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What's the most fun way to make a Snowman in Blender? ❄❄❄

Previous challenge: What's the most fun way to create a fork in Blender??

Winter is here, and I'm trying to build a snowman.
But my Blender freezes after the first snowball! (is it because of the ice?)
There's gotta be a better way!
How would YOU build a snowman?
Use shaders, particles, python, geometry nodes, simulations or even your very own kitchen blender.
And please make it fun, I'm a millenial and have a really short attention span :))

Damn I missed your happy mood around here

Bah humbug! Question should be closed as opinion based! :^))

I wish I were any good with the Molecular addon...

And this made it to HNQ

Here's another just for the Geometry Nodes.  :)

The main part of the body is here:

click to enlarge
The idea for the body is to scatter points on the input mesh, and then remesh using the points to volume node. From there, it is simply assembly from instances and curve primitive nodes.
Here is the hat:

click to enlarge
In 3.1 the curve parameter seems to have been replaced by spline parameter.
Here are the rest of the frames that complete the node tree:

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge
And this is the complete tree.

click to enlarge
Here's the file to play with:

niiiiiiiiiiiiiice!!! +1

Had no idea geometry nodes were this advanced :). Thanks for adding the screenshots and explanation, now this answer is genuinely the most useful :)

Let's use collision and cloth (hard I know, but please try to follow!)
Let's make this random thing:

Add your settings like pressure, friction, stickiness, and eureka!

Now you have a base for a snowman that only works at frame 58... Oh wait...
Oh no, he is depressed :(((

Maybe add some snow and he will be happy again ... too much work for me

love that depressed one.... +1

Nothing like a depressed snowman with no eyes to make my day brighter!

eyeballs or limbs are too hard, that's why annotation exists (true facts)

Congrats for getting the most upvotes on your snowman-building skills :)) +500 points for you, well deserved :))

I knew that depression can win it xD Thank you so much for this Christmas gift @JachymMichal !

The Abomitaball Snowman
A glowing abomination straight from Chernobyl.

Made from a series of metaballs plus a particle system emitting metaballs from a hidden mesh

Shape the static part of your snowman with a few metaballs
Add a mesh emitter object roughly shaped like your snowman body. You can optionally make it from a copy of your metaball base and convert it to mesh to use as emitter.
Add a simple particle system with Newtonian Physics, pointing to an additional smaller sized Metaball object.
Under Velocity turn off Normal and increase Object Z slightly.
In the Field Weights disable gravity so they "float up", then add
a texture to it.

Make the texture is Blend type, and turn off all influences except
Size.
Switch Mapping to Strand/Particle so it maps out "through time"
rather than any spatial coordinate.
Under the Color panel enable the Color Ramp and flip the default
result direction so they shrink with age rather than grow.

OK I'll admit - a glowing sublimating snowman was NOT on my bingo card this year :D

Yummy meatballs.

Lately I find myself tired with all those mouse clicks to add a sphere, and duplicate it 2 times, it's just so much work... So I just type some code, like this instead:
C.area.type='VIEW_3D';o=bpy.ops.object;a=D.objects;c=a[1];c.select_set(1);o.shade_smooth();d=o.duplicate;m=c.modifiers.new('','SUBSURF');m.levels=3;d();b=a[2];b.location.z=-1.6;b.scale*=1.5;d();b=a[3];b.location.z-=2;b.scale*=1.5;d();b=a[4];m=b.modifiers.new('','MIRROR');m.mirror_object=c;m.use_axis=0>1,1>0,1<0;m=D.materials[1];m.diffuse_color=[2]*4;m=m.copy();b.active_material=m;b.location=[.5]*3;m.diffuse_color=0,0,0,1;b.scale/=10;[exec('d();b=a[i+5];b.scale=[.1]*3;b.location=Vector((2,sin(i/2),-cos(i/2))).normalized()*.8')for i in range(5)]
Ctrl + C Copy it, in Blender in a new project (with default cube) press Shift + F4, then Ctrl + V to paste, Enter, done.
As requested by Jachym Michal on behalf of phone users and exceptionally lazy people, an image (click to reveal; please, instead just copy-paste the code once at home):

 it's also a more readable and interactive version:

Thanks maaaan, now I can have a default creepy snowman instead of a cube :D

@JachymMichal I thought about it, figured it would spoil a surprise - fortunately there's a spoiler feature on SE!

@cocomac thanks for edit, I used to write pluses in key combos, but then I saw others on BSE not use them, with the shortcuts still being readable (maybe even more), so I found the pluses redundant. According to a meta discussion both are fine. As for the code formatting change, I reverted it, because unlike usual code it's a very long oneliner, so single backticks make it easier to read and copy to clipboard.

Nice spoiler free edit ;)

The best part of this answer is that when you upvote, the tooltip is "This answer is useful"

you've got to pump it up...cloth simulation with pressure

and I love how the head pops up at the end :D

Go to pixabay.com -> search for snowman -> download image
Then use this node setup:

Is this the cheapest and worst solution ever? Yeah
Was this the fastest answer? Yeah

+1 for the cheapest but definitely fastest answer :))

cmon man, you could at least give it alpha and cut the black color

@MikoCG He's waiting for a bounty to do that ;)

@MikoCG: if i would have done that...it won't be the cheapest anymore... ;)

Ummmm.. WAY too much work. You could just have drag-and-dropped the image into the workspace.

@Robin Don't give that man any ideas...

i could spent money and let someone else do the snowman for me..... :D

@Chris Yes! .. But I warn you.. I'm expensive.

@RobinBetts : how much?

i like where this is going...

@Chris .. All that dragging-and-dropping doesn't come cheap.

Let's make it hyper realistic
Start with 2 cubes
Switch to front view and change the studio light

Add relistic arms and hand

This is the tricky part (face and belly) be careful

And don't forget the scarf and hat

Not even ILM can handle this level of detail
Happy Holidays to all :)

and now turn it around xD

Love the mittens and scarf, that snowman has class ;)

I can't really tell if it's a render or a photo at the last one.

_________Under pressure !!!!!!

I reversed it to make it look like melting, but didn't turn quite right :) https://imgur.com/FeTRGNP

Ohh... a bouncy anti stress snowball :)) Perfect!

Softbody solution with collision:

Here's my lazy way with a few modifiers from the default cube.

What a great start to my fully procedural Christmas! :)

I was thinking about an array solution, but setting it up as modifiers only and using mask and screws instead of to sphere cast for extra roundness is a nice touch. :)

Minimalistic Animation nodes solution:

If you can use less nodes, let me know. I am happy to learn ...!!

Maybe... a quote approach... I don't remember if it is from Ton or someone else?

I have to show this to my girlfriend. We both love The Little Prince. Thank you Lemon, this is really sweet :)

@JachymMichal, so... romantic ; )

i know you too well lemon, you just want to ruin the moment :D

are you really pushing me to talk about cats @JachymMichal ??

no. just no. not today! this challenge is about snowmen!

Like many things Blender related, the "man" portion of this has already been built and released to the internet under a CC0 license.
Thanks to lsmft - https://www.blendswap.com/blend/8395

It is then trivial to craft a snow.

And apply a coat of snow to the base mesh with a Particle System.

That's the gigachad of snowmen ⛄

Geometry nodes solution:

I am sure, it is possible with less nodes. Robin will show us ;)

You're really covering all the bases with your answers here :D

Nope - I didn’t provide a shader nodes solution - and no sverchok….and no rigid body…

I decided to make mine with a python script and using the real_snow addon that comes with blender, turned out really well I think.
I'm planning to make this into my first blender addon called "Snowman Generator". I'm just learning to make blender addons right now.
Fun contest, thanks!

cool... you should eventually share you code! +1

I will throw it on github once its done for sure

Ummm... Yeah, looks "slightly" better than my Python Snowman...


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Link multiple planes through edges extrution
I have a series of planes along the line but I don't know the position of the vertices of each plane. What I want to do is link the planes to each other through the edge extrusion. I try to do that using the code below:
import bpy
import bmesh

# Check if the object exists
section_1 = bpy.data.objects["Plane"]
section_2 = bpy.data.objects["Plane.001"]
# Ensure we're in object mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

# Set the active object
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = section_1
section_1.select_set(True)

# Switch to edit mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

# Create a BMesh from the object's mesh
bm1 = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(section_1.data)
bm2 = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(section_2.data)

for vertex in bm2.vertices:
    vertex_coords = vertex.co
print(f"verteces positions are {vertex_coords}")
# Select all edges in the mesh
for edge in bm1.edges:
    edge.select = True

# Extrude the selected edges
bpy.ops.mesh.extrude_region_move(
    MESH_OT_extrude_region={"use_normal_flip": False, "use_dissolve_ortho_edges": False, "mirror": False},
    TRANSFORM_OT_translate={
        "value": (20, 0, 0),  # Move in the x direction
        "orient_type": 'GLOBAL',
        "constraint_axis": (True, False, False),  # Constrain to the X-axis
        "snap": True,
        "snap_elements": {'VERTEX'},
    }
)

# Deselect all edges after extrusion
for edge in bm1.edges:
    edge.select = False

# Update the mesh and return to object mode
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(section_1.data)
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

The code is concerned with the easiest case. Thank you in advance!

Hello, it's really hard to understand what this script does. Could you add a screenshot of your setup and another with an example of what you want to achieve ?

@Gorgious as shown in the figure I have that series of planes, I want to link the edges with each other to build a solid in an automatic way

I don't know python, but you can't link the edges of individual objects without first joining them all together into a single object using Ctrl-J.

@JohnEason in this case, how does it work?

How does what work? - As I said, I don't know python but using normal modelling, selecting two planes in Blender and going into Edit mode you will not be able to merge the vertices from the two planes even though they are both editable. They still remain seperate objects and I assume the same would apply if you tried to 'link' them using python.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Is there a way to refine 3d camera track created by lidar?
There are some wonderful apps that can capture 3d camera tracking data using the Iphone's lidar sensor. However occasionally there is jitter or sliding in these camera tracks.
So, In the scene I have camera, background video and lidar scanned 3d scene. (no tracking points)
I was wondering if there is a way to refine the imported 3d camera track using the background video and the readily available accurate 3d scan of the scene.
(If only I could click some points in the background video and corresponding points in the 3d scan and say the camera keep the overall 3d track but fix it so these points do not move away from each other)

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


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Copy and pasting wont work in animation. Not even duplicate

I have duplicated, copy and pasted (ctrl C and V and It wont work at all. I have even restarted my program mutiple times. Am I doing it wrong?
Here is the copy of the blnd file

Hello could you please share your file? https://blend-exchange.com/

Yes of course! I'll make an edit of that right now

You have only created a keyframe for the X rotation, you need to create a keyframe for Y and Z if you want to keep the same orientation, otherwise it will get the Y and Z rotation of the previous pose:


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Use Empty (Location, Rotation, Scale) as a Driver to drive a Shader Node using Scripting
I would like to use an Empty object as a Driver (Location, Rotation, Scale) to drive a "Mapping Node" or any other Shader nodes using Scripting. I know how to do this manually with drivers, but i want the drivers to be added with Scripting.
So to be clear, the idea is that when you click on "Run Script": drivers need to be added automatically to location, rotation, scale of the Mapping node in Shader Editor. And the Driver have to be an empty or any other Object.

Hello and welcome. Please don't write in all caps in the title or body of any posts, it is the written equivalent of shouting, is harder to read and may be considered rude. Please use the [edit] button below the post to change your text into regular case.

Although i'd recommend using drivers for that, transfering values can also easily be done through scripts - the important part is correctly identifying the node to access.
#read values from the empty
source_empty_name = "SourceEmpty"
source_empty = bpy.data.objects[source_empty_name]

location = source_empty.location
rotation = source_empty.rotation_euler
scale = source_empty.scale

# identify the mapping node of your material
target_material_name = "DynamicMapping"
target_material = bpy.data.materials.get(target_material_name)

target_node_name = "MappingPython"
target_node_type = "MAPPING"

for node in target_material.node_tree.nodes:
    if node.type == target_node_type and node.label == target_node_name:
        # set values
        node.inputs["Location"].default_value = location
        node.inputs["Rotation"].default_value = rotation
        node.inputs["Scale"].default_value = scale

This requires assigning the right names to your empty, the material, and the mapping node.

The downside of using a script is that you have to manually trigger it if you want the node to update. There are ways to trigger it on updates, but this is not a "clean" way.

Hi Ismir Egal, thank you so much for helping. It seems to work for you, so i must did something wrong. I named the Empty: "SourceEmpty". The material name: "DynamicMapping". The mapping node: "MappingPython" and the mapping node label: "MappingPython". Please tell me what i'm doing wrong. I will update my question with a picture of what i have done.

Also, when i a run the script, there was no drivers added to the location, rotation, scale of the Mapping node(MappingPython).

Finally your Script works, but it doesn't update when i move the empty. I was expecting drivers to be added automatically in the mapping node in location, rotation, scale. But i learned something new from your script that i didn't know was possible. Do you know how to add drivers to the mapping node using an empty as a driver? The reason why it is so important to what i'm trying to do is simply because in Shader Editor there's no node that can do what "Object info" in Geometry node can do; meaning bring location, rotation, scale of any object to the Shader Editor. Thank you again.

What you describe is the right way to do it: You can just right-click the fields inside the mapping node and hit 'add driver'. You need to set the 'type' field to match the field you're editing, then you can use the eyedropper to select the empty as a source. This has to be done for all 9 fields, but gives much better results than using a script:  tiny example file

Thank you Ismir Egal for your answer.


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Problem getting the Fiber Mesh addon to work
I am new to blender so please go easy on me if I'm being a bit stupid here.  I am trying to apply the Fiber Mesh (bounce fiber) addon to a mesh in Blender.  I have followed every step in a couple of different tutorials but nothing appears in my 3D viewport, and I just wondered if there was something obvious I'm doing wrong / not doing?  Here's what I've done:
Installed Addon (pretty confident this is fine)
Added a new mesh cube
Converted object to a Bounce Fiber object (under object properties panel -> bounce fibers)
Ticked the 'use selection' box (under object properties panel -> bounce fibers)
Changed the number of bounces to 600
At this point, I had hoped that when I hide the mesh (fiber_cube) in the scene collection I would see the curves underneath, but there is nothing there.  There are also no sub-branches of the fiber_cube object.
However, if I go into the 'blender file' under display mode, and click 'curves' I see a curve named 'cu_fiber_cube_000000'.  If I drag this into my 3D viewport, it creates a new object in my current layer but still nothing is visible.
A few other things:  I'm in Object Mode throughout, in Global View, and on the Layout tab.  I have tried it with the same results in Blender 2.8 and Blender 2.9.
If anyone can shed any light on this I'd be really grateful!
Rich

please provide your blend file

Hi, I have added a link at the bottom of the original post.  I hope it works - please let me know if I haven't done it correctly!

ok, looks like it does not work in the newest blender version anymore... :(

Thanks Chris, do you know which is the latest version that it works in, and if it's possible to download this version anywhere?

unfortunately i don't know...i tried it with 3 version (the latest ones), none of them worked for me...

Thanks a lot for looking into this Chris - really appreciate your time.  I just found a mirror for the download of 2.80 and it worked, so hopefully if anybody else needs it this can be a work around!  Thanks again.

so i am happy for u that it works now!


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Apply texture/ structure to a plane with an image
I'm pretty new to blender and this might a simple question but I couldn't find exactly what I needed online, at least not with my keywords. How do I add an extra texture/ structure to a plane that got an image on it?
I got a wine bottle with a paper label, but of course this label isn't perfectly smooth and on top it should be made of some natural paper with some structure (fibers etc.).
But how can I apply this texture/ structure without overriding my original "texture" (label image).
I tried a texture into the displacement input of the Material Output, but this didn't really work as I expected it.
Texture:

Nodes:

Result (with current setup):

Quick example (made in Photoshop) what I want it to look like. Bottom original, top how I want it:

The simplest way to put an image as the texture of a plane is using the import images as planes add on. Go to edit, preferences, add-ons and search images as planes. Click the checkbox next to the add on and close the preferences window. Now, press ShiftA to add to scene. Then, in the mesh menu there should be an option image as plane. Select that option, and choose your image. Please upvote and mark as accepted answer if this helps.
EDIT
Based on what you are asking, instead of putting the texture into the displacement slot, you should add a mix node, connect that to the surface slot, put the current Principled BSDF node into the top slot and add a second Principled BSDF node with the image texture there. Fiddle with the alpha slider until it looks how you want.
I'm on my phone right now, so I cannot guarantee that this answer will work. I will edit this response if this doesn't help, and I'll get onto my computer to test the answer first. However, if this helps, then you're welcome :).

Thanks. But thats what I already got. My label is imported like this. But on top of this I would like to give this label/plane/ image some structure by adding another texture to it

I'm not understanding what you mean my 'structure' and 'texture'. I can probably help if you clarify your intent a little bit.

I got the plane with my label as image on it. It looks like perfect white without any issues or "texture" on it. So I want it to another image on top of it with 50% opacity for example so the white gets some fibers on it

I added another picture to preview my needs.

I just edited my answer to help

This is missing some screenshots, and preferably the images you are using as textures, but thankfully the problem is rather simple. Material nodes allow you to use SEVERAL textures in various ways for the material.
If the fiber texture is plain black and white, change its color space from sRGB to Non-Color Data, pipe it into the Height input of a Displacement node from the Vector category, then pipe the vector from that into the Displacement thing on the Shader Output node. Note that you will have to turn the Displacement strength down quite a bit in all likelihood.
If the fiber texture isn’t black and white, you might still get away with it, but… well, is it a normal map or just an image of fibers? It all depends.
For more information, see The Blender Manual -> Rendering -> Shader Nodes.

Thank you. I will add some screenshots now. But I think the displacement nod already does the trick. I directly put the texture node into the Displacement of the Material Output node.

I added the screenshots and the texture. It's kind of working. But how can I make that texture finer and scale it down? I tried a Texture Coordinate into a Mapping into the Image Texture Node to make use out of the "seamlessness" (?). But it was kind of weird.

One more thing (sorry for the spam). I actually don't really need a displacement. All I need is just the fiber texture overlaying my label and mix it together somehow

@jona ok, that is much better. In this case, I might use the MixRGB node set to Multiply.


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Speed up Intel denoise
Currently I'm rendering on cpu, because at the time of writing it's faster for me (tested it a few times).
I know this is kind of bad and I should get a better gpu, but well, currently it's not possible to buy the 3080 that I want.
So I'm stuck with rendering on my Ryzen 9 5900X instead on my GTX 1060 (I know that this card is a bottleneck for me).
Also to notice, I'm pretty new to blender. But what I noticed while rendering on CPU is, that the Intel Denoiser is applied after a tile got rendered. But only with a single core.
Maybe this isn't such big of a problem when I render on GPU, because in the meantime the CPU can put all it's power into denoising.
But is there a way to let this run multithreadded?
For example my remaining render time at the beginning was 20min, and round about this time it was finished. But now it's denoising (40min in) and I would say it's just 2/3 finished. So it would totally take 60 instad of 20min for my render.
Is it because I don't have an Intel CPU?
Maybe somebody could assist me with this.
Thank you very much
Here you can see that 23 threads are rendering the image and 1 thread (tile) is denoising.

Which denoiser have you activated? (https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/178257/type-of-denoiser-built-into-blender/178330#178330) You mentioned the "Intel denoise" but have a Ryzen CPU? The 'Intel OpenImageDenoise' requires an Intel CPU. When you enable denoise in the Cycles options then only 1 thread (tile) is used for denoising. When you have a Interl CPU then you can use the compositor node setup with the denoise node and the whole image is processed at once.

I got the OpenImageDenoise activated. And I was wondering why it‘s working because yeah, it‘s not an Intel CPU. What should I use for good denoising with AMD?

@Blunder OIDN doesn't require an Intel CPU. You can either use the denoise node or enable it in Render Properties > Sampling > Denoising > Render.

@RobertGützkow I just enabled it where you said. Is that a disadvantage over the node? I tested it again today. After 30min the render was completed, time remaining was on 7min (didn't go down) and it took 45min more to denoise, because only one tile was used for denoising.

@RobertGützkow oh, you're right. I confused it. The CPU must support SSE4.1, Ryzen CPUs do this.

@jona try the node. On my PC it's a bit faster than the render setting. I'm surprised that denoise takes so long for you. My render times are several minutes but denoise takes only a few seconds. Maybe my scenes are too simple? I'll try one of the official demo files.

I didn't notice a significant slow down with denoising either and I didn't notice a trailing single tile that would denoise in current versions of Blender.

Well, yeah yesterday I tried with official files and had no slowdown there. Can I upload my file here so you can check it maybe? I can upload later after work.

I posted another question here with the file I'm talking about attached to. https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/210383/speed-up-my-rendertimes-in-cycles


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Cycles Transparent BSDF - Minimal Value
Is there a minimum value for transparency of the Transparent BSDF?
I try to make a physical simulation using the Transparent BSDF of Cycles.
Therefore I am converting decibel values to percentage and apply these as Color Input into the Transparent BSDF, e.g. 10dB loss==0.1 transparency, 20dB==0.01 transparency. See image below.
This works great until a hard boundary at 50dB==0.000010 transparency.
Any input value below 0.000010 (50dB) results in total absorption, i.e., full opacity.
Is this a known rounding error or maybe a bit depth resolution problem of the shader?
Thank you for any hints.
Best Regards

Float algebra in Blender is single precision, so 10^{-5} is very close to the round off value.

Thank you for the fast comment. I thought in that direction. Is there an approach to overcome this issue? For rendering / baking i can use float32 values, is there a similar thing for shader "configuration" values?

Have you thought of keeping a linear relation between dB and color? Yeah, might not be physically accurate, but maybe it's enough for visualization? Or you could try to increase your range by taking a square root or using another power.

Since the goal is precise rendering of physical effects, this is a major issue. Not only a visualization problem.

"precise rendering of physical effects"? There is no such thing. At all. Doesn't exist. In any field or in any software. So you will have trouble if that's the goal you have in your mind. It only ever gets precise enough if you are lucky. Choose a higher number to represent lower values maybe, like what you would do with scene units - if you need to work with nanometers, you use Unit Scale and set 1 scene unit to represent 1 nanometer or micrometer instead of a meter and gain precision in scales that matter to you.

Not sure if my fictional example makes sense - who would need to work in nanometers?.. Anyway, if you are making a planet, you scale the units to match kilometers or hundreds of kilometers. That might happen.


text:
Why Is My Weight Painting Black?
I can't paint this model. My weight painting is Black. Why?

This is my file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_VHAp8aFk5-p522MYeaY93SwWz_b5udG/view?usp=sharing
i cannot make or brush this to blue

It looks like you can weight paint as we can see red as well, black means 0 weight if you have enabled the option in the Weight Paint Overlays panel, but maybe share your file so that we can check?

Where are two parts in your question.
Why my Weights are black?
This is actually answered by moonbots, You have zero weights option enabled:

But it is not affect on why you can't paint. It just shows points with 0 weight, so that you can easily distinguish between 0.01 and 0 (It is important sometimes)
Why I can't paint?
This is because of brush settings. You have selected Add mode, in this case it can only add weight. But your weight is 0, so it is nothing to add. In this case, you should change brush to Mix mode:

Mix mode is the most common brush for painting weight, so I don't recommend you to change it, unless you definitely know what you are doing.
Wait, I still can't paint
Sure. This is because auto-normalize option is on. In this case, you can't remove weight if this weight is used only in this vertex group. Auto-normalize ensures that all deforming vertex groups add up to 100% while painting. When this option is turned off, then all weights of a vertex can have any value between 0 and 100%. However, when the option is on, in one vertex group it can add up to 100% only if it is 100%.

i can not find weight paint overlays icon

oh i see it, but i did this for the first steps but is not working :/

have you set brush to Mix mode?

I wouldn't say the issue is the brush choice, but the understanding of how brushes work. No matter if you use the Mix or Add, if you put your brush weight to 0 and expect to have full red, you will always have issues. With the Add brush, you "add" your brush weight value to your current vertex group. But since it is set to 0, you are asking Blender to add 0. Changing the brush weight to any other value would work just fine. With the Mix or Draw, it "draws" the weight as your brush weight (taking the brush falloff into account). With a brush weight of 0, you will draw weights of 0.

Can you explain by video recording, sr for make this thing go hard

https://youtu.be/X1jQ71Pg6SU

Thank You!! This Saved my life<3


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Problem with rendering animation with alpha channel and glare and using them in premiere pro
I'm currently working on some hologram animations for a short movie but I'm sort of new to Blender and therefore don't know a lot about the proper settings etc.
I've read through the posts that deal with the subject, but I've seen that all these posts were written years ago and are therefore based on other versions.
As far as I have seen, a lot has changed over the versions, so I don't really have an overview of what exactly has changed in the processes I need and what has not.
But of course I'll keep on checking it out.
Groundwork:

The assets I created are fairly simple shapes.
For these, I used Shade Nodes and Geometry Nodes to make materials etc. so that they resemble holograms (with transparency and everything).
Then I added glare in the compositing tab.

However, when I wanted to render the animations, problems arose.
According to various YouTube videos, the following settings must be made for rendering:

background transparency
file format: FFmpeg Video
Container QuickTime
Video Codec Quick Time Animation
for Color RGBA (I also want to have an alpha channel so that I can later integrate the animation into the film in Premiere Pro)

So I should get a .mov file with alpha channel and everything.
The problem, however, is that individual frames cannot be recognized or retrieved in Premiere.
And as soon as I select PNGs in the video codec, the glare etc. is gone and the colors are not displayed correctly.
Have I overlooked some setting in Blender, or is the problem with Premiere?
Of course I tried everything I could (e.g. all possible combinations of container and codec) but none of that worked. There must be a simple solution, right?
Thank you very much for your help, I would be grateful for any ideas or suggestions.
PS: If there is any information missing that is needed, just let me know, I am currently working on the solution permanently

Hello and welcome. Instead of Alpha, you could try to render with a black background and use a different layer /blend mode in Premier to add it to your scene (like multiply, add or screen)

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57816/how-do-i-get-the-glare-node-to-output-transparent-instead-of-black-background https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/173932/exr-color-difference-to-png https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/104642/partly-ignored-png-alpha/104658#104658 https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/260675/glare-alpha-not-saved-to-png-file

Hello and welcome. This question seems to have been asked before in multiple forms over time, and already has various answers but you never acknowledged any of them. We are not sure if you aware of the existing posts but none of the described techniques address your particular requisites, or you simply didn't do any research at all. Could you [edit] you post and clarify how your question differs from the suggested duplicates? Otherwise could you rephrase it to focus on a particular step you are stuck with?


text:
Speed up my Rendertimes in cycles
I'm really new to blender but I did a lot of research and testing, but my render times are just bad.
Or rather my rendertimes in a specific file that I created (my first project).
For the scene I need about 1:30h to render. I render on CPU (Ryzen 9 5900x), because my CPU is faster than my GPU (GTX1060 6GB) (and yes I know, GPU render would be better and yes my GPU is a bottleneck, but RTX 3080 is sold out).
I tested the BMW file/ benchmark and have a render time (CPU) of about 1min with adaptive sampling on.
Can somebody with more knowledge than me please check out my blender file and tell me what I did wrong?
I already played around with specific render settings (samples, denoise, tilesize, bounces)
Maybe a simple setting is wrong that I just overlooked, because the scene isn't really that complexe (just a single shelf in a room).
To note: I would like to render this image in 4k, so that's intended.
Thank you for your help.

blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com

Your expectations may be too high for a 4k image.
Your benchmark of 1 minute for the BMW is very good. Note, however, that the image is rendered with only 35 samples and at 50% size. If you increase the size to 100% the render time will quadruple! Increase the size to 400% and it will be multiplied by 16 again. That's 64 times longer for 400% than if the size was 50%. This turns one minute render time into one hour!
On the other hand, your scene is an indoor scene. Such interior scenes need much more samples to get rid of the noise. That's because the light only comes through the window or door and bounces in the room. More samples increase the render time. Light portals can help a bit (What does Light Portal mean?).
For preview in high-res you can render only a part of the image with a box selection, press Ctrl+B. (To remove the box press Ctrl+Alt+B)
Last but not least you can render nice interior scenes with Eevee, too. Have a look here: (youtube) How to make Realtime Archviz with Blender and Eevee (Part 1 of 3)
18 Ways to Speed Up Blender Cycles Rendering (It's from 2017 but gives you an idea about render times and how to save time)

Thank you very much. Somebody on reddit also pointed out that I'm actually rendering at 8k (because I've set it to 400%). My initial idea was 1080p * 400% is 4k, but actually only dimensions get multiplied and it comes out to 7680x4320 instaed of my wanted 3840x2160


text:
System out of GPU memory
Since I got my new GPU this error comes up from time to time when rendering a small (100 frame) animation.
At the top of the renderview (F12) it says "System out of GPU memory". When I restart blender and try again it's working.
What is the reason for this? Is blender filling my VRAM with (useless) stuff for whatever reason?
The GPU is a RTX 3080 with 10GB and my old card was a 1060 with 6 GB and I never had this problem, same scene, same animation and besides the GPU same PC.
After tweaking some stuff and trying to render the exact same scene (after the restart) it says again "System is out of GPU memory". Is blender not clearing it correctly after the render is done?
When I check the VRAM it's at 6 GB (out of 10GB)

This sounds like a driver compatibility problem, where either blender OR the drivers could be out of date on protocol.


text:
Error when removing item from EnumProperty created from a Json file by using .pop()
I have a multi-module addon that has ModuleA as AddonPrefs and ModuleB as operators.
I have the following EnumProperty inside my ModuleA AddonPreferences. It takes in a function that makes a list based on a .json file. Everything works for adding new items inside that json.
def update_registered_projects(self, context):
    import json
    projects_list = []

    for mod in addon_utils.modules():
        if mod.bl_info['name'] == __package__:
            addon_path = Path(mod.__file__)

    projects_file_path = Path(addon_path.parent / 'registered_projects.json')

    if projects_file_path.is_file():
        with open('registered_projects.json', 'r') as projects:
            projects_json = json.load(projects)
            for i, project in enumerate(projects_json):
                projects_list.append((project, project, '', i))

    return projects_list

class BitCakeToolsPreferences(AddonPreferences):
    bl_idname = __package__

    registered_projects: EnumProperty(items=update_registered_projects,
                                      name='',
                                      description='Register projects here before starting.',
                                      )

In ModuleB I have an Operator that basically reopens the .json file, .pop() the Key contaning the project I want to unregister from my enum and dumps the dict back into that file again.
I'm getting the following error on my Panel's Draw() function once my enum_unregister function runs:
This only happens when I delete the LAST entry in the Enum.
WARN (bpy.rna): C:\Users\blender\git\blender-v293\blender.git\source\blender\python\intern\bpy_rna.c:1505 pyrna_enum_to_py: current value '1' matches no enum in 'BitCakeToolsPreferences', '(null)', 'registered_projects'
Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\NZXT-DESKTOP\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.93\scripts\addons\BitTools\menu_side.py", line 69, in draw
    current_engine = projects_json[addonPrefs.registered_projects]['engine']
KeyError: ''

This error is happening on the last line of the following code:
class BITCAKE_PT_send_to_engine(Panel):
    bl_idname = "BITCAKE_PT_send_to_engine"
    bl_label = "BitCake Exporter"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "UI"
    bl_category = "BitTools"

    def draw(self, context):
        scene = context.scene
        panel_prefs = scene.menu_props

        addonPrefs = context.preferences.addons[__package__].preferences

        pcoll = preview_collections["main"]
        unity_logo = pcoll["unity"]
        unreal_logo = pcoll["unreal"]
        cocos_logo = pcoll["cocos"]

        registered_projects_path = get_registered_projects_path()

        current_engine = None
        if registered_projects_path.is_file():
            projects_json = json.load(registered_projects_path.open())
            current_engine = projects_json[addonPrefs.registered_projects]['engine']

I've tried Googling everything and searching this place for an answer, without any success. Hopefully you guys could shed some light, here.
Thanks a lot for taking your time to help me out :)

You should probably gracefully handle when the enum isn't in the JSON anyway, but the most obvious thing is you aren't holding a reference to the strings your dynamic enum uses: see the warning in EnumProperty's docs and this Q. Try fixing that first.

I spent so much time figuring out why this bug was happening that I didn't realize I could've just pointed MyEnum = 'AnotherEnumStringID' and just change it to another valid entry before Draw() was called. So I did that.
I was trying to forcefully rebuild my Enum list before Draw() was called and the solution was way simpler than I thought, I had even read that same Question you sent... But anyways, problem handled, sorry for the dumb question :/


text:
Mesh breaks rigging
I have a watch strap that I'm trying to bend like in the image.

But the result is that the mesh is tearing apart.

What's the problem and how can I fix it?
The only thing I can think of is that I modeled the strap in rhino3d but I imported it correctly in Blender.

I followed this tutorial to rig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AMm4Is2iY&vl=de
Is there a simpler solution to bend the strap like so?
If someone can help me I will appreciate it a lot.
Thanks

its because that part of mesh is assigned to more than one bone
you can check it with selecting and deselecting different vertex groups and you see.
you can solve this by checking auto-normalize and substracting this parts from other vertex groups
read about auto-normalize

or you can just paint it again or instead of weight paint do it in edit mode and assigning by hand(this is good for simple meshes)
also I noticed your mesh is not connected some parts are separated so this is a good example of having a clean mesh could help clean rigging and animations

Thanks mma78, you saved me! Now it's working perfectly, just one question, how could you say that I have some parts separated?

first there is a gap between to parts of that mesh in second pic and when i downloaded it used L key to select linked vertexes

Thanks again! I resolved this problem doing: edit mode -> selected everything -> Mesh -> Clean up -> Merge by distance with 0.01


text:
Edit mode 2.91 very slow and cpu intensive compared to 2.79
It took me a while to move over to the new Blender version. Got my hotkeys changed and activated my favorite plugins. What I noticed is with relatively low poly objects (100k) the edit mode is incredibly slow and unresponsive compared to blender 2.79.
Just grabbing a vertex and moving it feels sluggish, selecting also. When grabbing a few (10) vertices and moving them around continuously my cpu is between 15-30% and response is quite slow. Doing the same in 2.79 it is fast and cpu sits around a comfortably 2-5%. The graphics card is idling at 20+/-Mhz and only increases in speed (2500+) when I move around in the viewport.
For the same operation Blender 2.91 uses 10 cores at 100% compared to 1 or 2 cores in Blender 2.79.
I also tried the same things without any plugins active (deleted my user profile). Turning of AA does nothing, but that is to be expected since that only increases the GPU load.
I don't have any modifiers active on the model. Turning on a simple subsurf (resolution 1) in 2.91 increases my ram usages to 18GB with only 750k vertices compared to Blender 2.79 where it goes from perhaps 400MB to 600MB.
What could I change to get a more responsive Blender, as it is now I can't consider 2.91 to work with; it seems horribly broken.
My system is:

R9 3950x stock
AMD RX 6900 XT stock
32G 3600 c15 memory
Windows 10 Pro, probably latest update as of now.

Edit 3
Also tested it on my old (and slow) laptop

i7 6700HQ
Nvidia 960M
16GB memory
Windows 10 Pro latest updates

Edit 5
Also tested it on my new laptop (same issues obviously)

AMD Ryzen 5900HX
Nvidia RTX 3070
32GB memory
PopOS latest updates

Small edit: the performance while not editing, like moving the view in the viewport is very fluid and not a problem.
Another edit: Things like limited dissolve are a magnitude faster in Blender 2.79. I think that the developers of Blender should first focus on getting reasonable performance (increase it by a minimum of 10 and decrease memory usage by the same amount) before it is anywhere usable. I think doing some minimal research on time complexities of algorithms might solve a lot of their problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_complexity#Table_of_common_time_complexities
Something tells me it has something to do with that.
I'll stick with the old Blender for now for cleaning up models before printing...
Just to note, sculpting is lightning fast; at this point I'm clueless why normal editing is so slow.
Edit 4:
The issues I'm describing seem to be logged here:
https://developer.blender.org/T73360
Please check that page for any updates relating to this. As a side note Blender version 3.0 is already a lot faster than 2.8+. However, it is not yet as fast as 2.79.

What rendering engine are you using in 2.79 (Blender internal or Cycles), and what renderer are you using in 2.91 (Cycles or EEVEE)?

In 2.79 it is Blender Internal, in the viewport and in 2.91 I could only find the option in render properties and it is set to EEVEE. However, I'm not doing any rendering. I only use wireframe and solid. Switching to Workbench does not improve the problems I describe since moving the view in the viewport I probably get more than enough fps. I only use Blender for cleaning up models for 3d printing nowadays.

An issue with the AMD card most likely. Upgrade or downgrade the drivers.

Which thing I describe make you think it points to an driver issue? The problem I have  is at the previous and latest driver (there aren't any others for this card since it just came out).
Everything is fast (navigating the scene with 20mil vertices is no problem) except moving vertices around or some mesh operations like subsurf and limited dissolve, which clearly is not any work the gpu is really bothered with.
Btw I also tested it on my older Dell laptop i7 6700HQ and 960M and I experience the same problems so it is clearly not a gpu driver related problem.

I have the same problem but I'm using 3.0 and it happened while I was working on a project mid scene.
I did two things. Started using Matcap shader for the first time. I also installed AMD Prorender.
I'm going try uninstalling those 2 items and if that doesn't work I'll try upgrading the gpu drivers. Thanks for this thread as it's so frustrating as there's only 34K verts in my scene.
Happens when I try editing/moving verts/edges. Painfully slow.
This is my first major scene/time spent on Blender and if this happens at this stage it's really crushing after all that work. Hopefully it's a bug that can be rectified

Blender 3.0 is faster for me (not yet 2.79 levels but a lot faster than 2.8+), they have solved some issues. I don't have any problems with low poly models such as you describe.
The issue is logged on the following page so see that for reference:
https://developer.blender.org/T73360


text:
Why does my human face sculpt look weird outside of front view?
I'm fairly new to 3d sculpting, so I'm having an issue creating the basic form of a human face. In front view (and even side view to an extent), the sculpt appears to be coming along nicely. As soon as I leave perspective and start orbiting the mesh, it just looks awful.
Can someone tell me if this is normal for the early stages of a sculpt? It just looks so much worse outside of front view. Do I need to add more of a curve to the side of the face? I can't put my finger on the issue, assuming there is one?

I think you can look at references and see for yourself. It's part of the learning process, you have to learn to see how things truly are, see proportions, how muscles and bones are woven, and apply to your sculpt.

I'm not looking for pure realism right now. I'm just trying to create the basic form. I'm wondering if the screenshots provided look unusual for an early sculpt? And if so, can you see a specific issue with the form?

What focial length do you use in the viewport? The default is 50mm and it adds a lot of perspective to the model, especially if you zoom in. Try 85mm or even 100mm for portraits. The orthographic views of screenshot 1 & 2 have no perspective at all. Furthermore, the model has no ears, no eyebrows, unfinished eyes, nose and lips. This makes it look like an alien/snake. That's normal. In the screenshot 1, the drawn ears are added to the face and he looks more like a male human.

You can search for free basic human male models and compare with your sculpt, to better understand where the main issues are. I also found interesting to sculpt with an underlying mesh of a skull. I think that mainly it lacks a better definition of the orbits, wrong position of cheeck bones(too much prominent and too much close to the nose), wrong jaw line, wrong neck muscles, lack of Y deepness of the labial arc, ...


text:
Diffuse Lighting
I have been trying to create "diffused" lighting in my scene. Here is the picture i am trying to recreate and attached is the blender scene with the appropriate camera / view. I have tried making my materials more rugid, i have also tried to use musgrave + noise textures to diffuse the light but i always get the very sharp sun shadows ? Maybe the glass i use should act as a "diffuser" ? but i have no clue as to how to do it ? or maybe instead of a sun use a big ball of light ?

Thanks for your help

there is no attached blender scene....

The sun lamp source will always cast a hard shadow because of what it's modeled after. The sun. The sun creates a hard shadow in the real world because if you look at it in the sky, it's quite small. It's more like a single light bulb. When creating a diffused light, avoid the sun lamp at all times. use environment textures instead, and use area lights on the walls to mimic/augment the reflections that are coming from the white walls. This way The whole scene will be lit instead of having all shadows be pitch black.
Interior scenes are difficult to properly light due to the amount of light bounces that Blender needs to calculate. Try to be creative using these 'artificial' lighting techniques until it looks right.
Also, the bright area in the back is very important. It looks like a wall that's getting a lot of sunlight through a window. This creates a lot of reflections that reach all the way into place where the camera is. You can use a sunlight to create that hotspot, but make sure the walls are blocking the light in other places.
Hope this helps!

"The sun creates a hard shadow in the real world" - that's a really to simplified. It depends a lot on atmospheric conditions. The first (but not only) condition everyone can imagine is a cloud between the sun and "scene". But I get the technical difficulties to simulate that in Blender.


text:
Hidden geometry reapears in weight paint mode
I am trying to weight paint my model. To make things easier I have already hidden most of my character. However no matter what I do, the face mesh always unhides itself when I enter  weight paint mode. I have most of my character parts divided into vertex groups, though I cant see how could that affect just the face to unhide itself.
I also tried selecting the face in weight paint mode with paint mask option selected and hide it this way. This does work, but as soon as I go to paint over the mesh the face reappears again.
Not sure if I am doing something wrong or if this is a bug.

try pressing v in weight paint mode?

Nope that doesn't work either...

maybe it's a bug, what Blender version are you using?

Blender version: 2.92

Yup its a bug. I installed Blender 2.82 and it works perfectly there. I guess I will be doing my weight painting there and then switch to the newer one later on.

Yup its a bug. I installed Blender 2.82 and it works perfectly there. I guess I will be doing my weight painting there and then switch to the newer one later on.

In case someone stumbles on this question with the newer version, this is still present in Blender 3.0, unfortunately.


text:
Export multi user objects with armature
Lets say I have 2 arm objects (Arm_1 and Arm_2). Their mesh is a multi user data. So that if I edit something in one arm the changes are applied to both arm objects.
I also have a single armature with bones and unique vertex groups for both arms. I have connected the armature with the arms and it is all animating properly inside Blender.
Now the problem is when I try to export all that. The exported FBX has only arm_1 visible and arm_2 is gone.
After some thinking I came to the conclusion (which might be wrong...) that the armature is being attached to each arm as a modifier. However since both arms are a multi user object, on export it applies the armature only to the first multi user object. And the rest are hidden.
How can I avoid this ?
I know I can make each arm a single user, but I like how convenient and easy it is to have them as multi object. If you need to go back and fix something, it is much easier to do it with a multi user data rather than to apply that change to each object separately.

Did you try to import it back to Blender? May be the other software not support multiple armatures in one file.

I have a single armature for both arms. Though when I imported it back to Blender both arms were there, but on top of each other. In the other program (Unity) the arms are on the proper location, but are invisible. If I remove the armature then they show up.

I kinda found a workaround. Every time before exporting I make a copy of all objects and then merge everything except the armature. Then export the merged copy


text:
Should I use a glossy shader or a metal texture to export an object?
I have a model i wanna sell on CGTrader, and i know some people might be using different software like 3DS Max or Maya, so i want to make my blender model available to all software. one of my objects on the model is using a glossy shader to create a silver look. i don't know if maya has a glossy shader, so would it be smarter to go with something every software has, textures? should i use a metal texture or a glossy shader? which one is applicable to most software? is there a glossy shader in other 3d software?

Could you please gener generalize your question according to [tour]. (https://blender.stackexchange.com/tour) In that form it will attract downvotes.

thanks cegatron. i'm just asking if in terms on other 3D software compatibility if i should use a metal texture instead of a glossy shader.

edited it to further explain my question.

If you want to have object with shading for some other render engines like Maya, VRay besides Cycles then do materials for Maya, VRay and Cycles. Maps have to be baked as well but that isn't enough to have actual material

no this is not a duplicate, i am asking if exporting a model with a texture works better for other 3D software besides blender.

It's not an exact duplicate, but what they mean is: the suggested post should help you to understand that (other than very basic) materials are so much specific of each program that it could make no difference to choose one shader or another. Blender does it in one way, Maya and other programs each will do it differently. My 2c.

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


text:
Baked normals are colorful?
I have fixed a problem I had with baking normals onto a low poly model and have gotten my normal map.
Baking the map to my low poly model didn't work no matter what I tried, so instead I just baked the high poly, and it worked! But I have a new problem: the normal map is good but there are these weird colored artifacts that are around my bump. I can use this map and it works fine, but for presentation purposes I would like it to be all purple-blue.

How can I get rid of them so that the whole thing is purple-blue instead of green, yellow, and red? If I can get rid of them then I can finally get a good normal map. To me, it looks like I need a higher ray distance value but I am not using selected to active; it's just a 4k texture bake with margin set to 16. Everything else is set to default. Could i maybe draw over it in photoshop? Please help

When you created your "Bake3" image, did you select the "Alpha" checkbox?

@DaleCieslak yes i did.

So did you try creating a new image with Alpha unselected?  I'd also try increasing your Ray Distance.

@DaleCieslak  fixed the problem by just baking on my high poly, but now i have a new problem^^

Do not edit one question with a new question. Add answer with what worked for you on previous question. Then ask a new question where include what is above.

kind of too late for that..i wrote a lot of stuff

That's quite easy to do. Stackexchange has edit history if you haven't noticed - that "edited "some time" ago" link below your post. Editing question with new question is wrong accodring to the rules of the site - that's all

well this hasn't been removed yet..in 5 hours i am adding a bounty of 50 rep for someone to answer this question

It's hard to answer without seeing your model, but your question is a bit silly, wanting a normal map of a given color.  The colors represent vectors in the x, y, and z direction and so the shape determines the color.  If you want it mostly blue then make a mostly flat model.  Harsh bumps will give red and green colors, and possibly you have flipped normals in parts of your model?  Also did you bake in Tangent Space or Object space?  Object space maps tend to be more colorful.

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


text:
shrinkwrap modifier makes object flat
So i made a cartoon squid and i want to add some suction cups, so i hit CNTRL+7 and aligned them to one of the tentacles, but now i need it to stick to the bottom, so i add a shrinkwrap modifier and it makes it flat which i need it to be thick, how can i fix this?
Here is a picture:

.blend file:

I have tried other ways but the suction cups hang over the tentacle and it wont "stick" to the tentacle..i have tried answers that are a duplicate of my question but i get the same results. I have tried latice, and shrinkwrap but to no avail.
I still have this problem.

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/77390/why-shrinkwrap-making-the-tube-flat and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/95975/why-im-not-getting-thickness-with-shrinkwrap-modifier or https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/101715/mesh-deforming-when-shrinkwrapping

This may be a duplicate but the solutions are not working for me so i need something else.

@Optimus If solutions are not working for you please explain why they are not working.

I don't know why they are not working...@Ray Mairlot

@cegaton that is not working, it kind of works but then certain suction cups are not "sticking" to to tentacle like others...is there any other way? perhaps you can explain it in my blend file?


text:
How to model a computer mouse?
i am trying to model a computer mouse similar to this:

I have not found ANY tutorials on how to create a computer mouse, I have tried box modelling it, but failed because i could not do the side view. I have yet to find a tutorial on modelling a computer mouse. I have tried various methods, none have met my needs. i know there is no set way to do this, but i would like a method or step-by-step guide on how to model this, as this is a complex shape.
EDIT: My problem has still not been resolved, not just creating the base mesh, but a more detailed answer would be nice. Please..

Please use google. There are Blender tutorials about creating computer mouse.

Did you try googling or YouTube for tutorials ? This is a very broad question. Modelling a mouse like this uses numeral methods including booleans and beveling. You have to be familiar with booleans (or precise box modelling), to achieve this.

have not found a tutorial on mouse modelling yet.

Are you sure you didn't find any ? a quick YouTube search brings up dozens of tutorials on mouse modelling in blender.

all i see are timelapses, not 20 minute in-depth tutorials..

Here's how I would do it:
Create a cylinder with 90° rotation on the y-axis.
Stretch the cylinder:

Use the knife tool (K) to cut the cylinder like this:

(Do this on both sides)
Select the loop created by your cut:

(Wireframe used to show selection)
Select loop inner region (search for this by pressing Space)
Enter face selection mode and Select>Inverse.
Delete faces (X). Select the edges of the hole and make a face (F).
Select the edges that form arcs (you could do this by selecting the side faces, converting to edge selection, and deselecting the bottom edges):

Bevel these faces (ControlB). Adjust the bevel settings as desired:

Now that you have the general shape of the mouse, you can use proportional editing to create the curves in the surface.


text:
Normal map has artifacts and nothing is fixing it
So  i modeled and sculpting a Ionic column and then retopologized it, and baked the normals, but there are colored artifacts in the map. I have tried increasing the Ray Distance, the Margin, the size, but to no avail. I think it has something to do with the position, as when i select both objects and hit ALT+G my low poly drops to the cursor and my high poly doesn't budge. I have discovered a trend, the smaller the UV's are the more colored and blurred they appear. Here is trying to bake it with margin set to 64 and ray distance at 1:

Nothing really changes when i increase or decrease ray distance/margin size. Unfortaunately i cant upload my .blend file as it is a whopping 164MB. The best i can do is provide pictures:

Here is my UV's (on low poly, high poly doesn't have UV's)

Any idea of what could be the cause and how to fix it? Is it something with my position or not.

Have you try to set margin to 0 (as the UV parts are very close to each other)

Yes i have, the only thing it does is slightly help, but makes my map fuzzy and blurry, and also has green/yellow "sludge" around some of my UV's that are small


text:
Seams are correctly marked, UV's are messed up
I have retopologized a shotgun and marked all the seams where they are supposed to, and then Unwrapped it, and instead of getting nice UV's, i get this:

Here are the seams:

I have tried Applying the scale, Averaging Island Scale, Packing Islands, and minimizing stretch, and Smart UV Project, and Lightmap pack, all of which slightly helped, but not enough. What is wrong?

Could you highlite the geometry connected to the problematic UV island by keeping the selection in sync?

Do a "remove doubles" clean up operation on your mesh and unwrap again and see what happens.

Those lines stretching from an island to another could be caused by a single missing edge mark, or that after doing the UV Map you picked up a couple of tris and turned them into quads and those triangles where from different sets of islands.

I am sure i marked everything, but i will review it again just to make sure.

Some steps could fix your problem:
1-Apply Rot & Scale to objdata. (CTRL+A in object mode)
2-Make Normals Consistent. (CTRL+N in edit mode)
3-Remove double vertex. (CTRL+V+Remove Doubles in edit mode)
4-Recheck your topology, maybe you have N-Gons or Triagles that are messing the Unwrap.
That's all I can think of now, hope it helps.


text:
How to bake Boolean as a normal map
I have a revolver barrel, one of them is a low poly, and the other is a high poly. The high poly has lots of holes inside it, and the low poly doesn't have any. I don't want to ruin my topology/UV's so i would like to "bake" the Boolean's of the high poly object to the low poly. Is it possible? I really don't want to UV unwrap and Boolean again. I have tried doing the booleans and UV-unwrapping but 1. it increases the polycount and 2. when i join the two objects and reset and UV-unwrap again, it is a mess.

I tried baking it from high poly to low poly like a normal map, but i do not get good results, regardless if i bake in Substance Painter or Blender:

I do not understand why it is not working, So does anyone have an idea why?

You could just copy the whole ordeal, apply it and just bake it with a cage on the the low poly model.

@Sidar So bake it like your baking from a high poly to a low poly? I already tried that and it does not give the desired effect, unless you mean something else.

It should work fine. What happens if you try? Can you edit your question with a shot of the normal map and what the low poly looks like with it applied?

Just added it, as you can see it turned out horrible :(

Tried what exactly? there are a few ways of doing a bake for normal maps. Make sure the rays are long enough. show us the normal map

Once again... don't use Booleans folks, model with proper topology instead

Normal maps are just lighting information it is not geometry so it can only do bumps and small details not holes or Geometry.


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Smoothing two objects together without boolean
So i have some cords that plug into a socket. the socket plugs into the hammer head, and I want to smooth the connection between the socket and hammer head so it doesn't look like they are intersecting. I have tried using a boolean union but it does not give the desired result, and gives shading issues. Sculpting isn't working out, it just gives it a bumpy look and its not smooth no matter how much i lower the level of detail or add subsurf. The topology of the hammer head and the socket are completely different, so is their any other way to do this?

Here is my reference:

See the part where the socket is smoothed and combined into the hammer head?
I want to make it smooth with that connection.

EDIT: Still haven't fixed the problem, even after using below two methods. Maybe there is a sculpting method?

Could you draw some lines and/or arrows on your image? I think of a hammer as a tool to drive nails with and I don't see one of those here. As a result I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish.

there we go I added it

I think this should perfectly answer your question: http://topologyguides.com/post/163096515095/decals

If you really want to avoid actually connecting the two meshes, you can use this custom shader by the community:
Shader: Rounded edge between the two intersecting faces?
Although best practice (and what you see in your reference) would be to just connect them with a boolean or similar operation and clean up the mesh afterwards.

If you want to smooth them together you are going to have to connect the meshes, this can be done without boolean.

ctrl F > knife intersect and delete the internal mesh on both.
select all the points int he area and ctrl V > remove doubles (this will connect the meshes.)
with the points you want to smooth selected go into the tools menu and select smooth vertex.

Did not work, it only ruined my topology and created a huge hole in my hammer head

Post a picture so i can see why it didnt work. Ive used this method many times before when boolean is misbehaving

Is there any other way to do this? This is sort of confusing for me

I should add that when you knife intersect u only select one of the intersecting pieces

I delete the face that is at the end of the socket, then i go to the hammer and knife around the circle shape, then I remove doubles and nothing happens.

When you remove doubles you need all the points in the area selected. The knife intersect creates overlapping points on both meshes so when you select all of those points and hit remove doubles, it joins all those overlapping points into single points

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

weird it says it has no doubles

Are the meshes a part of the same object?

Yes they are...

anything else you can think of?

I think this can be done nicely with a shrinkwrap modifier on a vertex group and then using a data transfer modifier to blend the normals so it looks like a smooth connection.
This video explains that in detail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luFz5gzvM9s&t=289s

Since its a Gaming asset as per the visuals, I would suggest you to soften the Normals of those ares when you are making the PBR textures that would be much easy and even you can darken a bit at the point of intersection so that it adds more feel to it.
OR
Still if you want to make changes into your model only then simply add few loops and scale up the tip of those "cords" so that it makes up a smooth kind of transition from proper straight(Straight tip or end of cord) to proper flat part of your hammer .
Note- By scaling the tip I mean the part which is intersection with the hammer and it must be at a zoomed level so that when zoomed out the transition
must look more natural.

Can you add some detailed instructions and screenshots to help others understand what you are talking about?


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How to connect these two and create a crease between them?
This is difficult to explain so im open to any edits on those post. I'm trying to create a pinch between the bottom of this arm rest and the line design on this wall. I've tried using the pinch sculpting tool but it doesnt give the desired results.

I've also tried to extrude the bottom edges to the line design but it fails to work, giving me this:

I've also tried bridge edge loop, to no avail. Im open to any idea.


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I am unable to remove sprinkles from inner part of icing for donut by using weight paint
So I was watching this blender guide
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjEaoINr3zgEPv5y--4MKpciLaoQYZB1Z&si=mfyfhlZThtu0CTSy
And teacher said that i should remove sprinkles from inner part of icing to save time for rendering.
1 I enabled weight paint mode.
2 Enabled check mark for "Front faces only"
3 Accepted all modifiers
But when i draw on outer side of icing it still also draws on inner side of icing.
Can you please help me find solution for my problem?

Hello, are you sure that your object has thickness? Maybe share your file? https://blend-exchange.com/

It seems the object has thickness, judging by the sculpted drips and rim.  I'd go for face orientation issues (in edit mode, select all a and shift+n). ---- But this seems indeed like a classical "no thickness" issue, that happens when you try to paint before "apply" (an action with this name) the solidify modifier.

Here is my blend file

Your object has no thickness, if you weight paint on a side it will paint on the opposite side. If you want thickness you can give a Solidify modifier to your object or select all and AltE > Extrude Faces Along Normals, make sure that the normals are correctly oriented (select all in Edit mode and ShiftN) and paint in Weight Paint mode (make sure that the Front Faces Only option is activated):

authors: Рущенко Александр


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How do I clean up this mesh after importing from 3dsmax?
I am very new to Blender. Just installed it last night!
Trying to import all my models from 3dsMax to Blender. I want to smooth out an area. It looks fine in 3ds max but not in Blender. See image. There are lots of triangles around the head of the snake. I tried converting them to quads and using the smooth option but no success.
Thanks for your help.
Link to blender scene file

Edit...
Going into Object mode and right-clicking then choosing shade smooth and un-checking "Keep Sharp Edges" and then going to sculpting to smooth things out.
Is there a better way?
Edit #2
The wings are not attached and when I move them they snap back. I would like to keep the animation of my 3dsmax files if I can,
Thanks.

Please include your image directly in your question rather than just a link to it! See How to upload an image to a post.

fixed, sorry about that

Try to go into the Data panel > Geometry Data > Clear Custom Split Normals Data, also maybe select all in Edit mode and M > Merge by Distance? If it still doesn't work please share your file: https://blend-exchange.com/

I sorta got it working. But maybe someone has tips to make it better. Thanks,


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How to make a Stone/Clay Material?
I want to make a clay material like in this photo. Not a clay render, a clay material; something for my sculptures I model in Blender. How could I make something like the material in this image?

I have been trying to make this material for hours and it's driving me crazy.
please help!
this is what i have gotten after playing around with nodes:

Yep, this site is more geared towards helping solve a problem, rather than making it for you.

a clay render is not at all what i need. for better understanding i edited the question.

See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/4938/how-to-make-an-object-have-a-clay-like-surface

no, again not a white/blank material or play-doh. CLAY, look at the picture. see the texture/material on him? i want to replicate that..

cegatron, please un-mark this as a duplicate. it is not

Here is mine for a clay material like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWjJfw32cbM

Try using textures to add some subtle displacement and/or normal mapping. Box mapped image textures or procedural textures are perfect for this. For example, here's a simple procedural texture consisting of some high frequency details mixed with a few larger features, normal mapped onto a diffuse shader (plus a touch of displacement):

It may be helpful to throw in some image textures to get some more irregular larger-scale features.
Note that true displacement is required to get those tasty bits of self-shadowing near the terminators prevalent in your example. Displacement is still currently an experimental feature, so to use it you'll have to switch enable experimental features in Properties > Render > Feature Set. Once that's done, be sure to set the displacement method to True in the material settings.
Displacement means the actual geometry is being displaced, so for it to work you need a sufficiently dense mesh. Adaptive subdivision is ideal for this; to enable it, add a subsurf modifier and enable Adaptive under Render.
See Blender Cycles True Displacement for more details.

Also keep in mind that lighting is just as (or perhaps even more) important as the material itself. Part of what makes your example distinctive is the long light-to-shadow transitions which show off the fine details of the material.
Try playing around with lights and different lighting setups while making the material to get a sense of how it behaves under different conditions.


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How to wrap text on top of an object
I have a pencil here I modeled and I want to wrap some text around it. I have been trying this method: What's the simplest way to wrap extruded text around a cylinder? but this is not working for my pencil. I am trying to wrap the text on top of the object. here is what i am trying to achieve:

As you can see, the letters H and B are wrapped around the pencil. Here is my scene:

Please help. is there any other way to do this?

Can you show some detail on why "it's not working"  For example the curve you are trying to wrap around? Are the pencils round or hex in cross section?

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/52904/wrap-curve-around-sphere/52905#52905


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where can i get a backdrop like this?
Was looking for a backdrop (if that's what its called) for a scene i have in blender. If you look at this image you can see a glowing orb at the back of the image, providing light, i think its called a lightdrop but i am not sure. What is this called and where can  i get it?

I have tried adding a sphere with an emission shader and rendering it, then using the compositor to add a fog glow effect. didn't work. what are some other methods?

I would create a material on a plane with a spherical gradient.

The method to tweak this gradient is changing the colorramp or the RGB-curve.  As you can see, the Fac slider of the RGB-curve is on 2.5. I used it to overexpose the white.
Maybe it's better to adjust the color in the last step but that you have to test by your self ;-)


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Filmic color management not installing
getting this error when trying to install filmic color management:

I looked inside my color management folder and saw there was filmic files all over:
enter image description here

Any way it is downloaded but maybe not displaying or something?
I followed this tutorial precisely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nYGJI0r2-0

Where did you download filmic from? Filmic is not an addon in the traditional sense, it replaces the colormanagement folder entirely. See the github page if you have not yet, and follow the instructions there precisely.

Isn't Filmic part of default Blender now?  IIRC, you don't have to install anything, just enable it in Color Management.

Blender 2.79 is bundled with Filmic already. Just download that and use it, no need to install anything else.
The error is caused by Blender trying to write to a write-protected directory. You can solve that by changing the directory permissions or running Blender as admin, but you should probably do neither and just use 2.79.

So that's good to know because I realy like that feature and exlpored it some time ago. Thanks!

A few reasons: Are there significant differences between filmic shipped with blender and its development version?


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How to fix shadow terminator artifacts?
I am having issues with my scene. I created a sand dune sort of mesh and everything is all good. I add in an HDRI and then get this:

As you can see, the sand has some sort of weird shading issue which I believe is called "shadow terminator artifacts". I've only seen three solutions:

Up the mesh density (didnt' work, even with my high poly 1mil mesh i got these artifacts)
use the shadow terminator removal tool in blender 2.9 (Also didn't work, the shadows became too large)
Disable smooth shading. (Did absolutely nothing)

I honestly am confused and have no idea how to fix this. The scene is literally just an HDRI rotated around slightly.
One thing i will note, is that the shading issue goes away when i have a more diffuse HDRI (or none at all)

And here is everything in the viewport:

I also have tried switching out the HDRI for something else and still got the artifacts. What else can I try?
EDIT: forgot to mention, I don't get this issue when I render with EEVEE.

try to change the size of your light, if it's a sun and if you are in Cycles it is called Angle

@moonboots I'm not using any lamps, just an HDRI.

so maybe add a light in order to smooth the shadows?

@moonboots doesn't seem to work really

could you please pack your images and share your file (only the terrain)? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

@moonboots File size seems to be too large, can't. One thing I do notice is that the issue goes away if i remove the displacement map..

are you using an image texture for this displacement map? in that case maybe check if it is set to non-color data, olso I think it is supposed to be 32 bit float, and of course the node organisation must be correct

@moonboots yeah im using this: https://www.textures.com/download/3dscans0014/126018.. Setup is normal i believe and everything in regards to displacement is set to non-color data.

Oh also I have tried using a different texture and still got issues

try to share on another platform


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Created UDIM tiles without image
I created some UDIM tiles in blender and everything looked good, but then i imported it into substance painter and baked and it only baked the mesh map of what was in the UV space, which included only one tile. Figured out what I did was create UDIM tiles but without adding in the image first, which is why they wouldn't show up on the drop down menu in the UV editor.

So basically if I am understanding correctly, blender thinks that all of my tiles are separate UV grids? I'm very confused.. My UV grid:

Is there any way to add an image for each UV tile, or is it too late? I tried adding in an image but it only applied on one UV square, and i can't make multiple images in one UV space, if that makes sense.
What it looks like in substance painter:

Any ideas?


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Weird shadow issue with Cycles?
Relearning blender, I notice when I render my image, the shadow looks pointy.. the mesh is very smooth so I don't know whats causing this. The same thing happens in Eevee. Anyone know what might be causing it?

I've tried playing around with the lighting strength and trying different angles but still get the same issue. I'm using just a default point light, what is wrong?

@JachymMichal Just edited it, hopefully you can see it better

@JachymMichal, he's talking about pointy noise, not the shape of the shadow.

The way Cycles works is by creating a rough approximation of the final image and then cleaning up the noise over time.  The more samples you set in Cycles, the more time it has to clean up the scene (but the longer it takes to finish rendering).  The reason it's not cleaning up anymore for you is that you don't have the samples set high enough.  You can change how many samples you use in Properties -> Render -> Samples.  There are two settings, one for the viewport and one for the final render.  You typically want the final render to have more samples than the viewport.  If the image is too noisy, you can increase the samples, and if it takes too long, you can decrease the samples.

If you're not sure how many samples to set it to, you can set the viewport samples to 0 (aka infinity) and wait until the image clears up (and you can't move around in the scene while it's clearing up).  Once it's clear enough, you can look in the top left where it says, "Path Tracing Samples", and whatever number that's at, you can set the viewport or final render to that.  Note, it's okay if you have the viewport samples set to something low enough that it still is a little noisy.  As long as the final render samples are high enough, the final render will look good.

(In this scene, 38 samples is good enough for the viewport, but I'll probably want the final render to be set for something like 64 or 128 just to make it nice and clear [if you look closely at the shadows, you can see a little noise])

for the viewport I've seen some people setting the number of samples very high, so the viewport continue updating itself getting better and better)

@Sanbaldo Honestly, that makes sense, though you can just set the viewport samples to 0 to get the same results.

great feature! thanks


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Creating a boundary between objects (python)
So I'm trying to create a visual line that is used between 2 objects. A basic example here:

Where the white lines represent a boundary between the 2 objects (the 2 blue lines)
These boundaries basically stick to the right and left point of each object and connect together.
A more complex example:

The idea is so when I create an object it creates these lines that connect from that previous object to the next one.
So what I've attempted:
Bones
This method seems to work pretty well. The major issue is creating these points when a new object is created. One bone point can stay at the current object and the other point at the newly created object.
So if I wanted to duplicate it like this:

I would want it to duplicate the bone points along with it creating this boundary I want.

So it would have to extrude the bones at the same time as the object gets duplicated.
So some code I messed with:
for ob in bpy.data.objects:

arm = ob.data

bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')
for i in range(3):
    bpy.ops.armature.extrude()

This simply extrudes it just how I want it. However this duplicates them in edit mode preventing me from duplicated the other object along with it. (Object need to be a separate object too when duplicated)
Constraints
For this test I went ahead and attempted to use a stretch to constraint with a basic object on each path. This however didn't give good results for what I wanted. Spacing would be weird, and having to setup specific axis could
If anyone has any ideas or ways I could improve upon my ideas that would be great!

How would Blender know which object follows another object? Do you maintain a list of sorts? Is there some naming convention?

These objects are sorted in a list by name from objects = sorted(bpy.context.scene.objects, key=lambda ob: ob.name). Each object starts with "Lap" in the name to represent the path object it is then just has numbers at the end, .001, .002, .003 ect.

Is it for the viewport only? How many objects are we talking about?

It's for just the viewport and entirely visual just to know the boundries between the objects. There isn't quite a particular amount as these are used for any amount the user may want to add for their map. These simply represent the boundaries the player cannot go out of in a racing game. where a plane covers the X Y Z of how much a player can go and they connect to each other.


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Merge by distance does smth weird
I accidently duplicated my mesh and can't go back anymore. When I merge by distance(remove doubles) it works but this happens, help

ps I tried changing merge distance, didn't work

Share your file, I'll take a look... https://pasteall.org/blend/

You can select one copy of the duplicated mesh when you hover the mouse over the mesh and press key L. This will execute the Selected Linked operation and select the verts. But there might be more wrong that causes these shading issues.

Do you have a solifidy modifier ? Looks like inverted normals. When in edit mode select everything and SHIFT + N

since the solution wasn't connected directly to my question should I delete the whole thing? (I'm a new user)

Solidify modifier was inverted.
SHIFT + N in edit mode while everything selected fixed the problem.
thx @Gorgious

Please don't add "thank you" as an answer. Instead, accept the answer that you found most helpful. - From Review

The thing I found useful is not an answer, it's a comment to my post, I can't accept it...or can I?

@feik It's alright, I think you have to wait a little bit before you can accept your own answer. Cheers


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Added .FBX doesn't follow armature "head" bone
(newbie here)
I have an rigged character and I am trying to add additional .FBX props on top of that.
Steps followed:

Import FBX prop (a branch in this case)
Add Armature modifier and linked it to the Rig and Checked "Bind it to Vertex Groups"

Create a new vertex group for the newly added prop and add it to "head" (named exactly as my head bone)

Moved the SM_Tree_Twing_02 under Head object in tree (I don't know if this matters, though)

The problem:
If I try to rotate the "head" bone in Pose mode, my prop doesn't follow the bone rotation.
Normal Pose:

With rotated bone:

What am I missing?
I'm sure I'm missing something because if I try to export to Unity I get the branch follow my character and has movement on it (it is linked to something from my Armature). Thank you for your input. I don't mind going to read how it is done but frankly I do not know what exactly to search for.

The quick fix was to remove all bones from "head" up and re-assign all the meshes with new weights. This worked for me. I'm not sure why I had to do this again, tho.


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Creating a controller that can control the intensity of emission of smoke
I have been trying to create a rig that can control the intensity of emission of condensation (similar to smoke) on wings like the one in the video (at 1:33)
https://youtu.be/wjTV2AdoLNs?si=JqxRDM6sgNThumlZ
He just rotated the controller and boom ! The condensation appears

Up until now I have been able to just create a vapour condensation without volumetric using displace modifier with coordinates set to an empty which gives an effect of motion of condensation when moved around (when the empty is moved around)
However I am not able to create an effective rig as shown in the video above, ie control the size of the condensation , and also animate the motion of the condensation** (vapour or smoke or whatever they call it).
I will leave my progress below

Why am I not getting any help ??

What should I do if no one answers my question?


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Aircraft canopy Material
so i was working on an aircraft [ tejas mk2 ] i faced a problem while making the canopy , iwant it to be exactly like this
but i ended up like this well i know it looks funny but yah i am an intermediate blender user ,what i wanted is a glass material that has such type of coulourish reflection as well as clear at the same time. soo.... please help me out , picture of the node settings would be much appreciated . cheers!
edit : here is my current progress

Hello :). The effect is called iridescence. Luckily, it's pretty easy to fake it.

Jachym Michal yup thats what i wanted , let me try it

One more thing - to get good results, use HDRI lighting for your scene. Or your glass will always look flat (no reflections) :)

– Jachym Michal well thanks i got some okay kind of results a bit of more tweaking may help i guess , i have posted the image

Hey man, the result looks so cool! Is that a Rafale? And more importantly - where can I check more of your work? :)

Jachym Michal https://twitter.com/Raghuna86681990/status/1374404327175909379 , well its called tejas mk2 aka lca afmk2 from india , you can check out some of my works in my twitter handle . i just began moddeling these , so i havent yet posted anything much except for 4 more renders . thanks a lot mate


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Is it possible to get nx, ny, and nz values of an object's coordinates in blender?
So in trying to do a script that writes these values, specifically for an object's XYZ coordinates for either the direction the object is facing. I've messed with matrix stuff before in blender but I'm not quite sure how these in particular would work.
Edit:
NX, NY, NZ determine the direction the object is facing by calculating the normal the triangle the point is over.

Please elaborate on what nx, ny and nz are.

Alright I updated the post

The global vectors of the local axes?

Yes the  global vectors of the local axes.

Global representation of normal axes.
The global value of the  z axis z_axis = Vector((0, 0, 1)) of an object obj can be calculated using
nz = obj.matrix_world * z_axis

All can be calculated from the matrix world using,
nx, ny, nz =  [v.normalized() for v in obj.matrix_world.to_3x3().transposed()]

"Normals" are used to tell which way a set of vertices are facing.
On the other hand, something that has been "normalized" has been scaled to 1 unit, and/or it's location brought to the origin.
I'm guessing neither of these suit your needs.
It sounds like you want an object's local coordinates, possibly rotation as well.
import bpy
obj = bpy.context.active_object
x,y,z = obj.matrix_local.to_translation()
roll,pitch,yaw = obj.matrix_local.to_euler()
Rotation is measured in radians.  Can be converted with Python's math.degrees() if need be.


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Unhide objects with UI?
I've been having issues trying to hide an object based off name (as a UI checkbox).
It nearly works, hiding an object is somewhat decent, not perfect as sometimes you need to recheck to work. But the main issue is i can't go back and unhide it.
if "bpy" in locals():
    import importlib
    if "MK8_export_paths" in locals():
        importlib.reload(MK8_export_paths)

import bpy
from bpy.types import Operator
from bpy.props import FloatVectorProperty
from bpy_extras.object_utils import AddObjectHelper, object_data_add
from mathutils import Vector
from bl_operators.presets import AddPresetBase

from bpy.props import (StringProperty,
                       BoolProperty,
                       IntProperty,
                       FloatProperty,
                       EnumProperty,
                       PointerProperty,
                       )
from bpy.types import (Panel,
                       AddonPreferences,
                       PropertyGroup,
                       )

def common_update(self, context, origin):

    obj = context.object
    scene = context.scene

    for ob in scene.objects:
        if scene.my_prop:
            if ob.name.startswith("Glide"):
                ob.hide = True
            else:
                ob.unhide = True
    else:
            ob.hide = False

class MySettings(PropertyGroup):

    bpy.types.Scene.my_prop = bpy.props.BoolProperty(update=lambda self, context:
    common_update(self, context, 'my_bool_one'))

class PathSETTINGS(Panel):
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_my_panel"
    bl_label = "My Panel"
    bl_space_type = "VIEW_3D"
    bl_region_type = "TOOLS"
    bl_category = "NewTest"

    def draw(self, context):
        obj = context.object
        layout = self.layout
        scene = context.scene
        layout.label("First row")
        row = layout.row(align=True)
        row.alignment = 'EXPAND'
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(scene, "my_prop", text="Hide Object")

# Registration

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(MySettings)
    bpy.utils.register_class(PathSETTINGS)
    bpy.types.Scene.my_prop = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=MySettings)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(MySettings)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(PathSETTINGS)
    del bpy.types.Scene.my_prop

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

How does common_update get called?

Oh yeah sorry i forgot the part with the boolean when i was copying parts of my script to the site, added it to the top of the code.

It's apart of the "PathSETTINGS" class, just the indentation seems to have messed up a bit.

Suggest making script such that it can be run as a working example from blender text editor.   For the formatting required on bse martkup, select all (ctrl-a) , tab (moves all one tab over), copy and paste here.  Also can you explain the reason for update=lambda self, context:  common_update(self, context, 'my_bool_one') instead of simply update=common_update and remove the never used origin parameter?

if (scene.my_prop == True): -- please just change that to if scene.my_prop:.

Thanks I updated the code for it to work properly. So "Origin" was just going to be another option for multiple booleans but i ended up not using it. Some of this code was used for reference. The update=lambda self, context: common_update(self, context,  part just defines those and common update needs 2 arguments.

If I was to copy the script above and paste in blender, will it run without errors?

Yup it will. There will then be a new category in the tools tab.

Please define bpy.types.Scene.my_prop and how you are calling update method in register.  On a clean file without the property defined it throws an error.

Ah yes sorry made a mistake. All that should be fixed now.

Feel free to try/modify this
bl_info = {
    "name": "Blank1",
    "author": "Your Name Here",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 79, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Tools panel 'T' > Blank1 > Blank2",
    "description": "",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "",
    }

import bpy
import os
from bpy.types import Operator
from bpy.types import Panel

def unhide_objects(scene):
    """Unhide all objects"""
    for ob in scene.objects:
        ob.hide = False

def ToggleHide(self, context):
    scene = self
    unhide_objects(scene)
    if scene.TestStringProp:
        for ob in scene.objects:
            if ob.name.startswith(str(scene.TestStringProp)):
                ob.hide = True
            else:
                ob.hide = False
    if not scene.TestBool:
        unhide_objects(scene)

def initprop():
    bpy.types.Scene.TestBool = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name="TestBool",
        description="",
        default=False,
        subtype='NONE',
        update=ToggleHide)

    bpy.types.Scene.TestStringProp = bpy.props.StringProperty(
        name="TestStringProp",
        description="",
        default="",
        subtype='NONE')

def delprop():
    del bpy.types.Scene.TestBool
    del bpy.types.Scene.TestStringProp

class VIEW3D_PT_Blank1_Blank2(Panel):
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Blank1"
    bl_context = "objectmode"
    bl_label = "Blank2"

    def draw(self, context):
        scene = context.scene
        layout = self.layout
        row = layout.row()
        col = layout.column(align=True)
        col.label(text="Columns")
        col.prop(scene, "TestBool")
        col.prop(scene, "TestStringProp")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(VIEW3D_PT_Blank1_Blank2)
    initprop()

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(VIEW3D_PT_Blank1_Blank2)
    delprop()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()