree with the use of a tree node editor. The only problem is, though, even when I try joining the leaves and the wood itself as one mesh it still imports into UE4 as multiple meshes. There's over 400 leaf twigs in my tree plus the wood, so I can't really put all of them back together once I import them to UE4. Idk if this is more of a Blender Stack Exchange question or a Game Developement Stack Exchange, though.

The default leaves generated in the Mtree node system are a Python scripted
particle system. Unreal reads each particle as a separate object. Therefore, we need to combine the particles and the tree trunk/roots/branches etc. into a single mesh for Unreal.
There a few steps and the (processing) time required varies depending on the complexity of your generated tree(s).
I also strongly suggest texturing your tree and leaves before beginning this process

Select just the leaves and navigate to the modifier properties:

Select convert, this will make each leaf particle a separate object, and hit apply on the modifier settings:

Shift +  LMB the trunk of the tree and parent the leaves to it with Ctrl + P and select Object (Keep Transforms). Again, however long the parenting process takes is dependent on the complexity of your tree trunk (roots, branches, twigs etc.):

When that is finally done,  RMB on the parented tree+leaves and select Convert to Mesh, this will be much quicker than parenting:

Now (with everything still selected) we right click again and select Join.
If your tree object still have a separate leaf object, then select both your tree object and leaf object, right click on the leaves specifically and select Join again.
Voila! All the leaves and the tree are now a single mesh, ready to be imported to Unreal:

In my experience, the materials don't always import correctly therefore playing around with the import settings and material editor is still required, but our base tree is now in Unreal. This method could also work with Epic's Blender-Unreal import plugin that you can search for on their github.


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How To Spiralize Mesh
I wanted to turn the selected mesh in the image into a spiral. Is there any way I could do this? I couldn't do it with the screw modifier. Thanks! :)

I'm confused;
1: You have a mesh selected, not an image
2: It's... already pretty much a spiral...

@AlexanderESmith I know that I have a mesh selected, you must've read the description wrong as it's not an image I'm trying to select. Also, the mesh is just a screw, I want to turn it into a spring shape.

I see. Can you elaborate on what you consider the difference to be between a spring and what you see here? A higher frequency of repetition in the pattern? A single pipe rather than the two? A thinner pipe (so they don't touch)?

@AlexanderESmith I consider this to be more of a rope. With a spring I expect it to be like this: https://d27ucmmhxk51xv.cloudfront.net/media/english/illustration/spring.jpg?version=1.2.1 but pretend that the spring is the same shape but made out of the "rope".

If you want to use the current rope, I'd need to know how you created it. Otherwise I can tell you how I'd make a spring from scratch.

@AlexanderESmith Yes, I'd like to possibly change the rope into a spring. Here's an example I managed to find: https://prevuepet.com/images/products/productaddl_730_1445_0_resized_26486_zoom.jpg just take away the ends and make it a bit cleaner.

@AlexanderESmith Oh, ok. Is it possible to check the settings of a modifier you already applied?

Unfortunately no. Unless you can undo past that point?

I would, but sadly that was one of the first parts I made. I'll try making a replica instead.

I've messed around with the settings and the closest I could get with the screw modifier was 4m for the Screw, Y for the Axis, 3 Iterations and everything else stays the same.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


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Is there an add-on that lets you build using meshes in Blender?
I was wondering... if I were to create a set of blocks or pieces that fit together in Blender, would there be an add-on that would let me select one of those blocks and simply place them like in a level editor for a game? This would be much easier than copying, pasting, and dragging each individual block into place. Ty!

You mean like a tile-map?

@ChristopherBennett Kind of, but if a tile-map were 3D

I think the closest blender can do is by using the array modifer. You can use curves to set custom paths if necessary, and you can stack arrays. However, I'm not sure how you'd manage random offsets if you needed something like that.

There is also the addon SPRyTile but I think it ony builds 3D scenes out of 2D tiles.


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Make displacement flat near edges?
As you can see below, I have a displacement texture on two separate meshes that I want to perfectly connect. I tried using an add-on called Y.A.V.N.E to connect them but haven't gotten good results. Is there any way to make the edges of a mesh flat while keeping the center of the mesh displaced? Thanks!

the only direct method (no python) I am aware of, would be manually weightpaint the edges and constrict the influence of the dispace mod. If they are close enough when not displaced, you can try merge by distance.

Hello :). The displace modifier can be limited to a specific vertex group. Have you tried that?

@JachymMichal Hello! I know I'm a bit late, but I was wondering if there's any way to fix this after you've applied the displacement modifier? I stupidly used to apply all of my modifiers instead of keeping them lol.

@MmmChezBurgerz Hello :). It depends on the complexity of your mesh. Please ask it as a new question (with images) so others can help :).


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Converting program specific functions to Blender in python
I'm sorry the title is vague, but I couldn't come up with a summary of my problem.
I am trying to convert a script made for a model viewing tool called Noesis to Blender. I'm stuck on some Noesis specific functions and need guidance.
Now this is the specific line that I am stuck on:
boneMat = NoeMat44.fromBytes(bs.readBytes(0x40)).toMat43()
I have already made a function for bs.readBytes(). I have printed out various values. From what I know, this function is making a vector 44 and converting it to a vector 43, I'll show some values that I have printed out from the original script.
These are the bytes that are from bs.readBytes(0x40):
b'\x00\x00\x80?
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x80?
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x80?
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x80?'

Somehow, they get converted to this vector:
((1.0, 0.0, 0.0), (0.0, 1.0, 0.0), (0.0, 0.0, 1.0), (0.0, 0.0, 0.0))
I imagine this would be linked to bone matrices in Blender as that is what they are called in Noesis.

It is still vague after you finish the question description. How could we help you with any specified question? A guide to convert 4×3 to bledner 4×4 matrices? In general, you said you're converting Noesis to Blender to what?? Examining it or extract function or mock the process?

I'm not sure why your bytes code became split into lines. I think this is stackexchange, but if this is done by bs.readBytes(0x40) you need to concatenate all lines before you will be able to decode them into floats. Decoding can be done with built-in memoryview() method or with built-in struct module, like  struct.unpack('f', bs.readBytes(0x40)). After that you can arrange floats into tuples. For example like this (consider bs.readBytes(0x40) doesn't split result into lines):
# readBytes_result = bs.readBytes(0x40)
def readBytes_to_vector(readBytes_result):
    bytes_to_floats = memoryview(readBytes_result).cast('f')
    counter = 0
    axis = []
    my_floats = []
    for fl in bytes_to_floats:
        axis.append(fl)
        counter+=1
        if counter == 4:
            counter=0
            my_floats.append(tuple(axis))
            axis = []
    return tuple(my_floats)

I prefer to use memoryview instead of struct because though it returns its own "memoryview object" instead of sequence of values (which is not always very handy) it is faster, especially when you need to handle large bytes arrays, like pixel data for example.


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Mesh Dilation or Expansion for 3D printing Project
I'm totally new to Blender and this forum & I'm looking for a tool to help me with my 3D printing project.
I am working with a mesh for an object that you can imagine to be be a coil or a spring: it is a twisted filament with a good bit of geometry in it (it is not a sculpture, for example).
The filament itself is rather thin, which makes it difficult to 3D print so ideally I could expand the mesh to make the filament thicker. I tried exploring this using MeshMixer with not so great results, particularly because I cannot perform mesh dilation in a single operation to the whole mesh, and instead have to work my way manually through the mesh which creates artefacts that greatly distort the initial geometry.
Do you think that Blender can be a solution for this problem? Could you please give me some pointers on how to go about to do this?
Many thanks for the help.
Best,
R.

Difficult to be sure of the solution without seeing the model.

Depending on the mesh a displace modifier with default settings will inflate or deflate the mesh along its normals. Tweak the strength to vary the effect.

Concave mesh will self-intersect if the strength is too high or too low so keep that in mind.


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Weight paint isn't visible
Going into weight paint mode, the weights aren't visible at all. There's not even the 0 weight blue. They're there and working though because I can pose the character, and I can paint because it changes her pose when I do, but I just can't see it at all. I'm sure it's just a simple button I need to press or something but I can't find the solution by searching so that's why I'm posting it here. You can see in my screenshots that I'm in weight paint mode, but no weights are visible, and she can be posed.

are you sure you have selected this object and not another? Also, in the Viewport Overlays panel, make sure the Weight Paint Opacity is somewhere above 0?

@moonboots Thank you! That literally solved it, I wasn't aware of that feature though and I'm not sure why it was turned down but I'm glad I know now!  :)

In the Viewport Overlays panel, make sure that the Weight Paint Opacity is somewhere above 0:


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Split mesh into equal chunks

I have a mesh and I need to chunk it into 256 equal pieces.
How can I do it?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/34942


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Set XZ origin to objects
I have a map splitted to 256 chunks, now I need to center origin to every object, but I need to center only X and Z origin, not Y.
Or another way, can I change Y origin to 0 for all objects?

You mean XZ  as shown? Halfway up the hills, halfway along the bottom, on the left edge?


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Baking bevel node results in colourful normal map
I am trying to bake the bevel nodes normals onto my model. However, I constantly get results like this were the normal map looks all colourfull, instead of the light purple colour its supposed to be.
I've tried to do it using a duplicate of this model with the bevel node, and baking it from there. This unfortunately also gives the same result. I also tried CPU instead of GPU compute, Cuda instead of Optix, 2.92 instead of 2.93, using a cage, checking the normals and adding a displacement modifier to a duplicate, trying to bake that.
grenade_normal.blend

Have you tried to turn off denoising (Optix) and bake on the CPU? It works for me that way.

I eventually got it working by importing it in a new file, despite it not working earlier. Thanks though for the suggestion Blendur! I can't answer you directly but trying to render it on the CPU didn't work for me when I tried.

That's weird that you had to import it in a new file. But I'm glad it works now. (You should be able to comment on your own question even with only 1 reputation. With 50 rep. you can comment on any question IIRC)


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Why 3d model shows fill after converting to gcode ? (using snapmaker luban to covert to gcode)
I am trying to create 3d model from svg using blender, but when import .stl under snapmaker luban it shows some area as fill ?
What might this causing ?
3dmodelusingblendertosnapmakerlubanforgcode

You may need to use the 3D Printing Tool Box first.
Here's a video tutorial that may help explain the options of 3D Printing Tool Box which you can use before exporting out of blender to check the stl.
Blender Mesh Fixing | 3D Printing Tool Box Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rgrLWFUjlk
Time Stamps:
    0:00 - The 3D Print Tool Box | Blender Mesh Analysis.
    1:03 - How To Scale By Volume & Bounds.
    2:40 - Non-Manifold Edge Explained.
    3:35 - Bad Contig. Edges Explained.
    4:20 - Intersect Face Explained.
    5:34 - Zero Faces Explained.
    6:19 - Zero Edges Explained.
    7:18 - Non-Flat Faces Explained.
    9:10 - Thin Faces Explained.
    10:10 - Sharp Edge Explained.
    11:30 - Overhang Face Explained.
    12:15 - A Little Bug To Watchout For.
    13:19 - Automatic Blender Mesh Fixing & Exporting.
    14:15 - Mesh Design Things To Keep In Mind.


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Need help on to make svg image into 3d object
I have imported by SVG object build through inkscape and trying to convert into 3d object, but object looks like as attached here

What next steps I should take to make it nice 3d object with 2-3 mm thick and how i would need to clear those lines in between or appearing on the object face?
Want to understand what are those and why do they appear and what's the best practice to follow, while creating svg images for 3d objects?
Thanks for your help and time!

Since you imported curve object, just go to Curve Properties and change Geometry > Extrude value ... you dont have to necessarily convert  into a mesh.

Select all in Edit mode and press X > limited Dissolve. You can tweak the parameters in the Operator box on the bottom left of the 3D view. To extrude, keep everything selected and press E, drag in order to get thickness.

Thanks, one more thing wanted to under how to get the smooth surface print?, currently its like a lines on the surface.

maybe try right click > Shade Smooth then in the Object Data panel > Normals > Auto Smooth and play with the value. If it still doesn't work please share your file?


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Wild visual glitches and broken controls
Wild visual glitches and broken controls
My viewport when in solid view isn't rendering any mesh and most of my controls are broken, for example, I can't move around at all, and I have to press command + right-click to select anything.

And when I get close to the mesh it renders really weirdly, however my controls do return to normal.

Everything also returns to normal in the side or top-down views (I don't know what they are called sorry) and when I am looking through the camera.
The same weirdness applies to the other viewport shading issues, though each is slightly different.
I'm running blender 2.93.2, on an M1 mac, (which is what I originally thought was the issue but the problems occur running native Apple silicone or not, and it only happens with this blender file, every other one is fine) so if anyone has had this issue or knows how to solve this, please let me know.

can u provide blend file?

@Chris https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XwI-NwtLdq2mG1dmT4tLMz3KoCZovUaJ/view?usp=sharing

press on this button

and then the glitches go away and you can select again.
But...don't ask me why and don't ask me what's wrong. Hopefully some Pro can help here... ;)
I assume something is wrong with your file. Looks like Blender saved there some !"&/§%/!%"§. What you can do is, start a new Blender file and use File->Append-> then choose your file and append all the stuff you need. That worked for me. No glitches. You can select everything.

Thanks! For now, I'm just going to use the append thing.


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How to use the simple deform modifier/ loop cut an irregular shape?
I'm trying to bend the object shown in the photo around the z-axis of the axis in front of it. I'm following the process shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq2_goboheo&ab_channel=GamemakerGameProgrammingCourse , but I cannot get it to work for my object.
In the video the guy uses the loop cut function in order to allow a square bar to bend round an axis, but I cant work out how to apply the correct loop cut to my object. I can only get the following loop cuts:

Instead I want the loop cut to run down the face of the object.
And when I use the simple deform modifier the shape awkwardly rotates around the axis and becomes thicker.

Is there any way to fix this issue, or can someone suggest another way to make a curved object. This object needs to sit flush against a sphere.

if you want your obect to rotate around Z, it needs the right topology, you can cut a vertical grid with the Knife Project tool for example. Also make sure that you've applied the rotation (Ctrl A (Apply) > Rotation. If it doesn't work please share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/

This isn't an issue , this happens due to a big ngon in center of your mesh and not a good "origin position"
in this kind of situations , i prefer using Edge crease (Shift+E while selecting boundary edges)
also i prefer to learn topology before struggling with software polygonal modeling softwares are different from Cad modeling softwares .
I guess you are modeling a gamepad and i don't prefer using deform workflow (which is used in cad programs) just go with "polygon modeling" or watch tutorials about it and go on .
here is the video that i uploaded for you to use for your purpose btw :   YoutubeLink


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Using two curves to make a rounded groove
I am having trouble making a specific shape. Specifically, It is ellipsoid with an ogive cross section (for those of you who don’t know what either of those are, an Ogive, is the shape of a rocket nose cone, while an ellipsoid is a fancy term for a 3D oval). I am trying to make this as smooth and even as possible, yet every option that I try does not work due to the unevenness of the curves. I have the both the curves for the Y and Z axis mapped out (Fig. 2 and 3), but the x axis curve is uneven thoughout (The curve grows and shrinks depending on how far from the center on both the y and z axis you travel, Fig. 1 shows this pretty well).

As a sidenote, I come from a engineering and CAD modeling background, so vertex modeling is new in that I don’t have as easy access to the complex shapes used in programs like Solidworks or Fusion 360.
Any help or suggestions are welcome.

What do you mean the curve grows and shrinks? The visual representation in pixels? That's like when in Adobe Illustrator you've scaled the view so small you can't differentiate between 0.25 pt, 0.5 pt and 0.75 pt lines - they might be all one pixel thick. And if a line isn't vertical or horizontal but diagonal or curved, trying to show that with the pixel resolution of a monitor is not easy. Your curves have a theoretical thickness of 0 as long as you don't add geometry, and 0 is hard to show if you have a fixed monitor resolution and the need to visualize the path of the curve.

Is this the shape you mean?


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How to write a script that selects bone constraints and fill in the blanks
I am using Blender2.78 and have zero coding knowledge. I'd like to run a script that adds bone constraints 'Copy Location' and 'Copy Rotation' in each bone in my armature and fills in the target slot with the name of the second armature I want to copy from.
I watched a tutorial and have my script like this:
import bpy

for bone in bpy.context.object.pose.bones:
    if bone == 'EMPTY':
        bpy.context.object.pose.bones["bone"].constraints["Copy Rotation"].target = bpy.data.objects["Attacker Control"]

I click run script but nothing happens. Could someone teach me step by step how to do this? Also, I know what I'm doing sounds like it is solvable by linking animation data. I've tried that but it didn't work, so I've resorted to doing it manually. I'm hoping to speed up the process with this method.

if bone.name == 'EMPTY':


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Child of constraint mess - Set inverse undo previous pose

I've never used Child of Constraint before and must've messed it up here. I'm making a dance animation and have Child of Constraint set up between the dancers' hips.  Please help. I have no idea how to fix this.
I've attached the blend file if anyone wants to take a look.

You've got other problems that should probably be addressed before tackling the child of constraint. Both the Male and Female are parented to the Male Control, while neither is parented to the Female Control. In Object Mode, the Female control moves nothing, while the Male Control moves them both. You may have done this to make animating easier, as if he is leading. But it would be better to keep the female parented to the female control, and if you want the male to lead, use a child of constraint to keep her with him. Create a clean scene and share, and I'll respond re: child of constraints.

@R-800 I'm confused by your reply. In object mode, I can move the female control which moves the female rig while Male Control moves only male rig. I don't get the same results as you do. I didn't add any extra parenting between the rigs, only child of constraint on the female's hips (called 'Master') to the male's hips (also called 'Master'). All of their movements are done in pose mode, none done in object mode.

My apologies. I can no longer see the problem I did originally. When I load it up this time, everything seems to work as it should. I don't know why it didn't before. Let me give another look and get back.

I'm not seeing any issues at all now. It's not even clear to me what you are wanting to achieve that isn't now being achieved. Female Control Master (hips) is child of constrained to Male Control Master, as it should be, and the one follows the other during the twirl, as it should. Could you try and clearly explain exactly what you are wanting to happen that isn't happening? Which pose is getting broken by setting inverse and when?

If you need multiple inverses-- which isn't unheard of-- you need to use multiple child-of constraints.  You can animate the influence of these constraints to switch between them.


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Can’t Select Faces Inside Cylinder

I’m very new to blender, this is the second tutorial I’m trying to follow (Ducky 3D’s environment tutorial). I’m trying to make the inside of the ring emissive but I can only select the outside faces. I tried remaking the cylinder thinking I made a mistake but it had the same issue, and wouldn’t let me select the inside faces.
I did try selecting the Interior Faces in the Select All By Trait but it didn't work either.

Does this answer your question? Object is missing geometry in edit mode

The inner faces are not real: they are being generated by the modifier. The idea of modifiers is that they are a “Procedural effect” that is, they follow a formula, and thus can run on top of the existing geometry, constantly virtually being the last thing you did. If you want to adjust a modifier, you can do it at any time. If one should want to adjust actual changes one made to the mesh, one would have to undo until they found the correct operation, and all the following work would be lost.

is there a way then to add thickness to the cylinder without a modifier? The tutorial I used was from 2 years ago, maybe in an update since then is there a way to make a cylinder like that with faces I can assign emission too?

@SynthwaveSuccubus Yes, the solidify modifier has a solidify operator counterpart, or you could just apply the modifier. Applying the modifier runs it permanently as an operator and deletes it.

The Solidify modifier is what I used in the image above but it doesn't leave me any faces to grab, but it worked in the tutorial.

@SynthwaveSuccubus Apply the modifier. I think it’s in a pull down in the modifier’s header

Thank you! Going off a tutorial using an older version of Blender, things have been moved around a bit since then so I had no idea where to find it lol Thanks again!

I will say as an afterthought that you can set the solidify modifier to use different materials for the solidified part than for the original. And, you’re welcome. PTLJ

you can also press Alt E > Extrude Faces Along Normals

As @TheLabCat has said, you can't edit the faces generated by an un-applied modifier, because they don't exist, at edit time. However, you can assign materials to them. The Solidify and Bevel modifiers both have panels that allow you to set the material index for generated faces:

Sou you can have separate materials for inner, outer, rim, and bevel, if you want to:

...

I had the same problem in Blender 3.3, so I imported the project into Blender 2.8, applied the Solidify modifier, saved it and reopened it in Blender 3.3 and it worked.


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Creases when cutting aircraft windows
I need help,
I need to cut windows out of the fuselage of an airliner, however every time I do that I get these weird shadows/creases.
I am limited to a certain amount of vertices because it is for a Flight Simulator, and it is also important the windows stay at the right size, which they are now.
Thanks in advance :)

If polygon count matter as you said, I would warn you that those N-Gons around the windows are hiding lots of triangular faces (that's where the shading came from BTW: long and thin tris...). It really depends on your target software, but usually the triangular mesh should be taken into account, so I would extrinsecate the "real" geometry and then optimizate from there..

The mesh is triangulated although I didn't apply the modifier.

It's impossible to resolve with current number of faces and vertices, you'll need to add at least one top to bottom loop cut and proceed to insets and bevels around those windows. If polycount is that important paint a texture of windows and use it as an alpha mask which allows skipping any geometry cnanges at all (the software you export to has to have alpha textures support for that)..

What do you mean by "mesh is triangulated"? Maybe I was not clear: I wanted to suggest the idea of converting the n-gons in tris (or quads, it depends on your need) so you'll be able to adjust the topology in order to achieve a correct shading.

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/66928/fix-creases-on-a-curved-surface and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/76037/how-to-avoid-mesh-anomalies-after-knife-project

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


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Blender viewport no anti aliasing
I have been trying to get the viewport to look smooth but my PC refuses to apply any anti aliasing.
Because of this, I have great difficulty working on my models.
Here is what it looks like,

Here are my settings
What can I do ?
Thanks in advance.

Is this true also for the "default" scene? I mean, a simpe cube...do you see jagged edges also there?

AA doesn't work with viewport ambient occlusion, make sure you have AO disabled

Ambient occlusion is off and I get the same result with the default scene.

@Osian Sodenkamp's tip worked in my case. You have to disable screen-space ambient occlusion in the display options panel (hidden under N key). I'd never find it out if it weren't for Osian's comment!

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


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Exporting .mtl (with .obj) and multiple textures
I tried search previously on this issue, but only came across issues where people were not having their .mtl file generated when exporting a .obj file.
I have been able to successfully exporting a .obj file with its accompanying .mtl file. The files seem to contain all of the relevant information, except for in the .mtl file:
newmtl test-material
Ns 96.078431
Ka 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
Kd 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
Ks 0.500000 0.500000 0.500000
Ke 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Ni 1.000000
d 0.000000
illum 2
map_Kd textures/test-01.png
map_d textures/test-01.png

In blender, for material test-material, I actually have two textures: test-01.png and test-02.png. Both textures have their boxes checked for active, I see both textures laid on top of one another, yet the exported .mtl only shows the first texture.
Is there an option I'm missing? Does .mtl not support the case where a material has multiple textures?
Thanks!

Wavefront doesn't support multiple textures. You can only add one diffuse/specular/normal/... texture per material. To export both, you'll need to bake them together to one texture.
See the specification here: http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/mtl/


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How can I import video into viewport?
I have already created a storyline, it is going to involve mixing film with 3D objects and possibly also using the grease pencil to create 2D animations on top of regular film too. If any of you know any great tutorials that are dumb proof, I would greatly appreciate it. I used to know how to import video in the old blender into the viewport and draw on top of it but I have yet to figure it out with the newest update.

Hello and welcome I cleaned up your post to go straight to the point. Asking for links on how to do X is considered off topic here, but directly asking how to solve X is ok. Could you rephrase your question on how to solve the specific issue you are encountering, rather than ask for pointers to tutorials.

Adding image empties works for video, so long as you set up the ending frame and the FPS right.


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Blender weight issue to Unity

I have a mesh and rig, I have one bone for jiggle effect, the right one that I have moved to right, but in Unity there's a jaggy edge. Why?

Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/210801/weight-paint-different-from-unreal-engine/210828#210828

thank you, eventually i found out it's problem in Unity


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Rendering animation gets progressively slower
Setup: Blender 2.90, Gigabyte RTX 2060, AMD Ryzen5 2400G 24 GB ram
When I'm rendering an animation the render time per frame starts at about 15 seconds.
But the render time progressively gets slower. After a few hours it's two times slower.
There is very little change in the animation so the render time should be the same for each frame.
When I restart Blender and continue rendering the animation the render time gets fast again. So the same frames are now rendering at 15 seconds instead of 30 seconds.
The problem is that there is a delay before the actual rendering starts. During this delay nothing seems to be happening. Blender doesn't show anything in the status line on top of the render screen. This delay progressively gets longer. During this delay I can hear the CPU fan speeding up. Task manager shows a 10% CPU usage increase.
Memory usage is constant at about 30% for both CPU and GPU.
I had the same issue with Blender 2.83


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Viewport Not Rendering/No Lights/No Materials
I just did a render 2 min ago. I'm on blender 2.9 and I was playing around with the denoise features. At the time, the lighting was working, and the materials on my object were perfectly fine. I was using Cycles to render in the viewport. So I decided to try a render with the denoising, and the message "Loading render kernels (may take a few minutes the first time". It took way too long for being worth the wait so i just knew i just saved my project, and i alt f4'd. So i relaunch the program, and when I load my project, lighting, materials and none of the rendering engines want to even work. I hit F12 to run a render, and it works there, but not in my viewport. What's going on?

You are in solid preview mode. Change to material preview or rendered preview (two farthest right of the 4 small circles in the top right of the viewport). You can also switch modes by pressing the hotkey Z in the 3D viewport and then selecting your preview mode from the pie menu.

Can you make it a little  more clear a bit I don't understand what's your question?


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Animation nodes texture value to vector
I would like to scale multiple instanced objects based on a BW texture so i can get random scale on objects. Can i do it with textures or is there any other way?

AN extra nodes version supports now textures


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Cutting a Notch at the top a Rounded Cylinder
Fairly new with Blender. Please excuse the following question if it comes off to amateur! But certainly hope someone will be able to figure this out for me.
Essentially I want to cut a notch at the top of rounded cylinder. The cylinder is currently modelled with a Subdivision Modifier.
I tried using the Boolean Modifier using a rectangular box to cut the Difference from the cylinder. However, it leaves really bad stretch marks along the edges.
Any type of tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Andy

If you choose to go the route of booleans, then here is the method I would use.
Quad cap the cylinder to begin with. Delete the Ngon faces top and bottom, and grid fill them with Ctrl+F > G with the edges selected.

Next you can add modifiers. Order is important, so here is the modifier stack:

Bevel and Weighted Normal are the key ones that help here, they will help eliminate alot of the shading issues that you will run into relying on boolean workflows.
Finally, enable Auto-Smooth in  Properties ‣ Object Data ‣ Normals

This is roughly the result you should end up with:

Wow, just what I was looking for! Thank you so much Timaroberts! You have yourself a good day!


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Why does my 3d object move around even though I have good motion tracking
I've switched from native Blender motion tracking to using April Tools mentioned in CGMatter's video.
This seems to be working really well. However, I have a 3D model of a porsche that is giving me problems.
Admittedly, the footage is pretty shaky, but despite that, I can tell that the tracking is good:
this video shows the problem. Note how the grey marker perfectly covers the black april tag square all through the video, yet the porsche still bounces around.
It doesn't seem to be a size or geometry issue either, since I don't have the problem when I use a large cube or when I use a small porsche. Does anyone know what's going on?

Do you remember what the solve value was? If it's over 0.8 it might need some cleaning up still.

April Tools doesn't include a solve error, it tracks the footage through it's own python script and generates keyframes for camera/marker movement. To iterate: the tracking is good, as evidenced by the grey marker on the ground remaining perfectly in place. If the tracking was bad, you would see that marker move around like the porsche does, and you would see the black square tag that it's covering.

Maybe ask directly in the github page for aprilstools would be a better place for this.


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How to make a cellophane plastic shader/material?
I can't find how to replicate the look of this specific material, cellophane.

I want to create a candy wrapper for a lollipop that I'm making for my 3D modeling class. I've tried 3 different material setups. I can't seem to find what I'm missing. Here is the closest result from a material that I found from a youtube tutorial.

I'm trying to make something like this:

Improve lighting
The main difference between your results and the reference images is lighting. Lights and the environment have a significant impact on how the material looks. You can design the perfect material, but it won't look right if it is in complete darkness.
The easiest way to get a realistic environment is to set up an HDRI, but you can also simply add a few different lights to the scene.
Add wrinkles
Note that the geometry in the reference images is quite complex. The wrinkles emphasize the intricate reflections that happen within the wrappers. To get a similar look, you would have to add wrinkles to your geometry as well.
Blender has a great tool for this – the sculpt tool. In particular, the cloth brush makes it easy to simulate wrinkles as you manipulate the geometry.
Add diffuse and absorption components
Overall, the material itself looks good. Perhaps its missing a little bit of diffuse shading. As you can see in the first reference image, areas where the wrapper is thicker due to multiple layers, the material appears whiter, even though it does not directly reflect any light.
You could mix in a bit of diffuse shading to emulate this effect. Furthermore, the diffuse shader should be especially pronounced in areas where the material is viewed at an angle, because in such areas, the light ray will have to travel further through the plastic. (You can achieve this with a Fresnel input).
In addition, most transparent materials absorb some ammount of light. Make sure that the transparent shader has a very light light gray color (instead of white). This will slightly darken the rays of light passing through the material.
Example
Inspired by the first reference image, I quickly sketched out some basic geometry, then messed a bit with sculpting to get some wrinkles. I used a different shader setup (a single principled shader), but you should be able to apply the techniques described above to your setup as well.


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Addons tabs will disappear from the n-tab toolbar
I have this persistent on going issue where I'll mindlessly hit a hotkey by accident and then all the addons I have installed will disappear in the n-tab menu before I even notice. The addons are still installed and are functional, but I can't access their tab menus as it just blips out of excistence every so often. The n-tab menu will only have the default tabs like tools, view, and edit.
Below I put a picture with the retopoflow, which has it's own menu and buttons at the top; this tells me the addons are working and installed. Sometimes, the tabs will reappear after hitting random hotkeys or will just be there when I reopen blender after a long time. Everytime I try googling this issue, there's no information on this it or I get redirected on how to install an addon or troubleshoot it. If I unistall, and reinstall the addons, it will come back onto the n-tab menu for a moment, but then disappear after working for a while or if I close out blender.
I had this problem with ver 2.8, 2.9 and now 3.6.1.
Is this some sort of bug, or is it a hotkey I'm not aware of?

I think that first you are somehow going to have to find out which key it is that you "mindlessly hit... by accident". Then in Edit->Preferences->Interface turn on Developer Extras. Then in Preferences->Add-ons activate the Development: Is key Free addon. Open the dropdown for it and click on the brief Documentation for how to use it. With it you can get a list of all the keys that are assigned in your Blender setup. You can copy and paste this list into some text program, e.g., Notepad on Windows and search for the key you think you pressed. Continued...

Note that the list can be long and that some keys are used in multiple places. You might be able to find the problem key this way.


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Sound-Driven Animation, Using Animation (and Sverchok) Nodes, is Not Working
I am trying to create an animation where a parameterized object, created with sverchok nodes, is manipulated by a sound file via animation nodes. Here are my node setups (blend file at the end of this post):
Animation Nodes setup:

Sverchok Node setup:

So, the sound file is read through Animation Nodes and carried over to Sverchok, where the sound drives the 'dt' parameter of an object (which is the time parameter of a Lorenz attractor via a script, which I posted about here).
This setup works in the viewport, but when I try to render the full animation, the frames do not adjust for dt. In other words, if I render the first 100 frames of the animation (as images, not as a movie file), I get 100 images that are exactly the same.
At first I also couldn't render any images. I read about how there are some issues rendering with Animation Nodes, specifically this thread, so I ended up using this script from VideoBombala:
import bpy

for step in range(1, 100):

    bpy.context.scene.frame_set(step)
    bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.filepath = 'd:/3D RENDER/2019 01 13/image.jpg_%d.jpg' % step
    bpy.ops.render.render( write_still=True )

Which, again, works but only produces the same image. I've also noticed that whatever frame the viewport is currently at, is the frame that the rendered images apparently are too.
I'm also using the BlueFox Animation Nodes Extension:
https://github.com/harisreedhar/an_bluefox_extension
Not sure what is going on here, any suggestions or help would be awesome.
Blend file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gMvKhExbVH5hSzoPK9GdetTph4r_YySM/view?usp=sharing

Do you have windows or macOS?

you should be aware of this might be a Blender/Sverchok bug, you can look at the same issue here: https://github.com/nortikin/sverchok/issues/4222

For lorenz attractor you can use latest bluefox extension which have chaotic attractors node

@Chris - windows, and thanks for linking that post, I also saw this one: https://github.com/nortikin/sverchok/issues/4295q, seems like you already encountered this?

@HariSreedhar - thanks, I will check that out! And thanks for the sverchok interface node, very cool to be able to transfer data between sverchok and AN.

@MarcusR: Yes, that's right. The script worked in former sverchok versions. Unfortunately in the newest versions it doesn't work anymore. But looks like that the developer now want to try to fix this problem.

Following this thread: https://github.com/nortikin/sverchok/issues/4295, I found that using the Render > Lock Interface option worked for me.
This is using Blender 2.93.1 and this version of Sverchok.

you can try it with this script (this worked for "sometimes"):
import bpy
import time
file_path = '/tmp\\sverchok_animations\\'

start_frame = 1
end_frame =10

for act_frame in range(start_frame, end_frame + 1):
    bpy.context.scene.frame_current = act_frame
    bpy.ops.node.sverchok_update_all()
    bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = file_path + str(act_frame).zfill(4) +'.png'

    bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)
    print(act_frame)

print ('done')

Unfortunately this script didn't fix it, were you able to get it to work in the blend file I included or in another one?

scene.frame_set(frame) is the recommended way to change frame in a script.


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How to make solid torus knot (sverchok nodes)
I am trying to create a solid torus knot using the sverchok addon. I've started with the following node setup:

Which produces:

This works to create edges, but does not work to generate polygons. When switching the UV Connection node to make polygons, I get:

What I'm going for is two unconnected rings, like a couple of chain links. Like this:

The key here is being able to use the torus knot node, so I can adjust the torus knot to different configurations, while maintaining the solid structure around it.
Here is the blend file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W8hgo_B8JWy5ZvfJOBlpLgWLUR3aNbo0/view?usp=sharing
Thanks,

A torus knot is a continuous cyclic path, you can't get two separated torus from it

on UVconnect turn off slice flag and cycle on two directions

If it is what you need, maybe. SNL used for sorting.

import gist:
https://gist.github.com/423c6ca03363c7f4aa2408f8d59df8d4

chain creation is like that and can be extended with curve modifier:
https://gist.github.com/fccce7bd9fdcd84d20371a72b59e207c


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Beveling loose edges on Blender 2.80
I'm wondering how to perform the operation on the selected vertex (left) that will result in the curve on the right:

Yes, those are loose edges. I tried the Bevel Tool and Ctrl+B, but they'll only operate in fully formed faces/edges.
I saw a teammate do this very operation with Blender 2.79 (I'm on 2.80) but he couldn't even name the operation, just a complex shortcut.
By the way: I'll want to transform this edge mesh in tubes, later!

Enabling Vertex Only in the properties of the bevel tool allows you to bevel the edge. You can also enable it in the Adjust Last Operation panel. The shortcut is SHIFT+CTRL+B.


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Geometry nodes fail to apply "Transform curve to mesh in order to apply constructive modifiers" generated geometry
I get a "Transform curve to mesh in order to apply constructive modifiers" error when I try to apply the geometry nodes. I'm using a curve to generate geometry in a similar fashion to what's being done in this question, but Realize Instances won't cut here because the geometry is being generated through Curve To Mesh and Extrude Mesh.
How to get it to work?

You can only apply a modifier if the underlying object is a mesh.
You can convert the object to a mesh with Object > Convert > Mesh (or with RMB > Convert To > Mesh), and then the modifier can be applied.
But if you want to convert directly the curve where you use the Geometry Nodes modifier, then you could create a cube, use the modifier there and include the curve with Object Info. This will allow the modifier to be applied to the cube, and your curve will still be a curve:


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FBX exported armature animation goes haywire when scale is animated
I have a complex character rig done by me in Blender and the models based on it imported seemingly nicely into Unity. I unfortunately can't share the model or its image by now.
Things start to go awry when I animate paws' scale and put arms stretch-and-squash into the mix: they animate as expected within Blender, with scales transfering when set to, but the exported model stretch horrifically in Unity, like all scales and stretches started to build-up one on top of the other with no compensation for parents transforms or else.
I have tried to export the model in different ways, including Apply Transforms on and off and changing the way scale is transfered to involved bones (Properties > Bone > Relations > Inherit Scale set to None and others), but nothing seems to work.
I haven't tried yet anything with Relative Parenting (Properties > Bone > Relations > Relative Parenting) due to time pressure and I've just removed squash-and-stretch and scale from the animation for now.
The problem is not in Unity, as reimporting the FBX model into Blender shows the exact same problem. So: exported FBX != Blender animated model.
All search I do lead me to other kind of common Blender-to-Unity scale problem (namely the 0.01 scale factor in the entire thing), but that's something I've already got right.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Exporter settings (which give correct orientation and correct skeleton scale withing Unity):
✔ Selected Objects
> Transform
    Scale: 1.0
    Apply Scalings: FBX Units Scale
    Forward: -Z Forward
    Up: Y Up
    ✔ Apply Unit
    ✔ Use Space Transform
    ✔ Apply Transform ⚠
> Armature
    Primary Bone Axis: +Y Axis
    Secondary Bone Axis: X Axis
    Armaure FBXNode Type: Null
    ✔ Only Deform Bones
    ✔ Add Leaf Bones
> ✔ Animation
    ✔ Key All Bones
    ✔ NLA Strips
    ✔ All Actions
    ✔ Force Start/End Keying
    Sampling Rate: 1.0
    Simplify: 1.0

The problem might not be in Unity, but it is not in Blender either. FBX is not a Blender-specific format, so not everything you do in Blender might be compatible with the FBX file format and therefore not be exported as expected. Of course re-importing it in Blender will then show the same issues, because Blender cannot say "oh, this file was originally created here with things that work in Blender, let's see if I can restore them from the 'broken' FBX data."

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PSj_1-E9uY

@GordonBrinkmann I can't agree. While I have lots of constraints that just weren't carried over due to obvious incompatibilities, Blender's sampled the transforms for every frame and I ordered it to apply transforms. The final transforms do not reflect world transforms for every bone as they aren't being applied to their local space per frame. And I've got those stretches right in 3dsmax a decade ago, so they're possible.

@joshsanfelici I sort of figured out I'd have to do that, after so much animation done, but was resisting it. Reality knocks the door. Thanks for the video!


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Sampling ends of "Curve to Mesh" generated mesh or between?
After generating a mesh from curve and profile curve,
what would be the recommended method to sample edge loop from the beginning and end of the mesh?
Could I approach this by using the curve and sampling the nearest edges to curve point?

As some alternatives to quellenform's solution: Edge neighbors -> Equal: 1 when you have no caps, when you have caps that aren't quads, you can select the tri/n-gon faces, and yet another alternative, you can simply select $n$ first and last points, where $n$ is the number of points in the "profile curve".

To select the ends of a mesh that you have created with Curve to Mesh, simply capture the end points in the base curve beforehand with Capture Attributes.
Something like this:


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How to set different positions for each point with Points node?
I would like to simply use the Points node as an initial parameter for instantiating objects in my geometry nodes, Think of it as a grid but with only 1 line
But I don't get the way to set each point instance a different position.

Just use the node Mesh Line instead. There you can specify a direction of the line and the number of points.

tbh start watching basic beginner geometry nodes tutorial - e.g. Erindale make great GN tutorials

use the index and plug it into the position and do some math to get it how you want


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Help!! Blender wont Zoom. Says moved object to master collection instead
Really need help here. Blender wont zoom in. It will zoom out all I want but when I scroll to go in it just gives me a message at the bottom that 'objects moved to master collection'. Anyone know how to fix this?

This is a help section, so the word is not necessary. I would also abstain from ! in a title.
With your mouse over any selected object, press '.' on the numpad. Or view -> frame selected.
That is my guess on what your question refers to, otherwise please specify if the camera won't zoom in render.

The '.' thing works to get to an object but doesnt fix the zoom problem. Im in object mode.

zoom as in camera movement in the viewport? Getting closer to your object from any angle?


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Blender armature imported as FBX to UE4 doesn't keep bone offset
I've created a character and rig and it looks and works fine in Blender, however after I export to FBX and import to UE4 the bones are shifted. One issue is that the root bone moves to the floor and seems to pull all the other bones down with it. Also there are a few bones that are parented to the root bone with an offset, shown by the dotted lines:

However in UE4 those bones become attached to the root bone. Is there a way to make them keep their offset on import? The bones move the mesh just fine but are in the wrong location. For example, when I select the bone that is visibly where the upper leg is, UE4 thinks it's the lower leg:

My transforms are all applied. Not quite sure what's going on here, any suggestions welcome. Thanks

You can create a new root bone, which will be parent af all others rig's bones, and set it on the floor, so that UE will not have to move anything. Similarly you can replace every "keep offset" option with a new bone, so that all the bones chains will not be "interrupted". UE requires a general root bone that will be placed at loc (0,0,0). Every bone is requested to be weighted to one mesh vertex at least. If some vertices are not weighted to any bone, they will be automatically fully assigned to the root bone.

Hi Josh, thanks for the tips. I moved the root bone down to the floor and replaced the offset areas with filler bones but UE4 still does the weird thing of attaching bones to the root, even though they are unparented from it and parented to a filler bone that connects the pelvis to the root, makin the whole structure out of whack

TL;DR: there's nothing wrong here, it's just visual.

However in UE4 those bones become attached to the root bone

Well, yes, but actually no.
Blender has bones, UE has joints. While visually they seem very similar, they do have quite significant differences.
Technically, Bones are made out of two joints, "start" and "end", which in Blender's bones are called "head/root" and "tail/tip". The body of the bone is just a visual tool that represents a relationship between the two. But the end joints are purely visual in a bone system, their only use it to define how to draw a body from a start joint.

Source: Bones - Structure - Blender 4.1 Manual

Source: Maya Help | Joints and bones | Autodesk

In softwares that have a joint system like Maya or UE, there aren't any defined "bone" entity, there are only joints, which are very similar to empties: just a point in space with transformation channels. But when a joint is children to another, a body or "bone" is displayed between them. But here they show up on any parent-child relationship, and from parent to child, and they only are a visual cue, not a datablock like in Blender's bone system.
What you see by exporting from Blender to UE is the result of translating bones into joints: only the root of any bone is an actual joint. This wis why there seems to "miss" a bone at the end of your skirt, but also fingers and toes. But remember: you don't see bones in UE, you see joints. Joints are only a point in space, and you can see the joint in UE exactly where the bone root is in Blender. You can optionally export "leaf bones" in different exporters, which will force to also export extra bones at the end of a chain to store the position of what Blender considers to be a bone's end. But that's useless besides aestethics, and arguably just adding useless data.
As for unconnected bones: this does not exist in joints. All joints after the root are children of another joint, and a body is displayed to show that. But do not think this is an issue: the bone isn't rotated, or changed in any way, remember: there is no bone here, it's a visual indicator of relationship between two joints. Again, the joint is exactly where Blender's bone root is.


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Arm rig with natural shoulder deformation
Part two in the answer to this post describes exactly what I want to achieve for the shoulder deformation but it doesn't explain how to do it:
Shoulder deformations
I downloaded the example Sintel rig and I can't find which controller is being moved to achieve movement of both the arm and the shoulder. It's quite a complex rig and I want to keep mine as simple as possible.
I see somebody else asked the same question here but with no solid solution -
Shoulder Movement following the arm
Any other suggestions on how to achieve this?
Thanks

Hello, could you pleas share the Sintel rig?

To move the shoulder and the arm, both bones (the shoulder bone and the arm bone) are animated.

Hello again @moonboots Here is the Sintel rig - blendswap.com/blends/view/7093.

@Leander oh I see! I didn't realise it was an animation but that would make sense


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Convert node-based texture to exportable image
This is a follow-up to this post - Seamless grunge texture overlay across two materials
I have my node-based texture (thanks to moonboots) and now I need to somehow get it into UE4. I read up on texture baking but I don't know if it makes more sense to try that or would it be easier to recreate the texture directly in UE4? I pressed the Bake button in Blender and it saved internally, how do I export that out into an image file?
Thanks

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/13508/how-do-i-bake-a-texture-using-cycles-bake/13509#13509

With your baked Image Texture selected in the Shading tab (the node should have a "selection outline" - like when you selected it before baking), you can easily save your image from the UV editing tab:

Hi Christopher. I should have mentioned in my question that there are two separate materials on the sign, one for the background and one for the text. The part I'm struggling with is creating a single image that keeps both material values in tact. Is it possible to bake two materials simultaneously into one image?

Yes you can. I've always found this video helpful - it's for 2.79, so it looks a bit different, but it still uses cycles (which is necessary for baking.) I'm sure you can figure the rest out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9airvjDaVh4&feature=emb_title


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How to achieve inward folding after extrude

as shown on the right side of the picture

What is the left image?  The right image is a concave corner, so it isn't like the left image?  What do you mean by "inward folding", concave?

On the right is what I want to achieve.
How to create this -90-degree-angle  extrude quickly

thank you for your kind assistance，my friend

I would go around it as to make it while Extrude you will need to place 3D Cursor in right place and Scale extrusion to it.
You can instead make it as such:

Add Solidify modifier with Even Thickness.
Apply it.
Go to Edit Mode.
Select needed faces.
I to Inset.
Delete created faces.

After I tried your method and got the result I wanted，thank you my friend!

@YaoFq If my answer was helpful consider accepting it and upvoting.


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blender edge crease Invalid

He doesn't work when I use subdivisions
This is the uploaded file
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rKluT2TomDGfA4u_UMgL3OPLji65zgjx

you need to crease this edge as well:

Okay Thank you for your help :D


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Mixing Transparent BDSF with Glossy BDSF using a Fresnel factor in cycles results in black material
I have the following shader node setup:

and I would expect this to work similarly to the Blender manual's description of using a Fresnel node to blend Glossy with a Refraction BDSF to emulate the Glass shader:

The most common use is to mix between two BSDFs using it as a blending factor in a Mix Shader node. For a simple glass material you would mix between a glossy refraction and glossy reflection. At grazing angles more light will be reflected than refracted as happens in reality.

Frustratingly, however, I get this result:

This is a very similar issue to this post, however the only answer begins with "switch to Eevee" but I'm sticking to Cycles (which doesn't have this setting).
I'm also aiming for something like this question, but my issue seems to be outside of all of that.
It's possible that the issue is a mismatch between the indexes of refraction - a transparent shader is basically a refraction shader with IOR of 1, but the Fresnel node has an IOR of 1.45 - but setting the Fresnel's IOR to 1 causes the shader to be fully transparent and my sphere to disappear.
The reason for the mismatch is that I'm trying to render a soap bubble. Light doesn't refract through a bubble as it is filled with air (of the same IOR as the air outside the bubble, i.e. 1) so light rays pass through unbent, but for the purposes of Fresnel reflection, the IOR is equal to that of the soap film.
It's possible that to achieve this effect I need to give the soap bubble some thickness (allowing me to use the usual refraction BDSF, or even just use the Glass one) but soap bubbles have a thickness of less than a micrometer, and I don't think Blender will be able to handle that!
Thanks for your help! I'm doing this in the hope of implementing some thin-film interference further down the line, which should be exciting!

Are you using the Shader preview or the Render preview ?

@Emir neither, the screenshot I gave is the actual cycles render

Try switching the positions of the Glossy and the Transparent in the mix shader and change the IOR to 0.010 (Unintuitive, I know).

Well, is hard to say, it's working for me https://imgur.com/a/001hFkQ with the same nodes... Is that the look you are after?

@ChristopherBennett oh that's interesting!
https://imgur.com/a/FkNPmCb
This is definitely closer to what I was looking for, thank you! It's not very visible, but I can play around with the settings!

@Emir I'm afraid not - your torus has the same strange black bands that my sphere has, that I want to get rid of!

That's because i make it that way (glossy BSDF type)), what i mean was if you were looking for a transparent area and a non transparent border

@Emir no, I was looking for a render with no border at all, like ChristopherBennett's answer below

I've figured it out! The Fresnel node takes into account the direction of the normal to factor in total internal reflection, meaning the dark border is actually the "inside" of the glossy shader. It assumes the body is solid rather than hollow, which is suitable for a glass object but not for a bubble. I'll write up a solution shortly, but the fix is to trick the Fresnel node into assuming all faces it touches are facing towards it.

I was able to achieve this look with this node setup

The look is more defined by using this as a background (HDRI + Color):

As an "enhanced" version of this, I would add a Noise Texture and use the colors from it for the "soap film" color, and the height as the basis for a bit of a bump map (so the surface isn't perfectly spherical).

This looks great, thank you! Any idea why my initial setup was behaving strangely, and does the Fresnel IOR have any sort of physical backing?

Honestly, I'm not sure why this setup works with the IOR that it does - last time I set up something like this, I'm almost certain it behaved differently. Regardless, it seems to work for this project. And yes, IOR is based in physical backing, and no, that doesn't seem to apply here for some reason - unless it's just a property of how a "non-refractive film" works.

Playing around with this is producing some really weird effects - I think I need to read up on how all of these nodes interact with the faces on the other side of the mesh, which I think is probably what's contributing to the weirdness here

I've played around with this a bit, and noticed this:
https://i.imgur.com/82nrH7N.png
When the glossy shader is replaced with a diffuse one, we get what looks like a "hole" being made in the side facing the camera, and the "sun" on my HDRI shining through the hole and lighting a circle on the internal surface of the sphere. Very strange! (The lit circle moves around as I orbit the camera)

I've set the Fresnel IOR to 2.25 for the above image


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MATH: Using sine w/frame count to dictate emission
I have 2 scenes at 35 fps (yes, non-standard)
Scene "L" 175 frames:
5 sections of 35 frame each
Emission should turn on/off once during each 35 frame interval per object
There are 5 objects, they should flash in sequence
Scene "R" 245 frames:
7 sections of 35 frame each
Emission pulse once every 35
There 7 objects, they should flash in sequence
How I have it setup now in material:
+[Value node] = #frame + {frame spacing integer} -->>
+[MAP RANGE node] = Min 0; Max {total frames}; Min 0, Max = {???} -->>
+[MATH; SINE node] -->>
+[Principled BSDF; Emission]
Not sure what to put into {???} to get the desired results. I got Scene "L" to work using 35 but that doesn't translate to the Scene "R". The {scene spacing integer} does enough to make the rings in Scene "L" work but not really sure how it does.

First, no need to use map range. Second, sine produce result from -1 to 1, so either trim negative values or move them by 1 (or remap like in the image below). Lastly, one sin cycle is 2pi (not 1.0). So to get the right cycle, divide value on count of frames and multiply by 2pi. If you want to start with the lowest point of sine wave, you should offset the value by half of pi.

Multiplier is 1/35*pi*2
Addend is -pi/2

Works like a charm. Thanks!!


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How to use array modifier with units?
Pretty new to Blender, I'm trying to learn how to make a studded wall.
How do I use the array modifier to use imperial units? For example, I would like to create a stud, and have them spaced 16 inches on center a set distance.
Thank you much!
Sorry if this is a duplicate, I asked this question yesterday but it was closed, so I'm asking again.

Hi. Please address the issues with the original question by using the 'edit' link below it. Once the issues have been addressed it will enter a review queue to see if it should be re-opened. Thanks.

Ah, my fault. I did edit it, but I had noticed it was still [closed] So I wasn't sure if that was still a valid question.


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How to cut these two objects where they meet?
How can I remove the material where these two object meet? I'd like to keep the objects separate, but I imagine a vertical line right down the middle of these two objects.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/184019

That looks easy enough. I've removed the right object, but when I mirror, I don't see a second object.

The bisect tool might work for this. Its a bit fiddly, though.

actually, with 2.90 alpha you can edit two separate objects at the same time. pretty cool...

@wilks You can edit separate objects at the same time in 2.83.4 as well.

Create an Empty (plane axes). This will be the mirror line.
Delete one of those "bars".
Select the other one and add a mirror modifier, and set the mirror object to the Empty.
Position the empty so that the bars are where you want them to be.
Go into edit mode and reshape the end of the bar by selecting verts and moving them. Get it to the look you want.
To turn both back into separate objects again apply the mirror modifier, go back into edit mode. Select everything with A, and press P and choose "Seperate By Loose Parts".

I attempted this, however, after the mirror modifier, when I rotate the object it doesn't rotate as I expect. It will rotate so the objects are lined up on whichever axis.

So after a little break, I decided to come back to this. This is the correct answer! Thanks for your help @Eric


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Vertices that seems to be aligned, are not?
Hi all and good to be here.
I'm new to the forum and fairly new to Blender. I did some tutorials and simple drawings, but now I want to 3D print my designs.
I've created a rim (1/24 meant to be used in scale modeling)
The inside of the rim containts a 'cylinder' that will be used to attach the wheel to the model car. For some reason, the vertices shown in the image below appear to be somewhat offset when I slice the STL export for printing. However, all the vertices have the same Z value of -11mm.
What am I missing/doing wrong?

According to the slicing tool the outer rim first appears on the third layer, where the center starts on the 1st.

I am aware this could also be a problem from the slicing software... but let's look at the design first.

Have you tried selecting all of the vertices and changing the Z value again? maybe there's some missing

Yes, I've tried that. That was when I made the screenshot ;) Perhaps I will cut off the highlighted section and redo the extrusion, but this time for both the outer and the inner parts at the same time.

I found out what the problem was.
In my scene collection I still had the original cylinder I used to create the center part. I'd set it to invisible, but when exporting this object was 'actived' and visibly added to the stl file.
Jep that feels like a newbee mistake :S

i had problems like that as well. I ended up just starting from new and being very careful. Blender sometimes just creates some weird slightly invisible vertecies out if nothing. and if u don't ctrl + z them, I don't find any way to get rid of them


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Missing Detect Features properties in Blender 2.8x?
According to Blender Manual (2.8)
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.82/movie_clip/tracking/clip/editing/track.html,
Detect Features should have properties like Placement, Margin, etc... which I can not find.
Am I missing something or this is expected behaviour in 2.8x?
Thanks

Okay. I found it!
Once clicked on Detect Features they appear as shown on image below (red circle).


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Animated Texture
Someone can help me? I'm trying to do a animated texture like in these pictures below, some animated lines and circles walking through all my objects, but I just can do it in a single object per time, would like to do it in all my objects like my objects was only one, but I can't lost my original objects textures and colors

My project here

are your color stripes procedural? I've answered a similar question here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/177051/can-i-make-a-material-move-from-one-point-to-another-with-shader-node/177075?noredirect=1#comment296801_177075

Yes, it's like this that you did to this cube, but I'm trying to do it to a object with more than one material, idk how do it to all them at same time but keep my original materials too

Look at this video, I'm trying to do like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9NmIXwUEjA&t=129s

it would be easier to make a video with animated colors, then use this in an Image Texture (video mode)


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Light only one object
I'm trying to light only one object at my scenes, but with not sucess.
Would like to put light only at people and not at background. Can someone help me?

I guess you can only do it with the Compositor, no?

How can I do it? I'm noob at blender yet haha

you need to check some tutorials about the Compositor, a bit tedious if you're new at Blender but maybe there's another way around

Oh thank you, I'll check out

try to find a tuto for 2.8 because the layer system has a bit changed since

Thank you I found it


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How can I stop Blender from rendering the 3D scene instead of my video?
I am trying to render a video in the video editor of Blender 2.83b. However, when trying to render it, Blender just renders a view of the default cube instead. I have never interacted with the 3D scene in this project and I just want to render the video I made. How can I get it to render the correct thing?

I removed the camera from the 3D scene, and now I am notified that there is no camera to render from at all. So it appears there is no camera set to capture the video, if that's how it works? In that case, how do I add a camera for rendering to the video?

Hi. Please don't use the comments to expand the scope of your questions or to add new information. Please use the edit link below your question to add the additional infos to the original text.

The solution is to check the Sequencer tag. I wasn't able to find it from other answers originally as it has moved in the new 2.8 UI.


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How to use some special symbols like ™ ,♟, ⚘, ✿,  etc in blender?
I was facing the problem regarding symbols like ™, ♟, ⚘, ✿,  to be used in blender. Changing the font type to MS Gothic helped to view ™ ♟ ✿ but ⚘ and  symbol is still not visible.

Try the font Segoe UI Emoji Standard, you can find it under the filename seguiemj.ttf in the Windows Fonts directory.
EDIT: To get the flower, use Segoe UI Symbol Standard, the filename is seguisym.ttf. It has all symbols, but the icecream looks different.

symbol is visible by Segoe UI but ⚘ is still not

Yeah, my bad, I overlooked that while trying to find the correct icecream symbol. I've edited my answer.


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How to make 2 objects not intersect each other?
I have made an animated rigid body active character and the ground is passive rigid body. But the character's feet passes the ground that I don't want to happen.I want to move character so I don't want its feet sunken in the ground.
I am a newbie so please explain in details.

It's going to happen any way you slice it. How you handle the slight annoyance is up to you.
Option1 1. Use a floor constraint with an offset so whenever the floor is hit, it will not go through.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/constraints/relationship/floor.html#:~:text=The%20Floor%20constraint%20allows%20you,ceiling%2C%20or%20a%20wall)!
Option 2. Use a solidify modifier so you don't see it go through . Real things have thickness.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/generate/solidify.html
I tried a simple rigid body scene and the solidify modifier did a good job hiding, but this is part of the error in your simulation you will just have to account for in simulation. For actual manual animation, you can use the floor modifier with offset and that will work very well

If you're trying to animate a character that is to behave as normal, I don't think you want to try to use physics to solve problems with floor interaction. I personally don't know such an approach to be a recommended workflow in any 3D package. Floor collision difficulties are just something you are going to have to learn to deal with. One way to do it is by taking care when animating. If you simply ensure that all your foot keyframes are in the right position, and set in the correct order, no drifting through the floor plane will ever happen. For example, if you set the extreme forward and extreme back positions for an IK foot in a walk cycle, and do this before setting any other keyframes, then the foot has no choice but to slide straight back and forth between these two positions, and could be counted on to perform absolutely no movement along the vertical axis. Such an approach can be an essential foundation for all the keyframes which follow, as these two will ensure that no movement below the floor plane takes place.
Alternatively, you can use location constraints to help ensure that undesired behaviors never become possible, instead of relying on keyframes alone. But even here, care will have to be taken, particularly while setting up the character itself, so as to ensure that the bone positions of the armature properly meet with the floor plane at the same time that the character's foot geometry meets it.
Physics is a resource intensive operation. It is slow, prone to bugs, and not at all ideal for the purpose of general character rigging, in my opinion. It's certainly not a one-button alternative to planning your rig.


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Creating a 30 degree angle at a corner of a cube
I am drawing a greenhouse and must create a 30 degree angle at one end a drawn 2 by 4.
Search to date has not produced an example of creating a precise angle.  I grab and move two opposite vertices on the x axes and an angle is created but how to be precise?

Just create another object with the good angle, then snap this one to it (snap to edge).

can you not just rotate the face?

@Luciano .. No. :) . Try it.

@RobinBetts Would it be possible with the Shear tool? It seems perfect for the job, but I couldn't make it work :).

@JachymMichal You certainly could use it.. but AFAIK it works only in screen space, so you have to line up the view, and then you have to do the same amount of mental arithmetic to figure out the offset.., so here, personally, I'd just go for the move. Actually, practically, as in the comment to my own answer, If it's that kind of job, I keep jig-objects lying around, just for snapping.

@RobinBetts Thanks for the response :).

One way to do it numerically, assuming Y up, X across, and starting with the end of your bar square..

CtrlC Copy the height of your bar from its Y in
the Dimensions panel
Select the top edge or point, (whatever will wind up where your arrow is..)
GX, and then in the Adjust Last Operation panel, type into the 'X' field: "CtrlV / tan(pi/6)"

You can stash expressions like this  in a text-block to copy and paste from if you have to do this sort of thing often, but usually you only have to do this once, the rest is duplicates and snapping.

Or... just keep half an equilateral triangle hanging around to (uniformly) snap-scale and snap-to.

Add another Cube and rotate it by 30° and move it to place. Then add a Boolean modifier to the object and apply it.

Addendum. This can also be done with Bool tool addon. Enable Bool tool in preferences:

Open sidepanel and its Edit tab. Select the cutting object first, then select the to-be-cut object. Click Difference.

This method destroys the cutting object.

Tried it and got it to work but there must be a better way.  Thanks for the input.

@Liamdale It can be also done with Bool tool addon. Enable it in preferenses and you find it in sidepanel's Edit tab. You still need that extra object (which can be used many times, it doesn't get eaten in the process) but don't need add+apply any modifier.

(Oh actually using Bool tool the cutting object vanishes, you can't reuse it.)

I tried the add-on and found that it works well.  True the template is destroyed but I created a permanent 60-30 template saved it and appended it as needed.

You can see the angles by turning on Face Angle in Viewport Overlay (shows all the angles on a face). I was wrestling with this problem a few weeks ago and wanted a certain angle where 2x2s met.
I went in and played around a bit today.  Here's my method, more or less. The ones above are more elegant, but this one shows you the angle. :)
Click the Viewport Overlay near the top right corner of the viewport.  Down towards the bottom, check Face Angle. This will show you all the angles on a face. Click the edge you want to manipulate (I took the upper right end, use shortcut keys G and Y to move it along the Y axis. (or whatever axis you are lined up with). I was not able to get closer than 30.006 using my mouse and sliding.  After that, I had to type in GY 0.0001, check the angle, and try again with a different number until I finally got to 30 degrees.There's probably a better way to do this part. Now that I know how to use the Bool Tools addon, I would probably use the rotated cube with Boolean instead.

Tried this method but there are so many numbers they overlap one another making the angle unreadable.  May be a configuration problem? I will keep searching.  Haven't tried the numbers approach.  Next on my list.

Just found another way which is similar to yours using the addon measureit.  I selected the vertices to get the current angle of the target corner. Showed it and it registed. Then selected the two vertices to grab (G - X) and drag the vertices to create the required angle.  The measureit angle display will adjust its display to show the current angle. kept dragging until I reached a 30 degree angle.  Not the best method but it works.

You can shear using a formula: tan(radians(90-angle))
So for 30 degrees: tan(radians(60))

Cool. IMO this is easiest way to put in some arbitrary angle.  For the case of 30 / 60 could stick in sqrt(3)

Tried it with both 30 and 60 degrees and it works !  A little vertices management but it works very well.  Thank you lemon.

Inspired by Robin Betts's answer, here's another numerical method. This is based on the fact that sin(30°) = ½ exactly. Note the starting dimensions, the 10 cm side is along z-axis in this example:

Go to edit mode and make sure the Transform Pivot Point is set to Median Point and select the end face of the beam:

Scale by 2 along z:  S Z 2 ↵

Rotate by 60° around y:  R Y 6 0 ↵

The horizontal edge stays horizontal:

What If the angle was say 33.45634 degrees?  Does it matter what order you do scale and rotate step?

I needed a 30 deg at one end and 60 deg at the other end.  sin(30) gives 0.5  sin(60) is 0.866.  I don't see how much scaling is necessary to compensate the rotation width reduction.  Math is not my strong point.

Yes I understand. I mentioned because if its not 30 (just hypothetically) and a simple fraction then scale isn't 2 its 1.8138...(for example angle suggested above), rotate isn't 60 its 56.54366. Typing or pasting these values in is far more time consuming.  See the new answer from @lemon that would entail crunching the angle once.


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Autosave has stopped working
Autosave no longer saving files.
version 2.91, no addons besides factory checked ones

Please add some more details, like what OS are you using? Did you run a serach for *.blend at your disk?

OSX Catalina 10.15.7
I have searched and found no autosaves since yesterday. A clean install fixes it, then it randomly stops autosaving.

Sorry, I can help with OSX. In Linux I would suggest to look to /tmp/. You may also try running the portable version, maybe it helps. But those are just blind guesses, I never used OSX.

@user85015 This may help https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/134722/autosave-don-t-work-in-2-8/221362


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How to interpolate/keep values in Python
I would like to interact with a scene in real-time, let’s say for an example when I hold a key, the scale of an object doubles, ie with some sort of driver. As that’s either 1 or 0, the object is either small, or snaps into big. I am looking for a function to be able to dampen / lerp that value over a time to get a smooth transition (just as in Unity). Is something like that built in, or do I have to create that from scratch?
This Unity script chapter on lerp/interpolation, I think that is clearer than I could describe it. I would love to use this function in Blender realtime with drivers, without KF interpolation.

tbh i don't really understand what you want (or mean). How can a scale either be one or 0 if the scale doubles? And why does it snap if you want to interpolate values? maybe make a sketch or link an animation how it should look like?

I am sorry, my description must have been confusing. In fact the example setup is quite simple, I will try better: Python detects a "keyboard.read_key()", and if a specific key is pressed, a Blender Driver lets say scales a sphere to a new value. Key not pressed sphere scale 1, key pressed sphere scale 2. As soon as I hit the key, the scale of the sphere "snaps" to the new value. I am looking for a way for 1 and 2 to interpolate over time t, in order to have a smooth transition animation in real time in the viewport.

you need to describe a specific issue you want to solve. your post lacks focus on the actual issue at hand you are trying to solve.

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

I think it's perfectly clear what he means. I don't think there's anything to do that builtin though, you'll have to do it from scratch.


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Changing color of objects not working, can't see materials in viewport
I am having trouble changing colors of objects.
I've changed the color of the material but it isn't making any visible changes and preview is unchanged in the viewport.

You are now in Solid view, where materials don't appear.
Switch to Material Preview or Rendered preview, and your colors will be there.

You can also set a color for Solid view only, in Material > Viewport display options.

AWSOME....got it. Thanks a lot.

Try inserting keyframes for the object color if you want to change the color during the animation. Your current view is solid, so the color is not going to change unless you go to rendered view.

it is supposed to change in rendered mode.

There is no animation yet, just the text. I am going to make another video to better clarify, I am doing things wrong and I can't figure out what. Will be a minute, have to let the dogs out.


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Blender 2.81 crashed now no version starts
I've never had issues with any blender version up through 2.8 64 bit and was actually using blender when i noticed that 2.81 was released. I downloaded 2.81a on Dec 5 and it opened for a few moments and then crashed. Since then i have been unable to get any version started up again with the exception of the 32 bit version of 2.8 (which I don't understand). I have tried absolutely every suggested fix on the internet.
I have a pretty beefy rig that i built for the purpose of modeling and gaming. GTX 1070, i7 7700k, etc... All drivers have been updated to no avail. Tried the opengl32 fix. when i copy to the folder i get an error saying i need a driver that supports opengl 3.3 but the most updated drivers i have support Opengl 4.6, so i dont think that is the issue.
Originally the command window that opens before blender said something about the userpref.blend in %appdata% and the internet said to delete that blender foundation folder and reinstall everything. Now, that userpref.blend message is gone but the program still doesn't open.
I've tried opening in cmd prompt with --debug and blender still crashes without throwing any error messages. "when i say crashes i mean window goes gray and i get the little (not responding) message".
Final thing i have noted, if i restart my computer and immediately open blender (i.e. within 30 seconds, any longer and it wont open at all.) blender 2.81a opens perfectly and quickly. but it seems to crash as soon as i either click away from blender, or open another window in blender like the preferences menu. Still no error messages.
I found a similar question on here that said to link debug and system files created from blender_debug_log.cmd. The steps leading to the creation of the file. was

restart computer
immediately open blender_debug_log.cmd
open preferences ( but again any window in/out of blender produces same result)
window goes gray and shows not responding.

Here is the google drive link:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fNBgJAKFsnpymMCqLeAe69RDLn51kNKE

Does this answer your question? Blender 2.8 causes all other versions to not run!

Thank you for adding the debug logs and writing a detailed question. Unfortunately the debug logs look fine, there are no errors reported and drivers are already the most recent version. Since Blender doesn't really crash, but freezes/hangs have you tried keeping it open for a while? Does it respond some time later? I noticed that you've stored your Blender install in the OneDrive directory, perhaps you could try putting it somewhere else on your system (just a wild guess in case there is some conflict happening with One Drive getting a file lock and Blender can't access its own files).

Thanks for the quick responses. I apologize for responding late wasnt expecting answers so quickly. That other post did not help. But did give me the suggestion to post the logs here.
For the other questions. I have left it open for hours (1 hr to all night) at a time to see if it unfreezes. No dice...
I did notice that it was in one drive. I have tried it in folders that arent linked to one drive as well as storing the zip/unzipped folders in two different hard drives. One ssd and one hdd. That didnt help either.


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Boolean Problem
I'm trying to use a sphere to cut into a cylinder tube. I am following a tutorial on youtube but when I follow what the guy says to delete the boolean sphere (shift and minus) it just makes the whole screen zoom out an increment. Doesn't matter if its the number pad minus or the main keyboard minus. The boolean sphere remains. I can make the sphere invisible and it looks fine but it is still there when it comes to rendering.
I have looked at loads of online things about booleans as they seem to be quite problematic, but I cant find out what I'm doing wrong. Cheers.

Just apply the Boolean modifier before deleting the sphere.

Should be CTRL minus not SHIFT minus shouldn't it?

Perhaps you are missing a step.  Is the tutorial available to examine?  Can you post an URL for it?   I suspect that he's talking about a step using an add-on, but not knowing which add-on makes it likely to guess wrong.

That's the problem Chris, I can't delete the sphere.
CTRL minus doesnt do it either alas.
It was this dude. Good tutorial but I am lost somewhere... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuRB6S1ql5s

It's often beneficial to not delete your cutting object until you're completely satisfied with the result.
If you want to prevent something from rendering, click the filter option in your scene collection (looks like a funnel)

Then turn on the render disable option (looks like a camera)

From here you'll have the render options appear next to your object names, so you can disable rendering for your sphere, or in my case a cube.

Once you're happy with the render output, apply all modifications for your final render and composite.
Hope this helps!


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Picture attached to an object only viewable at certain angles
Basically I have a picture attached to one side of an object.
Depending on the angle I am looking at it is sometimes viewable, half viewable, or not viewable at all.
Thanks as always for your help everyone.

when you say that it is attached, what do you mean? Are you using an Image Texture and a UV? Maybe you have faces overlapping?

Ah yes , so it's not really attached. Its actually slightly higher than the face of the object. So i don't think it should be overlapping anything. Its just a jpg. Is there a way to properly attach it to the surface of an object? Thanks.

you should better unwrap your object and give it a material with an Image Texture node, with your image loaded, and put your UV over the image in the UV Editor

Thanks moonboots, i've done that now. It's projected onto all the sides now though. I have managed to get  one face perfect but now want the other faces to go back to normal. I'm checking tutorials just now to work it out. thanks.

in Edit mode, select the other faces, then go in the UV Editor and make them small so that they lay over a completely black surface. Or give them another material

Yep, worked that out. :-D Thanks Moonboots, you rock.

I rock'n roll!!

Maybe you have faces overlapping. You should better unwrap your object and give it a material with an Image Texture node, with your image loaded, and put your UV over the image in the UV Editor. If you don't want the other faces to display the image, in Edit mode, select the other faces, then go in the UV Editor, scale them down and move them so that they lay over a completely black part of your image. Or give them another material.


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Is it possible to export as gltf with animated textures?
Im working on a model and have set the texture of the computer screen to an image sequence. However, I can play the animation just fine and the sequence works well, however, when exported as a GLTF there is no image sequence and stays on the first image while everything else that is animated does play. Is it even possible to export it with a working image sequence? Help much appreciated.

No, only LocRotScale and shapekey weights can be animated. The only way you could do it is the "stop motion" trick (where you animate scale 0<->1 to show/hide objects) but that's hard to do.


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Exported GLTF plays too fast
I have a project going that has a few animations and am able to export as a gltf with textures and everything looks fine. Im using the standard Microsoft 3d viewer, however, when It exports, the animation plays too fast. Before, I was able to export just fine but now, when I export, the animation plays too fast. I wonder if it is a setting or something I changed? the animation length has always been 371 frames. Before I had the problem it still was 371 frames. Any Idea on what this might be?

The glTF exporter is required to convert "frames" to "seconds" on the way to glTF.
Try choosing a lower frame rate, that should space out the number of seconds listed in the exported glTF file.

I tried this and it worked great! Thank you so much for the answer!!

One other note: the glTF exporter does not currently (v3.2.1) use the "Frame Start" settings to offset the animations. So, an animation whose first keyframe is on the default "first" frame, frame 1, will start "late" in glTF. You want to ensure that your first animation keyframe is on frame 0.