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Can I make some keyframes Bezier while keeping some as Linear (in Graph Editor)?
I have a simple animation, and I want a certain keyframe to be Bezier in the graph editor, and another keyframe to stay Linear. But when I hit “T”> Bezier, it changes the entire animation to Bezier. Is there a way to keep certain keyframes Linear while the desired keyframe to be Bezier?

Select the first keyframe and press T > Linear, select the second one and press T > Bezier, here is what it gives, you'll have a linear then a bezier interpolation:

I figured out how to do it.
I just went to the keyframe’s side tab, and went to the “F-Curve” tab, and changed the Active Keyframe Interpolation from Linear, to Bezier.


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Freeze a Rigid Body right up until impact?
I want a simple animation, where an object is hurled towards another object.
I want the impacted object as an Active Rigid Body, but I want it to freeze where it is right up until the frame before the impacting object hits it. I did this by key framing the “Animate” box to turn off on the frame right before the impact. This works, but when I go to Copy this setting to other objects using Rigid Body>Copy from active, all of the other objects copy the basic info without the keyframe. Why is this happening?

because it says "rigid body> copy" it copies only the rigid body settings, not the animation. If you wanna copy animation data, select all objects, the object with the animation at last (with shift-select) and press ctrl-l -> link animation data

@Chris I think you can give that as an answer

Because it says "rigid body> copy" it copies only the rigid body settings, not the animation. If you wanna copy animation data, select all objects, the object with the animation at last (with shift-select) and press ctrl-l -> link animation data

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How can I bake many Rigid Body objects to keyframes at once?
I have an absolute ton of different objects in a Rigid Body simulation and I’m wondering: Is there a way to bake them all to keyframes at once? I just simply can’t do them individually.

Doesn't selecting all objects and doing Object > Rigid Body > Bake To Keyframes work? As per my experiment, it will bake to keyframe every rigid body object you selected.

Just as @HarryMcKenzie says, select all and then choose Bake to Keyframes. Have you even tried it before asking the question?

No, you cannot "select all" and bake to keyframes, if some of that selection is not part of the rigid boy world. What would be great is some way to filter the selected objects for rigid bodies and then you COULD apply keyframes. Example, I have a model disintegrates (not explodes) via rigid body animation per component, but some of the items in it cannot have rigid body physics applied (nurb paths etc). Selecting all objects of the model will not allow for baking to keyframes.

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


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Can I make the ocean modifier less repetitive?
I have a simple plane with the ocean modifier on it. When I turn the "Repeat X" and "Repeat Y" settings up to make the ocean larger, it just duplicates the same exact pattern out so that my ocean waves are completely tiled. Is there a setting to randomize the ocean waves?

You should not use Repeat to increase the size, it will create repetitions, maybe increase Spatial Size and Resolution as explained here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZfWXvNXp6Q ... If it doesn't work, check Dylan Neill's video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8PSS5HqC-Q

Rather than using repeat X & Y use spatial size to determine the size of the mesh. The other settings in the modifier are sufficient for some randomization of the generated mesh (time, alignment, etc).

From the manual:

Spatial Size
The width of the ocean surface area being simulated, in meters. This also determines the size of the generated mesh, or the
displaced area. Of course, you can scale the object with the Ocean
modifier in Object Mode to tweak the apparent size in your scene.


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How do I make an object fly and rotate on it's (Local) Z axis with keyframes?
I have an arrow that I'm animating across my scene. I want the arrow to be rotating as it's flying but, since I don't have the arrow flying exactly on one of the axises, I'd have to animate it along it's local Z axis. But every time I try to do this, it doesn't animate properly because of the way blender reads animation on the 3D axises.
My question is, Is there any way to animate the object rotating on the local Z axis while it flys across the scene?
P.S. Sorry, this is kind of a generic question, so I'd be happy to provide any extra info.

The best way to do this is animate an empty with the large scale motion, like so :

Parent your "Arrow" to the empty.

Animate the "Arrow", in this case I keyframed 1500° of Z axis rotation.

Great Hack! Thank you, it worked!

i would use a curve to move the arrow.
Then give the arrow a follow path constraint:

And then animate the rotation easily by giving two keyframes on the forward axis:


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Can I adjust white balance on camera?
I want to be able to adjust the white balance on my camera in blender to the exact amount I shot with (in a VFX shot). Is that possible? is there a plugin for that if not?


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How do I get a light to effect one object in a scene and yet not another when I have several lights?
I have a light in my scene and I want it to effect 1 object, but not another. Is there a setting I can turn on/off for this result?        I'm not talking about how to turn off the object's visibility to light because there is more than one light in the scene and I want one of the lights to be effecting it while another doesn't.
P.S. I've tried to use different render layers but I need them to be in the same render layer because of light bounces and stuff so I can't have them in different render layers.

Play with emission pass I guess

Upload blend file


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Can I animate the focal length for camera tracking?
I'm camera tracking my shot where I zoom in during the shot. When I tried to animate the focal length for the solve, Blender gives me an error that reads: "focal length" property cannot be animated. Is there a way to animate the focal length or is there an option to solve for a focal length change?


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Volumetric object where the volume gets less dense towards the edges?
I have 2 spheres. 1, the outer one isn't selected while sphere 2 (the inner one) is selected.
I want to make sphere 1 a volumetric object surrounding sphere 2 where the volume gets less dense towards the outer part of the sphere. How do I do this?

anisotropy in the volume scatter shader is what controls this. Usually it's most noticable in the viewing angle, but maybe could be used that way too.


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Unwrapping with "Project from view" gets weird results
I have a simple plane stretching into the distance (picture 1), and I want to unwrap this using the "project from view" option so the texture will perfectly match the footage except, when I unwrap it using that method, the UV squares are absolutely everywhere and the texture (obviously) doesn't match (picture 2). Why is this happening?

Frequent issue here .. People usually use Simple subdivision to dense topology also avoid geometry behind camera ... but it wouldn't be perfect anyway ... Use camera projection shader instead  UV from view ... my favourite solution... https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/226821/2214

Here is several solutions, but not the best ones from my opinion :) https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/213542/2214
https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/217908/2214
https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/229935/2214


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Redefine numbering of frames in export animation
I have a single Blender Scene that consists of lots of scenes (in the movie/theatrical sense), so scene 1 consists of frames 1-1000, scene 2: 1001-3000, etc.
But I'd like to redefine the numbering when I export an animation as frames. I'd like to export scene 2 as s2_0001.png-s2_2000.png, but blender insists on using the frame number in the timeline, so it'll always be s2_1001.png-s2_3000.png.
The problem with this is if I decide to change the length of scene 1, then my numbering for scene 2 completely changes, so if I need to re-render any part of scene 2, the number for every single frame is different.
Any ideas how I can achieve this?

I would assume you will need to use python in the file name slot. How to do it is beyond me. Maybe add python to tags.


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Detect if object data is associated with a scene in any way
I'm making an addon for the NLA editor, and I need to know precisely which strips are selected in the NLA editor.
Unfortunately this means checking every single data object in the blend file, because there are 20 other data types with animation data to consider beside Objects - materials, nodetrees, armatures, worlds, etc...
The problem however is in telling whether or not one of these non-Objects are associated within the active scene, because if I have 5 scenes with NLA tracks in each one, I may have multiple NLA tracks selected in one scene's summary dopesheet,  but I just want to know the selected nla strips in the active scene's summary dopesheet (ignoring filters and such).
Simply put, I need to know which non-Objects (ie, material, armature, world, etc) are associated with a scene in any way.
Any ideas?

Can you not make use of the "users" data recorded for each of these data types? I know users are recorded per file and not per scene and due to the purging method it sometimes reports false users but seems like a good starting place.

I looked at Blender's source code and realised it was quite an ordeal for the dopesheet to filter objects relevant to a context, so I gave up any hope of a simple solution and just went about doing a ersatz version of it in python.
It's a bit of a mess, but it works for detecting most non-objects (and objects) with animation data in a context:
https://gist.github.com/hedgehog90/634ea03acd2a1d87f99fbb06857e1956


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Retrieving the Material from a NodeTree
For a driver scripted expression I want the name of the material for a node input value.
It's an emission node and I want to make the following scripted expression for the emission strength:
bpy.data.lights[self.material.name].energy

'self' refers to the nodetree, but self.material isn't a valid expression obviously.
There appears to be no way of referencing the targeted material from a nodetree according to the python API.
self.id_data just refers to itself, so I'm stumped. Surely there must be a way to find the material of a nodetree besides scanning every single material in the blend data for the nodetree reference?


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Linking material emission value with light power for easy animation
I have a flickering lightbulb.
It consists of a point light and a lightbulb mesh with an emission material for when it's on.
I'm using a noise modifier to variate the lightbulb power, but I'd like to link the power value to the emission strength.
I know I can just copy the modifier from the point light fcurve to the emission, but it's a hassle. I change one I have to change the other. Also consider the emission strength is exponential in its visual effect - 0.0 - 1.0 massive variation, but as you get higher the difference is less and less noticeable, unlike the point light where the strength value has a comparatively linear effect.
Any ideas?

For the strength issue, try using the power option on the math node to exponentially increase the lights power. Then you could connect it to the emission strength.

but how do I link the point light strength with the material's emission strength at all?

I worked it out! Added a driver to a value node linking to the light's energy property! Working perfectly :D


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Selecting all exterior angles on a 2D mesh after mesh intersection (Geometry Nodes)
I have a flat 2d mesh of a ring, I instance a load of cubes around the edge and mesh bool the difference for the resulting mesh:

Now I want to take the intersecting edges and filter out all of the interior angles, so I am just left with a selection of the following vertices, so I can assign a named attribute and bevel them:

I can't figure out how to filter them in geometry nodes...

Aren't these edges those with a distance from origin greater than [something] ? Maybe Position into Vector Length into Greater than ?

Interesting idea, but then we need to work out what is [something]? I would rather it wasn't a manual input. Also it's difficult to see but outer edges are made of many vertices because it's cut from a high resolution circle. So we need to filter these out as well and just select the vertices that form distinct outward corners. I figured there must be a way to calculate the signed angle between 2 vertices and see which ones are less than -45 degrees the inner angles would be filtered out because they'd be around positive 90.

You just have to tweak to get once the [something]. Matter of seconds. Why wouldn't you do it manually ? Is there a reason ? Does your gear model change shape or size ? Something else ? Maybe update your question with a bit more information. I'll gladly help if I can. For now, it seems super quick and easy to do (manually).

There are many models, many sizes. And like I said, there are many vertices along the circumference that your method would bevel, that I don't want to bevel. I need to bevel just the ringed vertices in my screenshot programmatically in geometry nodes.

We can't guess these models and sizes. Thus we also can't guess the "laws" to select these vertices. Provide us with more informations if you're hoping to get an answer.

Nevermind, I figured it out.


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Blender 2.92 Fluid / Gas simulation not working
I'm using Blender 2.92.
Now I'm trying to simulate some fluids and gases, but it seems that I'm not ready for these. I've succeeded setting a simple fluid scene (just a cube domain and a cube inflow), it works ok. But whenever I try to change anything, the simulation just stops moving. E.g. I moved an object after viewing the whole animation and the simulation does not update (no matter how many times I click bake data and bake mesh).
The same thing with gases. I added a quick smoke effect to a cylinder, it worked fine. I added some new objects, set them to be effectors, set the simulation to be modular and clicked bake. After some seconds I press play - nothing changes. Just a black unmoving cloud around the cylinder (picture below).

I had the same problems on 2.90 version and struggled much. I've found plenty of fluid and gases tutorials where people just click all the buttons I clicked and boom - they get it to work. What am I doing wrong? How can I vew the result after changing something in the scene?
Or do I have to set everything beforehand and delete gas domain every time?..

I'm brand new to this, but you'll need to keep in mind that you typically have at least two objects involved in a smoke or liquid simulation: an emitter and then the smoke-domain or liquid-domain.

Yes, I used the domain and the emitter. The domain type is selected properly (fluid for fluid simulation and gas for smoke simulation)

What I mean to say is that if you are moving one object involved in a simulation, you may need to also move the other object.

If you baked the simulation, you first have to delete the bake and then bake it again after your movement.

I do this every time I try to re-bake the simulation

Ok,then please provide your blend file

Here you are

i tested your file and add effector. works fine. my proposal: make a video from the start so we see EVERYTHING what you are doing. So we can help you. Or describe in detail every single step you made. Normally a video is more clear and quicker.

I don't know what I made wrong in the previous attempt, but it worked fine. I did not use quick smoke effect, but instead set all the properties manually. Thanks for your help, but I'll probably delete the question...


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Right angle displacement
When using a height map like the one below, what's the best way to displace the mesh so that there is no transition between the light gray and dark gray? No matter how many times you subdivide the mesh, this will not create the desired 90º angle between faces.

Height Map does not change the topology of a  surface.  Extrusion of a  subdivided  plane can create vertices of 5 edges from vertices of 4 edges.  So you may want to see extrusion videos where this fact is used to advantage .  Models of humans et cetera have 5 edges corners or 5 poles for arms or legs. Perhaps the majority of edges would have 4 edge corners or 4 poles.  Consider searching extrusion and topology.

The right angles you seek will come from 5 pole topology or ... simple composition of scaled cubes .. using more vertices and edges than 5 pole topology.

Lets assume your height map is generated by some texture. Blender has particle systems which can place scaled cubes in particular areas based on the texture data. So you could match scaled cubes to the pixel colors / grey scale values of your texture. Knowing that you may want search differently. You can probably search better than I can. If you are conversant in Python that is an option as well


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Animation ramps up seed and slows down
I have an animation that slowly increases its speed and slowly stops. How do I stop it from doing this? I have set it to linear extrapolation but it still does the same thing.

Not extrapolation, but interpolation. Meaning: the kind of transition between two keyframes. Set the interpolation to Linear.

@susu Thank you so much. Everyone was telling me it was extrapolation.

Not extrapolation, but interpolation. Meaning: the kind of transition between two keyframes. Set the interpolation to Linear. @susu


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Scale of Curve to effect Location of "Set of objects"
I'm trying to create a rig in Blender and i'm fairly new to the program, I am wanting to scale a Bezeir circle that will in turn shrink the distance of a set of objects in a circular motion.
I really can't wrap my head around it, any help would be greatly appreciated

Circular Path
If the shape of the curve is a circle, this can be achieved even without a curve.  You just need a few empties placed in correct positions (around the circle) and parented to some object whose Scale will be adjusted to move the visible objects (Cube in my example)

When the circle is scaled, each empty moves as if they are parented to a certain location on the (circular) curve.  But in fact this is just simple parent transformation.

Instead of parenting the cube to an empty, we can just copy its location using Copy Location constraint.
Non-Circular Path

A more generalized solution is to use a Follow Path constrains on the visible objects and constrain them to the curve directly.
Important thing here is to give each visible object a difference offset (on the curve). If we have 6 objects, for example, each one should have an offset 100 / 6 * i (where i is the index of the object, 0, 1, 2, ...).

This method should work on any kind of curve, open or closed.

Thank you so much for your in depth response this was really helpful and has solved my problem!

You are welcome.


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Smoke/Fire cards or simulations
HI I'm trying to create a really high quality cinematic in blender, In my animation there will be a bunch of boats on fire or smoking, (mostly) in the distance, How should I achieve a high quality effect of them on fire or smoking? I've tried simulations and I'm worried that if i keep using that after 5-6 boats it might be too costly, However I have yet to see a good example of smoke cards being used in a way that actually looks good.
Any help is greatly appreciated.


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Online render farms for blender
I wanted to ask if there are any free render farms. I tried to find one but I couldn’t. If anyone finds a “free” render farms pls tell me.

You can use foxrender farm . Upon signing up itself you will get 25$ free credit. The cost per frame is very low too.

Sheep it is free to use. Your projects will be prioritized if you have enough "credits", which you obtain by sharing your CPU/GPU (that is, rendering other users projects), but that's not mandatory.
Sheep it Renderfarm

And you "pay" for your render time with the credits you earn rendering other people's renders.

Yes but if you don't have enough credits, your project will still render - it will just be at the end of the queue, so you will have to wait longer.

Thank you everyone. This is a great  community.


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Merging Edges In Blender
I have two edges merging with each other. And I have to delete one edge. Pls tell me how to delete doubles

Can U share an image of whats happening to picturise the problem?

Blender 2.83: In edit mode, select both edges, then click mesh\clean up\merge by distance.  Keyboard shortcut is M > By Distance. In Blender 2.79, it was AltM.

Thank You Zippy. You solved my problem

And Zippy the shortcut key is Alt + M.


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Cannot Replicate Shallow Lake Shoreline in 2.8
Have vested an unruly number of hours trying to learn Blender. Tried replicating the tutorial on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgFJ5ER-elg
Seems that Evee was unavailable at the time when this Tut was published. That alone took me 3-days to figure out. We now have the "Principled BSDF" which is throwing off all possible Node translations from previous versions out the window.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Kindest Regards
Nino

you have the exact same nodes in 2.8, so you should be able to build the exact same node organization. There's a difference with Eevee though as it manages Glass differently, but you need to precise if you plan to use Cycles or Eevee...

Though it seems rather over-complicated (or over-simplified, depending on how you look at it), the Principled BSDF can be used to make your task rather simple. See the simplicity of the setup below. Note that I changed the Blend Modes to play nice with the alpha. I also took advantage of the Principled BSDF to add a small amount of subsurface color.

If, however, you want to do it the "old fashioned" way, I think you'll find this node arrangement satisfactory. Notice I had to add the normal data in the form of a displacement input in this example.

EDIT - Here are some images of a working setup done in the file you posted.
EEVEE

CYCLES

Thanks for prompt reply. This helps making the “transition” into the Principled BSDF.
RE: Moonboot’s reply, guess there’s still a “learning curve“ for me to overcome figuring out Evee’s transparency differences with those in Cycles.

Evidently I can't even "copy" nodes successfully.

What do you mean? Is something not working?

How can I upload/share my Blend File

Upload here - https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ Copy the URL of this question and paste where it says, then edit your question and paste in the link they give you.

Done (or so I think). What am I missing? Thanks for your support.

Sorry, I'm not seeing the link. Maybe try again?

This it? :

Nevermind, look at the shader for you "water" plane. You forgot to connect the Transparent BSDF. To make the water surface look more realistic (show the bump more), increase the scale of the Noise Texture Node to something around 100.

I added some images to show a working setup to my answer. Have a look, It should clear things up. You can see I also used a MixRGB node to soften the Noise texture (combined it with white) going into the bump node in order to give the waters surface a more "calm" look.


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Weird behavior of boolean difference when a carving a logo in solid body
Hi guys and thanks in advance.
I'm trying to carve a logo imported from .svg file(black) into a shape(highligthed).
Previous steps with logo are:

Convert to Mesh
Solidify

After applying a boolean difference modifier, everything looks fine except 2 pieces which don't doesn't seem to have a mesh, and look odd on a render, as if the main object is hollow in this area and you can see its internals.
Seems that .svg curves are somehow broken there, but i can hardly understand what's the issue.

have you tried shift+n in edit mode recalculate normals?

@dave44 tried for both objects which are already solidified. Doesn't help


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Why will hair not render in cycles?
My hair particle system (beads of water) renders as it should in the viewport, but not in the render, even though the effect is enabled for rendering. Can anyone help?
BLEND FILE

I figured it out. The collection of instanced objects were not enabled for rendering. Makes no sense to me why these objects would need to be enabled for rendering when I want to render only the particle system, but I guess that's beside the point.


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Material that uses Texture Coordinates won't "stick" to meshes in a physics simulation
My material uses a Texture Coordinate node, so it won't stick to meshes that are part of a physics simulation. I assume this is because the node uses the mesh coordinates but not the delta transforms associated with the simulation.
In the attached blend file you can see how the material sticks to a mesh animated using location keyframes but does not stick to an identical soft body mesh influenced by a wind force. Does anyone know how I can get the material to stick to this mesh?
P.S. this is my first post and I'm new to Blender.

You have to unwrap your mesh

Thanks, Duarte! This worked: (1) unwrap mesh––it took some tinkering to get the seams/projection right, and (2) change Texture Coordinate node output from Object to UV.

Duarte Farrajota Ramos really deserves credit for this, but the solution is as follows:

In the UV Editing workspace, select mesh in Object mode.
Switch to Edit mode and select all vertices in the mesh (A).
Press U to unwrap mesh. (If it has already been incorrectly unwrapped, delete the existing UVMap from the Object Data Properties, one of the tabs in the Properties Editor on the right).
Choose an unwrapping method from the menu. In this case, Cube Projection worked best.
Change Texture Coordinate node output from Object to UV.


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Realistic tree falling animation
I have a simple tree in my scene. I'm going to have it fall over and when I do, I (of course) want the branches to shake around in a realistic way, and impact on the ground. is there a way to simulate this?

Can you add an image of your tree topology? ... To let us see a structure ...

In some cases you can cheat physics by

creating a dummy of tree simplified into some lowlopy version
(like here by Convex Hull operator)

run Cloth sim on this dummy
and for highres Tree use Mesh Deform modifier to transfer simulation

Result in here looks pour, but if you will care more about topology result could be better.

... or probably better create a low-poly tree as extruded faces (roughly in direction of main branches), use a Cloth and for high-poly tree use Surface Deform modifier.


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Blender shows error when I save my project once I add in a texture
In recent days, I've been running into a problem where once I add in textures to objects in my scene and try to update my save, I get this error:
Python: Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/Users/sperosoaps/Library/Application Support/Blender/3.0/scripts/addons/poliigon-material-converter/poliigon_ui.py", line 90, in draw
addon_updater_ops.check_for_update_background()
File "/Users/sperosoaps/Library/Application Support/Blender/3.0/scripts/addons/poliigon-material-converter/addon_updater_ops.py", line 727, in check_for_update_background
updater.set_check_interval(enable=settings.auto_check_update,
File "/Users/sperosoaps/Library/Application Support/Blender/3.0/scripts/addons/poliigon-material-converter/addon_updater.py", line 511, in set_check_interval
raise ValueError("Enable must be a boolean value")
ValueError: Enable must be a boolean value
location: :-1
Why is Blender giving me this error?

That appears to be a problem with Poliigon's Material Converter Script.
There are (at least) two releases of the script.  Make sure that you have Version 3.1.3 installed.  Earlier versions do not work with 3.0 alpha.
If you have the latest version, then you need to contact Poliigon at <support@poliigon.com>.


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What technical color space is OpenEXR rendering in Blender?
I’m rendering my project as an OpenEXR sequence and, when I go to composite this over my footage, to be exactly accurate, I need to both convert the Gamut from what it originally was rendered at, and to what I want for the final result (Which in my case, is sRGB). But I don’t know what technical color space OpenEXR is in Blender. What color space is OpenEXR?

Hi :). I'm no expert but afaik EXRs use the unconverted camera color space, since they're meant for a scene-referred workflow https://www.filmriot.com/blog/scene-referred-vs-display-referred/#:~:text=A%20scene%2Dreferred%20workflow%20is,space%20to%20display%20color%20space.


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How do I make a certain render layer a "Background" render layer?
When you do a VFX scene and click the button "setup tracking scene", it automatically makes 2 render layers: a "Foreground", and a "Background" render layer. And the background render layer just renders the shadow without having to uncheck "Camera" in object's visibility settings and stuff. I'm wondering: is there a way that I can manually make certain layers "Background" layers?


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Can I make my smoke look white like snow?
I have a smoke simulation and I want to make it look white like snow but, even when I turn the color to pure white, it looks dark like smoke (using the "Principled Volume" shader). Is there a method to shade the smoke sim to color it white like snow?

I found this node setup from Blender Made Easy's tutorial. The "Light Path" node is only there to make sure that, since the smoke is technically now emitting light, it won't effect the scene (only needed for cycles). The bottom "value" on the second multiply node (circled in green) controls how white it is. For all of the other info on what does what, check out the tutorial.


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How do I append camera with camera track animation
I want to append the camera that had animation on it (because of a 3D camera track) to a fresh 3D scene. How do I do this? When I append the camera into the new scene, it has no animation.

Have you tried appending the actual camera object? File > Append > Your Blend > Object > Your Camera?

@brockmann Yes. And when I do that, it imports the camera in the axis of 0,0,0 and with the rotation of 0,0,0

The camera solver requires a movie clip, perhaps you forgot to import the clip? If you do not need the clip, you can bake your track down or export as alembic.


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How do I break an object away from linked data and edit keyframes?
I have a bunch of objects with linked animation data to a certain object. Now, I want to edit specific objects that I have linked animation data on. The problem is, I want to put some randomness in the different objects but when I go to edit the keyframes on one of the objects, because they're all linked together, I edit all of the objects. Is there a way in which I can edit the keyframes on a specific object without editing all of the linked objects (without unlinking the objects)?

In the Dope Sheet editor, if you switch it to Action Editor, you can click on the Create New Action button on the right of the current action name (double sheet icon), is it not what you want?

Or you can use NLA editor to freeze this action and add another action above and do some specific changes


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"Graph Editor" animation handles missing?
This is a very very very simple question and probably simply a mistake on my part but I'm asking on the part of all other people who (like me) aren't the best at animation.
I have a very simple scene of a cylinder flying along the "Y" axis and I want to be able to get the animation curve handles in the "Graph Editor" except, there are none. What do I need to do to get handles to adjust the animation within the graph editor?
Pic below of how my Graph Editor looks

maybe scroll down?

... or up :) Or press Numpad "." (Frame Selected)

I won with the scroll down  ^^

@moonboots Yup! I would've marked your question as the answer except you didn't write the format as an actual answer, but rather just posted a comment.

I just had to scroll down. I initially tried that, I apparently just didn't scroll down enough.


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View of my Blender file is completely messed up and I cannot seem to fix it
It seems like I am only able to centre my zoom around the camera and no longer with the object I've made. I can't even really zoom in that far at all anymore either. This is my first time trying to make something on Blender so I am very unfamiliar with the program, but none of the suggestions for solutions I've found online have been of any help.
(Also I am on a MacBook)

Try opening the file, and in the open options (settings) unselect "Load UI".

Welcome to Blender!
Have you tried changing the camera lock settings? Press N to bring up the sidebar. On the right-hand side of the sidebar, press the View tab then expand the View Lock options.  Here, you can toggle locking to the 3D cursor, to View, or to an object.
If you would like your view to always rotate around the selected object, press, in the top left corner, press Edit > Preferences. Open the Navigation tab, and check Orbit around selection. Please note that your viewport will still rotate around the 3D cursor if that option is checked in the sidebar mentioned above.
PS: If you're looking for a good beginner's tutorial series, check out the Donut Tutorial series by BlenderGuru

This sounds like it would be solved with the "Show Active" action. You can select the object you want to zoom into and execute the "Show Active" command.
To use Show Active, hit full stop (.) on the number pad.
Since you're on a Macbook and probably don't have a number pad, you should make sure you have "emulate numpad" selected in Preferences>interface>input. Usually, you hit a controller to indicate you're entering numpad emulation, then you use the numbers across the top of your keyboard. (I don't know what controller yours is set to, sometimes it's [backspace], sometimes it's [/].)
You can also create your own keymap options on "keymap" in the same interface tab and assign the "Show Active" action to a particular keystroke.
Good luck.


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Smoke is not casting shadows in Eevee
Smoke is not casting shadows in Eevee render.
The blend file is given below.


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How to export Blender 2.8 for Elements 3D/After Effects (+ Node material)?
I'm new to Blender, but thanks to a few tutorials online, managed to create a cool fireball effect I'd like to utilize in one of my upcoming videos (hence Elements 3D / After Effects).
But, despite exporting the object and loading the mtl files into Elements 3D, all I get is the following:

The animation works great, and I'm getting the opacity, but that's about it.
To help clarify, below are some screenshots of what I'm trying to produce... but everything about the material was created using a node tree, which might be the issue?
Desire Result:

Full Node Tree:

Zoom in:

Just to show material location (within isosphere)

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I tried learning how to bake this using a YouTube tutorial, but I think because I'm not using Principled BSDF, it's not working? I'm honestly unsure. Sorry for such a newbie question!

I don't now about Elements 3D / After Effects material system, but I'm sure there is no direct solution for node setup export.
Nonetheless typical workflow is to bake material textures in Blender and apply them in other editor.
I prefer Principled-Baker addon.


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I can't move, rotate or scale in blender 2.8 object mode
I am very new to Blender 2.8.
I know that hotkey like G, R and S are essential and very useful but I can't do any of them in object mode. I can only move the origin (the orange thing that for the object) freely.
I have a MacBook and use a mouse.
I tried looking at transformation locks too but that wasn't the problem.
Did I click on a weird setting?
Any help much appreciated!

It appear you have accidentally selected to move the Object origins. This is only available in Object mode, hence the difference. Unless you are wanting to move the origins, turn it off.


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2.8 Grid disappears in Orthographic mode and returns in perspective mode
The X Y Z grid disappears in Object top/front Orthographic mode.  I'd still like to see the grid in that mode.  Any way to turn it back on and keep it on?  The Grid is all on in the Overlay settings.

This has been reported and it's been fixed already with the commit rB4bbd1b9610f6d85079ea5bc31fc1949f8409a1a4. Just update your Blender version.


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Plane in Render not visible in Object Mode
Thanks in advance for any help. I am following Andrew's Donut/Cup tut on youtube using 2.8.1 and had a render problem.  Here is a snap of my Object Mode

And here is the same view in render mode.  The 'pink' plane/table is not visible, instead I have a gray plane intersecting my cup which I cannot find in Object Mode.

Why do I have this plane and why is my cup, in Object Mode (Principled BSDF, Transmiission=1, Roughness=0) have what looks like an HDRI country scene in LookDev mode?

Note: the donut is floating above the cup, just to move it out of the way, otw it would be intersected too by the gray plane

You've hidden the object in the viewport by clicking on the eye icon in the outliner. This doesn't hide it in the render though. https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/152955/how-to-disable-in-render-just-one-object-and-not-the-entire-collection-in-blende

You do have another plane in your scene, it's just not showing in the viewport.
In your outliner check these options and look at all the collections you have, there is a plane there not visible but renderable. You can disable by object or entire collections.
Nice donut btw!

More about it at: Blender Docs

You have 2 planes from what I can see in your outliner. I'd bet that 'plane.001' is the pink one you see in the viewport. The plane that's cutting through the cup (and it looks like the donut is sitting on) may be in the donut collection - it's showing there are 2 items there and it's not expanded.
The reason you can't see it in the main viewport could be that at some point you hid it and forgot about it. See if alt-H brings it back. If not, check out the donut collection and make sure that the outliner shows it as visible.


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2.81.16 No Rock Generator
I want to install the rock generator for v2.81.16 and I found this answer, v2.81 Rock generator
I have downloaded the zip and installed it as described but I still do not have the rock generator. I have lots of other addons so I think I placed the contents in the correct directory. Has something changed since this linked question was answered?

The linked answer is obsolete since the Rock Generator is now part of Extra Objects add-on since commit rBA7347930a0fa14e752929e28c9b48adf74597b018. The separate Rock Generator add-on has been removed from the add-ons contrib repository by commit rBAC70b649775eeeebedb02c1c7b7aa996a7f6294177.
If you are using a 2.82 alpha build from the 12th of December or later, enable the Extra Objects add-on. The Rock Generator operator will appear in the Add > Mesh menu.

If you are using a build of 2.82 which doesn't include the commit, because it was compiled before the 12th of December, you will need to download a more recent version.
If you don't want to use the latest 2.82 alpha which includes this change, you will have to clone the repository and either manually replace your older Extra Objects add-on with the updated version or revert to a commit where the Rock Generator was still a separate add-on. Both options require experience with git.

I'm running 2.82a now and I don't see it anywhere,. I am searching for rock

Is your version of the alpha from the 12th of December or later? Have you enabled the Extra Objects add-on?

Yes, you are looking in the wrong area. It is in community.

I am using 2.82. I actually did not find it in 2.81 either. However, I cannot get it to install properly in 2.82 even though it is there in the community section. It probably only works in 2.80 right now.

I'm running 2.82a now and I don't see it anywhere,.  I am searching for rock

I only have "geodesic domes" which is useful, but not a rock generator as far as I know, 2.81. 2.8 had it for me but not 2.81.


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How to Render Composite layers for timeline video creation
Hi and thanks in advance!
I followed the tut to make a planet using Blender 2.8.1.16, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUNfPavsViY which resulted in an image containing 2 layers, Planet and Atmosphere.  I can render each separately using cycles and see them in the compositor.  I can create a simple timeline to spin the planet 360 degrees on Z and play it in timeline.  But when I attempt to render a series of images from the timeline, it ONLY renders the frame playhead images.
How can I instruct blender to create all of the images needed for the timeline rotation?
In Output I have, Frame Start=1, End=250, Step=1, In Post Processing  I have tried with Compositing on and off and I have Sequencer Checked.

Okay from what I understand you are confused why it's rendering the images at where the playhead is right ?

Yes, when I did the Donut I believe I simply set up a a timeline with some keyframes and it rendered the entire set of frames that I could then render as a video.  Is there a different behavior for Compositor or having View Layers that I am missing or am I just confused about some simple thing that I am not understanding?

I think you have everything

I must be missing something, when I render I get whatever frame the playhead is on and just that one but when I did this before I rendered all frames within the start and end and was able to render a video from an image sequence.  In this case I never get an image sequence.  You said that I am 'confused why it's rendering the images (you wrote plural) at where the playhead is" - I would say NO, I am confused why it ONLY renders the single image at the playhead and not all of the images defined by Frame Start and Frame End.

Easy Peasy - I was trying to use Render Image to render my animation sequence, not render animation.  After doing another project I realized I need to render animation either as a series of images (preferred) or as a single video output.  I was thinking that Render Animation was not for the image sequence but for the movie output.  Now I see that is part of the output format for Render Animation. ;-)

You can mark your own answer as correct.


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Simple fluid sim issues, 2.91
I must be missing some basic understanding in the workflow of a fluid sim.  If I create a collision object, an flow object (inflow) and a bounding domain object, I would expect I could bake and see water in the animation.  This is not always the case.  I run thru some simple water simulations that work but sometimes when I do similar I get no fluid after baking.  What is the secret sauce I seem to miss?  If I do a Quick Fluid I get a similar Domain and Inflow object that work.  Do you see any problem with this simple fluid sim setup and why I get no fluid after I bake All and run the timeline?
Domain Object

Collision Object

Inflow Object

Your inflow may be too small compared to your domain Resolution.
Also, you should always 'Apply Scale' and also ensure your normals are pointing in the correct direction after re-sizing your meshes (negative scaling can result in Normals pointing in the wrong direction).
Check normals and try making your Inflow larger and don't forget to Apply Scale. Then free and re-bake the simulation.


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How to correctly project texture to UV map from 3D scanned object?
I am a beginner in Blender and I am trying to get a 2D image of a scanned object with the texture correctly applied or projected.
As you can see, in the right section I have the 3D object with its texture applied. It is an OBJ file product of a 3D scan.

As I was investigating, one way to obtain a projection is through a UV map ("Mark seam" => "Unwrap"). When doing it, I get a 2D object with the desired shape (selected in orange, left section), but the texture is not applied correctly, it is shown in the background without projecting on the faces.
Is there any way to achieve it?

So I hope you learned it by now, just stumbled over it to explain for other newbs: brace yourself as "projecting from 3d scan' is not where the journey should start, to.understand what happens. I try:
You have a 3D scan obj. If you investigate, an obj made with an app (I suppose you used a smartphone) comes already with colorinformation. This is because of a .mat , wich is referenced and automatically opened and applied when you import the .obj. That is the "picture" you see in blender: a automatic uv unwrap, wich are assembled more or less randomly. That is not the important part.
First: Cleanup (Described for Blender)
On a 3d Scan it is always usefull to select a vertex, press Ctrl + L and by doing so select all linked geometry. With shortcut H we hide it and not connected, faulty scan geometry should still be visible. With strg+a select all (visible, false) geometry and delete it. Alt + H to make all visible again. You should be able to display the object in most software/engine now.
When you want to show it as ingame object or optimize it for use on e.g. smartphones, you need to build a low poly model. For doing so please watch the 1000 methods and tutorials (I use TopoGun 3, it pretty much makes a new, organized mesh automatically but you have to know your way around 3d already, to understand it).
The low poly model can not only reference color but also the details and curvature of a "high polycount" model. The process of doing so is called "projection". In order of doing so you need to UV Unwrap the low poly you build (yes, mark seams,  unwrap). Then the process applied is generally called baking, when color or other visual information (normals, curvature, ambient occlusion...) Is transferred. For blender you find it in the cycles render engine tab under Bake. Substance Painter and Mormoset 3d also have neat baking overlays.
The best part about blender is the color projection part especially for 3d scans! There is some tutorials out there but anybody reading this should have the keywords to look for now.


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UVs disappear once Loop Cut is done
I couldn't figure out why my models UVs were not showing up, so I went step by step with a new object to see when it would happen.
Create a box, open UV Editor, the UVs are there. Do a Loop Cut anywhere on the box, the UVs then disappear from then on.
Anybody else have this issue and is there a way to fix it?

Your UV editor only shows currently selected vertices.
When you add a loopcut, all other vertices are de-selected.
Just check the UV Sync Selection button and it will work.


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Alpha-Over Node Not Working

This is my composite setup. From all tutorials, wikis, etc, this should place the movie clip in the background and the wall/thing in the foreground. Does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Your nodes are correct, but how can you see through the "walking/thing" layer if your walking/thing render is fully opaque? You need a transparent background for that.
If what's behind your objects is only the world environment, then the simplest way to get transparency is to head over your render tab, Film panel and check the Transparent option:

You forgot to make the world background as transparent. To do so, go to Render Properties > Film > check Transparent.


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I have input a reference image and it wont rotate. What do i do?
So i am trying to create an image and i have input a reference image but i cannot rotate it on at 90 degrees on the Y-axis. I have changed all transformation orientation to Global but it isn't trying to work.

Press ">", than choose "median point". Make sure "only location" is not selected.


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Batch export GLTF from separate Blend files?
I am trying to find or make a means of opening separate Blender files and exporting the a GLTF from each separate blend file using the same export settings?
Not sure whether to start by making a batch script outside of Blender to open each file, change the export settings to a default setting then export.. or to write a python script inside Blender that imports each file from a folder sequentially and exports from them with a default setting for each GLTF.

1.Take the .py script from the code sample below these steps and put it somewhere sensible

The output directories in the file are these, please change to your own:
basedir = 'C:\\Users\\###USERNAME###\\Downloads\\TestBatch' output_base_dir = 'C:\\Users\\###USERNAME###\\Downloads\\TestBatch\\compressed'

In powershell/terminal/command line on windows I ran the below command from this location where my Blender was installed, please change the location of 'blender-batch-gltf-export.py' to your own location for it.

Location to open powershell from:
'C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.4'
Command to run (change the location of the script here):
.\blender --background -P C:\Users\###USERNAME###\Downloads\TestBatch\blender-batch-gltf-export.py

The script can be edited easily if you look at the lines 31 and 39 for 'bpy.ops.export_scene.gltf('

e.g. I can add animations export here via adding 'export_animations=True,'
bpy.ops.export_scene.gltf(
            export_animations=True,
            export_format='GLB',
            export_draco_mesh_compression_enable=True,
            filepath=out_path)

You can see documentation on the GLTF export options you can change here, they will match up with those of the Blender GUI export GLTF menu properties:
The script, save as blender-batch-gltf-export.py:
import bpy
import os

# Blender application is needed
# Script for Windows
# From Blender install folder: .\blender --background -P C:\Users\###USERNAME###Robert.Farthing\Downloads\TestBatch\blender-batch-gltf-export.py

# Edit your own
basedir = 'C:\\Users\\###USERNAME###\\Downloads\\TestBatch'
output_base_dir = 'C:\\Users\\###USERNAME###\\Downloads\\TestBatch\\compressed'

files = [f for f in os.listdir(basedir) if f.endswith('.blend')]

print(f'Found {len(files)} blend files. Processing...')

for f in files:
    if not f.endswith('.blend'):
        continue
    path = os.path.join(basedir, f)
    bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath=path)
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

    try:
        just_name = f.replace('.blend', '_draco')
        out_path = os.path.join(output_base_dir, just_name)
        bpy.ops.export_scene.gltf(
            export_format='GLB',
            export_draco_mesh_compression_enable=True,
            filepath=out_path)
    except:
        just_name = f.replace('.blend', '')
        out_path = os.path.join(output_base_dir, just_name)
        bpy.ops.export_scene.gltf(
            export_format='GLB',
            export_draco_mesh_compression_enable=False,
            filepath=out_path)


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Animating a suiting up effect
I am attempting to create an animation of a character suiting up in a full body suit and I’m wondering what might be a good way to achieve this? I currently have two models - the character and the character suited up. For visual reference the type of thing I’m going for is something like this comic:
I’ve looked at maybe using the cloth modifier but getting it to animate from cloth hanging to a standard mesh is something I’m not sure about. An alternative method I thought about was rigging the suit with a ton of bones and basically manually animate them, but that seems like it would require hundreds of bones and would behave like a suit physically would. Are there any other methods or ways of doing this that would be viable?
Thanks for any help!


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I would like to have it so the texture is linked to an empty point
specifically, I want to be able to create an effect similar to a transformation from those anime shows from the 2000's where the torus goes around the character and as it moves upwards, the character is now wearing a new outfit. how can I make it so the top half of the model is showing one texture, and the bottom half is showing another while controlling that point with an empty?

Put some kind of mask into the object space of the Empty, using the bottom slot in a Texture Coordinate node:

Here, the Empty is a circle, and we're interested in the Y dimension of its object space. The Value input node labelled  'Fade' is provided to adjust the sharpness of the transition.
The character can be made the parent of the Empty, so it will work wherever the character happens to be.
To achieve a complete change of clothes, geometry and all,  the cluster of nodes determining the Factor of the mix could be made into a Node Group, and the mask made between opacity and transparency on all materials concerned. But if things got too tangled, you might consider using compositing instead.

that is exactly what I was looking for, thank you.


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Why can I not transform (scale) a texture?
For some reason, changing values in the "Mapping" Node, does not do anything whatsoever. the plane is unwrapped, I reloaded the texture several times, all that happens when changing values is the 3d view refreshing. Any ideas what I could be doing wrong?

Hello :). Don't you have more UV maps by any chance?


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Jagged black parts of mesh only at certain angles
I'm not sure how to deal with this issue I'm facing. I'm quite new but I've researched this issue and I've tried deleting doubles (merge by distance) and I've tried to recalculate normals but none of those really work. I was wondering if someone had bumped into a similar issue.
The picture you see are from the same fish. It's only from certain angles it affects but I'm not sure why.. In the rendered part image some parts of the fish turns really dark and those parts look really bad.
Pictures from different angles from cycles render in viewport by just rotating the camera a small bit, not changing anything else.


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Liquid goes THROUGH rigid body with effector. Mantaflow (Blender 2.82)
I will start by showing the issue so it's super clear what the problem is:

Alright. So the cup has fluid type effector, with Effector type Collision.

The cup is parented to the plate so they will act as one.

The plate then has a rigid body so it will fall and is also an effector so the liquid should interact with it once it spills over (that was the idea xD). Here are the settings for the plate.

Then we have the domain which is baked and then the meshes are baked with rather ok settings I guess (I followed a bunch of tutorials and draw some conclusions myself).

And that's all the info I think should be needed. So, how come the liquid is still just falling down through the cup?

You are supposed to change your surface thickness. it defines how much of the mesh that will be considered an obstacle. The surface thickness is the same as the value of the volume of your cup. What you do is to multiply the three dimensions of the cup. Whatever value you get is the correct surface thickness of the cup. Hope this helps.

So, what you're saying is that "surface thickness" is the unit volume of the effector object ? So if you have a cube as an effector that is 2x2x2, then the surface thickness is 8 ?

I believe there is a bug in the collision calculations,  as you'll see in my "answer" in https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/209934/111042 that Surface Thickness is "in addition" to the mesh volume.   ST seems to need at least 0.5 to work as a collision object in blender 2.90, or "Is Planer", neither of which are inadequate solutions.


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Weird shading fragments when rotating view
I'm currently trying to render an architectural model using Blender. However, when shaded there is a strange issue with the roof which I never encountered before in shading view.
I highly doubt that the issue comes from the material itself, as the material is just a basic Principled BSDF with a color and a reflection map attached (the shader came with the .obj right from ArchiCAD, other values of the shader look normal and as expected).
The issue I encounter is the following: from some perspectives everything is just fine and looks just like it should. However, if I rotate the view to certain positions, there are bands appearing that run over the roof and appear shaded in a different color. The following pictures should clarify what I mean:
View with shading as expected:

View with weird shading:

The issue is not linked to unapplied Scale/Rotation/Location as I already tried those in order to solve the issue. It also is independent of the render engine as Eevee and Cycles produce the same result. Strangely, the other materials seem to work just fine (or at least I haven't found anything odd by now for any other material).
I also tried to switch the shader for another Principled BSDF in order to test certain behaviour like various Roughness/Metallic/Specularity values. When doing so, I also had a situation where the grass texture was reflecting off of a part of the roof, which makes absolutely no sense, because the entire terrain is ALWAYS below the roof, so no reflection of the grass should be possible.
I have absolutely no idea, what the issue could be and I didn't really have any idea how to google for this strange behaviour (except for search requests that where pretty broad and returned more common shading issues). So I'd be really happy for any help regarding this issue. If there is anything else needed from my end, please let me know and I'll try to provide the neccessary information asap.
In case this is of any help, I'll provide the shader settings for the roof material down below:

Hey have you checked if you have overlapping faces or verts? In edit mode A than M merge by distance

@EvripidisLalissidis That's actually one thing I didn't try until now. I tried it on a copy of the original model and it removed a notable number of vertices, however, it doesn't seem to resolve the problem. I gotta say that the model produced by ArchiCAD is a hot mess (like rectangles that could easily be quads being divided into the weirdest shapes ever) but that's what I gotta work with. When looking at the model up close, it doesn't look like a clipping issue though and I'd also assume clipping to look differently after shading.

you can upload a packed Blender.file at https://blend-exchange.com/ and ill have a look tomorrow morning :)


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Modeling problem with edgings
How to make such edgings? I have tried to just adding additional loops but I got bad result

Simple answer: model them.
There are many different kinds of seams on various furniture so it is essential to have good reference photos and see clearly how they look so you can then decide what will be the most appropriate method for modelling them. The ones in the picture seem to be simple piping seams. If you Google 'piping seam', you can find pictures and even videos how they are actually made and see that it is basically exactly what is sounds like - just a pipe going around, that is sewed into the seam to hide it.
I would recommend to model furniture with correct peaces of fabric so there will be seams on your models in the places there would be seams in reality. This helps with texturing and if you have UV seams already marked it is very easy to select them in edit mode with shift+g > Seams. Once selected you can duplicate them with shift+d and separate them with p > Selection. Then you can hit alt+c and convert the edges to curves. Once you have curves it is very easy to make pipes out of them just adding some bevel and adjusting it's resolution in the curve tab in the Properties Editor:

You could also use another curve as a bevel object if you needed a more complex form. Also because you now have them as curves, you can use more complex geometry and deform it with Curve modifier to follow the shapes of these curves. This way you can model various complex patterns for classical furniture:

I guess it depends on the degree of detail you want, if you need something simple you could do it this way:

Duplicate the edges, separate them from the object with P and convert them to Curve with alt C.
Create a new Curve > Circle.
Select your edge curve and in the Properties panel > Data > Geometry, choose the circle as Bevel Object.
Change the circle dimension or shape until you're satisfied.
If needed, convert your edge curve to Mesh

If your profile is more complexe than a simple circle, create a segment, give it an Array modifier and a Curve modifier with your edge curve as the Object so that your segment will follow this curve.

If it's a simple circle you are using for a bevel, a separate bevel object is not needed. The default curve bevel makes a circle. Saves a few clicks and then you don't need to have circle floating somewhere.

sure, but if you want to slightly change the shape  ;)  + this is not the main point of this solution

you need to choose Fill > Full, Bevel > Depth, Bevel > Resolution

Good point. Who would use a bevel with half fill and 0 resolution?.. It would be nice to have defaults that make more sense...


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How do I resume a rendering animation?
I've stopped my animation that was rendering at 224 frames (out of 250) and I can't find a way to start rendering again from where I left off. I've been told to change the start frame (under frame range) to where I last left off but it just starts the render from the beginning (restricted to 224-225 frames).

First rule of course is: Always render a sequence of lossless, single frames
Be it Targa, Png, Tif, OpenEXR, BMP, whatever rocks your boat.
Blender might crash, someone might trip over the power cord or ten other reasons might cause rendering to end prematurely.
Another reason is that sometimes there's just a single frame that's wrong and you can easily re-render just that single one or retouch it in Gimp.
But, more relevant to this question, Blender has a nifty feature which only works with rendered image sequences. It's called Overwrite.

If this checkbox is empty, Blender will ignore frames that are already rendered and saved in the output folder. It means if Blender finds a saved file for that rendered frame, it skips rendering it and just renders the next one that is not saved yet. Blender won't check whether you changed a color and there might be a corrupted frame if rendering was aborted in an unexpected way, but other than that it's quite handy to solve your trouble.
Combined with placeholders, you can even set up a rudimentary render farm.

What you've been told is correct. You'll need to adjust this number:

Then you'll need to stitch the two clips together in a video editor.
A better approach to rendering animations is rendering an image sequence of PNG's (or EXR's for full dynamic range) and then using the sequence editor to convert that image sequence into a video. Have a look at this tutorial on how to do that.

I have actually been exporting the animation as an image sequence, but when i start from frame 224 it starts rendering it like it was starting from the beginning

Go see @Haunt_House's answer, as he says it's the overwrite button you're looking for.


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Rendering Error when I press F12 in Blender
I'm a newbie in blender.. and everything was going fine but I don't know whether I clicked something or what, now when I render it gives the error: "No render output note in scene".
I don't even know what this means it must be something very easy that I overlooked.

In the compositor editor type (enabling "Use Node") you should see two nodes one attached to the other. A Render layer node attached to a composite node. The message you are talking about is shown when the composite node is missing.
If it is missing press Shift + A -> output -> composite. Plug the render layer image output into the composite image input.


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Why did Global Texture Coordinate disappeared in Blender 2.80?
Global Texture Coordinate disappeared in Blender 2.80
I need Global texture coordinate for boolean cut texture animation

global? would you mind putting in a screenshot of what you mean?

Ok, i post image screenshot

Hello. You must edit the question. Put the image there.

I edit post and upload image screenshot

what version of blender was that? And where do you exactly find the panel, in what mode. The information would be useful and save time.

Blender 2.79 Only "Blender Render" working fine, In Blender 2.80 "Eevee" "Cycles" not exist Global

You could always use the Object Space of an Empty placed at 0 of, and aligned to, the World Axes:

The global coordinates where an option that only existed for the Blender Internal render engine.

Global
The scene’s global 3D coordinates. This is also useful for
  animations; if you move the object, the texture moves across it. It
  can be useful for letting objects appear or disappear at a certain
  position in space.

It wasn't and isn't an option in Cycles or Eevee. The closest equivalent would be the Camera output of the Texture Coordinate node.

Camera
Position coordinate in camera space.

You know.. I thought there used to be a Texture Coordinate option called "World" or "Global", but I can't find any evidence that there ever was. At any rate, it's not an option now. But I found using the Geometry:Position output hooked up to the Mapping:Vector input has the same effect of a texture changing as the mesh moves through space.

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.


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How do I position my instance empty for collections?
So today I am working on a huge warehouse scene so I need to be very efficient with my geometry and obviously instancing will be a huge help.
I want to place the empty that represents the collection neatly over the instanced object, but instead that empty wants to be in a totally different location which does not look very clean.
I have tried applying the location, setting it from the world origin, resetting the origin point for the base object and I can't figure it out.

What I want is in the second image. (keep in mind the second image is just an empty I placed over the lockers to give you a visual for what I am trying to achieve )
Seems like there should be a simple way to place this thing.

How to change a collection instance's origin : https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/164070/86891


text:
Rounded cap on Curve with Geo Nodes
It seems so simple but I just can't seem to make this happen with Geo nodes.
Can anyone just create a curve, attach geo nodes to it, add depth, create rounded caps, and then add a simple controller that makes the curve go certain degrees around a point?

Old non geo-nodes workaround if it matters https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/55302/rounded-caps-on-a-bezier-curve-pipe and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53523/how-do-i-add-a-non-deformed-end-cap-to-a-tube

Got to chuck one in.. I'm not getting this flickering that's being discussed here? Or maybe I am?

I do have a couple of  bugbears.. the normals are not perfectly matched, even after welding, because of uneven mesh density, I think. Also, the geometry matches only if there are an even number of segments around the minor circumference, and cap rings. You could put in some math to constrain to that.. but that would just be more nodes.
This shows the GN followed up with a Weld and Subdiv

(Blender 3.0b) Crits welcome.

This is beautiful!! <3

Man ... I just tried re-creating this ... it took 15-20 minutes and I got almost nothing LOL ... I will have to download this fille and try to understand this magic

I might be ignorant but so many of your nodes are missing fields ... did you remove these somehow? Like your math nodes for divide don't have a second input?

@General_Iridium Yup.. I think I collapsed (Ctrl-H) too many of these nodes, to try and make a reasonably-sized tree for illustration. Especially the Curve to Points. (I should have left that open to show only 2 points are sampled.)  I'm relying on anybody interested to download and crack those nodes open (Ctrl-H, again). Maybe I shouldn't.. I don't know, these trees can get very big, and hard to decipher from a picture alone, so I'm treating that like a sketch. Fire away.. happy to elaborate to answer questions, or make suggested improvements.

I mean, I think you have a GREAT result here ... it is actually exactly what I was looking for. I think I was just a bit discouraged since as small of a node tree as this is it is still very hard for ME personally to follow... maybe just because GeoNodes is changing so quickly ... I have no idea how guys like you KNOW about these nodes ... let alone can implement them correctly in challenges.
Really wonderful work ... just thinking what do i need to do to understand GeoNodes better. ( keep in mind this is someone who has been using Blender for a long time now )

@General_Iridium I'm still getting the hang of which data are being piped down which noodles, myself. This tree was built one chunk at a time, pretty much the ones in the labelled frames. If you take it apart, and plug the chunks straight into the output, that might clue you in in the same way as I was clue-ing myself in. :)

I'm very late to the party, but I saw a video featured here on BSE:
 Youtube: The Simple Solution to Blender's Bezier Curve Problem
So I thought I'll share my solution. Similar to the one of Robin Betts:

It aligns correctly to the 3D splines:

It's important the 2nd Euler Align is X not Y:

However the smooth shading for the above setup FAILS!

To fix it, either Realize Instances and Merge By Distance:

Or for performance, capture vertex normals before cutting the sphere and use that in the shader:

If you can still see a seam on the caps, this is because the surface is smooth, but the curvature change isn't (next derivative of smoothness), I explain it more thoroughly (and how to further smooth it) here:
What is causing this stretched shading on the mesh and how can I fix it?

you can do it with this node setup (it is Blender 3.0b):

*** UPDATE ***
This "should be" the non-flickering version, which works with "half spheres", which were rotated depending on the start and end degree.

Nice ! I was looking for a way to rotate the UV spheres depending on curve control points tangents to avoid flickering but no luck. (Also removing the unseen half-sphere could make the curve/sphere interface seamless) If the camera is not too zoomed in this solution does the trick though.

thank you. Yes, it is by far not perfect. But it is a good starting point .... ;)

Can you make this work with a full circle?

This very simple node setup allows having rounded caps on any curve. The idea is to use the start and end points of the curve and generate a sphere on them. The curve can also be animated with a "Trim Curve" Node.

Hi thanks for the answer. Could you add a short textual description of the procedure and how it works, along with the image, rather than just post a screen shot, so your post can be indexed and searched for by future users.


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Create ColorRamp
How can I create a ColorRamp for a Cycles material through Python?
I am able to create a new shader output node with nodes.new(type='ShaderNodeOutputMaterial'). Searching online, I see that it is only possible through C code (however, these pages dates back several years).
Is there a way to fake a ColorRamp (maybe with multiple Math nodes in greater/less than mode) or create a ColorRamp for a Cycles material through Python?

The node type you need for creating a color ramp is ShaderNodeValToRGB. Below is an example that demonstrates how to create a material that contains a color ramp that is connected to the base color of a Principled BSDF.
import bpy

# Create a material that uses nodes
material = bpy.data.materials.new(name="Example_Material")
material.use_nodes = True

# Get the collection of nodes in the material
nodes = material.node_tree.nodes

# Create a color ramp node
color_ramp = material.node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeValToRGB")

# Example for connecting the color output of the color ramp to the Principled BSDF
principled_bsdf = nodes.get("Principled BSDF")
material.node_tree.links.new(principled_bsdf.inputs["Base Color"], color_ramp.outputs["Color"])


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Draw some Groove on Object
I'm designing a Sause Bottle In blender Lately. But I just Faced a Roadblock.
As you can see in Reference Photos Below, there is some Grooves on The Top of The Bottle And I just Cant Pull it off!

I Tried Using Knife Tool Which Took me 20 minutes To Create Only One Out Of 12. So I Found Out This is Not The Right Way. So I Tried To Make Something Looking Like The Groove Itself To Use Boolean On it.
Here is The Result From The Second Way That I Tried (Boolean Modifier):

Which Caused This Disaster On Quantity of Vertices And Edges In Just A Really Narrow Area!!
So is There Any Other Way Or Any Hint That Yall Could Give me?

i would try it with sculpting...

You don't need so many faces in my opinion. You can check my answer here, except you don't need to twist it at the end: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/134710/how-do-i-make-this-twisted-surface-on-a-bottle/134771#134771

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/55635/making-rounded-dips-in-cylinder https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/134710/how-do-i-make-this-twisted-surface-on-a-bottle https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/52488/how-can-i-model-indentations-on-a-surface https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/35791/how-would-i-make-these-curved-indents-in-this-water-bottle-picture-in-descripti


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On blender 2.83, my 'enter' does not seem to work?
I saw tutorial saying, press 'S', 'Z', '0', followed by 'enter' to set selected vertices Z coordinates to "ground" (zero).
On my blender 2.83, when I do the above sequence, I see the 'scale' window open with Z= 0 (on the left bottom of my screen) but pressing  does not do anything.  The vertices don't move, their values stay as before.  That 'scale' window does not have any confirm button either so I am not sure how to 'complete' the change.
Is there a mode of some sort that I changed by mistake or perhaps my keyboard 'enter' is non standard?

If z = 0 then there is nothing to change...

Enter should work, but you don't need to confirm the inputs that way. You can confirm alternatively by left clicking, which has always been a way to do the confirmation. Right-clicking would instead undo the change altogether. Does it work when you do this?

What do you mean?  I thought that scaling by 0 meant multiplying all the Z by 0 so in effect forcing all Z to 0.

I exited blender and restarted it and your left-click works.  In fact I see the change even before pressing 'enter' and 'enter' works now.  So I guess there is some kind of mode that I triggered that seems to reset when you start blender.  Thanks for helping.

Scaling will depend on pivot point.   eg pivot point scene cursor at global z = 0 will have a global  "drop to ground effect"  for SZ0  Remember vert coords are in local space. A SZZ0 will show the local z axis when scaling.


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How to shear a cube (or rectangular cuboid) without changing surface dimensions?
Imagine a cube (or rectangular cuboid) where each sides have a depth.  Let's say like a carton box.
If you remove any two opposing sides, you can shear it to look like a rhombus or back into a square while keeping each surface dimensions.
What are easy ways to do this in Blender?
In my particular case, there are a bit more details than a carton box so I am hoping that the rest of the model can keep its appearance while shearing.

Here's a GN group which will deform a mesh as you describe:

..it rotates every point in a mesh by 'Angle' about an axis in direction 'Axis Direction' passing through the projection of that point onto the XY plane at offset 'Z Offset', all in Object Space.

Thanks for helping.  Using Blender 3.4.1, I am not able to reproduce the exact geometry nodes.  In 'Group Input', I only get 'Z' and 'Axis', not 'Z offset' and 'Axis Direction'.  In 'Multiply Add', I only see one multiplier instead of 3.  It is my first-time using geometry nodes so perhaps it is something I don't yet understand.

Hi, @VirtualPaul ! If you download the .blend, it should work. Sure, it is a couple of things you don't yet understand. The 'Z Offset' in the Group Input  is one I created and named myself, by dragging a noodle from its first vacant socket. It's the way you make inputs to GN groups, the inputs either appear in the modifier panel, or on the left side of the Group  node if  it's nested (used as a subgroup, with Add > Group, in another GN tree).   The Multiply Add node has 3 entries because it's Vector Math > 'Multiply Add', not Math > 'Multiply Add'.

Thanks, it works now.  Is there a way to clean-up all the fields available in the modifier section?  It shows 12 of them but the way I understand it, I only need one angle and 3 axes to control this GN?  Or perhaps I just need to delete it and redo it from scratch.

@VirtualPaul 1 angle, 1 axis-direction (vector, 3 components), 1 Z-offset. I don't know how you wind up with 12 :) Maybe look in the N panel of your GN window, under the Group tab, 'Inputs', and delete the ones you're not using? (You can also set their types there)

There is a shear operation.  If you press f3 and type "shear" you will find it, or go to mesh>transform>shear.
If you shear the box along a local axis and then resize it along one axis, it will appear to flatten.
You can get equal sides by resizing it this way.

Interesting, thanks.  I just wish I would not have to scale manually and measure to get the correct result.


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Unable to remove lines/vertex points
I made a grate by creating a cylinder then removing the center portion by boolean operations using another cylinder.  I then created a face on the top of the cylinder, and an array of cubes which I then superimposed on top of the cylinder and removed portions of the cylinder face using boolean operations again.  This had the effect of created a grate. But, this created some weird lines/vertexes/faces that I cannot merge.  Here's a screenshot of the top of the grate.  I've highlighted the lines I want to remove.  Apologies if this doesn't make sense, as I've got a dumb headache.
How do I get rid of the lines/vertexes/faces?  I'm needing to bevel the outside edge and I can't do it unless I get rid of them.
Thanks

It's a result of the boolean operation. Blender can't "poke holes" in the middle of a mesh - it must have adjoining edges to facilitate the cut. Though you can control how the boolean is placed by preparing your topology, in most cases, you place the "cutter object" and let blender figure out the rest. The problem with this is that it a) often leaves "ugly" topology, and b) creates its own adjoining edges that cannot be removed until proper topology is re-established. This would be accomplished largely in your case by connecting all of the verts in the intersections of the "bars".

I'm going to propose the radical solution that you get rid of the extra edges by making the grating in a different way.

Create a plane and subdivide it with six cuts.
Create a circle that is slightly smaller than the plane.
Go to top view.
Select the circle and then the plane.
In Edit Mode select Mesh->Knife Project
Immediately switch to vertex select; invert the selection and delete the inversion.
Add a wireframe modifier to the plane. Check boundary and set the thickness you want.
Add a bevel modifier below it on the modifier stack.  Set the Amount appropriately and Segments to 2.  Make sure that the Bevel amount is less than half of the thickness in the wireframe.
Add a subdivision surface last.

Here's the plane after all of the modifiers have been added:

Here's the modifier stack for my example:

Now you can use the original circle to make the casing that surrounds the grid:

Select the entire circle.
Extrude and immediately hit accept.
Scale outward to create the face of the casing.
Extrude down to create the outside-
Add a Bevel modifier
Add a subdivision surface last.

If you want the casing to have thickness, extrude both the inside and outside circles.
Don't join the two, unless you apply the wireframe first.
Here's the result:

Thanks.  Will try both tomorrow.

Tried both, they didn't do what I needed.  The second answer produced too many non-manifold edges for me.  Thanks anyhow.


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Select text object by name and change font via script
I'm needing to know how to access and change the font for a pre-existing text object.  Everything that I have seen uses a new text object.  I've tried looking at the bpy.ops.fonts structure, but can't seem to figure it out.
Thanks.

Is this a Python question?  If so please tag Python on your question and show some Python sample in a screen capture.

Example below is based on windows file location.
import bpy

my_name = 'ALGER.TTF'  #name of text object
new_font = 'G:\\Blender Working folders\\Fonts\\ALGER.TTF'  #file location of new font
for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    if ob.name == my_name:
        ob.data.font = bpy.data.fonts.load(new_font)

Thanks, this bit of code is enough to allow me to figure out what I need to do.

In edit mode before you start typing select from the Font Panel

Bold
Italic

This determines the font choice


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Select all faces within an area delimited by sharp edges
I've got a model that has sharp edges around islands.  I want to keep the sharp edges, and be able to select only the faces inside the island borders.  Any ideas?
I'm able to select a single row around the island.

Then one more row.

Any more than that and the selection selects things outside of the island.

If you can easily select one row of faces around the island then the hard part of the issue is solved.
Just select that single face loop and hide it with H, then select one of the remaining faces at the center of the island and select all linked with Ctrl + L.
Unhide the hidden loop with Alt + H, and it should include it in selection automatically


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source for The Mesh extra objects addon in latest version?
Been trying to make dice using this: How do I create an 8 sided die from one object?
But I can't find the menu where you choose the shape of the object! Does anyone know how to do this in the latest version?
Would appreciate any help :)

Open the preferences (Edit > Preferences).

Switch to the Add-ons tab, search for Extra Objects and enabled the Add Mesh: Extra Objects add-on.

Add a new Regular Solid object (Add > Mesh > Math Function > Regular Solid).

Open the Adjust Last Operation panel in the lower left corner of the 3D View.

Adjust the properties.


text:
Why isn't the boolean modifier working?

When I use boolean on objects I've reshaped, it gets like this. If the object that has the modifier is a normal object that isn't changed, it just gets a hole in the top, like if the object is hollow. The other cube has a bevel modifier and doesn't really change at all, it just got some weird black lines. No problems when doing this with other unmodified objects instead of the number.

Welcome! For a better screenshot: Main Menu Bar in Blender > Window > Save Screenshot... And you can share the blend using: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

please share the source file here (https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/), cause your question is not clear

How to take a ScreenShot


text:
how do I scale text on the z axis?
Is there any way to scale text on the z axis? It doesn't work for me and I want to use it to make a hole/carved number in a dice with boolean.

Text Properties > Geometry > Extrude

To use Text object in boolean operation you would have to Convert to Mesh


text:
Toggle mist on / off in cycles
I've created some mist in my World settings using Volume Scatter in the Volume section.
Is it possible to quickly turn it on and off for rendering, so that I can create a render with mist, and then render one with a transparent background when I need it?
At present I have to delete the Volume Scatter, render the scene with the transparent background, then add the mist again.
Many thanks for your help,
Ian

can't you just unplug the node in shader editor?

Thanks! I hadn't realised where the node settings for the World were. Found them now.. That works great.


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Why does Render Preview work but actually rendering crashes everything?
I have a somewhat complex test scene (not really that complex just a little demanding)
Here's the render preview:

The render preview works fine but when I press render everything just crashes, so the question is what is the difference between the Render Preview and actually rendering the scene?
Is it just because actually rendering a scene takes more computing power? if so are there a way to slow it down and use less computing power?
So far the only thing I got to render was the default cube
Also, a little more information. My setup for this is kinda weird, so there is no hardware acceleration for GPU compute, so I am using CPU for rendering. I'm also doing this just for fun so i don't expect and good performance from this setup

Welcome! You can share the blend using: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

I'd also suggest to run your Blender from the system's console, start a render and see what gets written in the console when Blender crashes (and tell us what). It might give clues on what's happening. See this : https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/command_line/launch/windows.html

I had this issue when I was using the  2.81 version rendering eevee. Now with 2.82 it works fine.


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cloth simulation, cloth(plane) collide at center of of the cube instead of at the surface
so I have been playing around with cloth simulation, and was doing a low-poly bend and made a blanket on top. and then used cloth simulation on the plane and collision on the cube. first, I had a subdivision surface modifier on the cube and when I played the simulation, the cloth would go inside the cube and rest in the middle of the cube, then I used a cube of similar proportion but did not subdivide it, and the result was the same. then I made a new plane way bigger than the cube, applied the cloth physics property but the result was the same.

note: when I try this in a new file all the result is normal but only on this file, there is a problem.

Does this answer your question? Why does this cloth go down past the top surface of the cube?

This can be because if many problems you should try these:-
Make sure that all modifiers on cube are applied and that on plane the cloth simulator is the last modifier or is only equipped with cloth modifier.
Also increase permeability of collision modifier on the cube as 1 and check that it is setted to volume rather than being on object origin.
Also try deleting and again adding the cube in the file it is not working.
If it still don't work then you may even delete the plane and add it again in your scene.


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Procedural stretched materal
I was experimenting with Blender's material nodes and texture and accidentally created a (in my opinion, beautiful) stretched material by creating a small mesh and applying a large image texture. If it matters, I'm using Blender 2.82a.
How can I procedural generate this material using Cycle's material nodes?
I'm very inexperienced with Blender, so details would be appreciated.
Description of material: cross section of wood stretched along the curve of a mesh
Material samples:

You can stretch any texture using the Mapping Node.

Add Mapping node right after Texture Coordinate node
Change type from Point to Texture (but it will work either way)
Crank up the scale disproportionally


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About Painting Bump texture
When i try to paint Bump texture on cube its outline appears to be distorted. I have used 4k Bump image.Could anyone tell how to make bump painting smooth.

here is a 1024x1024 example.
go to shader editor and make the first option in image texture to cubic or smart.


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How to create segment a large model of landscape into smaller sections that can be higher resolution?
I hope to make a 3D model of existing landscapes in blender, with the hope of eventually adding them to video games that allow you to create your own maps. I tried using the following two tutorials with no luck: https://youtu.be/BXDSfrzR0zI and https://www.beamng.com/threads/tutorial-level-building-with-lidar.39370/
With the video, I do have 3D maps, but I think I have too large an area with too low of a resolution. This is because when I try to zoom in, it seems the roads are a bit blurry. I am trying to start out with somewhat large areas, like the island of Nusa Tenggara Timur in Indonesia, with the hopes of slicing out a smaller section that can be used in a game without crashing. I am quite new to blender and while I can follow along the video tutorial, I’m not 100% understanding everything I’m doing and what the alternatives are.

Hi. Asking for tutorials is off-topic, but you can always ask about the specific techniques that are not working if you can be specific about where it is going wrong vs what you are expecting/trying.

To answer your question. Slice down your original hight map into smaller parts. So you can assemble multiple so called map tiles into one high resolution map.
For large detailed enviroment usualy tiling maps are used in game engines. The heightmaps are loaded directly in a shader - in modern games with adaptive generation of geometry depending on the distance you can actualy see (Tesselation).
If you generate a high resolution mesh for each map tile you most likeley will run into memory issues.


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When adding a new face, joining faces become reflective
Having this problem with multiple meshes (so it's probably something easy I'm missing). I have these flat meshes I'm attempting to make into closed 3D objects. But the original vertex shapes become reflective and change colour when adding in a new face.
I'll select the vertexes for the edge of the face (pic 1) create a new face with F key (pic 2). But then BAM, all the faces that connected to those original vertexes have lost their colour and become shiny/reflective (pic 3).
(You can also see the colour change from pic 1 to 2)
I'm wondering if there is a fix for this, or if I'm doing something wrong. Cheers in advance.
Pic 1

Pic 2

Pic 3

The fill option is a bit mischievous some time. You may want to try grid fill and see if the same thing happens. It could be flipping your normals or maybe they are already flipped and it is showing back faced culling. You can check to see this in the material slot, there is a back faced culling viewing option.

thanks for the reply! Turns out it did have something to do with the normals. Flipping all the new side fills so they were facing inwards seemed to fix the issue for 95% of the faces. The other 5% still had some issue, just had to recreate those faces without properly connecting them to the edge of the new fill faces. Once again, thanks for the reply!


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Rigged mesh rendering differently to viewport (AFTER EDIT)
I have a rigged character with a sort of "belt strap" across his body. This has been rigged and weighted so it moves correctly with his poses. In the pose I'm wanting to render his belt strap phases through his tunic.
I've edited the mesh (with "on cage" & "edit mode" ticked in the Armature Modifier tab) so that the belt strap and tunic align correctly. Unfortunately, the render does NOT reflect this change, and renders without the new edit.
Looking for solutions!
Image 1 (Viewport - with edit)
Image 2 (Render - with edit but not showing edit)

Note, I cannot " Object -> Apply -> Visual Geometry to Mesh "' as I plan on animating the dude, not just getting this 1 render. Nor does this actually work.

hello, could you please just share the belt + cloth? https://pasteall.org/blend/


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How to merge multiple empties into 1 average empty
I'm looking for a way to create a new Empty in the average center of 2-3 other Empties. (See Image 1)

The original Empties come from motion capture points on an actor. I'll be using this new Empty to manipulate a bone within a rig. (See Image 2) The original Empties will be moving throughout the scene. IS this possible natively through Blender? Or will I need an Add-on or an original script?
Or is there another solution to my problem? Possibly using all 3 of the original empties to manipulate the joint? I've slipped slightly out of my depth here.
Using Blender 2.82

You can set the cursor to the midpoint of those Empties and create a new Empty at the cursor location:

Select your empties
Set the Transform Pivot Point to Median Point
Place the cursor at this middle point: Right Click to show the Object Context Menu > Snap > Cursor To Selected (or press Shift + S > Cursor To Selected)
Create the Empty: Shift + A > Empty

I know it's been a while but you can do this through Copy Location constraints on the new empty:

Select the new empty
Add 3 Copy Location constraints in the Constraints tab.
Location Constraint 1 gets 1.00 influence, Location Constraint 2 gets 0.5 influence, and Location Constraint 3 gets 0.3333 influence.

And for more empties: the formula is: influence $= {1\over x}$, where $x$ is the number of the constraint, starting with $1$. You can type in the fields e.g. 1/3 and Blender will make the calculation.


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Uncontrolled scattering while animating blender particles
I defined particles to represent granules. It worked fine in preview but after extracting rendered output (video), the particles scatter randomly. How do i fix this? Thanks in advance!!!

Add your . blend file.

can you try to be more clear? your problem isn't clear by the question. Press the edit button and change it


text:
How to accurately position the start/end color of linear gradients in blender?
I have two 2D meshes next to each other in Blender. I plan to scale-animate one of them (with the connecting edge remaining constant). I'd like the two meshes to have a linear color gradient go across them. The following image shows a schematic of what I'm trying to achieve (the 2 rectangles representing my 2D meshes in Blender).
This schematic is drawn in figma, which provides a handy "from-color-1-to-color-2" overlay over the shape to be colored making it easy to coordinate such a color gradient across two shapes because this tool lets you specify the start/end color right at the edges you're interested in.
However, all I have seen in Blender so far when it comes to color gradients doesn't suggest a way to precisely determine the start/end color for any given edge of a 2D mesh. Is this possible? Thanks!


text:
How can I make a fluid (smoke) follow a particle system?
I'm using Blender 2.82.7 for this.  I need to make a tornado, I created the particle system, I created fluid physics, but when I make the final bake the system does not behave as I wanted and it spreads.  Is there also a way to save the cache?  It takes a long time and when I close Blender I need to bake again.  I'm using Blender 2.82's new Mantaflow system.

I found the issue is with the particle size. The default one is too big, if you reduce the size the smoke will be far better, I reduced the size to $0.01m$.
Change the particle size from: Particle Properties -> Particle Settings -> Viewport Display -> Size

It worked! Thank you! In the viewport the smoke was very soft and you can hardly see it, but I increased the density in the material and it was good. Can you send your particle system settings (just the amount of particles you used) and also those of fluid physics please?

@PCBMoreira2 Sry for the late answer. I'm adding the particle settings and physics in the below answer. Check it out....

[

Here is the particle settings and physics for the tornado in blender 2.82

No problem the delay, I will use them here to test, thanks.


text:
How to change "default" Blender used by Windows?
I have multiple versions of Blender installed: 2.78c(for a class I'm taking using the game engine), 2.82a and 2.83a. When I hit the Windows key and search for Blender, the default one that shows up at the top is 2.78, however, this isn't the one I'm using most often. I'd like to change this so that 2.82a is the default. I have already set it so when I open .blend files, it used the version I want, and yes I know I can set a shortcut for the taskbar and use that, but I'd still like to be able to change this.

Well, just search for Blender 2.82. The searching algorithm is not really editable, to get instant acces, pin apps to Start/Taskbar :).


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Blender Cycles: uniform position-based colors?
I am trying to create an effect where I have several objects (say, cubes) which draw their color from an underlying texture.
Imagine, for example, if I had a rectangular region consisting of side-by-side cubes (or alternatively one large object with many joined cubes). I also have a texture of, say, a rainbow in front of a blue sky.
The effect I desire is that each object draws its color from the texture (i.e., a cube in the top-right corner gets the color of the top-right corner of the texture). Ideally, I would like that each object/cube is colored uniformly, say by extracting the color of the pixel closest to its position. The result would be a very grainy representation of the texture (depending on the resolution of my cubes).
Do you know if such an effect is possible in Blender Cycles?

Are those cubes static?

Is this the kind of thing you are looking for ? https://youtu.be/05HFa3jNBH0?t=24

Yes, we can assume they are static

@Gorgious: Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for - thank you!

@J.Galt Do tell me if you have trouble achieving it, I'll try to write an answer, he goes pretty fast in the video

Thank you - I managed to reproduce it! If you want and would like to provide this link as a reponse to this question, I could accept it as the designated answer (so other people know we resolved this question). Otherwise I'd have to answer the question myself, but it's better to give credit where credit is due ;)

This is just a response to mark this question as answered. The user Gorgious linked a video which showed the solution: youtu.be/05HFa3jNBH0?t=24
The trick seems to be to switch to top-down, orthographic view, then project a UV map from view, shift the UV map over the desired part of the texture, then select 'individual origins' and scale the UV map projections of each object waaaaay down. Done =)
Thanks, Gorgious!


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Glowing Mesh (topology)
Anyone knows how to create this glowing mesh effect?

Video link: https://youtu.be/dKo0rWXVAlc?t=18

Hi :). What have you tried so far and where exactly are you stuck?

I would say, add a wireframe modifier, uncheck "replace original", material offset 1, and add a blue color (i assume you already have a material) with lots of emission and if you render in eevee: turn bloom on.
emission 50:

emission 200: