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What is the equation of an F Curve?
My goal is to graph an F curve on an external program.
I've read that an F curve is a bezier curve, but when I plug in values using a start and end keyframe and their handles into a cubic bezier curve, the graph looks completely different. (Using the points: [(0, 7.83), (4.67, 7.68), (-0.2, 0.475), (4, 0.822)]) Clearly an F curve is some kind of univocal curve, whereas it bends backwards a bit in the Desmos. I get that this is because time cant move back on an animation.
But how then, do I get an equation that can create the graph of an FCurve given the data from two keyframes? Or, how can I adjust the values from the data of two keyframes, such that they match a traditional cubic bezier curve equation?
Any help is appreciated.
Here is the F curve graph in blender

Here is the failed attempt to graph it in Desmos using a cubic bezier curve equation and the points from the F curve

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/graph_editor/fcurves/introduction.html#direction-of-time

@MarkusvonBroady this helped me establish that the curve is univocal, but I'm not sure where to go from there to being able to graph it

The algorithm to interpolate a Bezier fcurve is in source/blender/blenkernel/intern/fcurve.c.
First, let's label the points:

The function BKE_fcurve_correct_bezpart first adjusts the handles so the curve will not go backwards in time. If v2 is to the right of v4, v2 is slid backwards along the v1-v2 line (ie. without changing the v1-v2 slope) until it's lined up with v4. Similarly for v3, which is slid forward until it's not to the left of v1.

For example, using your points, the handles would be adjusted to v2 = (4, 7.702), v3 = (0, 0.492). This may be all you need to do to make it work in your graphing program.

After that I think the usual formula for a cubic Bezier curve is used (wikipedia)
$$\mathbf{B}(s) = (1-s)^3\mathbf{v}_1 + 3(1-s)^2s\mathbf{v}_2  + 3(1-s)s^2\mathbf{v}_3 + s^3\mathbf{v}_4,\ \ \ \ 0 \le s \le 1$$
The value $s$ is the curve parameter. The projection onto the the horizontal axis gives time, and the projection onto the vertical axis gives the fcurve's value. So if you want to evaluate the fcurve at a given time $t$, you would first solve for the curve parameter $s_t$ that makes the time equal to $t$: $\pi_1(\mathbf{B}(s_t)) = t$. The LHS is a cubic polynomial, so you can use a cubic root finding method for this. Then the value of the fcurve at $t$ will just be $\pi_2(\mathbf{B}(s_t))$.


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Does Blender have a way to reset the interface in session?
Sometimes when I'm teaching people how to use Blender, I find that they accidentally enable snapping or change some setting by pressing the wrong key or change their transform orientation. Is there a key you can press or menu option that lets you reset the interface back to the defaults?  I don't mean doing a factory reset of preferences, I mean just changing any settings you might have changed in session to the point where Blender was when you loaded the program to work on the current scene.  If it doesn't have that, I think it really needs that feature for new and experienced users.  Maybe an add-on?

I mean, part of learning Blender is learning how to debug and avoid accidentally altering those settings. It's just an inevitability that you spend the first few days accidentally enabling snapping, or getting lost in the viewport or whatever. It happens. Eventually you learn the ropes and those issues become less frequent. You could probably write an addon to do this but what Snap settings, Transform orientation etc is considered "default" differs from user to user. Not to mention there's no way of knowing what settings a beginner might wind up accidentally changing until they do so.

If this is an extreme issue and you're teaching a large class of kids or something then I would consider breaking these individual "issues" into their own lesson plan. Like make a 30 minute lesson exclusively about Viewport navigation Ortho vs. Persp view modes etc. Next lesson dive into a "mini-game" about snapping modes etc. You might be trying to get straight to "How to model a whole scene/object" a bit too fast. IDK. I understand the concern but I think it could be viewed as a teaching opportunity, rather than applying a band-aid fix to the issue.

in the User Preferences there is the checkbox Load & Save > Blend Files > [X] Load UI. If you uncheck it, then Blender keeps the current UI layout (workspace, views, etc) when you load a blend file. To "reset" the UI settings, save the file with the messy UI, then load a blend file where the UI settings are ok. Now deactivate the Load UI checkbox and load the file with the messy UI settings again. It should be fine now.

+Blunder Thanks for providing a solution. It's a bit complex, but it works.  However, this method only resets some of the settings, it still keeps the grid snap, proportional editing, etc. turned on.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Hotkey for selecting edge loops doesn't work in XFCE window manager
I'm using Blender 3.2 with the XFCE window manager on Xubuntu Linux. For some reason, when I try to select edge loops using the default hot key of Alt+Mouse select, it doesn't do anything.  I've checked to make sure I have emulate 3-button mouse turned off in the settings and that I'm not using this combination for anything else.

The XFCE window manager has a setting under the "Window Manager Tweaks" -> Accessibility settings called "Key used to grab and move windows". This is set to "Alt" by default and that interferes with the Alt+mouse select hotkey under Blender. If you'd like to use the default edge loop select hotkey, you'll probably want to change this setting to "Super" or something else. I'd recommend Super, which is the Windows key on most keyboards
Under XFCE I normally use the Super key for most window manager type operations such as change desktop, maximize, etc. 25 years of window manager tweaks have led me to this conclusion. Since I'm answering my own question I should point out that I encountered this problem because I started using Blender under a new account where I hadn't made that change in the XFCE settings yet.

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


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how to make an object look wet in Eevee? (blender 2.8.3 at least)
I was going to answer here How do I make an object look wet? as it does not specify the rendering engine, but it was closed...
I created a UV Sphere.
Then I used sculpt to make some irregularities to let it shine.
There is 2 lights above, one to the left, other to the right.
Using Principled BSDF (w/o texture).
at Principled BSDF:
Metallic is not what I want, doesnt look wet anyway.
Changing Specular doesnt help, the shine is not sharp/thin.

Do you just want it shiny, or do you want "puddles"?

The result I got makes it look wet (no water drops tho), looks also like it is a very polished plastic.

For a very simple, fast and easy to do effect, I just had to:

In edit mesh mode I used "face/shade smooth", so no need to subdivide the mesh (wouldnt be enough anyway).
change Roughness to about 0.125, even w/o a texture.

It looks good.
Not sure tho if it could cause trouble later to try to apply other effects (not that I am trying to).
It is only visible in "Viewport shading" "render preview" mode.

If instead of principled BDSF, I use some shader with texture and normals, I had to change the Specular color to F3F3F3 hexa. I have absolutely no idea how and why it worked, I was just messing with the values until that happened! :). Can someone explain why it worked? I will try to create a .blend test case later.


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How to drive a modal operator from a class TerrainSculptWorkspaceTool(bpy.types.WorkSpaceTool):?
I've created a modal operator that I currently start by pressing a button in a panel, but want to adapt it so that I can use it from a workspace tool button instead.  I've written a test script that creates my button and can send commands to an operator - but the trouble is that the operator acts like a one-off operator and not a modal one.  Only the invoke method seems to be called.  The modal method never is even though the operator is returning RUNNING_MODAL.  How can I adapt this to create a modal operator that maintains state for as long as I'm using the tool?
import bpy
import bpy.utils.previews

class TerrainSculptWorkspaceTool(bpy.types.WorkSpaceTool):
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_context_mode = 'OBJECT'

    bl_idname = "kitfox_terrain.terrain_brush_draw"
    bl_label = "Terrain Brush Draw"
    bl_description = ("Raise or lower terrain under cursor to the current brush height.")

    bl_icon =  "ops.gpencil.draw.poly"
    bl_widget = None
    bl_keymap = (
        ("kitfox.echo_tool", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS'},
         {"properties": [("tool_mode", "DEFAULT" )]}),
        ("kitfox.echo_tool", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS', "ctrl": True},
         {"properties": [("tool_mode", "CONTROL")]}),
        ("kitfox.echo_tool", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS', "alt": True},
         {"properties": [("tool_mode", "ALT")]}),
        ("kitfox.echo_tool", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS', "shift": True},
         {"properties": [("tool_mode", "SHIFT")]}),
        ("kitfox.echo_tool", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS', "oskey": True},
         {"properties": [("tool_mode", "OSKEY")]}),
        ("kitfox.echo_tool", {"type": 'LEFTMOUSE', "value": 'PRESS', "oskey" : True , "alt": True},
         {"properties": [("tool_mode", "OS+ALT")]}),
        ("kitfox.echo_tool", {"type": 'MOUSEMOVE', "value": 'ANY' }, {"properties": []}),
    )

class EchoToolOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Echo tool"""
    bl_idname = "kitfox.echo_tool"
    bl_label = "Echo tool"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER", "UNDO"}

    is_running = False

    tool_mode : bpy.props.StringProperty(
        name="Tool Mode",
        description="Tool Mode",
    )

    # @classmethod
    # def poll( cls , context ) :
    #     return not EchoToolOperator.is_running

    def __init__(self):
        self.picking = False

    def modal(self, context, event):
        print("modal evTyp:%s evVal:%s mode:%s" % (str(event.type), str(event.value), self.tool_mode))

        if context.mode != 'OBJECT':
            EchoToolOperator.is_running = False
            return {'CANCELED'}

        return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        print("invoke evTyp:%s evVal:%s mode:%s" % (str(event.type), str(event.value), self.tool_mode))

        EchoToolOperator.is_running = True

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

You have to put this into your invoke method.
def invoke(self, context, event):

        print("Starting my Modal")
        # this line
        context.window_manager.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {"RUNNING_MODAL"}

def modal(self, context, event):
    if event.type == "MOUSEMOVE":
        print(f"{event.mouse_x}, {event.mouse_y}")
        return {"RUNNING_MODAL"}
    elif event.type in {"RIGHTMOUSE", "ESC"}:
        print("Done!")
        return {"FINISHED"}

I tried adding that but now have a new problem - the operator never exits.  I need to be able to finish or cancel the operator if the user clicks on one of the other workspace tools.

You have to add a modal method to your operator and handle the events. A modal is like a mini-program that runs repeatedly on every frame of the viewport rendering, and depending on the what you return from each event.type it will either continue or finished etc. I put an example in the answer.

I think you're missing  the point that this all needs to be driven from a WorkspaceTool.  This imposes additional constrains regular modal operators do not have.  I cannot return 'FINISHED' because I never receive any signal I can interpret as finishing the operation.  By capturing and processing mouse input, I effectively disable the ability for the user to click on other workspace tools which is how one would normally expect to stop using a tool.

You can put any condition in the modal event loop to trigger a return {"FINISHED"} outcome. It doesn't just have to be an event like keypresses. Your question was specifically oriented around "How to get a modal to work" so that's what I'm answering.


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How to create a mirrored copy of selected linked meshes?
I have a log house see the image:

all small logs are linked duplicates of the first small log (second from the bottom).
How do I create a mirrored (across ZY plane) copy of the wall (including all logs big and small), so that the new logs will be linked duplicates of their counterparts?
Ideally, the second log from the bottom still being the only origin of all small logs which are linked duplicates and the big one creating a linked duplicate?
EDIT:
Moving origins doesn't work for me, this is what I get (I do check options/transform/affect only origins):

UPDATE:
Your cylinders have all different sizes and all have not applied the scale.
So here is the working solution for you:
Add an empty in the middle and use that empty as mirror object:

old answer:
you can use the mirror modifier, if you change the pivot points of your objects before, like this:

I can't move origins with the same effect as in your image, please see update

Pls provide blend file, I show you then

https://github.com/alikim-com/blender/blob/main/home_test.blend

My blender version is 2.90.1

i updated my answer, thx for the blend file

That worked, thanks a lot!

You are welcome!


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Rigging a double hinge
So, I am trying to make one of those concealed door hinges.
I cannot make it work to save my life. I have tried several things but nothing really made it work the way it is supposed to work.
The arms are supposed to rotate on both connected cylinders and hide inside the housing, while the cylinders inside the housing are sliding further inside to make space for the arms.
I've added a few pictures and a video, I hope you understand what I'm trying to say and can help me out.

Can you add a specific reference of what it is supposed to look like?

Yes, I have added an animation and a picture I found on google. I hope it helps

For those types of mechanisms I would suggest doing it with a simple rig. The end cylinders are driven by the most open hinge where rotation controls the position of both. And the position of the joints are handled on two bones with an IK constraint.
Here I leave you the project where you can see the constraints that I used.
In this link there is a video that shows how the mechanism works: Video hinge mechanism

I want to rig the same thing but I cannot open the project or the video. Can you please reupload it again? Thank You!

@FelixLeung in this case, I think it's reasonable for you to post your problem as a question in its own right. Leonardo has not followed the guideline asking for answers to be self-contained.


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Convert between 3 variable rotation and 2 variable rotation
I think this may be more of a math question than a blender question, but I'm trying to do it with python in blender, so I'll start here.
I work with a small theatre and am trying to use blender to do some visualization work. The moving head lights that they have have only two variables that determine their rotation. Pan and Tilt. (or X and Z I guess)
How can I convert the XYZ Euler rotation into only the XZ rotation? I am an engineering student and am not necessarily afraid of matrix math if it's involved, but I'm certainly no expert.
Edit: [The goal is to be able to quicky and easily point the light in a direction using the "look at" gizmo, and then retrieving the associated X and Z coords from where it ends up pointing.]
I just don't even know where to begin.
Here are two lights pointing the same direction but one where the Y variable is 0:
Edit: [This shows me that I can use X and Z only to get the same angle, even if the light is technically rotated a different way along the axis the arrow points in. Is there a way to do this kind of conversion?]

Thank you

I finally figured it out.
Basically, use the rotation matrix and a unit vector to find a different rotation matrix where angle β = 0
Start with this matrix R(α, β, γ), found on Wikipedia:

Sorry, I don't really know how to use any math formatters.
plug in β = 0 to get a much more simplified matrix (since I want the rotation only in terms of X and Z, the Y value, or β, will be 0)
I then use the unit vector V(0,0,1) to find a system of three equations that can be used to solve for α and γ
Because the X and Y values in the unit vector are zero, everything simplifies down to R(α, γ) = V(x, y, z) where
x = sin(α)sin(γ)
y = -sin(α)cos(γ)
z= cos(α)
Now that I have these equations, I can grab the rotation matrix from the light I have the XYZ euler rotation for, multiply it by the unit vector to get an intermediate resultant, and extract the α and γ values using a bit of algebra.
Here is the Code:
import bpy

import math
from mathutils import *

RotMat = bpy.data.objects['XYZ Light'].rotation_euler.to_matrix()

Resultant = RotMat @ Vector((0,0,1))
alpha = math.acos(Resultant.z)
gamma = math.asin(Resultant.x/math.sin(alpha))
if Resultant.y > 0:
    gamma = gamma *-1
    alpha = alpha *-1
XZLight = bpy.data.objects['XZ Light']

XZLight.rotation_euler = Euler((alpha, 0, gamma), 'XYZ')

Note that because the Resultant.y is not used in the math, there is no way to know if it is negative or not. That's why I perform a simple check and flip the resulting directions if it's not.
The result of running this script is that you take one light that has coordinates in XYZ euler format and place another light in exactly the same angle, but only using the Z and X components. This is exactly the solution I was looking for.

I don't understand why it has to be so complicated. If you use Track To Constraint it's easy to orient the light and then you can either apply the constraint or use object.matrix_world.to_euler() to get rotation euler in radians that you can then convert with math.degrees(). Am I missing something here?

There does not seem to be anything to convert. The lights are real so they are in 3d space and they can be rotated in 3 dimensions, but they are fixed and have mechanism made in a way so they only rotate in 2. If you only need 2 rotation axis, use only 2. You can lock the other one for convenience so you don't accidentally change it by clicking the lock icon near the property you want to lock:

What you said makes perfect sense, but I think I may have asked my question wrong. I would prefer to manipulate the lights by using the "look at" gizmo (i think that's what it's called; the yellow ball control thing), except I can't lock the y axis out of that. So after I set the angle with the control, can I then figure out the equivalent values for rotation using only the x and z axis. The biggest reason for all of this is speed. It's so much faster to just point the light at something than it is to slide the sliders up and down until I get the desired angle. Thanks

You can use Track To Constraint for that.

Hi, @MartynasŽiemys ! ,, yesbut.. how do you extract the Wold Space rotations?

Hi. Well... yes but..  does he need to?..

@MartynasŽiemys I think I do... I was able to set up a Track To Constraint with an empty, but part of the goal was to be able to get the rotation values for the X and Z so that I could feed them back into the real world light controller.


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Smooth out rigging?
I'm still a little new to rigging. I want to try and make this tail curve a little smoother and not look like a finger. I looked up tutorials, but all I could find was to use bendy bones. However, Since this is going to be exported to unity, I can't really use those.
so, I'm wondering if it's possible to make this tail curve smoother using standard bones. perhaps a better way of weight painting or something?
(i'm using blender 2.93 as well btw)
Blender File here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/352uwxp8ka627pes1rcn2/Tail-Armature.blend?rlkey=b8cfmmhbuqsqzjz15ww88gur0&dl=0

Does it have enough horizontal subdivisions? I've given a try and it works fine for me: https://zupimages.net/up/23/30/ok92.jpg but maybe share your file?

It does have Quad faces. I placed a link to the blender file with the tail in the dropbox link. @moonboots

I meant maybe make your tail more low-poly but if you need to use your object in a game engine you may need it to be high-poly enough to have a smooth outline

I guess the best is to subdivide the bones and parent again.
You could try to smooth the weights (in Weight Paint mode, select a vertex group, Weights > Smooth, and in the Operator Box increase the Iterations up to 50 or whatever value), but it will make the control a bit more complicated. Also don't forget to enable the Preserve Volume option in the Armature modifier:

Before/After:


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Vertices collapse on themselves
So, I'm rigging a model and I noticed a problem with the Arm. As shown in the pictures, the upper part of the arm collapses on itself when I move it. The rest of the arm is fine.

I'm still learning how to properly rig and such, so if anyone can tell me why this is happening, that would be greatly appreciated.
Here is the Blend file, i managed to get the head and somewhat of the left arm and still kind of new to rigging so it's not the best. I'm rigging it for vrchat so.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12SQNEksYcoQCIxSNnqGwRWLvLGupZK4y/view?usp=sharing

If there are any other bone layers, or any hidden bones, or any drivers, peeps would need to see that.  We also need to see the bone axes.  Your best bet is to just link a file.

It happens because one or several bones are influencing this part of your mesh when they should not.
Select the armature in Pose mode, shift select the object, switch to Weight Paint mode, select the bone called Chest, you'll see that its vertex group contains vertices that are part of the arm:

So in the N panel, choose Blend > Subtract in order to remove these vertices from this group and it will work fine:

You could also shelect these vertices in Edit mode, go in the Properties panel > Object Data > Vertex Groups list, in the dropdown menu on the right of the list select Remove From All Groups, then assign to the group called Arm_L only.


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Texture appearing in squares across the map
I was following a tutorial on how to paint textures on to a object and for some reason, when I started painting, the texture didn't show up in its proper place. It just appeared in squares all around the map. if anyone has a solution to this, Please let me know.

You need to unwrap the mesh again, currently the mesh unwrapped in small square UV islands, thats why you are getting this result.

I would start by looking at your UV map. If you try using the color grid or UV preset textures (when you create a new texture) you should be able to see if your UV map makes sense, or if it's causing the issue.
If the UV map is the problem, you can probably just UV unwrap your object again. To make a flat UV map from above your object (which should work for your terrain), switch to edit mode with Tab, toggle to orthographic view with Ctrl+5, switch to top view with Ctrl+7,  then select UV unwrap (or press U) > Project from View (Bounds).

I did exactly what you told me to do about the UV map and it didn't do anything, do you maybe have any other solution

I'm not sure what's wrong then. Your texture is definitely on the map, and you can see faces that have portions of your texture applied.

I've added a picture of them both in edit mode and this is what its showing me

I figured it out thanks for your help anyway

make sure there are no overlapping island in your UV map. try smart projection


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Hair Particle not showing up in render
I'm using the hair particles to make grass but for some reason, it's just not showing up.
What I made:

What is rendered in the preview:

Here is the full Properties for the hair particles.

Can you show your full particle settings ? Especially Render, Display and Cycles hairs settings. Also, make sur "Use hair" is checked in the render settings (under Geometry)

Okay, I added the full Properties panel for the Hair particles, P.s, I checked if the "Use Hair" is checked and it is.


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How do I make a texture wrap seamlessly around a corner?
I'm trying to render a 3d print model, so I followed the guide here, but on 2 faces of this cube it flips, so it alternates, instead of continuing the pattern. Is there a way to make it seamlessly wrap around so it looks more realistic?
Here is a picture:

You would have to provide your cube with this material to see it closer ... for me it is not happening ... https://imgur.com/3F59Jln ... just you are not supposed to plug Mix node into Displacement socket so probably there can be an issue.

You need to add the "Displacement" node before connecting it to the material's displacement output.

This is not a problem with the texture but with shading. You(as well as the author of the tutorial) are not supposed to plug color into a vector input socket. That is the reason you are getting unpredictable results. The grayscale map should be converted to proper vectors with Bump Map node setting the desired distance the bumps would stick out of the surface. You should plug that to your Shader's Normal input:

It's also possible to use real displacement or adaptive displacement. Those are different than bump maps. You can find a lot of info about how to do that by searching BSE or elsewhere online.


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Unity asset not behaving in blender but does in other software - fixable?
So i have this asset that originates from a unity project.
It is a FBX model with a couple animations, the character is in three mesh parts and some of the meshes deform upon import into Blender.

Now I have tried to import it in 3DS Max and it do not deform there but gives error messages at the start which can be ignored and it works.
So do anybody know what and if there is anything i can do to fix it to be able to work in blender?
If i knew what makes it deform or maybe re export it out of 3DS if it salvageable.
I can post the error messages 3ds spits out if it would help.
Thanks in advance!

It's way better to post images inline on Blender Stack Exchange so that people who read your question don't have to click away to some other site. I edited your question and fixed the image - I hope you don't mind. Maybe some more people see it and will come up with more solutions to your problem.

FBX format has problems in Blender because of some issues with license incompatibilities making the importers difficult to maintain if I understand it correctly so if you can use 3ds Max or Unity to convert the asset to some other format like .dea or .abc ir might work fine/better when imported to Blender.


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How do I animate shape keys within an action in Blender?
I am animating an action for a character I have made in Blender, and I have created mouth shape keys for lip-syncing. I want this action to have the character lip-syncing to some audio and have some body language, but I can't animate shape keys in the action editor (I can't create keyframes with the shape keys). Am I missing something here? How would I do this?

To be able to animate the shape keys you can change the view from Action Editor to "Shape Key Editor" or "Dope Sheet" editor.

Thank you :D One more question. Since I am editing the shape keys in a separate action, am I able to merge that with an action in the action editor?

Some time ago I tried to do that, but I couldn't find a way, apparently the shape key action and the actions are saved separately.

@BryanDean Hello and welcome. This site is not a regular forum. Please don't reply "Thanks" as an answer or comment, instead upvote the post that helped you. If you feel it completely solved your issue consider marking it as accepted.


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Pipemodelling with Curves and T-Junction
Is it not possible to bevel a pipe out of a 90° curve with t-junction? Any work arround? It must be easy to control. Any Ideas?

A curve vertex can't be connected to more than 2 vertices if it's your question

i just want to bevel a curve with multiple crossing. i need them for a visual connection line and want to keep them non destructive. a curve with just two open endpoints works fine. but with more ends it wont work

To my knowledge this is not possible with a simple curve setup, see @moonboots comment. Maybe some crazy NURBS setup that I can't picture.
Here are your options:
1.

Skin Modifier on a mesh without any faces. It does support t-joints, however you have little control over how exactly the connections look like. Still, it is easy to change later on.

Edit -> Preferences -> Extra mesh objects.
This will allow you to add pipe joints. Even though this is considered a destructive workflow, I would prefer it. If you keep the connections clean, it should be easy enough to re-arrange the construct later on (make sure to store a to-scale copy of each component (mesh object) you are using, for later modification) It will look much cleaner than the curve bevel or skin modifier.
3.
Use the boolean modifier with curve objects (or meshes). Be aware, it's not the most reliable modifier in the stack, so there is a chance that it breaks somewhere along the way.


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Camera rotates around itself while following nurbs path
I am trying to do an animation around an object where my camera is following a nurbs path. I have added to modifiers to my camera; follow path(nurbs path) and dampened track(object). But when I modify the cameras offset factor to move the camera, the camera also rotates around the dampened track axis as it moves along the path.
link to blend file https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTOS_R1m1K5g-MUoz4fRruUcuZexg?e=FUvj0C

Hello coule you please share your file? replace the target object with an empty for example

added link to file

yes it looks like you need to create some rotation keyframes on its Y axis

Excellent, that solved it! Thank you!

I meant on its Z axis of couse, not Y  ;)

It looks like you can't avoid these rotations, to fix it, rotate your camera and create some keyframes on its own Z axis.


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Blender freezes when using the move tool on fedora 36
Often when I use the move surface tool blender freezes my entire computer for a period of time, sometimes it unfreezes and sometimes it crashes.
the computer I'm testing it on isn't very powerful, duo core, 4 threads. 7th gen i5 2.6 ghz, 8 GB DDR4 RAM and no graphics card but I don't think it's that because none of the other tools cause this problem
As far as I'm aware nothing else would be interfering with it, but it's probably a setting somewhere. Running Plasma 5 if that might have something to do with it

I'm on Fedora 36 and do not encounter such issues. Have you tried using the stock Gnome that ships with it just to test if it is indeed Plasma 5 causing the issue? Also, check System Monitor to see if a core is running at 100%. If you care to edit your post and attach the .blend file I can check it for you. https://blend-exchange.com/


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Circular Dependency Error - baking AO Texture
Blender 2.93 trying to bake AO Textures.
Baked a couple of objects OK then the following error was presented: Circular Dependency for image "Body_AO_2" from object rear_door_generic
Any ideas on how to solve it - it has become a huge pain and cannot figure how to fix it. Images attached of the node setup.

https://ibb.co/s5kXyGz
https://ibb.co/X5ZWrN6

The error message tries to tell you that you cannot bake a texture to an image and use that image at the same time to determine the color that you want to bake.
The solution is to disconnect the Image Texture node of the bake target (Body_AO_2) while you bake. Make sure the image is not used in other materials.
After you baked the image you can reconnect the Image Texture node. Don't forget to save the image. It's not saved with the blend file (except you pack it).


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Function that prints the location of all the vertices of an active object
I want to write a function that prints the location of all of the vertices of an active object.
I have a Cube and I want to print out the location of the 8 vertices of the cube.
I started doing this but I dont really know what I am doing.
def printVertices() :
       Cube = bpy.context.active_object
       lemesh = obj.data
       print(lesmesh.vertices[0].co.x)

Please don't ask the same question many times. If you are not getting
answers, or the answers don’t help, then edit your original post with
more information and detailing what you have tried that is not working.
Read: What should I do if no one answers my question?

Assuming your object is selected, the following code should work:
import bpy

for vert in bpy.context.active_object.data.vertices:
    print (vert.co)

I will also point out blender has an integrated terminal where you can type incomplete python statements (e.g bpy.context.active_object.data.) and press tab in order to print a display of the possible completions. This is very useful to quickly navigate over the properties of bpy objects and gain quick intuition on what you can and can't do.


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Is there a way in Grease Pencil to cut the end of those stripes?

Is there a way in Grease Pencil to cut the end of those stripes?

I'm not a specialist in this area, but Grease Pencil Layers can be set up very flexibly  to mask one another: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/grease_pencil/properties/masks.html and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI0V-0UuhmE&t=280s  ..

You could go into Edit Mode, select the brushstrokes you wish to erase, and hit Delete. Or you could use the Erase tool or the Cutter tool.
In Grease Pencil, there's a toolbar on your left. Select the Scissors icon.
Next, highlight the line you want to remove and release your mouse.
The line should then be removed.


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Trying to rig eyes, but what should be the driver only spits out 0's instead of it's global axis. (I'm using a target constraint). [Videos included]
I am having an issue with the eyes of a model
I am trying to have the rotation of an empty with a tracked constraint be a driver. However, when doing so, I no longer can see the empty's global rotational axis.

Here is a video showing the issue I'm having
https://youtu.be/LIedMhWMfhc
Also, here is a video with it baked emulating what it would be like if it were working the way I want it to.
https://youtu.be/zyQCtsnPxNY

Rather than videos, it would be more helpful if you could add a blend file to your question showing the problem (How to add a blend file) and some screenshots explaining what you're trying to do.

The Track To constraint does not change the Empty's global rotation. To get the rotation numbers you need to apply the Visual Transform with Ctrl+A in Object mode.
But this will not help you and is not what you want. You want to use the UV Warp modifier. It will do the job. It calculates the distances between the origins of two objects and shifts the UV mapping accordingly.
So you can specify the eyeball as Object From and the control Empty object as To. If the pupil moves in the wrong direction you need to rotate the UV island or change the mapping of the Axis U. It's U =>X and V => Z in the example.
Example with the default cube:

Result:


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Array instances do not follow the path of the curve
Why do the array instances follow the first path, but on the second path they are on some breaking path? It can be seen in the picture. Both paths are the same, created from a deformed circle.

please provide blend file

There are 2 issues here:

The curve and object that should follow the curve must have their origins at world origin.

apply the Location of the curve (Ctrl + A in Object mode). This will move the origin (orange dot) to the world origin (0,0,0).
move the chain segment parts (parent and child in your case) to the world origin. It's easy to do with the 3D cursor (Shift + S in Object mode)

the bad curve has loose segments and a single lost control point in the top left area. It doesn't need to be closed but the curve must not have any loose parts. Check it in Edit move. Select a control point and press L to select all linked segments. What will be not selected are the loose segments. Move it a bit to see what's going on (G).

When the issues are fixed you can set Fit Type to Fit Curve and select the curve in the Array modifier settings. Blender will adjust the length of the array so it fits the curve.

when you use array and curve modifier make sure both use the same curve - you mixed them up
the object and the curve should have both position 0,0,0 -> move them together after it works, not before hand
also parent items not before but after you successfully see the right result

then u get:

thx man i just fix my curve and works very well...i dont see that mess...


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I can't select my camera and i can't find it in Scene Collection
it looks like my camera is missed but I still could use it by num 0 or ctrl+alt+num0.i just can't select it or select it under Scene Collection.

Maybe you have no more camera object in your scene and you've made another camera? Check what object is selected as camera in the Scene panel > Scene > Camera

You cannot select camera because you are in Pose Mode

@MikoCG Pose Mode does not hide cameras in the Outliner, if filtering for "camera" does not show anything this means either there is no camera object in the scene or if there is, both the object and the inherent object data have been renamed so that they are filtered out. If there is no camera object but a camera view, he has made a different object the active camera.

Open the filter menu (icon funnel) in the outliner and enable Cameras and/or Objects:all ?

Same as my case. Camera not shown in Scene Collection but numpad 0 still work. Any solution? Thanks

If there still is a camera object in your scene and filtering in the Outliner for "camera" does not show anything, then maybe you have changed both the name in the Object Properties and the Object Data Properties:

But maybe you accidentally deleted the camera object. The reason you can still switch to camera view with Numpad 0 or align the camera to the current viewport with Ctrl+Alt+Numpad 0 is most likely that you accidentally made a different object the active camera. This works by having any object selected and pressing Ctrl+Numpad 0 (this might have happened when you tried to align the view).
Now first of all go into Object Mode. To find out which object is the active camera, you can choose Select > Select Active Camera from the viewport menu. Now that the camera is selected, you can see the name of the object in the top left corner of the viewport - the name of the active object is always shown there when Overlays are enabled:

If you still have no idea where the object is in the Viewport or in the Outliner, you can hit Numpad . in either of them to Frame Selected, which means the viewport gets centered and zoomed in on the selected object or in the Outliner, the hierarchy gets expanded to reveal where the selected object is located and jumps to the entry if the list is long.


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how to make vertices align in a circle
I am completely new to blender and I was practicing how to make clothing out of a base mesh. I am using a technique where you duplicate a portion of the base mesh and expand out on it, but the vertices are not exactly how I want them. How can I adjust the mesh so the arm, neck and body holes are circular? Thank you!

In edit mode try Alt+Shift+S (to sphere) and move the mouse right/left to adjust the "to sphere" influence. But is that case, not sure that'll give a good result. Can be more simple to do it manually, per vertex.


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Camera view not aligning with camera? Blender 2.82
When I try to use either the camera button or Numpad 0 the camera snaps to the object instead of the actual camera?

CtrlNumpad 0 assigns any active object as current camera.
To set your camera the current camera, select it and use CtrlNumpad 0.
Now Numpad 0 will use the camera.


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Why can't I use the bevel equally on all my loopcuts? Double edge problems
I found some answers in this question already posed, but without finding the solution.
(Bevel tool creating intersecting faces)
I knocked down the wall several times rebuilding it in different ways and then cutting it again with the loopcuts, but each time I was presented with a different error that I will try to point out through multiple screenshots and also uploading the file, which had already been subjected to a another question.
1). So, what I have to create NOW is a wall that includes cavities along all the cuts (loopcuts), the same ones that I managed to create in the central entrance doors. see fig. 1.
while in fig. 2 I show you how the wall texture should be.
 (fig.1)
 (fig.2)
I would like to create them manually instead of attaching a texture to you, what do you recommend?
2). Alternatively I thought I could create them by directly extruding a portion of the cut face, but this would involve further cuts to my only surface, which already seems not to work correctly. (besides, there are also some oblique cuts to be made).
This is what I would like to do: in figure x, you can see the exact blunt edge, where some loops work correctly, while others don't. fig.y
furthermore in figure y, you can see how in transparent mode some walls are visible and others not.
 (fig.x)
 (fig.y)
3). I noticed that there are several double edges and vertices which sometimes prevent me from loopcuts or change the direction of the bevel. How can I remove all duplicates? (fig. 3 and 4)
In the vertices I tried using the merge - by distance, it signals me a lot of vertices and applying it several times gets to 0, but I'm not sure if it has removed them. What about the edges instead? how do i locate them, know where the duplicates are and remove them? Do I have to do it manually or is there a shortcut?
 (fig.3)
 (fig.4)
ps. I wanted to upload the file but now it weighs 76mb how can I do? is already compressed.I put this google drive link to download the file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/182UTa6t7IOB7K0iE7T3Nr6QqnF-4NoOk/view?usp=sharing

hello, I think there are a lot of questions and it's a bit confusing, maybe choose one question at a time and make it very clear and simple? Also, it looks like, like for many buildings, yours is made of the repetition of the exact same pattern, so maybe try to build only one pattern, make sure that everything's ok, and repeat it with an Array modifier? Otherwise it will be hell. Once you're glad you can apply the Array, if necessary...

It seemed useless to ask 3 separate questions, as they concern only one project. i have ordered all in points and steps, you should understand the problems enough.
I mean it's all a big big problem, i don't know what i should solve first. @moonboots

Yes the scheme is identical, in fact for the windows I used an array, but the problem is the wall that I divided by loopcut which has all these problems: double edges, wrong normals, and the bevel does not work correctly on the loops. @moonboots

I removed the question of the '' normals '' I turned them manually leaving the outside in blue and the back as the inside in red. Now it should be easier since there is only one problem, that is to recreate that texture if it is recommended through the loopcuts and the bevel as shown in the figure, or alternatively another method to not do it manually.

As for your previous question. If I rephrase: this should be constructed like a Lego. Many parts are similar. Model them once and make an assembly duplicating them... but it seems you want to do it another way...

@lemon, yes that's why I was talking about array, the same pattern is repeated on the horizontal axis

But the model is still one piece...

yes, apply the Array once you're good

Yes, I wanted to try to do the whole facade in a maximum of two steps, use the bevel and extrude inwards to generate the recess. but it seems to be more complicated than it is.

I'm not sure to understand what's the method you're using, what are the problems you're encounting, etc, but if I had to do this kind of walls, I would make only one segment that I would repeat with the Array modifier to make things easier, and for the bricks, if you want to keep the whole thing as one unique object, you could:

Cut some orthogonal lines, bevel them:

Extrude them and bevel the extrusion (for example with a Bevel modifier with Limit Method > Angle):

If you think that there's a problem with this kind of method, please tell me?

it is exactly the method I am using, but as you can see from the screenshots many loopcuts do not respond well to the bevel modifier, and do not allow me to perform a correct bevel on all the loopcuts at the same time, nor evenly.
I followed this method as you can see in figure 1 in the example of the pilasters.
In my opinion, the problems that I think may affect this process include double edges. then I don't know. i have linked my file if u want.

I tried to knock down the wall and make a new one and loop it but I haven't solved it.

there are many ways why a bevel can fail, so it's hard to sum them up, but to simplify your work, maybe first make the window a different object so that it doesn't interfere with your work on the brick wall. Plus in general, if an object is separated in real life, it's better to do a separate mesh (or object) in 3D. You could even make one separate mesh per brick.

What I actually did is (after an infinite series of tests and manual corrections), extrude edge by edge to recreate the faces of the wall, to allow the loop to be generated because in some phases of the wall creation I couldn't even to divide it with the loopcuts. I wanted to avoid having to do everything manually as I believe there are other methods.


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Normal map not baking properly--half of the model is baked in the wrong direction
New to blender, so I could be doing a lot wrong here.
I've baked my normal maps in Cycles render, but parts of them are flipped the wrong way. There are awful seams on the tail and legs and I'm at a loss now of what to try next.
What can cause this and how can I fix it?

Are normals of the mesh pointing in the same direction? Edit mode > select all > Ctrl+N. How does normal map actually work once applied to lowpoly?

All the normals are working properly. From what I can tell, it's a problem with the way Blender is deciding to bake. The left side of the tail should be on the right side and the right should be on the left. But when I paint my texture everything works just as you'd expect it to. So if it's not a problem with the normals and not a problem with the UVs, it's gotta be the renderer right? I'd like to learn from this but it seems to me that the best option might be to pop it into photoshop and reverse the normals manually?

Can you show screenshot of your mesh in the solid shading, Edit mode? "it's a problem with the way Blender is deciding to bake" if this is true it should've worked this way for all baking normals cases as well while it doesn't. What version of Blender do you use?

I've added a photo to the post. I use version 2.79

Does it mean highpoly normals are also facing outside? Is scale for both objects applied? (Object mode > Ctrl+A). I suppose this artifact happens on the seam on the UV map. Do places with other seams have the same? If you can share some parts of the model with problem upload it here https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ and hopefully someone can spot the problem

Yes I've applied scale and it's still got the bad seams. And yes, this problem appears on pretty much every seam. I've seen similar problems online but none quite like mine, nothing I've found online has helped. I will post on your link though, thank you very much for that!

Unfortunately my file is too large and it doesn't accept .zips. Is there anywhere else I can post?

Create a simplified version of the file with only piece of the concerned model where the problem is apparent (on the place of a seam). Then upload blend itself to blend-exchange


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Using Drivers to Limit Distance & follow Empty
I have a voxel "hair" object I am making, made of 110 separate Cubes.
Currently I am stuck with 2 challenges in making the Driver setup:

I want all of the cubes (Hairball objects) to be "Slow Parented" to an Empty (EmptyHead), so they delay following behind it.
There are several objects on the same Armature that the cubes are not supposed to touch.

Starting with the X location channel, and similarly for Y and Z, I will have the following variables:
self.location.x (from Use Self, for Hairball objects), EmptyX, HeadX, REyeX, LEyeX, ScutesX, WebX (Variables use Single Property of location.x based on the object they are referencing).
My ultimate goal is to have the objects with self.location.x to follow EmptyX with a slight delay, and to Limit Distance so that they never touch HeadX, REyeX, LEyeX, ScutesX, or WebX.
I have been racking my brain, and studying every answer I could find, but so far, to no avail.
I feel like there must be some way to do this with drivers - Though, I am unsure of how to proceed.
It may not be of much help, but I have attached a screenshot of the current project, simply for an idea of what I am working with.
Once I get the Driver set up properly, I will be joining the cubes into one object then separating by loose parts - To save me the headache of trying to write a script to apply the drivers to all objects.
I am awful with Scripts, so if it is possible to stick to a purely driver based solution I would be very happy, though I am more than willing to accept any help.
I am grateful for any possible assistance; Please let me know if I can provide any further information to aid in clarification / a solution.
Thank you :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTdRGZA4TXA

I appreciate the help, though the video in question does not touch on, nor offer any form of insight to, any of the issues I am experiencing.

True, but my thought was you could parent the cubes to bones and side-step the driver issue entirely

Ahh, a good thought! I have tried that, and it does work somewhat - It doesn't work for the anti-collision effect. That being said, parenting the cubes to the main Control bone and adding Limit Distance Constraints did give a spectacular spherical effect of the cubes circling the armature - But they only seemed to be able to circle the origin point of the rig, not wherever it had moved to - Hence, my assumed need for drivers :)


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Particles except Flames in Render mode
I have a problem with the render mode. I dont have flames like in the Solid mode, but Particles.

Do you setup flame material? Show flame nodes.

Material is set up incorrectly. Attribute for the fire is called "flame", no "flames" were expected. If you want to create one for you use Quick Smoke command from Object menu.

Are you kidding me I changed the name to flame and the fire appeared. I thought that the name isnt that important, because it is "just" a name. -.-


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How do I UV unwrap and texture onion-like object?
What would be the best method to UV unwrap and texture an onion-like object?
It doesn't have to be an onion specifically, it's just an example. I'm talking about all the objects that are spherical in shape and have distinctive parallel lines following the surface from one pole to the opposite pole, converging around both poles (like watemelons etc.).
I'm mostly interested with image-based texture solutions, not procedural ones.
The photo is Creative Commons licensed image taken by flickr.com/photos/user-colin/

You want to UV unwrap it such that you get a square/rectangular UV island. Then you can use an image texture that is setup for polar coordinates. The trick with a sphere is that you have to remove the single vertex at each pole to unrwap it properly.

Create sphere.
Delete vertices at each pole.
Set viewport to ortho mode and view the sphere directly (front or side, no angle).
Unwrap via sphere projection. Your UV island should be square.
Create a polar coordinate image texture (features run from top to bottom).
Apply to texture using UV coordinates. I've used a Texture Mapping node to increase the X scale so that it tiles more horizontally.

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


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How does squared samples "make tweaking easier?"
According to the documentation, the new "squared samples" feature in the render settings can "make tweaking easier from an artists point of view," but it's not clear what this settings does, or how it would make tweaking easier.
In short, what does the squared samples setting do, and how do I exploit its powers?

All it does is square the specified number of samples. So 10 samples becomes 100 samples.
From the commit log:

Cycles / Sampling UI:
Add a "Squared Samples" option to the UI, to use squared values for ease of use. This can make it easier from an artist point of view, to weak settings.
With this enabled, all Sample values will be squared. So 10 Samples become 100 Samples.
  For the Non-Progressive Branched Path integrator: 4 AA Samples * 5 Diffuse Samples would become 16 AA Samples * 25 Diffuse = 400 in total.

Also see this related post and this thread on the bf-cycles mailing list

That doesn't seem worth it...

@Matt ikr.. IIRC the rational was that "artists will see a larger difference by adjust a smaller value" or something like that. I'll see what I can find out.

huh... I suppose that makes sense. It may also be attempting to take into account that as more samples are taken, an increasing amount of additional samples are needed before an appreciable change is apparent.

The reason here would be that, assuming square pixels, to double the sample resolution of the image, you'd have to quadruple the number of samples because each 1-by-1 pixel holds n samples thus having sqrt(n) pixels per side (on average).

Think of the option as choosing between fine or course control. You may also notice that the totals are displayed at the bottom of the panel, (more useful with Branched Path Tracing) which also shows how increasing one value will increase related samples.

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


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Does Blender have a software-limited amount of RAM it can use?
The other way to ask this question is, are Blender's memory limitations solely hardware related? Or, is there a point at which Blender will either crash or fail to use additional memory, even though there is more memory still available on the machine?
Speculation isn't useful, but anecdotal evidence is, i.e. "I have 64GB of RAM and Blender has used all of it." Or "I have 64GB of RAM and Blender crashed trying to render a scene that required 16GB."
Even more useful than that is a software engineer's answer about how Blender actually works (not should work, not if it was coded the way I'd code it; what it actually does).

Let me just say that if you've got 64gb of RAM, you shouldn't have a problem.

What is memory management (from http://www.tutorialspoint.com/):

Memory management is the functionality of an operating system which handles or manages primary memory. Memory management keeps track of each and every memory location either it is allocated to some process or it is free. It checks how much memory is to be allocated to processes. It decides which process will get memory at what time. It tracks whenever some memory gets freed or unallocated and correspondingly it updates the status.

There is no software cap. There can't be - it would have to be coded in for it to be. Blender will use all your RAM up to 16TB (64bit). Its up to the OS to provide the memory for blender.
If you have a page file it starts at around 2 GB or 4 GB and windows expands the page file when needed. However, they might not be as fast as Blender requests more memory. If this happens, Windows does not allow Blender to get more RAM and causes an out of memory exception which crashes Blender.
At that point the page file gets bigger and in second run of Blender its very likely everything will run/render without problems.
If your OS fails to allocate some memory for Blender fast enough, Blender will crash.

This is (almost) exactly what I was looking for. To be fair, there COULD be a software limit, if it were "coded in," but your explanation clarifies why it's reasonable to assume there isn't such code. +1 for ALSO explaining why Blender would be told it can't have more memory, even though (hypothetically) I clearly have more disk space for dynamically allocated virtual memory. Thanks!

I have personally witnessed Blender utilizing 18GB+ of RAM during Cycles renders, 15GB of RAM while UV unwrapping highly subdivided meshes, and using all 64GB of physical RAM during various simulations. The following show Blender utilizing all system memory:

It's not unheard of to run into Blender coding errors in memory management which can limit scalability such as the following:
https://developer.blender.org/T42318
However, as others have mentioned, these limits are not by design.

Show me some software memory limitations (the code is opensource), because it does not have any!. Also this bug is not a bug and the operating system shuts down Blender.

How much RAM did you test with @SixthOfFour on what OS? I've tested again with 2.72b Win64 which crashes at 9.8GB but 2.71 Win64 completes without issue using 11.5GB. This behavior appears to indicate a Blender software limitation rather than OS.

@SixthOfFour could you run the UV unwrap test with 2.71? BTW - I've edited my original answer to acknowledge that I've seen Blender utilize full system RAM for other tasks.

The memory allocation limit referenced above was changed today to a bug rather than by design and code fixes were submitted. As Blender is showing software memory scalability again in this area the answer has been edited.


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Why does combined bake look different from render?
I have a huge static scene, and I'm trying to bake a lot of the lighting so that the simple stuff will render faster (for an animation). ...and I'm getting some results that I don't expect.
The ground is baked using "combined" and it looks GREAT. It's entirely indistinguishable from a straight render. The only way I can tell the difference is a black border under the buildings, if the texture resolution is too low, but the point is it looks exactly the same whether I render with or without using the baked texture, but using the bake takes half as long to render. That's exactly what you want from baked lighting.
The problem comes in with the buildings. As you can see, the render WITHOUT the baked texture:

...looks very different from the render WITH the baked texture on one of the buildings:

The one building that I baked in this case looks darker than the unbaked one. I've done this with several buildings, from several different viewpoints, and using a variety of settings, but the results are always something like this.
Here is my material setup:

And just in case it matters, here's the image and UVs for that one building:

All the others are almost identical, but with their own images and materials. Any idea why the ground would look exactly the same baked and not, but the buildings look so different?

...also, when I bake the buildings, I set all the materials to use their appropriate diffuse material, so that the bake isn't getting anything weird from OTHER baked textures in the scene.

Just realized, this might be the same as: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/23259/baking-object-with-combined-results-in-much-too-bright-an-image-texture-cycle

Well, I've been searching for an answer to this question for literally years, and just a few hours after I post a coherent question, I stumble upon the answer.
The baked texture can't imitate the roughness of the original shader. I'm using a roughness of 1.0 for the diffuse shader, but when I bake it, it has to be piped into an emission shader.
When I turn the roughness of the diffuse shader down to 0, it perfectly matches the baked texture.
My only thought is that roughness has something to do with the viewing angle, and the baked texture just can't take that into account, because it has to be baked from all angles.
Oh well...

I never changed roughness on a diffuse shader. It's good to know.


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my keyframes wont animate
On Blender 4.2, I'm trying to animate my country ball. But when I press I in the timeline, all what appears is all channels, only selected channels, and in active groups. When I click on one of them, nothing happens. When I click outside the timeline it does insert a keyframe but when I go to factors and change the tapper to 2 or 3, it doesn't animate the country ball. Here's what it looks like:

You have to press I over the field you want to animate to add a keyframe directly to that. If you press I in the Dopesheet/Timeline then it won't know where to add it, other than all the channels you have in the timeline or the active one you have selected.

By default, the only properties that you will keyframes by hovering animation editors or the viewport are the selected objects' transforms and their custom properties if they have any. It will not add keyframes to other data blocks, even if they are related to a selected object.
Here you are trying to animate a property of a modifier. To set a keyframe on that property, you need to hover it with your mouse while pressing I. Or  RMB > Insert Keyframe, or click the dot near the property to add a keyframe (it will then become a diamond to show its has keyframes).

Omg thank you so much!! :)

You're welcome, don't forget to hit the ✔ in the top-left corner of my answer to accept it ;)


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glTF/GLB exporting with multiple actions through NLA not supported?
I need some help with exporting GLTF/GLB with two or more animation tracks that are meant to be toggled on and off in Webflow later.
Exporting the whole thing as a keyframe based animation works, but then I get only one action take. If I then "push down to action" in the NLA editor and split it into two actions, with separate names, upon export, my model rotates 90 degrees and I still only get one track. This rotation doesn't happen with an export to GLTF/GLB from the animation still being just keyframes.
I'm guessing this has to do with how the model is rigged - it's a pre-made animation chosen by my friend for a specific project. Any guesses?
To just see if I got the same result with a super simple scene, I made a 4x keyframe animation of a cube moving around with the same approach I mentioned above, just turning it to an action, splitting the track - and there is no animation data saved in the GLB for this cube.
How do I go about making these two separate takes in a single GLB ? Exporting it with the keyframes being just keyframes worked, though, not through NLA.
(Also, I'm not quite nailing the textures just yet and the glTF is more shiny than the GLB, so I have to figure that out too).
Thank you, and any help is much appreciated
(I'm a beginner Blender user, but have been using C4D for 3-4 years, some work in Maya, some UE4/5 so I'm not a complete beginner, just unfamiliar with this software)
(Windows user)

Is it related to this post: Multiple object animations not exporting to GLB ?

Also read .fbx export why there are no materials or textures for your texturing problem.

As mentionned above, these issues seem to already have answers on this site. I also recommend checking glTF 2.0 - Blender 4.2 Manual. If the provided links do not help, please [edit] your question to provide updated information, as well as provide more details on how your specific asset is made, additionally provide screenshots or even share your file if it can help.


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My IK bones are wire mesh and cannot be clicked on (selected) in either edit mode or pose mode. I'm using blender 4.2
My IK bones cannot be selected in either pose or edit mode. They are mesh and all the other bones are solid.
I am following a video on rigging a character. I got almost done, however the IK bone is mesh, and I cannot select it in either pose or edit mode.
Edit: Original poster's son here, got some screenshots. I hope these help, and thank you for your feedback thus far. They're still fairly new to blender (I'm even more new to it), so I apologize if any technical explanations may go over our heads or if we're explaining the issue poorly. I believe what they're asking is if this bone will cause issues with their rigging/animating, and if it needs to be deleted (And how to do so since they can't select it) or if it can be safely ignored. If it's an issue, they'd also like to know how to avoid it in the future.  Thank you all, again.

Hello could you please share your file?

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 look past external interferences (like reflections, smudges or Moiré patterns) and guess if we are looking at hardware issues such as a malfunctioning display or connections, a software level issue like driver malfunction or glitch, or actual artifacts or issues with the model itself.

Hi. You can also create a screenshot via the main menu Window > Save screenshot in Blender. It would be helpful to see a complete screenshot including the outliner on the top right corner of the screen. -- Here is a guess: you have created 2 armatures. One has the solid bone and is in Edit or Pose mode. The other armature has these wireframe bones because it is the inactive object that is still in Object mode.

As hinted by the fact that your bones aren't displayed the same way, and more importantly, seeing in your outliner that you have multiple Armature objects:

The issue becomes clearer: you can't select those bones because they aren't part of the same armature object.
Why does it matter
Objects, are a container that exists at a specific location, rotation and scale in the 3D space and carries data, such as mesh, curves, bones, ...
An Armature object is the object that contains bones for animation, whereas bones are the individual parts inside the armature. Also, sometimes referred to as "rig", which is the term to call the whole system of "things" that make a model animatable.
Commonly, we use only one armature for an entire character (props are sometimes part of the character rig, but sometimes on their own if shared by many characters).
That is because handling bones within the same armature is easy, whereas animating bones across multiple armatures, or worse, making them interact, gets quickly complicated with hierarchy and dependency issues.
Yet we need different armatures for things that also need to be independent.
How to fix
Fortunately, turning multiple objects of the same type into one is pretty easy. ↹ Tab into Object mode. Select the objects you want to join, finishing by the one you want to join "into", then hit ⎈ CtrlJ to join the objects together.
If you had constraints already setup, you may need to check if they still point to the correct bones.
You may also need to make sure each bones you have is correctly named. If two bones were named the same in individual armatures, they would have been renamed during the join, as there can't be identical bone names within the same armature.
Finally, check your bone hierarchy, you should always have only one root bone (to avoid standard issues when exporting outside of Blender).

I'm really new to Blender as well, but I think I might be able to help, maybe.
That bone is the 'root' bone, and is what holds the character in place, so it doesn't sink it to the floor or something. By selecting it, you should be able to move the entire model as if you selected all and hit G and dragged it around.
I'm not sure why its not clickable, but it could be something to do with your Visibility or Viewport Display in the object properties tab, or it could be from the Viewport Display in the Armature (little green running man) tab.
There are ways to select a bone by going into your Bones layer on the Layer selector, just keep expanding it until you find that bone on the list, it might have some special property attached to it.
Have you tried moving your model in pose mode? If so, does that bone seem to have any weight attached which makes your model deform? If not, you may not need to worry about it at all. It shouldn't interfere, so you should be able to safely ignore it.


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Blender - Quick Liquid - Domain is a glass cube
In Blender 3.3.0, "Quick liquid" creates a domain which is rendered as a glass cube.
I tried in several ways but please check the most straightforward one:

Brand-new Blender session

Change the engine to Cycles, render the default cube without problem

Apply Quick liquid

Without any further modification, it renders the following:

Thank you very much for your help in advance!

Welcome to BSE. Would you mind editing your question and clarifying exactly what you expect to happen when you hit render? As per the steps you outlined, Blender is attempting to create liquid from the default cube. The simulation is pretty ugly with the default settings, but it is behaving as it should. What you are seeing in the render is the default cube, plus the simulated liquid.

Please watch tutorials on fluid simulation.

Quick Liquid does 2 things.
1.
It sets up a domain object (some cube-like shape) around the currently selected object. It gives this object a default glass material and sets it to be displayed as a wireframe in the viewport.
2.
It turns on fluid domain physics for the domain object. For the selected object (your default cube) it sets up fluid emitter physics.
So the behavior you're seeing is perfectly normal.
You might want to learn more about fluid simulation in Blender.
Here's a CGCookie tutorial that might have some good info for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B0QM4Cft5c

Dear Samuel - my bad, the advices and the link helped a lot! Really perfect tutorial, now everything looks perfect!
Thank you very much!

Happy to help, István!

The quick effect operators only set up an object for a given type of simulation, you have yet to actually do the simulation, aka "bake" it.
For a liquid, specifically, baking will deform the domain mesh into the simulated liquid shape. If nothing is baked, then the domain just keeps its normal form: a cuboid.
By default, the baking occurs when you start a playback from the start frame.
So you can hit ⇧ Shift← Left arrow to jump to the start frame, and then hit space to playback. You should see the domain mesh deform frame after frame. It might take a while depending on your machine, so be patient.
You will also need to enable the mesh option on your domain settings:

Keep in mind that to see the mesh deform/simulate(instead of just particles), you have to enable the Mesh option in the domain settings before you bake.

Dear L0Lock, thank you very much - patience and enabling Mesh option helped a lot, it took some time to see the results - but definitely worth it. :) Thank you!


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Selecting different body parts of any Rig
In viewport I can drag and rotate, position, scale any part of the rig armature, but only FK-RibCage is "officially" selected no matter what I select (written in top left corner of the picture, yellow letters) and I can see only it's location, rotation, scale values (Right side of the picture, yellow bars).
I'm using Blender 3.3.1 LTS on Mac Monterey 12.4

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

What do you mean by "different body part stays printed in the top left corner and in the Item -> Transform drop down menu"? Which parts? What do you want to do? What is in the top left corner?

My problem was that I couldn't tweak Loc. Rot. and Scale numbers in the panel on the right (the one that activates when you press N) of the rig part that I've selected in the viewport. No matter what part I selected in the viewport it would keep showing values for a different part (usually FK-RibCage). Like I wrote, I could select, and move the desired body part in viewport and even key it, but I couldn't see the numeric values for it's Loc. Rot. and Scale and therefore couldn't tweak by changing these numbers.
Turns out that changing my selection from select box or select lasso to TWEAK solves this issue. I now get values for the part of the rig that I've selected and the correct name displays in the top left corner of the viewport as well.
Hope I made my problem understandable, don't know how better to describe it beyond this. Unfortunately server won't let me add picture today.
Would be curious to know if this is a feature or a bug. I don't see a reason why you couldn't use select box or lasso to "fully" select a part of a Rig, But maybe I'm missing something.

This sounds like a bug. I usually use the Lasso to select bones because on my computer the selection takes longer and longer over time when I use click or Box Select. It's probably also a bug or a graphic driver issue. If I restart Blender then it works fine again for some time.

Your'e probably right. To be honest I'm using pretty underpowered MacBook for Blender as I wait for my new PC to arrive. Processor: 2,3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5, with 16GB RAM and Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 1536 MB graphics card.

Am not really sure of what is exactly the problem, but I assume it would be great if you can select other parts of the rig right?
Then with your rig selected in the scene hierarchy, go in the properties panel, and then go to the rig part. Try using different type of viewport display settings.

You can also check if some bones aren't hidden in your scene hierarchy.
Please provide more info about your problem if it is not solved :)


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Animation changed when I push down to NLA track from Action Editor
I created a jump action in Action editor but when I push down to NLA track then it suddenly change the root bone change its rotation and hand stop moving

This is ss where I created Jump action

This is ss where I moved it to NLA editor and it change it's rotation and hand reset to it's original position

Hello, it's hard to guess, maybe share your file (only the armature and its action)?

@moonboots Thank u , will share file soon :)

@moonboots here it is

also attached in main question

Your root bone is rotated 0° in the jump action:

But it is rotated 90° in the walk action:

So it's normal that it rotates 90° when you switch from one to the other. The weird thing is that it should come back to 0° when it plays the jump action, even though the walk strip is set to Extrapolation > Hold. Maybe someone will understand, that said, to fix your problem, maybe simply change the Rotation of the jump action to 90° as well?

I try with changing root rotation it solve problem but it also changes loc. and rot of other bones too while moving to NLA . Look like there is mistake in animation may be , so I try with complete new file and reanimate jumping animation but this time it remain as it is while I move to NLA.
Can't figure out whats the problem with first jumping animation , it also changes hand IK to FK


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Inserting Grease Pencil keyframes duplicates previous keyframe
I'm pretty new to using Blender so this might just be a dumb mistake on my part, but I can't figure out what's going wrong. Whenever I insert a new keyframe in grease pencil, it is not blank, and it just duplicates whatever is in the keyframe before it. This suddenly started happening today and I can't figure out why. It's making animating very difficult.

Are you sure it didn’t used to do this?

It definitely didn't use to do this. Whenever I put in a new keyframe it would clear out the strokes of the previous one. If I wanted the same strokes to be in the next keyframe, I would duplicate it.

Perhaps you accidentally activated 'Use Additive Drawing'?

That is it! Thank you so much!


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Unable to get my smoke + fire Simulation to be of a realistic quality
I am currently working on a client's freelance project but have hit a wall with the smoke+Fire simulation/Mantaflow. I have been looking at all the youtube videos, forum posts and the like to help get the client's desired result. I want realistic rocket combustion that does look fuzzy or pixelated.
I've tried to change up my materials, settings and render engine but they only seem to make subtle differences and I'm just finding myself running out of options. I can't recall everything I have tried as I have tried for an embarrassingly long time but with any suggestions, I will know If I have tried them before hopefully, that doesn't cause problems.
Here is my file: https://mega.nz/file/JKZm0bQa#BixcS2BvxOuazb4lbo7gMJYxtc7Vo7_Jmkc74ZUoUBw
For some reason it won't let me upload images so here is a link to them:
https://i.sstatic.net/vJ0kc.jpg

did you watch Polyfjords fire/smoke simulation tutorial?

Image uploading fails with "Failed to upload image; an error occurred on the server" so you're not the only one with issues.

I did watch the Polyfjords fire/smoke simulation tutorial


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My Bool Tool doesn't work properly
I am trying to create a handguard for a gun but my bool tool doesn't work. If I try scaling the cubes up my cylinder disappears. I think something is wrong with my cylinder mesh but I don't know how to fix it. Can you help me?

You can start by recalculating the normals on the boolean mesh! Red means they're inverted. Select All in Edit mode and hit Shift-N then try again. Having said that, the top image appears to show that it's working as expected so what exactly is your problem? If it still doesn't work you'll need to share your Blend file: https://blend-exchange.com/help

Thanks for your answer but unfortunately flipping the normals doesn't do anything. I want to cut my cylinder deeper however I don't know why It doesn't work properly. I have uploaded my file but I have also sent the link here. https://blend-exchange.com/b/J3Bvb0sX/

can u pls provide a blend file with the bool modifier?

@Chris He's uploaded the Blend file. I suspect that part of the problem may be because he's trying to cut a cylinder created with an unapplied screw modifier, however it's still giving odd results even with the modifier applied to both cylinders. Not sure why he's not using a simple cylinder with one end scaled down slightly, but what do I know...

I have uploaded new file with bool tool. (link: https://blend-exchange.com/b/PePq40r7) I am trying to repeat work from https://www.artstation.com/learning/courses/OzX/introduction-concepting-in-blender/chapters/9eJ8/boolean-practice-handguard (timing 1:16) but I can't figure out where I made a mistake.

You need add subdivisions to your mesh (I subdivided it 5 times, but more is better) and also, for performance, you can activate the fast solver on boolean modifier.

Yeah, thanks. It's kinda working but I still can't figure out why it works so strangely.

good idea from Leonardo :) for me it worked with fast and 3 subdivisions:  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/Umgwy.jpg

for me - it sounds like a bug - you could try filing a bug report, but they might say "it only works with applied modifiers" but maybe worth a try ;)


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How to composite "moving texture" for oil painting or watercolor filter?
I am seeking an effect for composites that creates a moving texture noise, such as oil painting. For reference, see the example below:

or

Please don't forget to demonstrate pictures, gifs, or upload blends files. to make it easy to understand.

Have you tried literally painting three pages with watercolor, scanning them and overlaying them as an image sequence over your render? You could also use a scaled up noise texture set in 4D to animate through time. The first reference you show almost looks like a denoised render with not enough samples for the denoising to make a clear result.

I'm actually a beginner, I don't know much on create this, can you help me?

Denoising Exploit
A cheap but not very controllable way could be to exploit the looks of a denoised render when there's too much noise. Basically, do all you can to make the denoiser do the worse possible result : lots of noise and too few pixels to work with.
Lower your rendering resolution, as well as your samples.
Set the denoiser to OptiX as it tends to perform worse than OpenImageDenoise at lower samples, you can even set the passes to "None" to "help" him doing a worse result.

It produces weird shapes. If your render is even more complex than mine with geometry everywhere, it should be even more visible. The first example you show really looks like what can happen with that method.
Blurred noise in compositor:
I was about to advise that answer, but it looks like textures are really broken now in Blender, so let's do even simpler:
Find a form of animated noise on the web, may it be a video or a GIF.
In the compositor, enable "use nodes" in the header. Drag and drop your noise file in there. Depending on the one you got, you can already multiply it with your render layer by pressing Shift A > Color > Mix, and plug in there your render layer in the first image, then your noise texture, set the mode to multiply and play with the factor.
You can also add a Color > Color Ramp to adapt the darkness of the noise, a Distort > Transform node to scale the noise up, and a Filter > Blur node to blur it up. Pretty much as follows:


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How can I remove this indentation
There's a little indent that's showing up in my model. Here's what it looks like.

That part is in the middle of a line of vertices that seem like they are all the same, but this is the only place that has the indent.
Here's what Edit Mode looks like:

All the blue lines have a Mean Bevel Weight of 1.
When I look at the mode in Object Mode, it shows the indent

I've applied Rotation and Scale. And Reversed Normals.
The problem seems to be something with the Subsurface modifier. If I turn it off, the issue goes away.
Any ideas of what to try?

It's too hard to tell from just that one angle, but likely either duplicate verticies (merge by distance to solve) or the side faces.


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Slow render with RTX 3060
I'm following the earth tutorial by Andrew Price.
I'm rendering one single image that is now taking 33 min, and it's only at 9% rendering...
He rendered one image in 14 seconds.
My graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 which I also ticked in "Preferences" with CUDA. In the render settings, I chose GPU Compute (rendering with Cycles). I'm aware he's using a better GPU, but still, I figured RTX 3060 should be strong enough to render this scene. I have already tried with OptiX, but there's no difference.
By changing the Feature Set from "Experimental" to "Supported" it does render a bit faster. Experimental is chosen in the tutorial to enable Adaptive Subdivision (which I thought should actually speed up render time and not slow it down).
Thank you in advance

Hello, could you [edit] your question with a screenshot of your render settings?

Actually Adaptive Subdivision is not making it faster. It is creating displacement (but based on pixel resolution instead of geometry, to put it simple) which has to be computed. If you have displacment on your model relying on Adaptive Subdivision and you switch to Supported, then this feature and the displacement is gone, so there's less to compute which makes the render faster. Would you mind showing the other render settings under Sampling as well, like Noise Threshold, Max Samples etc.?

I have updated the post, thank you!

In addition to Gordon's comment, in the provided screenshot you're using CUDA rendering instead of OptiX, and having both the GPU and CPU selected means you're using Hybrid Rendering, which may or may not be slower.

I think that just solved the issue. I removed the CPU and switched to OptiX. I thought CUDA was the way to go, thank you so much!

@FranziskaG Oh, good to know - I didn't actually think of that although it's the same for me, too. I couldn't test it when I wrote my comment, but now back at home I have the same GPU as you have, but a worse CPU. So at home I switch off the CPU because it slows down the render compared to just GPU. At work I have the same CPU as you, but a bad GPU. There I use both and it speeds up the render, so I thought the combination of your CPU and your GPU wouldn't be a problem.

There're 2 problems of your Cycles rendering devices:

In most of cases, don't enable CPU in Cycles rendering devices
Use OptiX for NVIDIA GeForce 20/30 series because 20/30 series supports hardware ray tracing. This will accelerate rendering process a lot.

And you should check your render settings. 4096 sampling is not necessary unless there's massive noise when rendering. So you have to set high sampling numbers to save details when denoising.

"In most of cases, don't enable CPU in Cycles rendering devices" Why and do you have data on this?

I have seen some problems in your settings. First of all a laptop rtx 3060 is quite slow compared to desktop counter part, and in case of Andrew Price, he uses four 3090s in NVlink.
Next you using hybrid rendering which in most cases slows down the render time.
Also use optix instead of cuda with only gpu selected.
Also use denoiser with optix (not openimagedenoiser) in which case u can higher the noise threshold to 0.2 or something and get a good result.
Bonus, you can check in camera settings render only selected


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Indent Guideline in Text Editor
Does the text editor have a feature that shows the indentation of the code? If it does, that would be nice to know.

No, it does not. If you want to get into python development in Blender I can highly recommend the Blender Development extension for Visual Studio. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=JacquesLucke.blender-development

That's nice info. I'll check it out.

An addon is doing that.

You can find it here. It seems to work well in 4.0.

That's pretty ace

It works great, Thanks.


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Subdivision Mesh Color
Editing vertices, faces and edges becomes difficult post subdivision. While I understand I can toggle off the subdivision during editing, it would be beneficial (to me) to be able to change the theme of the generated subdivision mesh as to decipher between it and the object's original mesh.
TL;DR: Is it possible to change the subdivision generated mesh color?

You can change "wire" or "wire edit" colors in the preferences:

To clarify, "wire edit" is the color for the editable part of the mesh.
For instance pink here (as this color does not or few overlap with others):

I never knew...  I often switch on wireframe display while modelling so I can see modifier effects.. but then, without this distinction, I have to double-take to see which mode I'm in. very helpful

To clarify: Is this same colour for all edges in that mode...rather than  a different colour for original vs modifier generated edge.


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How to draw a polygon

How can I draw polygons that connect the domes as shown in the image?

you can also check my answer here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/305056/rounded-dice-why-do-the-simplest-things-seem-so-difficult

Probably just start from simple Cube and Bevel Vertex (Ctrl+Shift+B) ... ?

Add UV Sphere, delete bottom half and merge by Bridge Tool ...

Hi, vkl.. Beat me to it! :)  .. Maybe elaborate this with (Shape: 0.5, Clamp Overlap, and Merge by Distance) ? The sort of thing we might take for granted, but  beginner-readers would not.

Hi Robin :) Sorry, You are right, maybe later ... OP probably needs corner edge (like I tried before https://imgur.com/LqQiLZz but it doesnt end with a tip at bottom ...) so I wanted to wait, since my answer can be wrong.

True. Topo not great. Then there would be  getting a perfect circle on the top as another step, or calculation. You're ahead of me, as usual :)

Thanks for the reply, I'm late replying due to the PC replacement process. My apologies. I was able to make it the way you showed me. Thank you very much.

Starting with two cubes quarters, that can be something around this:

using, mirror on X/Y and a subdivision.
 Blender 4.0

Thanks for the reply, I've been working on replacing my PC and have delayed my reply. My apologies. I didn't know there was such a way. I hadn't thought of it. Thank you very much.


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Only part of image is rendered
So I am trying to render an image with a resolution of 5000px X 2500px
(I have cleared render region) But it still only renders a part of the image (see screenshot) Does anyone know what I am doing wrong?
Render engine : Cycles

Have you cleared the render region in the view you were in when defining it?

What do you mean? I am in camera view and then selected under view > view regions > clear render region. Or is that wrong?

ok, it was just to be sure you cleared it in the camera view.

ah thnx no I was hoping it was that

is this finished render in F12(render image) or viewport? Or is it running and not finished render?

The screenshot is just started but I finshed it yesterday and it was when finished the same .

Whe I try to render it smaller it does show orange borders, but I just cannot find where to undo that)

Go to Render settings (right panel), scroll down and find Performance and under Memory do you have Use Tiling checked? If yes, it means that it renders in default tiles 20482048, your image is 50002500 which means that it renders your image in 6 tiles, try to turn it off if it will render whole image

yes! thats it THANKS! :)

keep in mind that those tiles have purpose, it is generally known that if you render with CPU it is better to use many small tiles and if you are using GPU you want to render image whole or in a few big tiles, many people don't know about this possibility in settings and figure it only if they render something bigger than 2048*2048


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I want to compine these two bsdf perfectly the first one including diffuse of the orange text, the second one is for metal wear
as you can see I want to merge these too perfectly

Hello it's not clear what you mean by combine, maybe elaborate a bit?

i mean mixing, i want to mix these too, my English is bad sorry ;(

You can use a black and white image as mask between the 2 materials (plug it in the Factor input of the Mix Shader), you'll need to unwrap and scale and move your UVs so that the text is correctly placed:

yeah, I figured it out,i used the same text texture and made a mask out of it, thanks!


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Texture in edit and object view is a jumbled mess, in cycles render it looks correct
As title states, so far cross fingers my model looks ok with texture applied in cycles render view. However it recently became a mess of texture, all mixed around, scaled wrong, parts missing in object 3d view or edit 3d view! The uv editor space, the texture and UV map are fine and unchanged. I haven't changed the UVs since working on the texture.
I previously was working with the same image size in photoshop that I exported UVs png from Blender. I was saving back to that same png file name, until most recently I decided to work on an enlarged psd file for adding more texture detail. I than saved a flattened version of that to the same png file name as before, but went with a larger image size for that png. Then when I tried to load the image into UV editor and the node as well under image texture node, the object view became the mess I'm describing. What's worse is all the previous files have the same scrambled mess texture in object mode even though they are calling back to older png files that worked fine before! I opened them up and without making any changes, the textures also are a mess. Is this a graphics card issue or some setting in Blender I have to reset in nodes or something? I'm using cycles render and nodes.

Can post the .blend? (pack the images via the File->Export data menu) https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ Also try Ctrl+A and applying any Transforms, scale, translate, rotate.

Apparently the texture looks ok now. I shut down the computer last night, restarted this morning in safe mode to try and clear out some stuff, than started up again as usual, opened the project folder and looks like object/edit views are now back to projecting texture correctly.

I can see about posting it if I get more bugs occurring, and I may need to try to get the latest version downloaded in a bit to make sure I avoid certain issues. Thanks!


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How to regular-subdivide an irregular edged flat surface in Blender
I want to break a surface into pieces of square shapes like in the image below. How do I do that?
The blue is a mesh surface with one face (object) and the squares are a subdivided mesh.

Thanks

Is the blue shape an object or a background image?

The blue is a mesh object (face). The lines are also a subdivided plane.

Does this help? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/91158/how-to-divide-a-face-into-a-square-grid/91162#91162

Thank you Ray. it was a great help. I am not just that pro in Blender, but I am getting there.

Ray - When I did the knief project tool, the cust through was not as perfect. Any idea?


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Rendering with OpenGL in Blender does not show the intended rendered image or animation
I am trying to render animations and images fast using the OpenGL feature in Blender but even though I want it to render a fully rendered image or animation, it only renders the solid image, or the material image, or texture or wireframe. Basically it renders in every other way except the rendered type I want.
Please help me see what I do wrong.
Here are some screenshots.
The first is how i want it rendered.
The second is how it actually renders when I press the little camera icon, NOT what I want.
The 3rd is to compare, I want a wireframe render
And the 4th shows the wireframe render, exactly how is supposed to be.
Please help!

First render isn't Open GL. It is a viewport/preview render, which is basically final render with less number of samples. You currently have 100 samples for final render and 32 for preview, less samples means faster rendering but also noisier.


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Hair dynamics sends particles flying when mesh moves
I'm trying to use dynamic hair for an animation, but every time I turn it on, the hair warps, then "explodes" when the mesh is moved. It doesn't get any better when I try to bake the dynamics into the system. I'm completely at a loss as to what could be the cause. Any and all help will be much appreciated. I've attached the .blend file, in case anyone wanted to tinker with it.
Edit: I've updated the blend file to better showcase the problem, as I've removed the armature entirely, and the problem is still there.

I Know this is an old post. but what i did to fix this problem was,

Duplicate the particle system causing the issue
Disable or delete original(weight map should still be applied from duplicating.)

and my problem was fixed.

Make sure the armature is above the particle system in the modifier panel
And go back to the frame where you begin caching
Or bake the hair dynamics

It is. Could the weights somehow be affecting the hair?

Make sure the armature is above the particle system in the modifier panel

It is above the amature, but the thing is, when I completely removed the armature, vertex groups, etc, I had the exact same problem. One thing that did fix the problem was completely removing and re-adding a new hair particle system, but it took me about a week to make that fur, so I'd really hate to lose all of that work.


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Uploading an object from Blender to UE4 looks different
so I have created this ak-47 mesh using blender

and when I try to export it to UE4 it looks like this(I exported it as a .fbx file so I don't think this is the problem)
As you can see for some reason the parts that are white in blender works fine but the parts that are grey are not.
when I crated this ak I first built it as a one object and then separated it to 4 different objects so I would be able to add different materials to each part later and I think this might be the problem somehow.
I'm new to blender and this is the first time I try to crate something without a tutorial so this might be a very stupid problem but I couldn't figure it out so thank you for the help :)

your normals seems inverted. Turn on backface culling in 3D view in blender and try CTRL+N

Your mesh seems to have very poor topology

I experienced this same problem. Open Blender and go into edit mode by clicking Tab. Then you need to select all the faces, and use Ctrl-N to recalculate the faces' normals. Finally click that thing that looks like a wrench and click solidify. By doing that you're making every face solid like a room and that should work.


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What does the "Absolute" setting in the Math node do?
The documentation is a little unclear.
"Always return non-negative value from any operation input 2 between input 1."
https://www.blender.org/manual/render/blender_render/materials/nodes/types/converter.html
I'd expect the node to ignore the second value altogether, and just give you the absolute value of whatever you piped into the left side. But it's not clear how this node deals with two values. Does it ignore the non-piped value? Does it ignore the second value, regardless? Does it give you whichever input is non-negative? How does it handle two inputs? What "operation" is performed between the two inputs?
What does the "Absolute" setting actually do?

The Absolute mode is similar to the mathematics $\left\vert X \right\vert$ operator. Any negative value is turned positive.
The 2nd input on the node is meaningless and has no effect at all (thanks Carlo for checking this out in Blender's source code).
Below is an example that illustrates the mode. The image has values in the interval $[0, 1]$ (black to white). The first math node multiplies everything by $-1$, thus turning the interval to $[-1, 0]$. Everything that equals or is smaller than $0$ is rendered black, so the image turns black.
When you plug this into the absolute node, all negative numbers are turned positive, and the image is displayed again.

From a quick look at the source code https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/master/source/blender/nodes/shader/nodes/node_shader_math.c$219 it seems to me too that the second input (b) is not take into account. The result (r) is just the abs of the first input (a).