text:
object.select_set(True) makes item active, not selected
I'm trying to add a simple triangle to a scene (with Blender demo BMW) using python script. I then want to enter edit mode, select a vertex and then move 3D cursor to that vertex, exit edit mode and then add an area light at the 3D cursor. Repeat to set up very basic three-point lighting. However, when I deselect all objects, and then try to select my "LightingRig" object using the code example, I can see that the triangle is active (not selected, as intended) and I get the following error:
RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.object.mode_set.poll() Context missing active object
How can I set the triangle to be selected, and not active?
import bpy
import os
import sys
bpy.ops.wm.append(
    filepath=os.path.join(lr_file_path, inner_path, lr_object_name),
    directory=os.path.join(lr_file_path, inner_path),
    filename=lr_object_name
)
lr = bpy.data.objects.get("LightingRig")

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

lr.select_set(state=True)
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT") # This is where the error occurs

Does this answer your question? Blender 2.8 API, python, set active object Orange color means selected, you want an object to become yellow to be active.

I see. I thought orange was active. However, I'm still getting similar issues.
I'm trying this:
bpy.ops.object.vertex_group_select()
bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected()
This gives similar context error:
RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected.poll() failed, context is incorrect

This is because there's no 3D cursor inside the Text Editor where you run the script. You need to search for a view3d space to change the 3D cursor there, or do it like here: How to set cursor location, pivot_point in script?

This can be done without using any operator I believe

Thanks. I'll take a look at the suggested ideas. First time I've used python and also first time I've done scripting in Blender - there's a lot of quirks :)

Operators in bpy.ops are for interactive use through the UI and should be avoided in scripts because they depend on context. Using them through scripts may yield unexpected results at best, or fail entirely at worst. Manipulate data directly from bpy.data instead.


text:
Use Curve Control Point Radius to Scale Mesh in Geometry Nodes?
So I've been trying to build a classical column generator using geometry nodes and run into a bit of an issue.
The way my generator works so far is:

I input a column height and the number of column drums.
I generate a mesh that's basically just a single edge the height of
the column (minus one drum) and give it the same number of vertices
as there are column drums.
I instance my pre-made column drum mesh on these vertices.

You can see the result of just those nodes on the left side in the screenshot above. So far so good. However, classical columns are not just straight, they're tapered towards the top and this taper is not linear but rather curved (this curved taper is called entasis), like in the column on the right side. I've been bashing my head in trying to figure out how to create this entasis using geometry nodes.

The way I'm doing it right now is by using a quadratic function that roughly matches the entasis of one specific column (see above). However, this method doesn't give me precise control over the curvature and it also makes it very tedious to change the entasis from column to column (which I'd like to be able to do) since that will require me to calculate a new quadratic function for each new entasis profile.
What I would like to be able to do is to specify a pre-made curve that's basically just a straight line oriented along the Z axis with an arbitrary number of control points, each of which has a radius corresponding to the (normalised) width of the column at the given height and to then access these radius values in the Geometry Nodes graph to scale the column mesh. This would allow me to easily author different entasis profiles and switch between them. However, I have been unsuccessful in implementing this system (I can capture the radius values just fine but scaling the mesh according to those values at the corresponding Z positions is eluding me) and I am starting to wonder if it's even currently doable in geometry nodes.
So my question is either how can I get this radius scaling to work or, if there's no way to make it work, is there a different way for me to easily create this type of curved taper using geometry nodes (in a way where I can precisely control the curvature)?
Screenshot of the entire Geometry Nodes graph for reference:

maybe i misunderstood your question, but isn't that exactly what curve to mesh does?  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/tnvh5.jpg

Hm, not really. If the whole column were just one continous mesh, that would probably work but the reason I'm doing it this way is that I need the grooves in between each column drum (i.e. the gaps in between the stone blocks that make up the column) to actually be 3D geometry so I need to do it with instanced meshes. Unless there's some way to scale instanced meshes using Curve to Mesh that I'm unaware of?

Basically, this is the right way to influence the radius of a curve with the node Set Radius.
In your concrete example with the individual segments of a column and the column profile, it gets a little trickier.

I would solve it like this:

Divide a curve, and create your column profile with the node Float Curve.

Then instantiate this curve in the number of segments you need in exactly one place.

Next, trim each of these curves so that it corresponds to exactly one segment at the corresponding position of the column with the node Trim Curve. This transfers the radius at the respective position to the segments of the shortened curves. Here you can also add a distance so that the segments have a small space between them.

Then create the profile for the column (or use an existing curve with Object Info) and combine it with the node Curve to Mesh with the multi-segment curve you created earlier.

Finally, you can add an additional object that represents the inside or the mortar of the column.

Thank you so much! I ended up changing it to use a pre-made base curve with predefined radii instead of generating one from scratch (which allows me to switch out the curve on a per-column basis). Also got rid of the gaps and mortar base since I want the drums to be flush with one another (added an angle-limited bevel modifier after the geometry node modifier to create the groove).
The only issue with this approach is that it doesn't allow for as much versatility in the drum shape. A mesh-based approach would be best. But other than that this is perfect and way better than what I had!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to export Blender model with animation & materials to Maya
I made a rigged box with an animation. I want to export it and use it in a Maya scene. Whenever I export it the box is all merged together and it doesn't display either the material, the animation, or the armature. Can someone please tell me how to properly export the model? should I use fbx or obj and what settings should I have?
I would appreciate any kind of help, thank you

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures

I converted the materials to a base map and exported the box to .fbx because I needed the joints and did the animation all over again. One of my friends told me that the easiest way to export animations from blender is with Alembics, however, this format doesn’t export rigs.

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


text:
Some shading troubles
I have some issues and I'd be so appreciative if u could help me. The problem is that the color is different on one part of a icon, I checked shading nodes etc. but nothing seems to be wrong there

If that is a normal mesh object I'd be inclined to check the normals. Select the whole object in Edit mode and SHIFT-N to recalculate normals. If that doesn't cure it we'll need to see your blend file: https://blend-exchange.com/help

Thank u so much! It did help

Good! You must have had those faces flipped.


text:
Set Origin "Origin to Geometry" stacks objects to one point in render
So I started with the can selected in the red and added two array modifiers and I wanted to rotate the lid on each can, but since the origin point is set to the original can, it rotates relative to the can.

To fix this I selected every can and did "Set Origin Point to Geometry" which fixed the lid issue but after I set the origin point to geometry, it stacks all objects to the same object  on which the array modifier was used.
This is the Render Output before applying Origin to Geometry:

This is the Render Output after applying Origin to Geometry:

I am using Cycles but same thing is happening in Eevee also.

This looks like what would happen if you used "Set Geometry to Origin", are you sure you didn't accidentally do that ?

If you have a keyframe on the original model, then, every object will have it. So if you hit the render button every origin (with their mesh) will go to the same location as is shown on the picture.


text:
Difficulty with a flat surface that creates shadows
My question may seem simple, I'm new to Blender. I am using version 3.1.2. On a flat surface on which I apply the BoolTool tool to create an opening, my surface behaves strangely. I get ghost shadows on the edges created by the tool. How to avoid this behavior?
Thank you!

it looks like you've shaded smooth, so maybe go into Oblect Data > Normals and enable the Auto Smooth option

Also, the bool tool is notorious for creating poor topology that does not shade well in blender - for example, your plane is now a set of several n-gon's (faces with more than 4 vertices). Blender cannot "poke holes" in the center of planes, so the "crease lines" (two in the top corners, one across the bottom) are where blender was forced to create an edge through the plane in order to accommodate the "cut. Blender shades best with quad based topology (especially curved surfaces and smooth shading), so to properly solve the issue, you will have to re-topologize (get rid of the n-gon's).

Thank you I've try with a cube and its working well, Very much Thank you!


text:
Empty object is invisible
Im using an empty cube to act as a target for an animation, but for some reason when I opened my project, all my empties had gone  and i don't know how to fix it. Any tips?

Has the Empty visibility entry somehow got disabled on the Object Types Visibility dropdown? (Leftmost eye icon on the R/H side of the top toolbar next to the Viewport Overlays dropdown.)

please upload your blend file if John's answer doesn't help so we can check it out

Hello, sorry for awnsering so late but ends up the extra overlays were disabled, thats why it wouldn't show up

View Object Types next to the Show Overlay button, check if any of them are hidden.


text:
Material Rendering background
I'm doing an animation in wich I have and hdri as a background and one of the objects I have is a water bottle, so it's supposed to be transparent. The problem of it being transparent is that it's rendering with the background image wich I didn't want to happen. Is there any way i can fix it?


text:
Im trying to copy the rotation of a gear to an object but the gear is inbetween 2 axis so cant copy the constrain gear to an exact axis
Hi so I'm trying to copy the rotation of a gear I made to an object but the rotation of the object rotates on the Z axis and I want the gear to rotate on on the X and Y axis at once as the gears make up a circle, I'm able to constraint the gears to diffrent axis (object rotatates on the Z axis while the gear rotates on the X or Y but not both) is there any way to make the gear constraint the rotate to an object and still rotate on two axis?

A sketch or picture with annotations would help a lot to understand what u are doing and trying to achieve

All figured out, I had to change the axis it changed on to local so it rotated on the new axis (the axis X+Y) so it rotates on the axis of the object not the world axis. I can still send a video if you would still like to see it?

If you solved it, congrats! Would be great if you could write an answer to it so other people with same problem can learn from u


text:
array modifier collapsing on it self

hi, I'm trying to wrap my tank tracks around the wheel with array and curve modifiers but as you can see in the picture it stretches it too thin and it collapses on it self. I have tried fit curve option but it doesn't work pls help me

maybe apply the scale of your curve (and don't forget to set the vertices radius to 1)?

can you tell me how to set my vertices to 1?

Select the curve, go into Edit mode, select all, right click > Set Curve Radius, type 1 and Enter

thank you so much.

so was it your problem?

yes now I'm good

Apply the scale of your curve and set the vertices radius to 1 (go into Edit mode, select all, right click > Set Curve Radius, type 1 and Enter).


text:
Displacement modifier creates dotted indents for smooth lines at texture
Following the advice to redraw the lines in the texture myself, I'm trying to displace a texture on a model with UV map already applied. On the texture I have hand drawn lines and expect them to be embossed on the surface of the model. Suspecting that issue is with the intensity of the colours I added some experimental lines.

But the result I'm getting from the displacement modifier consists of series of dots, not the continuous lines I expect.
Why is that?
Google drive folder with files

I would say you don't have enough geometry for such a thick lines. You would have to subdivide model before Displacement.

BTW Remesh modifier destroys your UV maps (just a note if you planned to 3Dprint texture as well).

Ooo, happy day! Thank you!!!


text:
How can i use my own rig to input into mixamo and get animated fbx. My blender fbx is not getting imported in mixamo
i have a blender model with rig (face rigged through auto rig pro and body rigged by rigify). I want to use this model and armature in mixamo to animate it and download the animated fbx. But when i export the fbx from blender with textures and armature, the resulting file is unable to get imported in mixamo (i get error - cannot map the file, in mixamo).
I want the armature and model both because its weight painted properly in blender. I can get an obj or fbx into mixamo without armature (although there is texture and color loss there), but mixamo auto rigger does not do a very good job in rigging the model.
Can anyone please help as to why the armature and model both are not being imported in mixamo. Or is there anything else i can do, so that i can use my weight painted model in blender and still utilize the keyframes downloaded from mixamo.

I don't think that you can upload your own rig to be used for animation in Mixamo. There is an addon from Mixamo for Blender that adds controls to the downloaded rig for easy animation. But if you want to use the existing rig you can use an addon for retargeting that supports Rigify and Mixamo. For example ExpyKit 0.5 by BallsAndNinjas.

Hi, thanks for the answer. Can you please help me with why i am unable to import the FBX file exported from this blend file to mixamo. I have tried multiple settings in Blender export but the resulting FBX is not imported in mixamo.

Oh, it's the teddy bear! I see you have improved his mesh topology. It looks great. The upload to Mixamo works for me if I only upload the mesh. In the export dialog, you can limit the exported objects to the selection and also to certain types like "Mesh".

Hey, full disclosure, someone else made this mesh for me :D. Although, i was able to map  a simple human metarig from blender to this character, and then upload both mesh and armature as an fbx to mixamo. It worked perfectly and i was able to get an animated fbx out from mixamo and use in blender for animation.
Now i need to figure out how to use the facial rig as well. So the person who made mesh for me rigged the body using rigify and face through auto rig pro. I am yet to learn face rigging.

Not sure if the original face rig can be added as it is to the mixamo rigged version.

The following link to a YouTube tutorial helped me upload my genesis character up to Mixamo, maybe you could learn from it to upload your character YouTube video on how to upload genesis character to Mixamo You can see by the following screenshot, that the character is now available for me on log in to apply any mixamo animation  I personally would like to learn how to make my own "mixamo compliant" animated files, then the sky would no longer be


text:
Edges Need to be smooth from blender to Substance
I have tried the smooth modifier in blender and had no luck.  I have prominent seams when I am trying to texture the model after leaving blender 3.9.

The problem is that you have autosmooth sharp edges in an area without uv seams. Anywhere that you have a "sharp" edge split on a model you have to have a uv seam (though not necessarily the other way around.
This is because when you set an edge as sharp what it essentially does is tell   each vertex on the sharp edge "Pretend to be two vertices at once".
You can actually see this by checking turning on Split Vertex Normals in the overlay panel.
Shade Smooth > Autosmooth:

Flat shaded:  (Each vertex is essentially duplicated for each face it's a part of, at least as far as normals are concerned).

Smooth Shaded, no autosmooth:

Right now you are trying to tell the uv to represent two different vertices in the same UV shell and it's basically deciding on one or the other for each pixel.

I would go back and clear all sharps on this model, a tree model generally speaking isn't going to need any kind of split normals anyways. But in the future remember that any split edges have to have a uv seam.

This is a great answer

thank you for that.  I figured it out with help.  You had the same answer.  In maya you just select all the edges and soften edges.  I am new to blender so I am getting the hang of it.  Thank you again.


text:
How I can extrude down?
I'm new to Blender and I  have used the extrude tool. But somehow it doesn't go down, like creating a "void", it's like it is copying the same face again.
You can see the circle was extruded, but just don't go down.
I can't insert more images, but I want to get this result on 10:30 on this video

Not sure why that is happening - it shouldn't. Instead of using the extrude tool, try using the hotkeys - E (extrude), followed by the axis (Z) and then move your mouse to change the level of the surface. Does this make any difference?

It's strange, because when I create a new project, it just work normal as it should. I think that maybe cause some sort of configuration or I have changed the proprieties since creation.
And remembering this is a copy from other object. I just do it for training.

..Hard to reverse-engineer what you've done, but there are a couple of clues in your picture:

The edges in the top surface look a little thick? There are possibly some doubled faces / vertices there. Try X deleting, or H hiding some of the faces, to see if there are more hidden underneath. It's a feature of Blender's extrude, that if you cancel by right-clicking, you don't cancel the extrusion. You cancel the move, so the generated faces remain, exactly over the originals.
The Gizmo indicates that something is being operated on, halfway down the bottle. AltZ go into X-Ray mode, and see if there's a face there, which is the one being extruded, out of sight.

Thank you. I did it.
But I have created the object all over again. Somehow I I have created duplicated face and  I don't know how.
That's strange...

@MatheusFreitas If you start an extrusion and right click to cancel it, you're actually confirming an extrusion with an offset of 0 from the original geometry. I used to double faces by doing this all the time until I realized that right clicking didn't undo the extrusion like I thought.

@ChrisHayes .. I used to think this was a problem in the interface to extrude/inset.. but once you're used to it, it's actually useful. Like so much in Blender, IMO.  a bit less 'convenience', a bit more learning, makes a better tool.


text:
Inset Face flickering
I'm creating a roof for a church model, where there's a small "hole" on the rectangular figure, but when I try to inset face, it's start to flickering and creating vertices and edges where shouldn't be.
I'm trying deleting extra edges, extra vertices, extra faces, but nothing works.

Usually this happens to me when there are overlapping faces, in my experience.
Try deleting Only Faces of surrounding topology and then re-creating the faces with the appropriate vertices

Thanks I did it!


text:
Donut Tutorial in Version 2.79
I loaded v2.79 because I can't load the latest version because of my old Mac operating system, El capitan, and my old machine won't load upgrades beyond that, so in the famous donut tutorial he uses proportional editing to distort the torus. My controls do not work the same at all. At 7:30 in part 2 of the Blender Beginner Tutorial Blender Guru says scroll up or down with the scroll wheel/button and when I do it does not do what it does in his version.

Hello, what is your question ? You feel like the proportional editing doesn't behave the same ? Be careful with it, if you have the radius set too high, you won't see a circle on your screen, you have to scroll your mouse until you see it. You can see the radius in the top of the screen or the bottom iirc see https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/102370/cant-change-mouse-influence-in-proportional-editing-mode/112355

Ok, thank you very much, that works!


text:
I have an undesirable black area on my glass shader/object

(Using Principled BDSF)
I'm aware that glasses are naturally going to have a bit of black anyway, and I have no problem with the black sections around the base of the main section and the beginning of the handles, but the rim just can't be correct, can it? It started out from following the BlenderGuru tutorial, but his looks nothing like what I ended up with.
If you look at the .blend and image you'll see there is definitely a problem there (at least I hope so - I'd rather a fixable problem than a generally incorrect model/scene). Rotating around shows that, even when the rim has only 2 layers opposed to 4 for the light to pass through, the problem is always there on the rim. Thickness of the glass and how many layers it passes through is not what is affecting the rim. Those 2 things do affect the base/handles, but I'm happy with that.
I have tried adjusting geometry and applied the first layer of Subsurf as other posts said to - no change.
I tried adjusting the bounce levels on light paths, under both Path and Branched Path Tracing - caustics and transmissions etc etc - but nothing seemed to happen.
I added an HDRI in case lighting was an issue, but again, no change in the rim.
The only thing that seemed to do anything is applying a Solidify modifier at a very low thickness above Subsurf in the stack, but this surely isn't the correct solution and the IOR seems off to me after doing so. I have already applied thickness to the model anyway, so it's not like I have a paper-thin glass.

Does this answer your question? How to illuminate the darkness inside glass objects in Cycles?

Worth reading: How can I make a more realistic glass shader?, Why does an object with a glossy shader render in black?, How can the Glass Shader be imitated using only other shaders? and Alpha channel through glass material instead of background (Cycles)

Remove the Solidify modifier, use path tracing with the Full Global Illumination preset, connect the background node to the world output and either remove the liquid or make it fit the glass. The model itself appears to be completely fine. I can turn this into a full answer if it solved your problem.

@brockmann you are correct. This is the only correct shader for glass in cycles. Liquid would be improved with the shader from here:https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/72495/create-a-gradient-effect-like-for-coffee

Good find @Timaroberts

I've had a similar problem today with an object I created using the screw modifier.
It turned out that for some face loops the normals were pointing in the wrong (opposite) direction and especially the bottom of your object looks to me as if it needs some normal recalculation. I suggest enable the display of face orientation to verify.

This is caused by a reflection of the background world behind the plane. If you change the world color, or increase the size of the plane, the blackness will disappear.

Not necessarily... Scene with hdr: https://i.sstatic.net/P8lKl.png

That then would either be normals, or the IOR level.


text:
How to model motion of a ball being passed on between multiple characters
i do not have a file to share for this question, but i will try my best to explain the issue. I want to create a football scene where multiple characters pass ball to each other. I have been using a Nurbs Path and follow Curve constraint on ball until now for ball motion. But the issue is that the speed of ball is dependent on the length of the Nurbs Path. THis is not helpful when there are many characters passing the ball around.
What are other ways i can control the ball movement so that its not restricted to the length of the Urbs path, instead i can move the ball at any speed and put it at any location on the scene at any point.

Using keyframe animation with interpolation set to Bézier. The closer the keyframes are together, the faster moves the ball. And with the Bézier interpolation you can tweak the curves to make a motion speed up or slow down.

You could use the Curve modifier on an object instead, parent the ball to this object, and move this object, it will only cause a problem if you extrude the start point


text:
Creating a Dark Scene with only a glowing lamp and a Character - What HDR/World settings and material settings for light are required
This is quite an open ended question, but i would like any possible help. I want to make a scene like in the image shared below.

I am not going for photo realism, my 3d character will be used in place of the woman here. To get this effect, i have added volume scatter in world settings and added glare node in composite to get a glow. But as you can see my render is far away from the result i want. I want to know if this can be done in Blender and what settings should i use to get the backround lamp and well lit character. From what i can see, currently my lamp illuminates a lot of the scene and environment, while in the pic only the character is lit and the lamp glow is seen, rest of the environment is black.

maybe don't use volume scatter and instead create the glare effect in the Compositor?

I would definitely not use volume scatter here. Only use a Glare node in the Compositor. The other thig you can clearly see is that there is a light source from the front, as the lamp in the background might create the rim lighting, but never cast light onto her face and the other parts of her body that are on the opposite side of the lamp.

Current glare effect is using the compositor only. I am not able to get the pitch black darkness though

Of course not if you use volume scatter - as the name says, it scatters the light inside the volume. Meaning there is nothing pitch black unless the density of the volume is so high that the light doesn't reach through. But then this will definitely not help your scene ;)

Apart from that, what do you know about the reference photo, how it was taken? To me it looks like there was bright light shining on her, then maybe shot with a low exposure and cranking up the contrast to get the dark parts black. So did you set the Color Management settings to resemble that? High contrast, bright lights, low exposure? Then I guess the original photo was edited afterwards, so you can further work on it in compositing or also in an external image editor additionally.

These photos look like they were heavily edited in post prod softwares like photoshop, lightroom or after effects. I would use your scene and play with the compositor nodes or the color management settings if you want to approach it, because you won't get this effect with "just" a physically based renderer

Oh, it's the big teddy bear again! :-)  With a real camera, you can take such a picture (without the rim light) with a flash lamp in a dim room with only a few lamps/light sources. In Blender, you can recreate this effect as Gorgious and moonboots suggested. Here is a try:  https://i.sstatic.net/uJOtS.jpg The ground is "fake" because it's painted almost pitchback (no realistic green grass)

@Blunder And I suggested that, too... ;)

oops, of course you did :D

The opic is not mine actually, i got it from internet and like the setting, so trying to approximate it. I will try the things you mentioned above, thanks.

@Blunder can you please share the settings you made for the shared render pic.

Here is my second try:

(Note that you can copy (Ctrl+Alt+C) & paste (Ctrl+Alt+V) all three [X, Y, Z] values at once in Blender when you hover the location field and press the keys.)
The following changes were made:

World settings: removed the Volumne Scatter node (=no more fog), set Color to pure black (000000)

Floor plane: made it less reflective and darker by setting the Color of the Diffuse node to Hex 080808, and Roughness to 1.

lowered the Strength of the Light disc (Circle object) from 300 to 1 (Emission node). It's important that it emits some light, but it doesn't take much since we're making it glow in the Compositor.

added an Empty and called it Light Focus to control the lights and placed it in the bear's face, position [2.550, 4.250, 2.710]

move the Spot light to position [6.063, 9.141, 3.256] (in front of the bear), set Strength to 1200 W, added a Damped Track object constraint with the Light Focus as target and set Track Axis to -Z so the light points to where the Empty is => spotlight on the bear. See the screenshot below.

added an Area light as background light behind the bear and opposite of the camera at position [-2.188, -1.135, 4.279], set Strength to 3000 W, set Size to 2 m. Then added a Damped Track object constraint with the Light Focus as target, Track Axis to -Z

enabled [X] Depth Of Field in the Object Data Properties tab of the camera, choosen the Light Focus as Focus Object.

in the Render Properties tab, enabled [X] Motion Blur for the raindrops

the raindrops (Sphere object) had no material yet. Created a new simple glass material for them => set Transmission = 1.0, and Roughness = 0.067 in the Principled BSDF node. If you wish, you can stretch the mesh a little to better mimic the falling motion.

in the View Layer Properties tab enabled Passes > Light > Other [X] Emission for the Compositor

almost done. Switched to the Compositing workspace, enabled [X] Use Nodes option and added the following nodes:

last but not least, zoomed out a little with the camera so that the foot does not "stick" to the bottom of the picture.

Here is my first try, just for comparison. The eyes look different because the Separate Color node changed in one of the recent Blender 3.x versions and the node was "invalid" in my Blender 3.3.
The front light is stronger and the angle is different. The light comes more from the side. Lens Distortion is stronger (3000 W). The camera and raindrops are unchanged.

Have fun experimenting with it!

THank you so much :D


text:
Why is my weight painting not following brush strokes, when trying to paint for a vertex group on a plane
i want to make a plane with grass using particle system. For that i start with a plane, create a vertex group and go to weight paint mode to paint the areas where i want grass. But for some reason, the weight painting does not follow my brush across the plane. Mostly the brush does nothing on the plane, but when i just try to paint crazily all across the plane, ,i get few paint values on the sides of the plane. Please help.
File attached -
https://easyupload.io/fz1i3e

you haven't subdivided your plane at all. You can only paint on vertices. Since your plane has only four, you hardly can see your paintings.
Select your plane, Tab -> edit mode, right click on plane -> subdivide -> enter 20 and try again.

ohhhh, thanks for the answer, i get it now. :D

you are welcome


text:
How do I animate part of a plane getting longer over time?
I would like to be able to take a plane, and animate one or more parts of it extending (getting longer over time. I include an image of what I want to happen over time.

You can create this extrusion, then keep the edge selected and CtrlH > Hook to New Object in order to hook these vertices to an empty:

Back to Object mode, select the empty and move it:

A thousand thanks, moonboot: it worked! If anyone is interested in how I animated the plane moving, I began by following moonboot's advice above. Then, in Object mode, I set a key frame at frame 1, choosing the "location, rotation, scale and custom properties" option. Then, still in Object mode, I moved the empty, which made the plane grow longer. Then at key frame 30, I added another key frame, choosing the "location, rotation, scale and custom properties" option again. When I played back the animation, it looks as though the plane is growing longer along one of it's edges. FABULOUS!


text:
Principle volume shader broken?
I have this large scene (20-30 meter domain) with smoke and fire. And wind. In object mode simulation looks fine, in render view with Principled volume shader it looks fine as well. But when i try to add emission strengh - all domain becomes completely white. Same happend with smaller domain in a fresh project. No idea where this issue might be coming from...

Solution in the Volume Info node. Flame output goes to Emission Strength and you can do bunch of stuff in between them with Color Ramps among others, including Attribute node. I found 'heat' attribute most useful for color of the smoke. I will continue gather information about this and will provide more profound answer later on

The easy way to get flames is to use temperature attribute. Increase temperature to around 3500 (warm - yellowish color):

and add some Blackbody Intensity:

If you want, you can add some orange tint into it:


text:
Problem with Radial Array (Object offset about an Empty) on Blender 3.1.2
I'm a fledging in Blender and I've been monkeying with this amazing software for a few days. When I came around to Modifier -> Array, I got stuck into the option Object offset. With a bunch of tips I learned from Google and Youtube, in order to make a radial array for a selected object, we need to go through these following basic steps below:

Add an Empty Plain Axes system
Move the Cursor to World Origin
Move the center of the selected object to Cursor
Turn off Relative and Constant Offset
Turn on Object Offset and choose the Empty
Add more selected object number
Rotate the Empty Plain Axes system about Z axis.

It didn’t work eventually and resulted in a crazy outcome.
I also turned my problem over to a video and it shows you three situations with the cube: the first is the standard, the second is the 45-degee-rotated, and the third is the resized. It, the radial array, only worked for the standard cube. The video is attached below for my explanation and your consideration.
I thought the answer is somewhere in the Preference of the Edit or otherwise, “I have no idea!” though. So, is there anyone here giving me a hand, my predecessors?
Thank you so much,
enter link description here

to add to Agnivesh's answer, instead of doing the transformation of your object in Object mode, do it in Edit mode, so that you won't need to apply the scale or rotation

Like @moonboots said, you wouldn't have the problem if you manipulated the cube in Edit Mode. The thing is, the Object Offset is not moving the instances per each step by the value applied on the empty, but by the difference between the empty and the original object. So even if you don't do anything with the empty, if you rotate the object by e.g. 15° on the X axis, then the cube instances will be rotated 15° on X per each step around the origin point. If you then rotate the empty on the Z, both rotations will be applied for each step of the instances.

And this applies to all transformations. It's not just how the empty is transformed, it's the difference between the objects. Are the origins of the cube and the empty 1 meter apart on the X axis (no matter if the origins are at the world center or anywhere else)? Then each instance will be 1 meter on X away from the previous instance. Is there a Z angle difference of 10°? Then each instance is rotated 10° more on Z. Is the cube scaled to 0.5 on Y and the empty has a scale of 1? Then each instance will be twice as wide in Y direction then the previous instance.

Oh by the way: one last thing, if you manipulate the cube in Edit Mode, another advantage aside from not having to apply transformations would be that the origin stays where it is and you don't have to move the origin to the 3D cursor afterwards.

Also if you move the object in Edit mode the origin will stay where it is, no need to move it afterwards

Thank you, my predecessors! All of your answers are very helpful. Because I'm a newbie, I switched back and forth between Edit Mode and Object Mode to modify the model in a haphazard way when following the tutorial video, which led to that crazy outcome consequentially. I also made another video according to all your answers with 2 situations: one is modifying in Object Mode and the other is modifying in both Object Mode and Edit Mode haphazardly (this is my case). And applying Rotation & Scale solveed the problem at the end.

Possible reason is you haven't applied transformations to the object before using the modifiers, so before using the array modifier press, Ctrl +  A and apply Rotation and Scale

Your solution is the key. Many thanks!

Thank you for all your answers. The best solution is to apply the transformations before using modifiers. And the other important thing is remembering to try manipulating the object as much in the Edit Mode as possible.
See the video attached below for more clarification.
Enter link here to see the solution video


text:
Creating strip out of two lines with geometry nodes
Hi I am learning about geometry nodes and they are very powerful and interesting, but I don't understand if it is possible to build meshes starting from primitives.
For example, I have two line meshes with the same number of vertices and I would like to create a strip of triangles or quads by mapping their vertices by index. How can I achieve that?
Clarification screenshot following: I would like to procedurally build the faces by joining pairwise vertices belonging to each of the two curves, e.g. creating a face from the green-cyan vertices, then a face from the cyan-yellow vertices, and so on. This is a quad strip pattern, but a triangle strip would be fine as well, for the sake of learning.

It so happens that the order of indices in  a GN-generated Mesh Primitive > Grid is quite convenient. So, being a bit naughty, and depending on that Blender implementation detail, we can make a mesh loft between any 2 splines, presented as 1 curve:

... just by transferring  Position, by index, from the curve to a 2 x Resolution grid. Resampling means we don't have to care about the number of control-points or resolution of the splines, the point-counts will always match.
The curve could just as well be the 2 arcs you've generated within a GN Tree:

This was exactly I was hoping for, thank you very much!

Out of curiosity, I wonder if index can be considered stable and safe (i.e. it's really being naughty here?) or if can change and it's possible to re-index vertices.

Hi @ARDVL! I can't realistically imagine any reason the devs would suddenly change the index-order on either a Mesh>Grid or a multi-spline curve, so I'm being super-strict, with that remark. I would personally be happy to rely on the order. But it is under someone else's control, and  there's no published guarantee. So if I was doing this for intended re-use at some unknown future time in a commercial studio, possibly incurring costs / other people's time chasing a mysterious bug, I would feel the need to give a more limited, but reliable solution, more like @quellenform's.

I would construct it like this:

You obviously want to use a curve as a base and create a mesh.
The node Curve to Mesh does not really help you in this case.
But you can create a new line with the node Mesh Line, and adjust its positions to the curve by transferring them with the node Transfer Attributes and resetting them with Set Position.
After that you can extrude the mesh line with the node Extrude Mesh.
If you use the value $0$ as Offset Scale, you can scale the individual edges away from the center by any value with the node Scale Elements and get exactly the mesh you have sketched.

You can create a Mesh Grid with Vertices Y equal to 2 and Vertices X equal to the arcs resolution. That way even ad odd indexes are on opposite sides of the grid.

After that, you just need to transfer the position from the arcs to the vertices, even indexes are for the larger arc. The index for transferring needs to be the index of the vertex divided by 2, that way we get the same index for every two vertices in the grid.

Result:


text:
Blender 3.1 Eevee Material Override gone?
in older Blender Versions there was a way to create a Material Override in Eevee in the layer properties tab. However in Blender 3.1 it's gone - or I cant't find it anymore. Is there I new spot to look for it, or a new process of doing material overrides?
Thank you for any help and regards
Tomas

As far as I know, Material Override has always been a 3rd party addon.  I believe this version is the one people mostly use.

I think it was a Cycles feature only, in the View Layer Properties panel > Override

Hey there, thank you very much for your replies - you are right, it's a cyles feature! I intuitively remembered it to be possible in Eevee too, but that's not the case unfortunately. Best regards and all the best!


text:
Shadow Catcher Compositing Blender 3.4 how?
I've been struggling with the shadow catcher in Blender Cycles for hours now. It's not possible to me to mix the denoised image with the shadow catcher image in the compositor (I assumed it would be a Multiply Mix node). Could anybody tell me the node setup for this issue?
How can something basically necessary be so complicated...
Regards and thanks for any help!

I luckily found two valuable tutorials how to do it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29xoVux9xlY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeVyu9DPmUk However I came to the conclusion, that for me it's better and faster to render the Shadow Catcher pass separately and process it in Photoshop.

This is how I use the Shadow Catcher, if this is not what you want you have to clarify in the question how you want it to be set up.
Here I have a simple scene with a sphere on a plane. The plane has Shadow Catcher enabled under Object Properties > Visibility. I've disabled the background with Film > Transparent and I've enabled Denoise in the _Render Properties.

If I now render the scene, I have a denoised image of the sphere with a shadow on a transparent background which I could put over any image/background I like with the Alpha Over node:

If you don't want to use the Denoise function for the Render, you can of course use the Denoising Data and the Denoise filter in the Compositor, but still you can simply overlay the image with the shadow over some background:

Thank you Gordon! I guess this will do the job! In my case I had the problem that I haven't connected the Alpha over node correctly!


text:
Spacebar Actions - tools - in preferences is not working in Industry Compatible Key Maps
I am using Blender 3.3 with custom keymaps based on the industrial compatible keymaps. I would like to define the space bar action to open "tools" and not play or search. In addition to that I can't access these preferences in my custom keymap and need to switch to standard Blender keymap to choose from the alternative options. After I have picked "tools" and go back to my keymap settings Blender will still perform the "search" action. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?
Best regards and thanks for any help!
Tomas

After spending hours in my keymap configurator I have found the solution. The "search" function and the "tool" function were both active in my keymap config. After deactivating the "search" function in my keymap, the "tool" function suddenly started working when I hit spacebar.


text:
Blender 3.2 Download instead of 3.3
I would like to download Blender 3.2 instead of Blender 3.3 because 3.3 is not working properly on my computer. However the Blender website only enables me to download 3.3. (when I click download 3.2 it jumps to the 3.3 file.) How can I get the 3.2 version?
Best regards, Tomas

you can find all releases for download here https://download.blender.org/release/. to get version 3.2 download it from https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.2/

https://dotbow.github.io/Blender-Launcher/

Hello Harry and hello Markus,
thank you for your help! It worked out perfectly well!
Best regards, Tomas


text:
call the unregister function of any addon by its file name, addon name, or file path
I need to call the unregister function before disabling the addon.
I can get this information about the addon:
addon_collection = {}
for addon in addon_utils.modules():
    addon_name = addon_utils.module_bl_info(addon)
    addon_file_name = addon.__name__
    # my_name.update({addon_name['name'] : addon_file_name})
    addon_items = {addon_name['name'] : addon_file_name}
    addon_collection.update(addon_items)

print(addon_collection)

I get such a dict with keys.
{'Magic UV': 'magic_uv',
'TexTools': 'TexTools_1_5',
'3D Navigation': 'space_view3d_3d_navigation',
'Stored Views': 'space_view3d_stored_views',
'Cycles Render Engine': 'cycles'}

Also, I can get the path to the file:
for addon in addon_utils.modules(refresh=False):
    print(addon.__file__)

D:\blender\0\3.1\scripts\addons\node_presets.py
D:\blender\0\3.1\scripts\addons\node_wrangler.py
D:\blender\0\3.1\scripts\addons\space_view3d_align_tools.py
D:\blender\0\3.1\scripts\addons\object_boolean_tools.py
D:\blender\0\3.1\scripts\addons\object_carver\__init__.py
D:\blender\0\3.1\scripts\addons\object_fracture_cell\__init__.py
D:\blender\0\3.1\scripts\addons\drop_it\__init__.py

From these lists it turns out that I can refer to the addon

By file name
The name of the addon
The path to the addon file

How to call unregister function?
Without knowing the internal classes or other functions that have different names, but are somehow called when the unregister function is triggered.
Thank you in advance )

import object_fracture_cell
if "unregister" in dir(object_fracture_cell):
    object_fracture_cell.unregister()

If you prefer try/except
import object_fracture_cell
try:
    object_fracture_cell.unregister()
except AttributeError:
    print("No unregister function in object_fracture_cell addon")
except RuntimeError:
    print("object_fracture_cell has already been unregistered")

From my understanding if the addon is a single file, blender will seek a unregister function inside it and nothing else, and if it is a multifile addon, it will seek __init__.py then seek the unregister function and nothing else.
So you can assume that if an addon can be unregistered, importing it then calling my_addon.unregister() will call all the unregister logic.
However I don't think it is mandatory for an addon to have an unregister function so you should add an if or try/except block.
for instance :
import node_presets

print(dir(node_presets))

import object_fracture_cell

print(dir(object_fracture_cell))

['AddonPreferences', 'Menu', 'NODE_MT_template_add', 'NODE_OT_template_add', 'NodeTemplatePrefs', 'Operator', 'StringProperty', '__addon_enabled__', '__addon_persistent__', '__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__spec__', '__time__', 'add_node_button', 'bl_info', 'bpy', 'classes', 'node_center', 'node_search_path', 'node_template_add', 'node_template_cache', 'os', 'register', 'unregister']
['BoolProperty', 'EnumProperty', 'FloatProperty', 'FloatVectorProperty', 'FractureCell', 'IntProperty', 'Operator', 'StringProperty', '__addon_enabled__', '__addon_persistent__', '__builtins__', '__cached__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__loader__', '__name__', '__package__', '__path__', '__spec__', '__time__', 'bl_info', 'bpy', 'main', 'main_object', 'menu_func', 'register', 'unregister']


text:
Pitch Black Image Editor & UV Editor

Hi. I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and Blender 3.1.2
I noticed that I cannot see my selected faces in the Black UV Editing environment. Selection seems to be under the black pixel as if it is a mask. I tried updating my graphics card and other drivers and results seems to be the same. When I look at the previous version and other's interface, the UV Editor does not look like this. Is this a bug or is there a way to fix this?

Have you tried File - Defaults - Load factory settings?

I have tried it. It did not change anything. I tried reinstalling and the problem is still there.
I've also checked the Video sequencer on Blender 3.2 its in the color Turquoise or blue green.

I've found the answer and might as well share it incase someone encounters a rare situations as mine.
Apparently its a hardware problem specifically with the graphics card. My outdated GPU only supports OpenGL 3.3 where the 2.93 and above requirements are OpenGL 4.3
I may be able to run Blender 3.2 and I'm lucky to see the some parts of the interface, but there were probably more errors that I was not able to encounter since I could not get the basics working. The solution given to me was to either upgrade Graphics card that supports the latest version of OpenGL or downgrade blender version that supports the current GPU.


text:
Convert Hair to Mesh while mantaining the shape
I've currently got hair I made using the particle system that look something like this:

and I want to convert these from something that uses a particle system while keeping the looks the same. However, when I use the "convert to mesh" option in the modifiers tab, I get this:

which has a much larger number of very thin strands showing as lines instead. Is there another way to achieve what I want?
Thanks.

I'm not sure you can, you need to reconvert to curve and give it a profile

Does this answer your question? Convert Cycles Hair Particle System to Mesh Object

Hair shape in particle system is not real geometry, you can notice that at  bottom of each hair, they are more like a cards ...

... if you Apply modifier it generates a mesh from hair strands ... you have to Convert to Curve ...

... with Curve selected go to Data Properties > Geometry > Bevel > Depth set some value ... to control thickness of hairs at tips add Bezier Curve and use it as Taper Objectr under the same panel ...

... now you can Convert to Mesh.


text:
I am trying to bend a pencil shape along a curve path. How can I bend the pencil like in the pic?

I need to bend the pencil as in the first image which is without affecting the top and bottom. But in mine there is bend in the tip part and at eraser part which i don't need.
Thanks to the community I modeled the pencil.

Just use the answer to your question here but don't animate it?

I'm a little confused: you're showing a rendering here that was created with the file I gave in response to one of your questions. In this file I do exactly what you ask here. And I deliberately built this file so that there would be no bending of the ends. So I don't quite understand this...

Please don't post the same question more than once. This is a duplicate of your previous post that already has answers, and seems to be the third question covering this topic. Why is this being asked again?

I suppose it is not possible without a little hack. You have to detach top and bottom part of the object so that they will not be affected by modifier. Do it like so:

Disable curve modifier.
Select top part and detach it from the shape using P ⇾ Separate selection.
Same from bottom part.

Now, to make separated parts of the mesh follow the main part, do a vertex parent:

Select top part and main with shift. Go in edit mode and select 3 vertices from main part. You should see the highlighted edges on the main part:

Press Ctrl + P ⇾ Make vertex parent.

Same for the other part.

If you made everything correct, you will see that the top and the bottom part follow the main body, then you turn on the curve modifier:

You can also add a twist to it

i have done like this and sometimes its not following the main part. And then when i got the right there was some problem like it was not attaching to main part perfectly. And i don't know how i got that right at first.

I suppose you can disable modifiers and reparent, if you have some troubles

should i apply all the transforms

I'm not sure, give it a try

THANKS @Crantisz, I completed it.

you can use the simple deform modifier for that and play around with the limits:


text:
How do I repeat an NLA strip at the same speed it was before it was an NLA strip?
As the title says, I'd like to be able to repeat my animation at the speed it's currently at when I convert it into an NLA strip.

When you push an action onto an NLA strip, the speed of the action doesn't change, so I don't know what you mean by "speed it's current at".  However, if you simply want to repeat the action, you can set a repeat value in the NLA strip N panel.  Is that what you want?

Have you changed the speed of the strip? Go into the N panel > Strip > Action Clip > Playback Scale

I tried doing what moonboots said, but when I go to action clip and increase playback scale the animation slows down. I should mention this is a looping animation.


text:
Why does my texture paint disappear from my model?
I'm new. I drew a texture painting on a model but whenever I save it and open it in another program the texture paint disappears. I can only see the texture paint in texture paint mode. The texture paint also only appears in Solid View as well. What am I doing wrong? How do I fix this?

Painted images are not saved in the blend file (if not packed) and you must use the menu Image > Save  (Alt+S) to save it. Have you done this?

I didn't pack the file the first time. I packed and saved it and it opens fine in blender, but the paint still doesn't appear when I try to view it outside of blender on 3d viewer. I'm definitely still missing something. How do I get it to appear outside of blender? edit: Is there a step I'm missing?

Does this answer your question? .fbx export why there are no materials or textures?

Yes, it does. Thank you for your help.


text:
How do I make this cylinder wrap around this path?
I have this path. I want the yellow half cylinder to automatically follow my path. I tried to use Shrinkwrap but it doesn't find the path.
My end result should be that the cylinder is like the annotations I did.

At its simplest, this could be your curve, set to 'Half' Fill Mode, using its native 'Round' bevel...

.. followed up with Solidify, Bevel, and Subdivision Surface modifiers
The curve can have a fairly nasty habit of flipping its twist.. I've found the most stable method has been to set the curve's 'Twist Method' to 'Minimum', as shown, construct the curve in in its XY, and adjust its tilt, throughout, to -90 degrees.

create a bezier curve,
Apply a curve modifier to your cylinder,  select your bezier curve as "curve object" under the curve modifier
Set the right Deform Axis

Make sure your cylinder has enough geometry to get wrap around the path

On top of that, a subdivision surface could also do well, an inset can be done on the top and bottom faces if there are there to prevent deformation.


text:
How to disable shadows in Cycles?
I'm trying to disable shadows in Cycles for the purpose of using decals, since shadows break the illusion and make it an evident sticker. I've tried setting shadow mode to "none" in material proiperties tab and in object properties in Ray Visibility, turned off shadows. Now, while in evee looks fine in Cycles the decal still casts shadows. I k now that I can use a second UV to implant the decal in the material itself but when using Subd-modeling it causes unavoidable stretching.
So, is there a way to turn off shadows so as to use decals attached with shrinkwrap not making itself apparent with a shadow, no matter how small?

You say that in Cycles the decal still casts shadows, it should not if you've disabled Ray VIsibility > Shadow, so I'm not sure what you mean

I got to the bottom of it. When I turned off shadows from object properties it seemed to still cast a fenter "shadow" except it wasnt a sahdow, but reflection so I turned off glossy too and that did the trick.

In your decal Object level Properties, in Ray Visibility disble Shadow:

Thanks for replying!. The fainter "shadow" I kept seeing after turning off shadows was actually a reflection so turning off Glossy was also needed in this case (it was a decently reflective material).

@Andermaiden You just have to be aware that turning off Shadow and Glossy might result in problems when interacting with other objects surrounding the decal. For example, the decal becomes invisible in other reflective objects (e.g. like a mirror): no reflection. But as you might see, not completely invisible: the remaining comes from Diffuse visibility. But if you turn that off as well, not even completely diffuse surfaces like the plane here will get any colored bounce light: no diffuse bounces

Oh, then which would be the right way to go abut with decals? Because games are using them now so there must be a way.

@Andermaiden if you want Gordon to get a notice of your followup question, you should use the @ notation "@GordonBrinkmann", otherwise he will not see it.  I'm afraid I cannot answer your question myself.


text:
Issues With Shadows
I'm making a character, but every time I put it in render mode no shadows pop up. I feel like this has a simple solution but I can't figure it out. Can someone please help?

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

Hello, maybe share your file or at least show a screenshot?

I can't really be specific without your .blend file or screenshots, but here's something that might have caused the problem:
You might have switched off shadows in object properties > viewport display or if you're using cycles (not applicable to eevee): You might have switched off shadows here.


text:
Issues with Shadows (Followup)
Yesterday I made a post about how my character didn't have any shadows rendered on it, the person who answered the question said he couldn't explain very much without a screenshot, so here's the screenshot.

I checked the box that he told me to check and it was marked, so I have no idea what the issue is.

please show the Shader Editor for the orange material, maybe you use an Emission node, or the Image Texture is directly plugged into the Output node, which works as an Emission, a surface with Emission won't show any shadow


text:
help with weight painting
This model is very picky about when I try to weight paint it, anyone have any tips?

Hello, you don't give enough details, what's the problem exactly? Maybe share your file: https://blend-exchange.com/

Does the model have enough geometry? The blend file would be helpful as stated above

Your mesh is very low poly and probably has few vertices. But Weight painting relies on vertices with more of them meaning more control. You can add a Subdivision modifier to your model, set to "Simple" (which will keep the overall shape of your model) with a subdivision count that suits your needs. If you leave it at "Catmull-Clark", it will round out your mesh.


text:
how to create splines streamlines
I am a beginner in Blender and in Animation nodes. Is it possible to somehow achieve simulation of streamlines just like on CFD simulations, but only with splines in Animation nodes?

That is, splines procedurally flow around any shape. I tried using particles, but I didn’t get anything good. Maybe there’s at least some hint about how this can be implemented.


text:
Glow effect of Gold
I'd like to make a golden crown in 2.8 Blender which flies on top of a logo, as soon as it settles on the final position looks glowing or shining.
It's supposed to look like the color of the gold inside shines facing to the camera.
I tried to set a spot behind the crown, facing to the camera, the inside get's brighter but it doesn't transmits to the outside.
Make a gold reflective object
I used the first tutorial for the surface and a square shaped light.

I think you should look more into lighting the object in different angles than adding emission to a metallic shader

Maybe add an emission node to the crown material, where you control the strength based on the location. You will have to also use a mix shader.

Edit 1: This is what I meant. Here I have a cube where the emission node is applied and mixed with the gold as per your example. The where the mix-factor is 0 (meaning only take the emission node). You could change this factor throughout the animation to slowly change, e.g. start the factor at 1 (100% gold), then animate through to a value you are happy with e.g. 0.4 (40% gold, 60% emission).
Since emission is very strong and will likely take away any details in your crown maybe only have small parts of your crown (or other objects) able to emit light and the rest staying pure gold. I hope this helps.

Edit 2: You are definitely after volumetric lighting then. Create a Cube around you scene, Add a material to your cube, delete the surface shader and add in a the Principled Volume shader. Reduce the density and now your lights should look like they are impacted by dust or fog in the scene.

NB this is rendered using Cycles with a denoiser in composition, using a density of 0.1 and a 10000W spot light.

The blender file I used is here:

Can you help me a little more specific? I'm kinda new to it and need to know where to add the nodes and how to use it.. If you look at a beamer you see a little bit of light glowing in front of it maybe dust or else that add's that effect.

Edited for you. BTW If you are wanting dust etc, then look up volumetric lights

Good this means the cube glosw on the object? The idea is like this: A light shines through the crown, and then you can see somehow rays of lights shining in front of the crown.. Just like when u have a little fog or dust in front of a beamer and you can see the light rays in front

Hope this is more like it. I just added the volumetric lighting as an example.


text:
How to do cool visual effects like those in Control (2019)?
I'd like to create visual effects reminiscent of those in Control:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecn9zGd1Qpc&t=38s&ab_channel=YungKudaShorts
I like how the powers in this game distort light in an explosive, organic, and color stretching way, as if using these powers twists and strains the very fabric of reality.
I'm a newbie with Blender, I've just been making models of things and haven't done very much with materials and shading yet. I've tried looking up things like particle effects and glass distortion effects and general tips and tricks, and they've been very helpful to improving my Blender knowledge, but I still feel like I don't see the path to being able to make specifically these kinds of effects.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to make these kinds of visual effects? Can anyone point out what kinds of tools or methods I should study up on?

Try to use post-proccessing for distortion effects. You will find a lot of video about how to use the Compositor. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/compositing/index.html

I was just trying to drive a Refraction BSDF with Layer Weight, but I couldn't get it to look right.

Hello and welcome. As it stands this question is too broad to be answerable without requiring an extensive tutorial or description. You should show efforts towards reaching your goal, describing what you have tried and why it failed, so we don't risk recommending something you already know. The scope should also focus on a particular step you encountered an issue with. Describing the whole procedure from start to finish would be too lengthy to explain, and is beyond the goal of this site. If you could [edit] your post to focus on where you are stuck we can vote to reopen it.

Thanks for the pointers


text:
How to add a cutscene in UPBGE 3.0?
How to add a cutscene in UPBGE 3.0?
All the tutorials on YouTube are outdated and don't seem to work on the newer versions of UPBGE.
I tried the method on GitHub (https://github.com/UPBGE/upbge/issues/1073#issuecomment-551172122) but it did not work for me, so I tried using the video as an image texture but it only plays in the viewport (still image when I press  P). Could anyone suggest a solution?
I would like to be able to see the cutscene when I press play, then I can add delay and change scene nodes to switch to the gameplay.

I think this might explain the solution you need.

if Martys comment doesn't help, maybe you should describe a bit more what you want to achieve...

Hello and welcome. Please write all the content of your question in the body of the post. Also state what you have tried and where exactly you are stuck. 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.

Turns out animating it was the answer. Thanks for the comments before. https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-add-a-cutscene-in-upbge-3-0/1356564/3


text:
blank area on render
Every time I try to render this image, half of it doesn't render. I don't have a render region so I don't know what's happening. Does anybody have a fix?

Your render clearly says that it has just finished 0 of 4 tiles. Meaning the one it is rendering is the first of 4. It also says you just waited 1:46 minutes so far but the render will take about 2:38 hours.

If you have left Blender mostly at default settings, then you will see in the Render Properties under Performance > Memory that Use Tiling is enabled, and the Tile Size is set to 2048:

Usually when rendering standard 1920 × 1080 images you will not notice the tiling. So I assume (although you did not give any information on that) you are rendering a 4k image with a resolution of 3840 × 2160 pixels. This is larger than the tile size and will be split up in 4 tiles, from which it started rendering the first one from the bottom left with the full size of 2048 × 2048, and the other three will be rendered with what is left from the complete image resolution:

So to sum it up: there is nothing broken here, no need to fix anything. Of course you could set the Tile Size to something larger like 4096 so that the complete image can be rendered in one tile. That depends on your hardware if it is capable of rendering such large tiles and if it really is in any way faster than rendering it in 4 tiles...


text:
help with specific texture
I'm having issues with trying to put the texture on the right on the shape on the left, can anyone give me some pointers on what I'm doing wrong?

since you didn't tell us what you did and didn't show us...i would suggest you provide your blend file. And because we don't know what you did, i can just blindly guess: did you uv unwrap?

@Chris I did uv unwrap, basically what I did was I linked 4 circles together to make that shape and then, after making the mask texture, tried to apply it to the shape. Obviously, that didn't work, so I tried to adjust the uv unwrap and it still didn't work. If you have any idea what I'm doing wrong then any tips would be helpful (I don't know how to link the blend file), thank you.

Can you show us a screenshot of the UV map, and the geometry in edit mode? The UV map is obviously pretty borked, but I notice there’s a portion where part of the texture near the left eye seems semi-transparently overlaid over the rest. Does this portion flicker when you orbit around the mesh?

Hi Please use a title that reflects the content of the question. It should be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the issue so that users can at a glance understand what your post is about. Use the [edit] link below your post and avoid anything not strictly essential to the post. Remember, your title is the first thing potential visitors will see, and makes your question findable for future users. See "What is the problem with posting an image or link and asking “How do I do this?""

If you can get an orthographic view with it selected and facing at it ("orthographic right" Numpad 3 in your case) you could "project from view" in the uv unwrap menu (U) in Edit Mode.
Also it looks like there might also be two planes, co-planar, mirrored, yet z-fighting. you can check by enabling Face Orientation in Viewport Overlays settings.


text:
Creating textures for other programs
I created a chain mail with blender. I would like to be able to export only texture images (like BaseColor, Diffuse, Metalness, Normals, Roughness) without 3d object, to use them in other programs like Daz or Marvelous. How can I do? thank you

You will have to switch to cycles, select your object, and bake any one of the following: See some tutorials about how to bake in blender.


text:
Strange illumination in the roughness of the texture
I'm trying to import this texture:
https://www.poliigon.com/texture/metal-spotty-discoloration-001/3225
From here you can see how I did it and the result

To download the texture images and the .blend file I shared everything here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1d0PDnWH9VRH86OyYz8pmwltxfbkLDh0z?usp=sharing
What am I doing wrong? thank you

Your point light is extremely bright, 50,000 watts is the strength. Set it to something low, like around 1000-3000 if you want a really bright scene but still retain the colour:

Thanks for the reply. But the result should be shinier, more metallic, like this: https://www.poliigon.com/texture/metal-spotty-discoloration-001/3225
instead it looks dull

@IacopoGuarneri that depends on your lighting, and you can adjust the roughness from the value you have gotten on the group node.


text:
Model appears inside-out with missing polygons in Eevee, but fine in Cycles
The model I'm creating has random polygons missing and appears almost entirely inside out when viewing in render preview mode with Eevee, but in Cycles render preview it appears completely fine. I even checked the orientation by enabling the option to color-code faces based on their facing direction, but all the polygons are facing the right way. This has nothing to do with the textures, as it still happens even when I remove the textures.

In the Material panel > Settings > Blend Mode > make sure it is set to Opaque and not Alpha Blend. If it still doesn't work please share your file


text:
Can't start Blender
Yesterday I was working just fine, but today I tried to open Blender and it closed, then I ran it on Terminal and I got this:
bl_locale_set(): Conversion failed
ERROR (gpu.shader): gpu_shader_2D_widget_base FragShader:
      |
   81 | layout(depth_any) out float gl_FragDepth;
      |         ^
      | Error: unrecognized layout identifier `depth_any'

Writing: /tmp/blender.crash.txt
Segmentation fault

# Blender 3.2.0, Commit date: 2022-06-08 10:22, Hash e05e1e369187

# backtrace
/snap/blender/2474/blender(BLI_system_backtrace+0x20) [0xc1491e0]
/snap/blender/2474/blender() [0x11d8e2a]
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x43090) [0x7fe2ad77c090]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(GPU_shader_get_builtin_uniform+0) [0xad8a590]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(GPU_matrix_bind+0x1b) [0xad8729b]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(UI_widgetbase_draw_cache_flush+0xb5) [0x23d5e65]
/snap/blender/2474/blender() [0x23d92b2]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(ui_draw_but+0xc9c) [0x23dd30c]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(UI_block_draw+0x2fe) [0x237b95e]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(UI_blocklist_draw+0x34) [0x237b9e4]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(ED_region_header_draw+0x77) [0x1c5fc27]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(ED_region_do_draw+0x841) [0x1c631c1]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(wm_draw_update+0x7a3) [0x179dd13]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(WM_main+0x30) [0x179aa40]
/snap/blender/2474/blender(main+0x322) [0x10d47e2]
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf3) [0x7fe2ad75d083]
/snap/blender/2474/blender() [0x11d570c]

# Python backtrace

I reinstalled Blender just in case but it didn't work, I'm using ZorinOS

Try restarting your computer.

This is a known issue in Blender, described in ticket https://developer.blender.org/T98708, which looks like the exact same issue described above.
Try setting the environment variable
MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.1 blender
it should work with that setting.
Also, you could try Blender 3.1.2, alternatively.

Thanks a lot! It worked


text:
Fspy add-on not installing
I am continuously trying to install FSPY, but according to the instructions on the Github, it is clearly mentioned that not to unzip it.
 I tried it to import it as File>Import>fspy, but there is no option for FSPY...
I also tried to install the zip file from Blender(Install Addon)

Then how can I install it?
Any advice will be really appreciated!

TLDR; Download the latest release: https://github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy-Blender/releases

Scroll down the github page and read the instructions on how to install the add-on properly:

Download the latest version from the release page (fSpy-Blender-VersionNumber.zip)
In Blender go to Edit > User Preferences > Add-ons and click Install from File
Select the fSpy-Blender-VersionNumber.zip file by using the file browser
Don't forget to enable the Add-on

If successfully enabled, a new menu entry in File > Import will appear:

Don't download the entire repository!

Again, download the latest release: https://github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy-Blender/releases

Apologies for confusion re screenshot comment. Suggest in future posting the link to the addon source in question. IMO no need for screenshot proof of missing menu item.  If your question is in regards to 2.8 or prior,  for the time being might pay to flag in title.

Apologies my side too..✌

Download and Install FSpy Application for windows.
(https://github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy/releases/download/v1.0.3/fspy-setup-1.0.3.exe)
Download FSpy Add-on for Blender.
(https://github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy-Blender/releases/download/v1.0.2/fSpy-Blender-1.0.2.zip)
Open Blender > Preferences > Add-ons > Install Add-on > Select the downloaded 'FSpy-Blender-1.0.2.zip'
Enable the add-on
Open the FSpy Windows client and Open a reference image. (tweak the perspective as necessary)
Save the "tweaked" image as .fspy"
Import the .fspy image and you're good to go

You need to install the addon first.
For 2.79 Go to File > User Preferences > Add-ons and click the button in my screenshot and point the dialog box to the .zip file

For 2.8 Go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons and click the same button and point the dialog box to the .zip file

EDIT: Then make sure the addon is enabled like so:

Then you can go to File > Import and you should be able to import your desired file type.

I didn't understand that how to point the dialog box to the zip file

Once you click "Install Addon from File" you will be able to navigate you your .zip file, once you do that the add-on will be installed.

I already did that, then to add-on is not showing in the list..

Apologies, I for some reason assumed you had installed addons before, so missed a step. I have edited my answer for you.

No you are getting it wrong, I had installed add-on previously like BLAM, it installed without any problems and it was by this method only to install it from blender itself but this(fspy) isn't installling, it may be installing but is not showing in the list to enable it..

Then i'm un-sure of how to help any further, I have done the exact steps in my answer (i did the steps from a blank Blender file to create my answer for you) and it's working fine for me, I have the ability to import fspy files with Blender 2.8

I don't know why it is not working for me..anyways thanks for your efforts..

It works well for me. Are you using the last 2.8 build ?

Hi, I'm having the same problem with build 2.82. I can select the zip file, which then opens to show 2 additional folders, and the dialog wants to import again. Selecting one of the folders does nothing. The Import/Export does not display the Add-On, even after Refresh, or after closing/opening Blender.

if you want to run fspy on LINUX
 you need to download this link https://github.com/stuffmatic/fSpy/releases/download/v1.0.3/fspy-1.0.3-x86_64.AppImage and then open "downloads" or folder what you select to download
and click right on file named fspy.Then go to "properties" then "permisions" and click on "is executable".
I also downloaded this icon file file: https://fspy.io and click right on the logo and click "save image as" and select folder.Then click right on file named fspy.Then go to "general" then file type options and click on the icon image and browse the icon.

I think that some of the confusion with installing the FSPY in Blender 2.8 is that at least for Safari users, the downloaded zipped files automatically get unzipped if they are deemed safe in Safari by default. You will need to turn that functionality off. Go to Safari Preferences > General > and uncheck Open "Safe Files" after download. Blender is looking for the unzipped file.
I did this, then downloaded the file, and it installed in Blender 2.8 no problem. Hope this helps.
-Todd

Actually, I hope that no one is using safari anymore :P

I know normally how to install addons. None of the suggestions worked. Fspy does not appear in the list, but it exists in the scripts/addon folder. Whenever the reason will be found, I would be glad to know. Maybe use an older Blenderversion just for fspy...- very professional lol! - Greeez!


text:
Import-Export:Import images as planes not working Blender 2.8
The extra option is not listed in Mesh-

I have checked the Add-on..
Then too this occurred.

It is under Images below the objects, putting it there with reference images as well

If you still can't find the option, make sure that the add-on is enabled. Open the preferences window and enable the images as planes add-on.

It worked..,grateful.


text:
vertex paint not very efficient in python, blender stops working
Imagine you have the following situation: you want to color the vertices relative to a certain vertex group x in red. I used the following function the problem is that it is not very efficient in fact blender stops working immediately, I'm working on a mesh with about 230,000 vertices and 500,000 faces (I just started developing addons blender and I still have a long way to go).
PS. This operation will not be repeated once but many more depending on how many vertex groups I need to color
            name_vertex_group = "myVG"
            name_mesh = "myMesh"

            mesh = bpy.data.objects[name_mesh].data
            vertex_group = bpy.data.objects[name_mesh].vertex_groups[name_vertex_group].index
            bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = "VERTEX_PAINT")

            index_vertex = []
            vs = [vertex for vertex in mesh.vertices if(vertex.groups)]
            for vertex in vs:
                for vgroup in vertex.groups:
                    if(vgroup.group==vertex_group):
                        index_vertex.append(vertex.index)
                        break

            for face in mesh.polygons:
                for vert in index_vertex:
                    for loop_index in face.loop_indices:
                        loop_vert_index = mesh.loops[loop_index].vertex_index
                        if vert == loop_vert_index:
                            mesh.vertex_colors.active.data[loop_index].color = [255, 0, 0, 1]
                            break

            bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = "EDIT")

Am I right to guess you're running this script from Edit Mode? If that's the case, you can use Bmesh to loop through the mesh and set the colors.
The execution time will vary wildly depending on your computer build, but this method has been taking 1-2s to process a mesh with 1.5 million faces, as opposed to 15 seconds when using an approach altering data directly like yours.
import bpy
import bmesh
from time import time

obj = bpy.context.active_object
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(obj.data)

# Vertex group index => vertex color
vgroup_colors = {
    obj.vertex_groups['Test_VGroup'].index: (0, 0, 1, 0),  # BLUE
    obj.vertex_groups['Test_VGroup2'].index: (1, 0, 0, 1),  # RED
}

# Extract group indexes for later usage
target_vertex_groups = vgroup_colors.keys()

# Destination vertex color layers
vcolor_layers = {
    obj.vertex_groups['Test_VGroup'].index: bm.loops.layers.color['Col'],
    obj.vertex_groups['Test_VGroup2'].index: bm.loops.layers.color['Col2'],
}

# Get vertex group weight layers
dl = bm.verts.layers.deform.verify()

start = time()
for vertex in bm.verts:

    # Only loop through vertex groups when vertex belongs to any
    if len(vertex[dl]):

        # Return keys (vertex group indexes) of groups in which this vertex has weight over 0
        in_vgroups = [vgroup_index for vgroup_index, weight in vertex[dl].items() if (weight)]

        # Extract indexes of groups of interest from this list
        in_target_vgroups = set(target_vertex_groups).intersection(in_vgroups)

        # For each face corner this vertex is part of
        for face_corner in vertex.link_loops:

            # Set colors for found vertex groups
            for vgroup_idx in in_target_vgroups:
                face_corner[vcolor_layers[vgroup_idx]] = vgroup_colors[vgroup_idx]

end = time()
print("%ss elapsed" % (end-start))

# Update viewport
obj.data.update()

hi your solution is very good but I still have a problem.
If for example I have to color 1 or 2 vertex groups then your solution is perfect, but if I am in the bad case where I have to color a hundred vertex groups then blender takes longer to run your script.
To give you an idea, the largest vertex group has 42000 vertices inside it, is there a more efficient solution in this case?


text:
select vertices in a vertex group
I have a problem, I use a mesh of about 230,000 vertices and 500,000 faces, it contains vertex groups, suppose you have to query a vertex group database and this returns some of them that you want to select on blender, my function it is good when I have to select 2-3 vertex_group but in a bad case where I have to select them all then my works take a long time to run. To give you an idea, the largest vertex group contains 40,000 vertices. What could I do?
def select_vertex(obj, vertex_group):
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")

    vertices = obj.data.vertices

    for vertex in vertices:
        for vgroup in vertex.groups:
            if(vgroup.group==vertex_group):
                vertices[vertex.index].select = True

Imagine that this function is inside a loop that iterates through all the tuples that my query returned so "obj" will be my mesh while "vertex_group" the index of the vertex_group that i want to select

Are you aware that Blender has a standalone function to select all vertices assigned to a vertex group: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/properties/vertex_groups/vertex_groups.html#editing-vertex-groups

fastest way is https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/75223/finding-vertices-in-a-vertex-group-using-blenders-python-api . if it's still slow then there is nothing else you can do.


text:
Blender for scientific meshing
I'm pretty new to Blender. I'm trying to use it for scientific meshing (particulary for Boundary Element Method).
Here is my workflow right now:

I draw my object in my CAD software (Fusion 360).
I export it in .obj and I import it in blender.
After some modification of the mesh in Blender I export it in .obj.
Finally I import it in my scientific tool.

Now that you have some backgroung here is what I'm trying to do in Blender:

I need to separate my object into different part. (The scientific tool is able to recognize group in the .obj.)

For now I'm doing it by selecting the faces of one part in Edit mode and then press P to separate into a new object. But it seems that different objects can't share vertices. So if I'm modifying the mesh (for example by dissolving a vertex) of one object, its boundary will not match the other part and it results into a hole in my model. So how can i linked vertices?

I need to reduce the size of the mesh

From the CAD software, the mesh is very dense. This can results to very long computation. therefore i would like to reduce its size.
For now, I select the faces, dissolve it and then poke it.
I'm able too get from this :

To this:

Which is way better for my computation. But i would like to get less point. A solution could be to select one out of two vertices and dissolve it. But selecting manually the vertices is very long. Is there anyway to do it automatically. i tried the decimate modifier but i can't figure how to make it work. (maybe it's because my object is a plane and not a volume).
And as I said earlier, if i dissolve a vertex, the corresponding vertex from other part aren't modified and therefore i have a hole in my model.
and last question : is there anyway to perform a uniform remesh? I mean a remesh where all triangles are approximately the same size. This is not mandatory right now but it can be useful for particular cases.
Thanks!

Try the Decimate modifier again - I would recommend setting it to "Planar" first - you need to be in Object Mode in Wireframe Preview to see it in real-time (without applying the modifier).

If that isn't what you're looking for, maybe try a Remesh Modifier set to "Sharp" (Octree depth 6 or 7) - this will make the mesh into even(ish) quads - apply the Remesh, then add a Triangulate Modifier to make the quads in to (relatively) even triangles.

Thanks for your answers, it helps a lot. But I still have trouble with the remesh modifier.  I have a hole like this in my model (https://imgur.com/a/udaWlsm) and the remesh modifier is filling it. Any idea how to solve this?


text:
Cloth Pinning checkbox missing in Blender 2.8
There is no option to pin a vertex group to hold the cloth at the position!

2.79 had this feature

Oh I missed that!
It is under Shape Menu.


text:
How do I export glass with the transparent background and Alpha channel (so I could see though it when compositing with another video)
I'm trying to export a glass object in RGBA format. But the glass catches the HDRI colors in it and it's not transparent. And I wanted to use it to composite with another video so I need to be able to see through it.
Is there a setting that would turn that on/off?
Please see the example below:

In the Render Properties under Film > Transparent you can find the option Transparent Glass to enable.

@GordonBrinkmann could you add that as an answer to this post please? That is a relevant new feature worth documenting, in an attempt to keep old questions relevant and up to date following this discussion on meta. Feel free to add it here too for rep, and ping me in comments for upvotes.

By default, blender does not have transparency in GlassBSDF node.
You have to use TransparentBSDF node to give transparent property to your material.
Here is my node setup for Cycles engine…

If you are using EEVEE engine. You have to change Blend Mode in material settings panel to Alpha Hashed or Alpha Blend (Alpha Hash will give some noise in renders. To render without noise, use Alpha Blend, but this would increase render time)
Here is my node setup for EEVEE engine…

Finally, to remove HDRI effects, disconnect any texture nodes connected to Background node in World Shader Node Editor
*To reduce background effects on the object, decrease the strength value.


text:
Another How to align faces of 2 objects question
I am struggling with aligning face of one object to face of another object, my goal is to align obj1 "foot" face to obj2 face along with entire obj1 mesh if that makes sense. And make it so the obj1 rests on obj2 with its "foot" face. I know that my explaining skills are awful, but thats the best i can do. I'll attach images of what i mean down below. All help is welcome. Thanks

This is what I always end up with no matter of selected options, I tried moving the origin point to the foot face, making empty object and parenting obj1 to the empty, snapping to face with every option avaiable, attach-allign addon. No matter what I did, it always ended up like this or worse.

Few things to note: obj2 face is not in line with x or y axis, the face is basically rotated diagonaly and also rotated on Z axis, it is part of bigger object, but that should not matter.

If you apply the rotation on your object with it aligned to where the Z-axis is facing up for how you want to it align, and the origin at the bottom, then you can just use Face Snap with Align Rotation and Project Individual Elements enabled.

Thanks a lot, works like a charm. I don't know how I missed this.


text:
Blender Sculpt Mask bush is not showing the masked area
In my Blender sculpt mode the masked area is not showing up (expected it to show up in black). I don't have any modifier at all (screenshot attached). Can anyone suggest me anything please?

Hi, welcome to the blender.stackexchange! Can you please explain more precisely why it should be marked? I don't see how you tried to mask it. Please share the blend file to have a try myself.

He's talking about the Mask brush, yes please share your file: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

In the top right of the 3D view, there is the Show Overlays button with a down arrow next to it. Click the down arrow and make sure that the mask overlay is turned on. That was the issue I had.

This was my problem too, thank you for your answer, I could not find any answers on other searches.


text:
Accurate modeling of a sessile drops (like dew droplets)
Is there some relatively easy way to generate drops, like dew, on a given object/scene? I'm interested in some kind of real simulation of fluid-surface interaction (would like to specify surface tension / contact angle for droplets), not just handmade flattened sphere drops such as in many tutorials.

This one could help you a bit: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/92271/flattening-the-intersection-of-overlapping-spheres and for the rest of your question, no it's not possible "out-of-the-box" in Blender. I don't think that even Mantaflow will have surface tension in it.

I have no clue how it would turn out, but try making the object a fluid input via mesh. If you leave no velocity, the water should bubble up on the edge of the item. Just an idea :D


text:
Using existing topology to model details and grooves
I'm trying to model the Five-Seven handgun, which as you can see in the image below has some grooves running along its handle.

So far, I have blocked out the lower part and am trying to add in details such as this. What I usually do is try to use the 'inner' vertices created during the blocking out phase to trace out the details, but my geometry always ends up messy instead. Here's an example:

I translated the vertices I had to best fit the groove on the right, however I am bound to run into problems - the vertices in the top curve of the groove are going to go extremely close to the vertices that resulted from modeling the engraving on the top left. If I try to use those, then I end up with very awkward edge flow. I also attempted using the Knife Tool to cut some triangles, but they also result in extremely bad topology, not to mention that I've been repeatedly instructed to avoid triangles as much as possible (this is going to be a game asset).
The dealbreaker is that even after trying all those alternatives, when time comes to bevel the groove I also end up with bad geometry and checking the mesh under smooth shading gives me horrendous results.
Tthis is one of the walls I always end up running into when modeling complex hard surfaces. I'm including a .blend file in case you'd like to take a look, and am open to critique about my mesh overall. Thank you!
EDIT: Here's the blend file

I'm not sure about the precise problem you're pointing out, in my opinion, at first, you should not care about the grooves, just model the object with its shape and bumps, then, when the whole shape looks rather good, begin to engrave the grooves with the knife, then bevel, and extrude inwards... I think you chose another way and payed too much attention to the grooves from the beginning

I know, it seems like I can never explain this issue. Regardless, let me outline what I did, let's say for the lower part. I used a mirrored cube to first trace out the general shape of it, then inserted a few vertical loops to refine the shape and push out the parts that curve. Then, I did the etchings on the top area of the lower part of the gun - the one with the engraving.
My issue is that I ended up with uneven geometry. So now, I have trouble rerouting the vertices 'inside' the mesh to carve out the rest of the details such as the grooves. I hope this makes it clearer!

I would do it this way: First model the general shape of the gun with no worry for the grooves. Once your good, begin to draw the grooves lines with the knife. Keep using the knife to make sure you have mainly quads and not tris or ngons, then bevel the grooves, and extrude inwards. You'll have to bring some corrections of course. You could even separate the grip in several different meshes as anyway it will be hidden by the grooves.

For the main handle grip you are not far away. The top part has too many edges close together. I would increase the subdivision count for the handle and shape the edges as required. Bevel each edge for the groove and use a bevel x 2 and move the centre set of faces inward. Try for similar sized faces if you can. I am sure everyone has their own way of doing this.

I have exaggerated the groove on here so you can see it and added a subdivison surface x2. Done quickly but if you take your time I am sure you will do a good job.


text:
Modeling the grooves of a key
I am trying to recreate the usual grooves you'd see in a common machined key at the area shown in the image:

So far, I have tried both beveling an area and extruding down and even resorted to a Boolean difference. The latter obviously introduces extremely bad topology, so I guess there's a better way of doing it. Beveling results in a groove that's 1) too 'rectangular' instead of a nice cylindrical shape and 2) faces at the sharp end of the key that are not level with the groove, as shown below:

Is there a more efficient way to achieve that result? I've been away from modeling for a while, so excuse me if the question has an obvious answer. Any other feedback about my topology will be greatly appreciated. This is a model destined for a PC game and PBR texturing.


text:
How can I get a clean intersection for inner wall corner?
I'm creating a modular kit for a game level. I started out by making a regular wall, and I'm now trying to use it as the basis to create the corners. The wall has a pivot located at one of the bottom vertices that allows for easy grid snapping, as seen below. You can also see the outer corner I've already created.

The outer wall was created by duplicating the 'normal' wall and rotating by 90 degrees, which placed the main middle edge of the wall exactly on top of the duplicate and left a gap in the baseboard and moulding. I followed this technique to bridge the gap in the baseboard/moulding, which gave me an exact 90-degree outer corner.
I now want to create inner corners (concave). I duplicated the base wall again, and used a 90-degree rotation to place them in the correct orientation. Now, the walls intersect as seen below.
]
What I want to do is somehow make another perfect 90-degree corner while the mesh still occupies the same 2x2 square footprint exactly, but I can't get anything to work. I've tried two things:

Pulling the intersecting edges back, joining the meshes, and trying the same bridging technique. The result is a distorted, uneven bridging, despite the meshes being a carbon copy of each other.
Joining the meshes and using the Intersect (Knife) tool with Self Intersect. For some reason, it produces a triangle in the middle of one wall, and adds vertices in the straight joining edge.

Is there a way I can do this without resorting to manual vertex manipulation?

Why don't you just include corner pieces in your kit?

This is supposed to be the corner piece, I'm just trying to create it from the same mesh as the base wall to avoid inconsistencies.

Well, there are plenty of answers covering that. Like this one: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/105941/60759 . Or you could also rotate the geometry 45° and use symmetrize.


text:
Importing FBX Models
for some reason when I import FBX models (usually from sketchfab) - when I try to render them - the materials look like they are glass. But I finally realized its because it is turning on the mirror option when I import.  Any one know how to disable this?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures