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Blender Game Engine Rigid Body Instability
I've made a simple quadrapod with rigid body 6 DOF joints - with joint limits so it's only a single DOF per joint (w/without limits doesn't effect end results - I will have limits in the end goal though).
However, I am getting crazy instability. The joints do, rougly, seem to be working - but they just shudder and jitter a lot.
I'm not putting much force on them here. I have set them as dynamic objects, with collision convex hulls (not that boxes made a difference). I have the box ticked that says it disables collisions between jointed objects.
I am using rigid body joints as I intend to move towards some sort of machine learning for gait development - this rules out armatures I believe. Each leg needs to be able to freely translate and rotate in the world coordinate frame - this would allow gait development on uneven terrain, and for the quadrapod to fall over!
Example added below.

My blend file is here:

Please use https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ for more permanent blend uploads.

You want something like this?

Notice the bottom right of the screen. I have locked the X and Z rotation for all the legs (Both upper and lower).
Alternatively, you could use this method, but it stiffens the joints so it's able to stand:

Notice that I have deselected the Angle X limiter. In addition, I changed the joint type to hinge for all upper limbs.
Alternatively, disregard the modifiers on your upper limbs, and assign them to the lower limbs instead using a hinge pivot like this if you don't want the stiffness of the previous solution:

Note that the hinge modifier only affects the LOCAL X axis, not the global. So you have to re-orientate the limbs like I did to get the local X axis pointing the same way as the global axis (Just for reference, they have to point directly 90 degrees out from your limbs.
If you look closely, you'll see a gap between the lower legs and the main body compared to the back legs. I made this quickly, so I didn't adjust to the 100% accurate values, but you have to tweak the Angle X min/max values to your liking. This will determine how far the legs are allowed to rotate along the X axis. Too high and the legs will go through each other, too low and the lower legs won't connect with the main body when it's laying down. Depending on your needs, these numbers will be different from the ones I gave you, but again, you have to tweak these to your liking. Again, these are local X values relevant to your upper limb.
This deals with your spasm issues.
Hope this helps. Let me know if this wasn't the answer you were looking for.

Does that lock the rotation with respect to the global frame? If so, I can't really have that - this is a somewhat simplified model, and what about uneven terrain?

You never told what this would be used for, but you mentioned it's a quadrapod. In my head, the hinges should then behave like our knees and elbows. If the spasms of your models wasn't the issue, please specify it further. Alternatively, you could use bones, much easier to work with than direct mesh physics.

Yeah, the hinges should behave like our knees and elbows. But if you lock the rotations on the rigid body themselves, it locks it with respect to the world frame. If the quadrapod is walking on slanted ground, if you lock the rotation, the legs will ALWAYS stay vertical.
The end goal is to do some sort of machine learning for gait design. So that's why I'm using rigid body.

Ahh. Edit your question with that info, it would help resolving your issue. I'll update my answer.

Thanks! But why! What is the difference between a 6DOF rigid body constraint and a hinge constraint? Surely the hinge is just a special case of the rigid body?

A hinge behaves like the hinge on your door. It can only rotate through a single axis. A 6DOF is like the joint on your foot or shoulder. You can rotate your foot/shoulder on any angle and rotation, to a limit. But the ball hinge itself is on a fixed location. The 6DOF behaves similarily to the ball hinge, but there are some differences. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/rigging/constraints/relationship/rigid_body_joint.html

So the hinge joint is different to the 6DOF with joint constraints locking it down to only one rotation, no translation? I'm trying to understand WHY your fix worked.

A bit late, I know but in case it helps anyone else- in my case the instability with the 6DOF was caused because I did not apply the scale of the objects I was linking. When I applied the scale the instability vanished.
tl;dr objects with scaling other than 1,1,1 seem to be the cause for the instability.
ps to apply scale click object>apply>scale


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Fluid Particles display percentage affects blender render
According to the docs, the display percentage I set at 1% in the screenshot should not affect the final render, but choosing a higher value results in more visible particles in the final render of my scene, which uses Cycles. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

"but clearly does" and... what happens, not happens?

Higher value results in more visible particles in final render.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Motion blur for fluid sim particles (Cycles)?
I've got a fluid sim with pretty convincing motion blur by enabling vectors in the fluid domain and using a vector blur node in the compositor. this works nicely.
I also have a fluid sim object of type Particle. Under its particle settings I chose Rendered and assigned a Metaball object as the dupli object. It renders OK.
However, I can't get motion blur working for the particles.
I also tried enabling motion blur under the Cycles Render properties.
My guess would be that for every frame, the baked fluid particles are loaded without reference to their positions in the previous frame. Thus, to Blender they appear to be perfectly stationary
Is there a way to make it work, or what would be the best workaround? (eg. rendering the particles to a separate layer and blurring that layer
Another possible workaround might simply to render a video. we are talking about fast moving tiny droplets, the video codec might blur them, though probably in an ugly way

This is currently not supported (as of v2.82 / 2020)
See https://developer.blender.org/T19527

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

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


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Extrapolation doesn't work in the Dope Sheet
I can't understand why, in the Dope Sheet, when I try to extrapolate the rotation of my propeller (Channel > Extrapolation Mode > Linear Extrapolation, or ShiftE) it doesn't work. It works fine in the Graph Editor though. What am I missing?
The file is here.

As extrapolation works on a single channel basis, the procedure in dopesheet needs to have the object transform channels expanded and the Z euler channel selected. Then you can go to menu > Channel > extrapolation mode > Linear, or use shift E.

oh ok it makes sense, thanks  ;)

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


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What causes this glitch in this mesh? How do I remove it?

There seems to be a weird glitch in subdividing the mesh at the vertex along the mirror axis. Although, only in this one place.
Any idea on what caused this, and how to fix it?
Thanks!
Edit. Blender file: https://we.tl/t-yjIh6LZgs4

Thats a delicate location for that kind of glitch. Could you upload a file?

@AM Haha quite. I updated the post to include a download to the file (We transfer)

I took a look at your file. First I tried switching to the smooth brush and putting the strength to 100 to try to smooth it out. It seemed to look better after but there was still something majorly wrong with it.
Then I checked it out in edit mode and noticed a naughty 5 sided NGON inside the mesh.
Ngons = bad bad bad. So I would fix that for a start. :)
Another thing I noticed while trying to give you a fixed version of the sculpt is that during your sculpting, you've managed to move the mesh off the centre of the grid, so now the sculpting is no longer symmetrical, so be casreful when moving your object and make sure the origin sits at 0.000 on the X axis at all times.
Now editing your sculpt in edit more when using the multi-resultion modifier can cause it to break your sculpt. (this is to do with the fact that all vertices are numbered and the multi-resolution modifier identifies the location of each individual vertex by it's assigned number). So if you delete a vertex and replace it, then the vertex numbering is all changed and it causes major problems with your sculpt.
The best way to solve this is to first:
1) Go into Object Mode >> change the location of your sculpt to 0.000 on the X axis.
2) Go into Edit mode >> Remove your ngons (faces with more than 4 polygons) and try to make all your faces into quads (four polygon faces). I saw the back of the leg was an ngon and the upper legs contain two ngons each so there at least 5 ngons you can try to make into quads :)
Then press W and "Remove Doubles". Also, press Ctrl+N to make sure all your normals are facing outwards (these two are just in case).
3) Unfortunately, now you'll need to delete your multi-resolution modifier in Object Mode.
4) Now press Ctrl+A and Set Rotation and Scale. (Again this is just in case).
5) Now you'll have to start sculpting again. Yes, it's a pain in the backside but think of it as practice and usually when i have to do a sculpt twice, the second time always turns out better!
Good luck and happy sculpting!

Oh thank you for this detailed answer! I appreciate the extra tip :)

You're welcome! Glad you found it helpful in some way and all the best


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Material choice does not update render view
It seems that switching from one material to another in Object mode is not updating the real-time render view or the full "Render" output window with the newly chosen material - instead, only one material in my list is still being used.
In attached screenshots "peep blue 01" is the initial selection and render output - it's a light blue material.
When going to the Materials tab and choosing "peep blue 02" I see the correct Preview for that darker and more glossy material, but the change is not reflected in either the real-time render view or when I run a full Render in a new output window for that object.  It did show correctly in renders when I first created the material, but switching back is not taking effect.
I figure this is something simple, but this amateur Blender user is kind of stumped.  Advice welcome!

You need to assign the material by assigning it in edit mode. Just clicking on it in the material selector just shows the preview.

Answering my own question, because I happened upon it in another post:
How can I swap Textures and Materials
To change the active material assignment, I noticed a couple options:
Option 1:

Go into Edit mode for the object
Choose your desired material from the Materials list
Click on the "Assign" button to apply that material to your object

Option 2:

Go into Object or Edit mode for the object
Click the black down-arrow to the right of the Materials list, a menu opens below
Choose "Assign Material" -> {name of desired material} and it will apply that material to your object

Somehow in my "beginners" reading and tutorials, I missed this detail.  Leaving this answer here in case it's useful for others.

Your answer to your own question isn't quite complete, so this attempts to round it out a bit.
You've given Suzanne two material slots. Slots are a mechanism for assigning multiple materials to a single object. Slots are (mutually exclusive) sets of faces, each associated with a material.
When you assign a material to an object, it is given one slot automatically, which contains all the faces of the object. New slots, beyond the first, are empty on creation. You can add faces to a slot by selecting them in Edit mode, and assigning them to the active slot with the button beneath the slots list.
You assign a material to a slot by making a slot active, and selecting or creating a material in the materials dropdown beneath the slots list.
Deleting a slot containing faces assigns the faces to the next slot up, unless it's the top slot, in which case the faces are assigned to the next slot down. Deleting all slots reverts the object to a default material.
(You'll find that slot assignments are not updated in a render until a return to Object mode)

Thank you Robin, I appreciate your adding the clarity of assigning materials from the list to different faces of an object - indeed, I was simply assigning a single material at a time to all of an object's faces and was using the Materials list as a convenient switching mechanism.  Sorry that I do not yet have enough points to upvote your answer.

@wader  no pronlem. The slots can  be a convenient switching mechanism. That turns out to be just a subset of they are.


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Baking camera property drivers to keyframe
I know its possible to bake the values of drivers to keyframes using Object > Animation > Bake Action but is there a way to bake a driver that is controlling a Camera's properties? I want to delete these drivers while keeping the same Camera animation.
Edit: Link to Blend

link to comparison video

Quick script to bake camera data.
Bake a bpy.types.Camera object's drivers to keyframes.

Bakes all driven properties of scene.camera.data from scene.frame_start to scene.frame_end in frame_step steps.
Assumes there are no array type properties on camera
Leaves drivers intact, will need to be removed. (Currently code used to remove camera drivers crashes my version of 2.8, and doesn't work on 2.79) Keyframes trump drivers.  Remove manually if happy with result.

Test script
import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
cam_ob = scene.camera
cam = cam_ob.data
frame_step = 1
ad = cam.animation_data

f = scene.frame_start
if ad:
    while f <= scene.frame_end:
        scene.frame_set(f)
        for d in cam.animation_data.drivers:
            cam.keyframe_insert(d.data_path)
        f += frame_step

The script itself looks to have worked, and quite fast as well.
Im rendering the result and will mark as accepted answer if it works.

As previously said, the script itself looks to have worked for the project in Blender's viewport, but upon rendering (through the distributed render farm, Sheepit), the result is not correct (seems that the focal length is not adjusting as expected). I have updated my question with a link to a simplified version of the blend file and the rendered result clip to compare if you or anyone want to test locally.

As a rule to self, I don't download 90Mb files to answer BSE questions. Can you add a stripped down file with the driver set up (no vid) to http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com ? (paste link in question)

That is fair, I did not know that blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com existed. I've updated the link on the question

You are driving the ortho_scale on  a  perspective camera?

I haven't really questioned that. The camera movement is imported from a mmd motion via the mmd_tools plugin which is creating the drivers automatically.

In case someone needs it: you can add d.mute = True to disable but not delete a driver.


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How do I curve procedurally generated textures (Clouds)?
I'm quite new to blender and am still getting the hang of things. Having followed BlenderMaster's tutorial on creating clouds, I've managed to create something like this:

I already know how to move the clouds in XY axis and to control the density, but how do I bend/revolve/twist/curve the clouds into a specific direction using the node editor? Something like this:

All help is much appreciated.


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Python script to select the vertex with minimum z-coordinate from a selection of vertices in a mesh
I've put together a python script to select only the vertex with the minimum z-coordinate from a vertex selection in a mesh. The problem is that it works randomly, resulting in the correct selection only about once in four attempts. Most of the attempts result in none of the vertices getting selected. I've tested it on a square grid of unconnected vertices with neighbour correlated random z-coordinates.
I'm using blender 3.4.1 on MacOS Ventura 13.1
Sample file is here
Tis is the script:
import bpy

# Enter Object Mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

# Get the active mesh
mesh = bpy.context.object.data

# Get the selected vertices
selected_verts = [v for v in mesh.vertices if v.select]

# Find the vertex with the minimum z-coordinate
min_vert = min(selected_verts, key=lambda v: v.co.z)

# Enter Edit Mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

# Deselect all vertices
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')

# Enter Object Mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

# Select the min z vertex
min_vert.select = True

# Enter Edit Mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

That's very interesting. I suspect that the pointer reference to min_vert gets disposed after you return to Object Mode. So just use the min_vert.index value to set the vertex select property directly like this:
bpy.context.object.data.vertices[min_vert.index].select = True

Here's the complete script:
import bpy

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')
mesh = bpy.context.object.data

def get_min_z_vertex_index():
    selected_verts = [v for v in mesh.vertices if v.select]

    if len(selected_verts) <= 0:
        return -1

    min_vert = min(selected_verts, key=lambda v: v.co.z)
    return min_vert.index

index = get_min_z_vertex_index()

if index > -1:
    print("min-z vertex index: ", index)

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT') # important or else selection will not work
    bpy.context.object.data.vertices[index].select = True
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
    mesh.update()
else:
    print("No vertices selected!")

Thanks for the prompt reply.
Your code works, but after a few times with different selections it gives the following error:
Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Users/joe/Documents/Blender/ChatGPT Generated Script Min-Max/ChatGPT Generated Script Min-Max - Corrected. blend/Text", line 13, in
ValueError: min( arg is an empty sequence

it's an empty sequence if you don't select anything. you need to check if len(selected_verts):. see my updated script.

Thanks. It works as expected.


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Issue regarding bevel shape and hardened normal shading
I'm trying to use hardened normal chamfers to make this room more interesting, but I'm having issues with the bevel shape and normals. Cuts keeps appearing in corners or rounded edges like the doorframe.
shading issues on corners:
artifacts and loss of the orginal arc curvature:
complete room (Backface culling is on):
blend file:
How can i fix these shading problems whilst maintaining a relatively low face count? Should i bake a higher poly version to the low poly or is there a better way to approach this?

The loss of the original arc curvature as you call it is due to the poor geometry in combination with enabled Loop Slide in the Bevel modifier, you can see it better with Harden Normals disabled. Loop Slide guides the bevel along the edges, so disabling it would be better or using different geometry, as you can see in the lower half of the image:

For the shading issues, well these are simply quite large bevels in a single segment  to be smoothened. I would set them at least to 3, or better even 4. As long as you don't apply the Bevel modifier, no new faces are generated.

By the way, there are edges on the floor from one door frame to the other which also have a bevel weight on them. That's not necessary since they are no corner edges that need beveling.

Thanks for the help. Could you explain to me why my original geometry was problematic so i don't make the same mistake again?

@João Well, as I wrote in the answer, Loop Slide guides the bevel along the edges (maybe not a professional explanation), which means in your case mostly vertical along those four edges to the side and upwards along the two horizontal edges. There are no edges perpendicular to the arc, following along. I know you want to keep the face count low, so maybe an N-gon would have been better since it doesn't have these guiding edges.

@João Or maybe you've read somewhere N-gons are bad, avoid them in any case and make quads (which is not always true, sometimes they are even to prefer over quads). But then you should maybe inset the N-gon face like I did in the bottom right example of the first image, and then create quads for the rest of the face. In that case, the bevel would have follow along the arc edges. But as explained in the answer, since you can simply deactivate Loop Slide in the modifier, it won't matter too much.

I'm afraid that if I ever try to start modeling professionally, meshes made with ngons won't be easily accepted. So I was trying to get better at modeling using only quads (started out using the boolean workflow),even though I know it doesn't matter that much on flat surfaces.

@João Well, I'm not going to model professionally, so I don't know if you have to always use quads, no matter if they are in some cases making things worse. There are tutorials on Youtube discussing pros and cons of N-gons and quads etc.


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Fixing Blender Norman Rig
I'm trying to fix Norman Blender Rig (https://www.blendswap.com/blend/7749)
because it's an excellent rig for animation training.
Would any of you have a faster solution than redo every facial driver by hand ?

Hi. For those unfamiliar with the issues with this rig, can you explain in detail what you are having to do by hand that you are hoping to do faster?

all facial drivers are broken, so I wondered if there was a python command or something to fix this, instead of re-creatinf all drivers...


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How to bend parts of mesh with a force field?
I'd like to make feathers on a tail of a model bend to the force fields. I've tried some tutorials but after spending whole day trying different methods, none of them worked propely. For example in this tutorial:
-> Bending a pole with wind <-
I selected all the feathers and added them to the vertex groups, like this

then I followed rest of steps in the tutorial. Unfotunately when i started animation with wind, whole program started to lag extremely and crashed.
Then I tried to use Cloth physics, but it didn't work as rest of model completly colapsed as soon as I played the animation.
So far I can't figure out how to make that part of mesh bend propely with force fields, I'll be glad for any help!

One way would maybe be hair-dynamics. Put a hair particle system on tail object, use a weight map to grow them where you want them to grow (might be a bit of a mare trying to get the pointing where you want them to though!), and enable hair dynamics. Then add a 'particle instance modifier to your feather object and chose the tail object & particle system in the modifier. Then mess with the hair stiffness etc.

Here's some wheat I used this method on- https://www.dropbox.com/s/h8a6p08plff3wkw/WheatVariations.mkv?dl=0 So a hair particle system on the plain, and a few 'wheat' objects instanced onto the hair, then blown about with wind & turbulance. Like I said it needs some messing with values but it can work...

alright! I'll try to do it (might have to watch some tutorials tho) and let know how it worked out. Thanks.

Okay I made it! I found this tutorial to be helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOm2K9jOZLI&t
instead of drops I copied feathers from main object and splitted them from it, made vertex group in place where I wanted them to be and applied them to it. Now I just need to play around with settings to make them behave correctly because they act kind of strange to the forcefields and they dont follow rest of object in a correct way. Thank you for pointing out such a ways.

no sweat.......


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Move 1 animation along Y axis while keeping others at origin
I downloaded 3 animation from Mixamo and added them as FBX.
I "pushed them down" in the NLA editor as shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPJbwXLqJs&list=PLtdazDa5xnOM8kSmgma8urtkKKYh27RCn&index=2

idle
two cycle sprint
running to  stop

I aligned the 3 animations to run back to back, which works well. The animations play on the same armature at the correct time.
For the running to stop animation tho, I want the animation to start at the Y position where the two cycle sprint stops. I tried selecting the running to stop animation in the NLA editor, which makes it turn green and show that there are keyframes for every frame. I don't see anything in the dope sheet or graph editor though. In the dope sheet -> action editor, the animations are listed but I can not select them. Toggling "only show selected does not help.
Update: the visibility issue is partially resolved: it was in fact necessary to de-select "only show selected".
What remains is the translation issue.
Updated image showing curves

How do I translate all the keyframes of the last action along the Y axis while leaving the others as they are? Why don't I see the keyframes in the graph editor or dopesheet?
blend file
Original image

If you've enabled the Only Show Selected option you need to have some bones selected in Pose mode, then you can switch back to Object mode if you want (and if you disable Only Show Selected it shows the keyframes as it should):

Now in order to move the armature to the correct location, you need to select the master bone of your hierarchy (which is the first of the spline, called mixamorig:Hips), select the Z Location track in the Graph Editor (use the eye icon to isolate the track or ShiftH) and move the curve on the editor Y axis until it reaches the good position on the 3D scene:

That seems to work, thank you. Unfortunately I still need a hint about translating the animation. If I translate all bones in pose mode and then exit pose mode; there seems to be no effect. When I translate in edit mode, the bones keep their new position, but the mesh warps horribly.

I've edited, is it what you want? @Nino van Hooff

Excellent, I would never have guessed that the translation is needed on the Z axis. I never rotated the armature or mesh. For my understanding, I would love to know why. In any case, I'm really glad this got resolved

You want to move the master only, on its Z axis, the other bones will follow, you don't want to move all the other bones, if you do so, those that are not parented (like the controllers) will move on their own Z axis. As a side note, generally the armatures have a root bone that is the master (and the spline and controllers will be parented to it) but it doesn't seem to be the case with the mixamo armatures.

That I understand, but why Z? I expected Y because it is forward in this scene and Z is up.

It's the own bone orientation that you need to consider, not the global


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Problem applying physics into MMD Model in Blender
When I apply the physics on my MMD model, part of her bosom and her skirts go floating instead of hanging.
Any help?
Blend file:

Welcome! Please use this site to share blender files https://blend-exchange.com/

There is too much total mass hanging from the topmost joints.  The rigid bodies are getting far enough away from each to break the joints.  Realize that with a model at this scale, gravity is acting at about 8 times the force as most MMD models.


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Parts of my 3D character model keep vanishing
As i am editing and shaping around and cleaning up the object, vital parts like the entire legs at first, and now the chest as well, they are fully gone in sculpt mode, and edit mode. Why does this happens?
Why i can't even do retopology on top of this?
Should i be more careful with these options i use frequently? Or is it a totally different problem?

This following picture is the very first body model i ever made. Here is exactly how my problem looks like.
Both chest, thighs and legs are fully gone, i don't know when.

again, with more precision

Conclusion
To be fully honest, i don't have any idea how these parts vanished, They only exist in object mode and i have not deleted any faces or vertices of them, or any layer. i did join some of them but they were still edit-able... i don't know, they just magically vanish, i won't even be able to finish the legs more precisely.
Can you tell me

What is the problem
What i should avoid doing
is it possible to restore the lost parts maybe with retopology?
)(any other advice is welcome)

Final Edit
@3fingeredfrog huh, i did press Alt H like you suggested, on object mode, nothing happened, but when in edit mode i just pressed it and everything reappeared!!! thank you so much it worked like a charm, i never would know that would work, thank you so much!
[

Perhaps while in Edit mode with the "missing" parts selected you hit the H key? The H key hides selected parts in Edit mode but they will not be hidden when in Object mode. The shortcut keys to UnHide are Alt H. To test this if this is the case,  in Edit mode use the unHide shortcut keys (Alt H) and see if the missing parts reappear.

+1 to 3fingeredfrog ... @Holdentoledo to attract more people avoid long story telling, go straight to the point, so we can help others too. Thank you

@vklidu I kinda tried, I'm very new to this so I didn't know exactly the precise thing to ask


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Noise trap - Interior Scene with no glass materials
I want to get rid of the noise but I can't for the sake of god find out what is causing it.
I am using an HDRI.
I am not using glass materials.
I blocked all the HDRI light with objects apart from 2 windows (no glass, no geometry, just 2 big openings).
Here is a picture (32 samples)
:
(I am new to blender but I am very familiar with 3d environments)
(HDRI is hidden by ''world-> ray visibility-> camera (uncheck)'' but checking it doesnt make any difference anyways)
EDIT:
My question here lies on, why does this happen? The problem is solved, I can just increase the samples and activate the denoiser. The problem I have with this is that previewing with 32 samples is different than previewing with 100 or 500 samples. At one point I added a glass material and it acted as a noise trap and after removing the material, the noise trap persisted. I want to know why that happened.

Not gonna link more threads, you can find a lot about this under 'Get rid of/ Reduce Fireflies'

Isn't light portals a thing anymore?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/502/increase-cycles-speed-for-interior-render

I know 32 is too low and I know there might be a solution on those threads but I don't want to try everything until it works. I had a scene, I previewed the render with 32 samples and it worked just fine, then I added a glass material to the windows and it became noisy. I removed the material (I even removed the windows) and it stayed noisy as you can see. I want to know why that happens.


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How do I make a pile of fibers?
I need to make a pile of hair-like fibers. My instinct is to create a fiber-shaped particle emitter, let the particles fall onto a surface and then convert them to mesh. Am I on the right track? Thanks for your time.
Reference pictures:

maybe show a reference picture of what it is supposed to look like.

Reference picture was added.


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Trying to make fire in a glass cube
I'm trying to make a transparent cube or glass cube with fire in the middle of it so you can see it in the cube.  I've tried different ways to make the cube transparent but I don't see the flames but in the render, the emitter is visible but no flames.
Does someone knows what to do? :)
Thank you for your comments! I've tried to make it with a glass shader and both transparent and translucent shaders.  In the render, i can see the emitter and the glass cube as I like it. But I don't see any flames in the cube. They just don't show  up. I dont have any pictures now.

Hello and welcome to the site! As of now there's too little information to answer your question. Could you please provide some more? Which ways of making the cube transparent did you already try? How did you make the fire? Do you see the fire without the cube? Please click "edit" underneath your question and add this information, images do not hurt either! We are here to help you, it's just difficult when we don't really know what the problem is.

Most important question, what Blender version? I see that there is some bug right now (today 2.8 build) with smoke/fire rendering.

Hi cgslav. Im using the 2.79 i think :)


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Is there a way to fix mark seams "border" which are showing in render?
I did uv-map and in render there are these kind of border in places where I mark seams.
Is there a way to fix this?

https://ibb.co/vY00k9s

that can be a normal issue. Try Sift+N to recalculate them.

It didn't work.

you should had more information about the mesh. eventually upload it (or a part of it) using https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ ...and I think this is not a uv seam issue

I added blend file.

this is probably due to the normal map but the blend file does not include "bump to" texture...

I upload it. Sorry I'm not used to this kind of stuff.

well... can only say that disconnection normal map solves the seam. But hard to say the diff in the normal map texture...

When you use normal map in a shader you have to change the color space to "Non-Color". If you change the texture file you have to do it again.

This is it. Thank you.


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Glossy shadder work differently on two obejcts
I did face and after that I did retopology. And now glossy shader on lowpoly mesh is working differently than on other objects. Anyone know why is this happening? I didn't change anything in any options.
I just saw that this is not glossy shader problem but fresnal.

Ok. I found the answer. I had to flip normals.


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Differences in texture painting between 2.7 and 2.8
Why when I'm texture painting it looks so bad, I mean in 2.7 the same texture look good but in 2.8 its look like that.
It should give the same color as skin behind but instead it give this black color.
Is this because of low quality of texture? Why does it looks good in 2.7 but not in 2.8?

Painting with stencil.

Switch color space from RAW back to SRGB. Try it out. Additionally: Texture stencils will paint with the original color marked white. If you're trying to create details using a stencil, consider painting in a "layer" for oppacity or roughness instead of the direct color.

I was trying all color spaces. With "layer" you mean that I shoud make new image for roughness and connect it to the principled BSDF? When im using stencil normaly in base color it looks the same (more black then color).


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differences in quality of brush alphas
I wanted to do a something like skin pores. I tried to do it with brush alphas but the quality of it was very low or was different in different areas. And here is my question: what affects the quality of the results when using alphas on brushes when texture painting? I will put some images to show what I mean. (I apologize for my English)

I make some alpha in gimp. I cant remebere where i found this one from the begining (this "skin").
Brush texture 1k:

Brush texture 4k:

Maybe JPG is too lossy to be a good mask for a brush

Do you get the same result when painting in the UV/Image Editor? What is the target texture canvas resolution versus the actual brush image resolution?

When i used UV/Image Editor results was the same. Target texture is 1k. I was trying 1k and 4k brush texture resolution but nothing changed. I will update post with pictures of that. I am not sure if I answered your question correctly.

I worked it out a quite some time ago, but maybe it will help someone else. I did bad UV mapping, begginer mistake.


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How can I connect multiple bones to one?
As seen in the image below, I'd like to connect the tails of bones 1-5 to the head of the target bone, in a way that allows the connected bones to rotate accordingly when moving the target bone.
Is that even possible or does Blender require its usual black magic to make something as simple as that work?

Please add some more infos. Should the 1-5 bones stretch to follow the target? Should they only point at it? Because if the answer is not for both, then 3 bones are enough to deny any possibility, and this is geometry and not Blender-related.

The goal is to have 1-5 move together with the target bone (up and down etc.), and the other bones connected to 1-5 should be fixed at their heads and moving at their tails.

Hi, If I understand it clearly, you want to move the Target bone. When doing so, Bone 1-5 should follow the Target bone. And the bones attached to 1-5 should have their tails connected to bones 1-5 without moving their heads. Is this right?

Yes, that's my goal. Imagine the target bone as a car's wheel hub that moves up and down or rotates left and right, and the bones connected to 1-5 as the suspension wishbones that are supposed to connect the car body (bone heads) with the wheel hub (bone tails).

Bones 1,2,3,4,5,suspens, are all child of bone "control", which can move up and down and rotate left/right.
Suspens has a "stretch to" constraint pointing to "car" bone. Bones A,B and C have a "stretch to" constraint pointing at 2,1 and 5.
Car and Car2 are parented also.


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How do I know a details about video codec used by Blender?
When I do render animation I can choose a "Video Codec". Is that codec provided by Blender app, OS or is installed with some external app? How can verify what have been used?

Blender uses Ffmpeg to encode video (https://ffmpeg.org/). The Blender install provides support to read a wide variety of codecs, but offers a limited number of containers and codecs to write. The available codecs may also depend on how blender was compiled, and what other codecs are supported by the operating system you are using. For example on apple's confuser you might find other quicktime codecs (for licensing reasons) than on windoze or linux (to further compound the differences, some linux distributions don't provide ffmpeg support out of the box, like Fedora, again for legal reasons).
As much as we like to use blender for every need, be aware also that there are much better and more flexible encoder only apps out there. Even ffmpeg in terminal (or in many of the different frontends or GUIs) can give you more options (and faster encoding)
.


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JPG decompressed and compressed again, will it affect colors and color space?
I found easy to add a black frames to my photos with Blender. I just add some scaling and offset in VSE and render one image. I am wondering is that process affects colors or color space of my photo? Is my JPG decompressed and compressed again?

The color space is the same: sRGB, so expect no transformation there, but know that Jpeg is a compressed format, a lossy compression format designed to make file sizes small at the expense of quality. A terrible format if you are applying transformations.
Every time you decompress an image, change the geometry or color, and re-compress the image again you will get new compression artifacts. Do an image search for "macroblocking" and "compression artifacts" to understand the horrors of the JPEG format.

In fact I observed the quality loss. Wandered if this is more caused by the JPG format or scaling resolution, cause a new pixels must be somehow recalculated.


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Why is the emission shader clamping even when I increase the strength to crazy high values?
I have made a pretty complex scene in Blender 2.82.. I used an HDRi to barely light a scene(strength 0.05).. I just wanted my scene to be lit by street lamps with an emission shaded ball inside the lamp post… Test renders were as expected.. the scene got fully lit by the lamps..
But after I made a few more changes to the scene ( not touching the light sources ).. The scene was dim and dull.. when I increased the strength of brightness to crazy high.. it still did not light up the scene properly..
The scene:

The lamp post array can be seen is made of 3 different meshes: Pole, sphere emitter, covering
Lamp post material:

The pole material

The glass cover material

The actual emission shader
I did not make any changes since I made the test render.. but now, it does not work as intended..
The test render that was qualified:

After the changes:

Just to mention, I did not make any changes to the scale or move or anything.. I literally just appended new meshes for grass to be used as particles in the field present in right side..
The link for the scene:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E0inbkPYmTTkzVnRi2sR15HU8w-BSiIj/view?usp=sharing
Edit1: After testing I found out that any value from 1 to 15000K, does not help in lighting up the scene.. it behaves like EEVEE.... the above render was done with 20K strength.. but still not illumination...
Edit2: I tested spot lamps and they do not light up the scene as well..
Expecting Your help..

Hello :). It works just fine on my end. Would restarting Blender help?

Mesh lights tend to be pretty noisy, especially if they are small. I hardly ever use only meshlights to illuminate a scene. If you put one of your lights closer to the road, you can see it does not get clamped, it's just very noisy. My suggestion is to switch to spot lights. Your lamp posts are 12m high, so to actually illuminate the street you do need a lot of power. I set the strength of spot to 20,000, that did the trick. If you are uncomfortable with such high numbers you can use a light falloff node to make the lamp ignore the distance.


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How do i unlink a texture from a material?
I applied a texture via uv mapping editor and node editor for reference, did the job, deleted the image texture node, unticked "use nodes" box, removed the texture from uv mapping editor and that texture still affects the material. When i import the .blend file to unity, the material gets renamed from "wood" to "wood_woodDoor_jpg". I notice that the texture doesnt have a 0 next to it in uv mapping editor and that when i reopen the project, it stays there. How do i  remove this texture from my project?

I did the exact same thing before with no problem. This time around, maybe i did something in a wrong order?
I even selected this in Unity:

The texture probably was associated with another material (like those present in the selected object materials) and thus still had a user until you explicitly deleted it by choosing it from the list and pressing Shift+x button.

Reference: How do I completely remove an image from my .blend file?
Apparently I had to add the texture to the UV map editor again and then Shift+LMB the X button to remove that texture from my project.


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How to make a mesh follow the curvature of another deformed mesh?
I'm trying to find a fast way to snap one mesh to the curvature of another deformed plane. As of now, I'm drawing the path out by hand and manually adjusting the height of each vertice to follow my ground plane. Surely there must be an easier way through modifiers or something?
Here you can see what I'm doing. I'm adding banners around the track which need to follow the curvature of the ground.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks.

When I try to add that modifier, I can't select the 'ground' plane as a target.

What other information would you like?


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Visible objects in edit or object mode are invisible when rendering
I'm working on a model that has assigned materials (very simple ones, they are the default material with a color). The problem comes when i try to render it. I don't know why but most of the parts become invisible. The problem happens with cycles render and with blender render. Here is a list of things i've tried:

I've checked the little camera on the Outliner view.
I've tried to recalculate and flip normals.
Clear all restricted render
Save as a new file (i heard i had to append to a new file but im new in blender and don't know how)

This is the object on the object mode, you can see that the objects are visible (all the parts of the group are visible too)

Here you can see the rendered image

I don't see any difference between the objects that are seen and those that aren't but as I said, i have not much experience with Blender and i don't know where i have to look at. Most of the object has been by extruding planes or circles.
Here is the file:

Edit: I've Joined every object of the window's grid and now that part it's visible. Despite of this, the frame is invisible yet.

Thank you

Your problem appears to be related to the "Duplication" setting under the Object panel.
Setting it to "None" for all the objects fixes your issue. I don't know, however, if you were using the "Gruoup" setting for a purpose (unlikely so: no duplication group was selected).

Great, it did work, thank you. Why is this happening? I mean, what is the motivation of doing that change?

As far as I understand, with your settings Blender was being asked to use your object not as an object but as a placeholder for the transformations to be applied to a duplicated group of other objects. Such group, however, was not selected (see the blank line under "Group:"), thus resulting in no renderable output. However, I don't know what caused your file to be caught in that situation. Maybe as a result of duplications, parenting, or inadvertently invoked shortcuts.

or fiddling around (guilty on many occasions).  The group option sets up a Dupligroup  Good Catch.  @Kaostias would consider using an array modifier for the grid.


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Is there a way to turn hair particle into animated, keyframed mesh?
Trying to camera project on a particle system instancing an object, I dont want to change that single object material, because I have painted them differently for each one, Will be good to project by camera, but i am not sure if i can do that. Is there a way to do this?

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


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How do I make a plate wrap around the edge of the object?
Project on the google drive
Hi. I need to make this object wrap around the model. I tried using a shrinkwrap modifier. However I wasn't able to make it to bend the plate. Does it have to do with lack of vertical loopcuts? (I can't add them because of a weird topology). I also tried using a subdiv, but it didn't change anything. What should I do to achieve the bending around that edge effect?
Thank you in advance.

Hello, it's hard to understand how you shape looks like and what you're trying to achieve, could you please show a picture of your object model?

I added additional pictures

your topology is super messy, what you could do is use a Curve modifier in order to bend your object, but make sure that your object has enough topology to bend


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Why do I have this weird reflections?
Why are those weird reflection on the edge of the blue driver appear. I didn't use any kind of glossy or metallic materials on it. How do I fix it?
Thank you in advance
I added the project file

Can you upload your .blend file to https://blend-exchange.com/ ? Thanks.

It looks like stretching as a result of a subdivision surface modifier without adequate supporting geometry. Add an edge loop around the inside of the problematic "rim" and see what happens when you move it closer to one of the inner or outer rings - it should correct the image somewhat, but you may need to add a second edge loop to move close to the "other"  ring before it is fully corrected.

So... Any ideas? Or maybe it's just a bug


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What would be the way to model the upper part of the bench?
I am new to blender and I wanted to model this bench. What would be the easiest and most accurate way to model the top of this bench (I'm talking about those little folds and deepenings). Thank you in advance and sorry for such basic question

That's really helpful, but how do I actually make this unit mesh in step 1? (I'll add a picture of it to my post)

Hi :). Scroll through the answer, there's a specific gif about it ;)

I'm sorry. I didn't see that. Anyway thanks for a quick response.


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How do I create such material?+un-wraping
 Sorry for such a basic question, but how do I recreate such material? I tried making this kind of concrete material in substance designer and browsed the whole internet for the right textures, but it still seems like a long way from my goal. I want it to look as photorealistic as possible.
How should I do it?
I also have problems when it comes to un-wraping the model (smart UV doesn't seem to work and can't figure out where to put those seams on the model)
I'd appreciate a little help with that too. (I'll include the project file).
Thank you in advance!

UPD: There is a texture I created in SD, but still looking for your suggestions to make it better. Also would appreciate some suiting image textures. (But like I said, I searched the whole internet through and didn't find anything perfect for my purposes)

Hi. I think you forgot to pack your materials before you uploaded the file (File > External Data _ Pack Resources).

Also, I notice your object has non-uniform scale (comes from scaling in object mode). Select your mesh in object mode and press Ctrl+A (apply) and select "Scale".

Thanks for the scale suggestion. I definitely overlooked that.

But also I didn't want to include textures since they, don't really resemble the texture I was going after.

You could mix a big Noise Texture for the background spots with a smaller Noise Texture for the small dots, use a Color > MixRGB in Multiply mode in order to mix. You can create a texture before the Mapping of the big Noise Texture in order to twist it a bit:

Thank you for your suggestion. It looks nice, but it is far from what I am looking for. Like I said, I really need a photorealistic look for a close-up.

it just needs additional layers of textures. But if you want realism, why not use real picture of concrete?

here is another try: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/190637/how-tocreate-a-full-pbr-concrete-material

Thanks. I'll try it


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How do I model a plant growing through a hard surface?
I was struggling with modeling that bump (particularly sharp edges, cracks). What would be the best way to do that? Thank you in advance

I think you might want to investigate some "explosion" tutorials.  IMHO, the plant is exploding through the surface in very slow motion.

is it supposed to be animated? You could even do it with texture instead of modelling...

Not animated. Just like a bump on the wooden floor in the corner there

Wooden floor reacts differently on pressure from underground than elastic asphalt ... Wood wouldn't be just a bump (•‿•)

Probably, but how do I model that?

Wooden floor
You can start with addon Floor Board Generator ...

Setup in "vintage" style ...
In edit mode select a few planks in place you want to crack the floor and Separate P > Selection.
Use Annotate Pencil from tool bar to draw a line (On Surface) and use a build-in addon Cell Fracture to crack those planks. Set Point Source > Annotation Pencil with some Noise.

Noise 0.1

Noise 0.001 (lower value = more spiky / straight shards).
Search for Add Rigid Body > Active with all shards selected. Than search for *Rigid Bodies Connect to add constraints between shards. In properties (left down corner of 3D view) select Chain by Distance.

Under Physics Properties (with all constraints selected and one Active -bright orange), enable Breakable. Hovering above checkbox, right-click and select Copy to Selected. Lower Threshold value (copy to others in the same way).
Add Rigid Body > Passive to other objects participating in simulation.
Green Cone is animated on Z axis (with option Animated enabled under Physics Properties).

Notes:

Nice tutorial about fracturing with Cell Fracture addon
There also exists a build of experimental Blender with Fracture Modifier, that could handle this task in more efficient way (but on Mac is last version blender 2.8 ... and I could not find the Annotation Pencil feature).
Sometimes addon "looses" some shards - it happens due boolean operation. If does it happen to you, enable in addon's popup window - Debug Boolean ... this will keep Boolean as modifiers. You can select origin of "invisible" object, and in modifier panel switch from Exact to Fast. Before assigning Rigid Body, I had to apply modifiers ... just select all shards and Search for Convert to Mesh.

Asphalt surface
For "elastic" material like asphalt at your reference ... just model or sculpt a hump and use image texture with b&w crack as a factor to mix outer/inner materials ... or if you want more relief use this texture in Displace modifier too.

Thank you so much that is really helpful! However I can't get the planch addon to work in 3.0.1. Could you include a brief instruction on how to install it? I just installed  a .py file from the github, but there didn't appear any new tabs for me in Blender (and can't find it in the old ones like 'edit', 'tool' etc.)

See edit ... I used wrong link.


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Why the image imported as plane is not transparent?
I imported the png image with alpha channel as plane, but it doesn't have transparency to it.
Why is that?
Thank you in advance!

hello, are you sure that your image is transparent? the grid seems to be part of the image, could you please share your original image?

Yep, maybe it was the image. However I changed it to another one and still can't get it to work.

You need to make sure "Use Alpha" is checked when importing Image as Plane. If you do this, and the image is actually transparent, it will take care of it automatically

I did exactly that, but still couldn't get it to work properly.

Neither image you've uploaded has a transparent background, the grid is baked into both

Oops. Sorry... I'll try it again with the other image

Yeah it works now. Thanks a lot


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How to fix the texturing problem with the floor?
I have this floor made out of tiles using array modifier and I wanted to apply the surface imperfection texture to it, but the problem is, it treats it like duplicates of a single object (which it basically is). So I want the surface imperfection texture to be continuous across all the tiles. How do I do this?
Thank you in advance!

You're going to have to organize your node tree or provide a file for someone to be able to help

I added the blender  file, but didn't include the texture, cause it all together it was around 100 MB. You can use any texture, I just want it to be continuous and spread across all the tiles. Thanks!

Create an Empty. Add a UV Project modifier on the tiles and make sure its the last modifier in the stack. Set Object to your Empty. Now you can translate and scale the empty to manipulate the UV's.

You can use the free  Poliigon Uber Mapping Node (Download Link) that has mosaic rotation and noise to fix tilling patterns.

Huh. I've genuinely never thought of that. So simple. Thanks ;)

Thank you. That really helped. However still cannot figure out how to deal with tiling, because of the fact that tiles are duplicates of the same object, when I adjust the scale to suite my purposes, it still repeats itself on a larger scale and you can't fix it with mosaic rotation or smth similar. Any suggestions?


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problem with baking high poly to low poly model
okay, so i'm trying to bake a normal map of a sculpted cracked stone wall on a low poly one. but when I do. it like scatters everything around, and give random weird colors other than your typical blues and purples, its putting out like yellow, green, and red.

this is what the low poly looks like.

this is the high poly.

and this is what the normal map looks like when baked.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong, or if there is a way to fix this.
all I know is I can't render this without baking to the low poly.
so if you guys know what to do. and how to help. please let me know.
this is what the baked image looks like

Anything with a blue<0.5-- your yellows-- is where the the low poly failed to enclose the high poly.  Increase ray extrusion or use a cage.  Or, possibly, where your high poly has backwards normals, but that shouldn't be the case.  Anything purple is probably just hitting something close to a 90 degree angle: use a low poly that better defines the high poly, avoid 90 degree bends in the high.  But also, don't judge a normal map on the image.  Judge it on how it looks on the mesh when used as a normal map.

this is what I see when I use the baked image. /Users/nielsen2022349/Desktop/Screen Shot 2022-01-18 at 10.55.31 AM.png

We can't see the image because it's not a valid link and the image is on your desktop. You need to edit your question and upload the image there with the image icon of the toolbar.

okay, that is done

Thanks. Have you tried to increase the Extrusion value as suggested and checked the face orientation?

As Nathan says, try with a cage, otherwise it's often tricky...


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How to switch rendering engine via python script
I managed to compile Blender as a Python import module. When I do bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True) it renders with cycles. How can I render by using Blender internal renderer instead?

You can set the engine before rendering like this:
bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'BLENDER_WORKBENCH'

Its possible multiple scenes are involved in the render so you may want to do...
for scene in bpy.data.scenes:
    scene.render.engine = 'BLENDER_WORKBENCH'

Note: If you select the Scripting screen, then change the engine, the code to do this is printed at the top of the screen (called the Info view), eg:
bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'BLENDER_WORKBENCH'
bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'

! Thanks for the helpful hints about using a for loop to enforce all scene to be rendered by using Blender internal renderer.


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What is the best way to overcome layers limitation in Blender?
I am doing an archviz and would like an idea on how to overcome layers limitation.
My workflow

Assign layer 1 - 10 for 10 DWGs of floor/elevation plan
Assign layer 11 - 20 for the actual 3D model for each floor/elevation plan

For a 10-floor building this is fine, or for repeating floors. Now, I have 12 floor plans DWGs that have little similarity to each other. I would then need 22 layers.
What would be the best way to accomplish this in Blender? Different scenes? Different .blend for each DWG?

Change your workflow?

Different scenes for each "chunk" could work, or different scenes for models and DWGs could probably work. You will have to change your workflow in some way, as I do not think you can add layers

@pycoder, yep, but how and that was my question. I am aware that my current workflow is too limiting. I'm sorry if I didn't ask clearly.

"The best" is certainly opinion based and bound to personal preference, there are definitely different approaches, workarounds and valid alternatives.
Working daily in archviz in Blender however I end up exclusively using Groups for organizational purposes instead. Haven't really touched Blender's Bit Layers for scene management in quite some time, except for when render layer compositing is required.
I permanently changed my outliner to Groups mode in my startup.blend and use it as an always-open "layer manager" of sorts.

That way you can assign custom names to the "layers", have an unlimited number of them, and do the usual toggle visibility, selectability and renderability from the list.
Only difference between this and actual CAD-like layers is that since they are groups they don't store an actual state per-se, so adding an object to an invisible or unselectable group, for example, will not immediately make said object take on the group invisibility or unselectability state. You will have to manually toggle it again for this to update all new objects freshly added to said group.
For organizational purposes, if you also wish to use group instances along with groups as layers, then things might get messier with a long list of groups. Using some sort of naming scheme to keep groups organized, sortable and manageable is one possible workaround.
I generally prefix all my "layer groups" with the 'Layer' prefix in their name, and then prepend different prefixes for other group types meant as reusable instances, depending on their content.
Something like 'Component' for project specific reusable building parts; or 'Assets Furniture', and 'Assets Decoration' for generic movable objects; 'Assets Vegetation' or 'Assets Trees' for the greens, etc.
You can still have objects belong to several layers at the same time, and if you import DXFs with Blender's standard DXF importer, half the work would already be done automatically, since the importer already matches DXF layers to Blender groups by default anyway.

I never thought of using groups as 'layers'. Yep. naming consistency is important. Thank you for sharing!

Forgot to mention that If you import DXFs half the work would be done anyway, since the default DXF importer already creates groups for each DXF layer by default.

True, I just noticed that. I work with DXF.


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Updated version of Blender
I just want to make sure I keep all my user preferences. When I install the updated version of blender, how can I keep all my user preferences?

As far as the Start-Up File, save a version as you like it in the older version and open it in the newer version and set it as the start-up file. You find that in the File menu by selecting "Save Start-Up File..."
I don't know about the User Preferences as I have the same question myself.


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Using Scalable Link Interface (SLI) to speed up renders
Has anyone used two titan cards in Scalable Link Interface to speed up renders? I'm just curious because I've tried everything.

SLI will actually hurt performance with cycles.


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Textures not showing up on objects unless selected in UV editor
When I assign a texture to an object's material and use UV unwrap it doesn't seem like Blender assigns the texture to the faces as they're not visible in the 3D view. If I use the UV Editor to select the texture then it's visible. Is there a way to make sure a texture and its UVs are properly assigned in the Default window layout without having to switch window layouts for every object?

Are you using BI or cycles?

Normally, you have to assign the image for each, since Blender won't know which image and which UV set you are going to use for which texture or which material. But you can learn to split the area by right clicking on the Editor border and choose Split Area. Then you can arrange your own customized layout as you wish for ease.

Enable the Material Utils addon and hit Q over 3D View. It let's you transfer material assignments to UV editor and vice versa (so you don't have to do it twice).

I'm not quite sure what you mean, but when you say "without having to switch window layouts for every object" it sounds like you're changing window layouts, just to do the UV Mapping, which is not necessary. I'm guessing that you're using the Default layout for unwrapping and the UV Editing layout for assigning the image, and you're right to guess that there's an easier way. (this will help)
In the header of every window, there is a button all the way on the left which will let you change the window type. What you probably want is to change one window to the UV/Image Editor and another to the 3D viewport, but in the same layout. This will let you see both at the same time. (All of the layout is totally customizable; the various layouts that have names are just presets, you can even change those or add custom layouts). In fact, I usually use the Default layout and I'll change the top-right window (which is usually an outliner) to a small 3D view, and then just change the big main window to whatever I'm doing at the moment, even another 3D view.
Another problem that you might be encountering is that Blender decouples the viewport texturing from rendered texturing. The render will use the image in the material settings, but the viewport will use the image that's selected in the UV/Image Editor for that UV set. (You can have multiple UV sets on a single object, but each UV set can only have one image). This means that you can see one texture in the viewport, and a completely different one in the render. This also means that if you haven't chosen an image in the UV/Image editor, then it won't show up in the viewport, even though it will render.
Hope that helps!


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Proper way to maximize reuse of assets within scenes
I am trying to use Blender to create game content like models and environments(levels). Whether creating a mesh/model or a level there's usually multiple assets involved that are getting shared by many other assets like textures, other meshes, rigs and materials. The blender flow seems to involve recreating assets every time they're used.
What is the best way to reuse shared assets between .blends and to make it easy to find these assets? I'm aware of the linking functionality but it does seem a lot of work (finding the host .blend and navigating its structure) when there's lots of links to be made for each .blend. I'm also looking for the ability to change the shared asset in any .blend referencing it and have the change propagated through every other .blend that references it (Example: altering a Material or a Mesh that's being referenced by a level). I don't think this is supported by Linked proxies.
If linking with proxies is my only option I was thinking of having every instance of certain types of assets in one .blend file (Like Materials and Textures or sounds but absolutely not models) to make them easier to find when linking. Is this a terrible idea?

Asking "best way" questions is generally discouraged on Stack Exchange.

@RolandiXor why? wouldn't asking for the best way get multiple answers which is a good thing

@RolandiXor With the original Blender forums now disabled this StackExchange is now effectively the official blender forums.

@qwertie well I should probably expand on what I mean. If you ask a question that can get multiple answers that approach the same thing from several different directions; that can mean that your question is too broad. I hope I'm making sense.

Also, keep in mind that this isn't meant to have a forum-style interaction. The more objective the question the better. You risk having your questions closed if you treat it like a forum.

It looks linking is what you want, you will have to use the link option. You can find this under File→Link. Although it sounds as though you already pondered this method. After some quick testing it does seem that all the mesh and material data is transferred.
For advise on keeping all the objects organized, keep all the objects you want referenced in a library file and just link from that to keep from going through all the objects you don't need to reference. Also, name your objects properly. Navigating through the .blend structure is easy when you know which folder you need to go to. For whole objects, after you select File→Link, go to your library blend file and select Object→'Objectname'.
Use Alt+D to duplicate the linked object in your level files if you don't want to get another linked object. If you use Shift+D, only the material will update in my experience.


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Morphing 3D objects in Blender
I'm thinking about morphing a frog into an octopus in an animation.
So I was thinking about modeling/sculpting the two animals, then baking them onto low poly meshes with vector displacement (especially baking the frog fingers onto a stump). From what I've read so far, this could work.
Then, once rigged, moving them into similar position and using some mesh deformer/corrector (like the correctional PSD morph in C4D) to wrap the low poly octopus onto the low poly frog. Is there a similar deformer in Blender ?
The last thing I'd need to do is transferring the frog displacement and texture to the octopus to finally lower their "opacity" to 0 and crank up the octopus displacement and textures to 100 to finalise the morphing.
But since the octopus UVs should be quite different, how could I do that ?
I guess it's a quite complicated idea, lol. Thanks for the help.

yes, give your second object the same material, then in the UV/Image Editor, change its mesh position so that it fits the image texture, is it what you want? If not please give more details

Not sure if that would work since I'd like to make morphings. I'm thinking about morphing a frog into an octopus in an animation. So I was thinking about modeling/sculpting the two animals, then baking them onto low poly meshes with vector displacement (especially baking the frog fingers onto a stump). Then, once rigged, moving them into similar position and using some mesh deformer/correcter to wrap the low poly octopus onto the low poly frog. From what I've read so far, this could work.

The last thing I'd need to do is transferring the frog displacement and texture to the octopus to finally lower their opacity to 0 and crank up the octopus displacement and textures to 100 to finalise the morphing. But since the octopus UVs should be quite different would your suggestion work ? I guess it's a quite complicated idea, lol. Thanks for the help btw :)

I'm not sure to understand here, do you mean to have the two animals displayed at the same time ? I think having one animal morphing to the other would give better results. If that's not what you mean I'd be glad if you could elaborate. Thanks!


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Grease Pencil textured strokes transparency issue with other layers
I used different grease pencil objects for different elements of my animation (to move/scale them independently) but there's some kind of transparency issue on the strokes. I'd like to have a smooth blending.
However, textured strokes blend nicely when they're on the same GP object.
Is it normal ? If so, is there some workaround ?
Or maybe some rendering issue ?
I searched for individual layers move/scale options, but couldn't find any. I guess there's no such thing.

I'm using Blender 2.82 (same issue on 2.80) and macOS 10.13.6 (17G8030)
Blend file link : https://gofile.io/?c=3jIdCi
Screen capture of the behaviour : https://gyazo.com/7c6f3de424572ec6bab5fc5436e73339

Edit : I played a bit with Y positions and now the girl strokes are blending nicely. At some point the house did the same on some frames but it got this blending problem again, really weird.

So with some help I understood it was mainly a z-fighting issue. Kinda solved. The problem still happens when a grease pencil layer is in front of a background image but I can deal with that.


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Copy data from transform panel
I've been trying to find out ways to copy and paste the transform (panel) data of one bone to another, but I can't seem to find anything about how to do this anywhere. I have roughly 40 bones I need to do this for, so it will get tedious trying to copy and paste the individual locations and rotations of the heads and tails of each bone.

Possible duplicate of Searching for 3 posing buttons in Blender 2.8

Could you please elaborate.  Head and tail suggests edit mode. Possible dupe suggests pose mode. Copy transform of one bone to 40 others?  Are bones in same armature.


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Baked Texture not coming out right
I've been trying to bake some color masks into my diffuse texture in Cycles Render, and it generally works.
The problem is that the baked texture always looks completely different from the original, even when the only thing I connect it to is a diffuse or Principled BSDF shader. I'm using the Diffuse Color bake type (no direct or indirect lighting).
Original image texture (left) and baked image texture with only Principled BSDF shader (right):

I've circled and annotated most of the changes in the baked texture below:

a) The entire black area is gone and the dark and light grays of the diffuse bleed into it.
b) There is now some noticeable light grey patch in this area.
c) The once straight, linear edges in this section are now gone or heavily deformed.
d) The shape of the texture where the grey meets the dark grey is filled in and bleeds over another black part of the circled area.
e) The black portion is noticeably smaller and shaped differently.
f) There is no longer a straight divide between the light grey and dark grey in the circled area.
Here are my settings:

EDIT: I tried adjusting the margin from 16 to 4 pixels, but it seems like it's only modifying how much of the texture changes and cuts some parts of it out. Here's the baked texture with a 4 pixel margin prior to baking:

(Notice the green to red spectrum is cut off in the corner.)

Hard to spot the differences between those textures, maybe you can elaborate? You can do so by using the edit link at the bottom of your question.

@metaphor_set I added an image of the baked texture with most of the notable changes from the original texture circled in red.

@metaphor_set I clarified what parts of the image look different from the original, so (hopefully) you can see what I'm talking about.

Hello. Did you try to play with the Margin? I think it is too high.

@LeoNas I did not think of that, but it just slightly reduces or modifies the deformation of the texture. It still doesn't look like the original image texture.


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Cannot Weight Paint Near Bones
When I go into Weight Paint mode after selecting my model, I am unable to weight paint near the bones (black area). Also, moving the arm bone pulls the leg skin, despite the leg lacking weights (blue). This is possibly because my model has multiple components that would be weight painted separately. Is there any way I can fix this? It would be awesome if anyone could help me :)

Set Zero weights to None https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/80091/how-to-paint-weight-black-to-weight-blue/80094#80094

@Patdog Thanks for your response! This solved the black region problem, but the arm bone is still pulling the leg skin (without the leg having weights).

Chances are you have weights still connected to a vertex group. You can check this best in Edit mode and selecting the vertex groups one by one. Still stuck? You can always upload your file here and see if the problem can be found http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/help/


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Armature Model Suddenly Big
I created an armature for my Collada (.dae) model, selected the armature and my model, then applied automatic weights. For some reason, my model suddenly became 20 times larger after applying the weights. I tried removing doubles, using regular parenting, and applying uniform weights, but nothing seems to work. I have been dealing with this issue for quite a while, and the internet has little to no mentioning of the issue (some websites did not have answers). Can anyone help me fix this? I would really appreciate it :)

Try to apply the scale of the armature and the model before generating weights.

@Denis How can I do that? (Scaling the model also scales the armature)

----------> ctrl + A

It totally works now! Thanks guys! :) I tried to up vote both of your comments, but an error message is displayed.


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Custom default settings for nodes/materials
Is it possible  to set custom default values for nodes? For example, if I add a math node I would like it to be set to multiply by default.
In a similar trend, is it possible to have the Principled BSDF as the default shader when creating a new material?
Thanks.
Edit: the "duplicate question" provides only a rough workaround to one part of my question, so I don't quite regard it as an answer.

Possible duplicate of How to set default shader to principled brdf

You could always make a "default" material, set it's fake user flag and store it in your startup scene. So changing to your default material will be trivial, even if it's not fully automatic.

That might be not possible at least from GUI. If you script material adding then you define what is there but you will get predefined nodes first and then do something with them if needed (remove/create new ones), related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5668/add-nodes-to-material-with-python and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/23436/control-cycles-material-nodes-and-material-properties-in-python


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Preview render resets after rendering a few samples
When I enter the rendered shading mode in Cycles the preview render often gets stuck in an infinite loop: it renders a few samples, sometimes only 1, and then restarts from the beginning. I can't find any logic behind which objects or layers need to be visible for this to occur and no settings have changed afaik. This is a recent problem at work, happening in different files on two different computers.
Any ideas what might cause this?
(PS: Since these are work files I'm not allowed to share them here.)
Extra info edit: Blender 2.79. Standard interiors of about 1.5 - 2.5 million faces spread over a handful of layers, nothing we haven't done before.

Which version of Blender are we talking about? Also, how complex is the file? Vertex count, etc...

2.79. Nothing excessive, standard interiors of about 1.5 - 2.5 million faces spread over a handful of layers, nothing we haven't done before.

Are you playing animation in rendered view?

As far as I know there are no animations or animated objects in the scenes.

No matter if any object is animated or not if the timeline cursor is moving then blender takes it as a animation. Are you doing that?

No, also the amount of samples it renders appears to be somewhat random depending on how many objects or layers it needs to render, so it isn't just rendering a sample per frame for example.


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Uv stretching along tris?
I'm cheating my way out of making angled stacked header bricks above a portal by simply scaling one side of my uv plane. However, instead of stretching like expected for some reason the texture just switches direction along what seems to be a diagonal of the plane (or, the edge of where the tri would be). Does anyone have any idea what causes this or how it can be fixed? Thanks!
To be clear, this is the pattern I want:

The file can be found here (it's a work file so I can only upload the relevant bit. However, the problem persists): https://pasteall.org/blend/f0f4038816b14727af3d99d02519d434
(yes, scale and rotation are applied)

could you please share your file?so I can take a look at it

@Ribbit12 I edited the post with the link (https://pasteall.org/blend/f0f4038816b14727af3d99d02519d434)

The problem here is that you create unstable UV geometry when you stretch the face this way. The calculation happens from the vertices. And you just have four.
That you can see one half nearly working but the other half not is because a quad face is made by two underlying tris. And each underlying tri is separately calculated. And the result is then distorted as you can see it.
One solution would be to subdivide the face, so that you have enough vertices to calculate the UV in a proper way. I get a somehow useful result after 3 subdivisions.
The better solution would be to modify the texture instead of distorting the UV. Distorted UV is always unstable UV.

So just a technical limitation then. Anyway, subdividing it does indeed fix my problem so I'll mark this as the answer. Thanks!


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Image texture rendered badly in Blender cycles
The texture looks correct in the preview but renders badly with vertical artefacts and looks very low resolution. What's going on here?

This render, focussed on just the label (128 samples) shows the damage:

It is not the texture that has poor quality, it is the whole render. You seem to be rendering at a low resolution

I rendered at 4096 samples.

That sample count seems unnecessarily high for what seems like an outdoors scene. Anyway your issue is not sample count, it is render resolution, as in pixel size of the picture

I've added a closeup on the label and simplified the node so the image texture node goes directly into a diffuse BSDF node then to the material output node.

Looking at the "750ml" part in the bottom right corner of the label the 7 and the 0 are clipped away leaving just "5ml" visible.

I have found that it happens when I add the shrinkwrap modifier.  How to stop the damage?

The shrinkwrap modifier must be applied first, before the subsurface modifier.

It seems low resolution rendered image. You should check the resolution of render image.

It's not related to resolution or sample count.  I've added another screenshot close up to the label.  The vertical clipping is very clear in it.


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Cycles, Materials Baked to Texture Lost Shading
I'm very new to Blender, so this is probably a quick fix that I'm not noticing.  But, after having spent 2 days researching how I could fix this and coming up empty, I felt I should ask for help.
I've been trying to teach myself materials and node use through tutorials, and I just tried baking the materials to a texture.  I'm using Voronoi nodes to give polished detail to the steel part of the model, as seen in this picture.

But, when I bake the image to texture, I only get the gray base without the polished streaks from the Voronoi node.

Here is the node setup for the steel material.

And it was baked as Diffuse with only the color attribute selected.

If any more information is needed I'll gladly provide it.  Something inside is nagging me saying that this is a very simple fix that I'm just not noticing it.
EDIT 1:  I've added my Blender file.
EDIT 2 - SOLUTION: Thanks to Carlo I was able to figure out what was going wrong and play around until I fixed it.  The problem I had was I was feeding the Voronoi node into a Bump feeding into the Diffuse normal, instead of feeding it in with the color.  I knew it was something silly simple I was doing wrong.  Also, like he mentioned, the Lighten node was destroying it too.  First thing first, I got rid of the Bump, and I put in a multiply mix, then set the contrast to low.  I got an effect that I'm actually liking better than the original because the polish streaks aren't so pronounced, but just barely noticeable.  Compare this material setup picture with the original and you'll see where I altered the nodes.

Thanks so much Blender.se community.  I really needed this.  And, I'm sure I'll be back again in the future as I continue my Blender learning adventure.  Have a great day!

Welcome to Blender.Se. Could you attach an emission shader to the latest color mix node (named Lighten) and show the output as you did in the first image?

@Carlo  I gave it a shot and the texture came out pure white when I baked it.  So I also tried baking with direct and indirect lighting, and instead it was just black with faded light that was being emitted by the object.

"Lighten" mode needs brighter color in order to show something
With your setup are baking the Color component of the Diffuse pass. This means that the bake texture will show only the exact color input that's being provided to every diffuse shader in the nodes of your scene; no bump map/normals are being considered in this process, so the only way your texture could show some variations comes from the Mix factor of the Color Mix node (in your case set to Lighten blending mode)
Regardless of what color texture is coming into the factor, the output of the node will always be the light grey you see in the baked texture you are showing in your question: you are infact trying to Lighten a bright color with a darker one.

The manual is not quite clear about what the blending mode is doing:

Like bleach makes your whites whiter. Use with a mask to lighten up a little.

I may guess is adding the second color only when it's brighter than the first one, but it's a fact that using a second color darker than the first one results in a color that is always the same of the first one.

I edited my post to show the results of your help.  Thanks so much!  I think in his own way @Dimali was trying to say the same thing to me with his answer.  Thank you to both of you, and especially to you for your detailed explanation that helped me figure out what I needed to change.  Have a great day!

The reason for this is that you selected the Bake Mode "Diffuse", which is only the diffuse lights on the surface. Try "Full Render" to include your texture on top of the Diffuse bake.
Don't confuse the diffuse render pass with the diffuse texture or the diffuse shader.

Do you mean the "Combined" bake?  When I do that it includes lighting and so the model either comes out dark, or with unwanted shadows when I add light sources.  How can I mitigate that issue?


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Convert blender shhader to unity/texture
My question is about importing a shader into unity. I know the question was already asked, but for me it doesnt work. Here you can see, what I tried.

this is the original and my aim.

This is with they combined as you can see.

And this with the diffuse  bake.
I have no idea why this doesnt work. I also tried to delete the light. But this also doesnt work.
Do you have any Ideas?

I found the answer. You  have to set the light to 100 percent lit, then you get a good looking result. But the second problem i with the black color line  inthe center of the thsirt. Here you  have to bake both materials at the same time,on the same picture. Finally you  get the result as you  want. In my case it looks like:


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Rendering in CUDA / OptiX - Different Results / SSS error?
I have some weird rendering issues with my new RTX 2070 Super graphics card.
I'm currently using Blender 2.81a. Image #1 is rendered in CUDA and it's looking right.
Image #2 is rendered via the new OptiX RTX support, but some Heads look different. It's the Subsurface Scattering (Random Walk), that doesn't look the same. Alle the other maps work.
The strange thing is, it's not on all the heads, just some. The biggest difference is in the 3rd head.
I created the SSS maps in Substance Painter, the white parts "glow red", the black parts are untouched by the light. Except the ears and the nose, most of the map is black and should not have any effect (like in the cuda-render).
but in the OptiX-render, the black parts of the SSS map seem to "brighten" the face on the 3rd head. The 4th head on the right however seems not really effected by this.
The shaders are alle the same, except different Maps (Normal, Roughness, SSS, etc.)
Do you have a solution for this problem? Help would be much appreciated ;)
Thanks and all the best

I couldn't find a bug report about this regarding SSS. Please check if the same issue occurs in the most recent nightly build. If it does please report it to the bug tracker. Don't forget to follow the submission template (ideally use Help > Report a Bug in Blender) and provide a simple scene which allows to reproduce the problem.


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How to change the number display format?
Blender version 2.93
By default, Blender displays numbers in the format of 10,200.50 and does not respect the user defined values.

My current number format settings are set to 10 200,50 which is used by most software, but not Blender.

I simply want the number format I've chosen to be displayed in Blender.

And in case some would argue "this would mess with the internal code if it needs to be able to treat , as a decimal place too". No, this is just the visual part for the user. It will convert to the display format when displaying, and convert from the display format for user input. -- I personally don't mind period as a decimal mark, but comma as a thousand mark is just wrong and breaks the ISO standard.

Hi :)  It's in Properties > Scene tab > Units > Separate values (or something like that). Then you'll only get a period as a decimal mark.

I'm stupid, I was supposed to state which Blender version I'm running. I have to use 2.93 to ensure everything works as it should. So I assume Properties and Scene tab are things of Blender version 3?

Separate Units is there in 2.93, but it only changes 1.3m -> 1m 3cm, which isn't what you want.

@scurest Yes, that wouldn't be what I'm after, since it would then possibly say "1,000 m" which to me reads as 1000 mm at a precision of 1 mm.

About thousands mark:
These are not normally used, but are used for eg scene statistics in the statusbar. The commas appear to be inserted by the function BLI_str_format_int_grouped_ex, which hardcodes comma as the separator. So you cannot change this.
About decimal mark:
AFAICT, most numbers in the UI are printed by the standard snprintf function with format specifier %.*f. Theoretically this is a locale sensitive function. Try running this from the Python Console to set the locale.
import locale as l; l.setlocale(l.LC_NUMERIC, "")
# Try this one if that doesn't work
import locale as l; l.setlocale(l.LC_NUMERIC, "Swedish")

(The precise name of the language will vary). I had to move my mouse around the UI a bit to get it to update, but it did change.

But it can't use one localised and one hardcoded symbol, that would result in collision.

Then you can't change it.


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Why is the ground not showing in the render?
In the viewport there is the desert ground but it isn't there in the render?

have you checked the visibility options in the Outliner (also check the Globally disable in render option)?

@moonboots Vewport / Render is seen at screen as enabled under Outliner (if Global would disabled it would not be seen in Viewport) ... modifier?

@Henry ... probably share your file just with Desert object if issue persist. BTW How relates the title of your question with your issue?

@vklidu Sorry, was going to ask a question before this one but managed to resolve it, just forgot to change the title.

Can't imagine how, but OK ... great you solved it ... please delete your Question or create an Answer. Thank you

Fixed it, the particle system for the cacti was the problem. I just had to make the instances real from in the modifiers tab.


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Why has my render got such a sharp light gradient in eevee?
I rendered as an EXR sequence with the DWAA codec in Eevee. It could have something to do with that or it might just be my monitor, I'm not sure.

EXR:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yapa4vja06x2ur0/Shot_20100.exr?dl=0

Please embed your images directly into the question rather than making folks go to links which aren't likely to exist in future. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75491/how-to-upload-an-image-to-a-post

Hello and welcome. Instead of having users go through links and external sites please use the builtin tools to embed images in your post. See How to upload an image to a post? or GIF

This is banding. It's common with 8-bit colour output and subtle gradients. Either enable dithering in post-processing or output to a 16-bit format (noting that monitors generally can't display all these colours and so you'll still see banding until you apply dithering).
This is part of your EXR after converting to 8-bit with dithering applied in GIMP - banding is much reduced:

..but shows up when the image is displayed resized. Click the link to get a better idea :)

@Nick I rendered it with a full colour depth (^see edit to original post^) so surely because it is a 32 bit colour depth it would be more than sufficient to avoid banding? Might be very wrong, just thought I'd ask.


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Cycles (Experimental) doesn't work with custom geometry attributes
Just trying to confirm / clarify the issue with blender 3.0 version.
I'm preserving original geometry point positions (custom vecor attribute) on a geometry to get a consistent procedural pattern material shading when the geo is getting deformed. The attribute is created with the Geometry Nodes modifier from 'Positon' plugged in to a custom named output then material reads this attribute through the 'Attribute' node. This technique works fine with the Cycles [Supported] but once I switch to Cycles [Experimental] the attribute read in the material network stops working (with custom attributes) - it is still working with the standard internal attributes like 'generated' or 'uv'. Is this a known limitation of the Experimental mode or there are workarounds/options to get this issue sorted?
[EDIT]
Thanks for the answers. I've spent some more time debugging the problem and I guess I found what's not working:

Cycles Experimental Adaptive Subdivision doesn't see custom attributes generated by GeometryNodes
(Also) GeometryNodes modifier is 'blocking' adaptive subdivision feature when placed after subdivision modifier in the modifiers stack

Examples:
This is the subd shading reusing the original Geometry position:

.. and this is switching to the custom attributes generated by Geometry Nodes

.. and also this is rearranging modifiers stack so that GeometryNodes is resolved after the subdivision resulting in adaptive option gone from the subdivision - as the result myPos custom attribute is getting into the material (as a cost of dorpping adaptive subdivision)

maybe show us a screenshot of your node setup?

I don't have such problems, clarify your setup. Screenshots of nodes of shader and GN should be helpful.


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Capture video from cameras in blender game engine for Artificial Intelligence
I'm new to programming in blender game engine.
I want to investigate the Q-learning AI using blender game engine. For this purpose I want to make 3d pong. It will look something like this:

The game will contain two boards and one ball. I want to capture data from two cameras and feed it into the Convolutional network and find an optimal actions (Q-values) according them:

I was faced with the problem of obtaining images from cameras in blender game engine. Can anyone help me with this?
Ideally I need transform images to arrays and transfer data using sockets. But, as a last resort, I'll be happy with the option of saving images into folders.
I will not satisfied with the screenshots, using bge.render.makeScreenshot(filename), because I need multiple cameras.
If I succeed in this, I promise to make a tutorial in Youtube about it and share all source files ;)
Sorce files
Many thanks!!!
ADDITION:
I've tried to use script from this link:
from bge import logic, render

camList = logic.getCurrentScene().cameras
cont = logic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner

cam1 = camList['Camera_LEFT']
cam2 = camList['Camera_RIGHT']

width = render.getWindowWidth()
height = render.getWindowHeight()

cam1.setViewport(0, 0, int(width/2), height)
cam2.setViewport(int(width/2), 0, width, height)

cam1.useViewport = True
cam2.useViewport = True

folder = '//image-#.png'
render.makeScreenshot(folder)

It gives me right view in viewport:

But, screenshot in my directory is still from 3d view (((:

Please, give the source files.

try using this script from a related q and then use render.makeScreenshot

let me know if this solves your problem so i can make an official answer and we can close the issue

I suggest to check the BGE API. Have a look at the VideoTexture section. ImageRender.image should be what you are looking for. - this is just a comment as an answer should provide much more detail.

I found the answer!
Thanks ThaTimst3r for his video on YouTube: /watch?v=e4KNstJhFeA&index=1&list=LLNnIYCXmFzdsaND3RsqYSdA

We need to add two planes which we will use for our "screens". These screens need different textures. So, we need to link the materials of screens and cameras. For this purpose, in each screen, we create two properties: the material and the camera.
The values of properties have to be the same as name of material and name of camera respectively.
Next, in our code we will link them:
camera_name = obj['camera_property']

and
matID = texture.materialID(obj, 'MA'+obj['material_property'])

Let's render texure from camera:
renderToTexture = texture.Texture(obj, matID)
renderToTexture.source = texture.ImageRender(scene, cam)

So, final we have the effect what we need. We can even set the resolution of images:
enderToTexture.source.capsize = [500, 500]

And convert images to arrays:
imageArray = texture.imageToArray(renderToTexture.source, 'RGB')

Thats all, I think.
If you have comments, I will listen them with pleasure =)
All source files.


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View Expressions curve in Graph Editor
I've animated some channels, such as rotation channels and a modifier value using Expressions. But I can't find out how to view the resulting Driver curve in the Graph Editor. I'm using Blender 2.8.
Thanks.

Found the solution. In Blender 2.7x there was a separate Drivers section in the Graph Editor, but in Blender 2.8 it has been decoupled from the Graph Editor and now has its own dedicated Drivers editor.