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Is there a way to allocate more memory to GPU for the GPU Compute
I have been working on a solution to a situation I currently have with rendering using the GPU. In the process, I find that my Card's GPU Memory is only 512MB
First Question, Could this be why when I attempt to render and the kernels start to load, that it just sits on the blank render screen then eventually crashes the computer?
Second question, Is there a way to allocate more memory to the GPU maybe from the internal RAM? Or do I need to get a GC With more memory? I do have another AMD with, I think, More memory.

Your computer already do this automatically. VRAM is only storing very frequently-used resources that need to be accessed in a very short amount of time. If/when the VRAM is used up, most computers will attempt to transfer some of the less important information your your RAM.
DirectX, AGP and PCI-Express cards do this automatically.
You could manually assign more RAM to be used exclusively by your GPU, but this requires a lot of internal knowledge about computers and you have to know exactly what you're doing, because you can really mess up your computer this way. I won't add links to any tools that can do this, because there are always people stupid enough to attempt this without proper knowledge (Not saying you are, but there are bound to be someone in the future at least).
If you really want to do this manually, research it until you can feel comfortable messing with the RAM, an find the tools yourself. I don't want to be responsible for you frying your RAM cards.
If you do not have the proper knowledge about how to do this (which very few computer users do), you're better off inserting/buying a new GPU with more VRAM.
If you're on a laptop, chances are that your internal GPU uses some of your RAM if it runs out of VRAM. If this is the case, you should upgrade your laptop's RAM capacity.
Final note
RAM is a lot slower than VRAM, so you'll notice some real slowdowns in the rendering times. Also, again, do not attempt manually assigning RAM to your GPU without proper knowledge about this.
Hope this helps.

It absolutely helps :D Thank you for the answer. I do know a little about that kinds of stuff, I do think a little research would be in order however, But I know enough that I could keep up with tutorials or how to's. I really do appreciate you keeping those things in mind and not posting those types of things : :D tells me that you are considerate towards others...A trait not so often seen these days.

All I needed really was just what you gave me. More of a validation that it could be done.

Glad the information helped you, and it's good to see people who understand the decision to not post links to software that can potentially cause damage. Hope you get something fixed to avoid the crashes.

I think I do, I gutted a few other computers, one I think was custom and set up for gaming, It has a sweet graphics card. I am more than sure will work beautifully. Thank you so much again :D


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Water rests about half an inch over cup from inflow
I am trying to do a still image with a glass cup that is being filled up with water from a pitcher. I set up the Domain (Big Box), I have a circle filled with Ngon as inflow and a glass cup I modeled from a UV Sphere. The whole simulation works great, but the water doesn't go into the glass. It hits the top like as if there is an invisible cube around the whole object.
How do I fix this?

SOLVED! Okay so how I was able to fix this issue was I simply removed the plane from the Fluid Simulation. Not sure why that solved the issue but it did.

The plane may have been set as a collision object by accident?

source: Stack Exchange

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

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Why am I getting UV distortion on a flat surface?
I have marked a seam around the entire border of a surface and when unwrapping I'm seeing odd distortion and scaling issues.
I've recorded my mesh to show the issue.
As you can see, there is distortion in the middle of the face and a scaling error in the bottom right "leg".
I have averaged and packed the UV. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? Thank you.

To accurately tell, what's wrong .blend file or image of UV layout in UV/Image editor would be needed.

To get a nearly undistorted UV, the modeling topology should be made by even quads, with every pole made only of 4 edges (5 and 3 where strictly necessary), which is not your case. Anyway, as the surface is flat, you can set the 3D view in a front ortographic perspective, select all the faces of the flat surface and press U "Project from view" and you will get an undistorted UV. Then you can select all the UV islands in the UV editor and average and pack everything.

Thank you, projecting the flat surface gives me a perfect UV map!

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UV Stretching on a cylinder
I'm a bit confused about why a cylinder I am trying to unwrap is giving me stretching issues:

I have applied scaling to my object and the UV map itself looks fine to me. Interesting, if I reduce the height of the cylinder, I can get the UV squares to be more uniform so it seems to be a scaling issue of some kind. Any ideas?

Try to scale Y the part of the UV map surrounded in red

Those are not stretching issues, your UV coordinates are naturally stretched so the texture appears correspondingly stretched. UV Mapping doesn't necessarily give undistorted results by default, you have to manually make them so, so as mentioned by lemon fix it by scaling in the Y axis.

Or scale it up by X (or down by Y). In other words, change ratio for that part - as of now X is too small, Y is too large.

Possible duplicate of Texture appears differently across surfaces of a complex object?


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Is it possible to move an object closer or farther away while keeping the same perspective?
If I grab an object and move it left or right, or up-and-down, it moves in a path perpendicular to my current view. Is it possible to move an object parallel to my current view?
In other words, I want the object to move closer or farther away while maintaining the same relative position in my view.
Is this capability built into to blender?

could you please add screenshots of your problem to explain what you mean to be able to help you?

If I got what you ask yes, it's possible, switch to view transform orientation then grab the object and press ZZ (constrain the grab on view Z axis):

That's exactly what I was looking for!  Thanks for the clear, concise, and quick answer!


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How to create an orthosis for a .stl hand?
I'm trying to design an orthosis for a thumb for a university project. I have a .stl model of a hand (which can be found here: https://grabcad.com/library/hand--5)
and I'm wondering how to create an orthosis right onto that so that I can 3D print it?
The idea is to 3D scan a random hand, then create the orthosis and 3D print it perfectly fitting. Now I want to try and create an Orthosis right onto that.
Is there a way to select the thumb from that hand model and add kind of an offset to it? My idea would be to create an offset of 5mm or so in order to have a perfectly fitting tube for the thumb and then sculpting that tube into my desired shape.
Is there a way?
I'll upload a picture of a rough solution I made with Geomagic Freeform. I selected the thumb and created an offset which I then shaped to my liking.
However my Macbook is struggling with Geomagic Freeform (and its only a few more days of trial) and I'm wondering if there is a way to create something like that with blender?
I really appreciate your help!
Best regards,
Chris

Should be relatively easy to do overall, but don't expect any automated system. It must be done by hand. Look into the Solidify modifier to create an offset. Also look into the Shrink Wrap if you want a cleaner working topology base from which to create your orthosis

The workflow in this case would go like this:

In edit mode, select appropriate faces.
Shift+D to duplicate faces.
P>Selected to separate selected faces, then Tab to enter object mode.
Select new object, created from the thumb faces and add Shirnkwrap modifier.Use eyedropper to set hand as a Target for the modifier.
From there you can give the new object shape of orthosis and add Solidify modifier to give some thickness to the model.Somewhat like this:

Cool, that helps a lot to get started with. Thanks very much :)


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2.77a - Keep foot on the ground with anchor OR do not allow any vertex below certain world Z
I am animating a human character. It is bit irritating that I need to go and adjust its feet for every animation I do.
Is there a way, through a constraint, to plant a bone at certain LocRot and not alowed to be moved by the IK? (Actually cannot work well with IK when I think about it).
Or rather, tell the rig that no vertex can cross 0 of Z. That will do it even better.

well, you can place a bone(anchor) in the desired location on the floor, then add a copy location and copy rotation constraints to the feet targetint the bone(anchor). then when the influence of the constraints is 1.0 the foot will be stick to the floor(the anchor bone position/rotation). you will have to keyframe the influence value that can be easy adding a driver for it.

My feet are not part of IK, it a seperate bone that is connected to the shin bone which is the one with IK constraint. Because of this the feet dangle when changing poses of the character and have to manually adjust them to sit flat on the floor.

well, you can place a bone(anchor) in the desired location on the floor, then add a copy location and copy rotation constraints to the feet targetint the bone(anchor). then when the influence of the constraints is 1.0 the foot will be stick to the floor(the anchor bone position/rotation). you will have to keyframe the influence value that can be easy adding a driver for it.

Would you edit your answer with this answer so I can mark it as an answer?

@EvgeniPetrov edited the answer with the one in the comment.


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Parts of object drag when rotating
I'm new to blender and have been fooling around with weight paint and armatures.
Now when i rotate my character, the arms drag while rotating. Not sure how these specific pieces got stuck nor can I edit in pose mode to grab the corner which is stuck.
I'm having a difficult time researching a solution because I'm not sure what is really happening here or what's caused this.

This vertex must be part of an unwanted vertex group. Select it and in the Properties panel > Object Data > Vertex Groups, on the dropdown menu, click on the Remove From All Groups function so that it's not part of any group. Now you can assign it to the group you want.

Thank you!!! Took me a bit of time to look into this and grasp what you were saying but this fixed it! Appreciate your time.

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


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How can I arrange items in a circle using Python?
I wrote this code with the intention of getting a square arrangement of pillars.
for i in range(0,9):
    for j in range(0,9):
        x = i
        y = j
        z = 0.5
        bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(x,y,z))
        cube = context.active_object
        cube.scale[0] = 0.3
        cube.scale[1] = 0.05
        cube.scale[2] = 0.8
        scene.objects.link(cube)

I'm unsure how I would get the cubes to arrange themselves in a circular pattern. I know that I can set z = 0 (all cubes on the same plane), and that x and y should satisfy the equation of a circle, x^2+y^2 = radius^2; but I'm unsure how to best proceed. Could anyone please lend me a hand?
Thank you in advance!

Could use the polar coordinates r and theta, where x = r * cos(theta) and y = r * sin(theta)
eg below, a full circle with 60 pillars. Like minutes on a clock.

import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
from mathutils import Matrix
from math import radians, sin, cos
z = 0.5
r = 4
theta = radians(360) # 2Pi
columns = 60
alpha = theta / columns
for a in range(columns):
    angle = a * alpha
    x = r * cos(angle)
    y = r * sin(angle)
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(x,y,z))
    cube = scene.objects.active
    # rotate if needed
    #cube.rotation_euler.z = angle # or using Matrix
    rotmat = Matrix.Rotation(angle, 4, 'Z')
    cube.matrix_world *= rotmat

    cube.scale = (0.3, 0.05, 0.8)


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How do i texture a long cylinder without so much stretch?
I have a long cylinder that i am texturing. The texture becomes really stretched because of the long length of the mesh. Is there some way or setting to fix this or is it all about resizing the UV image/tile the texture/finding a higher resolution texture etc.
Edit: Maybe some tricks or tips for the process of texturing theese kinds of things is also much welcome!
Thanks, much appreciated!

Do you want to paint the texture (texture paint in blender) or do you want to use an image already done ?

It is just an image texture.

Thanks for your input but i realise that UV texturing is kind of "art" in it self and i just need to learn and play around/get better with marking seams, managing UV maps and space, layering UV maps etc so that kinda answers my question. Thanks for your time!

I find that if you're UV-unwrapping the mesh, you need to make sure to apply the scale on the mesh before unwrapping. Do this by selecting the mesh and pressing CTRL+A, then click "Scale" on the popup menu that appears. When that's done, re-unwrap the mesh:

Note: you can also apply the Rotation and Location if needed, and it's generally a good idea to apply Location, Rotation, and Scale on  your mesh before doing things like UV unwrapping, texturing in general, physics effects, particles, etc.


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Sun Beams node. Where do the rays come from?
Creating Sun Rays is always a struggle.
Today, I am trying to create rays coming from below around silhouettes produced with transparent PNGs - reusing several tips I found on here.
And it seems that the rays are going down rather than up...

In this setup, the light comes from an emission plane, above which are silhouettes.

The World Compositing setup.

The Volumetric environment.

Unfortunately, when I render the rays seem to come from above and mask part of the silhouettes! On this render, it is obvious that the emission is way below the silhouettes.
How do I make the rays come from the Emission object?

Sun beams node works with normalized screen space coordinates, where (X0.5; Y0.5) is the Camera's midpoint.

Your current point (X0.7; Y1.1) is way out of the screen. Try something like (X0.5; Y0.25) - it will be lower part of the screen, where is light coming from.

Thanks, but how do I do that? In a panel, menu...?

"Sun beams node" is in your Compositor setup: left value is X coordinate, another one is Y

Oh - gotcha. Weird that these values don't have a name/label. Thanks

If you hover mouse cursor on these values, you'll get a tooltip "...bla, bla image width&height", but I agree about proper XY labels


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Invert primary values in a photo
I am interested in trying to edit infrared photographs in Blender to match this process. In this process, the user uses Photoshop's Channel Mixer to swap the values of red, green and blue channels (other programs, such as Color Efex Pro, seem to do it too).
I assume this would have to be done in the Compositor, but I haven't found a way to do it yet. I tried separating channels but it didn't work.
Can one swap channels in Blender when editing photos or videos?

You can do pretty much whatever you want with the channels of an image with the compositing nodes. Look through the nodes in the Add menu(Shift+a in the Compositor). In the Converter section there are a lot of interesting nodes and amongst them Separate RGBA and Combine RGBA nodes that split and combine channels, so you can simply connect the channels in any order you want. You can also use all kinds of maths and other manipulations:

Ah, great, I guess I wasn't too far off in my .blend file then!

Sorry, I only now checked your .blend file. I am a bit confused what is unclear to you then. You were doing pretty much the same. What are you struggling with then?

I'm not sure, I guess being able to copy the values in the first link of my question in an input field rather than just switching them? Or is that unimportant... I'm not sure

Thanks for helping, it didn't refresh the image so I didn't think my setup worked. I enabled background so I could see what it's doing. Thanks


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Add a transparent image on top of a material
I'm designing this animal-type creature, and want to add a transparent .png image to its face with the face features (object has a subsurf).
On the left is the image with the features, on the right is the part of the object where I want it to be.

I tried to import the image as a plane, but matching the shape of the plane with the face didn't work, and the lines of the face left shadows on the head, and could be seen as a different object from some angles (although it's the closest I've gotten yet). It looked like this:

So , I tried selecting the faces of the head that the features should go over, and create a new material for it. Unfortunately, since the .png is transparent, the result produced was this:

(where it's impossible to tell the transparency from a black background default color, and where I wouldn't know where to start to adjust size and position).
I also tried UV mapping, but then the whole object became black with the features repeated all over.
Is it something I have to go into Nodes for? I'm kind of stuck here. Creating a new material and applying it is simple, but applying a material that is an image is a bit more complex it seems... Ideally, I would reproduce the same technique for the adhesive bandage on its arm (seen on the right of image 1).

A very quick fix is to use the shrinkwrap modifier (one of my favourite modifiers) on the plane and wrap it to the head of the object. Apply the modifier and UV-unwrap it again (to avoid distortion). You could move it a tiny tiny amount away from the head.
The material node approach described above is really the right one. I wrote this answer for completeness. In other cases, for instance, if you want to spray decals of bullet holes over a wall, this might come in handy.

Well, lifting it a tiny tiny amount (0.001) above the other face completely eliminates this. Of course, it depends on how dense the geometry is also.


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How to correctly use the new Create Guide Index Map node in blender 3.5
I am trying to figure out how to use this node as shown in the example video. Ideally I want to be able to output values as shown, based on strand proximity to my guides.

My initial attempt was to try and drag the node setup onto the hair system modifier stack, and use the attribute "guide_curve_index" output in my material, but this doesn't appear to produce any usable values.

link to the documentation page here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.5/modeling/geometry_nodes/hair/guides/create_guide_index_map.html

What are you trying to achieve? The GN "Interpolate Hair Curves" already outputs "guide_curve_index". Do you want to overwrite this attribute?

ah. hmm I wasn't aware it outputs already from a different  node. I will try that. Basically I want values on the hair that I can assign colors to in the shader nodes, the strand values should be unique based on proximity to the guide curves.

I didn't know that this was also mentioned in the documentation and just became aware that the second sentence in your screenshot describes exactly that: Other hair nodes use this node internally. Meanwhile I've found the video and now I understand what you meant by "as shown in the example video" :D . You want to colour the hair strands. Ok, that's easy, apart from a few pitfalls.

yup. exactly. sorry for my long-winded explanation. any light shed on how you would go about it would be most helpful. :)

Note: This is not an exact answer to the question in the title how to use the Create Guide Index Map node group. Instead, it shows how to use the resulting guide_curve_index attribute to colour hair, which is the actual goal of the questioner.

If you just want to colorize the strands you can use the guide_curve_index attribute. It is created by the geometry node modifier Interpolate Hair Curves and Duplicate Hair Curves created by the assets of the same name. And it's internally used by other hair assets like Curl Hair Curves, Braid Hair Curves, Clump Hair Curves, etc.
Note that the guide_curve_index (=sculpted hair) will be discarded and replaced when you uncheck the option [_] Existing Guide Map option in these modifiers. They use the Create Guide Index Map node group internally to create a new guide_curve_index attribute. The name of this attribute is hard-coded in the node group. However, it is also output and can be stored in another attribute.
The values are index numbers of hair guides. Depending on how the guides were created(1), the index values may vary. For example: 7, 3, 12, 50, 1954, 1935. Keep in mind that it is not certain that the values are continuous, ordered, equally distributed or have a specific minimum or maximum value.
You still can use these "random" index values to create colorized strands. A Color Ramp node takes values from 0 to 1 for the Fac input. To map the index values of the guide_curve_index attribute you can use the node White Noise node with one dimension (1D) as a kind of hash function. This converts a value ("W") to another value ("Value"), which is always between 0 and 1 and it's always the same output for the certain input value. This way you can input a given number (the curve guide index) and you will get a "random" number between 0 and 1. (If you need more control or randomness you can use the 4D option and change the input Vector value.) Finally this is the input for the Color Ramp:

(1) Side note: It looks like the Interpolate Hair Curves node group adds a value to the Spline ID when Part by Mesh Islands is checked/unchecked. (The added value can be 0. I have no idea what is done there and what "Part by Mesh Islands" exactly does. The node group is scary huge!). It is therefore not guaranteed that you will always receive the true index (=ID) of the sculpted hair guides in the attribute guide_curve_index but often you get them in an ordered form like  0, 1, 2, 3, ...

Thank you for the incredibly detailed answer! Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for taking the time to write this. (By the way, I believe the "part by mesh islands" is used to prevent children strands from interpolating across mesh chunks that have been split apart, highly useful for creating neat parting on a character's hairstyle by simply splitting the scalp mesh in the center, etc. )


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How to preserve UVs when using Decimate?
I have a few meshes in which I load into Three.js using the JSONLoader. The problem is, the huge JSON files take up too much memory so I need to reduce the amount of polys in my meshes. Currently, they are sitting at ~84,000, ~103,000, and ~178,200 vertices.
I tried using the Decimate modifer to un-subdivide, but have had no luck as the UVs become ruined, and thus my textures are also ruined. I don't have time to fully retopologize or make a lower poly mesh. I searched and found the poly-reducer script, but it was removed in 2.49. What other options do I have to reduce the poly count and allow my mesh to work with Three.js?

Try decimate planar with delimit UV option enabled

To keep UVs with Decimate Modifier you need to use Planar dissolve and enable UVs in Delimit section of Decimate modifier


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How does the cycles render-passes (for example: diffuse) works out when using colored light source?
As i read in the blender-wiki, there are several render-passes which are added/multiplied later on in order to give the final image.
My question is, How does colored light influences the values of the diffuse direct pass for example?
Is there an extra pass for every color channel?
Im confused because all the non-color passes are just giving values between 0 and 1, but a color is made up of 3 values, one for each channel. And in the blender-wiki, it just says (DiffuseDirect + DiffuseIndirect) * DiffuseColor.

I think that Direct and Indirect passes are able to store three cannel data (and even beyond the 0-1 range if needed...). Did you tried to set up a test scene? Where the colored light not caputured in the direct pass?

Direct and indirect passes are lighting passes. You literally add them to add light to your pixels. That light can be either white or colored light and it may hold intensity values well above 1, as they are scene values.
These passes contain the information of light coming from the light sources of your scene and interacting with surfaces (glossy, diffuse, etc.) both directly and indirectly (via bounces).
In real life, the colour of materials is actually a factor of absorption of wavelenghts, creating the ilusion of colour when those materials interact with light.
In a CG scene, when you light a red surface, it absorbs blue and green components (a part of the spectrum) from your light source and bounce back red.
This absorption can be expressed mathematically with a multiplication, hence why you multiply the lighting passes by the shader base colour to retrieve the appearance of the lit surface.
The multiplication of an RGB image by colour sort of mimics the behavior of a colored glass: It lets a part of the spectrum pass (the colour of the glass) and blocks the other parts.
As Carlo mentioned, producing your own test scene will clear up your doubts. Go try yourself and inspect the passes with a viewer node, it will show what information each pass has and it will make sense.

For example colored light with an intensity of 100 "units" * (rL,gL,bL) hitting an material-surface with the color (rM,gM,zbM) means: intensity * rgbL * rgbM (multiplied by any other factor like the angle between surface normal and incoming vector of light, etc.)?

It's not as simple as that because there are several factors involved (a single pixel may get light contribution from both direct and indirect sources coming from complex interactions with other materials) but yes, the intensity of light bouncing from that surface to the viewer multiplied by the base shader coulour is basically what you get from each pixel.
Anyway, keep in mind that materials can be more complex than just diffuse and glossy mixed with a fresnel and there are light/material interactions happening in the renderer to produce the pixel you get in your passes.

Also keep in mind rendering is like "baking" your scene to pixels with different light intensities. It's the result of light interacting with materials.
You may produce passes to tweak your image in compositing, but you won't be recreating lights and shadows, only putting together what the rendered baked as pixels.
So it's not that you can re-create the scene from the passes. You can re-create the rendering with passes, and having them separated gives you the chance to tweak the result, but always bound to what is already rendered.

In case I wasn't clear, an example: You can make a fresnel material less glossy controling the mix of diffuse and glossy passes, but you can't turn a diffuse material into glass. You only control what the renderer gave you to work with.

Thanks, theres one more thing thats strange to me: When comparing the shadings of a diffuse material, in the darker areas the saturation is higher than in the areas with more light. (Tested with a diffuse material cube and a single white light source in a black scene to avoid any sort of global illumination,etc. ) But shouldn't the saturation stay the same because the color/ratio between r,g,b doesn't change?

That's a good question, but it exceeds the scope of this thread. You should open a new question and post some sample images.
It's an interesting subject with many implications, so it would be nice to open a new thread to help others.

Most passes have color information, the + and * are not literal math functions, but rather blending modes.

Those are literal math functions. And those "blending modes" you mention are also literal math functions in the case of addition and multiplication.
When you choose the add and multiply blending modes in the mixRGB node you're actually adding and multiplying the RGB values of the pixels of the two inputs.

I know, but they are not literal in the sense that when you composite the passes, you don't use a (literal) Math node (meant for single values), but a Color mix node.

You can produce the same with math nodes on decomposed RGB channels, that's what the mixRGB node does internally: adding and multiplying each channel.

I'm not saying that it has to be done that way, it is of course more tedious and unnecessarily complicated, but the result is exactly the same because those operations are literal math ops as I said above.


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Where do these bright edges come from? Principled Shader Cycles SSS
I´ve noticed that there are this strange bright edges all around the triangles when using the sss on the standard hard surface Suzanne mesh. Can anyone explain to me how this happens? Is it just a problem between the shader and the geometry?
The same question goes for the dark lines, for example right* to the nose or down-left* to the shadow of the cheek.
*viewer perspective

complete

subsurface indirect

subsurface direct

Isn't it what SSS shader supposed to do? https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/nodes/types/shaders/sss.html

Of course it should produce that effect, but this bright edges look like they´re a bit off. I know from the glossy shader that there are also problems around "perfect" edges. The other thing is, in the example above I´m using the new Principled Shader, so I don´t know if there are any differences between the normal sss and the scattering used in the new setup.


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Is it possible to move the camera, after rendering the scene, through keyboard input as you would move a character in a video game?
In writing the title, I was given a "Questions that may already have your answer" link that was ALMOST exactly what I was looking for. However, on that page neither the question nor the answers specified what I want.
I am working on a school project, and I have been using cycles materials as I was unaware they could not be used in a game. I am wondering, is it possible, in a cycles render, to have the camera move through the scene through WASD input? If not is there a way that I could convert the cycles materials (I think they're nodes, and that's why they can't be used in the game engine right?)  to materials usable in the game engine besides baking? I tried that and it didn't work.
I am relatively new to using Blender, as this question probably indicates, but I should be able to work with whatever advice I am given. I also apologize for the multiple questions in one.

You may select the camera and use the Logic Editor to combine keyboard inputs and movement

@FacebFaceb That's not what they're asking.

@RayMairlot But they say: 'the camera move through the scene through WASD input?'

@FacebFaceb Yes, but they're asking how to do that with a Cycles render. (Also, you have to '@' me if you want me to get notified of your comments).

@RayMairlot sorry, misunderstood the qustion

@RayMairlot can what he is saying only be done in the game engine?

You can use the Blender Internal render engine. The movement you mention is hard to record, however you can animate the camera. I would recommend baking Cycles materials, even though it is more complex, and your first try seems to have been a failure. If worst comes to worst, you will have to recreate the materials in the correct render engine.

@JohnB Yes, you can only really get that kind of interactivity in the game engine. Cycles is designed for non-interactive stills or animations. Baking materials is the standard way of converting render engine materials to work in the game engine.

Baking a cycles texture to an image is the way to convert a cycles material to a game engine material. Once you have the image baked, you setup a game engine material that uses the image. If you have had trouble with baking, then you should ask a question showing the steps you used so someone can help you to get your baking right.

I think the answer to your question is "no". You can't "walk" into a render, whatever method (or program) you use to render. A "render" is a non-interactive image (or a sequence of for an animation render), so the best you can do with an image is zoom, pan, but you can't do what you asked.
What you wish to do (ie: walking into the scene with some WASD keys setup) needs an interactive scene, aka a "game". Blender "game engine" allows to create interactives scenes but, as you discovered, this "game engine" uses "blender internal" material types.
The "game engine" is there since many years, well before cycles renderer came, and it is also understandable that it uses "blender internal" materials, because of course cycles gives  way better results, but is also usually way slower than the "blender internal" way of rendering scenes.
You could, perhaps, try this: you could try to "bake" cycles materials to textures, UV map those textures to your "blender internal" objects, and then use the game engine to "walk" inside a scene that appears much like if it was rendered with cycles... it's a sort of precalculation. It will not be like a realtime cycles game, but it could also allow for much better results than the standard "game engine" ones.
I remember a cool project, let me search...
Found! Look at this: http://www.blendernation.com/2014/07/23/the-horror-of-cycles-baking/ this has been done with this method, I think. Also you could learn something about this setup watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB09T--_ZvU
HTH

Wow this is very helpful thank you very much!

Well you may lock camera to view, then press 0, then press shift+z, then select the walk navigation mode. This would work properly in Cycles, but not in BI.

Nope, OP wanted to make some kind of interactive render because of trouble switching to the game engine. Also why would editor camera manipulation only work with une renderer??

You are looking for the walk/fly mode, which you activate by pressing ⇧ ShiftF - you can start the cycles preview in the 3dview and then start fly mode and move around and cycles will continually re-start rendering the view. Note that as you move the view will pixelate and gradually get better when you stop moving, the same as when you start cycles or move the 3Dview while it is running.
You can use arrow keys or WSAD to move around while the mouse will rotate the view around the current position. Other keys are also used and can be seen in the 3Dview header while in fly mode or on the manual page linked to above.
If you go into camera view before starting fly mode you can re-position the camera by pressing ⏎ Enter to set the current camera position while Esc will reset the camera back to when you started.

Nope, OP wanted to make some kind of interactive render because of trouble switching to the game engine.

authors: Паша Горбань


text:
What is this dark mark inside my model?
I remeshed a text file by hand and then operated a boolean difference exclusion.
Now I see dark shape s inside my model that I can't understand. The Model and topology seem fine though.

Also here.

I tried applying scale and cleaning up normals but I can't understand.
What is this darkness inside the shape and how can I fix it?

The comment to use Object Data Properties > Geometry Data > Clear Custom Split Normals Data on my other question helped

It looks like for some reason the split normals are just messed up on this part, click on the Clear Custom Split Normals Data button under Data > Geometry Data:


text:
How to measure objects in Blender 4.2
I am looking for the option allowing a user to measure selected objects in Edit or Object mode.
It used to be in Viewport Overlays, but isn't there anymore:

I would like to display the size of the objects that are selected on the screen, edge length but also object width or height, etc.
I couldn't find an answer anywhere and it seems that questions related to measuring that are only a year old are outdated - as my menu doesn't look like that at all.
This official documentation page makes very little sense to me because the screenshot is cropped and there is no "Measure" in the Toolbar.

What Blender version are you using? In comments on answers below, you're saying that things don't look like what's displayed, but that might be because we're looking in different versions?

I use this one

I will try and compile the other answers to this question in this answer, in a clear and concise way. I tested everything in Blender 4.2.1 LTS version.
Mesh Edit Mode Overlays
If you select a mesh object (not a curve), and go into edit mode, you will find a menu called Mesh Edit Mode Overlays, which, as the name suggests, gives you access to some handy overlays when in Mesh Edit Mode.
As @gladys points out in their answer, you find said menu next to the Viewport Overlays button.
These overlays only show on selected edges or faces.

Measure Tool
The Measure tool, that lives in the Toolbar, lets you drag from one place to another to get the distance between those two points. If Snapping enabled, the Measure tool lets you snap to vertices, edges, edge centres, and faces.
But as @moonboots points out in their answer, you can use Ctrl while using the tool to snap it to above listed things too.

MeasureIt Add-on
The MeasureIt Add-on is an add-on that was bundled in Blender with Blender version 4.1. Nowadays you can get it via the Extensions, as it is a community made add-on. Make sure you enable  the add-on after installing it, if it isn't already.
This add-on adds a collapsable tab in the View tab of the viewport (if the panel is closed, press N while hovering over the viewport with your mouse).
The Show/Hide button will show or hide all the created measurements.
You can add a new Segment measurement to all selected edges by pressing Segment. They will appear in the viewport as well as in the list under the tab Items. If the lines displayed are way too long or short, or text should be bigger/smaller, you can edit that, on a per measurement basis in the Items tab, using the cogwheel button next to the respective item. There you can change text size, separation length etc.

To make all future measurements have certain settings, you can open the Configuration tab, just beneath the Items tab, and change the values to your liking.

Thanks to
Thanks to both @gladys and @moonboots contributions before mine, and their insightful images which I reused in this answer.

In Edit mode you can click on the mesh edit button next to the overlay button.

Unfortunately my version differs from yours

@MicroMachine, this definitely works in blender 4.2.0 and 4.2.2

@MicroMachine you have a curve selected, instead of a mesh. Make sure you have a mesh as your active selection when going into edit mode.

@lajawi is the measuring process different when measuring  mesh and a curve?

@MicroMachine You can't use the edge length on curves, because there are no actual edges, just representations of the mathematical curve.

To add to Gladys' answer, there's also the MeasureIt Tool (it's an addon), select the edge and click on Show, Segment and on the gear button if you want to change the font size:

Also you have the Measure tool, click on Ctrl to snap on the vertices:

Where does one find this Measure It addon? It's not included with Blender? Mine doesn't have it I'm upset that they keep changing everything around every other week, but absolute basics are nowhere to be found

In 4.2, click on the Get Extensions button in Preferences and type MeasureIt then Install

I don't see a gear but I think I'm getting closer? what an absolute obstacle course this is

It's under Items, you need to scroll down

I think I'm following your instructions but nothing looks readable it's just a big mess

you need to decrease the Distance (under Text Size)

@MicroMachine the image you attached shows your object is really small (only 1cm wide). The MeasureIt add-on has some settings to make the lines not as long, you can find them on a segment basis, in the gear icon as shown in this answer, or under the configuration tab, then Separation (this will only affect segments created after you've set this value). I've set this value to 0.001, opposed to 0.100, which would get you a desired result.

@lajawi I'm struggling to understand, do I have to set the Measure It settings to 0.001 before I create my object in the scene? I selected all the edges and clicked on the gear and changed the value but the blue lines stay as long as they were

All these tools allow you to measure the segments, they don't allow you to change their length to the desired value, I don't know if such a tool exists

@MicroMachine Only the measurement you're editing will get the new length. You'll have to do it for each and every one of them.


text:
Can I only render edges during an animation in Blender 4?
I made this animation using a Text element converted to Mesh, and a Remesh modifier whose Voxel Size value changes through time.

I am interested in rendering only the orange lines seen in this Viewport screenshot, after applying an emission Material to them. I do not want the faces.
So far I have tried a lot of things, such as the Wireframe modifier that didn't seem to make any difference, but I am finding it difficult to find resources applying to Blender 4 online.
I'd rather use Cycles because I'd like to add grain later on (I can't seem to see any grain even with 1 sample - but that's an issue for another question).

You can't see grain (actually called noise here) if you only use an emissive material on the object. Noise is generated by light bouncing off surfaces and not having enough samples. A light source itself is not noisy.

You can use the Wireframe node in the shader to mix between a transparent and emission material. This does however triangulate all of the faces.


text:
How to make multiple objects rotate and retract with an equal offset around a point?
I'm trying to model something to be retractable and I can't figure out how to make the parenting system. The idea is that once the first shape hits a distance limit the second piece starts moving, then the 3rd, 4th etc.
Is that done with drivers? Constraints? A general idea would help me a lot already.
Thanks!

Drivers with IF conditions expression
As you mentioned, you could link the rotation of the pieces with a driver. In the expression you can use a ternary conditional operator (see for example: Is it possible to put an if statement into the scripted expression of a driver?) to make the rotation occour only when one reach te other.
Here's an example using this statement:
var if var>0 else 0

Given that the 2nd bar has on Z rotation=0° and the first one on the bottom something like -30°... the rotatation will be equal to Z until the first bar reaches in its rotation a value higher than zero. From that point going on the second bar will pick a rotation equal to the one of the first (var).

For subsequential pieces, you should just add an angle offset in the expression. Here's some examples:

Final result of the rig:

This is amazing and beyond what I expected for an answer. Thank you so much Carlo, I'll use this technique in a bunch of stuff from now on. Hope you have an amazing week and thanks again. :')


text:
Is there a way to change scrollbar width?
I work on a 15' laptop and the scrollbar width takes a lot of space when working on multiple windows. Being able to hide the scrollbar or changing the width to a minimal value would help me a lot.
I've gone through every setting in User Preferences to search for a solution but couldn't find a way.
Thank you!

One way to scale scrollbars is... to scale everything: since 2.79, you can scale the UI through a global factor (default to 1). This is useful on hidpi displays, but it could help you too:
by default, the UI as 1.0 scaling factor:

but you can scale it down enough to get all the UI (and also scrollbars) slimmer:

of course now everything is too small, but in Blender you can also scale each area/panel (CTRLMMB drag): of course par of the UI (menu and icons) cannot be resized in this way, but you can at least find a compromise...

This worked. Thank you! Only problem is I can't resize the bottom toolbar to the original size, as you said. Hopefully they'll add the option soon. :)


text:
How do I move a vertex along the normal axis via scripting?
So I'm looking at using a python script to randomly move each vertex in a mesh back or forwards on the z axis.
I've got it moving on the local/global axis but I'm wondering how I can do this on the normal axis. I've tried doing the following:
for v in bm.verts:
    v.co.z += v.normal.z * random.uniform(-0.05,0.05)

But this also only seems to move the vertices up and down, not outward like they would do if moving along the normal axis manually.
Anyway I'm probably missing something pretty simple here so thanks in advance.

if you only change v.co.z all will follow the z axis...
Try :
for v in bm.verts:
    r = random.uniform(-0.05,0.05)
    v.co.x += v.normal.x * r
    v.co.y += v.normal.y * r
    v.co.z += v.normal.z * r

As batFINGER says in the comment, that can be written as :
for v in bm.verts:
    r = random.uniform(-0.05,0.05)
    v.co += r * v.normal

Thanks very much for the quick reply, it worked perfectly.

v.co += r * v.normal

thanks @batFINGER... I don't really know Python...


text:
How do you write in a text box in the Game Engine within Blender?
So when I was going to make a little game, I wanted the game's name, then created by Cool Guy (that's me!) underneath it, so I created a text box and tried to write in it, but it would not work. How do I write in the text box?

What do you mean "I created a text box"? How did you try to write on it, and why didn't it work? Please edit your question and provide more information

If it is a text object, you can Tab into edit mode and change the text value ahead of time. If you want to edit it realtime in you game please see the following steps:
Step 1
Switch your screen layout to "Game Logic" or open a Logic Editor window.

Now add the text object and position it where you want it.
Step 2
Under the logic properties for the Text object, click the special button that says "Add Text Game Property". A new string property called "Text" will appear, but alas! you cannot edit it directly. You need some game logic. Add a normal game property, set it to boolean, and give it a name you will remember. Now create a new Keyboard sensor, enable "All Keys" mode, and under the log toggle field, select your boolean property. Lastly, under the target field, select your property "Text".

Step 3
Profit. You now have a system where you can dynamically change a text objects lettering in game, but it will only happen when you enable the boolean property. i.e. if in a first person shooter, you could set it to toggle when keypress[right enter key] so you don get long string of "WWWASASAAWWWWWWWWWDD".
Hope this works for you. Happy blending.


text:
mirror modifier and multiresolution
I want to apply mirror modifier so, I did like this
(1). In multiresolution, I changed preview 2 to 5 and save external
(2). Ctrl+A : click the Location and Scale and Rotation
(3). Applied mirror modifier
(4). In multiresolution, save external and loaded the file that I saved in (1)
but the result is very bad.... please help me! what can I do for it?
First picture is what I want
Second Picture is what I get now...

Mirror cannot be on top stack of the modifiers when multires is used. Probably Blender has warned you when you applied the mirror that "applied modifier was not first, result may not be as expected". What do you aim to do exactly with the mirror and with the multires ?

If that's the final version of model, I suggest applying Multires and then mirroring mesh. Saving sculpt to external file doesn't always work as expected (or it isn't clear what to expect) so it may not save you from lot of unneeded work.


text:
Dimensions changed cube (prism) is still a cube when UV unwrapped
I've changed dimensions of a cube to make it a prism. Then unwrapped it for UV mapping, but it is still a cube in UV view when unwrapped.

What am I doing wrong?

you need to apply scale (object mode) before unwrapping (if you don't apply scale, you may see a quick message on the top of the screen)

It works, I didn't know I had to apply a transform, kind of not so intuitive, yet I guess there is a reason. Thanks

UV unwrap is here applied on an uniformly scaled object.
If the scale is non uniform (for instance X=1, Y=1, Z=2), the unwrap will be applied on a non scaled version of the mesh.
This can be seen if you stretch the information panel a bit (on top of this picture) :

So as a solution :

Use Ctrl + A
And select scale
Then unwrap again

Concerning the reason (as you asked in the comments of your question), I presume this is due to the fact UVs are part of the mesh data and scale is relative to the object data. So this allow to have uniform UV for several objects sharing the same mesh data, but having different scales.


text:
Strange relations between objects
In my scene there are some objects that are somehow connected to each other. E.g. if I transpose one object called 'Body' it also moves the object 'Border'.

The movement of 'Border' is not linear to 'Body'.
I removed all groups, constraints, parenting etc. of all objects. So I can not see any relationship between the objects. Any ideas?

Without seeing the file it's hard to tell for sure, but if you checked everything else, then it lefts only driver, although it's a wild guess.

I did not find a good solution to upload .blend files somewhere.. I hoped that the solution to the problem would be obvious. Drivers should be highlighted in the transform location field or seen in the graph editor as far as I know. But there seems to be no driver.

Then I have no clue.Hopefully someone had similar case and will give the right answer. For sharing .blend files Blend-Exchange is a good way to go.

@LucaHofmann Blend files can be uploaded here and then embedded in your question.

I did not know Blend-Exchange.. thank you :) I need to remove everything else in my .blend file before I upload it. Maybe it's a solution to export the objects as .obj files and re-import them. I'll try that first.

Ok.. there was no relation in the scene. The problem was that I somehow enabled the 'Proportional editing object mode' (Shortcut: O). I did not know this option in object mode. Thank you for the answers and sorry wasting your time.
It still do not get why objects that are closer to 'Body' did not move but only 'Border'...

I've just read this on Sunday 23/10/2016.  A very similar thing happened to me only today,.    Guess what?  It was that bloomin' Prop-edit button!  ha ha  Got pressed along the way somewhere!


text:
Geo Nodes: store attribute "line length" for every point in the line
I am creating a Mesh Line, and calculate the distance between point x and point x-1 to store it as a named attribute. Based on that distance I want to calculate the length of the line at that point. In the first screenshot I calculated and added the length attribute by hand.

The only solution I found to calculate the length is by using a Repeat Zone, but iterating over the 10 points seems to be a little laborious to me.

Is there a better way to archive what I want? Thank you in advance!

Pretty sure you wanna use an Accumulate Field node

Convert to curve, capture lengths and convert back to mesh?

(Using Blender 4.2.1)
For a chain of edges, a Shortest Edge Paths node should be enough :

Ok that is pretty easy. Thank you.


text:
Is it possible to control cycles mist pass height like blender internal?
In the blender manual about the mist pass, it is explained that the height intensity of the mist pass can be controlled. This gives the effect that it is more 'cloudy' on the bottom for instance than the top.
Blender manual on mist pass

Is this effect possible in cycles with the mist pass?


text:
Background image not on final result
Background image is not on the final result. These are my nodes:

And even though it is visible on the editor, when I render it the background is black and only the furniture is shown.

@cegaton yeah it's enabled. i could send you a zip file ?


text:
Hiding a panel in blender
I just started using blender. When I start using a new software / tool, I usually hide panels that I don't need and I show them back when I need them. In that case, I saw a panel at the top right (Hierarchy) which I wanted to keep. I have no idea what i did but i have like 7 duplicated panels...
Here it is...:

The top right panel is really weird and i have no idea how to remove them...

You can close windows by taking the diagonal 3 lines in the bottom left-hand corner and dragging it up or down to collapse it. In the viewport create a new window by dragging left on the 3 lines in the top right-hand corner, but collapse by dragging right on the same lines.
Hope this helps! :)


text:
How to make a triangular shaped plane
I am relatively new to blender and I want to make a triangle shaped plane in blender. Not a pyramid, just a plane shaped like a triangle. Thanks in advance

If you want to create equilateral triangle fast you may do it:

USING A CONE
Add a cone and set its vertices number to 3 via the Tool Shelf (T). Then delete the very top vertex with X.

USING MESH EXTRA OBJECTS ADD ON (REGULAR SOLID)
Activate the Extra Objects add on via User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U). Then go to Mesh-->Math Function-->Regular Solid. Delete the top vertex finally.

There is a triangle object in  mesh extra objects now (daily builds for now) if you want to add that to your answer.  :)

@Timaroberts Cool! Didn't know about it. I'll update my answer as soon as I get the new release. THNX!

Create a plane and go into edit mode with tab. Select two of the vertices and use alt+M to merge them at center.

The end result is a triangle.

You may also use the Spin tool in Edit Mode and rotate a single edge around one of its vertices. Make the 3D cursor pivot for that, set Steps to 1, give any Angle and you're done. Still, if you want an equilateral triangle set Angle to 60. By analogy, it's 90 degrees for the right triangle.

@Lukasz-40sth Ciekawe rozwiązanie. Pozdrawiam :).


text:
Part of my object disappears In camera view
Hi newbie in blender here.
does anybody know how to solve the problem?
Outside view show the whole 3d model, but on camera and rendered it comes out like this:

You need to increase your camera's clipping end value:

Tank you very much lukas :)


text:
Import DAE (collada) does nothing
I am importing a DAE file (a couple of different ones, acutally) and in both cases I get nothing in my scene.
The Blender Scene shows only render Layers and World, no geometry or objects.
How do we debug this? Is there a Log or something that tells us what is failing?
I get no errors, messages, nothing.
I am using the Collada importer that came with Blender 2.78... is there another importer I should rather use?
These DAE files do not come from Sketchup... Does it matter?
thank you
Gio

Look through related answer here - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/31766/unable-to-see-anything-after-importing-obj-file. There is a console where all actions are printed, see how to open it

What version of Blender?

This is more for reference for other users having issues with the DAE Format.
It could be that the Collada DAE version being used for your assets is 1.4.0, where as Blender only seems to read 1.4.1
Try using Autodesk's FBX Converter tool on the DAE files and you will be able to use your files in Blender.


text:
Python Script FBX export blender problem
I am writing a simple script that will export a file in blender
CODE
import bpy

bpy.ops.object.select_by_type(type='MESH')
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_GEOMETRY')
bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(filepath="~/Desktop/updatedhouse.fbx", path_mode='RELATIVE')

I am running into the following error and I am not sure how to decipher it.
 line 291, in write
    with open(fn, 'wb') as f:
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '~/Desktop/updatedhouse.fbx'

location: /private/var/folders/48/ptx7wqz138x4_shgs5nk6szm0000gn/T/AppTranslocation/DEB386B3-C3FC-4FAB-B7A2-0954C07B91CF/d/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/../Resources/2.78/scripts/modules/bpy/ops.py:189

That doesn't look like a valid relative path address. And if it is it probably means the folder you are trying to export to doesn't exist yet

~/Desktop? is the defualt desktop path for a Mac. How could it not be valid?

Nevermind you were right. I needed to specify the entire path

I needed to specify my entire file path in the filepath parameter of the bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx method.

Try this:
bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(filepath = yourpath, use_selection = True)


text:
OBJ + MTL import not exporting textures on .FBX in batch mode using python script
I am importing a OBJ that has an corresponding MTL file in its folder. In Blender I am able to view this texture with ALT + Z. When I export the fbx file in blender GUI I am able to get the file with textures in Unity.

However, when I run the following python code in batch mode I see a object with no materials
def pipeline(objFilePath):

    bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath=objFilePath, filter_glob="*.obj;*.mtl",
use_edges=True, use_smooth_groups=True, use_split_objects=True, use_split_groups=True,
use_groups_as_vgroups=False, use_image_search=True, split_mode='ON',
global_clamp_size=0, axis_forward='-Z', axis_up='Y')

    bpy.ops.object.select_by_type(type='MESH')

    bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_GEOMETRY')

    USER = os.environ['USER'];

    bpy.ops.export_scene.fbx(filepath="/Users/"+USER+"/house.fbx", path_mode='RELATIVE', object_types={'MESH'})

In my Unity Project I have a texture folder with the appropriate textures for all my models.
What am I missing?


text:
Blender Invisible Weight Paint?
The Mouth keeps moving when I try to move the arm. However I cannot delete the Vertices from weight paint. Nor do they show up in the Vertex Weight List:

Here is a video of what the problem is and what another version of the character was like (where everything worked properly):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOasFEq_P3g
I hope this is not a blender bug and I am overseeing something trivial. What am I doing wrong?

Normally, you'd click Armature tab >> Display >> Envelope, Tab into Edit mode, N to bring up properties, Right-click on offending bones, reduce their Envelope setting.  However your screen displays Vertex Weights instead.  Are you using a plugin?

When you move the bone 14 (upper arm), probably you are moving the forearm and hand bone also: check if there is some weight relative to theese other bones in your moving vertex.
Check also if the number you see in the vertex weight tab (0.000) is a true null value (maybe is 0.000024 which is not null).

Of course. Now I feel like an idiot. I actually knew that, but forgot, I didn't rig or animate anything for months


text:
Blender autosave
Some actions deemed "unworthy" cannot be redone with Ctrl + Shift + Z since apparently it wouldn't make sense. However when you Ctrl + Z past such an action (easily done if you accidentally Ctrl + Z in Object Mode instead of in Edit Mode) you cannot redo all the work you have done after performing an "unworthy" action which causes tremendous loss of work every so often.
Besides that, the power could go out, or the computer could freeze.
Is there any way I can force blender to autosave every 30 seconds into a new blend file so I don't get these urges anymore to close blender, shut down my computer, go outside and murder somebody?

There is a auto save feature in blender by default.
"File" -> "Recover Auto Save ..." would show you the tmp folder where the last file were saved, you can load it from there.
You can set the interval to save the file, in "File" -> "User Preferences ..." -> "File" tab -> see "Auto Save Temporary Files" option.
Also you can set the "Temp:" file location, where the file is saved.
As for me in OSX it save only one file with the same name as the file.
You can use other external options to save that file at given intervals for more backups.


text:
What do Cyan/Black Edges mean?
These Edges from Edit Mode are screwing up my Subdivide. What are they and how do I get rid of them?

These lines appear when you select "Sharp Edges/Vertices" from the "Shading/UVs" menu in edit mode. You can eliminate them by selecting "Smooth Vertices" from the same menu here:
I hope this helped. Happy Blendering! Cheers,
Graves Broderick


text:
Efficient method to extrude curbs
Very often I need to extrude a shape inwards or outwards to create a curb/wall or simply another edge loop. I move the verts around manually and it's a painful and long process. I'm looking for methods of extruding every vert by a set distance of it's parent vert.
This is what simply extruding and scaling does:

This is what I need:

Any fast way to do this?

select the upper face, and press  I  to activate the inset tool.

Is there a way to extrude them outside not inside?


text:
Cannot Rotate Objects in Object Mode
Instead of the rotation being applied to the Object I get this Panel on the right hand side of the screen. It doesn't seem to do anything.

It's hard to say what you're doing without more info, but if you are only attempting to rotate one object, make sure that you have Manipulate Center Points disabled:

Other than that, in Object Mode, simply press "R", use the mouse to rotate, then Left Click or press Enter to apply the rotation.  This toolbar on the side is for precision, after-the-fact editing.  Changing the angle will rotate the object.


text:
Disable double sided faces in Blender 3D View
For Debugging purposes in Animations I would like to disable Blenders default both sided rendering of faces in the 3D view. Is this possible?

In Properties panel N find section "Shading" -> "Backface culling":


text:
Cannot select Object in 3D View
I have an object that I cannot select nor manipulate. I can get into Edit Mode by using the Outliner however it is useless since I cannot Move it as an object. Seperating, duplicating etc the selection in edit mode doesn't do anything either.
See for yourself:

Your Gif is cropped in a way that might obscure the answer. When you select the visible objects there is an eye we can see. Next to the eye should be an arrow/cursor & a camera symbol. If the arrow/cursor is grey you have restricted selection. Just click it again to make it active.

Please provide your .blend file to be able to help you

You image is unreachable, please use the builtin image upload tool in the toolbar while editing your question next time.

Stackexchange doesn't allow me to upload gifs. I added 2 screenshots. No the object is not hidden. H and alt H dont solve the problem.


text:
Object Transform Origin to Geometry Floor
I have about 400 different Plant models. I need the origin to be at the very bottom of the plant so I can plant them at the correct height when I export them to Unity. Is there a faster way to do this than:

Snap cursor to Selected
Set 3D Cursor Location Z to 0
Object transform origin to 3D Cursor

If you are after a scripting solution, and if each plant model is one mesh,  could alter the script here.   There are also a number of align addons.

Enable the align tools Add-On.

In the 3D Viewport select your objects, open the Sidebar (N)
Go to the Item tab.
In  Align Tools > Advanced Align Operations, click on the Advanced button.
On the bottom left of the viewport window the Align operators control will open.
Set the Operator to Pivot mode.
Enable Active too, Self and Min
Then  set the Axis you are aligning, in this case it should be $Z$

Then your objects origins are at the bottom.
For older versions of Blender the interface looks like this:

"404 - Cannot find file" Download link is not working

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/42110/34004 This script worked. But I'm still interested in your tool, if you know a working link...

Changed the link based on that thread:https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?256114-Add-on-Advanced-align-tools&p=2857213&viewfull=1#post2857213

how do I get this thing to work now?

This is now included in Blender as an add-on.


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Cycles: Ambient Light?
I have disabled all lights, why can I see the textures? There is some ambient light going on, how can I disable all of it?

You have Ambient Occlusion enabled in the World tab. Uncheck it and your scene will be dark.


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Select Connected Bones in Pose Mode
I want to select all bones of the left Hand without having to click or box select each individual bone.

Quote from: http://blender-manual-i18n.readthedocs.io/ja/latest/rigging/armatures/selecting.html

You can select at once all the bones in the chain which the active
  (last selected) bone belongs to by using the linked selection tool,
  L.

Doesn't seem to work for me. Ctr+L does nothing, L only selects bones directly under the mouse pointer, no matter what bone chain it belongs to.

It is difficult to diagnose this without the Blender file. One issue could be that although the bones are parented to one another, they are not "connected". To correct this, go into edit mode, and make sure that "connected" is enabled for the bones:

Using L will select all bones that are connected though, which may include the entire rig, not just the hand, depending on your setup.
Alternatively, you should consider using Bone Groups for making such selections: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/rigging/armatures/properties/bone_groups.html

Where is the keybind for L in the UserPreferences? I have overriden some settings there..

No idea off the top of my head. Search for "Select Linked" under pose mode.

Found it under pose "select_linked". Changed L to Shift+L, works now thanks.

Though this isn't perfect, you could Select Hierarchy with the [ and ] keys. [ will select the parent of the selected bone, and ] will select the first child.
To select the hand, you can manually select the first bone of each finger, then extend the selection to the entire hand with Shift + ].


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Make Vertex Normals Perpendicular to face in smooth shading
Making a face shaded flat automatically makes all the vertex normals parallel to the face normal. However two flat faces touching each other will not share their vertex normals.
Basically select the face, press a button (or run a script), and have the normals automatically align without changing the shading. Right now I can only do this using Data Transfer and Vertex groups.


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How does "Flip Normals" affect Face Corner Data?
I use the "Normal Edit" and "Data Transfer" functions a lot, therefore I'm working with custom Normals with Face Corner Normals that differ from the Vertex Normals. The Pink lines represent the Face Corner Normals that are all pointing downwards towards the Cube:

After I Flip Normals this happens.

The two diagonal pairs of Face Corner Normals point into a different direction which results in odd definitely not intended shading:

I can fix the issue with the Data Transfre module and a bit of hassle. But I would like to know what the **** is going on here? I want to know how blender calculates the new position of Face Corner Data.
If your IQ is above 160 maybe you can figure it out because I can't, rotations are in precisely 15degree increments:

Flipped Normals:

I'm not really completely sure what your asking because I don't work with normals very much but flip normals mirrors all normals across the face.

I would assume this is due to the fact that it is a bunch of disconnected planes which are treated like one object. In the newer Blender 2.8x+ series, normals are automatically corrected while editing in edit mode.
The problem in your case is that all of the disconnected planes are being treated as if they are one object, and therefore, the normals are going to look very messed up. However, if you try this with all the planes connected into a full, closed mesh, you should see this problem disappear when you recalculate (if needed) the normals. If you flip the normals, they should flip.

Why was this answer downvoted? If something is wrong with the answer please say so in the comments instead of simply just downvoting with no clear explanation.


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Anti-aliasing not working in Normal bake
The Scene
So in the scene i have a high poly model and a flat plane to which i want to bake the normals on to. The engine i am using here is Blender Render

The Models
Just a flat plane (to which i want to bake the normals on) and the high poly sculpted mesh

The texture settings of the flat plane
Regular normal map settings here, checked the normal in the Influence and checked the normal map option in the Image sampling panel

The Anti-aliasing and Bake settings
Regular normal bake settings with the anti-aliasing turned on.

The Question
As you can see the normal map still has jagged edges despite anti-aliasing being enabled. I baked it multiple times to see if it worked, but still got nothing. They still bake out with jagged lines. I am at the ends of my wit here. How do i fix it ?

TexTools for Blender was recently released (free) which adds an anti-aliasing option for baking.

Internally the add-on just renders at 2x or 4x the size and then down-scales the final bake to the target resolution resulting in anti aliasing. The good thing is that this anti-aliasing works with all bake modes in TexTools.
You can find more information and download links from my website.

Welcome to Blender Stack Exchange! Please not that you must explicitly state it's your own website you're linking to: read How not to be a spammer.

As far as I know there is no way to anti-alias normal baking in blender internal with the standard feature-set.
The fastest workaround is to quadruple your texture bake size and then resize/resample it with an image editing program to the desired size.
Alternatively you could try the yPanel addon
https://youtu.be/ghJgnjskwyM?t=379
Download: https://github.com/ucupumar/yPanel
Be advised this is a relatively fresh addon and i have no idea how well it works.

I have tried it, the jagged edges are still there. The problem is that the anti-aliasing works (without the addon) when I try to bake some other object. There seems to be something wrong with plane or the sculpt mesh but I can't figure it out.


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Conditional else/if operator to perform different functions
When the object is in edit mode, I want to execute this:-
bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='SUBSURF")

And if the same object is in object mode, I want to execute this instead:-
bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='SOLDIFY')

I'm really confused about setting up the conditional operators regarding to the context of the object(modes). How do i it ?

You can check this in the context.
mode = bpy.context.active_object.mode
if mode == 'EDIT':
    ...

elif mode == 'OBJECT':
    ...


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Draw string value text modal

so I was trying to draw a text and a string value, more specifically, the value of the width of the bevel modifier. I achieved it but the string value seems to long, I want it to be shorter let's say I want only 0.0310 to display in the text without the extra numerals. How do i do it ?

hi you must use the round function...
in line 14 add something like this:
bevelWV = round(bevelWV, 4)


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How do i open a .3DB file in Blender?
I have try ed so many things I can't find anything. And when I found something someone created it gives me an error.
How do i do it? I would love to see the units from my favorite Real time strategy game out of the game so I can see them really up-close!


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Game object disappears after a dozen seconds.
Game object disappears after a dozen seconds.
Well, OK, now I know why but I'll ask the question and answer it anyway; maybe it'll help someone save some time.
Process:  Start with the default startup file.  Switch to game engine.  Switch to Game Logic.  Select the cube.  On physics menu pick any of: dynamic, rigid body, soft body, or character.  Press play.  Cube object disappears after a dozen seconds.  Can't figure why.  My searches tuned up nothing relevant. I've tried using Blender 2.77 64bit and 2.76b 32bit. Same results in both. I'm running WINDOWS 10.
Answer: The default game engine 3D view places the cube in top view, looking down the z-axis.  Because it's an orthographic view there is no perspective and you cannot tell that the cube is FALLING ( down the z-axis ). After about 10-12 seconds it reaches the clipping distance and vanishes. DOH!

Please answer your question as an actual answer. (no need to include it in your Q)

Ensure to have a ground within the cameras viewing frustum. Or better look from the side to see the cube falling


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How do I format an integer text object using just logic bricks
In the BGE is there a way, using just logic bricks and not Python, to format an integer text object so that it stays right justified within a field.
Let's make this a simple two digit number between 0 and 99.  When the number changes from 9 to 10, I want the 1 to shift one digit to the left and the 0 to remain in the units position.  There are two ways I found to do this, neither very elegant.
One way is to use ( with a single ALWAYS SENSOR ) a two frame animation defining the two positions ( a tens position and a units position ) with two EXPRESSION CONTROLLERS, one for the integer less than 10 and the other for the integer ten or greater.  Each controller is attached to an ACTION ACTUATOR that selects the appropriate position frame.  The other way I found was to use constraints in a logic brick setup similar to the position animation just described.
Is there a more elegant way or some feature I'm missing in the logic bricks?

without python, not really. The method you've suggested would certainly work. (elegant isn't always important)

Replace the always with a Property sensor in mode: "Changed".

Thank you both. X-27, chuckle, I agree. In programming I have often abandoned the quest for elegance in the name of utility. Monster, thank you for showing another way ( elegant or not ) for accomplishing what I wanted to do.

Not really elegant:

I guess this is pretty similar to your solution.


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Minimizing unnecessary edge loops
I'm modeling assets for a game and want to keep the polygon count to a minimum. One problem I've run into is having unnecessary edge loops on one part of a mesh that are necessary for a different part of the mesh.
For instance:

Both these parts need to be connected in a single mesh. If I join them at their intersection, I'll end up with a lot of unnecessary edge loops on the top piece.
Should I do this, or will the extra polygons affect performance?
In general, what is the best way to handle two meshes that need to be connected, but have different vertex counts on the adjacent edge?

Would it be acceptable to just let them intersect and not be a continuous mesh? If your concern is solely the polygon count than separating them as different unconnected chunks inside the same mesh object would likely solve your problem of reducing polycount

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos That is how they used to be--would that produce artifacts or lighting issues in a game engine (specifically something like UE4)?

No I don't think it would produce any artifacts. I have never made assets for Unity or other game engine though, so not sure, but I don't think these would produce any issues with lighting. Texturing on the other hand may reveal to be a little more tricky though, at least if you need continuity on those spots that is, but nothing that can't be solved I think.

Getting rid of unnecessary loopcuts is always a good idea, no matter for which platform you aim (mobile devices, PC?). If you can reduce the polycount significantly by using submeshes that's the way you want to go.
When using overlapping submeshes you also might want to delete hidden faces.
One other thing that is even more important than reducing a model's polycount by maybe a dozen polygons is the use of materials. If you have an asset that contains several submeshes you still want to use the lowest possible amount of materials (which is normally one). Having only one material per asset reduces the draw calls in a scene significantly. You might want to look up the terms "draw call" and "texture atlas".
Lightning errors in UE4 are mostly the result of missing or wrong lightmaps.


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Is rendering supposed to take this long with these specs? (40 sec per frame)
I have never used blender besides rendering some intro templates. But, I decided to try to do some basic animating. I did 621 frames of the animation and I decided to render it out to see how it was going so far. I did it with PNGs so I could render the rest later. And it turns out its taking 40 seconds per frame so thats about 7 hours for 10 seconds!
My PC isnt that bad either, especially the GPU, which I am using to render with.

GPU: Nvidia GTX 970
CPU: Intel i5 4460
Ram: 16 GB (Cant remember
whether it's DDR3 or DDR4 but RAM doesnt matter that
much I dont think)
OS: Windows 10

If its supposed to take this long with a 970 then I don't know how animaters wait this long, especially ones with a lower end PC then mine.
Some additional Info about the settings I used:

Samples: 128
GPU rendering
256x256 Tiles
1280x720 resolution (720p)
30fps

At one point, I had renders taking two hours per frame (intentional for quality with glass at 1080p).  I found that baking one of the two object's textures would cut the render time in half.  Perhaps that will be useful.  Keep in mind that there is always a balance between speed, quality, and cutting corners.

Short answer: is yes that is perfectly normal (and sounds like a good render time). See Why is my render taking so long?

i got 7sec/frame with 4k & 30fps, and my graphics card is cheap. i just use eevee, hold on, this is 2016, oh...

Rendertimes depend heavily on what you render.
For example smoke takes ages to render.
For your render settings, crank the tilesize up to 512x512.
Your graphics card also isnt THAT fast. And 40 seconds per frame isnt really much ;)
In most of my projects, render takes up to several minutes per frame on my machine. Thats why renderfarms excist. For example, i had some smoke/fire sim to be rendered. It took about 15 minutes per frame.
So, again, it depends on what you render.
What do you render? Maybe you can optimize?

thank you I thought it might be something to do with my settings. Yes, I am aware that it isn't the best of the best obviously, especially with the 1070 and 1080 out now. I am doing a minecraft animation, without any mist etc, so I didn't think it would take long. And I'm pretty sure my settings are not too bad because I copied them off someone who had much practice with minecraft animations.(from a youtube tutorial)

Which doesnt mean he has to be a good artist ;)
How high do you have the light bounces? (min, max)? A good setting in most cases is arround min=4 max=6. I also found something usefull for you:
https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/4-easy-ways-to-speed-up-cycles/

Actually he does also post many animations and they are pretty good the channel is Black Plasma Studios and they have the best minecraft animations I've seen, but that's besides the point. My light bounces are min=0 max=2 and I've seen that article already but I will admit I kinda ignored most of the steps so next time will definitely do all that.

Ok, so your GPU just cant render faster. You hvae to either accept that or upgrade =)
Anyways, like i said above, 40 seconds is literally nothing :)

Haha yes no problem just making sure next time Ill just render overnights


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Try to export as json, blender throws this error: AttributeErrpr: 'Image' object has no attribute 'file_path_from_user'
Hey guys,
I recently started working with blender for a game which will be programmed in three.js. Therefore I export my model as a json file. As I load textures from png files in it, blender throws an error pictured in the photo.
Thanks for every advice!

You need to update your version of blender. The image.filepath_from_user() was added to blender in 2.70 and you are using 2.69
This answer appears to include an up to date source for blender.
If you are using steam you can also install blender from there.


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Possible to Texture Paint as Material ID, or link materials into a master node?
Perhaps this will be a feature request, but I'm hoping there's a way to do this today.

Example of multitude of materials on a single surface, and what I'm trying to achieve.

I am using texture paint to layout textures on a plane. The above image gives a sense of how I'd like to layer materials. Each alpha channel is assigned to a material. This image is just a sample, and not the project I'm working on, but makes for a good illustration.
I have node editor set up with two Principled material shaders currently, and a mix shader with the two materials mapped by a mask image. The difficulty is when you start to add more than two materials. Using mix or add shaders nested one on top of the other with material definitions for each material thrown all into a single node would get messy very fast.
What I'd really like to do is have texture paint by separate distinct materials such as material IDs, with multiple (more than two) materials. I realize that material IDs are generally face-specific assignments, so this may not currently be possible with a texture painting in Blender.
I'm ultimately picturing a way to assign texture maps in a sense similar to Photoshop layers, stacking each material to achieve multiple materials by texture mapping. Another thought is if there's a way to link the outputs of materials as an input node in a central material definition. I could probably make that work without ending up with a massive material definition.
I realize I can use grouping to make the node editor pretty, but this severs the material definitions from a unique material's definition making changes to that material needed to be repeated in multiple places wherever it's being used. Having a single source and linking to other places is much better.
So is there a solution in Blender to efficiently map more than two distinct materials onto a surface?

Perhaps some clues for a workflow might include something like this https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/49705/texture-splatting-mix-multiple-4-textures

I figure I could do something like that, but I wanted to avoid throwing all the textures in one node. If anything, I'd like to use linked materials, but that doesn't seem to be possible at all right now.


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Radius and strength sliders in pie menus
How do I add the sliders (radius, strength)in texpaint to a pie menu ?

You might try looking at Pitiwazou's pie menus, and consider this post as a clue https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?348496-Addon-Wazou-s-Pie-Menus&p=2792716&viewfull=1#post2792716

Possibly answer your question here then with an example of working code?

From the link as it may help others to see it directly - borrowed from Pitiwazou's post on Blenderartists.org:
def draw(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    pie = layout.menu_pie()

    ups = context.tool_settings.unified_paint_settings
    sculpt = context.tool_settings.sculpt

    col = pie.column(align=True)
    col.prop(ups, "size", text="Radius", slider=False)

    col = pie.column(align=True)
    col.operator("sculpt.sample_detail_size", text="", icon='EYEDROPPER')
    col.prop(sculpt, "constant_detail")

Thank you, I was going to answer with the code but I was away for some time.

After thinking about it, this is an opportunity to tell the best way to go: shortcuts exist on the keyboard by default for Radius and Strength already. F key to toggle mouse movement to adjust the radius, and Shift-F to adjust the strength - and if using a texture in the brush, use Ctrl-F to rotate the texture brush and Ctrl-Alt-F to rotate the texture mask. Using these, you get a direct on screen feedback that you don't get just from adjusting a slider even in a pie menu in 3d view.


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Render Passes separately
Is there anyway to render passes other than combined separately ? I would like to render the Z pass, the mist or the normal pass separately but even if I disable the Combined pass, blender still renders the whole image everytime.

Is there anyway to alternative to this ? I wanted to render the Z depth only.

The Combined pass is useless in Cycles as far as I know, it doesn't change anything if it is enabled or not. In Blender Internal you can exclude from this pass other passes (like Shadow pass etc.) which might be useful, but not in Cycles.
If you are just after the normal, zdepth or mist passes, consider using some very fast rendering material on all objects (like material with no shader at all, just naked output node), because these passes depend only on the geometry and camera. Use the overwrite material option for Render Layers.
If you are using objects with displacement or normal textures, you will have to render these material for the normal pass to account for this. You can simplify these materials for bare minimum (a Glossy shader set to Sharp renders fast) and delete scene lighting to speed up the rendering. You can also limit the scene bounces or glossy/diffuse bounces, depending what shader you used.
If you are only after zdepth, you can also use just one render sample, the output is not nice anyway: Is Z-Render Pass accuracy dependent on sample count? Are others like object id? (Cycles) It's better to obtain this pass in a different way than directly.
If you need to customize how Blender saves and handles these passes, the place to do this is in Compositor. Enable it and connect the pass you want directly to the output node (and you can pretend the Combined pass does not exist). You can also use the File Output node to add how many file outputs you need to save all the different passes separately if not using OpenEXR Multilayer.

Wow, I didn't knew that the z-depth was sample independent. Thank you.

@Retrax Well, that pass on it's own is pretty much useless in Cycles, if it was dependent and better with more samples, I wouldn't mind, but sadly it's not the case..


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Move modifier to the top of the stack through python
To my knowledge I believe modifiers can moved up one step in the list through executing this line bpy.ops.object.modifier_move_up()
Is there anyway to move a modifier to the top of entire stack through python based on the modifier name or type ?

This can be done by some simple scripting. I assume obj is filled with the object with the modifier stack
def modifiers_by_name(obj, name):
    """ Find all modifiers with a specific name in obj """
    return [x for x in obj.modifiers if x.name == name]

def modifiers_by_type(obj, typename):
    """ Find all modifiers with a specific type in obj """
    return [x for x in obj.modifiers if x.type == typename]

# move all "Screw" modifiers to the top
for modifier in reversed(modifiers_by_type(obj, "SCREW")):
    # while modifier not on top
    while obj.modifiers.find(modifier.name) != 0:
        # move it one more to the top.
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_move_up(modifier=modifier.name)

Note I reversed the modifiers so the top "Screw" modifier will still be on the top after execution

I use this script
import bpy
sel_obj = bpy.context.selected_objects
for obj in sel_obj:
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_move_to_index(modifier="Armature", index=0)

Link to the docs : bpy.ops.object.modifier_move_to_index


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Colour picker Texture paint pie menu
Is it possible to add the colour picker in the texture paint panel to a pie menu ?

Do you already have a pie menu script working tha tyou need to add it to, or are you asking if there is a pie menu out there that does this?

No I don't have it, I read the source code for the paint panel and can't figure anything out. I need the color picker in the custom pie menu.

Not a complete answer, so I will just leave as a comment - you can use Texture Paint Plus and check out how the BrushPopup operator works, and see if you can get the code figured out in a pie menu instead. https://github.com/artistCDMJ/texture_paint_plus/blob/master/init.py

Panels and Menus use the same methods to display properties and operators, the main difference is that a pie menu will show properties floating by themselves unless you create a box as a background for them.
To make your own pie menu start with the pie menu template that is included with blender.
To show a colour swatch that will pop-up a colour picker when clicked you use layout.prop() to display the colour property. To show the colour picker itself you can use layout.template_color_picker().
An example pie menu that shows both -

class ColourPie(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_label = 'Set Colours'
    bl_idname = 'OBJECT_MT_colour_pie'

    def draw(self, context):
        ts = context.tool_settings
        ups = ts.unified_paint_settings
        ptr = ups if ups.use_unified_color else ts.image_paint.brush

        pie = self.layout.menu_pie()
        row = pie.row()
        # add a colour swatch that can popup a colour picker
        row.prop(ptr, 'color')
        box = pie.box()
        #show the colour picker directly
        box.template_color_picker(ptr, 'color', value_slider=True)


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Detect if any edge/edges are selected in a mesh
How do I detect if any edges are selected in the mesh in context ?
Im trying to enable or disable a class by this polling method which detects the object type and mode of the object but Im trying add detection of any selected edges to the polling
@classmethod
def poll( self, context ):
    return context.object and context.object.type == 'MESH' and context.active_object.mode == 'EDIT'

@classmethod
def poll( self, context ):

    #Get active object
    act_obj = context.active_object

    #Check for edit mode and mesh type
    if act_obj.mode == 'EDIT' and act_obj.type == 'MESH':

        #Get selected edges from bmesh
        me = act_obj.data
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

        edges_selected = [e for e in bm.edges if e.select]

        return edges_selected


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Creating a road with the Curve modifier
I use the array and curve modifier on a Bezier to create roads and curved bridges. The road texture has to be tileable lengthwise so I have to UV unwrap beforehand. Since the texture is square I have to divide the road up into bits that are as long as the road is wide. Which results in a blocky look:

Subdivision does the trick, however I would like to get rid of all the unnecessary Tris:

The Planar Decimate Modifier messes up the UV in some spots. So far I either left the extra Tris sacrificing performance, or I smoothened the road manually. Is there another way? I can't figure it out.


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Armature: Clear Vertex Weights of selected Mesh
I used set Automatic Weights when Parenting the Mesh to the Armature. However the Oxygen tanks are assigned to all kinds of bones. How do I remove all bone weighting from the selected Mesh?
I could go into WeightPaint and select every single bone and make sure the Oxygen tank is nowhere selected. But that would be a terrible inconvenience. And setting Vertex Weights in the right Panel of the 3d-View only sets the weights for a single Vertex.

select the Oxygen mesh in Edit mode, go to Data menu > Vertex Groups, click on the down arrow on the right of the Vertex Groups list (under "+" and "-" ) and choose Remove from All Groups, then choose the Vertex Group to which it is supposed to be parented and click Assign

Clearly the best way to do it. Put it in an answer and I'll accept

Select the Oxygen mesh in Edit mode, go to Data menu > Vertex Groups, click on the down arrow on the right of the Vertex Groups list (under "+" and "-" ) and choose Remove from All Groups.

Then choose the Vertex Group to which it is supposed to be parented and click Assign

This can be done easily with python:

Open the text editor
Select the tube mesh as shown in the screenshot you provided
Run the below script
import bpy
mode = bpy.context.active_object.mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
ob = bpy.context.active_object
selectedVerts = [v for v in ob.data.vertices if v.select]
for v in selectedVerts:
    for i, g in enumerate(v.groups):
        v.groups[i].weight=0

Select the vertices, if there is no active vertex, deselect one, and select it again with Shift RMB.
Enter the desired weights for the vertex, then press copy, to copy the settings to all selected vertices.

Although the other vertices copied the weights, there still may be additional zero weighted groups. To remove them, use Clean button on all groups.


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fbx export Bone_end
When I export an armature as fbx and reimport it blender automatically adds a bone at the end and adds an "_end" to the bone name. Do these bones have a purpose?
So far I have considered them a minor nuisance and simply deleted them. Here is what happened when I reimported the Armature three times

In many other software packages (e.g. maya) and in the fbx format there are joints instead of bones. A joint (point position) has a location, orientation, size but no length. Blender's bones naturally have a length since they actually are two connected joints. In reality you don't really need the tip of the bone to create a transformation matrix, but this is a Blender specific design decision.
So when exporting, an unconnected bone is converted into two connected joints. Two bones joints are converted to three connected joints. That way and end joint is automatically created to preserve the tip information of a bone. Even when rigging with joints it is common to create an end joint, since it makes orienting the last joint (before the end) easier.
Importing the rig create a bone for every joint, because the importer doesn't know if the rig uses end joints or not.
When importing a rig into Blender, there is an option to automatically remove the end joints: ignore leaf bones

In the process of animation, the leaf/end/tip joints (bones) are usually irrelevant and can be ignored or deleted.
Related: Generic import options for fbx files by Gui de Souza.
To enable/disable the export of leaf bones, check/uncheck the option in the export options under Armatures.

But how do I make Blender not export leaf bones?

By unchecking the Add Leaf Bones option in the export dialog, see my edit.

Hello, sorry to revive this but do you know of a way to set Blender not to add leafbones by default when importing rather than having to set it each time for each import?


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Merge Vertices in UV-Editing
How do I quickly move vertices to the same location? I can snap cursor to vertice and then move the other one to the cursor but it takes a very long time.

You could use the Stitch tool to stitch together the vertices along each edge.
Select two edges that you want to join then open the UV menu and choose the Stich option. (shortcut key =  V  ).
At the bottom of the UV editor view you will see a list of the Stich options.  Use the Snap option:  S key.
Left mouse button the validate Stich.
Select the other two edges, then  V  followed by  S  again.
Note that if you don’t want to move the vertices of the lower UV island you may have to use the Switch Island option:  Shortcut key =  I .
Left mouse button to validate.

If the vertices you are wanting to move to the same location in the UV space are not joined in the actual mesh then the stitch tool will not work.
Then you will have to use the snap tool:
Enable Snap tool and and snap to Vertex option.
Then select a vertex and drag it towards the verticex you want it to snap to.
Unless you have hundreds to do this should not take very long :).


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Allow user to select the location of a Custom Panel
Is it possible to allow the user to select the Location of a custom Panel which I have created using python in Blender.
Generally, I found that the location of a panel is set outside the Function in a class, and therefore I cannot use any decision statements!
I have already created an enum property which can allow to select the different locations. But I don't know how to use it!

There is only append and prepend, and other addons might try to do the same. it's difficult to force a panel location when your add-on is out in the wild. related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/24041/how-i-can-define-the-order-of-the-panels

Yes, I even I thought the same thing, but was just wondering if it was possible :)

The point made in the other post is valid I think. If people want your panels in a specific place they will save their layouts the way the like and use that as a default .blend .


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Change the Description of a value of a node
Is it possible to change the Description of a value of a node in Blender python. I am coding an addon, and want to set description for a value of a node.
But by default, it shows:

"Input value used for unconnected socket"

Thanks in advance!