text:
How to create a liquid meniscus/bridge between two surfaces
I'm trying to model a water droplet between two plane surfaces such that it forms a capillary bridge as soon as the surfaces get into close proximity of each other like in the first figure of this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capillary_bridges
I tried to play with the fluid simulation but I can only get an "infinite" stream of water. I also tried metaballs but I was only able to "melt" two balls with each other.
How would you do this?

Do you need it to be fluid simulation, or modeling and animating it can be a solution?

it doesn't need to be a fluid simulation, I just want it to look more or less realistic :)

Is it a still or an animation?

It would be cool if I could animate it. The idea is to have a sessile or a hanging drop on one of the surfaces and then when they approach each other the capillary bridge forms and when they move away from each other the bridge breaks again.

Like in this video : https://youtu.be/3fJl2jAsoMk?t=14


text:
Selecting a specific cube in an array to change properties
I am trying to iterate over an array of cubes that I created and assign a new location to each one. I am having trouble with my iterating code. I know the issue is somewhere in how I am referencing each cube.
import bpy

cubes = []
for i in range(10):
    cubes.append(bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=1, location=(i*2, 0, 0)))

for cube in cubes:

    cube.keyframe_insert(data_path='location', frame = 1)
    cube.location = (10,0,0)
    cube.keyframe_insert(data_path='location', frame = 120)

This operator does not return a reference for the created object.,
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=1, location=(i*2, 0, 0)))

so change to the following.
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(size=1, location=(i*2, 0, 0))
cubes.append(bpy.context.active_object)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Freestyle Uniform Displacement
I been looking online for this so idk if this is a duplicate or not, I never seen this asked before.
But for the curvy lines I went with the Sinus Displacement modifier in the geometry tab and its all spikey, I'm trying to smooth it but I have no clue what modifier to use for that.

But the bigger problem of the two is show below with the first picture zoomed out and the second picture Zoomed in.
I'm wanting the curves to be uniform but as you can see when zoomed out its less curvy and when zoomed in its more curvy. Is there any way how to set a uniform amount of curves to the sinus displacement?
Out:

In:

-please feel free to edit the question if you think it could be improved in someway, I don't really know how to make the question/post look better

Freestyle works on the rendered image, by zooming in the 3d view you give it a different image to work with. Render the scene and adjust the settings to suit that image.

@sambler thanks :D but is there a way to make this process automatic? Like a ik freestyle setup, or just self updating. Or should I just learn code for that?

Basically, you want to increase the Wavelength and Amplitude of the Sinus when the camera go closer to the object. You can do that with Drivers.
On the picture below, you can see the settings for the Wavelength driver :

a variable (named dist) return the distance between Cube and Camera
we invert it (1/dist), cause we want the value to decrease when the distance increase
we multiply it by a value (*200), which define the overall amplitude.

To find the right value, you can do trial and error, or calculate it. Here you can see dist is 10.439 ; say your desired Wavelength is 20 ; 1/10.439*x = 20 -> x = 20*10.439 = more or less 200.
The method is exactly the same for Amplitude. I used (1/dist)*30.

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


text:
I cant use the Z command for wireframe
I was doing some 3d modeling from a tutorial then when I added a circle I pressed f8 instead of f6 then after that z won't toggle wireframe. What did f8 do? Ctrl z works but didn't undo what ever f8 did.

F8 tries to reload all Add-ons. Maybe there's one that failed to reload correcly, causing keymaps to be messed up. Have you restarted Blender and tried again?

To get "Z" to toggle wireframe again, turn Object > Display > Maximum Draw Type to Texture or Solid if it is currently set to Wire

Or for the animated version from user Timaroberts

Sources:Can't get my model out of wireframe mode, GIF from Have I toggled wireframe?

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


text:
Is it possible to save animation as frame by frame to edit?
I'm pretty sure this is not a duplicate question been look for this for a month now.
I'm planning to make animations with blender and heard of the grease pencil thing but I need to make 3d animations and edit them.
As in a basic frame rate even with 15fps a 10-20 minute animation would be 9000-18000 frames and to edit every single one would to save each and every frame individually. Is there a way to use the grease pencil with 3d animation or is there a way to actually save 18000 frames?
Somehow I managed a while ago to download a 4 hour video.(around 1.6gb)
Would that be the same as frame by frame or has it been compressed?

Blender does have the ability to render to individual frames (PNG format is popular) and this is the preferred workflow.

I like to increase the compression to 100%, and if you aren't rendering frames with transparency, then use RGB instead of RGBA.  And uncheck the Overwrite box.  If you decide you need to throw away the previously rendered frames (because you updated the animation or whatever) you can delete them using your file explorer or bash.
As you have calculated this can result numerous images, which are usually each pretty large.
When you say you intend to "edit" the results of blender's rendering, you are being pretty vague, and depending upon the nature of the alterations you want to perform, your workflow can vary drastically.

Wow thanks! :D I have a couple of questions to this, the type of editing I plan is simple as in adding a mouth to the animation with out the 3d modeling to make the mouth 2d. But would importing 18,000 frames be a bit much? Or with 100% compression would I be able to still edit them? Sorry I'm new to animation and blender when it comes to this xD

The technique I would try for adding a 2D mouth to a 3D rendered character would be to render the 3D character, and then create a second blender project which uses the VSE to layer the mouth images over the 3D rendered character using image and movie strips.

By render do you mean load the animation to the vse? Cause the main problem I'm worrying about it trying to draw animation on compressed animation files, I'm not completely sure if I can just seethe frames in it or I'm I thinking of compression in the wrong way? Is it different than zip?

I would render the 3d character to a sequence of individual PNGs.  But blender's VSE supports both PNG sequences and encoded (compressed) video.  PNG compression is not lossy.  Most video encoders are lossy (but some have a lossless mode).  And when you use the VSE it is not exactly that you are "drawing on" the original video, but you are mixing together two or more videos which can achieve a "drawing on" effect and many other effects.

Thanks for all the help :D think I found the answer thx to you. I'm going to try 2 methods to test, the method you gave, and a method I seen on youtube where 2d grease pencil animations gonna try to render grease pencil in the png render images. If you want I could give you updates on both when I complete it.

After you have experimented with grease pencil, you could write a second answer to this question that outlines the technique and enumerates some advantages and difficulties so that people can learn from it (I have not really experimented with the grease pencil at all).  Having diverse answers on a question is sometimes a good thing.

This answer only covers configuring the output destination. To actually render, use the Render menu > Render Animation (and don't waste time looking for "the Animation button" that the Blender docs unhelpfully reference).

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


text:
Why arent all of my glass windows reflecting the same?
I'm wondering why my windows dont all reflect the same. In the image you'll see the right 3 windows are much darker than those on the left. As i pan around the scene the left windows reflect the white background, bu the right windows dont appear to, though they do reflect. The left window set are duplicates of the right so left and right should be the same. They certainly have the same materials.
Any clues?

Check the normals of the glass pane for inverted geometry.

Is there a difference between what's behind each window? Is there a room behind one and not behind the other or something?

OK I'll check the normals, whatever that means. Thanks :o)

There is a white face backing to every window, set back from the glass by 20mm or something like that. I'll check they're all the same distance.

Duarte, looks like you were on the money. had to recalc normals. Many thanks.


text:
Why can't I select multiple objects?
I am currently unable to select more than one object at a time for some reason. I have object mode selected. I then use shift + LMB (mouse buttons swapped from Blender 2.78 default). But the select just moves to which ever object I select and deselects any object I had already selected. I also tried box select, which now selects nothing. I have applied transformations as I know unapplied transformations can make things screwey. It was working just fine earlier. Any help would be much appreciated.

hmm, I switched the theme to ScienceLab. Selection appearance is different! Anyone know how mod the theme to make selection appear properly?

OK the problem was the theme. With ScienceLab theme the colour of selected and unselected objects is too similar for my eyes. Had to modify the theme.

Good to know, thx

In the outliner if you accidentally type while renaming (without having renaming properly started) you can mess up the selection enabled flags.
Type 'a' to 'select all' (in the outliner) and then 's' to re-enable the selection enabled icons (arrows between eye and camera).


text:
How to select left most vertices in UV using python?
I am trying to select vertices/vertex loop in left most direction or top most direction of a UV island using python but I am getting no where.

I have found this code by batFINGER, which selects top most vertex in viewport.
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Matrix

space = 'LOCAL'  # or 'GLOBAL'
find = 'MAX' # or 'MIN'
TOL = 1e-7
ob = bpy.context.object
M = ob.matrix_world if space == 'GLOBAL' else Matrix()
me = ob.data

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
verts = sorted(bm.verts, key=lambda v: (M @ v.co).z)

bm.select_flush(False)
#bm.select_flush_mode()
z = (M @ verts[-1 if find == 'MAX' else 0].co).z
for v in verts:
    v.select = abs((M @ v.co).z - z) < TOL
bm.select_flush(True)

bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

From the image you provided, it seems you want to select uvs that are close to the leftmost considering a epsilon value.
The script proposed below does the following:
Get all uvs from a bmesh
Sort them accordingly to the wanted axis
Select them until coordinate delta from the top/bottom/left/right most is under an epsilon value.
Code below with details in comments:
import bpy
import bmesh

# depending on the wanted axis and orientation (TOP, BOTTOM, LEFT, RIGHT)
# return a lambda to access the good coordinate and sorting order (ascending or descending)
def get_sort_key(axis):
    if axis == 'TOP':
        return lambda uv: uv.uv[1], True
    if axis == 'BOTTOM':
        return lambda uv: uv.uv[1], False
    if axis == 'LEFT':
        return lambda uv: uv.uv[0], False
    if axis == 'RIGHT':
        return lambda uv: uv.uv[0], True

# in edit mode...

# get the active object
object = bpy.context.object

# get a bmesh from its data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(object.data)

# get active uv layer
uv_layer = bm.loops.layers.uv.active

# get all uvs
# uvs are in face loops and accessed in the face loop elements by the uv layer key
uvs = [l[uv_layer] for f in bm.faces for l in f.loops]

# get access function and sorting order depending on the wanted axis
key_func, reversed = get_sort_key('TOP')

# sort elements
uvs = sorted(uvs, key = key_func, reverse = reversed)

EPSILON = 0.001

# take the first coordinate value for comparison
first_co = key_func(uvs[0])

# loop over the uvs
for uv in uvs:
    # get the coordinate value
    co = key_func(uv)
    # select if close from the first element
    uv.select = abs(first_co - co) <= EPSILON

# update selections back to the object mesh data
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(object.data)

works perfectly. Thank you!


text:
Is there a way to select all the vertex of an object which are on negative x/y axis using python?
I am looking for a python script to select all the vertices on negative side of axis. I want to add these to a vertex group so I can use them in my code. Any help is appreciated.

I found a code that select vertices on both side of 1 axis givn by batFINGER. But I need to select all vertex on one side of an axis like on negative x or on negative y.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/139172/selecting-vertex-on-z-axis-using-python

Using one of the answers from the link you pointed at (the first answer looked simpler to me), we can write a simple script that selects the vertices that are in one side of one of the axes.
The things you need to note are :

some_object.data.vertices gives you access to the vertices of some_object
some_vertex.co is a 3 dimensional Vector that gives you the coordinates of some_vertex. some_vertex.co[0] is the X coordinate, some_vertex.co[1] is the Y and some_vertex.co[2] is for the Z.

Once you know that, all you need to do is test for each vertex if the coordinate along the desired axis is greater than 0 (or less than 0) and select the vertex in question with some_vertex.select= True :
import bpy

obj= bpy.context.object
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode= 'OBJECT')
verts= obj.data.vertices

def select_one_side_axis_verts(axis= 'x', positive= True):

    #deselect all the vertices
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode= 'EDIT')
    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action= 'DESELECT')
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode= 'OBJECT')

    axis_index= 0

    #match case for the
    match axis:
        case 'x' | 'X':
            axis_index= 0
        case 'y' | 'Y':
            axis_index= 1
        case 'z' | 'Z':
            axis_index= 2
        case _:
            axis_index= 0

    #selecting the vertices
    for v in verts:
        if positive and (v.co[axis_index] > 0) or not positive and (v.co[axis_index] < 0):
            v.select= True

#test run : select all the vertices that have negative z coordinates
select_one_side_axis_verts(axis= 'Z', positive= False)

This selects all the vertices that have a z coordinate strictly less than 0, if you want 0 to be included, just replace if positive and (v.co[axis_index] > 0) or not positive and (v.co[axis_index] < 0) by if positive and (v.co[axis_index] >= 0) or not positive and (v.co[axis_index] <= 0).

just a small remark: if you lowercase the axis before the match, you don't need the 3 additional or's for the cases ;)

Yes, that makes sense, thank you :D

you are welcome ;) just to mention: the +1 upvote is from me because i think your answer is good anyway.

Thank you for that too.


text:
How to mask an entire faceset during sculpting
I am working on multiple objects all required to preserve some details, which can be done using masking in sculpting.
Can any one help me with a script which can mask first/single faceset on one click.
Or any other way where I dont have to hide/show the faceset again and again.

Why not just use the Automask option for Face Sets in the Tool settings (1)? It will limit the effect of the brush to the face set under the mouse pointer when you start painting (2) => https://i.sstatic.net/BlUmA.jpg

I need to mask that face set, remove the face sets then smooth the whole mask so the sculpting effect looks even

You can mask a face set by pressing Shift+A to create a mask that starts on the face set, and then hold Ctrl to make it fill one (or more) face sets.

Here is an add-on script that creates a mask from the face set under the mouse pointer on a single key press. Shortcut key is Y. The menu entry is located under View3D > Mask > Mask From Face Set in Sculpt mode.
The operator is only four lines but for the shortcut key, a few more lines are required.
bl_info = {
    "name": "Mask From Face Set",
    "description": "Creates a mask from the face set under the mouse.",
    "author": "Blunder",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Mask > Mask From Face Set",
    "support": "COMMUNITY",
    "category": "Sculpt",
}

import bpy

class MaskFromFaceSetOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "wm.mask_from_face_set"
    bl_label = "Mask From Face Set Operator"

    def execute(self, context):
        bpy.ops.paint.mask_flood_fill(mode='VALUE', value=0)
        bpy.ops.sculpt.face_set_change_visibility(mode='TOGGLE')
        bpy.ops.paint.mask_flood_fill(mode='INVERT')
        bpy.ops.sculpt.face_set_change_visibility(mode='SHOW_ALL')
        return {'FINISHED'}

# Only needed if you want to add into a dynamic menu.
def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(MaskFromFaceSetOperator.bl_idname, text="Mask From Face Set")

# store keymaps here to access after registration
addon_keymaps = []

# Register and add to the mask menu (required to also use F3 search "Mask From Face Set Operator" for quick access).
def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(MaskFromFaceSetOperator)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_mask.append(menu_func)

    # handle the keymap
    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    # Note that in background mode (no GUI available), keyconfigs are not available either,
    # so we have to check this to avoid nasty errors in background case.
    kc = wm.keyconfigs.addon
    if kc:
        km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name='Sculpt', space_type='EMPTY')
        kmi = km.keymap_items.new(MaskFromFaceSetOperator.bl_idname, 'Y', 'PRESS', ctrl=False, shift=False)
        addon_keymaps.append((km, kmi))

def unregister():
    # handle the keymap
    for km, kmi in addon_keymaps:
        km.keymap_items.remove(kmi)
    addon_keymaps.clear()

    bpy.utils.unregister_class(MaskFromFaceSetOperator)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_MT_mask.remove(menu_func)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Thank you for sharing! As of 3.6.1, this line needs to be changed: bpy.ops.sculpt.face_set_change_visibility(mode='SHOW_ALL') to bpy.ops.sculpt.reveal_all()


text:
How can I create a new space type in blender using python?
is there a way to create a custom bl space type in blender with a new header. also, Height of header is predefined, is there a way to increase the height of header and tool header?

No, you can't create a new bl_space_type but you can modify the existing header or tool header height.

How can I adjust the height of header or tool header?

Sorry, you can't change height of header and tool header


text:
UV Map is badly placed on model
I am trying to use texture paint to paint the bottom half of the wick white. But as you can see the has a very bad position on the model where a few pixel on the UV Map cover half of the model. How can I fix that?

I've tried to move the map with this nodes:

It moves the map but I was not able to figure out it's orientation in any way, or how (direction, rotation) I should move it.

Hi :). You fix that by unwrapping the model again.

Can you please explain what you mean with that. How do I unwrap it? I'm sorry I'm very new to blender.


text:
Weird shadow in water simulation
I have made a water simulation but it has a weird shadow that depends on the positon of the viewport "camera". I have no lights apart from the HDRi and adding lights don't change anything. Can someone explain to me what is going on and how to remove it.
Here you can find my project.

So this has to do with the way that EEVEE is faking refractions. since it's using screen space to determine what to refract it can't see behind the character in the water. In order to make this more subtle as well as resolve the hdri becoming visible at the bottom edge of the screen here are some settings to tweak: most importantly in your water material go to settings > refraction depth: change from 0.0m to something like 0.01m to 0.05m. in the render tab > Screen Space Reflections > Edge fading set to 0 (this will get rid of the fading at the edge of the screen, play with Clamp try a low value of like .1 to .5, play with Thickness. Hopefully that helps!


text:
How to remove instances from some parts of a curve? (Geo Nodes)
I'm trying to create a prodecural rollercoaster. I managed to include the pillars, but I want that, in some parts, the pillars don't show up, like in a loop:

How can I do this?
A side problem that I have is that my pillar index are based in the spline parameter, but would be better if were based in the "planar lenght" off my rollercoaster, so that the inclined sections do not have more pillars than the straight sections. Is it possible?
My nodes for the pillar:

I would solve it like this:

First I create an offset of the curve to get a direction vector from the original positions and the new positions.

Then I check if the angle of this direction vector compared to the vector $0, 0, -1$ is in the range of $\frac{\pi}2$.
If it does, then it is obviously a loop. In addition, I check to see if the positions of the curve points are above a certain value to the ground. This allows me not only to detect loops, but also to avoid placing pylons where the track rests on the bottom.

Next, I separate the curve segments and place their points on the ground, because this allows me to achieve a regular spacing of the pylons.

The line created in this way is then converted back into a curve, and divided into segments of a certain length. With this I have once determined the positions of the pylons.

Next, I create the pylons, as well as the track.

Lastly, I instantiate the pylons and create a raycast from the points up to the track to capture the distance/scaling of the pylons.

Yours looks so much more grown-up.. with all that official-document, engineering-department white!  :) . Fewer folks would die on yours. But they would only get 1/4 of the way up the loop before rolling back...

@RobinBetts Ah, I didn't mention: the slight curvature of the track comes from the fact that it is a maglev with electrodynamic drive (EDS). The passengers are stored in capsules, which are shot with zero resistance inside (!) the track until death occurs  ...so no problem to keep up with the mortality rate that occurs on your track ;-)

Ahhh, I see! And there I was, thinking you'd just been too lazy to make a track profile.

Thank you, I learned a lot!
I downloaded your blender file and tried to change the profile curve of the rollercoaster to the format that I want, that is basic tree circles. I did it, but some pylons are blowing up.
I don't understand a lot about raycast, and I think that is the problem, hehe
My nodes: https://gyazo.com/c07604c1ba01d317cd3a4702a1d95da1
What is happening: https://gyazo.com/3b3432819812ad9aa6d276dd24e2d930

@MateusRocha Seems to me to be a problem with the finetuning of the track. The raycast points exactly up, but for some reason it doesn't always hit your track. Can you share the blend file? https://blend-exchange.com

@quellenform

I solved it!
Basically my problem was that I was trying to create the entire "3 circle" structure as my profile curve. I change to actually three curves, each one converted to mesh.
Than I created a "false" curve that which role is just "cover" the raycast, and it worked out!
Thanks for all the help! I actually have another problem to figure out, but is about rotation, so I will ask it in another question.

@MateusRocha Perfect, glad for you that you were able to solve it! I look forward to more questions from you!

@quellenform here we go again...
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/266004/problem-in-aligning-instance-to-tangent-of-curve

This example assumes the plan view of the curve-path for the roller coaster is constructed in XY, and raised to its various heights in Z. The incoming curve has its 'Twist' set to 'Minimum'.
This approach constructs another curve from the supplied path, adapted to be a base for your pillars.

The parts of the  curve on which the track is either very steep, or inverted, are removed, so will not spawn pylons:

.. discriminating by asking how aligned the curve's Normal x Tangent is aligned to object Z. If you delete/separate points from a curve, in GN, it just dissolves them. We want to delete them. That's why the curve is  converted to a mesh, and back again. The mesh is deleted according to the curve's captured normal.

We want to sample lengths from  the curve's projection in XY..

.. we store the curve's Z for future use, and then scale it to 0 in Z. We sample lengths from the flat version. We can then instance the pylons on those samples, and use the stored Z, one way or another, to raise them to the correct height.
In this case, I've put simple extruded-by-0 grids on the sample points, and then ray-cast up from them,  'shrink-wrapping' the tops of the extrusions to the underside of the track, so I haven't used the stored Z...

You might use the stored Z. Perhaps to locate the tops of your columns, as instances, or by raising a selection-by-Z of your column-template to an offset of the stored value.

Oh, you were again a tad faster ;-) ...never mind, I'll finish my answer anyway, even if this is very similar to yours.

@quellenform.. Sorry, I hate it when that happens. The more care you take over your answer, the more likely that is. 2 angles on the same approach  can't hurt, IMO.. :) (I'd be interested, for one!)

(In the mean time, I'm just trying to calculate how many people would die, if my rc was ever built)

Thanks for your help! I learned a lot with your comment. I still got a problem. I will write a comment in the another answer


text:
Create line from origin to vertex of mesh in geometry nodes
I want to create a line with the origin as starting point and the vertex of a circle line as final point

How can I do in geometry nodes? I tried to use the transfer attribute to capture each vertex but I didn't work.
That is my simple node for the circle:

This uses a transfer attribute node to get the position vector at a specific index.  It will also work if you use a mesh circle instead of the curve and you don't need the curve to mesh node.
I've made the circle radius and index both input parameters.  You do need some way to specify which vertex, after all.


text:
How can I combine three spheres properly?
I'm trying to combine three spheres in a way that I can be able to modify the crease, like making the crease sharper or more round. I've tried using boolean but it doesn't come out quite right when I use subdivision modifier or when I use smooth shade.

You might consider using metaballs for this.
You'll get a clean-ish quad based topology but may have limited control over bevel radius for the unions.

Go to Add > Metaball > Ball. In the Properties Window > Object Data tab, increase the detail by lowering the Resolution Viewport to a lower value like $0.05$, adjust Resolution Render accordingly.
Enter Edit Mode and from the Properties Toolshelf, under Item > Transform increase the Stiffness value to $10$ or above. Values higher than $10$ can apparently only be achieved by scaling in the viewport with S, typing in higher numbers doesn't seem to work.
Exit Edit Mode and duplicate the spheres using ⇧ Shift +  D and place them at will.
Meta objects will naturally ensure a rounded bevel over the joints, and will also update live as you move them around. Topology will not naturally follow object shape though, like manual modelling would.

By "Metal" do you mean shading?

@MarkusvonBroady meta* :p

@MarkusvonBroady I meant internet slang for brutal and edgy like the music genre. :D Just kidding, silly typo, Thanks for the correction, Allen

To get a clean Boolean, topology must line up exactly.
If you're doing that with UV spheres, figuring out how many rings, segments, tweaking scale and distance to get topology to match, can be a real pain. Geometry Nodes begins to bring parametric modelling to Blender, so it might be worth hacking together a tool like this..

.. which makes it much easier to adjust everything, while working under  further Bevel and Subdivision Modifiers. If you set the Bevel 'Inner Miter' to 'Arc', you can get control over the central intersection by adjusting its spread.

The tool could be generalized.. supposing you were doing molecular modelling, or something, you could set the instancing framework as a parameter.. or the modifier could be kept in the bottom drawer and re-hacked for other one-off jobs.

That's an impressive approach I would not have thought of.  The result looks really nice.  Complicated to set up, yes, but really clean topology with a very low polygon count!

Thanks, @Ben !   I've often built temporary jigs for accuracy, as snapping targets, etc., for geometric modelling, but now you can often build a re-usable modifier in about the same time. :)

I was thinking about geonodes, but didn't occur to me to make the axes parallel - seems obvious once you see the answer. Also, is boolean even needed? Isn't it topologically a cylinder with adjusted vertex positions?

@MarkusvonBroady, that's an interesting thought.. you mean, just deform some other sphere-equivalent? You could get rid of the poles.

@MarkusvonBroady  Best I can do, so far..  preparation of geometry, followed by normalization about  3 points.

@RobinBetts looks pretty sweet! I was thinking about reproducing exactly the topology in your answer, but starting with a cylinder - you would need to reason about finding the poles on the top/bottom of the cylinder, and go from there with what vertices to merge... But I think it's definitely doable... I don't think I'll find time for it myself, though, Quellenform attacks me about improving the sorting algorithm...

@MarkusvonBroady  This one does start with a cylinder ... agreed... the problem is rather niche :)

@RobinBetts Oh yeah, I meant the answer as opposed to the comment.

You could try with an UV sphere or with a cube that you subdivide:

Then boolean and only keep 1/4th of the result, rework the topology a bit:

Give it a Mirror and a Subdivision Surface:

If you want the seam to be sharper you'll just need to add edge loops:


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Why is there some kind of warped paper in my Blender rendering?

So I was working on my blender project when I realized wraped paper in my render. How I supposed to get rid of it? (It only appear in render and viewport shading)

Hello and welcome. Rather than take photos of your monitor post actual screenshots instead, see How to take a screenshot. Photos are harder to read, because we have to guess if we are looking at a external interference like reflections or smudges or Moiré patterns, hardware issues such as a malfunctioning display or connection, a software level bug or driver malfunction, or an or actual artifact or issue with the model itself.

hello please share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/

@moonboots I wonder why you prefer PasteAll over blend exchange... Though to be honest blend exchange never worked for me, however small the file be (except of one unique occasion)

@Yousuf Chaudhry blend exchange works, maybe you miss one of the steps? I prefer to cite pasteall because i've been said once that we must not load too much on blend exchange

@moonboots I guess that's exactly the problem at my end... Blend exchange just doesn't load, I tried leaving a 4MB file on upload for an hour and no luck. The bar just remained blank.

@Yousuf Chaudhry in blend exchange, you need to copy paste the URL of the page where the question has been asked. There's a size limit but I guess it's not your problem here

@moonboots the link needed to be copy-pasted to upload it to the question... However, the files just refused to upload to blend-exchange itself. I guess maybe I just do it at the wrong time.

It's not any kind of warped paper. Looks like you have some real displacement going on on your materials, decrease the scale value on the displacement node in your material and this over displacement issue will be fixed. If that's not the case, kindly make sure to share your blender file so we can have a deeper look, though I'm pretty sure that this is a displacement problem.


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How to move an edge in edit mode without moving the meshes it connects to? Or apply a fillet?

Hi all! I want to fill in this corner with a curved fillet, but it is not as simple as clicking a fillet option on an edge in CAD. So my approach is to connect the two vertices in the image with a curved path, and use the fill faces to fill in the area. However, I can only connect the two vertices with a straight edge apparently, and to turn it into a curve I have to subdiv it into make other segments and manually move them. That's fine, but the problem is that every edge movement will move the overall meshes it connects to, but I want the meshes to stay fixed and only shape the curve. Is there a way to do so?
Furthermore, is there a way to copy the whole curved path segment post-modifying and paste it at the exact location below? Or even mirror it?
Thank you so much for your time and help!

Found the solution! You can edit the vertices in vert mode; and in terms of duplication just create the face and duplicate the face directly for convenience.


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Render looks much darker then in render preview
This is how it looks in render preview:

And this is how the renderd image looks

I have found this this but it does not solve my problem.
Here is my project.

You need to deactivate the render visibility of the object called ToS beach_mesh sky:


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Rigging skirt with hook modifier
I rigged a skirt to a model using automatic wights and it works quite well, but when the character is sitting the skirt doesn't "fall" on the the legs.

I tried fixing it by using a hook modifier. In the resting position it works and I can control the skirt using the circle that I hooked it to.

Now I wanted to combine the two solutions by parenting the circle to the armature. But as you can see this doesn't work

I also tried to use a bone instead of an object for the target of the hook. But this had the same effect.

Form experimenting it looks like the hook modifier uses the translation and rotation relative to translation and rotation when it was created. When I told the hook modifier to use the bone as target, while the character was sitting, it worked, but then it broke in the resting position.
So, my question is how can I tell the hook that it should use the translation and rotation relative to a bone?

This is not the scenario hook modifier was intended for.
You can try this setup, instead:

skirt is child of hip, and has a copy rot bone constraint targeting thigh.l influence 1.0, followed by a copy rot bone constraint targeting thigh.r with influence 0.5

DEF_skirt is child of skirt

Set skirt bone not deforming, move it to a hidden layer and assign some weight to DEF_skirt, expecially the center zone of the skirt.
Animate the DEF_skirt bone to control the borders.


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cloth modifier for not conected mesh
I have this dress

As you cans see the white part is not direcly connected to the mesh of the skirt.

If I add a cloth modifier then the white part just falls down.

How can I connect the white part to the skirt such that it followes the movement of the skirt. I have tried to make it part of the pin group of the cloth modifier but then it has a constant diameter.

Hello, is there a reason why it is not part of the blue dress object?

The white stuff is part of the blue dress object. It is all one object, the mesh is just not connected. I don't make this model. I imported it in to blender.

You could bridge between the 2 meshes and delete the faces only:

Don't forget to enable the Self Collisions option. Result once animated:

Another trick would be to give the cloth simulation to a cage object that has roughly the shape of your dress, give your dress object a Mesh Deform modifier with the cage as target, parent the dess to the cage:

When you animate the cage, the dress follows:


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Eevee one light creats multiple shadows
I have one light source and it creats 4 shadows in Eevee. The light is in the back of the model so, where are the others coming from? And there is one that is only the shadow of the hair and not the rest of the body and dress, why?

Hello please share your file

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10bvaUBwSa48Ei6XiOesCCupR6p8CtqT9?usp=sharing This ist most likey without textures since they are from differeten places on my PC and I could not add them in one folder

Eevee doesn't have the accuracy of Cycles regardings lights, here the problem probably has to do with the light Angle and the render Sampling values, decrease the Angle and increase the Sampling and the shadow should be correct.


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How to Get All Possible Values of an EnumProperty in Blender Python
I'm developing a script where I need to retrieve the available values of some EnumProperties in Blender. I found a similar question already answered here. However, for some reason, this approach does not work with the property bpy.context.scene.render.engine.
Here is the code I am using, based on the provided answer by @ideasman42:
import bpy

def enum_members_from_type(rna_type, prop_str):
    prop = rna_type.bl_rna.properties[prop_str]
    return [e.identifier for e in prop.enum_items]

def enum_members_from_instance(rna_item, prop_str):
    return enum_members_from_type(type(rna_item), prop_str)

# Test the functions above:
enum = enum_members_from_instance(bpy.context.scene.render, "engine")
print(enum)

The problem is that it returns only this value:
['BLENDER_EEVEE']

I am expecting to get all possible render engine values like CYCLES, BLENDER_EEVEE, etc. Could anyone help me understand why this is happening and how I can retrieve all possible values for bpy.context.scene.render.engine?
Thank you!
Additional Information:

Blender Version: 4.1.0 (also tried 3.5)
OS: Windows 11

This can help: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/284383/how-to-get-list-of-exist-areas-ui-type

The script you provided does not work for builtin enums unfortunately. You can use either of the suggested answers. I don't know of any other way apart from hardcoding it


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Get operator pop-up current position
Is there any way to get the current position (x, y) of some active operator pop-up?

I want to get the correct position even if for some reason I drag this pop-up from it invoke position (Meaning that I can't get the position through original mouse x, y position when this pop-up was invoked)


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Add vertices to Subdivided Cube

How can I add vertices to the edges of this volume? I subdivided a cube, but I only get vertices on the center of the surface.


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Glowing Eyes On Model Texture for export into ohter Programms
i find some cool Tutorial to how i can make cool glowing eyes on my little Model but they all for Rendering. Is is possible to have Glowing eyes on my Model Texture standalone ? So that i can import it into unity or unreal ? Or is it needed to make the glowing eyes in the engine itself ?
Hopefully i dont miss any other Post about this :)

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531

I make my models in blender then and I color my objects at UV editing. After that I export my blender stuff to Unity as fbx files. I simply just export them to Unity and I create a new material. After creating my material I place my pallets to Albedo slot (Which you can see in the first image). Now you can drag and drop your materials to your objects material slot (which you can see in the second image).


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Is it possible that "bloom" affects grease-pencil object in 2.8 with EEVEE engine?
So I am trying to do a animation where a TV emits light (bloom) and affects objects around it.

I already activated bloom and set that plane shader to "Emission" and it works with 3d Objects, as you can see in the right arm or even the mountains closer to the TV, where light stand out. But as you can see in the image the mountains behind the TV, that are grease pencil object, doesn't recognize the bloom.
All this I am doing it with EEVEE engine
Any ideas? Thank you people.


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Creating custom arc shapes (multiple bumps)
I'm a beginner at 3D modelling and currently stuck on modelling an arc for a furniture piece i'm working on. As per the image below, I thought this would be a relatively easy piece to model but of the methods i've try, none of them seem to be working!

The closest I've gotten is first creating a rectangle, giving it some loop cuts and performing the warp function. But when I try to create the additional bumps, I'm assuming the lack of vertexes made it impossible to smooth out those sections. Does anyone know what a possible way of creating an arc like the one I attached may be? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi, start with a cylinder, delete half of it end extrude sides, then you have a perfect arct. then you can extrude the bump where you want.

Use NURBS Curve to model the lower part

Still in Edit Mode add another NURBS curve and model the upper part or the 180° arc
Convert both to mesh, close at the bottom with edges and fill
Extrude these bottom edges
Y-Extrude the whole model

Thanks for this! Tried it out and it works perfectly! A question about UV unwrapping afterwards.. would creating the arc through this method create problems when I add a texture? I know when i tried to add a subdivide modified, Blende was lagging a lot.. not sure if that will affect UV unwrapping in the future!

Subdivide modifier mau cause problems if you filled with an n-gon. Try grid fill or/and retopologize. Use Remesh modifier.


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Mesh To Volume - Applying Voronoi geonode to custom shape
I've been looking at several tutorials showing how a voronoi texture geonode can be applied to a Volume Cube to create something like this:

What I'm looking to do is to apply the same Voronoi texture flow on a "Mesh To Volume." Now little did i know, the "Density" node between "Volume Cube" and "Mesh To Volume" have completely different behaviours. I've been looking at approaches like "Points to Volume" to find each individal voxel but no luck. Does anyone know if it is even possible to connect a "Voronoi Texture" geonode on to a custom shape to create the effect shown in the image attached?
Thank you so much in advance!

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/299149/density-field-for-volumes-in-geometry-nodes  This is a way to work around the issue and may be what you are looking for.  I still think there may be other ways that I want to try, but it isn't as intuitive as I hoped


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What are some approaches to making this organic shape?
I've been taking a stab and modelling organic shapes and came across this one image I am looking to recreate. I'm able to model the bottom piece from a cylinder and extruding it. Went about this process as if I was making a frog's feet.
Now the part that I am stuck on is the top part. I've tried starting from a square and using subsurf mods to create a sphere that I then manipulated into one of the bean-looking shapes. The results haven't been the best so I wanted to reach out to the community and see what are some other ways I can potentially go about creating the top shape. I've thought about sculpting the entire piece but feel I feel there must be a simpler method that I just haven't thought about.
Thank you!

You could begin with metaballs then sculpt, but if you want a clean topology you'll need to retopologize afterwards

Could try some spheres with lattice modifiers on them, once happy with the basic shape, join them together then sculpt the joints smooth


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How to texture a downloaded model made of stretched triangles?
I'm a beginner in blender. Trying to texture a 3d furniture model which was downloaded from the manufacturer site. Geometry is made of stretched triangles. This causes problems of stretched texture which is visible on render.
I unwrapped the model with "smart uv project" but the geometry is still stretched
Is there any solution to texture it properly or I need to remodel it to make it quads?
What if I need to use dozens of real furniture models like this?
Should I model everything from scratch in blender?
some pictures to explain:enter image description here

Hello :). Triangulated UV map shouldn't be a problem. I'd check the model's normals and double vertices (typical problems on imported geometry).

Hi, thank you for the reply. Model's normal are ok - all highlighted blue on a face orientation preview. I've also cleared geometry doing: Mesh edit > selecting all> clean up > merge by disatnce which resulted in cleaning over 7k vertices. But there is still problem on my texture

Thank you ;) I'm not sure if it is ok if I put download link on wetransfer: https://we.tl/t-JgWgkM54AU

It looks like a CAD model, and they tend to be messy like this :).

I know that 3ds max(I'm not an expert either) is capable of covering such geometry with texture without visible seems. I wasn't sure if I'm doing something wrong

As I'm learning for the archviz I know there are dozens of furniture models with simmilar geometry. Is that mean you recomend remodelling all models in purpose to render it properly in blender?

Thank you very much ;). It clears geometry in render indeed ;) Do you think merging faces (like selecting two or more and pushing "F") or disolving edges are right thinking in therms of cleaning mesh?

Thank you very much! You've made my day ;) I've been struggling this for several days ;p

This is caused by N-gons and double vertices.
If you only need simple shading, go Object > Shade flat and disable Autosmooth.

You can also use Mesh > Clean up > Limited dissolve to merge flat faces.
Before any larger changes, the mesh should be properly repaired.


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RTX 2070 Super not recognized by Blender 2.82a (Debian Linux)
So I'm working out the kinks of a brand new Linux build. Very much a noob, but have been researching and writing notes on Debian/Ubuntu for several months.
I've been carefully going through each software that I know I want to optimize and have been trouble-shooting everything to the best of my novice ability.

My build runs the latest 20.04 release of Pop!_OS, which is built upon Ubuntu 20.04
AMD Ryzen 7 3800x 32GB DDR4 3600mhz Ram
NVIDIA RTX 2070super (Gigabyte brand)
MSI Gaming Edge WIFI mobo

My problem is that Blender doesn't seem to recognize my GPU, even though all forum users I've come across, including on here, say that anything with a Compute value at or higher than 3.0 will be supported, and state no other possibility for an incompatibility. Yet the preferences window doesn't recognize any CUDA cores, and says it will default to the CPU.

"No compatible GPUs found for path tracing. Cycles will render on the CPU"

As I said, I'm running the latest release of Pop!_OS, my NVIDIA driver is the latest 440 driver release, and Blender is up to date for my package manager.
Could this be a glitch with Blender 2.82a? A glitch between Blender and Linux and my brand of GPU? Are the super variants of RTX cards not treated the same inside Blender as the main-line cards?
These are my only guesses, but I don't know if there's anything I can try.

Edit:
Downloading 2.83.1 directly from the Blender website (not Pop!_Shop) fixed it for me.

Not an answer, but I have a similar problem.  My 2070 Super is not recognized for CUDA rendering in Blender 2.83.  I downloaded 2.82a and it works fine.  This is odd.
I use Pop!_OS 20.04 as well.


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How to animate a low poly character with a cape?
I modeled a low poly Batman with a cape, what I'd like to do now is to make a very basic rig and make it move.
My only problem is the cape: I'd like to have the cape move and not be completely rigid as it is now.
Is there any way I could do this?
I did try to use the cloth simulation, but I always get very strange results, probably because of my mesh.
Here you can find my blend file.

From you file, we can not deduce anything: there is no animation at all. So what is your concrete issue with the cape?

I do not know much about cloth sims, but I do know that BlenderGuru has a video on it and what all the settings do. May want to look at that. Otherwise, I suggest subdividing your mesh. Maybe it acts weird because it doesn't have enough vertices to move it nicely?

Here's what I usually do now for capes:

Create a simple cape using a plane with 16 vertices (4x4).
Parent the cape to an Armature (with Empty Groups).
Manually parent each vertex to each Bone in Weight Paint Mode.
Then add a Subdivision Surface Modifier AFTER the Armature Modifier in the stack for smooth deformation.
Make sure the cape has Smooth shading.

Bonus - Realistic wind animation:

Animate your bones into a "cape down", "cape up", and then "cape down" pose.
Offset each column of bones on the timeline. What I mean is, each column of bones consists of each group of four bones that run down the length of the cape. By offsetting, I mean move each column of four bones maybe a couple frames from each other in the Dope Sheet (staggering the animation helps simulate realistic wind movement).
Add some Cycles Modifiers in the "Graph Editor" so it will loop.

Double Bonus: Use NLA Strips to store (and mix) different cape effects that you've preanimated.

Hope this helps any passersby! :) Peace and God bless!


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Facial Motion Capture Help
I'm trying to apply facial tracking markers to a 3D model and I've run into a bit of a snag.. While setting the constraint depths of the trackers to a face mesh, the trackers stay locked in below the model. I notice that the Location and Rotation settings in the Transform window are now yellow, but I'm not sure if that has anything to do with why they're locked. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi. Please make the title of the question specific to what you are asking and not just the general topic. Thanks.

Hey @RayMairlot, I ended up finding a solution. I was having trouble constraining the empties to the 3D model because I some how animated them which prevented me from being able to change their position.

If you have a solution you should post it below in the answer box below. And, as I said, you should [edit] your question title so it is specific to what you are asking.


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which modifiers to apply
General questions
How do you remember which modifier to apply or not ?
A lot of time in tutorial videos, people say “ don’t apply it” but sometimes it doesn’t work if you don’t apply it right?
What’s the purpose of leaving apply?

By Applying modifier you loose non-destructive way of modelling ... Can you refer some  situation or tutorial asking you to apply modifier? The only reason that comes to my mind at the moment is a case you need to adjust some vertices manually or you need to access some specific vertices via vertex group or so.

Each case is different, don't apply if you don't need to, apply if you need, but sometimes it's not a problem if you've applied but didn't really need to.
If you decide to apply, make sure that you keep a copy of your object somewhere with the modifiers non-applied (non-destructive version as Vklidu says). In case of problem you'll be able to come back to this version and easily change it. If you've forgotten to keep a non-destructive version, it may be tedious to rebuild the same object. But for example you can easily re-mirror an object, you just need to cut its half.
Sometimes during the modeling you'll need to apply a modifier because it's not always possible to make a non-destructive object from start to end with a huge stack of modifiers. Also sometimes it's more complicated to do something with modifiers than manually, don't always try to do everything with modifiers, but it's another problem...
The Subdivision Surface modifier is often not applied, because it makes your objects lighter and easier to edit. Sometimes you'll need to apply it though, for example to export to a game engine, or to 3D print.
Most of the time you won't apply the Ocean modifier, obviously, otherwise it will stop moving.
Etc... Actually you'll easily guess which one needs to be applied or not applied. At the beginning, in case of doubt, always make a copy of your object to keep a non-destructive version.


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Blender doesn't export character animations
I'm just learning Blender and I've made some animations for a character, but when I export it to FBX and put it into Unity, I only get the character model without animations..
Here are some pictures

See if this posting helps.


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Manually created vertex group affects area that should not be affected
I manually grouped all vertexes to bones and all of them act properly except for the "shin-L" one

Exact same bone on other side acts properly:

Weight paint mode did't give me any more information on problem -

I have no idea what is reason of the problem, so any help is appreciated
Link to model - model, all credits to Hakita, i downloaded this model from here
I'm just learning how to rig models, so i likely missed something.

Instead, try to Parent >> Armature with Automatic Weights

The offending vertex is assigned to both hip and foot bones.  Since the foot bone is a child of the shin bone, it deforms with rotation of shin as well as rotation of foot.

Your model has over 3000 duplicate vertices on it which could be what's causing your problem. In Edit mode select All then hit M > Merge by Distance and see if that cures your problem.

still have exact same problem, however thanks for the tip on how to clean the model, now i uploaded model without duplicate vertices.

authors: ПРОГрамЕРисТиКУеТ


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exporting vertex colors to gltf
I am trying to export animated geometry from Blender to Bevy with vertex colors via gltf.
In a test scene, i can create a sphere and paint the vertex colors, export as gltf with attributes enabled and it includes an attribute called COLOR_O:
"meshes":[
        {
            "name":"Icosphere",
            "primitives":[
                {
                    "attributes":{
                        "POSITION":0,
                        "NORMAL":1,
                        "TEXCOORD_0":2,
                        "COLOR_0":3
                    },
                    "indices":4
                }
            ]
        }
    ],

I am then able to read the data in the game engine.
Now I want to do this for an animated mesh, so I repeat the same process, but the attribute is not present in the gltf:
"meshes":[
        {
            "name":"RoadKillOut__0",
            "primitives":[
                {
                    "attributes":{
                        "_CUSTOM":0,
                        "_INDEX":1,
                        "POSITION":2,
                        "NORMAL":3,
                        "TEXCOORD_0":4,
                        "JOINTS_0":5,
                        "WEIGHTS_0":6
                    },
                    "indices":7,
                    "material":0
                }
            ]
        }
    ],

In both cases the color attribute is visible in Blender under Color Attribute / Attribute of type FaceCorner -> Byte Color
Or in the spreadsheet in Mesh / Face Corner / Attribute
But it doesn't get exported in the animated scene.
I tried deleting that attribute on the test sphere scene, and that caused the export to lack the attribute, so it's definitely this attribute that I'm looking for.
The animated scene is a skinned mesh on an armature, under a hierarchy, if that is relevant:

The GLTF exporter addon is developed by KhronosGroup on Github not by the Blender Foundation and questions about it should be asked here.

@JohnEason That's the Khronos issue tracker, not for questions/answers.  Asking questions in any Q&A forum is fine, and some of the developers of the addon even keep an eye on the gltf tag here on Blender StackEchange.

@emackey Fair enough. It sounds as if the problem wasn't anything to do with the exporter anyway in this case.

Turns out I had to select the mesh named "RoadKillOut_O" (not my name) and unlink it from "Scene_-_Root"
I am a Blender novice and I don't really know what the implications of this are, but the animations still work and now it exports as desired.


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marking verts with custom attribute
Is it possible to select a bunch of edges and assign a custom attribute to the verts that those edges include, and then export that data in a GLTF?
I am aware that geometry nodes supports custom attributes but I can't find a way to assign based on a visual selection or to encode that as a custom attribute in GLTF.
The reason is that I want to parse the data in Bevy (game engine) to selectively render edges in a wireframe style. Meaning I select the edges I want to be visible in Blender, and construct line primitives from only the verts that have the custom attribute on the Bevy side.

Regarding setting custom Attributes for visually selected vertices/edges/faces in the 3D-viewport; That seems to be possible. In the Object Data Properties panel, in the Attributes Tab, you can add your own attributes. Be sure to have an attribute actively selected in the list to which you want to write data. Then, in Edit mode, select the vertices you want to set the attribute for, and use the F3 menu to search for Mesh > Set Attribute. You can then set a value for the selected geometry and the selected attribute type from the list.
However, glTF2.0 only seems to support attributes for vertices, sadly none for edges or faces. The Blender glTF-exporter furthermore only exports attributes which names start with an underscore (so: _attribute), and when you explicitly activate attribute exporting in the exporting menu under Data > Mesh > Attributes.
So, exporting edge data doesn't seem to be possible with the default glTF exporter.

thanks this is helpful. i can work with vertex attributes for sure.


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Baking High Poly to Low Poly Problem
I am trying to bake my high poly model on to a low poly mesh, but I just can't get it to work. I have looked up many tutorials and have tried many different methods, but all I get is this purple texture, not sure why.

Any help would be appreciated and here is a link to the file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EUdzmTz7eZjoVCong4saU6ImBiBBCvmB/view?usp=sharing

The file link doesn't work. It's private. You need to set the permissions to 'public' for the file.

Have you tried to do it without an addon?  Is it possible this is a problem with the addon, where one of us should edit the question to reflect that?

Alright, turns out I messed up my UV unwrap and that was causing the issue, thanks for commenting everybody.


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use brick texture node as an overlay to simulate tiling
Premise: I'm totally new to renders in Blender. I'm trying to use it in my daily workflow, please be gentle
I need to use and change materials in my models quickly. So I thought "brick texture" node would be the best way to simulate tiling on different materials, overlaying the mortar on a base texture. If I need to change material I could change only the "base texture".
I found I'm not able to overlay the mortar to a sandard texture. I've looked everywhere for a tutorial or similar, but found none.
This is the node structure I expected to work, but ...

Hello, Ssimple, and welcome. What kind of tiling? Square? Irregular?  Offset?  Please illustrate with a representative sample of the possibilities.

My first thought would be to use Multiply instead of Add for your mix color node.

If I understand the question correctly, you want the mortar to be overlaying the Image Texture - without the varying colors of the bricks, just the mortar?
First of all, I see you've set the brick colors to white with an alpha value of 0 to make them transparent. This doesn't do anything, the Mix RGB node (or Mix Color in current Blender versions) will only use the RGB information and ignore the alpha.
So to overlay the mortar over an image, use the Fac output of the Brick Texture node and plug it into the Fac input of the Mix RGB. The Fac value is 0 or black where the bricks are and 1 or white where the mortar is. Any Color1, Color2 and Mortar color settings for the bricks are irrelevant.
Now you can plug the Image Texture into the Color1 input of the Mix RGB node (or input A on a Mix Color node) and choose any color you want for the mortar in the second input. Even a different texture if you want.
The Mix RGB node should be set to Mix, this way the brick areas will only show the texture and the mortar areas will show the second color (I used red to make it more obvious, you can choose any color).

This is to completely replace the image where the mortar is. Of course other mix modes can be used, too. For example to colorize the image with the mortar color by darkening it you can use Multiply. Colorizing and brightening it with the mortar you can do by using Add. To colorize the image in varying shades in the bricks you can change by taking the Color output of the Brick Texture instead of Fac (but in this case you might want to switch the mortar color to white instead of black). Or you can check out all other modes to see what they are doing.
Examples:


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How to deform an object by collision with another object in a realistic way?
I'm using Blender for the first time to create a deformation in a mask model based on how it would realistically deform around a face model, for the purpose of designing around the deformed mask. What is the best way to do this? The shrink wrap modifier seems like the closest thing to what I'm looking for, but I still have not been able to make it work in the way I'd like.

Hello, maybe show some screenshots of your current objects?

What is the way you would like it to work?

Hi, Dot, and welcome. The devil really is in the detail, here. A 'mask model' could be quite a wide variety of things. Could you please illustrate, so respondents can pick out a suitable method?


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Creating a Curved and Straight Platform
A bit of a blender noob here. I'm trying to make a straight platform that curves around a cylindrical structure.
I've added photos for reference, so hopefully what I'm trying to do makes sense!
Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Currently using Blender 3.4.1

If you select an edge and Ctrl E > Offset Edges, you can create an extrude or an offset edge, I'm not sure it answers though

I don't know whether you need your model to be manifold, with a continuous surface enclosing a single volume, like the following example, but the method could be adapted.
Rather than attempting to stretch the the inner shelf to the enclosing profiles, one way or another, you can construct the shelf from the profiles. This variation also assumes the topology has been thought ahead:

CtrlR loops cut in the receiving surfaces. They can be GG snapped to the same height. (In another variation, these could be ShiftD duplicated out, to make separate elements, and /or converted to curves, resampled for matching vertex-counts).
The loops are CtrlB bevelled to a depth
..and the desired portions selected.

For a sub-div manifold, the selection can be
CtrlI inverted, and the remainder I
inset, to isolate the shelf from the surrounding curvature
Once isolated, (if necessary,) the original selection can be connected with CtrlE > Bridge Edge Loops
.. and further loops cut in, for a more even distribution of faces.

This variation will subdivide well, if that's the way you're going. But the main point is, one way or another, to steal the curves from the existing geometry.


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Strange Problem: Mirror Modifier Not Working
Recently had an issue with the mirror modifier. I've searched around and tried a few things but nothing seems to be fixing my problem. A few days prior everything was working fine.
Tried resetting default settings and even reinstalling but the problem still remains.
Also tried all the suggestions in this video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ioeQAhxkb8

So something as simple as trying to mirror this half roundcube  the mirror doesn't apply automatically. I usually click the modifier and it should apply instantly and then I would add the clipping.
What could be the problem?
Any suggestions is much appreciated.

Your mesh's vertices are placed in the negative Y direction. To mirror them to the positive Y direction, you have to set the Mirror modifier's Axis to Y, not X.

Thank you so much, didn't know it was effected that way. Is there a way to have it autodetect the mirror axis when pulled on certain Axis?

@lefthanded modifiers operate in Object Space. If you want to see what that orientation is, go to the Object tab > Viewport Display panel, and check 'Axis' . (The XYZ axes are always displayed at unit length, as scaled by any object-level transforms, so may be hidden inside the mesh)

@RobinBetts Good point. Of course the mirror modifier in the question would have worked with X mirroring, if the object was rotated 90° on the Z axis without having the rotation applied. I was assuming the most simple case that the object had the same orientation as the world space which made the incorrect setting very obvious.

@lefthanded You didn't know it was effected that way? But did you never wonder what the axes to choose from are for...? Anyway, no it's not autodetecting unless there exists an addon which does that (but I don't know of any), also how should that work? How should the modifier predict what you want to do? An object to mirror does not need to have a connection in the center. So you may have mesh lying solely in the -Y and -X and -Z area. Does that mean you want to mirror it on all 3 axes to the positive side? Not necessarily. And which axis/axes should the modifier choose then?


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Use animated vertex weights in shader editor
I want to recreate the effect shown in this video and picture below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUql7f7iECE.

I found this post on how to use vertex weights in the shader editor:
how can i use vertex weight value in shader nodes?
But I cannot figure out how to use the vertex group (which is animated using the VertexWeightProximity Modifier) in the shader editor, to get two materials on the mesh.
What I did so far:

Created Geonodes on my mesh, capture the vertex group and created an output.

I then used the attribute in the shader editor in combination with a colorramp. But it seems that the captured vertex group in geonodes is still just my initial vertex group, unaffected by the VertexWeightProximity Modifier.

How can I use the animated vertex group in the shader editor to get the two materials working?

File would help.  Capturing is unnecessary, and capturing as boolean/face is probably not what you want-- you want float/point, probably.  Attribute output type also matters.  Modifier order also matters (you need the vertex weight prox before the GN modifier.)  Shader usage could potentially matter as well, although it's less likely you did something wrong there.

Ok, so I don't know where I made a mistake, but I went through the workflow for the 50th time and now it works. I think capturing "float/point" could the the problem: https://we.tl/t-PKWr56rtgX


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Help with IK Rigging for Full Suspension Mountain Bike
I'm having some trouble with rigging a full suspension mtb. I would like to be able to grab the wheel with a control bone and move it up and down. Suspenion linkages are a bit complex and there are inherent constraints due to the geometry. Essentially I need a couple bones (bone 6 and bone 2) to limit the IK action I have set up to compress the suspension. It almost works...

I have the linkage from bone 5 (control) working to move the upper linkage and the suspension. I'm having trouble with bone 006 and 002. There is a hinge where 006 meets 002, but bone 006 and 003 are one solid piece, so the angle and distance from the head of bone 003 needs to be the same as the head of bone 006. I have been trying without a bone 6 there but locking the distance from the two pivots is crucial.

A simplified version is here:
Green represents the wheel or the input control, which is some curve based on the length of the rods. red circles are floating pivots. blue circles are fixed pivots.

for those of you who didn't understand (like me) how this works, here is a pretty nice explanation/video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1dUV6pYztg at 2min you see the animation

I would feel a lot more confident with a file to work on.  The short answer is, get rid of 6, then move tail of 3 and head of 5 to the old head of 6.  Yes, that changes the direction of 3, but so? It preserves the relationship of the solid piece that is hinged at two locations, the head of 3 and the head of 6.  But if you do that, there's not really any reason to have any IK at all anymore (not any chain length 1 IK, at least, which is my assumption, not specified in question.)  It's not clear what's supposed to move with what.

i agree with Nathan - a blend file would help a lot and support lazy helpers (like me) to be more attracted by the question.

As both red dots and green one are floating pivots, there isn't a unique solution for the system, so you have to choose how to determine the behaviour of the setup. If the system of two red dots, green one and bottom blue were considered a rigid system pivoting on bottom blue dot, there would be a unique solution, that can be easily implemented.


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OpenEXR Multilayer Alpha Channel Issues - Blender to After Effects
I am working on a project which required some after effects compositing. I'm having trouble with an OpenEXR Multilayer Sequence.
I'm having trouble with a few materials and their alpha channels. Unfortunately, the alpha channel exported on a particular viewlayer seems to be muddled and pixelated. Is there a reason this particular material does not work with transparency for After Effects? It seems to work in the blender compositor, but I need AE for some other worflows and masking with this project. Anyone seen anything similar? I don't have a lot of experience with EXR or compositing, so perhaps it's something I'm doing wrong in AE and this is the wrong spot for this question.
Materials -

Blender Viewport -

After Effects Compositing

Blender Compositor -

This is another scene where one of the materials which seems to have worked in my test file but not in the scene here -

AE comp

Blend File

This looks more like and after effect question. Did you change the color space inside AE? OPENEXR is in linear color space

Yep, there are a few issues with converting Blender's filmic to AE linear but that doesn't seem to be the transparency issue. I actually think it has to do with the view layer alpha channels using a holdout mask, but only with certain cycles materials. Something I realized is that the alpha channel is not denoised in the same way that RGB is denoised. I will try with higher samples and denoising the alpha channel and the compositor to see if this has a difference. Maybe the velvet+transparency is just confusing for blender.

Update - it appears using "convert premultiplied" in the blender alpha over node yields the same result as my after effects comp!! Now to get after effects to not use their version of this option...


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Bad Alpha Channel when saving an image Externally
Really struggling with figuring this one out! I have some transparent/translucent materials I'd like to render on different passes. I am using some mask holdouts to get around misbehaving booleans for a faux "fluid sim" that involves filling a complex shape (deserves another post..) From the display inside Blender, they appear fine. However, when saving as a PNG, EXR, or multilayer EXR, the alpha channel is speckled.
Funnily enough, this is the same alpha I get when checking "convert premultiplied" in the compositor when I try using the alpha over node. Same speckled appearance when I have the alpha convert set to premultiplied. Note that I dont want to use the blender compositor for my final file export.

PNG viewer on file system or in After effects - tried all the alpha modes

Same result when converting to premultiplied... interesting...

Result is OK with nothing in the node tree or with the alpha over node:

Blend - https://we.tl/t-ijQ126oytW
It just seems that blender's viewer is handling the alpha channel differently then when you try to save a file out of it. Thanks!

Noise is harder to see on the dark background - that's all.

Alpha channel is not denoised so it's noisy. You can use Denoise node to denoise only alpha and output it with File Output node. That's in Add -> Filter -> Denoise in the Compositor node editor.


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How can I stop my logo from stretching / being weird? (Blender 2.91.0)
I'm new to blender (3 days) and I've recently tried to make some cosmetic packaging for a toothpaste brand.
I've been able to create the models to a decent extent, but when it comes to applying the logos, I am getting stretching and weird behaviour. I am planning on adding other parts of the packaging later, but before that, I need to understand how to fix this problem.
I'm using a png with no background, and I've tried to UV unwrap and map the textures on. I've attached the file and a screenshot below if that's any help at all.
Thanks for your help!

The key is UVMap. How did you unwrapped your objects? How looks your UV Map? If you are not satisfied switch to UV Editing layout on top row and in edit mode reposition UVMap.

I have seen your question and your issue, and It is quite common. Luckily, the solution is simple. Go to the UV editing section, before going there, remember to select the cylinder. Then select the face which is supposed to have the logo and carefully align it. For making it much more realistic, let the logo cover on of the faces but along with that, should cover a bit of the faces left and right to it. Hope it helps, if theres an issue with my solution, comment on my answer. I would also recommend going to this website to help you get started on stack exchange.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask
and
https://blender.stackexchange.com/tour
Cheerios,
Aster17


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Realistic Barley Grains on a Potato Pc
I just started on blender i am curantly trying to create a realistic beer/brewerie themed scene. I have already made a pretty good looking beer and now i want to create a bowl with the ingredients of said beer (Barley Grains and Hops) in the background. Ive tried creating the Barley with a rigid body sim to make it look realistic but my potato pc cant handle that and blender keeps crashing. Does anyone have a good idea on how i could achieve that with a different method? Scince im realy new to blender i dont realy know many technics yet. Also, any suggestions on making hops?
Thanks a lot for any help

it will be helpfull if you mention ur specs

TBH i dont know the exact specs. I do have 8gb of RAM, an I5 Core and some cheap-ish graphics card. VRam is quite low i think. Cycles in the viewport is a nightmare i can tell you that.


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Need help with lighting the scene
I'm a beginner to Blender and as my first Non-tutorial model, i tried making a Wine Bottle & a Wine Glass.
Well, the modelling went fine but the lighting part is still troubling me.
Can someone please help me with the lighting .
Here is the reference photo of how I want it to look like(except the cap opener) :
And here is my best renders up till now :

I'm also attaching the .blend file :
Thanks in Advance.

Maybe try adding a HDRI for your lighting/reflections. Go to the World section of your shading tab and add an Environment Texture (not an Image Texture).
Blender has some HDRI's at ...2.91/datafiles/studiolights/world. You can also find plenty more for free online. One of the most popular places is HDRI Haven (https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/):

Thanks a lot... it worked.....

Those pictures are often in multiple exposures of different ligths and then assembled in photoshop to take "the best" parts.
In Blender take planar lights and map them with proper hdr textures of real softboxes, then place planar lights left and right.
You will still need to adjust areas in postprocess to remove things that are unwanted.
Here is my example with three area ligths:


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Does Anyone Have a Profile For Contour ShuttlePro v2
I have a Contour ShuttlePro that I love using with Photoshop and Davinci resolve. It does not have a built in profile for Blender and so I wondered if anyone has created on they would like to share.
Thanks
Rich


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"Make Cyclic F Modifier" is making my animation cycle go out of sync
I'm trying to make an infinite cycle of a swimming cycle but and am using an f curves cyclic modifier to make the cycle. The cycle works for the first few minutes but then slowly falls out of sync. How can I fix this?
I'm also working with a lot of bones. Is there a way to just select all of the bone layers in the f curve window and change the cycles modifier settings instead of going layer by layer...

I figured it out! Turns out not all of my bone's last keyframes were actually at the last keyframe. For example, my right foot ik's last keyframe was at 125 when it should've been at 130.


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Stretch Noise Displacement along Curve - Geometry nodes
I'm trying to stretch a noise texture along a curve. Normally, my basic normal texture displacement is as follows:

Say I want the noise to stretch along the x axis. Easy enough. Just multiply the noise mapping vector.

But say I now want to modify the curve to point not in the global x direction. How can I stretch the texture along the curve tangent, rather than global space? I realize I could add noise to the curve circle profile, but I don't want a completely constant cross section.

My vector math skills are rusty! Thanks!

Lovely. This is brilliant. You are an accidental genius. Imagine if the above were grease pencil, your attempt to make jaggy lines. I can see many uses for your node work above.

We want to map the texture as if the curve was straight along X.

The black line is the curve.
The plane is a little part of the bevelled curve and the green dot is a point of it.
The blue dot is the curve point that originated the green point.
We want X axis along the curve tangent. Y axis along its normal. Z axis along its binormal (the cross product of the tangent and the normal).
If we want to know X, Y and Z components of the green point in this coordinates system, we'll need to know:

Blue point position
X position along the curve
The normal
And the binormal

(is there a more simple way?)
So we capture these four information above before converting the curve to a mesh.

Once done, we use them to recalculate the coordinates for each point of the resulting surface.
The dot products retrieve the part of the green point position relatively to the blue point, respectively along Y (normal) and Z (binormal):

I've used a checker texture instead of the noise in order to have a better view of the results:

 (Blender V4.0)

Awesome, thanks for the vector explanations!! I Tried using cross product of normal and curve tangent to get the binormal as that felt natural, but wasn't using capture attributes. Thanks!

You can use UV coordinates for the noise, with the simplest implementation of the UV not giving you a clean seam, but an interpolation across the one face loop near the seam, which is desirable in this case:

I positioned the camera to show the UV seam, which is rather sharp because of the somewhat high resolution of the Profile Curve, and yet the GIF shows you don't really see the seam in the topology - there are other artifacts nearby because the mesh folds onto itself due to too strong displacement of too rough noise:

However what if you stretch along the Profile Curve rather than the main Curve?

Now the discontinuity becomes clear. However, we have 4 dimensions available in our noise, and are only using two, so we can fix that by adding a dimension:

Don't look for a seam, there is none:

Homework
What if the main curve is cyclic? Can you use a 4D noise to get rid of the seam?

So you mapped the entire curve surface onto a 2D plane, where (0,0) is the start of the curve profile and start of the main curve, and (1,1) is the end of the curve profile and end of the main curve.
In the second example, you used the X,Y position of the curve along with the Z component, which is the spline parameter (0-1). And then used 3D noise.
For a cyclic curve... you could instead use the W parameter instead of the input vector, as each point along the curve could map to a different phase. You could make this symmetric with some kind of float curve? I'll work on this...

@Erik for 4D do the same for the main curve as I did for the profile curve for 3D. Then you end up with one curve XY, and other curve XY, totalling 4 dimensions.


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Trace Curves from moving point with Geometry Nodes
I am trying to trace out the position of a point moving around 3d space into a curve using geometry nodes. I have a series of instanced lines rotating to create a fourier series. I now want to take the endpoint of the final line and use it's point position per frame to generate a new curve to create a trace.
I am struggling with using repeat or simulation zones becuase the rotation is controlled by scene time, and sample curve with factor set to one gives me a point cloud with a single point that just updates is position over time.
I want to take that point at time 0 and put it into a list at index 0, and then append a new point to that list on the next frame, but I'm struggling with implementing that in geometry nodes.

Thanks!

Just join point after point after point and make a curve

Wow, really was that simple. Join goes in the simulation zone, not sample. Thanks!!!!

I just think I might have joined in reverse (the point noodle is going above the geometry noodle)

I think we should close the question as a duplicate of Create Curve from Path of an Object Using Geometry Nodes but problem is, it doesn't a have a simulation zone solution as on of the answers, which is the best solution currently...


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"Image as plane" won't disappear
I added an image as plane as a background behind my grease pencil animation. Then, fiddled with it on the Shader Editor so I could change its opacity (to fade from one image to the next).
This is the background image:

The problem is that a ghost of that image is in every scene. Even when I delete the entire "image as plane" object, the ghost doesn't disappear. Here are two examples of previous scenes that are affected:

And below is a ss of my material properties tab. If there are more ss I need to add to help make sense of this, pls let me know.

Select every previous "image plane as background" and uncheck Show backface in Materials Properties tab.


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Is there a way to use a cloth modifier on top of a geo nodes animation?
I made this looping flower animation (nodes below) and want to apply a cloth modifier to it, but all while maintaining the geonodes driven animation. Is there a way to do this?

Last time I checked, cloth modifier doesn't work on generated geometry... If you mantain the same number of elements with the same topology, you could reuse them by teleporting them using pinning...

You could duplicate object, apply GN, surface deform from original, use cloth with pinning following surface deform modifier-- IF your animation doesn't change topology.  But you're not showing what you're animating, so I don't know if you're changing topology.


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How do I collaps a mesh to have more than 4 edges overall?
I want to recreate the following image, but can't find a way to get the mesh to have a pentagonal/hexagonal structure. I tried different combinations to decimate the mesh, but nothing seems to work.

You can decimate and use a dual mesh (geometry nodes) after that:

That won't guaranty all are hexagons or pentagons, but most should be.
Use the "triangulate" option from the decimate modifier.
Then use a "dual mesh" node in the geometry nodes setting.
It's not clear in the image if the shape is hollow or not, so I've added an optional part to make a wireframed grid.

@enats: instead of writing "thanks" which unfortunately isn't allowed/wanted here, please click on the checkmark left of lemon's answer. thx.


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Change material of mesh with sphere
I have a 3D-model of the human body and now want to "highlight" certain parts of it.
Is there a way to take a sphere for example and use it as a mask, to change the intersecting geometry of the body and the sphere to an emissive material?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/79851/make-an-objects-visibility-controlled-by-another-object-or-an-empty

It's probably a more limited way, but it's also possible to use Light Path node and transparent shader on the other object to mix based on transparent depth. It might get messy if you need other transparent shaders in the scene(you could then use Transmission Depth and Refraction BSDF with IOR set to 1 as well), but you could have any shape of volume.

Thank you as well, also a nice solution!

One way would be to have a sphere with an emissive material on it and disable Ray Visibility for Camera and Shadow. This way the emissive sphere would highlight the body wherever they are intersecting (but also the inside and every other object the sphere is intersecting):

Another and probably better way would be to place an empty in the scene (which shape does not really matter, I've taken a sphere in this case) and in the material of the body you reference this empty in a Texture Coordinate node. With a Vector Math node you calculate the distance from the empty's origin and with a Math node set to Less Than you control the influence radius. Below a certain distance, the Math node outputs 1, above 0 - this value I use as Emission Strength in a Principled BSDF node which is my material on the object. Of course you can use the value in all kinds of nodes as a mix factor:

Just to give you an idea what else you can do with this value, here I've used it to drive the Base Color, the Metallic value, the Roughness and the Transmission in a single Principled BSDF node:

Thanks a lot, nice solution!


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Geometry Nodes // Rotate instances separately based on rotation and location of Empty Sphere
I have a grid with instances. I then added an Empty Sphere and want to rotate all of the instances 90° which are within the range of the Empty Sphere.
I figured out to rotate all of the instances at once, but can't figure out how to rotate each instance separately at the location of the Sphere.

You can also have a smooth falloff - node setup

You can use the Geometry Proximity node.
(You will have to parent a single vert to the empty as the node works with geometry only)
Then using Compare: Less Than to get a boolean output to use as the selection for the Rotate Instances node, you can rotate the instances to 90 deg within the threshold you set in te Compare node.
Now I have used the Empty Display Size as driver to control the threshold. But you can do the same with the scale instead. That will just be a little bit of more work to do.


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Remeshing only specific faces? (for sculpting & 3D printing)

hi,
I need to reproduce the barrel on the right in order to 3D print it and paint it (with actual brushes and paints, not digitally). I got to this point following a tutorial (iron rings not showing), but now thinking ahead about the sculpting part (I would like to sculpt the wood) I realized that in order to do so the top part would need remeshing. It is my understanding that you cannot remesh selected faces, you can only remesh the whole thing. I could start again and remesh at the very beginning but then that would mess up the procedure I followed in the tutorial, changing a few things (I'm an absolute beginner; I've tried but I came across some zero-faces errors). So, is there a way to salvage what I've already done and remesh only the top part? Or would it be easier to just forgo the sculpting part and do it with an actual knife once the part is printed? (it's very small though, 1.8 cm tall)
thank you

maybe you could make the changes with the Dyntopo option on? It will allow you to sculpt small details. It will triangulate the topology but it's not a problem for 3D printing from what I understand? Or create a grid, remove the faces only, and use it as a Knife Project tool to create additional faces on the top of the barrel?

thank you for your tips

You can use the Dyntopo option to add details:

Or you can use the Knife Project tool in order to create more topology: Create a plane, subdivide it, delete only faces, put it above your barrel, select the barrel, switch to Edit mode, CtrlLeft Click on the grid and Mesh > Knife Project. It will subdivide the top of your barre, and you can now sculpt some details:

thank you very much


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"chubby rope" with no intersecting/thin faces
I need to model a rope which is as similar as possible as the reference, which is a bit different from the ropes you get right after applying the Screw modifier, since the spirals are thicker and the overall shape is closer to a cylinder; I managed to obtain a satisfying result (highlighted rope) by playing around with the Screw properties, but I'm afraid it's not something 3D-printable as it has thousands of intersecting and thin faces.
Is there another way of obtaining something similar? Or, are those errors really not that important for printing as long as I make it manifold?
thank you

Faces intersecting are not printable, you need a clean topology, you should easily be able to do it with the Screw modifier

hi, thanks for the help. I've tried but it looks like it's impossible to do it without intersecting, just by tweaking Angle, Screw and Steps View. I've followed this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arb7_hePfgQ&t=96s&ab_channel=FunwithBlender am I missing some other parameters or modifiers I should act on? thank you

Oh ok I may be wrong, I'll try to give a try

I managed to obtain something a bit similar and with a clean topology by lattice deforming a barrel-shaped cylinder, using Array and merging https://tinypic.host/images/2023/02/01/Screenshot-2023-02-01-145123.png it's not really a spiral but I don't know of any other solutions

You can create this half circle, scale it to flatten it a bit, mirror (or you could rotate 3 half circles 120° on Z if you want 3 ropes):

Give it a Screw modifier, find the good Screw value:

Keep a non-destructive copy, apply the modifiers, press M to merge by distance:

To sharpen the hollow of the fold, select the 2 edge loops and bevel:

As you can see there are no intesecting faces:

Result:

If you want to give it more details, give it a Subdivision Surface modifier, a Displace modifier with some noise, apply, make sure that there are still no intersecting faces (maybe don't give any displace when you're close to the fold).

wow, thanks a lot. that's very kind of you


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How do I convert a geometry group input node input to an integer
I am currently following a tutorial on how to make procedural buildings with the new geometry nodes and the YouTuber that I am watching has a integer input when he uses the slider but mines a float


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how to display loaded objects during session of batch load .obj file in Blender using script
I can load *.obj from one directory using python script in VSCode, using sth like:
for item in obj_list:
    path_to_file = os.path.join(path_to_obj_dir, item)
    bpy.ops.import_scene.obj(filepath = path_to_file)

but Blender updates viewport only after all objects are loaded. During the whole session, it seems all objects are loaded into cache? Is it possible to load one object then display it in the viewport ?then load 2nd object,.....
ThX

You can use bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations=1)


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Blender Terminal opens with Script?
is it possible to open Blender Console (Terminal) by running script ?
instead of Windows->Toggle System Console
Thanks

Like this?
import bpy
bpy.ops.wm.console_toggle()

There should be a python command under that button?

thanks, exactly.


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Cant cut using Boxcutter
I just bought Boxscatter + HardOps, and immediately there was a problem: I can't create a red box inside the cube. I run along the edge with the LMB clamped down, and all that happens is the "Drawing" and "Canceled" messages in the corner. At the same time, the addon itself works: if you do not select the cube, then Boxcutter perfectly creates parallelepipeds and cylinders around the scene. What am I doing wrong? Of course, Blender version is the newest. Boxcutter is 717_1 Claymore

If you believe this is a bug, you could contact the developer.

thanks to recent API changes raycasted was affected. This can be rectified by having a version of Blender 2.83.7, 2.90.1 or 2.91.0 via Buildbot.
https://youtu.be/BIlAj-y-BXk
When it comes up updating HardOps / Boxcutter
When it comes to Blender itself
As time goes on with multiple versions they receive updates even though they are of different branches.
2.83 is an LTS which recently received a .7 update.
2.90 was previously experiencing stability issues which received a hotfix of .1
2.91.0 is a future version not yet release but we support it as well since all three have the same api recent changes.
In short update blender to the latest.
While 2.90 is correct the month may not be.
Get a current 2.90.

This is not a problem related to Blender but BoxCutter. You should contact the developer instead. But probably is the version not matching your Blender version


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Combining Multiple Materials Without Image Texture Nodes
I would like to be able to combine a number of materials together into a single texture map.
I have attempted to go through the baking process, however I believe the problem is that none of the materials have a texture outside of their base color as seen below

Is there any way to bake all of these materials into a single texture without a texture map assigned to each material? Or, perhaps there is a way for the texture map to inherit the base color from the shader itself?
I would be happy to provide more context for this question if it helps.

You can try to duplicate the model, remove all the materials one of them and add a new with a texture map. Then bake with "Selected to Active".

I have tried that but there is an error where it complains that all of the materials don't have an image texture


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How to use subdivide on this shape that i cant name
I'm kinda new to blender and i'm trying to model ww2 gun m1928 thompson.
Ive modeled a handguard at front of the gun:

When i try to apply subdivide modifier, it makes this weird shape:

Here is also edit mode of the object:

Ive used boolean value to create this shape.

As R-800 says, if you want to give it a Subdivision Surface modifier, you should avoid ngons, because the Subdivision Surface will divide these ngons and create overlapping faces. If you want to use a Subdivision Surface, you can create a much lighter topology, like this one:

Choose edges you want to keep sharp then go Edge>mark crease (Shift+E) and drag up for maximum value

Sharpening the edges won't solve the problem. The problem is ngons. The Subdivision Surface modifier doesn't like them. It's always going to go nuts if you have them. You want quad-based topology if you're going to use the Subdivision Surface modifier. That said, the OP doesn't actually need a Subdivision Surface modifier in the first place because the project can be achieved entirely with hard surface modeling techniques.

Yeah sorry totally forgot that. Deleting the Ngon-faces and then Faces>fill faces (Alt+F) works for me normally + faces> tris to quads. Or you can try using knife tool (K) to make it quads

Thank you! I had to look up the ngon definition, and from that ive assumed that you meant those faces that are around that custom shape in middle, ive deleted them and made these ones:
https://imgur.com/a/EiZhvnO
Is this right aproach or can i do it better?

That's fine, but what I'm trying to say is that for the kind of model you are making (hard surface - yet another term to look up), avoiding ngons isn't all that important.


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Can the Measureit Addon measure an animated armature?
https://ephmedia.giphy.com/dbe8121d-4453-4ae0-9569-97093c12948b.gif
I am using the Measureit Addon to measure the angle of these 3 vertices. When I parent or hook one of the vertices to an empty and animate the empty, the angle no longer displays.
Measureit only seems to work with vertices, not empties or bones. I can use animALL Addon to manually keyframe a vertice (second gif), but I want an automatic setup.
https://ephmedia.giphy.com/28d1e277-ee90-4b8f-b48d-8b0197196b30.gif


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Beginner-flat topology for Balustrade
Just starting out and am trying to figure out the best topology for the attached. I can certainly mirror from the arch centre, but having difficulty with where to start. From left to right within the larger opening and 'cloverleaf'... or from the right to left with the simpler edges of the block? The triangular divots against the outer arch bevels are also complicating my attempts to reduce.
Thoughts/comments welcome, and thanks in advance for your time.

First begin with the outlines, then extrude on the Y axis, then scale the extrusion, bring some additional edge loops to bring details and sharpen the edges, etc...

Bravo! And here I am trying to move the default cube...

mmh I don't believe you  ;)

Whoa... thank you M. Good to go.


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How do I manage parenting to an armature with a large number of bones?
I'm making a low-poly model with arms that are a separate object from the actual body. That's fine with me, I'm okay with some of the clipping that occurs, but what I'm not fine with is how long it takes to redo vertex groups for bones, especially if I later decide I want to add a new bone or remove one.
The Mirror X feature means I don't have to worry about mirroring bones on both sides, but if I wanted to edit something on both arms that's bothering me, I have to work on one arm, delete the other arm, duplicate the modified arm, scale it by -1, and move it, then (worst of all) I have to rename a bunch of "L"s to "R"s or vice versa.
I've considered instead trying to split my armature into multiple armatures that are nested in each other, but this messes up poses. This is especially annoying since I was hoping this solution would allow me to make parenting things like hair far easier since I can avoid sorting through eighteen vertex groups to find the four relevant ones.
My main question is, is there a way I can parent objects to my armature and selectively choose which bones get vertex groups without having to manually sort through a long list?