text:
Group Instancing: How do animations behave?
I've yet to delve into animations with Blender, but something I'm curious about is what happens if one were to create a couple of basic meshes joined with bones, then animated. If another object is made from the instance, would it also have the same animation? If so, can the animation be different, or not be animated at all?
I'm mostly curious as I'm not sure whether to create a group instance for several identical objects that would be separately animated in the future.

Usually all instances will be the same as the group. Even linking won't help. If you want to have more of the same rig in a scene, you can duplicate the source file and link the group from diffrerent files each.

I assume that also means I cant simply group the meshes only, then create the bones afterwards for each individual mesh? Also, regarding duplicating files, you mean having one set of the mesh and bones in multiple separate .blend files and importing them all into the main project?


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Memory (and large project) management
From what I've understood from other questions here, group instancing and dynamic linking are two methods for managing memory in a project that is large or complex. The latter also allows one to divide a project into many different components, to better work on each separate component and easily update any changes in the main project file.
This is where I have additional questions.
Let's suppose we are creating an office, with each floor being complete with furniture in varying amounts, types and locations per floor. Each model would be highly detailed, and therefore memory intensive. What would be the most effective way to approach this project as far as memory consumption is concerned?
To my understanding, two possible methods would be to create a group instance for each type of furniture and add them as needed, or use dynamic linking. With group instancing, if there are hundreds of pieces of furniture, but only a variety of five or ten, then the memory consumption should not go too much higher than what would be required for five or ten models (as opposed to hundreds).
What is unclear to me is how linking external files work in terms of memory management. Firstly, I am making the assumption that the 'Link' function (Ctrl+Alt+O) under 'File' is what people talk about when they refer to dynamic linking. Now there is already an issue when linking. When selecting the .blend file and linking the data in the 'Object' directory, the object appears in the center of the project and cannot be moved. The solution here appears to be the 'Make Proxy' command. When this command is used and the object is translated, rotated, scaled, or otherwise manipulated in any way, what happens to memory consumption?
At this point, we would have one linked object in the main project. To add additional objects of the same type, would you keep linking the same external file multiple times until the desired quantity is reached, or is there a better option?
Now suppose you wanted to animate one of these objects. Using the office example, say one chair could be reclined. Can bones be added to the mesh and have it all animated, without affecting other objects linked from the same file? This doesn't seem possible with group instancing from what I've tried doing. Editing the object in the group results in a change to every instance of the group. Assuming dynamic linking can achieve manageable duplicates of objects, would it be possible to link an object, then create the armature/bones and animation in the main project file? Is there a better, more organised solution?

Don't link objects, link groups. Have a rig effecting the item be part of the group. Copy linked groups with Alt D, no need to link them multiple times. Create a proxy rig from the linked groups on the groups you want to animate/change (Ctrl Alt P). This proxy rig will effect only the one instance.

@Jerryno is memory supposed to still increase significantly?

No, memory should increase but not significantly. Linking dupli-groups is as memory efficient as it can get.

Please ask one question at a time. You are welcome to ask as many questions as you need as separate posts. I see 5 questions, which should probably be separated into at least 3 different posts. I suggest editing this questions using the [edit] link below it down to just 1 question and asking the others separately.

I would if there wasn't a time limit on questions.

Nevertheless, that is how this site works. One question per post.

@Jerryno How do I link everything within another file? I can't seem to be able to link a group without their materials.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Assigning mesh to bones
I am new to Blender and having some issues following tutorials along where the mesh is assigned to bones. I have created a mesh and an armature. Bones are working as expected. At this point I am supposed to be able to parent the mesh to the armature by selecting the mesh, shift selecting the armature and then Ctrl-P, Parent with empty groups. Then I should select portions of the mesh and assign to vertex groups. One problem is I am unsure of the steps required to do this. Once I get the mesh portion selected (in Edit mode) I cannot find where the vertex groups are to assign. I may be in the wrong mode but the tutorials get a little vague (to me) at this point. Also, when I eventually can find the vertex groups it seems they are not all there. When I Parent with empty groups, should it create vertex groups for each bone?
I need a simple straight forward tutorial on this process.
Thank you

Yes in the Object Data panel > Vertex Groups, you should see the list of vertex groups the parentage has created, then you select the vertices you want in the mesh, select the vertex group you want in the list, and press on the Assign button

Is there a particular mode I should be in? I seem to only be able to select the mesh when in Edit mode, but then the vertex groups are not available. I'm so confused as the tutorials make it seem so simple. And as I said before, it appears that not all the vertex groups are being created when I parent. Unless I am misunderstanding this altogether.

maybe share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/

Hopefully this works, first time trying this. https://pasteall.org/blend/af8f805ea59848379c635d360a8335ff

You must have made a mistake at some point. First click on the Vertex Groups dropdown menu and Delete All Groups:

Also delete the Armature modifier in the Modifiers panel. Select the armature and in Edit mode, select the controller and target bones, go in the Bone panel and disable their Deform option.
Now parent the robot object again with the With Empty Groups option (not Automatic Weight which is made for organic things). Select the robot object, switch to Edit mode, select the left foot for example, go into the Vertex Groups list, select Foot.L, press Assign, and so on for the other parts:

Success!!! Thank you so much. Now, any idea what I did wrong so I can avoid it in the future? Also, the Foot.R vertex group was not created and I had to manually create it. Is this a bug in Parenting with Empty Groups? Where does the Armature modifier come from? Is that created when the parenting is performed? Thank you again for your help.

mmh Foot.R should be here, when you parent With Empty Groups it will create as many Vertex Groups as you have bones (as long as their Deform option is enabled) and the vertex group will share the exact same name as the bones. It's a way of parenting that is ideal for machines and robots as it doesn't assign any vertex to any group, it let you do it.

The modifier will automatically appear as soon as you parent with one of the Armature Deform options (so With Empty Groups or With Automatic Weight). You didn't have to delete the previous modifier as it had no armature selected but it was just in order to make it clean.

Well, almost success. I see now that the vertex group for Foot.R, the one I had to create, is not working. But I'm further along than before!

make sure that you have not disabled its Deform option by mistake. Actually you don't really have to disable the Deform option for these bones when parenting WIth Empty Groups but it was just a way to explain how it works

Are there any known bugs with 2.93.4? This is so frustrating. After going into animation and discovering the issue with Foot.R, now it seems none of the mesh is connected to the  bones anymore. WTH did I do? I've had meshes just disappear also. I think I will drop back to an earlier version if possible.

please share the file you're working on so that I find where the problem is

I deleted everything as before and tried again. Now all vertex groups have been created and the mesh is now moving as expected in Pose mode. Note to self! Make sure all vertex groups exist before continuing. Oh, I also upgraded to 2.93.5 so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

@Toroso don't forget to click the check-mark to the left at the top of the answer to accept.  moonboots donates lots of personnal time to answer questions.  the points earned help his reputation.

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


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IK Bone Constrain - Foot is weirdly rotated
I am trying to create bones for my armature follow this tutorial. However, when I apply the IK bone constraint, my foot rotates weirdly. It goes from this in Edit Mode:

To this in Pose Mode:

I have set all my bones Roll to be the same at 0 degrees but that doesn't fix my problem. I have also tried adjusting the Pole Angle as well. What ends up happening is that if I fix the foot rotation by either adjust UpperLeg.R Roll or Pole Angle, my knee no longer bends correctly. The other 2 parts of the legs roll do nothing to help. I tried looking at a bunch of other similar questions, but I don't know I can't seem to quite get it right.
Pasteall: https://pasteall.org/blend/b42573b8587e469d911befa446103034
Blend-Exchange:

In my opinion you need to bend the knee a bit forward in Edit mode, so that it knows in what direction it is supposed to bend, and then in Pose mode change the IK Pole Angle (to something around -75°):

I tried that and the knee bends towards an angle still. Am I doing something particularly wrong?

your upper leg and lower leg are not aligned, so it makes it bend a bit awkwardly, maybe align them?

Yep, that ended up being it. It is always something I assumed didn't matter, appreciate it.

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


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Best way to create a flat UV Map
I am wanting to create a template of a RZR, The issue is when I get to UV map some of the faces blend overlap on template which causes blurring. What would be the best way to map the below item so that all faces show on the uv while maintaining its general shape?

Hi :). You probably need to add more seams. Hard to say without seeing the UV map.

Yeah I tried that made a mess haha... I can show on over a screenshare if you'd like.


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Tail Armature acting weird, how do I fix it?
Followed this tutorial in rigging, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjSUjiD-SvI&ab_channel=RicSanCustomToys whole body works well. Trex tail (when I select any of the three last armatures) does not move correctly.
The other dino works just right, but I am unsure what went wrong as they were both rigged simultaneously, as in the two were rigged the same, or so I thought. I am unsure how to find the problem, where should I look/try?

Please provide blend file so we can check out your settings. Screenshot isn’t that helpful here

Try connecting the bones in Edit mode. Choose the very tip bone, then the second last bone and hit ctrl-p to set it as parent and choose connected. Repeat with the second last and third-last bone.


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How to get sun streaks /lens flare effect in compositor?
I am making a space scene in blender
The sphere with that emission material is supposed to be the sun .I remember doing somthing with the Index OB pass so I have it enabled.I wan't to get sun streaks like this:
How do I get this effect using the compositor?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4KLfzmey58 maybe try out this addon

So I found a solution to this problem I could of course use the Flares Wizard addon as @Jonas said yet the question was how it can be done with the compositor. This is how it can be done:

Add in a sphere which should be the sun
Give it an emission material with a strength of 10
Navigate to the object properties panel and in the relations ->Change the pass index of the sphere to 1
Navigate to View layer properties and in the passes-> enable object index (IndexOB)
Hit Render
Open up the compositor and use the node setup as shown:

Then you will get this:

PS:If your sphere is too big you will need to tweak the node setup.Likewise adding in a blur node in between can smoothen out that sharp streaks...
This is the rendered result:

If you want just sun glare you can you this node setup:
(Add node near render layers node is not necessary)
Which will get you this effect :

When adding the sun beams node make sure to place the cross in the middle of the sun


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How to merge two rendered .mkv videos from command prompt
So I was trying to use video sequencer to merge videos (I have 10 videos to merge) and I have the code. This code uses the line bpy.context.area.type='SEQUENCER_EDITOR'. When I try to run the code from cmd prompt, I get a NoneType Error. Please suggest how to merge the videos. If any changes make the sequencer work it will be great, or any thing that will merge 10 videos using blender python codes run from command prompt. Please help.

What exactly do you mean by "merge"? Do you mean put one video after the other to make a single longer video? You don't need blender for that. You can do it directly in ffmpeg https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate

I know it. But it said that ffmpeg is not recognized as internal or external command. Also I need to do it with blender python code. Please help me in that too.

I agree with @susu, Blender's video sequence editor can't be used as a command line tool, that's what ffmpeg is for, (you might need to install it). What "code" are you referring to? The bit you quote will only work within Blender as an addon.

You can use subprocess in Python to call command line argument


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Torus name keeps changing - keeps on adding index suffix
When I add say two planes together the planes get the names Plane, Plane.001 and so on. But when I add one, delete it and add the second plane, it gets the name as Plane. But for Torus, I am getting Torus.001. I have deleted and added several times but it goes on increasing the number. For this I am facing problem in accessing the Torus through python script. Can anyone please say the possible source for this error and the solution to it? I have checked its not happening with other Mesh objects.

@RayMairlot he is trying to use python to manipulate toruses, but because blender strangely names toruses with a number even when they don't need to have one he is not able to. I think this is a very good question because this issue seems only to be specific to the torus.

Hi. Please add any code relevant to your question into the question body. Thanks.


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Reverse Curve Guide Direction
When I create a curve and add 'Curve Guide' Force field, at one end there is a dotted circle and the other end a solid circle. As far as I have understood, the solid circle is for particle start and the dotted one is the end points. But I whenever I create the curve guide force field it automatically sets a start and end point. is there a way to reverse it ? Like interchange the solid and dotted circles keeping the curve as it is ?

You need to reverse the curve's normals direction: select it, go in Edit mode, then right click > Switch Direction.
To display the normals, go into the Viewport Overlays and enable Normals:

If possible may you also give the python code for that ?

I don't know anything about python, I guess you can get the code with the Info window?

Oh yes. I have got it. Thank you for the help.


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Deforming the initial cube by mouse
I would like to move one or two vertices of the initial cube in Blender so that it becomes a bit rhomboidal (deformed) by dragging the captured vertex with the mouse. I cannot find the right place in Blender to
play with deforming the cube. More specifically I need that the cube remains as a whole, just deformed. I have found something similar to this in the l.h.s. but not quite what I need.

I don't have a tool that does this for you, but you can manipulate the shape yourself. Here's how I would do it:

go to edit mode (either press Tab or go to the left corner, change it from Object Mode to Edit mode) you know that you are in Edit Mode if you see the vertices of the cube as dots

now select 4 vertices while holding Shift (the selected vertices appear orange and the one you selected last is white)

press S (for changing the scale) and then press Y (to scale it along the Y-axis, but you could also press X to scale it along the X-axis or Z)

to scale it you just need to move your mouse in the direction you want to scale it
if you are still in the scaling mode (you see a dotted black line coming from the center of your object), you can switch between the axes by pressing X, Y or Z and continue scaling along them

Hope this helps
(if you just want to move one vertex at a time, just click on the one you want to move and then press G to move it in space or G and then Z to move it along the Z-axis)


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How do I show the left hand side bottom box
How do I show the left hand side bottom menu which is present right after Shift-A added object Torus once
I've closed it?
It should be labelled Add Torus in this case.

Hi. Does this help? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/7850/how-to-edit-parameters-for-an-object-after-it-is-created

@RayMairlot Right!


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Changing color of a part of an object
I cannot find a way how to change a color to another, say "yellow" of a quadrangle on the torus surface.
I'm also interested in the possibility of changing an entire concentric circle of quadrangles around the torus to some other specific color.

you can select the faces and assign another material or use texture painting.

hey :) I saw that you are kind of learning Blender at the moment and just as a suggestion my favorite tutorial when I learned Blender was this  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrnSACiTJ4 in general Blender Guru has great tutorials...

@moamen Could you please provide me with a more detail how do I assign another material ? Thank you.

First make sure you are in 'Display material preview mode'

add new material to the object via '+' button.

Go to edit mode. Select the desired faces.

Select the desired material, click assign.

Done!


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Fac acronym in the Mix tab
What does Fac in the Mix tab stand for (in the golden tab Mix below ) ? I cannot find it in the Manual.

"Controls the amount of influence the node exerts on the output image." - from: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_nodes/color/mix.html

You mean mix factor?

Why are you using vector curves for black and white information like a mask?

@susu I'm just experimenttig to see what I get with vector curves.

@susu Please, what is the difference between adding a source to Fac and to Image to a Mix node ?

@brockmann Please, what is the difference between adding a source to Fac and to Image to a Mix node ?

@user2925716 please,  ask new questions on  a different post! not as comments.

And please refer to the blender manual as well, most of the questions you've been asking are already explained there: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_nodes/color/mix.html

Fac. is short for Factor
Nodes that have such input can use scalar information, or a grayscale image, as values to control the mix between two different elements.


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Odd Transparency or Normal Issues

I've been trying to resolve this issue all morning and I'm sure it's something small. I looked into the material but that seems fine...I reset the material to make sure.
My normals are facing the right direction....
At some point i hit all the options under Mesh>normals and "smooth vectors" did do something but still looks wrong.
Looks like this in EEVEE and the viewport.  Cycles looks fine but i'm trying to use eevee
It might have to do with object properties?  Anyways any help would be greatly appreciated so i can move on with this small project.
Also the building mesh came from using "image as planes"  and then extruding out the sides.

Have you tried to recalculate the normals to the outside of the model?

Make sure that the normals point in the right direction and try to set the Blend Mode for Eevee to Alpha Hashed.

Can you upload a copy of your .blend file? It looks like smooth shading + smooth vectors, and I can't tell from your photo but maybe front-face culling? Not likely, but it would be worth a closer look.

"Blend Mode for Eevee to Alpha Hashed" THAT WORKED, thanks @robert.  looks like the addon "images as planes" has it set to a different settings when you create a mesh from it.  Shoot I knew it was something small, If only i could have my morning back...Also how do you make it so this post has the solution in green or is that done by a moderator.  anyways thanks!

@ChristopherBennett Yea I stumbled upon shade flat and that made the mesh look better. thanks for replying so quick

You're experiencing a sorting problem due to Alpha Blend. Changing the Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed in the material properties should fix this issue. If you have to use Alpha Blend make sure that Show Backside is disabled.

Sorting Problem
When writing to the color buffer using transparent blend modes, the order in which the color blending happens is important as it can change the final output color. As of now Eevee does not support per-fragment (pixel) sorting or per-triangle sorting. Only per-object sorting is available and is automatically done on all transparent surfaces based on object origin.


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Efficient rendering of animated urban scene (using LiDAR point cloud)
I have a colourized aerial laser scan of a municipality that I would like to render in an animation. Below is an example I created for a small subsection:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WAoLJ6H1Qc0fIBdWPg9QvwVTKOTSEMSv/view?usp=sharing
As you can see, the trees and structures are represented by a cloud of points (within Blender, they are imported as equilateral triangles).
The entire dataset is many hundreds of millions of these points, but as the camera pans over the municipality, only a small section will ever be on camera at a time. The entire town is never displayed at once, although I would like the panning camera to sweep over the area seemlessly.
Is there an efficient way of doing this? I'm not sure I can even load the entire dataset into Blender at once. Is there any way to work with "tiles" of data, for instance?
Thanks!


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Facing a problem related to number of render samples,how to set the number of samples to 128 again after changing it?
Recently I changed the number of render samples from 128 to 510 for a specific model. but now even if I'm opening a new blender file and, even though there is written(in render properties) that the number of render samples in the render is 128 and viewport is 32. Still when I press Render image the number of samples that are calculated are 510, and I'm not able to change it, please help.

Are you sure that you are not using branched path tracing? I don't really know any other way you can have more samples than what your base sample setting is, is by using sub samples in the branched path tracing mode, or by squaring the samples. But 128 squared is way more than 510. Otherwise I'm thinking of a bug of some sort.

Are you using a material override? https://i.sstatic.net/F4QaN.png

yes, I'm sure I'm not using Branched path tracing. Even though I completely close blender and start a new blender project. The render properties are not even tampered and the render samples are 128 (render ) and 32 (viewport), just when I think ok it should work fine now. when I render the ing, The information shown at the top bar while rendering, it shous

it shows (Rendered: 20/ 510 TIles)

Im sorry, im a beginner in the blender. i didn't know that 510 tiles are just the way it should be, sorry for bothering you guys.


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Bone snapping to control bone while making an Inverse Kinematic Rig
Good evening. I have made a humanoid rig and wish to add an IK Controller to the bone "UpperArm.R". I wish to make the bone "CTRL_1.R" bone as a controller bone. Whenever I do so, the control bone snaps to the bone "UpperArm.R". A blend file has been provided. Please look into this. Thank you.
Blend File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RswoL_7QxSEs98YIJ_Ud3OiYzzdGmSnu/view?usp=sharing

Your problem has a very simple answer. When ever you add IK control to a rig, the  default chain length is usually 0, and the bone tries to point at the rig's origin, thus creating some weird posture.
You can solve this by adjusting the chain length to the number of bone you would like to be influenced by the Inverse Kinematics (IK).
Try 1 or 2 and get a feel of what work best for the rig.

Unfortuantely thats not the issue. I tried adjusting the chain length to 3 ( that is, 1,2,3) but still the UpperArm bone snaps to the controller bone... Any other suggestions?

You have a dependency loop.  Your IK target, CTRL_1.R, is parented to the IK constrained bone, UpperArm.R.  The position of CTRL depends on UpperArm via parenting, which depends on CTRL via IK, which depends on UpperArm via parenting, forever and ever. Parent CTRL to your root bone.

The answer is actually a combination of both previous answers:

The controller bone is parented to the IK bone itself controlled by the controller, making a dependency loop. Common practice it to parent the controller bone to the root bone (which there isn't here, so it would be a good time to make one).

The IK constraint's length is set to zero, leaving Blender trying to decide how far the IK chain should reach, and in this case climbing the hierarchy up to the pelvis. Common practice is to set it to 2 (arm + forearm = 2 bones).

Bonuses:

You don't need an elbow bone between your arm and forearm. The elbow is an articulation. Select it in edit mode and press ⎈ CtrlX to dissolve it without breaking the existing rig.
Common practice is also to parent the children bones to the controller instead of the forearm. So that their rotation remains fully controlled by the animator and not by the angle of the forearm formed by the IK.
You should position your IK controller at the same position as your hand bone.
You need an IK pole bone, which you can make by extruding your elbow, parenting it to your controller moving it away from your arm, and put its name in the IK constraint. The Ik chain will aim its bend to it, so you can control it.


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How do i frame selected objects in non-local viewport?
Is it possible to frame selected objects in my viewport (see image), i mean every time a frame selected all the other non selected objects disappear? and if this is possible what is the feature name to create hotkey.
I would be very grateful for any tips, suggestions or help in this matter. Thanks Stewart

"Frame Selected" ( Numpad  . ) shouldn't make anything else disappear. "Local Mode ( forward / ) "is what makes other things disappear.

I'm not sure if this cover your needs, but you can enable addon Stored Views. Located in 3D View > Sidebar (N)
From there you can save any view or camera view and switch between them.


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How to merge more materials into one
I have couple of objects in my GLB file.
One object (a chair) has this material:

and on scene it looks like:

The second object (group of objects) looks like:

and on scene:

My question is: how to merge second object (group) in order to look like first one, and how to merge materials from the second group in order to look like material from first object. I tried to merge objects with ctrl+J but it does not merge materials.
Many thanks!
Mirko

why do you want to merge the second object?

Because I am importing GLB into THREE.js and like this I will get 4 different meshes which does not make sense.

Maybe you need to "bake materials" using Cycles

Any idea how to do that? Many thanks!


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Crash when I start Blender 2.83 on Windows 7 Pro
I've just installed Blender 64Bits v2.83 (Os W7 Pro-64b) and when I try to launch it, I have a stealth window (kind for DOS command) which opens and closes immediately, and the program doesn't not open :-(!
Can you help me to solve this problem?
thank you in advance,
Best Regards,
G.

Something similar happened to me with  on a Win 8.1 laptop, but I was also getting an error message related to a sound setting. Strangely, I made it work by upgrading my graphics card driver to the latest version, so you can try that. If not, try to see if Win 7 is still supported. Hope this helps! Stay safe.


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How to get location and rotation of light instances with python?
I am trying to collect information about lights existing in the scene with python. For now I have color, strength, type and so on but now I need to store also location and rotation of the instances. How should I approach it?
For now this is how it looks like:
import bpy
import math

def get_lights():

    lights_list = []

    for light in bpy.data.lights:

        light_dict = {}

        light_dict['type'] = light.type

        light_dict['name'] = light.name

        if light.type == 'SPOT':
            light_dict['angle'] = int(light.spot_size*180/math.pi)

        if light.type == 'SPOT' or light.type == 'POINT':
            light_dict['size'] = light.shadow_soft_size

        light_dict['strength'] = light.energy

        light_color = []
        light_color.append(round(light.color.r, 2))
        light_color.append(round(light.color.g, 2))
        light_color.append(round(light.color.b, 2))
        light_dict['color'] = light_color

        lights_list.append(light_dict)

    return lights_list

l = get_lights()
print(l)
```

For global locations use matrix world
To make sure the global transform of light is as shown visually recommend using the matrix world.  Eg for default lamp global location and rotation
All the global transform info is available in the matrix.
>>> C.object
bpy.data.objects['Lamp']

>>> C.object.matrix_world
Matrix(((-0.29086464643478394, -0.7711008191108704, 0.5663931965827942, 4.076245307922363),
        (0.9551711678504944, -0.1998833566904068, 0.21839119493961334, 1.0054539442062378),
        (-0.05518905818462372, 0.6045247316360474, 0.7946722507476807, 5.903861999511719),
        (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)))

>>> C.object.matrix_world.to_translation() # global location
Vector((4.076245307922363, 1.0054539442062378, 5.903861999511719))

>>> C.object.matrix_world.to_euler() # global rot in Eulers
Euler((0.6503280401229858, 0.055217113345861435, 1.8663908243179321), 'XYZ')

Remember all angles are in radians.
By using ob.matrix_world.copy() in code below it creates a "snapshot" of when script was run. If ob.matrix_world is used it is bound to the reference of the light and will change when transformed, an most likely crash blender if referenced after object is removed.
import bpy

def get_lights(col):
    assert(hasattr(col, "objects"))
    def to_dict(light):
        d = {}
        # add stuff already got
        d["matrix_world"] = light.matrix_world.copy()
        return d

    return [to_dict(o) for o in col.objects if o.type == 'LIGHT']

# test call
# lights in scene
print(get_lights(bpy.context.scene))
# lights in blend
print(get_lights(bpy.data))
# lights in active collection
print(get_lights(bpy.context.collection))


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Blender material list is broken
I was working on blender 4.1.1 and suddenly the material list was missing, I restarted Blender and opened a new file but the problem persists. Anyone knows how can I bring it back? It's very difficult to work like this. Thanks in advance.

Please share a minimal file representing the error on https://blend-exchange.com/ , to see if we can reproduce the problem. I'm afraid this looks as if it could be a bug, in which case we are not equipped to deal with it on BSE, and, instead, you will have to make a report.

I could upload the file but when I open the same file on my laptop the material list works fine

OK, this does look like a bug, in however Blender is playing, in  the environment on the failing machine.. It  should be reported .. ( See Header > Help ).  Check your graphics drivers / OS are up to date, first. I'm very sorry,  we can't help here, and your post will probably have to close.

@RobinBetts I thought at first, maybe it's not a bug and it is possible that the material list looks empty while it is just accidentally filtered: material filter but then I realized there is no filter available in the material list in the screenshot as it seems... so it is probably really a bug.

Thanks @GordonBrinkmann  I don't like to stomp on posts without checking carefully. Will  just await response from marcod, if any .. holding off for a bit.

I get this problem when cycles plugin is deactivated, are you filtering your addons in 3d panel using (N shortcut) Tool tab>workspace>Filter addons ?

@cscholl I finally found the problem, for some reason when I disabled the Flow addon the material tab got hidden also, I had to reinstall the addon it for it to work, this is not a permanent solution but at least I found a workaround for the time being. Thank you all for the help.


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How can I add the glass stamp to the bottle?
I'm trying to add this to my model but I can't figure out how to.

Import your image as a plane, Shrinkwrap it to the bottle and set Wrap Method to Project.

To get the circle around your logo you could just add a circle, extrude it a bit outwards to give it some width and similarly Shrinkwrap it to your bottle. To Shrinkwrap the circle rotate it towards the bottle. Then Solidify it the amount that looks good.

Next give your bottle a Union Boolean from your circle and Bevel it.

Thank you very much!

I'm having trouble shrinkwraping the circle to the bottle https://i.imgur.com/sRvYlVz.png

I added an image of how the circle should look like.

Thank for all the help! it worked perfectly

You're welcome. Glad to help.


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Create arches to form dome on ring shape
I am trying to take this shape:

and have it with a dome (of a slightly different width) over the ring shape.  (refer to my sketch)
How do create a dome over this ring?
Attached is a side view of what I'm trying to achieve

I have tried using the bend modifier after watching some tutorials but I can't seem to get it to work since I'm not sure I understand what it's doing.
Any help in the right direction is appreciated!
My Attempts So Far:
Here is my wacky attempt using bend modifier:

I have tried the bridge loop technique as well but I also get weird results.

Have you tried spin? It can be a little tricky, but it's useful.

the bridge edge loops didn't work because the two faces you want to join need to be a little bit tilted towards each other, but anyway you have other ways to do it

I think I'd find a plan, section, and elevation easier to comprehend

How to create a dome procedurally.

Add a Plane, go to edit mode, select all, right click > Merge > By distance (in order to get a single vertex at the origin of the world)
Add a displace modifier, set the direction to Z and midlevel to 0

Add a screw modifier, set to X, angle 90°. Now you have an half-arc going from Z = 1 to Z = 0

Add another screw primitive. Now you have a half UV sphere primitive

Duplicate the dome and remove both screw modifiers, and set the displacement axis to X. Now add a screw modifier and don't change anything. right Click in the "Strength" field of the dome's displacement modifier and choose "copy as new driver".
Paste the driver in the "Z" location of the wall object with right click > Paste driver. Now go to the "Angle" field of the dome's first screw modifier and copy as a new driver too. Right click again in the "Z" location driver and choose "Edit driver". Click on "paste driver variables" icon on the top right of the displayed variables. Change the driver settings from "Averaged value" to "Scripted expression" and type : strength* sin(pi/2-angle). That should make sure the walls are always leveled with the bottom of the dome.

Now for the circumference, do the exact same process but with the "Strength" field of the wall's displacement modifier and change the expression to strength*cos(pi/2 - angle)

Add a boolean modifier to the dome set to "Union" and a "weld" modifier. Hide the wall object.
Add a solidify modifier to the dome object for thickness.
Result :

You can go wild editing every field in the modifiers and create your custom drivers !

I'm reviewing your answer and will let you know if this works for me.  Great work on that file! This seems like it's very flexible and combined with other techniques I'm learning may do the trick :).  Give me a few days to get back to you on this after experimenting.

Can you elaborate on the merge by distance and the first step.  I can't seem to get that to work, what settings are using exactly? For me I can raise the merge by distance to the max setting and it creates a line that is off from center from the original plane and I just see a line and not just one point.   Also what is the purpose of the displace modifier here?

You don't have to use this method, as long as you end up with a single vertex at the origin of the world. You could delete the other 3 vertices and just move the remaining one to 0,0,0. :) The displace modifier is here to let you tweak the radius of the dome afterwards, like I showed in the last GIF

If I understand correctly, then the spin tool might be a very good option here.
Keep in mind that with this operator,

The point of view will determine around which axis the extrusion
spins…
The position of the 3D cursor will be the center of the rotation.

So for your case,

Shift+S >cursor to selected
While in an orthographic view, Alt+R
Adjust the angle and steps in the redo panel
Merge by distance to remove any double vertices

I'm trying this technique now, I'm having problems currently trying to get it to work with some strange results.  Can you elaborate on the spin tool more in detail the settings you used.  Is it possible to do that arch on all sides at once to create a dome?

Here's a way you could possibly achieve this. Select the top of the inner ring, and press F to form a face.

Inset the face multiple times to leave some geometry to form the dome (through whatever means you prefer). Then, select the middle face and turn on "Proportional Editing" (O), check the box that says "connected only", and make sure it's set to "sphere". See below:

Grab the center face, and move it on the Z-axis to form a dome. You will have to adjust the edit area circle with the mouse wheel so it affects everything but your starting mesh. It should look like this.

Do this same thing for the outside ring. I think you'll probably want to do the outside first anyway, so you're not making the outer dome "through" the inner one. For the outside edge, you will have to extrude the edge upwards slightly first so it will be able to form a face. It should look something like this (but better - I was sloppy)

Can you elaborate on the inset method you used? I can't seem to replicate what you did.

I think I know what you did now, I think you just kept clicking on the middle face and running inset faces and setting how much it insets in.  Is this what you did?

Yeah. First make a face in the center - i'm sure you've done that already. After that there are a couple of ways I can think of. First is the sloppy, manual way, just inset by pressing I, and either enter a number distance or move the mouse to inset a bit, then press shift+r to repeat until you hit the middle. The more elegant method I prefer is to inset only once (I), and shrink the middle to a very small center point. I then add a loop cut with ctrl+r to the middlle of the new inset area. I then make it larger, and  bevel it with ctrl+b and scroll the mouse wheel until I  have more "loops".

I'm at the next part now where i'm trying to do the proportional editing so it creates the sphere, but when I do it and transform up everything just moves up perfectly straight to create a plateau affect.  I made sure connected only and proportional editing is on.  I tried selecting only the middle circle and then selecting just the circles I want but nothing so far, any idea what I'm doing wrong? (You might have to elaborate on what 'move' means for that part.  Sorry for my newbie questions :P)

When I say move, I refer to using the grab tool (G), so if I say move up, I mean select the face you want and move it up on the Z axis (G > Z + move the mouse). When you use proportional editing, there is an "area of effect" that is shown by a white circle on the screen. You can control the size of this circle by scrolling the mouse wheel. If the whole mesh moves at once, and/or you can't see the circle, it likely means that the selection area is bigger than the mesh/your screen. Make it smaller by scrolling the mouse wheel (up, I think). until you can see it.

Thanks the middle mouse wheel to expand the circle was the thing I was missing! continuing on with the rest now :).


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Animation Nodes - How to Instance multiple objects/collection
I do have some meshes under a Collection and I would like to put them into an Object Instancer while maintaining the original positions (it's a cartoon tree).
Can't find a way to do this.
Thanks!

Try this: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/33706/how-to-duplicate-object-with-its-animation-then-relocate-rotate

Instancing a Collection worked out. Not exactly the same workflow as the link, but it works. Now my objects maintain the original position. Thanks!

You may use the Object Instancer node to instance a group of empties, then you can set their instance_type to COLLECTION and set their instance_collection to whatever collection you want. For instance:

This is amazing. Thank you.
If you have time, can you elaborate a bit more about this setup?
I instance empties and then trough Object Attribute Output I define some parameters... but where come from those instance_types and instance_collection  inputs? Why the instance_type text input needs to be uppercase?
Thanks again!

@DimitriPaiva instance_types and instance_collection  are just the names of the properties in the python API. Hover over any property and you will see its API name. In this case, I hovered over the properties in the Object->Instancing panel to know their names. Moreover, it being uppercase is also related to how it is defined in the API, string properties are uppercase by convention.

Thanks @Omar. It was very helpful. Also, sorry about the delay. It has been tough weeks here.

what i get from instancing a colleciton here is an objects list. is it possible to get access to the child of an instance? Let's say I randomly instance a few collections all over my scene and my master collection has an empty. is it somehow possible to get the emptys world position within each collection?


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skin become dark after render in cyle render
I just used a blender. I need to ask why the skin turns black after switching from the material display to the rendering display, even though all the light is already bright, here SS. Thanks

Could it be because you are using a mix shader with the texture that mixes it 50% with black? Maybe slide the Factor to 0 (or maybe 1.0).

It's because you have unconnected Shader socket in your mix shader (it is black) and probably because you feed normal map data into displacement socket, and because your normal map texture is set to color and not non-color-data.

Thank you for replying, I have found a solution ... the texture must use alpha color.. i will edit this question

Rather than making answer an edit to question and marking it "SOLVED",  please add an answer.

sorry im new using this... thx for remind

FIX! here the node before.

After

This makes little sense. I would suggest learning what the nodes do before using them. If you removed the Mix Shader node you would only have the Diffuse BSDF that would have the same effect.

yeah i'm still learning now


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How to prevent the rigging hair pass through the body, object or mesh while animated?
Greeting...
I never find this problem solution for 2 years... can some one help me? Please? or blender dont have way to do this?...
HERE THE FILE :

Possible duplicate with https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/62122/how-do-i-stop-hair-particles-going-through-the-body-and-the-head?rq=1 If not,  could you specify what's different?

That was using hair particle system not using bone on that hair (rigging hair)


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Strange normal map behavior in Cycles (Blender 2.80)
I have a problem with normal map baking from high-poly to low-poly in Cycles. When I apply the normal map on the rendered object appears quads, but in eevee this doesn't appen. The strange thing is that these quads doesn't correspond to the wireframe of the mesh visible in Edit mode.
These quads are visible in the normal map, but why they don't appear in eevee? How can I bake normals without quads?
Thank you.

Make sure to set shading of both objects to Smooth, then rebake.

Shading of both object was already Smooth. Thank you.

One thing that seams to work is when you check the "32 bit float" when creating a new image to bake on. And sometimes that fixes weird artifacts but at the cost of eating a little more Vram and the color of the map being lighter (but the data should still be correct from the map)

I had to save the output normal map image (with Save As in the Image editor). This made baking work correctly.

Looks like unexpected behaviour or a bug; probably Blender couldn't rewrite image unless it was explicitly saved as file which invoked update.


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Object location before and after parenting
I've noticed this rather annoying behaviour with parenting and de-parenting of objects. For example:
Object A is located at coordinates 0, 0, 0.
Object B is located at coordinates 0, 0, 1.
If object A becomes the parent to object B, nothing happens as far as location is concerned. However, if A is moved to, say, 5, 0, 0, then B will obviously move with A. Now, if I decide that A should no longer be a parent to B and separate the two, B will return to the original location before parenting, which would be 0, 0, 1 in my example.
I assume there is a reason for this function. However, it becomes extremely annoying if I have linked and made proxies to parented objects, because as far as I'm aware, I need to make each individually linked object a proxy, and therefore the parenting data is broken and must be made again. At that point however, the new coordinates of unparented objects are made, and therefore the objects cannot return to their intended locations, which wastes time in relocating everything once more. I assume this issue also happens for other transformations such as rotations and scales.
Is there a way to work around this, without requiring the foresight to perform parenting only once all relative locations have been finalised?

Use AltP > Clear and Keep Transformation.
This will unparent the child and apply the transformation of parent.

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


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Alternating colour striped material
I'm attempting to understand how to use nodes and currently trying to create a material which involves a pair of alternating coloured stripes. Think of a barcode, or hazard stripes.
In my first attempt, I tried using a checker texture node, which took vector information from a mapping node. In this node, I used the point setting, and scaled it so that X and Y were .1, while Z was 1. The mapping vector information was then obtained from a generated texture coordinate node.
This seemed to be fine for two out of three axes, as the X and Y had stripes. However, I could not figure out how to apply the stripes to the Z axis, which remained a solid colour. I can see why this is so, but I don't know how to create an alternative solution.
Another limitation with what I tried is that if I were to set mapping rotation to 45 degrees for example, I would get solid colours on two axes, and triangular alternates on the third, which is definitely not what I'm trying to make.
So basically, how can I create a material which is striped in all axes, and can be rotated without any sort of distortion or deformation?

The thing is, any manifold will have at least 1 singularity, so it is mathematically impossible to create strips without disconnecting them.
However if you would allow discontinuity you can create strips in 2 axis and other 2 axis and mix between them. (Can you do this?)
Also, did you have a look at the wave texture node?

This can also be accomplished with the checker texture.

Separate the generated texture coordinates vector, connect a math node set to sine to one of the coordinates, connect the output to a math node set to greater than, and connect that output to a mix RGB node.

The result:

If you want stripes on all sides, it is probably best to UV unwrap the mesh and use the UV texture coordinates as input for the node setup.

Seems alright. I've added a mapping node between the first and second in your screenshot and tried giving it a 45 degree angle on the Z axis. I've noticed that the stripes adjust to the dimensions of the mesh, and is therefore only truly 45 degrees when the mesh is a cube (as opposed to a rectangle). Any idea how to work around that?

I stretched the cube to twice its length and added a Mapping node and rotated by 45 degrees.  The stripes stayed at 45 degrees.  I used the Camera output of the Texture Coordinates.  I confess that I don't know what using this output means, but it worked.


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Retain parent setup when making proxy
Currently, when I link several objects, or link a scene, I need to select each object and make them proxies individually. However, doing this results in losing the parent structure of the external file. For small and even medium numbers of objects, this is fine. However, more complex scenes will be difficult and tiresome to set up.
What is the best way to go about this? Is there a way to retain the structure? Can all the linked data be made proxies all in one go as well?


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Removing material from project
Despite several answers to this same question, I have been unable to successfully remove a material from the materials list in my projects. Following answers in other questions, I have gone to the Properties section and opened the materials tab, then selected the material I want to remove, then clicked the X button next to the list to unlink. I've also tried this with a shift click to set the users to zero. After a save and reload, the material is still in the list.
Since I believe I've followed the instructions in multiple answers to the letter, I am forced to conclude that there is something different about my project. The material is a direct linked library datablock. Perhaps this is the cause? If so, I'm guessing I need to remove the link between the external file and this project.
Another answer suggested to click the make local button next to the list, but this seems to create a local copy of the material, while the original remains linked. The local copy can be removed following the standard methods, however.

As a linked item, the object using the material will replace it when you re-open. You will need to remove the material from the model in the external file. The make local option would need to be applied to the object using the material not the material.

Care to post the .blend using Blend Exchange?

To remove a material from your file, go to the materials tab and shift+Click the × next to the material.
The material will be set to 0 uses. Consequently, saving your project, closing and reopening it will remove it from the list of available materials.

Go to your outliner and select "Blend File" from the drop-down.  Expand the list of materials, find the one you want gone, right-click it, and delete.  It will immediately completely remove the material from the file.

When you delete the material you have to click the X beside it holding the SHIFT button.

I did. Does not work.


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Creating an edgeless material for flame
I'm looking to recreate something like this , but if possible, using just the nodes editor and a mesh. I'm primarily having trouble with finding the right combination of nodes to create that edgeless, or feathered look to the mesh. The rest should be simple enough to do, mixing it in with transparent and emission shaders. I think I have that part of the node setup ready to go, but I need to have the rest of the node setup to be sure. That's where I'm hoping someone here might come in.

Volumetric emission is exactly what you are looking for.

Just an idea..
You could just draw with really soft brush in Photoshop/Gimp, something similar to a flame. Then use that as the mask factor.

I just did this on a flat plane. If you use a solid object just make sure all the sides are close to each other or it might look a little weird.

You may also try the fresnel node, which is white where normals are at oblique angles (to the camera/viewport), and black when normals are face-on. You can use that as a mix factor for your alpha channel or transparent shader, and so give your mesh soft edges.

Coloramp to Emission shader and Quick smoke gave me this result:
Add more smoke for stronger effect


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Insets with different sided faces to original
Say you have a plane, or one face of a mesh selected. You press I to inset. The inset shape will be the same as the face/plane you are insetting. Can the inset be a different shape, to the face/plane? For instance, a circular inset in a square.
I know you can achieve similar results with a boolean modifier, or even the bridge edge loops function. However, if this sort of inset function exists, it would make things faster and more convenient. If not...well, not a big deal, I suppose.


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Spherical background image
I'm trying to experiment with an animation project that requires the use of a spherical background image. The image I wish to use comes from a program that outputs six images; one for the top, bottom, left, right, front, and rear views.
Originally, I tried getting these stitched using an external program to create the spherical projection that can be used for a background in Blender. This worked perfectly, as far as seeing the image was concerned. However, the only free tool I could find places a watermark on the image.
So before I ask if a fully functioning free tool exists, is there a feature or add-on in Cycles that can create the intended background using the available images?
If it matters, the node setup I used for the watermarked image was:

Related - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/32493/cycles-skybox-using-6-projected-images

Hmm, so it looks like a Blender solution is out of the question. And I assume no change over the two years since that post? Guess that leaves a third party tool. Question is, which one?

You have option 2, you can create a cube around your scene and unwrap it to your skybox, not many downsides to that

How will that work with lighting? Sun lamps, for instance? Would the image even be visible unless the cube had an emission node on it?

There's also backwards process - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/28328/exporting-cycles-sky-to-skybox-images, maybe it could be useful. As to the tool I think panorama stitchers should be able to do that, Hugin is free one. Btw which tool did you use to get with watermark?

Yes, you can use an emission shader on said cube, and use a light path node to make it invisible to the sun causing it not to cast any shadows.

One approach you could use is to create a special converter scene using cycles.
Place the camera in the center of a cube and give each face of the cube its own material based on one of the face images (honestly: rigging the materials and the UV coordinates will probably be the most time-consuming part of this exercise).  You probably want to use an emission BSDF.
Then change your Camera > Lens from Perspective to Panoramic.  Change the new Type: to Equirectangular (unless you want one of the others).  Then render one frame and you should have an equirecangular version of the scene.
Save that image and you should be able to use it as the environment in your main project.
There is also https://github.com/Samsung/360tools, but I have not investigated the exact command-line for converting from a cubemap to equirectangular, and it might require you to convert to YUV and back.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/13435/660 has screenshots of the UI for setting the panoramic camera.

I'll try getting the stitching to work, but if I can't do it (and it looks like that might be the case), I'll give this method a try. I assume that the camera settings will eliminate the problem with seeing the edges and corners of the cube, and give it a proper spherical look?

As long as the images are generated with the proper perspective and aspect and no overlap for a perfect cubemap, it will be fine.  If the cubemap rendering process did generate some margin, you'll have to read the documentation of the generator and do some math to figure out the adjusted UV coordinates.


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Network render outputs pink frames
My setup is a Windows 10 system running one client and one master, and two Linux Mint systems running as slaves. Four GPUs per slave.
As far as the network setup goes, everything seems normal. The clients are able to communicate with each other, anyway. Problem is, when I click Animation on Network in the client, the render viewport starts empty. Then, once the 'results' start coming back, the frames are pink, and look more like what you would see when using the viewport during mesh construction. There should be an image background in the world, but that isn't visible either.
I've made sure that cycles is selected in the client configuration, and all the render settings such as sampling were configured in the cycles mode before switching to the network render mode.
I've tested this with both animation, and with a simple single frame render. Same results. Everything renders fine under cycles without the network render.
What am I missing? And is there any other information I should provide?
EDIT: I've noticed some other questions here getting answers about seeing pink when there are missing textures. I suppose I should point out that everything in my scene is currently just materials. The only image used is for the world.

No textures are being used

You just said yourself you use an image for the world. How are you not using textures?

The world, yes. Everything else is just material. There should not be any of that kind of pink issue outlined in other questions when I'm rendering internal shots where the world is not visible. So finding missing files will not  work, because there is no file to find in the first place.

If the world texture is not refrenced properly the whole scene is lit in pink, too. How does that not have an impact. Have you tried disabling the texture? Have you tried packing the textures under 'file->external data->' before sending it to the farm?

I'll have to give that a try later tonight when I get home. Will let you know.

No change. Tried completely removing the texture from the nodes and using a solid blue background node. Still pink. Tried packing. No difference.


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Procedural carbon fiber material
After several failed attempts to create a procedural carbon fiber material, I decided to look around for tutorials, only to find that the majority require the use of textures. The only promising resource seems to point to a dead page, but from the little information I could gather, it seems to have something to do with two texture nodes and a checker node.
I'm not quite sure what to do with this information, so hopefully someone might be able to fill in the blanks as to how I can achieve that weave-like look that carbon fiber has, without the use of textures.

What have you tried so far, and where did it fail? Can you post some images of what you achieved?

Here's my base for how I control my carbon fiber material.
This particular result is stylized for the purpose of indicating the primary color's that I change, to get what I want.

And Below is my node setup:

As time allows, I will circle back around on this, and add the text step-by-step to get this node setup for completeness, however lacking this the images should suffice for now.

Looks very promising. I'll let you know how it goes in a week or two when I get my computer working again.

Yeah, this seems to work quite well. Had to increase the scale on the brick textures for larger items, but other than that, the image alone is quite self explanatory. I'll probably play around with the rest of the node settings at some point as well.


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How do I use MultiRes modifier here?
Figured out I had to use MultiRes modifier in order to use alpha brushes with image as textures, and that has worked for two other files. However, with this one it just isn't working. Did I use the wrong image? The MultiRes modifier has not been applied yet.

I have realized it was at 1.0 strength but I am now facing other problems. They are in another question.

I FIGURED IT ALL OUT NEVERMIND LOVE THIS WEBSITE


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Eevee diffuse pass render bug?
I hope this is the right place to post this.
To see the "bug", please go directly to the observation part.
The setup
We need to export the diffuse pass render in low resolution of a scene, like I have here.

The scene above consists of a mesh object created by using a Skin and Subdivision modifier, and for demonstration purposes, two standard cubes of the same size, with no modifiers at all.
The two cubes are lying on top of each other, i.e. they have the exact same location.
All objects in this scene share the same Material with just a Principled BSDF shader:

Base Color here is:
R: 0.2
G: 0.4
B: 1.0

In the render settings, I checked Diffuse -> Color to get the respective output option on my Compositor, writing that into an EXR file.

I explicitly chose EXR here, since it allows for HDR color values greater than 1.0.
The observation
Now I stumpled upon the fact that in Eevee the diffuse pass seems to add the color values together for faces lying on top of each other (resolving "z-fighting" additively ?),
which causes for the resulting color values to be out of SDR range (greather than 1.0). In this case, the color values of the affected pixels are not
R: 0.2
G: 0.4
B: 1.0

as expected, but
R: 0.4
G: 0.8
B: 2.0

Now, you could circumvent this by simply telling your artists to not have any faces overlapping like this in their scenes.
The thing is, this artifact sometimes also appears (apparently) randomly on other objects with no overlapping faces, like you can see here on the skinned object, affecting only two pixels (I hope the gif plays):

This causes Eevee to be unuseable for us at this point.
Is this intentional behaviour or a bug within Eevee? Am I missing something obvious here?
The other solution would be to switch to Cycles for good. But we really would like to stay with Eevee, since it's way faster.
Blender Version: 2.93.1

One of the reasons, possibly the main one, that EEVEE is faster is that it's simpler, and you've just encountered an example of that simplification making EEVEE differ from Cycles.  It's not a bug, it's a feature, at least in this case.

Nevertheless I'd like to know what exactly causes the two pixels (not the cubes) to be out of SD range. For the two overlapping cubes, I get it.


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How to insert natural lighting with different illuminance values through window inside a room in blender?
I have created a very simple model of a room with windows. I have calculated illuminance values for different walls, ceiling and floor of the room through mathematical formula. I want to display lighting in the room depending on the illuminance values. For example, the illuminance at the far end of room (opposite to window) is very much lower than the illuminance near the window.
I cannot find anything in blender where I can input different illuminance values and show the result accordingly. Is there anyway to achieve this ?
Here is a snapshot of my room

What is the goal of this work, why do you calculate it by yourself, instead letting blender do this job for you?

Actually, I want to use RGB values from a csv file and use it to show how different does walls of the room look like. The values are calculated very precisely for another purpose of a study and I just want to show a real time depiction of how the room is supposed to look.

Why don't you draw wall texture based on csv and when apply this texture as shadlles  material?


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How to place objects on top of another object and join their geometry
I have 2 objects.  I want to put the dome right on top of the cylindrical ring.
How do I do this so it's pixel perfect? I need to do this for 3D Printing purposes.
Later I plan to join them together the two objects.  I'm not sure how to do this either so their geometry connects?
I have tried snapping but it doesn't seem to do anything even when I try to snap on faces.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong so any help is appreciated!

I should note the two objects have diameters and thickness that are identical.

It looks as though your objects are aligned. In that case:

Set your Snap to 'Active' and 'Vertex'
Put the dome into Edit Mode, select an accessible rim vertex, and hit A to select the rest. The rim vertex should still be active.
GZ move the dome down and snap the active vertex to the corresponding one on the ring.

(If the objects are not aligned on the Global Z, create a Custom Orientation from one of the rim faces, and use the Z from that.)
Now you have your object-rims exactly coincident.
Later, you want to join the objects into a single manifold mesh.

In Object Mode, CtrlJ join the objects.
Edit Mode, select all vertices,M > By Distance merge the coincident vertices.

This will leave you with a ring of internal faces. You can either:

In Edit Mode, select none and then Header > Select menu > All By Trait > Interior Faces and X > Delete Faces
Or do it by hand: H hide a face next to the rim to give you access, Alt - select the internal ring of faces, and again, delete them, before AltH unhiding your hatch.

EDIT in response to comments:
I can't be sure of the source of the mismatch between the dome and the ring, but it might be this:

This is the result of modifier - Solidifying a hemisphere. Note the inner circumference is lower than the outer.. not in the plane of the equator. Solidify is using the average face-normals of the ring to the immediate north, but there is no counterbalancing ring of faces to the south. If you solidify while the sphere is intact, and cut it after applying, this doesn't happen, or you could scale the rim to 0 in Z about one of the outer vertices, after applying the modifier.
In general, for modelling that isn't ultra-precision, I would turn up the merge distance to the minimum that merges the vertices I want to, bearing in mind I can restrict the merge to selected vertices. This is the usual case for me, thinking like a carpenter rather than an engineer, taking the 'measurement' of a length or angle, simply by copying an existing part, risking the propagation of small errors, to get a match.
For precision modelling, (where perhaps you should be in CAD anyway,) I would keep the merge distance to an absolute minimum. Unmerged vertices will then alert me to an error in measurement, somewhere.

This worked beautifully! Very simple answer and got the job done.

My only issue is for some reason this method overlaps the parts a bit after the snap, not sure why it's doing that? That is to say the top dome goes into the ring ever so slightly when you zoom in a bit.  It's not perfectly seamless.  When I try deleting the  interior faces it deletes the ring which I don't want.

The gap is on the inside of the dome between the ring part not the outside.  Outside looks perfect!

Also what setting should you use for the merge by distance? I noticed if I increased this the overlap issue seems to resolve itself but creates some weird geometry a bit in some places.

@JosephAstrahan  I've got to say 'Hello!' to use enough characters :) .. See edit.

sorry on delay just got back into work.  I figured it out and you were right that just increasing the merge distance until the vertices merged was the trick and keeping that as minimal as possible.  It looked wonky but only on the inside part you don't see anyways and only minimally weird, the outside was perfectly aligned.  So it turned out quite well, thanks for your answer & edit, I believe this will help a lot of users!

I've been doing this quite a bit lately, but BEWARE, I'm very much a newbie myself, so hopefully you'll get better answers from others.
To join that dome to the cylinder here's what I would do.

I would fist make a duplicate of both of the two pieces (using shift-D) on each, and then I'd hide the original pieces. This is so that I can always just delete the copies, and start over with the original pieces if something gets fouled up. Don't bother renaming the copies yet.
One mistake you really don't want to make is to join two pieces like the one in your example that will have faces touching once you join them! Look at the bottom of the dome. That face on the bottom of the dome, once you join the two pieces, will occupy precisely the same 3 dimensional space as the top face of the cylinder. That will confuse the dickens out of blender. So...
With the copy of the dome, delete the faces that comprise the bottom surface of it. (Delete them, don't dissolve them). Then do the same thing with the faces on the top surface of the cylinder copy.
In the window on the lower right in your example you appear to be in the modifier tab. Switch to the scene tab (the one that looks like a cone with a tiny sphere next to it). If you working in metric, switch to millimeters, if you're working in feet, switch to inches. This will give you finer dimensions to work with.
(since you seem to be having trouble with snapping I'll try to minimize using it, but you'll have to learn how to use snapping sooner or later. Watch a bunch of YouTube videos on snapping, trust me snapping is simply too useful to continue to try to do without. That said I'll try to use snapping as little as possible.)
Engage the measure tool. That's the bottom icon in you're main window that looks like the letter L with tiny lines on it. Go into wire-frame mode, and make sure the x-ray function is off. Click and hold near where you want to begin the measurement, drag to near where you want to end the measurement (kind of like pulling out a tape measure).
Now here's where you'll have to use snapping.
In you're example you appear to be set to snap to faces, switch to snapping to vertex.
Look for a corner on the bottom of the dome that is directly above a corner on the cylinder. (any corner will have a vertex to snap to)
Click and hold on one end of the measuring tool you made. Drag it a short distance in any direction, and while still holding the mouse button down hold the control button on your keyboard down (this engages the snapping action). Still holding the mouse button and control key down, move the end of the measuring tool to the corner where you want the measurement to start and when it gets close to that corner's vertex it will snap to that vertex, and you can let go. You now have one end of the measurement tool anchored to the fist corner. Use exactly the same procedure to snap the other end of the measure tool to a corner directly below the first corner. Check using the front view, and then a side view to make certain that the measurement tool is vertical and not at some angle that will throw off you measurement.
Now you have a precise measurement of how far you have to move either the cylinder, or the dome in the Z direction to get them to meet. Write it down!
I assume you know how to move them once you know how far to move them.
Once you've completed the move you can now join the two.
Once you've joined them, go into edit mode, select all (I use the hotkey A to do that), then go into Mesh, Clean-up, Merge by Distance and set the distance to more than the default, but much less than the shortest distance between any vertices. (your diameter is 42mm, so set the distance in the merge to say 5mm. If lines start jumping all over the place it means your merge distance is too high. Keep decreasing the merge distance until things merging that you don't want to merge stop doing it.
Keep an eye on the little blue boxed note the pops up at the bottom of the screen, it will tell you how many vertices where merged. If you keep seeing 0 vertices merged, that's not good. Think about it. The bottom of the dome and the top of the cylinder form circles that are essentially identical. Which means when they are joined you're now going to have 2 vertices at each corner making up those circles.  That's going to give you bad geometry. So keep increasing the merge distance until the little blue pop-up window shows that you've merged at least a dozen or so vertices.

Decrease the merge distance whenever it deforms your geometry, Increase the merge distance whenever you get a value of 0 vertices merged.
Many times, like when you use booleans, you will sometimes get 0 vertices merged, and it's ok, because there weren't any vertices on top of each other that need to be merged. But it this particular case you know for a fact that there are going to be vertices on top of each other because you just finished joining the circles at the bottom of the dome to the circles making up the top of the cylinder. So there has to be some overlapping geometry there.
You can keep changing the merge distance until you click on something. If you do a merge that fouls things up, there's always Control-Z to undo it.
Once you've finished, and the two copies are now one piece, it's finally a good time to rename your new object.
Hope this helps, Mike.

Thanks for your answer :), the answer below worked best in my situation but it's good to know these tricks also when perhaps alignment isn't perfect.  So thank you! I think this will help a lot of other users.


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Create new object from selected faces while retaining faces on old object
I have the following model:

What I'm trying to do is for each face create a new object.  I found out how to do that here, Splitting pieces of a mesh into a new object
The problem is, that method removes the faces when I select them from the original object (refer to my screen shots)

How do I create a new object from the selected faces without taking them away from the other object?
I am doing this because I need to make another part that fits into the main object for 3D printing later.

Can't you duplicate then separate by selection? This would create a new separate object.

funny you mention that, I literally just did that and it worked.  Weird that you have to do that though, but it works :).  Is there a better way then this? You could add that as an answer though if you want and I'll accept.

Check this .GIF:

Select faces
Shift-D then right click to duplicate
Press P to separate

Yup that is the answer for sure :), thanks for making the gif, this will help a lot of other users.

How did you put the key- and mousestrokes into the GIF, by the way ? Is there a dedicated program ? Or did you put them in manually ?


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Texture glitches and artifacts when camera is far away?
From up close the mesh in the view port looks fine. But when the camera moves away, artifacts and glitches appear? Is this a topology issue or a rendering issue in Blender? The object has no UV texture applied as each mesh has a material node assigned to it

Up close no mesh errors... Moving the camera back though, render glitches and artifacts pop up as the camera looks at the item

Is the decal a separate geometry from the disk itself? If so, have a look at this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-fighting

Thank you, this was the problem... After applying a shrinkwrap modifier, the problem was solved.

If the user's post was helpful, you might consider marking it as the thread solution.


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How to get consistent normals on a curved mesh
I'm trying to create a curved wall using a simple deform. I expected the normals to consistently point perpendicular to each face, but instead, there is a sudden change at different points causing the the angle between some faces to be harsh and noticeable. How do I fix this and how do I avoid it in the first place? Does it have anything to do with the placement and/or subsequent repositioning of the object I used to deform the cube around?

Don't know how to avoid it happening, but you can recalculate normals in Edit Mode with Shift+n. You can press Alt+n instead to get a menu with even more options.

Thanks. I've experimented with all of the options in the Edit Mode Normals sub-menu, but they either do nothing or don't affect the normals in a way that is any better, just different but equally undesirable.

I must confess to not knowing how the vast majority of those settings work. The only one I use regulary is Shift+n to essentially recalculate all the normals of selected geometry to the object's outside.


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Dope Sheet: Select all keyframes before or after a certain point
I'm attempting to create a smooth motion with a camera object in an animation as it changes location between several keyframes. My goal is to select the relevant keyframes at the specific point in time and move them forward or backward on the dope sheet timeline.
This of course only moves the selected keyframes at that specific moment, without altering any other keyframes elsewhere on the timeline, which means I would need to manually offset every other keyframe located after the one changed.
While the B and C hotkeys can help achieve this goal to either select everything ahead of the keyframes being adjusted, this may become more time consuming for any future projects that might be more complicated. Is there a function or hotkey I am unaware of which would allow me to include every keyframe ahead of the selected one? And if such a function exists, does the opposite exist as well (include all keyframes before selected one)?

Left square bracket ([) and right square bracket (]) will select all keyframes on all channels before or after the current frame respectively, including the current frame.
If you don't want the current frame included you will have to change the current frame by 1, left or right, depending on the selection direction.

Also Ctrl right click, will do the job (on the left or right of the current frame)

You guys are awesome. Both will definitely come in handy.

seems not to work as of blender 3.1
or is it my QWERTZ layout?

@Georodin Works for me in 3.2.

lol I just noticed that I bought yesterday your render border addon
small world

it is indeed my QWERTZ layout
because I can only access the brackets over ALT GR + 8 or 9
checked it in the keymappings

Another way is to create 2 markers and select all the keyframes between them.
Move the current frame to desired position and create a marker with M or from Marker > Add Marker in the Dope Sheet header. Then do the same for the other one.
Then select these markers by clicking RMB and holding Shift to select multiple.
Once they are ready and selected in the Select menu find Between Selected Markers function.


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Transparent glowing material
I recently came across this page, in which the creator made the transparent, glowing exhaust effect as seen in the photo on the linked page. The effect is interesting and I want to try and play around with it, or something like it, but I'm not quite sure I understand the method the creator outlined:

It's an array of 25 planes, each with a circular gradient material fading from transparent on the outside to blue to white on the inside. It's kind of a hack but it works surprisingly well.

I've been looking around for a material, or method to create this sort of transparent effect, without the appearance of an edge if I were to create a conical shape. This might be what I'm looking for to create the desired effect.
So is anyone able to clarify what the quoted description means?

For Cycles render engine, a possible node set up could be this:

With the Texture coordinate node's Object output we are gathering the information about where to place the following texture. Object will use the object's origin, rotation and scale, so the texture will be placed in the middle of the plane.
The following node, Vector Mapping, is tweaking a bit the scale of the texture upon the Z axis, as we are going to use a spherical gradient, while what we need is more like a half ellipsoid.
First Color Ramp is needed to adjust the feather of the texture border, second Color Ramp gives the shades of color to the emission node.
Last step is to mask out the emission shader using the first Color Ramp node output as the mixing factor fwith a transparent shader (don't forget to increase the trasparency bouces to at least the number of planes in the array)
Note: to increase the realism, I suggest to work upon the emission intensity rather than the color:

Okay, this seems like it's off to a good start. I think I've recreated your node setup exactly as shown in your screenshot. I get this when I render, though: http://i.imgur.com/ivmHZSw.png Not sure why the planes are visible as black, but my guess is that it might have something to do with how I created the mesh. I created one plane, then did Alt + D until I had the desired number of planes. The array modifier did not work in the Z axis for some reason, despite working for X and Y.

Using multiple object means that the shader will pick each object origins, while you need to use just one for everything. Creating a plane and using the Array modifier is the fastes way to achieve this: dont use relatve offste (plane has no height), but constant offset. About the black spots: did you increased your transparency bounces number?

Alright, seems to be working nicely now. One more question: How can I make the whole thing longer? Scaling obviously won't work, since it's a plane with no thickness. Increasing the offset makes very little difference, and decreases the 'resolution', so to speak. Adding more planes to the array seems to just make things slightly brighter in the same area, even if the transparency bounces are increased.

Oh, never mind. I now understand what you meant about creating the elliptical shape on the gradient. Decreasing the Z value in the mapping node increases the ellipse, after which I would need to increase the array size.


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Dynamic linking entire .blend file
Using dynamic linking, how can all the data from one .blend file be linked into another? The usual Ctrl Alt O method will lead me to a directory of components within a selected .blend file. For example, I can import a mesh or group, but neither would link with materials applied.

You should perhaps import objects, not meshes directly. The best/fastest way to import all from another .blend could be to just import all "scenes" (often there's only one).

I'm not quite sure what you are asking but I think the append option might work. It is in the file menu.

Append and link will not give me everything. If I append or link a mesh, object, or group, it will not come with any material. I want all the data to be there.

Okay, this is making some progress. All required data is there if a scene is linked, but since it creates a separate scene in the main project file, I can't actually incorporate it into the original scene. Tried Ctrl C and then Ctrl V into the original scene, but it doesn't work. Plus, I assume that creates local data and defeats the purpose of linking. But this is a step in the right direction, it would seem.

@Hiigaran once linked the new scene, switch to its instance in the file, select all needed object and make links to the other, original, scene where you need to use them (CTRL-L => object to scene => "scene"), there you can make proxies for them if you need to move, scale, rotate them...

@Hiigaran anyway, linking/appending even single objects and even single meshes DOES link/append their materials also...

@m.ardito Okay, looks like it's working. Now if I follow your method for, say 20 different objects, that would mean I have 20 different scenes, in addition to the main scene, what should I be doing if one of those objects needs to be duplicated multiple times?

no, you get a new scene only if you link/append a scene. Then you can make all or selected linked scene objects themselves linked to you "local" scene.

Sorry, we can't go on discussing this in comments...
As said if you need to append/link "all" of a .blend file, it's better to append/link an entire scene: here is an example for linking.

As you see, I linked a scene from another file, then from the linked scene in my new file, I made links for all objects in my "local" scene.
To be able to transform one of them (in object mode), add modifiers, etc, I had to make a proxy.
Another example shows how linking a single mesh (not even an object) also links its material:

Appending/linking just a mesh, you can't see it, until is assigned to an object, but it's there (technically is called "orphan data"), and its material also (also linked).

Ignoring the second part of your answer regarding the mesh linking for a moment...I'm with you so far, up to making a proxy. I got confused with your comment in my question, however. So if I follow your answer and I'm up to the part about making a proxy (which I assume I make a proxy for every object and children of parent objects from the linked scene), I should be ready to add additional duplicates of the linked object, yes? What should I do here?

when you have the proxy, you can duplicate it as usual: duplicate linked (ALT-D) which gives you another proxy, or regular duplicate (SHIFT -D) which makes a duplicate of the proxy, but "local", no more linked (that means you can alter its mesh in edit mode too)...

Okay. Now for one last question (hopefully). After linking the scene, then making links to the original scene, I noticed that if I edit the original external file, nothing happened in the main project. I tried scaling the object in the external file, saving, then closing and reopening the main project where the external file was linked in to, but the one I made a proxy of did not change. Thoughts?

It does, until you proxy it. But you have to reload the linking file, after editing the linked original one. When you proxy, you make a local transforms object mode reference, and thus it is no more updated. But if you delete the proxy instantly the linked object gets the update. That's the whole point of a proxy here: "let me use this object here indipendently",

So there's no way to create components in external files, and have them update in a main project file at any time you make changes, if those components have been positioned, scaled and/or rotated after being linked? After making changes to those external files, you would need to delete any proxied components in the main project, relink, and reposition/scale/rotate?

I think yes, but you're putting too many questions in one... the title was about another, more general thing, this can't be a tutorial...  better open a new specific one... me or someone else will answer there.


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How to switch between UV maps on multiple objects?
How to switch between UV maps on multiple objects at once? Example -- you have 300 assets, 1st UV channel for diffuse texture and 2nd for light map. If you want to edit all UV shells of the 1st channel on several objects in multi edit mode, you have to switch to this channel manually on every single active object one by one. Is there a Python script for doing it at once?
I've checked StackExchange and other forums, but couldn't find the working solution.
This script seems fine, but it doesn't work for me:
https://pastebin.com/wNWdUJdC
An example image of two objects:

That's acutally pretty close. You just have to assign a MeshUVLoopLayer reference to MeshUVLoopLayer.active according to the API. Also I'd suggest exclude the active object from the loop and test whether there is an active layer within the poll method:
import bpy

class OBJECT_OT_set_active_uv(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.set_active_uv_selection"
    bl_label = "Set UV Layer on all Objects in Selection"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        obj = context.active_object
        return obj is not None and obj.type == 'MESH' and obj.data.uv_layers.active

    def execute(self, context):
        target_uv = context.active_object.data.uv_layers.active
        for obj in context.selected_objects:
            if obj.type == 'MESH' and obj != context.active_object:
                if target_uv.name in obj.data.uv_layers.keys():
                    # Active UV Layer = Target Layer
                    obj.data.uv_layers.active = obj.data.uv_layers[target_uv.name]
                    obj.data.uv_layers[target_uv.name].active_render = True

        return {'FINISHED'}

def draw_set_active_uv(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    layout.operator(OBJECT_OT_set_active_uv.bl_idname)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(OBJECT_OT_set_active_uv)
    bpy.types.DATA_PT_uv_texture.append(draw_set_active_uv)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(OBJECT_OT_set_active_uv)
    bpy.types.DATA_PT_uv_texture.remove(draw_set_active_uv)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()
    # Test call
    #bpy.ops.object.set_active_uv_selection()

Oh my god, brockmann, thank you so much, you saved my life! It's working!
I've ran the script, and the new button "Set UV Layer on all Objects in Selection" has appeared in the UV Maps (Properties Menu).
And as documented in the manual, you can save your script in the scripts/startup/ directory with a .py extension and it will be automatically imported and ran on startup.

Cool! You're welcome, good and clear question btw. Suggest create an add-on out of the operator: How to create a custom UI? If you need help, just let me know @user34311

I needed this as well! I made it into a small plugin, that adds some small functionality on top of this for deleting a UV map / layer on multiple channels, setting it, creating and setting the active render layer map.
The addon is free, you can get it here:
https://gum.co/Batch_UV_Operations_Blender

Thank you for making that! You should put it on BlenderMarket so more people can find it, it's very useful.


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Select by certain vertex color
Is there a way to select all faces with the same vertex color of the selected face? There is an old addon, but it doesn't work in the new version of Blender:
https://gist.github.com/tamask/2590850

To upgrade linked addon  replace bpy.utils.register_module(__name__) with bpy.utils.register_class(SelectByColor)  and change blender version in the header dict eg 'blender': (2, 80, 0), for blender 2.8

@batFINGER I love how you just know these things :). It sounds like sorcery to me.

Thank you for the answer! But still I can't get the addon to work... I think the code has to be updated in some way, because Blender doesn't let me to enable the addon and instead gives me this message:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\scripts\modules\addon_utils.py", line 351, in enable
mod = import(module_name)
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'select_by_color_2'

I checked this post about properly registering the class and ended up modifying the end of the script like so:
def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(SelectByColor)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_HT_header.append(menu_func)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SelectByColor)
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_HT_header.remove(menu_func)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

script is broken though

ended up just using this one: https://blenderartists.org/t/select-vertices-according-to-vertex-color/471451/10

While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference.  Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. - From Review


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Clipping timeline at certain frame
It it possible to prevent timeline cursor going further than the end frame? For example, I have only 100 frames, but the cursor can go to 105.

In the Playback panel, enable the Limit Playhead to Frame Range option:

Thank you very much, moonboots!! It worked for dragging the slider with the mouse button! The only problem that remains -- the slider continue to move further than the end frame if i use keyboard hotkeys. Is there a way to fix that too?

What keyboard hotkeys?

Alt + Mouse Wheel UP or DOWN

yes, I don't know if this is supposed to work that way or if they have forgotten something  ;)

Thank you anyway!


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Boolean Difference deforming flat plane
I'm trying to cut a circle into a cube (as pictured) and the boolean modifier with the sphere is deforming the face of the cube. This is the second boolean modifier (the first being for the speaker cone below). Any idea why this is happening and how I can fix it?

You can take screenshots on windows by pressing "printscr"  You can take screenshots on mac by pressing command shift 4, and then dragging over what you want to take a picture of.

I give a small suggestion when you add the cube add a little thickness (solidify modifier). Then use the boolean modifier it work perfect you can see below.


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CTRL+Z No longer undoing, switching between Solid and Textured display modes
CTRL + Z in blender no longer undoes, and instead switches between Textured and Solid display modes for geometry in 3d mode. Any idea how I might have caused this to happen?

You might have changed your keyboard layout to another language. German to English would result in such a behaviour, since it switches the Z and Y key.

Go to File->User preferences->Input Tab->Search for "Undo" and assign the shortcut to ctrl+Z then press the Save User settings button on the bottom


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Can't open cgcookie flex rig
I downloaded the "cgcookie flex rig" zipfile but when I try to open it in blender, the whole blender app disappears on my screen. Does anyone know how I can fix this.
I have a windows 10 (32 bit) if that helps.

Windows 10 32bit? What sort of graphics card on board? What about other blend files do you have issue with them as well?

Try this:

source : http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/61707
I added the license and packed the textures into the file. I'm still on windows 8 but I can confirm it opens in 2.78a.