text:
Is there a way I can make render times longer to avoid overheating?
Whenever I render a picture above 16 samplings with Cycles, my laptop crashes in 5-20 seconds.
Is there a way I can manually make the render time longer while not affecting the quality of the render, so it doesn't get my laptop so hot it self-crashes to not melt itself? (I'm willing to use Add-Ons and, if there is a denoiser that could make a render with 16 samplings look like a render with 128 or 64 samplings that's okay for me as well.)
I live in a very poor country and can't afford a decent PC/laptop. Maximum I can afford is something below 50$ (Which would hurt my wallet quite a lot).

Replace ur laptop. 16 sample overheat is like EN12-82 computational power.

I have a Lenovo laptop, $200 from a couple years ago, and it rendered cycles fairly slowly but not THAT bad. And Lenovo is currently like the cheapster brand that isn’t outright horrible.

Well I mean, I live in a very poor country and can't afford anything better than this.

The best thing I could buy right now is a 10-50$ laptop (If something like that even exists).

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/55868/how-to-prevent-blender-to-overheat-my-computer-while-rendering https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1666/how-to-stop-blender-from-making-the-cpu-overheat

None of the answers really solves the root of the problem. Ideally you should (carefully) try blowing out as much dust from the laptop if you can since it shouldn't really be overheating in the first place. You could also try a laptop cooling pad which would be relatively cheap. At any rate, just limiting the number of threads, particularly on a single/dual core laptop may not be a great help. On both Windows and Linux it is possible to set a CPU governor/power profile to restrict the CPU from running at full power at the cost of speed which would solve the problem in other applications too

@James Answers should go in the Answers section.

@pipe: The OP hasn't even mentioned which OS they are using or what kind of CPU they have, meaning there is not enough information to give a detailed answer. I suspect it might also be considered off-topic by some

You may be able to fiddle with your Power settings: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/926390/how-can-i-deliberately-slow-windows#comment64586762_926444

Hi michael. Where do you live and what laptop (CPU/RAM) do you currently have?

Just to check. Is your laptop full of dust? A cheap laptop is expected to be slow, but not to overheat. If it's old simply cleaning the dust out of the fans may help reduce overheating

@James My laptop isn't dusty at all and I do have a cooling pad I bought about 5 years ago.

Here is a related SuperUser post.
In Blender, you can lower the number of threads by going to Render Properties -> Performance.

Change from auto-detect and lower the number of threads.
I lowered mine to 2 and started a CPU render and it does appear to split the compute load pretty evenly among the processor cores, so one part of the chip won't necessarily be hotter than the other and it should prevent an overheat.

(This PC runs pretty hot.) :)
It's also worth quickly noting that denoising is a processor intensive task in itself, so it may not be a solution.

Additional to the other answers, you've also asked for a denoiser - I don't know if you've already tried the Denoise node in the Compositor, it's quite good. Usually you're supposed to turn on View Layer Properties > Passes > Denoising Data with it, but testing this I couldn't see much of a difference. So to use it, go to the Compositor, press Shift+A to Add > Filter > Denoise and plug it between Render Layers and Composite.
Here an example image with node setup:

Curious, is this a photo or a render?

@HashimAziz It's a render... that's why the image on the left is noisy without the Denoise Node.

Besides Allen's answer, which is correct, you could also try to lower down memory consumption (which is called "memory cache limit") in the blender references.

Another try worth might be to denoise in a 2nd step...

If there's ever a non-built-in way to do this (luckly Blender has it), you can change the CPU affinity in Task Manager details view.

Threads auto detected in Blender: 16

Cores actually used:

Also, if overheating is caused by Turbo Boost feature, you can prevent that by setting the maximum CPU usage to 99% in the power options.


text:
Blender 2.77 Mac Installation-Python 3.5 files could not be opened
When unzipping the Blender 2.77 download file (blender-2.77-OSX_10.6-x86_64.zip) I get an error message "Could not extract the file 'blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.77/python/lib/python3.5/pycache/future.cpython-35.pyc': The file could not be opened".
If I click 'continue' I get a series of 'could not be opened' errors for what I assume is every file in the python 3.5 library.
I've not been able to find any information on this and don't see anywhere to ask about this at blender.org. I've not had this problem with previous installations of Blender.
I'm using a 2008 iMac running OSX Yosemite (10.10.5). Any thoughts?

I would recommend redownloading blender. I once (somehow) got a bad download, and blender would not start.

I took your suggestion and, after rebooting, I downloaded once from each of the 3 mirror sites but got the same error each time I tried to unzip the files.

I learned that my problem was due to using an outdated version of The Unarchiver (version 1.0.1) to unzip the Blender 2.77a zip file. Upgrading OSX over the years did not upgrade this utility. Installing the most recent version of The Unarchiver from the App Store allowed me to unzip the Blender file normally with no error messages.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Why do the objects in this rigid body simulation rotate too slowly?
I was attempting to simulate a bowling ball impacting a set of pins, however the pins just slide away instead of going flying like they should:

As you can see, the origins are in the correct place.
What is causing this?
Blendfile

Could you post your settings for the rigid bodies? I tried to rebuild your scene and it works just fine here.

@Haunt_House I linked to my .blend, can you use that?

I have it open right now. Sorry, my brain doesn't get much food nowadays. I tipped one of your victims 45 degrees and it's tilting veeeery slowly. so there's simulation going on, but for some reason, the rotation is extremely damped.

@Haunt_House It looks like the origins are way off, but they aren't..

Did the solution work for you?

@Haunt_House sorry, I was afk. That seems to have done it! thanks :)

One is glad to be of service. Funny enough, if you scale objects down, they not only turn slower, but they start to become quite bouncy. They rock back and forth quite a lot before settling on the ground.

@Haunt_House Odd. perhaps a bug? I though the new viewport bullet physics system was supposed to be able to handle scaling.. :/

More like a missing feature. Feel free to submit it anyway.

Your pins are scaled to 0.144. Seems like the simulation doesn't like that. Apply the scale with CtrlA and you should be fine.

Probably something to do with the mass calculation

@GregZaal wouldn't that mean the mass would be 330 times smaller, so the pins would accelerate 330 times faster? F = m a and all that.

When you clear scale (Alt+S) it'll be bigger, so more mass.

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


text:
How can I place the rollers of a corner roller conveyor evenly?
I manually copied each roller by hand and rotated/translated into place but it is not exact. How can I automate this?

This may help https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6023/how-to-make-a-circular-array-using-offset-object-as-center

Doing it by hand can be very precise and actually one of the faster ways.
First figure out how many rollers you need, then divide 90 by that number and you have the amount of degrees between each roller. For this example, I use 9 additional rollers, making it an even 10 degrees.
Then place the 3D-Cursor in the center of your curve and set the pivot point in the header to 3D-cursor.

Select your roller, duplicate it with SHIFTD and then without even confirming that hit R10RETURN.
That way, Blender considers duplication and rotation as a single action, not two.
You can now use the repeat hotkey SHIFTR to create lots of rollers and they will be rotated evenly around the cursor. No manual translation needed anymore.
If they don't have to turn, you could use an array modifier with object origin or dupliframes, spin tool or similar, but this solution is the fastest that I know and leaves the rollers as separate objects, ready for animation.
Sometimes it might be useful to put the object center of the rollers into the center of the curve using set origin in the tools area. But you should be fine with the method mentioned above.
You can use ALTD to create linked copies instead of SHIFTD if you want to save a bit of memory and filesize. All rollers will then use the same mesh.

One is glad to be of service.

While it is possible to do this manually, it can be slightly tedious, especially if you need large numbers of rollers. Another disadvantage is that you have to repeat this method if you want to change the angle.
Another technique would be to use the array modifier. Note that this method will make it difficult to animate individual rollers. Add the array modifier to the roller, and create an empty close to the roller:

Now, in the modifier, set the count to the number of rollers you need. Uncheck relative offset and check object offset. Under object offset, select the empty you just created:

Select the empty. Whatever transformations you make will be repeated as many times as you specified in the modifier. In your case, you will need some rotation and translation:

Now, you have more control if you later want to change the angle or the separation.

A good solution as long as the rollers are not intended to do any rolling. The array modifier is one big mesh with the object origin at the original object. Separating it afterwards and moving the object origins still won't fix the local axes. You'd need to parent them to bones then.

@Haunt_House Ah, now I understand why you suggested copying the rollers. The OP didn't mention that they had to do something, though.

Both solutions have their uses. The array modifier with object offset is a creative beast.

This is a good way to make the rollers, makes it easy to make adjustments until they are the way you want them. After they are in place you can apply the array modifier. You can separate by loose parts if you want each as individual objects.


text:
how to rig this object (function compass)?
I'm trying to make something like a compass which is used to draw functions on paper.

but I'm stuck and I have no idea how to rig it.
I want to make an animation to show how it works and I want to make an interactive bone so when the two legs move on their axis the parts in the middle move with them and become wider or thinner when the legs get separated or close to eachother.
Update: well I made an armature myself and it almost works. The only problem is I don't know how to pin those holes together.
the whole thing is I have rigged humans but I don't know how to rig mechanical parts.

Update 2: I tried to use a copy scale constraint to change the scale of both vertical and horizontal bones (middle ones) together but the problem is when I scale one of them up the other one will scale up as well (which is actually why its used for) but the other bone should be the smaller so the joints stay together.
How to inverse the copy scale constraint?
update 3: first of all sorry for the question itself its a bit confusing
so I made a animation of what I'm trying to do (it uses a simple armature)

I want to make an armature that by moving each of those legs in their axis
the rest of the object moves with it

can't add more than 2 links for now  this is the link   http://www.pasteall.org/blend/40938

http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/48447/935

this is the blend file of the animation

The trick is to use IK constraints mostly. Here's my setup:

Main is the root bone
pointer is a child of tip 1
big 1 is a child of pointer
big 2 is a child of big 1
small 1 is a child of big 1, not connected
small 2 is a child of small 1
small target is a child of big 2, not connected, no inherited rotation
tip 1 is a child of Main, not connected
tip 2 is a child of small 1 but doesn't inherit rotation
tip 3 is a child of Main

tip 2 might need a copy rotation constraint to tip 1 or tip 3 if you rotate the whole rig other than around Z.
Main is there to move everything. A handle of sorts for the whole compass.
pointer has a locked track constraint pointing to tip 3. Since the IKs are parented to it, they act in local space and won't flip even if the compass turns upside down using Main.

big 2 has an IK Constraint pointing to tip 3, chain length 2, it's the classic and simplest arm or leg rig.
small 2 has an IK Constraint to small target, chain length 2. Same thing, just upside down and parented to the big IK bones.

Now the rig moves correctly whether you move tip 1 or tip 3.

If you're having trouble using a rig, you could always use shape keys! To add a shape key, go to the object data panel and click the + under shape keys. The first one will be the basis key and then add another one. With that one selected, go into edit mode and adjust the mesh how you want it to look. Then go to object mode and drag the slider bar under the shape key and you will see it work.

no shape keys don't do the trick


text:
Text information about parameters in the picture (render result)
I would like to test a few different render parameters like nr of samples on the same scene. It would be much easier for me to be able to actually show the parameter information in the picture as a small text somewhere at the bottom of the image. Is there any way to do this?
I've prepared an example result of what I am looking for:

You have the text for output in metadata chapter of render tab in properties editor. You can access it from your script. I've used something like this to output some values:
import bpy

def driverFunc():
    'it returns clamp indirect value based on frame number, also changes text in the stamp'

    frame = bpy.context.scene.frame_current
    samples = bpy.context.scene.cycles.samples
    cli = bpy.context.scene.cycles.sample_clamp_indirect

    cli = 30.0
    #set stamp text
    bpy.context.scene.render.stamp_note_text = "s" + str(samples) + "; cli" + str(cli)
    return cli

    if (frame == 1):
        cli = 0.0
    else:
        if (frame < 11):    #first ten = +1.0
            cli = (frame - 1) * 1.0
        else:               #all next = +10.0
            cli = (frame - 10) * 10.0

    #set stamp text
    bpy.context.scene.render.stamp_note_text = "s" + str(samples) + "; cli" + str(cli)

    return cli

bpy.app.driver_namespace['driverFunc'] = driverFunc    # add function to driver_namespace

I added driver for clamp value, you can use some unused property of some object just to get this work on render. Otherwise it will not update the props. In the driver expression I used this driverFunc() call, (which value could matter or not), but it has a side effect - it sets bpy.context.scene.render.stamp_note_text.
Just create the empty text with ".py" extension, paste the code, fix it to show your own values, run the script, and then you can use the name of the function in any driver.
Do not hesitate to output metadata, it will show only in combined layer of render result. When you save the multi-layer exr, for example, no source layers contain the text, so you can freely compose them to the final image.
Hope it will help.
And I used it for an interior as well :-)

Blender 2.80 makes it really easy to add metadata plus a custom note to any rendering...

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


text:
How could one pixelate 3D models like in the photos below?
I want to pixelate 3D models for a game project, i don't know if it's possible to do in blender but what would be the best way to achieve this?

Have you tried disabling anti aliasing ?

To pixelate the image, as explained here by Dantti, first render your image then use this node setup in the Compositor: Render Layers > (Distort) Scale > (Filter) Pixelate > (Distort) Scale > Output and choose a value of 0.1 in the first Scale and 10 in the second, or 0.05 and 20 and so on, so that it reduces your image and bring it back to its original scale with pixelation:

To increase the anti-aliasing effect maybe you need to use materials wih Emission node only, but as Lolock says it's not clear what you want to do with your blend file as you're talking about a game.
If you want to kind of pixelate the object itself, use the Remesh modifier (Blocks mode), you need to set the Octree Depth value to choose the cube size:

I didn't mean pixelate like this, i want to pixelate them like just in the images. Pixels look like they are being distorted

But doing this in Blender is useless if you want to use these models in a game. The reason why these old games were aliased like that is specifically because they had no anti-aliasing and were displayed in a very low resolution. So just do that in your game engine and you will have the same result.

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


text:
Joining two curves in geometry nodes (Blender 3.1)
I would like to create a lemniscate, which is a figure 8. I would like it to rise as it swoops back and forth. I tried to do model the 2-d version using polar coordinates [r^2=(a^2)cos(2theta)] or rectangular/cartesian [(x^2+y^2)^2=(a^2)*(x^2-y^2)], but couldn't figure out how.
So, I tried to do a workaround using arcs. I was able to make two arcs and join them, then put in a little bit of height. However, there is a gap between the two arcs/curves. This occurs where the first curve ends and the second begins. How can I join them so there is no gap (i.e., so it is one long curve)? Then, how can I turn that into an array?
If anyone does also know a workaround on the polar plotting, that would also be hugely appreciated!
Thank you!!!!!

This page, (8) and (9) give you the parametric form, so you can do something like this.. If you let us know what you mean by 'rise up and down', we can tweak it.

@RobinBetts: why not copy that as an answer? ;)

Hi @Chris! Well....  OP could be specifically about joining (which, keeping indexes clean, is a bit  of a trick?)... or 'rising and falling' .. I thought I'd wait and see..

@RobinBetts Thank you very much. I apologize that I wasn't clear. In the non-polar solution, I want to see how to make the two sets of points in the curves read as one so that it is one curve with no gaps between points. Right now there is a gap between the end point of the first curve and the start point of the second. That becomes evident when I adjusted the z of the curves as can be seen in the viewport in the attached picture to the original post.

@RobinBetts With regard to the polar page, thank you. I had found that page as well, but have no idea how to input it into the X, Y, Z Function Surface Function that Blender has, or, more helpfully, input it in as math in Geometry Nodes so that I can adjust the Z position (that was what I meant by rising and falling) on my own and can also adjust the number of rotations afterwards (in other words, make a series of six connected rising lemniscates).

By 'connected lemniscates' do you mean a spirograph pattern? If not, could you illustrate? (BTW, the .blend of the way to get the simple lemniscate is linked in the original comment)

@RobinBetts Wow!!! I totally missed the Blend file. That was exactly what I was looking for! Thank you so much. I wish I could say I fully followed the math. It would be great to understand it to get around Blender's lack of polar functions. I was able, though, to easily take it and add on a height function and a # of turns function. See Blender File Here. How were you able to do this so quickly? I'm very impressed and thankful.

@Dave Cool! No problem. I'll make it into an answer tomorrow.

If your curve can be expressed in a parametric form (i.e. its X,Y and Z as a function of distance along some 'timeline' t), then producing it through Geometry Nodes is just a question of plumbing.
Create an arbitrary curve, sample it at the desired resolution, and then set the X,Y and Z of its points to the parametric function of its (0->1) Curve Parameter .
In your case, the parametric form of the 2D curve can be found in this reference, (8) and (9). The function is based on sin and cos, so it's cyclic with a period of 2*pi.
The bulk of this tree is just a transliteration of the 2D reference. @Dave has made the necessary adjustments, (marked red) to add a number of turns, in Z:

.. with this usage:

@Dave's  .blend  can be found here.

I thought I would try this using the polar equation

Some helpful notes:
1- I watched a tutorial that was very helpful in explaining each part of the node network that deals with polar equations. link here
2- I used the Math Formula add-on to create the equation.  Add-on link here.
Video of how to use the add-on link here.
3- Also my transition isn't very smooth in the center of the lemniscate.
Here's the main equation:

The full node network:

What it looks like:

Blend file link here:


text:
Rain drops not rendering in rendered animation but appear in viewport
So, i just followed a Tutorial on youtube to make rain. It works all good, viewport is perfect, animation too but once i render it... Its simply not there. The "Show Emitter" box is checked, i tried everything and looked everywhere but i can't seem find any answers that solve my problem.i've been looking for hours now in blender and can't find the problem. Is it a bug? did i do something wrong? Idk but can someone help me please, im new to blender.

Hello, could you please share the emitter and the particle object? https://pasteall.org/blend/

There is my full scene: https://pasteall.org/media/0/7/077714af67c50d2fcf6ed4a53730e905.blend

In viewport everything looks okay but i noticed that once i start to render the animation, the rain drops dont fall, they stay on the circle or in mid air but never reach the umbrella.

weird, it's seems to work here, this is what i get: https://zupimages.net/up/22/07/e2po.jpg

Yeah so i just tried to render the image and its perfectly fine, the animation however doesn't want to do it...

Rendering it into multiple PNGs instead of FFmpeg format doesn't work either.

you're right, that said if you bake the emission it will work, please try, it may be just that

how can you do that? Im really new to blender, i don't know the ins and outs of this program.

In the Particle System panel, choose the end frame and under Cache, press on Bake, it will pre-calculate the particle emission and the render should correctly work. It's generally better to bake a particle emission or a physic simulation before rendering:

YEEEEES! Thank you a lot! finallyyyyyyyy !!!


text:
Misalignment of depth map when projecting two views into 3D point cloud

Similar to this question, I'm projecting two views (RGBD) back to 3D point cloud, but observed severe misalignment.
The two views are generated using the same blender script. The blender file is here.
What I did was using the camera intrinsics and extrinsics obtained from rendering to project the two views back to 3D points (in world coordinate).
I converted the exported .exr depth to .npy, but I can confirm that it's identical to loading it directly using cv2.
Here's the script for projection:

def convert(c2w):
    # convert a c2w matrix in blender format to extrinsics matrix in opencv format
    # return np.linalg.inv(c2w)
    R, T = c2w[:3, :3], c2w[:3, 3:]
    ww = np.array([[1, 0, 0],
         [0, -1, 0],
         [0, 0, -1]])
        #  [0, 0, 0, 1]])
    R_ = R.T
    T_ = -1 * R_ @ T
    R_ = ww @ R_
    T_ = ww @ T_
    print(R_.shape, T_.shape)
    new = np.concatenate((R_, T_), axis=1)
    # new = torch.inverse(torch.from_numpy(ww @ c2w).float())
    new = np.concatenate((new, np.array([[0, 0, 0, 1]])), axis=0)
    return new

with open("./results_400/transforms.json", 'r') as f:
    meta2 = json.load(f)
ref_frame = meta2["frames"][4]
# ref_frame = meta2["frames"][59]
ref_c2w = np.array(ref_frame['transform_matrix'])
ref_c2w = convert(ref_c2w)
ref_c2w = torch.FloatTensor(ref_c2w)
# ref_c2w is converted to be exprinsics matrix
image_path2 = os.path.join(root_dir, f"{ref_frame['file_path']}.png")
print(image_path2)
ref_img = Image.open(image_path2).resize([400, 400], Image.LANCZOS).convert('RGB')

# plt.imshow(img)
# plt.imshow(src_img)

focal = 0.5*400/np.tan(0.5*meta['camera_angle_x'])
K = np.array([[focal, 0, (400 - 1) / 2], [0, focal, (400 - 1) / 2], [0, 0, 1]])
K = torch.from_numpy(K).float()

from PIL import Image
new_depth = torch.from_numpy(np.load('./blender/r_4_400.npy')).float()
new_depth[new_depth > 1000] = 0
new_depth = new_depth[:, :, 0]

y_ref,x_ref=torch.meshgrid([torch.arange(0, 400),
                               torch.arange(0, 400)])
y_ref, x_ref = y_ref.reshape(400 * 400), x_ref.reshape(400 * 400)

# xyz_ref = torch.stack((x_ref, y_ref, torch.ones_like(x_ref))).unsqueeze(0) * (new_depth.view(1,-1).unsqueeze(1))
xyz_ref = torch.matmul(torch.inverse(K), torch.stack((x_ref, y_ref, torch.ones_like(x_ref))).unsqueeze(0) * (new_depth.view(1,-1).unsqueeze(1)))

points = torch.matmul((torch.inverse(ref_c2w)), torch.cat((xyz_ref, torch.ones_like(x_ref.unsqueeze(0)).repeat(1,1,1)),dim=1))[:,:3,:]
save_ply(points.reshape(3, -1).permute(1, 0).numpy(), torch.from_numpy(np.array(ref_img)).float().permute((2, 0, 1)).view(3, -1).permute(1, 0), 'points.ply')

Proof it works: https://i.sstatic.net/dbYak.jpg
As said in the previous comment, just follow my answer to this question
Depth Pass to Point-cloud (with AN)
I forgot to mention in that answer, that you have to add an empty at 0,0,0 and then use the draw method of the PointCloudVisualizer. That is because we calculated the Blender world-coordinates from the depthimage + the camera coordinates.
Here are the .ply files, so you could verify it: files
I used the following packages for reference (of course there are 50+ other packages that pip will throw in there as well):

blender-2.83.20-candidate+daily.92d3a152391a
opencv-contrib-python==4.5.1.48
numpy==1.19.2
open3d==0.15.1

Thank you for your suggestion, honestly I think our codes are doing the same thing. Let me give it a try.

https://imgtu.com/i/berI4U I ran your script and found that the mesh don't align. I'm not sure if your cam.matrix_world is correct. It should be 4x4 matrix, but the points in 3d is 3d, so cam_mat @ Vector(p) errors.

@SCaffrey I edited it to an answer. I hope that it will now also work for you.


text:
Make points more linear
I'm beginner on Blender and I don't find how make points more linear like that red line (We can see points up and down the line) :

Goal is not to make a beautiful render, but a beautiful 3D print.
I know I can set them at the good place one by one but there is a function to help to do that?
I've try the "Smooth" tool (Cube 2x2x2 icon) but the result isn't very good
3D View :

Is that surface flat? or are the vertices capturing a curvature? Could you show us?

The surface isn't flat, see my update please ;)

One option could be to go to sculpting mode and use Flatten  tool.

A little silly to not suggest the smooth  tool first:

Prety cool :). I don't use sculpting tools, so I had no idea this exists.

One of the many perks of using a multi-purpose software :)

Both of these brushes will flatten the shape and change it drastically not preserving the original curvature. The only option is to use Surface Smooth Brush (a smooth brush with deformation set to Surface under tool settings)


text:
Why cant I view objects in render mode?
I am new to blender and i am following a tutorial series. For some reason I am not able to view the platform in my rendered image or in render mode. I am able to view them in material preview and other modes. I even duplicated the platform for making the wall and that too isn't visible.
This is in material preview.

This is in render mode

if my answer doesn't work, please provide blend file

Tap on filter in Outliner -> check camera icon.

Check now in outliner whether the camera icon on the right is checked. (it should be checked to show in render)


text:
How to decrease the size of particle for fluid simulation(2.9)?
I'm following this YouTube tutorials and making fluid go through the pipe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ChtnI8GNtM
When I make pipe very thin (e,g, 0.03m in diameter), then particle size of fluid exceeds the thickness of pipe, and the particle will not go through the pipe.
Is there a way to control the size of particle itself so I can make the  particle go through the pipe?

First of all, your particles in your viewport display are HUGE!! IDK why you have them set so high, but suit yourself. If you don't want this and/or have accidentally changed it to  look like this, then go to the particle settings tab for your fluid domain object, click on the particle settings for fluid, and go to viewport display.
Scroll down to the setting for particle display "size", and set it to a reasonable size of about 0.01. Now they aren't as big.
Now, you want the particles to be smaller so they "fit" inside the tube you want to have the simulated fluid flow through.
You have to set the resolution much higher to do this. Currently, it appears as if you have the default resolution for fluid baking (32) set. I would recommend a value of at least 100 for preview baking, and around 200+ for final resolution baking.
To change this, simply go to the domain settings and change the "resolution divisions" to the value of your preference.
I hope this helps!

Thank you!!! That worked!!

Where is "particle display size" setting? (In Blender 3).

Under Particle settings > Viewport display > size


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How do I simulate multiple connected pivot joints in a mechanism?
Hi i am doing a dynamic simulation for a project and i want to simulate movement of multiple connected pivot joints. This will be explained further in the following images:
This is the mechanism in State 1, before link extension:

The links in orange is State 2, which i want the links to be in when i move the left and right platform outwards:

How do I specify these pin joint constraints to achieve this mechanism?
Thanks!

is it ok if you make it move with only one of the two platforms? https://zupimages.net/up/22/09/25bv.gif

@moonboots: but in your gif you moved 2...or not!?

@ Chris, I make the left move with the right one, I can't do the opposite with this solution

@moonboots yes, that works! As long as i have a means of controlling the mechanism :)

With this solution you can activate the whole movement with the right platform:

Create this armature, bone_r and bone_l are parented to axis_r and axis_l, axis_l is parented to axis_r, the other bones are not parented:

Here are the constraints that have been assigned to the different bones: A Limit Rotation to pole_r so that it moves along one axis only:

An Ik is given to bone_r with pole_r as controller:

An Ik is given to bone_l with pole_l as controller:

And at last a Copy Location is given to pole_l with pole_r as Target:


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Disable Viewport center point, Navigation Guide
How disable the blue center point in 3D viewport?
It should be a simple option somewhere. I've been look around the settings and internet but still no answer.

This looks like a dot drawn with the annotation tool. Annotations can be hidden by disabling Annotations in the Viewport Overlays options. Alternatively you could hold your mouse button on the annotation tool and switch to the eraser, then draw over the dot to remove it permanently. If this solves your problem I can post it as an answer.

or select the annotation tool (on the left panel), keep pressing ctrl and draw to erase

It's not an annotation. But a center point of the viewport. Like what you have in the FPS game.

That's not a thing in Blender, as far as I'm aware. Have you tried erasing it? Based on your description and the screenshot it seems to be an annotation drawn with the placement set to View (it will stay at a fixed location in the viewport).

If it were a grease pencil object, it should show up in the outliner and be selectable.

It's not grease pencil, not annotation. I'd tried to earse and got error 'Nothing to erase'. And It's a new installation today.

Can you share the project file? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

It's just a blank file. I'm quite sure it's not any annotation. https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/KplV0G9b/

Do you have a NDOF input device? Perhaps the Show Navigation Guide is active (Edit > Preferences > Input > NDOF). See this thread from blenderartists.org as reference.

Edit > Preferences > Input > NDOF>Show Nevigation Guide. Unchecked and the dot is gone. Thanks for all for being helpful. I don't hvae any NDOF device thou.

The center dot is called Navigation Guide.
Go to Preferences and uncheck the Show Navigation Guide
Edit > Preferences > Input > NDOF> Show Navigation Guide

Blender Manual
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.90/editors/preferences/input.html

Thank you Robert Gützkow for the answer in comment.


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How do I make a Chowder-esque texture?
How would one go about texturing an object where the texture stays fixed relative to the screen even if the object is moving?
Additional reference (the 'unmoving plaid' trope):
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnmovingPlaid

Please contain all the information in your question. It should be easy to describe it without the link. Links can expire.

Also: Gankutsuou overdose ( :

Well, I agree it would take two pictures in this case.

The texture Coordinate node has an output called 'Window'. That means a texture is mapped according to the four corners of your rendered image.

Just create a texture that has the same aspect ration as your picture and you are done.

Tvtropes puts it nicely: It's as if the clothing the character is wearing isn't so much patterned as it is a cloth-based wormhole to a similarly patterned universe (unmoving plaid).
And this is how it looks:


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Rendering goes black after frame 1000

When I render this once it hits frame 1000 and an above it only renders black.
The black frame is frame 1000 and the other one is frame 999.

Check the preview, maybe the camera is going to somewhere where it shoudn't., and please, share the file so it gets easier for us to identify the problem.

You may have run out of memory. First of all, lower render resolution. If it's not possible, you may need to make it a little less realistic.


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" ***stack smashing detected***: <unknown> terminated" on choosing an object
Blender 2.79b in ArcoLinux 19.01.4:
Upon choosing an object, Blender terminates, with
" stack smashing detected:  terminated"
Any ideas about what may cause this problem?

Well, clearly it is a bug, so trying to get around it will not be good. Try to use older versions and, if possible, report the issue to developers at Blender site.

closed as off-topic by Ray Mairlot, Duarte Farrajota Ramos, Scott Milner, m.ardito, David♦ Feb 3 at 14:33: Sorry guys, I thought the info was relevant to the question.

Well, I've learned much. I wanted to report a bug, and on the website, one of the suggestions was to download the newest version before reporting a bug, so I downloaded 2.79.7. When I opened my project and selected an object, Blender still crashed, but it rewarded me with new information...as I remember, the information said something about sRBG display not supported, defaulting to "NONE.", and I needed to check my User Preferences file. I looked through the User Preferences thoroughly several times, but found nothing relating to sRBG or any choices regarding that. So I downloaded 2.78c, which still supported sRBG, evidently, because when I selected an object, it didn't crash.
Joel Gomes da Silva was correct with his answer about using older versions, but curiosity and stubbornness prevailed, and I learned a lot. Thank you Joel!


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Text turns into squares in BGE, text not visible
A sample file with dynamic text was created, and works fine. The same information was added to this working file, but when "P" is pressed, the text turns into a colored square. Here's a before and after pressing "P":

The next pic shows debug information confirming the text is being changed:

In fact, this is the same with ALL the text in this file, static or dynamic. Obviously, I'm missing a setting somewhere. Any ideas would be appreciated.
I found this information on Recording number of checkpoints passed:
We first need to change the font, because the default font will not display in the game engine. (an answer by X-27)
I'm doing research on that now.
Here's a screenshot of the AlarmBox with logic bricks.

I've changed to several different fonts. The same problem exists.

Would you try to alt + c to convert to mesh? If that doesn't work, try to give it a positive depth, which can be very small if you need it to be, and then convert.

@SilverRain: Converting to a mesh wouldn't work in this instance, it needs to be dynamic so when the low- and hi-angle alarms are being set, the numbers will change. Having said that, there are other places I could use that information. Also all the text has been extruded a bit to give it some height. Thanks for your thought!

What do you say you upload the blend to https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ and I see if I can recreate the error on my end?

@SilverRain: 37.1mb size...still want it?

@SilverRain: How about a few .png's relating to the parts of the program that are affected?

Well, like I said, to test it I would need the full blend. If it’s that big though, you might not want to upload it for fear someone might take it, if the website even lets you. But yes, if you upload it 37.1 MB is nothing. If you feel uncomfortable sharing, I reccomend you do not, just try it on newer computers.

Oh, did you do the usual, use a computer made in the last three years, updated graphics cards, windows 7/10, suitable RAM, etc.?

@SilverRain: Asrock 4-core, refurbished in March 2017, NVIDIA Graphics GP107 GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, 16GB Ram, AntiX-Linux 17 with all the updates. I sure hope that would be enough! Also, not afraid to share, but there's a 30MB limit to upload files. This file is an almost completed 25 ton P&H Omega Rough Terrain Crane. The boom doesn't have any text involved, I'll remove the boom and ship the rest your way.

Aha Linux. AFAIK, any professional will use Windows 7/10, macOS or at least Ubuntu. What do you say you try running the game on Windows 7/10 and see if you still have a problem. It might not be the answer you were looking for, but I think it is very likely.

@SilverRain: I'll remove the alarm box in the program before I revert to THAT inferior platform! I could rant on that, but I'll be nice...Thanks for your time.

@SilverRain: Actually, as I said previously, the example file I made (in AntiX-Linux 17) works flawlessly. There's something in my crane program that I did incorrectly. With enough time and effort, I'll stumble across it eventually.

UPDATE: I made another alarm box in a new file, (tested, works fine), put it in a library. Got rid of the alarm box that doesn't work in the crane. Appended the alarm box from the library, the crane turned black, as if I turned off the lighting, I press "P" and the crane shows normally, lighted, but the same happens with  numbers in the alarm box as in the first alarm box...a colored block, no numbers. I've repeated the remove and append procedure several times with same result. The crane stays black after the appended alarm box is removed, and when I reload the crane file, Blender crashes.

It looks like the background object is covering the text.
You need some distance between the text and it's background.

In wireframe mode, I turned the image 90 degrees after I put the text in place to ensure the text was extended above the background.The text is well above the background. Just now, I even increased the distance between the two with the same result. Thanks for your input.


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Why my point lamp is going in one direction only?
My point lamp is lighting in one direction and I don't know why. I've tried rotating and it doesn't work.

Glad if anyone could help.
Thanks
Edit: I found out the normal map was affecting somehow. anf answer helped a lot.

Your normal map node's strength is very high. Try setting it below 1.
If you are using the same image texture, it is better to use a bump node and connect it to the height input.
If you have a proper normal map (the purple ones), the image texture node should be set to non-color data and be connected to a normal map node'.


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Scripting: How do I add a keyframe after the object has been modified?
I honestly can not figure this out...
How do I add a keyframe frame for each time this loop executes?
Right now this code adds a keyframe, but it doesn't add the modifier to the keyframe I think.
import bpy

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False)
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=2, enter_editmode=False, align='WORLD', location=(0, 0,
0), scale=(1, 1, 1))
bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='SCREW')

bpy.context.scene.frame_current = 1
bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu(type='LocRotScaleCProp')

for t in range(1,10):

  bpy.context.scene.frame_current = t
  bpy.data.collections['Collection'].objects['Cube'].modifiers['Screw'].screw_offset = t
  bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu(type='LocRotScaleCProp')

and why do you think this codes adds a keyframe?

I am using Blender 3.0.1
Yeah, type='LocRotScaleCProp' won't work for modifiers.
Do it this way:
# -- Delete all
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False)

# -- New cube
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=1)
obj = bpy.context.active_object
# -- Add modifier
bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='SCREW')

bpy.context.scene.frame_current = 1

for t in range(0, 10):
    bpy.context.scene.frame_current = t
    obj.modifiers['Screw'].screw_offset = t
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path='modifiers["Screw"].screw_offset', frame=t)


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Consistancy problem with texture brushes in grease pencil
I have a problem with grease pencil, when i draw with the textured brushes, the density (or subdivision) change depending of the zoom or the brush size.
Also, when drawing circle or rectangle, it's all doted even at max subdivision.
I was hopping to put toonboom in the bin and go full Blender but this is a bit of a problem for my workflow and style.
Is there a solution for consistancy in the lines ?
Thank's for reading me.


text:
Lines with dots and density changing with zoom
[
Hi,
Why my line are doted like that in grease pencil ? It does that only with textured brushes, also density change depending on zoom, thanks.

Just change dots stroke to solid stroke.

Hi ! Thanks, but it erase the texture of the brush, it seems blender is not capable to make circles for exemple with textured brushes. I am looking for textured brush like the one in toon boom who are vectors.


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Lighting on a mesh is dark and inconsistent. How do I fix this?

Hello. I am creating a FNaF Fan-game of my own, and I wanted to create a concept trailer witch shows some ideas I have for the game before I make it.
However, in the cycles Render Engine, the character on the left (Sweetheart), has some messed up lighting compared to the character on the right (Sweetie). It looks like shes in the darkness even though there is a spot light pointed straight at her.
I was following this tutorial on how to create Scratched plastic materials( Procedural Scratched Plastic (Blender Tutorial) by Ryan King Art ) to make Sweetie's suit look more detailed. I believe that I messed up by simply copying and pasting all of the shader and texture nodes over to Sweetheart's Materials so that I didn't have to remake the shader nodes all over again for her character model. The models for both characters are not high poly, both of them are about 113,000 vertices and 110,000 faces each.
What can I do to make the lighting look better on Sweetheart's model, and what can I do to prevent this issue from happening again? because this is bugging me a lot more that it should.

You would need to use a broader and/or larger light source. Currently it is as if you are using a spot light.

As @Dontwalk said, your light isn't very broad. If you look at the wall behind your characters the, light and shadow, you can see that the spotlight merely shines on the upper body (on both characters I would say, only that you can't see down to the feet in darkness on the right one). Apart from that I don't think the left one looks much darker than the other, only that this more brown/earthy color scheme isn't as vibrant as the pink one.

For re-using the shader and textures: there's no need for copying and pasting all nodes manually to a new material. Just give the new character the same material. Then in the Shader Editor you can see the number 2 next to the material's name. If you click on this number, the material gets duplicated (you can see it by changing the name from e.g. "Material" to "Material.001" and the number disappearing). Now the second character has its own material based on the first and you can edit it without changing the other.

@GordonBrinkmann OML thank you for the advice! I needed to learn this so badly! I can't thank you enough!


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I have a sphere that I have added a cell fracture to. I can add a material to one fractured part but how do I add the same material to all of the them

Any idea how I add the same material to all of the fractured parts. It would be easy to select all of the parts and add a material but this is blender and its not a simple as that.

Why not give material first and after that fracture the mesh?

Just select all objects and at last the object with the material you want to apply to all others. Then press CTRL-L -> Materials:


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How to eliminate visual artifacts in rendered output when using the Speed Control effect?
I'm composing a 2D video from two different sources, with the final product being at 30 FPS.
One of the sources was recorded at true 30 FPS, and the video & audio streams have the same number of frames when I add the Movie/Sound strips.
The other source, however, is slightly off: the audio came in at 14,726 frames and the video 14,876 frames.
So I added a Speed Control effect attached to the video strip, and set the speed factor to 1.010 (14,876/14,726). When I preview the video in Blender, the audio and video are synced up perfectly and the video looks just like the source.
The problem is that when I render the video, it ends up containing visual artifacts like jitteryness and sometimes even speedups and repeats that aren't synchronized with the audio (sorry, this is hard to describe in words). The audio track itself is fine. I thought it might be a problem with the output format, so I tried a few different ones, and found this happens even if I render to a set of images (I simulated playback using Windows Photo Gallery).
The artifacts disappear if I remove the Speed Control effect, but of course, the video & audio are no longer in sync.
Am I doing something wrong here (I'm new to Blender)? Is there any alternate method to accomplish this? I need something that works reliably and efficiently as this isn't a one-time-only project.
(I also found there appears to be issues doing soft cutting with the Speed Control effect -- I may be misunderstanding how to do that -- so my goal at this point is to first convert the entire video source on its own, and then do all the cutting in the final step.)
I'm using Blender 2.68a. I tried using the latest dev build from today (same result), and also 2.57b, which not only had the rendering problem, but also didn't look right in the preview. I'm running Windows 7 x64. Here's the .blend file I'm using.
Here are sample renderings of part of the video: from 2.68a and from 2.57b (each file is ~4.5 MB) -- sorry I can't upload the source as the file is over a gig, but it should be obvious from those videos what's supposed to be happening (listen to the mouse clicks). Before someone asks, yes, this also happens when I render the full video (in fact, that's how I discovered it in the first place). I was able to reproduce problems in short sample clips as well, though not as severe as those two examples.

Welcome to Blender.SE! Your issue appears to be a duplicate of Can I import multiple strips of different fps into Video Sequence Editor?

@Aldrik: The Speed Control effect appears to solve the difference-in-FPS problem (at least in the preview) -- I'm asking about the rendering output.

I am not seeing anything that is out of the ordinary in the videos you uploaded. Can you try the 'Refresh Sequencer' button on the bottom of the sequencer? In older versions, cached frames affects the render.

@Mike: I just tried that; no effect. About not seeing the issues in the renderings (the 2.57b one is worse, btw) -- in the dialog on the right, I click the Connect button once, and then on the left side, I click Connect, then Cancel. Do the dialogs not reflect those actions? I can repro this in both Media Player and VLC so I'm pretty sure it's not a player issue (and that section of the raw video plays fine in both as well).

@JonSeigel A screencast just might not be the best showcase for this problem but I see what you mean now.  I tried to reproduce the problem but can't. Can you upload the sequencer blender file without the video?

Do you have 'Prefetch Frames' set to a non-zero number in the Blender preferences (under Performance)? That could cause problems with video decoding.

@Mike: No, it's set to 0.

I tried using Lightworks to do this, and it worked perfectly on my source material.
Therefore, I'm concluding this issue is due to one or more bugs in Blender, and has nothing to do with file decompression.
I found there are a few Blender developers on this Stack Exchange site, so if this issue is ever fixed, please let me know as it will simplify my workflow.
Edit: What I actually did was redo the video and voiced-over the audio again so I didn't have to reduce the speed of the video. When I rendered the final video, it ended up having artifacts, too. So I think the final word may be that it's still a bug in Blender reading or rendering the video, but I don't think it's necessarily related to the Speed Control Effect.

You may want to consider reporting this to the tracker, see this

You are experiencing decompression problems with your source video. Try generating proxy timecode (the proxy vision file not required), or convert the file to a less heavily compressed format.

Can you confirm how to do this? In the strip properties, I put a checkmark beside "Proxy/Timecode", then changed the Timecode setting from "No TC in use" to one of the other settings. If that's correct, this had no effect whatsoever, and I tried all of the different Timecode settings.

You need to set a timecode value even if it's just freerun.


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How to model a flag stand?
I’m quite new to Blender and started to make some shapes. At the moment I was trying to make a flag shape like that:

But unfortunately, I’ve got no clue how to do it the proper way. If someone could give me a tip or redirect me to a video tutorial that would be very helpful!
Thanks!

Hello :). Where exactly are you having trouble? Do you want to model the logo from vertices or just a general shape of the flagpole? Please add an image of your result.

Hi Michal, the flagpole is not the issue. The hard thing for me is to transform the plane to a shape what looks like the image I posted above. I will take a screenshot of what I currently have

Hey :). The flag shape is just two rectangles like this: https://i.imgur.com/8BlYaV9.gif

Basically you do this steps:

⇧ Shift + A -> Mesh ->  plane
7 -> Top Orthographic View
↹ Tab -> Edit Mode
⇧ Shift + ↹ Tab -> Turn snapping on
Select the bottom vertices and RMB  -> subdivide
Select the bottom left vertex
Press G -> Y -> Move down with mouse
Repeat step 6-7 for bottom right vertex

Here is a link to a video tutorial: https://youtu.be/3I-udSlXakM


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Some vertex groups on the armature have their location offset
I am relatively new to blender. So this is my first time rigging with vertex groups. To my understanding, I have done everything properly when rigging my vertex groups to my armature: unparent all the meshes, join the meshes, match the name of the vertex groups to the bone names. So after I add the armature modifier to the mesh and select my armature as the object, some of the vertex groups are offset.

The weird thing is, the vertex groups are in the correct position in edit mode but not in object mode.

The animation works fine except for the few vertex groups that have the offset.

Hello, please share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/

https://pasteall.org/blend/d5c50efe863049aaa822702afa563dff

I hope it answers your questions:
In Edit mode you should align the bones with the lamp arms:

Also, stick the IK target head to the tail of the IK bone, otherwise, as soon as you switch to Pose mode, your IK will move away from its current position to stick to its target:

Thank you so much! I cannot express my appreciation enough! I have been stuck on this problem for so long, and it is a relief finally having a solution! Thank you!


text:
Placing different animations on the timeline
I'm animating an art project. I've animated multiple objects that form a single fluent animation. I want to duplicate this animation to a different file where I can make one animation seem like 50. It can be compared to a scene with a growing bush with flowers.I've just animated the flower blooming and now I want to have the same flower blooming on 10-30 different twigs.
The first idea was to just isolate the flower blooming - then append this animation and just instance it and place all the instances where I want them. The problem I'm facing is that I can't choose when the animations start, they all start at frame 0 and that's that. Did some digging, finds out that's one limitation with blender.
I've read up on action strips. Sounds cool but it's kind of complicated to wrap my head around and when I watch tutorials it mainly focuses on rigging characters and blending different animations. I still tried but couldn't get it to work.
So what's a good solution for working with multiple animations in blender?  To make duplicates of the flower blooming and redo all the keyframes is useless, there are too many. Besides it sounds like a stupid solution for what i think should be a pretty straight forward job.

When the original flower is "Appended", not linked, it ends up with it's own set of keyframes.  Similarly when that copy is duplicated, the second copy ends up with it's own but identical set of keyframes.  Any reason why you can't just slide those inherited keyframes further to the right or left in the Dopesheet so they're not synchonised with previous instances?  Relative keyframe spacing (timing) can also be varied, further breaking up similarities.

Well that is absolutely  something i could do. I just thought there should be a smarter way. But now if I choose this way there is the problem when distributing the flowers over my scene. When I press play the animation jumps back to the world origin. I can't use delta transform because then i need to delta transform all the pieces in the animation one by one. I tried parenting to an empty to delta transform only the empty but then i messed up the pieces in the animation (even if I used keep transformation).


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Cycles not rendering Principled Volume emission smoothly
I am trying to render emissive lights in my smoke using Principled Volume node in Cycles render, but emission light is not rendering correctly.

When I set emission to 0 Cycles renders volume material as expected

What am I doing wrong here? Can somebody help me please?

I think you probably have to use the density as an input for the emission strength to achieve that. If you need the volume to have a higher emssion value then just pop a math node in between the density and the emission strength and multiply it.
Here's my setup:
before:

and after:

To ensure that emission only comes from within the smoke, make sure that the 0 position on the color ramp is black. This way, any part of the object that has a density of 0 will also emit nothing.
The blocky shape that you are seeing is an optimized domain that will not occupy as much screen area when rendering compared to the entire bounding box. This will improve render times significantly since volumetric rendering in Cycles is very slow.

Yay works like a charm, this is my new setup.


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Texture Problem, Multiple Textures
I'm using cycles render. The problem is the emission plate (no matter what size) won't hit some areas.
I'm a beginner in Blender, I started a week ago.
Picture:

My scene looks like this:

Can anyone help be diagnose this problem? Thanks!

Please show your materials for the dark areas.  Nodes might be easiest

It looks like the materials for the black areas don't have anything plugged into the material output node.

This is what was in the materials tab http://prntscr.com/8broqm

What are material outpout nodes?

Did you uv unwrap the mesh??

Look in the node editor.

^ I don't think so. All I did was RMB on one of the legs, went to materials, added a material, changed the color to image texture, selected which image I wanted and that's pretty much it.

^ I did that for everything

I think I may have found the problem, but here it is http://prntscr.com/8brxph

if you need a uv unwrapping video tutorial in the future here is a link to one ......     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tovu1A0LxeQ

@atomicbezierslinger it's already unwrapped.

For me it renders fine

I found the problem! I had two textures, very simmilar, but the one I was using had a large black spot, instead of the correct one. Ii'm so sorry to everyone for doing such a silly mistake :P Thanks!

No problem, we've all done that at one point or another. :)

I'm a noob with blender, it's like my second time using it, lol!

Feel free to add that as an answer and accept it to take this off the unanswered list.


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Logic shared between many objects
I'm new to Blender and try to make my first simple game using BGE. In order to win this hypothetical game, a character has to collide with multiple spheres. During the collision, spheres should disappear and increment some global score, thus the logic for all of them will be the same. I noticed that when I duplicate a sphere (using Shift+D) and then change the color of the original one, the color of the other one changes as well. Sadly, it doesn't work that way in case of "logic bricks".

The logic bricks are never shared.
The BGE is not designed to do that (unfortunately).
In your situation it is not a big deal.
Equal objects
You can get equal objects (inclusive the same logic), by creating a group (with the sphere). Place the group object in another layer, scene or blend file.
Then create instances of the group within your level scene. Instances share everything of the group object. This includes logic.
Dynamically created
Place an instance at a hidden layer. Dynamically add copies of that instance via Edit Object Actuator (Add mode) or via Python.
This will even work in conjunction with already placed instances.
Dynamically created copies.
Place the sphere with logic at a hidden layer. Dynamically add copies of that object via Edit Object Actuator (Add mode) or via Python.

But can I create the objects statically in the editor? I only want to make 10 of them, in specific positions.

Yes, you can create instances via <shift+a>\Group Instance... while you are within the 3d Editor.

Additionally to Monster's answer I found the followig video tutorial helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjFEcgB8zUg.


text:
Rendering series of images with objects in different positions
What is the best way to render a series of images with different cameras and views of the scene, with objects in different places?
Do I need to essentially create an animation and build all of that in, or is there a different way to do it?

Yes, create an animation to easily render each image that you want. An animation is simply a series of still images that when displayed briefly in succession provide an illusion of movement. As you only want a series of still images you don't need to do any fancy smooth transitions, just position how you want things for each image.
Start at frame 1, position your objects and camera as you want, then A to select all objects and I->LocRotscale to keyframe everything. Go to frame 2 and position things the way you want the second image and insert keyframes again. Repeat as many times as you need, then adjust the end frame to match how many frames you have setup and have the output file type as still images. When you use the Render Animation button blender will render each image for you.
While you can use timeline markers to switch cameras during an animation, I expect you won't need that, just position and keyframe the camera the same as every other object.


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seperating parts
If I have an object , say a robot.  is there a way to slice through the parts and make those separate objects ? say separating the hands from the arm. At the moment the whole this in just one part

if each part is already a separate mesh it will be easy (select a mesh with L and separate with P). If the body is made of one mesh it will be more complicate to separate each part, you'll need to select some edge loops and rip (V)

I've tried that but I get errors. I have had a go at trying that with a simple cube and I am able to use the RIP tool but when I go into object mode it still shows as one object albeit in 2 pieces. I wanted them to be treated as two objects so that they can be animated.

if they are 2 separate objects, first remove the Armature modifier if you they ever have one. Now you need to parent them to their own bone: Select the object, shift select the armature, switch to Pose mode, select the bone you want, then Ctrl P > Bone

Figured it out. This is what I did. Select the robot, right click and convert to mesh. Then go into wire frame view and then edit mode. Select what you like to separate and press  P and choose the selection option. Now go into object mode and move the object as you normally would.


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animation buttons

At the bottom of the screen I can usually see the play button and the start and end frame numbers of the animation but on here they have gone and in order to play I need to press the space bar. However I want to jump to a specific frame number and they have gone.
Any ideas???

Click on the tiny down-arrow indicated below to bring back the header line.


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Animate Properties
I animated a sphere to rotate by using the following code inside the Z rotation box in the object properties #frame/50.
This worked and when the animation played it rotated the object.
Then I changed it to #frame/90 and again it worked with no issues.
However at some point it stopped working and I reset it to 0
now there is a zigzag arrow on the right of the z rotation box and I cannot change it back to the diamond for key framing. The padlock is showing it as unlocked.
how do I return the setting back to normal without deleting the object and doing it all over again.

it's ok , you have to right click and delete the single driver.


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Adding Image as Plane

On the side of the lego block I want a picture as shown in the image below.
I added the image as a plane
I resized the plane and then added the shrink wrap modifier
When I move the lego piece the image stays where it is.
I cannot find any instructions on how to apply a picture to the surface of a flat object.
What am I doing wrong?

have you parented it to your lego brick ?
If not -> select you plane, shift+select the lego brick, hit Ctrl+P and Set the parent to object

You can also try to go through shader to add your image as part of a material and place it in the same place (using UVs for example) without having to deal with an extra mesh and modifier

i would recommend using a shader node for that because a parented object isn't needed for that and might cause problems with z-fighting

Thank you, didnt know to set the parent.

Use the image in an Image Texture in your material?

Did not want to go into using modes. It needs to be simpler than that and using nodes open a whole can of worms for a beginner

I don't think a shrinkwrap modifier is required. You can simply position the 'sticker' (the image as plane) direct in front of the part of the lego brick that it needs to 'stick' to, and add it to lego object so the brick and the sticker become a single object.
To position the image correctly, please try the following:

Firstly, remove the shrinkwrap modifier
In object mode, select the lego brick
Press Tab to enter Edit mode
Select the face you would like to attach the image ('sticker') to
Press Shift+S > Cursor to selected
Tab into Object mode and select the image ('sticker')
Press Shift+S > Selected to cursor

This will position the sticker in exactly the same position as the face of the lego brick. This will result in some Z-fighting, so you will want to move the image forward by a tiny amount on the X axis:

In Object mode, select the plane object.
Press G, then X, then hold Shift and move the mouse a small amount away from the lego brick

Finally, in Object mode, select both first the image as plane, then the lego brick, and press CTRL+J to add the image to the brick object. Now when you move the brick, the sticker will follow.

I know, especially for beginner, Blender is overwhelming and seems to be to complicated to ever understand a thing...but if you keep on learning it you will soon learn how amazing Blender is and IT'S FREE!!!
So if you use this material setup:

you can choose the image in the image texture node.
Also set it to "clip".

After that you might see something like this:

which is of course not what you want.
So click on UV editing:

Hovering your cursor on the right window, press A to select all vertices:

now just use your mouse to rotate your view like this:

then choose: UV -> project from view

if you now select "rendered view" you can already see parts of the image.
All you have to do now is adapt the UV coordinates on the left window like this:
Select A to select all UV coordinates, press S and scale and move your mouse so that the picture appears as you like it.


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Having trouble removing an excess face
one of the faces on my model seems to be covering an indent that I made.
In wire mode, both indents are visible, yet in solid mode, one of my indents is covered by a face. When I try to select the face, it selects the entire face around it. I'm not sure how I should fix this

Hello and welcome to BSE, the entire face is being selected because looks like it is one face, apparently you have overlapping faces, if I were you I would delete the massive face, and reselect the edges the way I want to have faces, and fill them again with . Aside from this issue, read the meta of BSE to know your way around, and welcome again to BSE.  I'll vote to close this question since I don't believe it's going to provide help to others in the future.

alright thanks George!

Try to enable auto merge and split edges with value of 0.001, select everything is involved and hit G and ENTER without actually moving the mesh.

If this won't help and you still don't want to delete anything you can duplicate and separate the boundary circle of the indent and use it as for knife project to cut your giant face. Make sure nothing is overlapping and the mesh is clean while you working like when you connect two vertices along a face, F and J does different things and you might miss it or there always could be overlapping verts or edges. You can keep auto merge enabled in situations where you can missout something.


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I am at the stage of adding Texture Paint and am getting missing UV's

I am trying to add texture paint but it does not show up when I go to the tab. When I do try use the paintbrush, I then get. waring sign about missing UV's. how do I fix this?

have you unwrapped your object, and also gave it an Image Texture?

I gave it an image texture in the Shading tab, I am following the Blender Guru's tutorial right now but I am held back by this bug

You are in Solid mode which is usually grey shading. If you want to see the material's colors select Rendered or Material Preview (key Z) -- As moonboots wrote, check the UVs in the UV Editor workspace. "Missing UVs" sounds like you have none.

So I added a UV map but when I go to the texture paint and brush it, it just paints over it and won't do spots. Brush settings are on mix

There is dozen of tutorials just pick one to learn basics if Andrew failed for you ... https://youtu.be/AnRQhH3fEDY


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Turn off brush overlay in Texture Paint mode?
I'm looking for a way to draw strokes with Texture Paint with soft brush and Strength set to low so that all painted strokes to be the same strength. The problem is that if the mouse button / tablet pen was released (while the stroke wasn't finished), it's better to erase the whole streak, because the strokes will overlay.

Currently if Strength is set to something other than 0 the strokes will be painted as it's shown on the left. I'm looking for a way to paint with Stregth set to low and get result like on the right (the result on the right was created with Strength set to 1).
It seems that in the wiki is written about blend modes, but either no denial nor approval on whether this is possible.

Im not sure if this will help, but i think its the answer your looking for..
In Texture Paint, on the tools tab on the Left (shown in your picture)
underneath radius and strength, is a blend option.. you have it set to "Mix" you can change this to lighten, Darken, Multiply, Subtract, etc..
try messing around with these options and see if that helps

Thank you for the answer.. As I get it, the way to achieve what I was going back then is to set Strength to 1 and adjust color of the brush. The reason is that all the blend modes will perform some operation on the strokes, while I was trying to find how to make them not affecting intensity of the stroke.


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Adding background to the landscape and mixing with mist
In order to create clouds in the background of landscape I followed instructions of the lesson and used the Image node to add image needed in the result. Then I mixed that image with color (by using AlphaOver node) added by the RGB node to make environment look more realistic.
So, we have clouds created.
Then Mist socket from the RenderLayers is used to give infromation to ColorRamp node about the mist we want to get. ColorRamp's Image output socket is connected to Fac socket of the Mix node. Our clouds are added to the first Image socket, and the main Image from RenderLayers - to the next one.
I would like to ask about this way of mist creating. How is it possible to avoid of translucence of clouds through the island and at the same time leave mist? I tried a lot and didn't found any ways to combine these 2 images without getting problem when clouds can be seen through the front image (in this case, island).
Screenshot of the nodes set up.

To point out your attention at the problem, screenshot of the rendered image if ColorRamp node settings are changed (mist managing).

UPD.
I'd like to say that I think my island wasn't behind the clouds but rather the island lost transparency according to the principles mist settings are processed in Blender. You might want to look for references - http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/World/Mist#Transparency,  this one - http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Mist_-_Make_Objects_Opaque. I'd like to use the last one as a manual but I was unable to reach everything I wanted.


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Fluid ignores gravity when hitting Effector, runs horizontal?
I am new to this forum and just signed up to solve this problem that i have with Mantaflow simulations. See I watched a lot of tutorials about fluid simulations but still am relatively new to blender, just started using it mid 2021.
The fluid is supposed to act as a little drop of water running down to the edge of the effector, dripping off onto the ground in the end. However, as you see in the rendered animation (had to be under 2mb sorry), the simulation behaves like it is being dragged to left and right, instead of running straight down.
I tested a lot of settings and applied all transforms, this simulation is even scaled up tmes 16, because i thought it might be too small in size for the simulation to operate. Still no change in behaviour.
Maybe someone here knows what's my mistake and can help me and others facing the same thing...

pls provide blend file - you can either drop a link to e.g. google drive/dropbox or any cloud storage or....just delete your cache and upload your file

Stupid question on my behalf: how did you get a single drop when your fluid is set to Inflow and the Use Flow checkbox is not keyframed? Deleting your cache as @Chris suggested is always a good idea. And beware: changes in the Flow object (like switching Flow Behavior from Inflow to Geometry for example) will only have an effect after the Domain resets in some way or another e.g. by changing settings, like setting the divisions from 64 to 66, then back to 64 again. For the sideway flow, see my answer.

maybe he has another inflow and keyframed that...

@Chris Well, if there's another it could be set to Geometry, no need for keyframes then... the wireframe view actually looks like there's a smaller sphere inside the larger sphere. Anyway, I was just curious, that's not the observed problem here.

Try enabling Fractional Obstacles in the Liquid settings of the domain. This alone might already help, apart from that I would suggest to increase your Resolution Divisions. Other things you can try are increasing the Sampling Substeps on the effector.


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Geometry Nodes: Pick random object from collection (not instance on points)
I am trying to find a way to pick a random object from a collection and join that geometry to the base mesh.
I've used instance on points before but in this case I just was to place the object where it already lives in 3D space and then join it together.
I can do this if I specify an object like so:

But I couldn't figure a way of taking the instances from a collection, picking a random one.  If I use the collection it outputs all objects in that collection.
Any help would be fantastic!

you will be pretty disappointed...but here you go:

That works brilliantly! I've no idea how or why it works given that I thought it would spawn in random places but it doesn't.  Thank you very much!

Please click the checkmark left of my answer, if it helped you. Thanks.

With the nodes improvements to the most recent Blender versions it's now possible to use fully automated, semantically clearer node trees to solve this question.
After separating the Collection into instances by checking Separate Children you can count the instances with Domain Size, always subtracting 1 to account for indexes starting at 0, then feed it into the randomizer.
Test the result against the instances indexes to select one of them.

Important: You must use a fixed ID at Random Value or it'll generate one random number for each instance. It can be set through an Integer/Value node or you can repurpose another single number. In this case I repurposed the custom Seed input.

But I couldn't figure a way of taking the instances from a collection, picking a random one. If I use the collection it outputs all objects in that collection.

Besides Chris's way of using a single vert to use the Pick Instances on the Instance on Points node, you could pick children objects (in a random order) straight from the collection using this set-up with Separate Geometry node.


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Join 2 arched curves

Been working in Blender for 4 yrs coming from 10+yrs of previous 3dsmax experience. And every now and then I stumble upon the simplest shortcomings that seem logical to have been implemented, but for some reason they are not. One of these is curve operations. In the case of straight Poly lines this method works well, but with arched curves it is impossible. Maybe you know some workaround? Any input will be much appreciated.

Mirror modifier allows merging vertices, so put the origin on the right vertex (select it > cursor to selected > origin to 3D cursor) and mirror the curve. And you have addons as well to automate the process in brackets.


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Blender - Sketchfab multiple armatures
The problem is that in my scene I have a hoverbike, using its own skeleton - it floats above the ground. And the second character is a girl sitting on it. She's animated too. When I export the scene to Sketchfab - it shows only one of them animated at a time, allowing to pick a different animation via a dropdown menu. But I want them animated at the same time. I tried NLA strips - the same thing - it binds the NLA strip or an action to an Armature - and still plays only one at a time. Maybe you know how to get them to play in Sketchfab simultaneously?
Thanks

In case there's someone facing the same problem, there's an answer. No, it's not possible at all. Because of the way the engines like Sketchfab and Marmoset are working. In other words - it needs to be a single armature with as many bones and hierarchies in it as you want, but only one root. So merge everything into one root and one armature - then it will work.


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Red Pixels in Render
in the last few days I have made one of my first environments in Blender.
I have played with the "new" geometry node and made a material that creates a snowy mountain.
My Problem: in the Render, I have these weird pixels (mostly red) ONLY on the mountain material.
I'll link a Picture with the nodes of the material.
Thanks for any help I will receive.
// One Problem could be the combination of the displacement textures, but I'm not sure.

It's the noodle going into Subsurface on the bottom Principled BSDF.

Oh!..... Thank you

I can see that it is some snow texture with translucent texture so it wanted to go into subsurface... it can go to subsurface but by default, subsurface gives you a red tone(like human skin)... you need to manually change values in subsurface radius (it uses RGB values so you should go for something like 0.1/0.2/0.8, I don't know it's just my guess, those information are online) to match what snow should be or use it some different way


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Geometry nodes variable mesh line
I am trying to make a mesh line with variable segments. The idea is to have 2, 3 or 4  variable edge lengths that repeat. I think im not understanding a very basic principle.

This is what I want with geometry nodes

This is my attempt

You need to connect the "count" to a free "Group Input" socket. This way, the number of vertices will be determines by input parameter of the Geo Node Modifier. You can then add a Transform Modifier to Scale the mesh line so its size will be fixed regardless of the count.

What i mean to do is create a mesh line and make the first segment 1m the second segment 0.5 meter the third segment 1m the forth segment 0.5m etc. so two or three lengths that follow eachother up continuesly.

I guess you are looking for a super flexible solution based on geometry nodes only, without having to use any inputs.

Here I simply create any number of curves (extend them as needed), join them with the node Join Geometry and then record the number of splines.
Then I create a Mesh Line with this number multiplied by an arbitrary value for repetition, transfer the length of the single splines with the node Transfer Attribute, accumulate these values with the Node Accumulate Field and reset the positions of the mesh line.
...roughly summarized.

Brilliant, this solution is very elegant. More lengths can just be plugged in. I love it, thanks a lot.

Accumulate field is designed for such tasks. It can add values together so that it is easy to make such sequences. All you have to do is to put first, second and third value one by one, in my example using switchers:

This works really well, thanks a lot. I never would have found this solution myself. :)


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Rigid Body World
I created a group of standard objects (cube, sphere and cone). I applied a Rigid Body modifier to each of the objects with standard settings.
Next, I created a separate file and using the Copy-Paste Objects method, I created three identical groups (A, B and C). How to properly bake the animation so that Group A starts falling at frame #50, Group B starts falling at frame #100, Group C at frame #150?
Here the Floor object is a passive element of the Rigid Body system. But for me, the algorithm itself (sequence of actions) for baking animation in a similar situation is important.

Blender version 3.0.

This has been dealt with elsewhere, but I don't feel like digging it up.  The easiest method is probably to animate deactivation on the rigid bodies.  Breakable constraints and non-rendering colliders are other possibilities.

@Nathan -- actually I took a look and am struggling, as you'll see by my "duplicate collection doesnt add to rigidbodyworld collection" https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/253394/duplicate-collection-doesnt-add-to-rigidbodyworld-collection !   Otherwise yes, more or less animating the Dynamic checkbox (and perhaps copy/paste as driver in other objects).

Your question is a different question, where you are duplicating collections (and the answer is, don't duplicate collections, instead duplicate objects and, optionally, move them to new collections.)  Copy-pasting rigid body objects as Геннадий Горбач is doing, between instances of Blender, does not cause this problem (at least in 3.0 +, although it used to.)

As stated by @Nathan part of the solution is to animate the Dynamic attribute of the Active RB (on frame 1 uncheck the Dynamic and click on the little dot to its right.

Then on the "start falling" frame #, click to enable Dynamic and click on what is now a diamond to set another keyframe.
Then on that animated object, right-click on Dyamic and Copy as New Driver,

and paste onto dynamic of all the other objects in that group.

In this way a change to the "start simulating" frame # on the first single object will affect the start time of the others in (your) Group A.
Now I run into an issue that if I Duplicate the Collection.  I am not getting these properly added to the Rigid Body World (a possible bug?).
(Again @Nathan added a similar comment to suggest the following.)
So I would next tell you to select all objects withing Group A, "D" (duplicate), and then move all of these to a New Group ("Group B"), and change the keyframe # for when to enable Dynamic simulation.
And so on for your other groups.

OK. Thank you. It works through Dynamic.

authors: Геннадий Горбач


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Is it possible to move, scale or rotate an object using ABSOLUTE value, to move it to the left for example?
I just start using Blender after 3 years of using 3DsMax and I find it very bad that I need to type negative values after hitting the G,S or R button to move, scale or rotate it to the left, you rotated it anticlockwise.
Example:
If I want to move a certain object to left in the $x$ axis I need to type $-5$ and to the right just $5$.
In 3DsMax if you positioned your mouse cursor at the left of the object your trying to move and type $5$ it will move $5$ to the left and if you type $-5$ it'll move $5$ to the right, cause in 3DsMax this is how you indicate the direction that you wanted it to move.
Is it possible to have this setting in Blender?

i am pretty sure there are different opinions what's better -> always change between mouse and keyboard or "just using keyboard" (which i think is a lot faster). I do not think that this is possible with standard Blender. Maybe there is an add-on for that. And for sure you could make this functionality possible via python.

Not sure I understand the question. You answered your own question I think.

+1, though definitely not something I want: I'm already annoyed when Blender decides where to forward keyboard events based on which region the mouse is in...


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Having trouble applying Modifiers to my object
having trouble applying modifiers to my object, it tells me its "disabled and skipping apply".
Anyone know how to fix this? -Thanks

This sounds similar to:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/62301/how-to-fix-modifier-is-disabled-skipping-apply-error

I agree with @HeziShahmoon on this. Since you provide no information which modifier you have problems with and how its settings are, anything else would be blind guessing. Let's say you have a Subdivision Surface modifier, with a subdivision level set to 0. In this case there is nothing to apply, because the modifier doesn't modify anything. Applying it would give the same result as simply removing it from the object.

Are you in object mode?

One other thought if you haven't sorted it by now: Click the green Mesh Data triangle on the properties panel and see if there's a number at the right-hand end of the Object's name field next to the shield icon. If there is, click it to make the object single-user and you should then be able to apply the modifier.

Apoligies, I thought I had added it in there somewhere, I am trying to apply the shrinkwrap modifier to the frosting of that tutorial donut on youtube. I am not in object mode and other modifiers apply, does this help? @GordonBrinkmann

@Wesley As Hezi and I wrote before, what are the settings of the modifier? If it's not really doing anything it will not be applied because it would have no effect.

Holy smokes i understand what you mean I found out I had not selected on the mod what to shrinkwrap to, being the donut. I appreciate the help in the feedback immensely, thank you. @GordonBrinkmann


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Group Custom Node Tree
I am using the built-in python script template 'Custom Nodes' to create a custom node tree, and when I have finished most of the works and try to group my nodes, I find the menu item 'Group' is disabled.

Is there a minimal demo that supports the group operations?

can you cut and paste your python script into your question?  The group command will only be available when you have two or more nodes selected.  In python, you set the node's select field to True to select it.  Does this answer give you the sample you need?

@Marty I can Group just a single node ...

@vklidu Yes, but depending on the version of Blender, the right-click context menu may only highlight the "Group" command if you have two or more selected.  I think it might be a version specific bug.

@MartyFouts Ha :) right, I'm not using contextual menu (just a shortcut) ... in 3.1 is not even listed in gray ... Sorry for distraction

To be specific, just try to run the built-in 'Custom Nodes' template in 'Scripting' window and you can find a new window named 'Custom Node Tree', in which group commands are grayed out when selecting several nodes.
I guess maybe extra classes are required to support the group actions. I searched through some open-source add-ons like 'Sorcar', copied some classes and modified some configures like 'bl_idname', which still didn't help.
I'm using version 3.0.


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Key frames don't show up in timeline nor in the dropsheet
Can someone please explain to me why I can't see my keframes anywhere? I've been at it for hours now and I can't figure it out.

You've enabled the Only Show Selected option (blue arrow icon button), have you selected the object for which you want to see the keyframes?

Yes, it's the plane I have selected on the picture. I want to make a flickering light. Enabling or disabling the Only Show Selected doesn't seem to make a difference

You need to select the node that you have keyframed. Also try to switch to Dope Sheet mode. If it still doesn't work, please share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/

The first Answer, Or maybe you just scrolled Away From The Section That Displays Your Keyframes .. happened to me. You can infinitely scroll in every part of Blender

As Moonboots commented: Click here on that node "Round":

and then you will see the keyframes.
Note: the green background of the Value shows you that this value is keyframed.


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Why won't my geometry nodes stick to my mesh?
Trying to use a collection to make different sizes of bubbles on my mesh.
It gets placed on the side of my mesh instead of on it.
However, when I also click "reset children", it places them correctly on the mesh, but only gives me one bubble instead of the three different sized ones. Why?

pls provide your blend file....sounds weird. the "distance" to your object is ok if you don't click "reset" children then the local location of the objects will be taken into account btw if you only want different size of your instance, you can do it like this: [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/sr3EH.png

Check 'Relative' in your Object Info node?

If you don't apply the scale on your original bubbles, the scale will be reset as well, when activating reset children.
Thus, apply scale on your orignal bubbles and it should work, when activating reset children.


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How to make viewport render look identical to cycles render
I've been searching on the web for HOURS trying to figure out why my viewport render, which is set to cycles, and final render don't look similar. The lighting in my final render seems dulled, affecting the glitter material I made as well. (viewport first + final render second)

a list of causes i have ruled out:

hidden item in outliner
viewport and render settings not identical
no hdri in final render
modifier not applied

I'll attach my .blend file down below if screenshots don't offer much information. Thanks to anyone who can help me out, I want to move on from the tutorial donut lol.
donut.blend

It's almost impossible to get exactly the same image in Render Preview mode as in a render, but here are a couple of things you could do:

You're not using exactly the same lighting.  There's a dropdown menu just to the left of the Rendered Viewport shading button.  You have Scene Lighting checked, but not Scene World.  You should check both.  In this case, though, a large part of the remaining difference will be the exr file you're using for the scene world.

There are various settings that can differ between viewport and actual render.  They include some render settings, like noise reduction, whether you're rendering transparent, and so on; as well as settings on some modifiers, most notably subdivision surface.

Oh! So when I click off the scene world lighting, it's only for my viewport and not the render as well? Do you know how I can only render the scene lights and not the scene world?

@wizardofloneliness change the scene world so that it has no output.  Setting the strength to 0 in the world properties will do it.  I keep three different worlds in my startup file just so I can switch between uniform light, no light, or an hdri.


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Normal map (not quite right) outline

Im not really sure why the outline of the anvil shows up on the normal map.
does anyone know what is causing it?

The outline you worry about just caused by setting Bake Margin to 16 px.

As said in manual for Render Baking:

Margin
Baked result is extended this many pixels beyond the border of each UV “island”, to soften seams in the texture.

This value should depend on margin of unwrapped UV map - not be more.


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how do I get blender to stop rounding up my dimensions?
I'm using 2.8 and If I have an object that is say 10.75 on the z axis the read out will change to 10.8 once I've hit enter. It doesn't change the dimension to 10.8 and if I click on the box again it shows me that it's 10.75. It mostly just annoys me and makes me constantly click the box just to double check that my dimensions are correct and I haven't made a mistake.

Can you please provide some screenshot with rounded dimensions? Blender rounds the dimensions to three decimal places.

Okay I added screenshots. Yes I'm used to Blender rounding to 3 decimal places but this started happening recently.

By default blender uses metric measurement system with Unit System set to None and rounding to 3 decimal places wich best suited for real world objects:

If you using Impereal Unit System rounding wich default to Feet rounding can be from 0 to 3 decimal places. This can be inconvenient when manipulating with a gizmo.

In this case, you can use Length in Thou wich meant "Thousandth of an inch":

For more complex cases: work with micro or macro objects - suitable overriding of Unit Scale:

Is there somewhere that I can set the number of digits that the dimensions gets rounded to?

No. But you can change Unit Scale to get almost like that result.

In my case, just activating Separate Units solved the problem.


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Ways to speed up render of same scene multiple time with different textures?
I've recently come back to Blender after not using it for a while and I'm trying to reacquaint myself with everything.
I've been working on a model of a product to be used on a company's website. It's fairly simple, they supply boxes of different drinks to bars, restaurants etc. So the model is just a box which will have different labels on for each flavour.
There are around 50 variations and the render time takes around 25 - 30 minutes each.
Because the only thing that is changing is the textures for the labels I was wondering if there is anyway to either keep the parts of the scene that don't change pre-rendered, or to only render the areas around the labels and then layer those on top of a blank render of the box (in Blender itself or with Photoshop)?
I'm using Cycles if that makes a difference.

For the labels I'd suggest use the render border: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/44504/possible-to-set-render-border-exactly

That looks like it could work well. But what size would the result be? If the whole image is 1000 x 1000 and I selected a 100 x 100 area. Would it give me a 100 x 100 image or 1000 x 1000 with blank space? If that makes sense

You can have both. If  crop is enabled (Properties > Render > Dimensions) then you'll get 100x100 otherwise you'll get the 1000x1000 with blank space.

That sounds perfect then, I was thinking for layering in Photoshop it would be a lot easier if it was the full size, as the area would be in the right position.

Further reading: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2014/render-borders-related-check-boxes-how-do-they-work

@poor  I would argue that that isn't a duplicate.  That question's answer may solve this problem, but they're certainly not asking the same thing at all.  There may even be other answers to this question which definitely don't belong with that question (like rendering out a texture coords pass and using a map UV node in the compositor).  See this meta post.  Remember this question isn't just here for the OP, it's for anyone else who happens by here too.

@PGmath You are right. Voted for reopening too.


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How can I make vertex colours into a UV map image?
I've painted my mesh in vertex paint, but I would like to edit the colours in Gimp, then reapply them as a texture and bake back to vertex colours.  Is there a way to export just the vertex colours? So it appears as a image file?

I don't think exporting UV layout could really help you here.. Bake vertex colors into image and use that one. There's also addon for baking image information into vertex colors.

I don't have an option to bake vertex colours into image. Only "bake selected to active" and "bake to vertex colour".

If Blender Internal in Bake panel select Vertex Colors from dropdown list. If Cycles connect output with vertex colors into something like Emit shader and bake Emit. For BI - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/35159/is-it-possible-to-unwrap-materials-made-in-vertex-paint. For Cycles - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/19459/how-can-vertex-paint-be-rendered

Yes! That is exactly what I'm looking for. The first link anyway, i'm not sure why you attached the second since I don't have a problem rendering vertex colours. But thanks!

First, switch to blender render engine temporarily to bake out the vertex colors to an image (I won't go into the details of how to bake as there are tons of tuts out there for that).

Edit the resulting image in Gimp.

Then setup an image texture in BI and enable bake to vertex color, then bake in "Textures" mode.

On the UV Image editor window ... the menu is available

In the user preferences window this is available.

I confused myself by with the UV export option, sorry (I edited my question). I want to export the vertex colours as an image file.


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Crash when rendering?
Machine and Software Specifics:

Desktop with i7 CPU AMD Radeon HD 6670 video card (DVI)
8 gigs RAM
500 gig hard drive
Windows 10

This machine only crashes when I render, which I do from a command prompt. Sometimes it works just fine, usually it does not.
Are there any settings that I should check to stop this from happening?
Thank you

Do you mean Blender crash or OS crash ? What kind of scene are you rendering ? Please add some details (text and maybe screenshots of scene / errors) and if possible a blend file

This is a OS crash, and is probably hardware related, but only happens when I render an animation - I use the command line, and create images. I tried lowering thread count from 8 to 4 - but no luck. just looking for other ideas

Scene size doesn't matter. I had a hot air balloon with flames that flew, and moving people on board that rendered fine. But I had a simple bouncing ball that caused a crash.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this question has nothing to do with Blender, but is instead about a crash that isn't caused by Blender.

Looks like a bad BIOS setting. SATA drive RAID Mode was "IDE" not "RAID".
 Reinstalled "Winders 10". Everything much more stable.