text:
Cuda sync error
I get a Sync error when rendering with my 1050ti and my 980ti. but if i render with just the 980ti it works fine with no error. is this a bug with the 1050ti or the pascal gpus or is my version broken cause ive reinstalled already and used the beta for the next release and it still happens.

Might be that your scene is large and your 1050ti has less RAM than your 980ti. I know there are a few different versions with different amounts of RAM. Do you get the error with simple scenes?

Short answer:
The smallest ram pool available will limit how complex the scene can be.
Gliderman hints at this in his comment.
For your case:
A 980ti has 6GB of Ram while a 1050ti is listed as 4GB.
If you want to use multiple GPU rendering you will have to ensure your scene uses less than the smallest GPU ram pool available.
In your case this is 4GB.
Blender Docs:
The official docs for blender state that that multiple GPUs do not share memory here

Would multiple GPUs increase available memory?
  No, each GPU can only access its own memory.

In short:
You are limited by the available ram of the 1050ti if you wish to do GPU compute
Workarounds:

CPU Compute - This is usually slower by quite a bit but you usually have a larger ram pool available. My PC has 16gb of system ram and only 4gb of video memory for example, but even an I7 is still pretty slow compared to a GPU
Reduce Texture Memory - If you are using cycles rendering engine, you can try to generate some procedural textures for things that may not need as much detail.
Render Layers - Render Layers can allow you to mantain scene complexity but it can be tricky to balance how light interacts. If you use render layers you will need to use the compositor to restore the scene to the full image you had in mind.
Buy a video card pair - This one is really straight forward, it just requires a significant sum of money to accomplish usually. I do not recommend this unless you already had a need to upgrade for other reasons.


text:
ImportError: dynamic module does not define init function (initbpy)
I want to access BPY in standard python console on windows 64bit operating system.
I searched, and found this link "http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User%3aIdeasman42/BlenderAsPyModule".
I did all the steps. but unable to import BPY in my python IDLE, also version of both are same. It shows error which is :"
>>> import bpy
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in <module>
import bpy

ImportError: dynamic module does not define init function (initbpy)
please help me.
thanks

Which version of Python are you using?

I also ran into this problem. I think Python3.x is needed or see bullet points below for more information.
Failed: python -c "import bpy; print('hello');"
Worked: python3 -c "import bpy; print('hello');"

"get Python3.x-framework from Python.org and install it."
"The Python version requirements are the same with building a regular blender binary (if Blender us using Python3.5 then there is NO WAY to use another version - 2.7/3.2/3.4 will all fail)."

Source: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User%3aIdeasman42/BlenderAsPyModule

Same Hassle on Ubuntu.
As of a recent change circa a month or two ago my bpy build also started to fail importing with same error. (Test import from bin folder, after successful build,  before install)
>>> from bin import bpy
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: dynamic module does not define module export function (PyInit_bpy)

As the error message suggests, and confirmed by running
$ nm -D bpy.so | grep PyInit_bpy

returning nada, whereas would expect something like
0000000002146787 T PyInit_bpy

Getting the result above and finally importing were woohoo moments indeed.
This came after searching high and low, throwing back quite a few red herrings, grinding through numerous updates, and so many re-builds,  finally came across a couple of leads on stack overflow.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4112375/so-module-doesnt-import-in-python-dynamic-module-does-not-define-init-function
You need to either use a plain C compiler, or force C linkage
  throughout your module with an extern "C" directive:

leading me to the python link flags.  Image from cmake_gui

The generated value for cmake entry  PYTHON_LINKFLAGS was
-Xlinker -export-dynamic

to
-Xlinker --export-dynamic -Xlinker -init=PyInit_bpy

fixed the issue for me and I can now import bpy in a python 3.8 shell.
$ python3.8
Python 3.8.2 (default, Apr  2 2020, 03:24:36)
[GCC 7.5.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import bpy
>>>

I feel tho, that this is a bit "hackish".. anyone reading with a "cleaner" way to do same please edit into answer or add comment.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


text:
Problem: When Rigging pant with rigify pant move away
when rig the pants with rigify rig the pants move away from body. I am using automatic weight paint to rig the pant.

hello, you probably need to correct this in Weight Paint mode

Well, You haven't set up Armature modifier for pants... You've set it up only for legs (according to your outliner).

Weight paint is working same.

I have applied the armature modifier to pant and weight painted it manually but it is giving me same results. i turned off the vertex group from armature modifier pant turned back to normal position but not animating with the rig.

Why did you apply it? After applying it transformation will be added to existing one

i applied it because the pant was deforming from its real pose to a different pose.

Found way to fix the problem. First rig pant and then use sculpt tool on pant and adjust its position and it will work fine in pose mode but it will not work fine in edit mode.

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


text:
How do I use a cloth simulation as a flow object in a mantaflow gas simulation?
I have a cloth simulation.
I have a manta-flow gas simulation -- "quick smoke" with the cloth mesh as the inflow object.
The flames do not follow the collapsing fabric (the goal), despite having pre-baked the cloth simulation. Instead, the cloth "falls out of" the flames, which continue to burn in the "old location".
I have tried several things, including checking the "initial velocity" checkbox in the domain settings.

The answer  today is unfortunately the same as in 2011.   They don't play together.  People can do tricks to simulate cross-effects.   I leave you with the following example  where the Gas Inflow on the left is Shrink-wrapped to a Cloth (identical object with same number of vertices, Inflow was scaled to be a percent larger prior to the shrinkwrap).  Compare this to the Cloth PLUS Inflow object on the right, where smoke appears to emit from the undeformed Cube.
This technique may or may not work in your case, as in my trivial case the cloth is probably well behaved, so that the shrink-wrap and cloth appear the same after simulation.


text:
lightwave export (.mdd) completely missing in 4.2?
I need to export a cloth sim to keyframes, and I believe this was done using the lightwave export add-on. However, I cannot seem to find this in Preferences or elsewhere?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/321746/many-addons-are-missing-from-blender-4-2-how-do-i-install-addons-in-blender-4-2. Search 'mdd' under Preferences > Get Extensions.


text:
Whitescreen render result
when I tried to render my project, it just get a white screen as a result. Could anyone help me? as I'm still learning on how to use blender and I don't know what is wrong with my project.
here is my blender file https://drive.google.com/file/d/18dfrGPXb2ssisoAOE2j1rkrojLsmw5-P/view?usp=sharing
I'm also using Grid Breaker from Andrey Sokolov plug-in.

Hello, it works fine for me, I can render image or animation, what does Grid Breaker do?

Hi, the project renders perfectly fine I think there is some issue with the plug-in that you used


text:
How to create and edit multiple materials at once?
I am creating a mesh that requires assigning individual quads to different textures. So far, I have been creating a material for each texture I want to use, assigning a diffuse shader, changing roughness value, changing interpolation method, setting the color to "Image Texture", and assigning an image file. Doing this for 30 different textures is definitely doable by hand, but it's incredibly tedious and I was wondering if there's an easier way to get this done.
I know there's an addon that lets you import images as planes, but it doesn't let you import as a Diffuse BSDF which I would prefer.

a little script could help here a lot. But i don't know whether you know python....

I think the only way is scripting. Here's a small script that will automate it. Put it in the text editor and hit run or install it as an addon. Then go to File > Import > Images as Diffuse and pick the images you want to import (use Shift and Ctrl to pick multiple files). It will also (optionally) add material slots for the new materials to your selected objects.
If you import the same image multiple times, it will reuse the same material. It does this by reusing the material with the same file name, so make sure your images have unique names.
If you want to change the nodes it creates, you'll have to edit the script yourself.
# Tested with Blender 2.93
bl_info = {
    "name": "Import Images as Diffuse",
    "blender": (2, 93, 0),
    "category": "Import-Export",
    "location": "File > Import",
}

import bpy
import os

def do_import(op, context, filepaths):
    mats = []
    for path in filepaths:
        mat = import_material(path)
        if mat:
            mats.append(mat)
        else:
            op.report({'WARNING'}, "Couldn't create material: %s" % path)

    if op.add_material_slots:
        for ob in context.selected_objects:
            add_material_slots(ob, mats)

    # Add fake users if needed so materials aren't deleted
    for mat in mats:
        if mat.users == 0:
            mat.use_fake_user = True

    return {'FINISHED'}

def import_material(path):
    name = os.path.basename(path)
    if not name: return None

    # Use existing material with same name if it exists
    mat = bpy.data.materials.get(name)
    if mat: return mat

    try:
        img = bpy.data.images.load(path, check_existing=True)
    except Exception as e:
        print(e)
        return None

    mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name)
    mat.use_nodes = True
    out = mat.node_tree.nodes["Material Output"]
    mat.node_tree.nodes.remove(mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"])

    dif = mat.node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeBsdfDiffuse")
    dif.location = (60, 300)
    dif.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 1.0

    tex = mat.node_tree.nodes.new("ShaderNodeTexImage")
    tex.location = (-260, 300)
    tex.interpolation = 'Closest'
    tex.image = img

    mat.node_tree.links.new(out.inputs[0], dif.outputs[0])
    mat.node_tree.links.new(dif.inputs["Color"], tex.outputs["Color"])

    return mat

def add_material_slots(ob, mats):
    if not hasattr(ob.data, "materials"): return

    for mat in mats:
        if mat.name not in ob.material_slots:
            ob.data.materials.append(mat)

from bpy_extras.io_utils import ImportHelper
from bpy.props import BoolProperty, CollectionProperty
from bpy.types import Operator

class ImportImagesAsDiffuse(Operator, ImportHelper):
    """Create diffuse materials for images"""
    bl_idname = "import_image.to_diffuse"
    bl_label = "Import Images As Diffuse"

    files: CollectionProperty(
        name="File Path",
        type=bpy.types.OperatorFileListElement,
    )

    add_material_slots: BoolProperty(
        name="Add Material Slots",
        description="Add material slots for imported images to selected objects",
        default=True,
    )

    def execute(self, context):
        if self.files:
            dirname = os.path.dirname(self.filepath)
            files = [os.path.join(dirname, file.name) for file in self.files]
        else:
            files = [self.filepath]
        return do_import(self, context, files)

def menu_func_import(self, context):
    self.layout.operator(
        ImportImagesAsDiffuse.bl_idname, text="Images As Diffuse", icon='MATERIAL')

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(ImportImagesAsDiffuse)
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_MT_file_import.append(menu_func_import)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(ImportImagesAsDiffuse)
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_MT_file_import.remove(menu_func_import)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


text:
How can I improve my workflow for creating retro-style 3D terrain zones?
I'm creating some terrain zones in the style of retro 3D RPGs, specifically like Everquest. I downloaded a tool that extracts terrain models from Everquest, and after importing and some tweaking here's an example of one of them:

It looks like the way they did it is to have a large grid as the terrain, and assign each cell in the grid to a specific texture. And there's different textures like grass, dirt, grass-dirt transition, modular paths (like 10 textures with a dirt path drawn over grass), etc, all as separate materials.
So I've adapted that and created a workflow to make the same thing. It gets the job done, but I feel like it's a pretty tedious process for what are relatively low-fidelity models. I'm hoping there's something that can be improved about it:

I make a rectangular grid in Blender, where each cell will be assigned to a texture

I make all of my textures, including modular paths and what not:

All of these textures are separate because in an atlas I end up getting texture bleeding when there's any kind of interpolation.

I create my 15+ materials in blender, one for each texture. This is kind of tedious, because for each material I have to assign a shader, roughness, interpolation, image texture, etc.

Reset all the polygons through the UV menu so that each cell/quad takes up the entire 256x256 texture.

I apply the base grass texture to all the cells, and then from there I will assign individual cells to the different path materials to create paths for the terrain. This is also a tedious process, it's like using a tilemap to create a 2D world but a lot slower since it's individual materials that I have to assign to individual polygons.

Tweak some stuff, randomize heights for vertices, etc and I can get something that I'm happy with and looks really similar.

If it's not obvious, I'm pretty new to Blender, so I definitely feel like I'm missing something that can cut down on how long it takes to make this super simple terrain. As I said, it's basically like creating 2D worlds using tilemaps, so if I have an option to just do that in another program and then in Blender somehow put it all together, that could work as well. But I don't know -- any help would be greatly appreciated!

maybe there is an add-on for that...or you can use python

Something like this might have what you're looking for - https://jeiel.itch.io/sprytile - (specifically the Tilemap features)

If you use a texture atlas with all tiles you only need one material. Create a grid of square planes with 2 array modifiers. UV unwrap it so it can display exactly 1 tile of the image. In the Image Texture node set the interpolation method to Closest to prevent bleeding. In the Object > Link/Transfer Data you can copy the UV map, modifers, and link the material to all square planes. Use a custom property for the tile index and in the material calculate the mapping. https://i.sstatic.net/6fGZe.jpg

To copy the custom properties see https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/24001/copy-custom-properties-from-one-object-to-another. The square planes can be shrinkwrapped on a large plane (Map 1 Forest in the example). This large plane can be subdivided (modifier) and displaced (modifier) to give the map some height: https://i.sstatic.net/hDv4a.jpg Last but not least, you can bake the texture of all tile planes to the large map plane and add some particle trees


text:
simple python script giving unexpected results
I have 250 curves in my scene and I need to apply the same extrude and bevel geometry to all the them.
I am running this script
import bpy
for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    if obj.type == 'CURVE':
        obj.data.extrude = 0.005
        obj.data.bevel_depth = -0.002
        obj.data.bevel_resolution = 4

but when I run it it results in a bevel of "0.197" and a depth of "-0.787"
the bevel resolution works correctly.
Can anyone explain why this might be happening? Thanks!

Look at the units. 0.005 m = 0.197 in, 0.002 m = 0.0787 in.

ok .. but when I type in 0.005 and .002 into the fields it looks fine. does the scripting only work in metric?

Lengths are stored in "Blender units". Multiply BUs by scene.unit_settings.scale_length to get meters. It will probably help if you just play around with the unit settings in the Scene Properties panel and see how that changes the displayed value.

@scurest consider making this an answer.

yeah. I did a inches to metric conversion and typed in those numbers and it worked perfectly. thank you.

I am working in inches for this project and had to convert the numbers to meters. I had to use the following to get the desired amounts
import bpy
for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    if obj.type == 'CURVE':
        obj.data.extrude = 0.000127
        obj.data.bevel_depth = -0.0000508
        obj.data.bevel_resolution = 4


text:
Why are the curve extrusions never sharp when tilted 90 degrees?
Curves are great. With curves one can significantly simplify modelling of many elements common to a lot of scenes - roads, beams, pipes, walls, etc.
It is more convenient to create walls when these extrusions face "up", as it makes wall thickness trivial to estimate when looking top-down and also shows the direction normals. To do so, the curve points must be tilted by 90 degrees:

Immediately, the problem is apparent. Curves (of all types) have this annoying quirk that the "sharpness" of 90 deg turns is lost when the median tilt is adjusted, and the thickness seems to receive some sort of linear interpolation to it. The 90-degrees sharp turns of the tilted curve can be "restored" by manually adjusting the "Radius" value of every single point (doable, but obviously not practical):

I understand that it is possible to create perfectly 90-deg angled even-thickness walls using the solidify modifier in conjunction with the curve (as shown in fig.3). But the question remains:

Why does curve extrusion thickness vary when the curve is tilted?
Is there some sort of hidden interpolation going on?
Any way to disable that?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/66353/how-to-make-beveled-90-degree-corners-on-a-curve-better https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/56079/how-can-i-make-a-perfect-sweep-with-bevel-object-in-bezier-curve3d-pipe https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/87253/can-i-extrude-a-path-in-x-y/87254#87254

The corners are smaller because there the tangent has a 45° angle.
So when a profile or the extrusion has a width of e.g. 1 m, it is 1 m in X direction at one endpoint and 1 m in Y direction on the other endpoint.
On the corners however this width of 1 m is angled 45° diagonal, which results in a width of only $\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}$ or about 0.707 m.
To conquer that you have to scale the radius by a factor of $\sqrt{2}$ or add more points (but then the corners will still look weird) or change the curve from 3D to 2D, which will mean that all points stay in the XY plane and cannot be moved up or down.
But a 2D curve cannot be tilted, so if you want a flat profile instead of vertical walls, you cannot use the Extrude setting of the curve, you have to specify another curve object, here I use a simple short straight line with a width of 0.4 m:

And here as a comparison the 3D curve, as you can see the corners keep the 0.4 m width of the profile line, but since they are diagonal, their X and Y width is smaller than 0.4 m:

By the way, the same "annoying quirk" happens with the Solidify modifier when you have Even Thickness disabled (as it is by default):


text:
Brush automatically switch to clay after every click
I am having an issue in Sculpt mode where my brush is automatically switching (to clay) after every click. I have tried reinstall blender and restart my laptop, but it does not work. I also reset all settings to default and still it doesn't work. I am using Mac and Blender 3.4.1.
Could anyone please help me with this issue, many thanks.

Restarting would have fixed this issue if it were a keystroke event mishap that made the computer think a key was held down, and reinstalling blender would possibly clear configuration data, but you might want to also load factory defaults. Also, there is the possibility of a bad download, but this doesn’t sound like that.

Thanks, but I have tried reinstalling and even tried an earlier version but still it doesn't work, and neither does restart

You misunderstand. I was telling you what your attempted fixes would’ve been able to solve, and thus what is not the problem. Did you try loading factory defaults?


text:
Armature without weights deforming my robot anyways
After a two week long creative process of modelling my robot it was finally time to rig it. The tedious but easy part I thought. I had done it so many times before why would it be different this time? (Screams of pain)

Here's the leg shot. Looks normal. Every part is an individual mesh that I individually set parent to bone. There shouldn't be any deformation by my knowledge and I even turned off the Deform setting in Bone Properties. BUT

When I bend the knee the joint VERY clearly deforms due to the fact that it's no longer a perfect circle. AND THE SAME THING HAPPENS WITH THE FOOT JOINT. Also I don't even have to bend the knee for it to deform. Having the leg perfectly straight but in a different position also deforms the joint!

I have tried almost everything I can think of. At first I thought it had something to do with my IK rig so I removed just about everything creating an FK Rig. But it still deformed. Joining the meshes, locking the scale, parenting to object and turning off the deform setting on everything even though it doesn't seem to change anything! I'm out of ideas and frustrated so I've turned to the stack exchange for help. Any ideas for why this happens or if there is a setting that can force something to not deform?

Maybe you've scaled your armature in Object mode? In that case apply the scale. If it's not the problem please share your file

Oh-My-God... The armature was scaled higher in the Z-axis. Yup that fixed it. You are an actual life saver. Maybe leave that as an answer so I can give you points.

You've scaled your armature in Object mode, you just need to apply the scale (CtrlA).


text:
Boolean Objects show random color where sliced
Okay, I hae been dealing with this probelm since starting this project. I have been doing multiple floor plan layouts for a client and to see the floor plan better, I am using booleans to control the height of some interior walls, windows and doors. I did this because some areas are being cut but there are cases that they don't need to be. Anyway, this issue is the color that renders where the object is being cut. I have tried many things that I know of to fix it but nothing seems to fix it. Like some doors are being showing white like the material that is set for that object, but others will show black. Sometimes I can get it to go away if I shade flat and switch between Keep sharp edges and not, but obviously this hasn't been a permenant solution.
What am I missing here!? I have an image attached as an example of some windows. I used the Alt Shift copy mode so they are linked, and the boolean modifyer is the same between the two. Yet they are different. The right side is the correct look I want. Has anyone run into this problem? I can't share my file due to copyright issues but if there is more information you need let me know.

How to upload a blend file on BSE - good practices and advice

This question seems misleading, because it appears to frame the issue as being a material or or shading problem, when in fact I suspect this is a geometric problem caused by failed booleans

To find out what exactly is going on there we might need the file, but since you cannot upload it I can at least tell you how the materials work on Boolean operations, maybe this already explains a bit that might be of use.
Let's say I have a window frame. It has a white material in material slot 0 and a purple material in slot 1. The purple material is not used on the frame though. The windows are a separate object with a single glass material.
The frame and its materials:

The glass object with its material:

And then I have a cuboid object which will be used as a cutter in Boolean modifiers on the frame and the windows to cut off the top half. It has 3 materials: a cyan one in slot 0, green in slot 1 and yellow in slot 2:

Now I add the Boolean modifiers to the frame and the glass. With the Solver in the modifier set to Exact you can choose between two Materials settings: Index Based or Transfer. The one in your screenshot is set to Index Based which is the default, but I'll show both here.
The frame will use Index Based, the glass Transfer. So if I now enable the modifiers and hide the cutter so that we can see the top of the cut it looks like this:

The reasons for this are the following:
First of all, the glass material has the modifier set to Transfer. This means the new faces created at the top inherit the material of the cutting object in respective area, so the left side is cyan, the middle part is green and the right side is yellow. Even though the windows only had a single glass material, if you would apply the modifier now, the new windows will have all four materials, the glass and the colors of the cutter.
A different method works on the frame: Index Based means, the newly created faces will get the material with the same slot index as the materials on the cutter object in the respective areas. So, the left side is the cutter's slot 0, the middle part is slot 1 and the right side should be slot 2. But since the frame object only has a slot 0 and 1, it will fall back to slot 0. This would also happen if there was a third slot on the frame object but it was empty without any material. Applying the modifier will not add any materials to the frame since it only uses its already existing materials.
Further information on how the new faces will be colored regarding a cutter object with no material slots or empty slots (empty slots meaning there is a slot but it has no material):
Transfer

If the cutter has an empty slot 1 for example, the new face would get the material of slot 1 on the original object. If the original slot is empty or does not exist, the faces get the material of the original object's slot 0.

If the cutter object has only a single empty slot or no slot at all, the new faces get the material from the original object's slot 0, no matter if this material is assigned to any other original face or not.

Index Based

If the cutter has a slot index that does not exist on the original object, the new faces created there get the material from the original object's slot 0.

If a slot of the cutter object exists on the original object but it is empty, the new faces get the material in the original object's slot 0.

If the cutter object has only a single empty slot or no slots at all, the new faces will get the material in slot 0 of the original object - no matter if this material is assigned to any other original face or not.

This sounds very similar for both modes and it is, but the major difference of course is, the Transfer method introduces new materials to the original object while the Index Based metohd only uses the materials present on the original object. And due to this difference they also deal a little bit differently with empty or non-existing slots on either the cutter or original object.
As I said in the beginning, to find out what exactly is going on in your model it would have been good to upload it. But here an example scenario what could cause the difference between the white and black cut faces when using the Index Based method:
Your cutter object does not have any material at all. Which means, the new faces at the cut get the material in slot 0 of the original object. If the object has a black and a white material and one object has the white in slot 0 and the other has the black in slot 0, then the first one will show white at the cut and the second will show black - no matter if the faces are all black using the same material.
Like in the following image: both windows look exactly the same, they have a white frame and the weather strip is black. But the left window has the white material in slot 0, the right window has the black material in slot 0. The cutter has no material slots at all, which means the new faces automatically get slot 0 assigned, regardless of their surrounding geometry:

In this case the simple solution could be to move the slot with the material which you want to show up at the cut to the top of the list by using the arrow/triangle buttons to the right. Now the thing is, if you simply duplicate windows they should not have different orders of materials slots. So once again, this is all guess work without knowing the real objects. Another problem could be simply Z-fighting, if there are faces overlapping each other. But then this should not occur in EEVEE or the Material Preview mode, just with Cycles.

That was just what I needed to know about the boolean modifier! Because the geometry I am using for the boolean to cut away the ojects has no material, I just switched the modifier to transfer. That fixed the issue I have been dealing with. Thank you!


text:
Vertex Group in Geometry nodes set to another object
I am trying to use Geometry nodes to control the position of a vertex group I have.  I am able to recall the group and I am able to move it but I want the vertex group to be assigned to either a point or the end of a mesh line.
For more context I am working on a parametric door and I want to be able to create the door elements as their own objects and then reference them in the geometry nodes through a collection. This does work but without asigning the vertex group to something, I have to "squish" the model together to get it to work the way I want. Its not as intuitive or practical.

Hopefully this makes sense.  Any Ideas on how I can achieve this?

If you share your project with https://blend-exchange.com/ it will be easer to help you.

Okay, I think I found the answer I was knd of looking for, but now I am stuck with another problem. I found that I needed to use a bounding box to extract the overall dimension of the door slab and I used that number and a math node to minus the X-axis and the input value can then be used to size the door what I want.
Problem is now, I need a way to get the middle vertex goup to move half the distance of the width value. Also, how I can combine these set position nodes so I can manipulate the values independently to one model.
Below is another file that has the updated nodes.

I don't quite understand what your problem is.
I downloaded your file but it is huge and complex.
The ideal so that someone can help you is to make a file with only what is necessary to reproduce the problem.

Oh yes, my bad.  There are two tests in those files where the first was to create a parametric door only using geometry nodes but as you mentioned, its a large file. That why I want to figure out a way to control the door using collections of premade models instead. I will add the reduced file here:

I'm sorry but I don't understand how can we help you.
Perhaps a solution is to make a new blend project with a door more easily. My level of English is not very good and perhaps it's me who can't understand you.


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Geometry nodes: Control z axis of items individually and simulatneously
This post might sound wierd but here me out.
I am working on an exercise for myself creating functional horizontal blinds from geometry nodes. I would like them to work just like in real life. As you open up the blinds they start to stack ontop of each other. See examples below:

I will have the Blend file below.  How would I start to achieve this result? I know I would need to realize each of the blind instances But how do I move the bottom element up by itself untill it makes contact with the other blind where they then move together? How would I start something like that?

I found a solution to your problem, here is a solution, maybe some values will have to be replaced or added https://i.sstatic.net/gYLHA.png it looks like this Value 1 https://i.sstatic.net/mYSi1.png value 0 https://i.sstatic.net/Z4Ico.png

There a many ways to approach this Blinds problem.
(You can skip to the Geometry Node solution which is on the bottom of the post)
The fastest way to solve it is using Object Constraints. No Geo Nodes required. Recommended if you know the correct parameters to set up the blinds, like size and various heights. You could always adjust the values but it quickly gets tedious entering values for each object in the Constraint panels. So you have to be prepared.
Here is how it works in brief:
Each slat object is positioned above the previous one with maximum distance  between each slant (i.e when the blinds are down).
Each slat object has the following constraints.
Limit Distance - with Target object the slat element beneath it.
Floor - with Target object the slat element beneath it.
The first constraint "pulls" the object if too far from the target
The second constraint always keeps the object above the target,
Here is a screenshot of the settings:
The only exception makes the bottom slat which only has Limit Location constraint to prevent it from going too far down or up:

Now by moving the bottom slant up and down you get the desired effect:
.
The geeky way to solve the Blinds is via Geometry Nodes. This allows quicker settings but also longer time for making a user friendly design.
Quick explanation:
You need two empties to control the height of the blinds (Bottom and Top) and one empty to control the opening and closing - Slider.
You can set the desired amount of slats via Number of Slats.
A Mesh Line is created with the same number of points which you can use to instance your Slant object. You can adjust the height of the object in the Modifiers tab.
The most important operations are framed with a brief explanation text about their function. Avery useful node in the solution is the Accumulate Field Node.
There are no constraints set on the control objects so you should expect unpredictable results if pushed too far or towards unaccounted direction.
Here are screenshots of the node setup in case the blend file attached on the bottom no longer exists:

Demo of the modifier:

Lastly, the blend file with both solutions as separate collections.


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Different Cameras render different Objects or Collections
I have looked around online for anything on this topic but have been unfruitful. I have a project where I am rendering a few different floor plans. Each floor plan varies in size and I don't want to have to adjust the camera for every unit (Talking like 26 different units).  Is there a way to have one camera didcated to only geometry located in a specific collection? That way, each unit has its own camera associated with it and I can keep each of the units centered in the camera.
Because there is a lot of units I don't want to have a separate file for each one having to adjust all of the settings and materails manually for each one. Any thoughts?

i think you should explain a bit more what you really want to achieve. If you don't place the camera manually, how should the cam know from which position it should record?

My idea, is to have 26 different cameras for each unit. To make it simple, I will use a 1 bedroom unit (1B) and a 2 bedroom unit (2B) as an example. I will have one camera deidcated for 1B and another for 2B. When I render out the 1B unit, I don't want the 2B unit to show up in the render as well. Is there a way to assign objects, prefereably in a collection, to one camera, so when I go to batch print all of the units, each one will be separate? Maybe its not possible for the cameras to do that. It might just be better if I move each units on the X-axis enough to avoid each other.

did you ever try different view layer? that's perfect for that, if i understood you right


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How to show wavefront obj file with textures (in Blender, later in QGIS)
The question
Seems like a basic question: How can I show a 3D model together with textures? How can I embed textures? I worked with Wavefront .obj file but probably the principle is more general. I have a 3d object that shows fine, but without textures. In the end, I want to show the 3D model + texture in QGIS, but as the problem is linked more to 3D than to GIS, I hope to find a Blender-related answer here that then in the next step will help me resolve the QGIS problem as well.
The final intention (not the question here)
I am new to Blender and 3D modelling. My experience is with GIS and I tried to import a Wavefront .obj file to QGIS (OpenSource GIS) to visualize it in 3D. This works fine, at least when I visualize it with Shading set to Realistic (Phong) or CAD (Gooch). However, I want to visualize it using the textures that came with the file I downloaded. There is an option in QGIS to set Shading to Embedded textures. When I do this, the model disappers. I asked this question on GIS SE, but got no answer.
The problem here and what I tried
So I tried to open (import) the model to Blender (ver. 2.93.4, Win 10) to see if it works. The 3D model shows, but without textures. So obviously, my problem is to understand 3D principles and how to visualize (embed?) textures so that they are visualized together with the 3D model.
As for as I understand, the .mtl file defines the path to the textures. However, I'm lost where to start and how to make the model to always be rendered together with the textures. To be more specific, I downloaded the file from here: https://www.turbosquid.com/de/3d-models/3d-farm-house-1594584 - it comes with a folder containing 3 files (FBX, mtl and obj) and a subfolder textures, containing 3 jpg files, see:

Loaded to Blender with Menu File / import / Wavefront (.obj), it looks like this:

the mtl file looks like this:
# 3ds Max Wavefront OBJ Exporter v0.97b - (c)2007 guruware
# File Created: 21.07.2020 20:10:25

newmtl Farm_house_D
    Ns 9.8492
    Ni 1.5000
    d 1.0000
    Tr 0.0000
    Tf 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000
    illum 2
    Ka 0.6980 0.6980 0.6980
    Kd 0.6980 0.6980 0.6980
    Ks 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
    Ke 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
    map_Ka [path]\Farm_house_D.jpg
    map_Kd [path]\Farm_house_D.jpg

newmtl House_Side_D
    Ns 9.8492
    Ni 1.5000
    d 1.0000
    Tr 0.0000
    Tf 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000
    illum 2
    Ka 0.6980 0.6980 0.6980
    Kd 0.6980 0.6980 0.6980
    Ks 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
    Ke 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
    map_Ka [path]\House_Side_D.jpg
    map_Kd [path]\House_Side_D.jpg

newmtl Roof_D
    Ns 9.8492
    Ni 1.5000
    d 1.0000
    Tr 0.0000
    Tf 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000
    illum 2
    Ka 0.6980 0.6980 0.6980
    Kd 0.6980 0.6980 0.6980
    Ks 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
    Ke 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
    map_Ka [path]\Roof_D.jpg
    map_Kd [path]\Roof_D.jpg

Hello :). You're in Solid View where textures don't show. Switch to Material Preview to see the textures (they load just fine) :).

And to add - the model gets imported in 10x the scale (just scale it by 0,1) :)

OK - where to activate Material Preview?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures

This same question was asked a couple days ago, but I can’t find it. Will answer.

As a commenter said, you need to switch out of solid preview mode to see textures. Check out this menu in the top right corner of the 3D View editor:

That rightmost option (excluding the pull down) will make the 3D viewport show the full render result of the scene at a (by default) lower sample count. To get a usable image from the perspective of the camera and without overlays (ie, black lines describing special non-mesh objects), press F5 to Render Image, and a full rendering will begin. Go to the “Rendering” screen to see an image editor already showing the “Render Result” image data block.
Blender Docs: Viewport shading
Blender Docs: Rendering


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problem with making grass?
I am beginner in blender.
I want to make grass. but I want to put all parts of grass on the soil . but I can not.
how to do it?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/8918/why-are-the-objects-in-my-hair-particle-system-not-sitting-on-top-of-the-ground https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/42922/hair-particles-are-not-fitting-my-fractal-ground https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/63991/hair-particle-system-to-create-forest-some-trees-are-floating

what i usually do is to go into edit mode and rotate or move the emitted object till the objects that are emitted are in the right position and rotation.


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In Blender 2.8, can I reset 'My View' to the initial perspective used when a brand new project file is opened?
Blender 2.8 offers several numeric keypad shortcuts for changing the perspective:
NumPad 0 = Camera Perspective
NumPad 1 = Front view
NumPad 2 = Roll scene down
NumPad 3 = Right view
NumPad 4 = Roll scene left
NumPad 5 = toggle Perspective/Orthographic
NumPad 6 = Roll scene right
NumPad 7 = Top Down view
NumPad 8 = Roll scene up
NumPad 9 = Flip current view (Top Down becomes Bottom Up, etc)

I use these (and more) shortcuts all the time, but there is another perspective that I often use: the initial perspective used when opening a new Blender project for the first time.  It starts out looking at a default mesh (cube) from about halfway between the X and Y axis, and slightly elevated along the Z axis.  I can approximate this original perspective in 'User Ortho' mode by pressing:
[NumPad 1]  one time        (which gives me a side view, along the Y axis)
[NumPad 6]  three times     (which rotates me about 45 degrees, half way to the X axis)
[NumPad 8]  one time        (which gives me a little altitude)

This may not be the exact same perspective as a newly opened project file, but I think it is pretty close.  I can't seem to find any way of manually determining or setting precise X/Y/Z coordinates for 'My View' like I can with any other object in Blender (cameras, lights, meshes, etc).  I'm certain that 'My View' is not considered an object in Blender, thus it can't be acted upon like objects can.
This 'five keystroke' solution is not very labor intensive, but I use this original perspective about as often as many of the other defaults (Top Down, Front, Side, etc).  Therefore I was wondering if anyone knew any other shortcut out there that might already change 'My View' in this way, one I'm overlooking perhaps?
The reason why I'm asking is because I have two Blender projects going right now.  Both are of one small building.  The first project represents the building BEFORE (how it looks now in the real world).  The second project represents the building AFTER (how it should look once proposed projects are completed).  I can manually set the camera location, rotation and scale to be the same in both projects, allowing me to render BEFORE and AFTER images with similar perspectives.  But when I close a project file, I also like to leave things in this default perspective, or when I'm working on two files side by side I like them both to have the same perspective for quick reference.  This is just one perspective I use frequently, and am hoping to find a shorter shortcut for.
And may I also say: "Blender Rocks!" I am loving it, as well as the community support you've all built up around this awesome program.
Thanks in advance for any help...

Just add a new camera and align it to view.
Then you can always switch to it by clicking the green camera icon.

Add a new camera, and make it active by clicking the green camera icon
Align it to view through View > Align View > Align Active Camera to View
Switch between cameras by clicking the green camera icons

Thanks Jachym.  I hadn't thought of adding a camera, but I assume that if I add a new camera in each file, and give that new camera identical coordinates within each file, then I should be able to obtain a similar view for each project.  I appreciate the help!

Sure, that would work :). You can also 'import' the camera from other files to save time. Just put it in a new collection and append that collection through File > Append.

This worked well to reset my default view when it started to behave strangely and seemed to reach some limit of zooming in.

@AJP Thanks for the feedback. This thread might be related to your situation: Why does the zoom sometimes stop at a point?. I usually switch to Orthographic camera (Numpad5) which has no such limitations.


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Texture looks off in newer version of Blender
Sup yall. I have a texture problem. I'm trying to convert a model from an old version of Blender (2.49b) to the most recent version. However the problem with it is after re-linking the texture, it looks wrong. As you can see, the skirt cuts off into a flat color.
Here's what it's supposed to look like:

And here is what it looks like in the new version of Blender:

I've converted some other models the same way but they didn't have any problems. But this one does. Does anyone know if it's possible to fix that?

Did you check in the shader "options" of the "Image Texture" Node, "N" panel in the shader view, regarding the blend mode? I would guess that the blend mode was set to a different option in the old version.

This was the issue. I think the blend mode itself was fine, but there's a checkbox that says "Backface culling" that wasn't checked, and once I checked it, that fixed it. Thank you.

As we can see here:

The texture's color space is set to "Raw".
Since it's a simple color data texture and in png format, it should be "sRGB", which is the default color space when you create an image texture node.

I fiddled with that already, but unfortunately it didn't fix it. If I change it to sRGB it looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/01aw3nb.png

how is your color management panel in the render settings?

I think those were okay, but I managed to fix it by checking "Backface Culling" under settings in the material properties. Thanks for your reply.


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How do I render with the viewport lighting?
Blender noob here. I'm trying to make some renders, but when I do the render looks really dark. I can add lights, but that's not what I want. I just want the render to look like it does in the viewport, without extra lighting or shadows.
Basically I want the render to look like this (without the wireframe):

But it looks like this:

Anyone know how to pull this off?

Alternatively you could disable the Show Overlays and use View > Viewport Render Image.


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SVG contour style is missing
I have this SVG I'm trying to import to blender, but the thickness of the contour just doesn't show.
Is there a way to import the svg exactly how is shown in the other softwares?
This r the prints of my problem.

The first img is how the SVG should look like, the second is after importing to blender and the third is after I render it

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/72423/how-to-import-svg-file-with-same-thickness/72430#72430

The line "thickness" is called the "stroke", that stroke is just an appearance applied to the vector line by the software (Inkscape or Illustrator). When you import an SVG into a 3d app, it only reads the base vector lines and doesn't translate that stroke width appearance to a 3d object. To get those lines, you need to edit the SVG in your vector program and outline the stroke before exporting.

Here's a article on how to outline a stroke in Illustrator: https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-use-outline-stroke-in-adobe-illustrator--cms-34160

.. or you could stroke the lines in Freestyle ..

Download, install and launch Inkscape (an open source vector graphics editor), open your SVG, select all objects of the SVG file, ungroup a few times, go to Path > Stroke to Path , save the new SVG.
Import into Blender and you should see some more borders / lines.

Thank you. It did the job. The colors of the SVG are all gone though, but that I can solve. :)

I'm using Blender 2.79.
Give the svg path a volume with the Solidify modifier.
Set the Offset to 0 and Use the Clamp value to thick or thin the stroke.


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Mac Blender 2.82 Simulation Issues
OK so I know I'm on the S list using a Mac for 3D these days, but it is what it is.
I'm running 2.82 and the improvements in the UI are impressive. I'm a C4D user, but want to check out Blender's Fluid and Smoke. I started with 2.8 and couldn't get ANY simulation to bake so I could see anything. Sometimes it will look like it's calculating, but nothing at the end. Sometimes it will zoom through and "calculate" in less than a second.
I then downloaded the latest build, 2.83 alpha. I set up a simple fluid sim and boom. I could see the simulation. Great. I freed the bake and added some obstacles to test everything. Nothing. I haven't been able to get any results except that one time. I've read many posts, watch tons of tutorials, changed lots of settings all to no avail. I'm not talking about rendering issues where Eevee and Cycles and GPUs come in to play, I'm just try to see ANYTHING.
Here's a link to a super simple file I set up. Maybe I'm missing something. Thanks for taking a look.
Simple Fluid Setup

OK so Smoke and Fire+Smoke seem to work now. No idea why. Now this is interesting. When I select my Domain and change it to Liquid, on screen it changes back to a solid cube. Could this be a clue as to why Liquid sims don't work at all?

I tried your file. I changed the render engine to Cycles and in physics properties - chase from modular to replay (this allows you rendering during your animation - so you haven't to waitlists till the end of the render).
I deleted your flow object and created it new.
Type: Flow
Flow Type: Liquid
Flow Behavior: Inflow
nothing else
activated liquid
It works :)


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Create a volumetric cone shape in eevee?
Anyone know how to create a volumetric cone in EEVEE? I know that volume scatter is able to follow a shape in CYCLE but not in EEVEE... I found how to create a sphere thanks to the nodes, but unable to make a cone.
Thanks for your feedback
Sorry... My English is so bad

Thanks to  Inigo Quilez, here's a signed-distance function from the surface of a cone of a given pitch angle.
float sdCone( vec3 p, vec2 c )
{
  // c is the sin/cos of the angle
  float q = length(p.xy);
  return dot(c,vec2(q,p.z));
}

I would have done it another way, but this is much simpler... it boils down to the distance from a point to a line.(The vector projection proof)

Here, the cone is in the space of an Empty, so you can move it around. You set the angle at the 'Angle' input in radians, and can adjust the scale of the cone with the 'Threshold' setting, and the density inside it by multiplying the result.

I tested it on a stack of planes.. it is filling the volume, with the 'Less Than' (the threshold).. if you use a 'Compare' instead, you can capture just a shell.


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Textures appear different in object and edit mode
I'm a novice with this program and 3D editing so I'm not entirely sure how I would fix this. Basically, I'm trying to make a 3D model of a character from a Nintendo 64 game, so I ripped the model and texture files using a graphics plugin on an N64 emulator, however the textures didn't map to the model properly, so I'm just going in the UV editor and trying to correct it. So far the textures appear fine in edit mode, but when I go to any others some polygons are textureless. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
For reference, here is what it looks like on edit mode:

And here is what it looks like on object mode:

Here is the project file for the model

Fixed it. It's because some faces were overlapping. Works fine now.


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how to make rigid bodies effected by cloth?
I am trying to model a cape with a brooch. I can use the hook modifier to attach the cloth to the brooch, but the brooch isn't effected by the tension of the cloth - it just keeps falling, as if there was no cape there. Is there any way make the cloth hold the brooch in place? Is there a better way to do this entirely?

To clarify, the "brooch" object is the small oval in this gif.

if the brooch has rigid body enabled it might be too heavy, pulling the cloth down with it. In that case you would need to either make the brooch lighter/cloth heavier or mixture of both. As well as playing around with the stiffness settings in the cloth until you get the results youre looking for.

your text "sounds" good... but for me this is not an answer. Please add a blend file or detailed steps how you would do this. And how you want to make the connection of the rigid body to the cloth. Because your solution does not work with a hook modifier....


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Brush Texture is a different color when painted on my mesh
I have a brush texture that looks like this:

However, when I try to paint it onto my mesh, this happens:

The background color is clearly not correct, even though I made sure that the Brush Texture and the Canvas Texture had the same hexadecimal orange color. What am I doing wrong?
Here are my settings for brush I am using.

Can anyone help me?

Choose Blend > Mix, and choose a white color, these are the 2 reasons why your texture is not printed as it is:

Thank you so much!


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Solidify Modifier behaving strangely
When I apply the "Solidify" modifier to my object, this one window I have acts differently then all of the others. They all look okay, but this one gets messed up by the modifier.
Here are 2 angles of the messed up part of the mesh with the solidify modifier:

Here is the mesh without the solidify modifier:

And here are my Solidify Modifier settings:

I got the window pains by extruding the edges out. I have already tried removing overlapping vertices and the scale is applied. Can anyone help me?

I think your normals aren't facing in the same direction.

Thanks! this worked.

You are trying to solidify a fairly complex shape that requires you to change the Mode from Simple to Complex in the modifier's panel.
Cheers!

Thank you so much. After I change it to Complex, are there any settings I need to mess with?

You are welcome. For your kind of shape I suggest "Thickness Mode = Even", the rest I think you can safely keep as it is. Cheers!

Also offset to zero, probably.


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Problem with seamlessly fitting objects together
I am creating an animation where an object has to split into several parts. I used the bisect tool to separate them, and then created a face where parts got separated. However, when I make these faces, I get strange shadows and valleys in the seams that i did not get when the object was just divided (with no faces in between):

Can someone help me fix it, or do I need to go about this process in a different way?

Try selecting all in edit mode, then pick mesh > clean up > merge by distance, and then mesh > normals > recalculate outside

do you have smooth shading turned on?

What's going on is you need to actually separate the geometry before you add those faces.  Bisect just adds an edge loop, it doesn't actually separate the geometry.  So as far as Blender knows, those two pieces are still one surface, and then adding those faces in the middle is creating a kind of geometry that simply doesn't work; this specific problem is called "internal faces."  Internal faces should always be avoided, because 3D modeling software simply isn't built to handle such geometry; for example, creating these weird shading artifacts around the edges of the internal faces.
So, make sure you actually separate the geometry before you add those faces.  You can do this by selecting the bisecting edge loop and pressing Alt-M and choosing "Faces by Edges," or you can select all the faces on one side of the edge loop and press Y.  Both produce the same result.  You can make sure everything really is separated by hovering your cursor over one of the sections and pressing L, which selects all the geometry that is connected to that section.  If it only selects the individual section, you're good to go.  If it selects the whole thing, it still isn't separated.
After you do the separation, you'll have to create those inside faces for each piece.  Once you do this, the smooth shading will inevitably show where the cracks are; you can counter this by toggling on "Auto Smooth", which I show how to find in this screenshot.


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How do I position a donut onto a cube with the corner hanging in between the donut hole?

I am trying to get the project on the right to look like the left. I am still in progress but ran into a positioning problem. I can not get the cube in the middle of the donut shape.

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


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How to animate a folding plane
I'm having trouble with what should be a simple task: I want to animate a piece of paper being folded. I can make the folds I need easily enough, but I think I need an armature to achieve the animation. How can I snap the bone rotations to the fold axes, and should I use parenting with automatic weights?
Thank you for looking.
Lee

You can animate with armature, where you need a bone per fold you want to make. You can constrain bone movement to 1 axis where it limits rotation to the fold you have on geometry once you have positioned and aligned the bone properly. But perhaps faster is to use shape keys. Also related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/6767/how-to-make-folding-origami-animation

Thanks for commenting. Aligning/snapping the bone to the axis is one of my problems. I'm trying to find out the method for doing this. Shape keys cannot rotate a plane properly. They just move the vertices from on point to another.

Snap the tail of the bone to 1 end vertice and the head to the other? You can use vertex snap in Armature edit mode or do this by snapping 3D cursor in Mesh edit mode.

Also what you said about shape keys is correct, they do linear interpolation between the vertex locations so you couldn't really get away with using them in steps over 90 degree angle. But you could break the animation in smaller degree angles though and maybe get away with in on budget schedule :)

I'll try the vertex snapping you suggest, and see how it goes, thanks. Not sure about breaking the animation down.. I'm impatient enough as it is. I'm always hoping for a short-cut!

Ack. Snapping to the vertices is no good. The bones need to be at 90º to the fold. I need a general/beginners tutorial on aligning bones to non-XYZ axes...

You shouldn't need that? You can align the "long" axis between head and tail and only rotate along that? But basically you align the bones by snapping the head and the tail any way you decide to do it.


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Combine Two Instances on one Geometry Node
I'm trying to achieve the effect I've "faked" using two node trees in the example below. Two different instances (colors, facing opposite directions) starting from opposite ends of a plane, and mixing in the centre. Done properly in one node tree, there shouldn't be much in the way of intersection, unlike my terrible example. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for looking!
LM

Copy the nodes that make the red instances into the nodetree of the blue instances and combine them with a Join Geometry node?

A useful pointer, thank you.

You can use a single Poisson distribution to avoid overlap:

That's a successful outcome... my own version doesn't work so well. Looking at the numbers, the scale may be very different on yours, which could be a useful insight.

Way better than mine

@GreenBeetle, you can use the "attribute statictics" to get min and max position to feed to the map range

@Daniel Möller. Good tip, thank you.

You could use the gradient as a factor for the distribution.
Here we have two distributions, each using one gradient (which is the inverse of the other).
One distributions pulls red Suzzanes and another pulls blue Suzzanes

Excellent! thank you, Daniel. Simpler in one way (and far more complicated in another) than I expected. I couldn't have come up with that by myself.

@GreenBeetle Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. I was on my phone when I wrote the comment above and could not give it a proper answer myself.

Every little helps, I say.


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Blender 3 Cycles Shadow Catcher Fail
Cycles Shadow Catcher in 3.0 won't work for me. The shadow appears in the viewport but doesn't render. It works in 2.93 no problem.
If anyone could point me in the right direction I'd be most grateful...
Greenbeetle

You have Shadow Catcher enabled as a render pass, so shadows on shadow catchers are rendered in a separate layer to be used in compositing. Uncheck this so show shadow catchers on the main view layer.

Oh wow. What an idiot! Thank you so much for pointing that out. I had a feeling it might be a simple error on my part, but I've been looking at the problem for hours. Much obliged to you.


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Select box not working
All the Selection tools (with the exception of tweak) have suddenly stopped working in my version of Blender 4.0
When I select using the tweak, The Shade Smooth dialogue box appears. I'm able to use the select tools in edit mode without any problems.
I was wondering if there was something wrong with my Mouse/ Wacom tablet/ Computer, but a restart has made no difference, and everything is fine in older versions of Blender.
Any ideas where I should look next?
Thanks!

Hello, when you say "When I select using the tweak, The Shade Smooth dialogue box appears." what does it mean exactly?

Normally, if you select an item, and (in my case) right click and choose shade smooth, or auto-smooth you get a little dialogue box open up offering various options. When I select an object with Tweak Select, this box appears as if I'd asked for a shading option. This makes me think there's something more than basic user-error at play...

Ok, I've found the problem!
I just noticed in the right-click dialogue box a new addition to the shade auto-smooth option. It said "left click shortcut" (or words to that effect). Right-clicking on that gave me the option to "remove short-cut". Once it was removed, box select came back as normal. I don't know how I came to unintentionally create this short-cut in the first place, but it had show-stopping consequences.
Apologies to anyone wasting any time trying to figure this one out. I was wrong. It was user-error.


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Combine animations
I have a simple animation with two moving parts. How can I speed up and slow down the two parts together?
I want the counters to start slowly, speed up, and slow down at the end.

you can do this in the VSE.

select your strip
add-> effect strip -> speed control

change speed control to multiply and keyframe the multiply factor

result:
https://imgur.com/a/5vRecsN

This looks great! Thank you. I now need to go and learn about the Video Sequencer...

yes you should! it's pretty powerful ;)

You can do it in the NLA:
Push down each action into the NLA:

Once done, select the strip, open the N panel, activate the Animated Strip Time option, go to frame 1 of the Timeline and keyframe the Strip Time value at 1 for example, then at frame 100 of the Timeline keyframe the Strip Time value at 50 for example, which means that from the frame 1 to 100 of the Timeline it will play the frame 1 to 50 of the action, so it will begin slower than the normal speed. Go on with the Strip Time values you want in order to speed up or slow donw as much as you want. Do the exact same thing for the other strip so that the 2 strips are synchronized:

This is what I was hoping to achieve, but I find the NLA confusing and unintuitive for the most part.

What exactly don't you understand in the NLA?


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Generating Camera Motion
I'm a beginner at blender. I want to create camera motion in videos with a stationary camera. Things like translating the camera arbitrarily through the scene etc. Can someone please give me a detailed explanation on how I can do so?

What does "with a stationary camera" mean? If you're moving the camera, it won't be stationary.

Or if you mean editing a live-action video with a stationary camera, to have camera motion, I'm afraid that's impossible—the video doesn't include anything outside the frame, which you would need as soon as you moved the camera.

Hi! what I meant was that I have a video with a stationary camera. Now, i want to generate camera motion in that video using blender. Will that be possible? I'm considering 360 videos.

If it's a live-action video, then unfortunately it is not possible. The video doesn't include any information you can't see, like what's behind other objects—which you would need if you tried to move the camera. You would also need stuff outside the original frame, which isn't recorded in the original video. Now, if the original video is of a CGI scene, then yes—but you'd have to talk to the person who made the video and see if they could give you the scene itself. The 2D video just won't work.

Although if the video is a 360º one, and you just want to rotate around your camera position without moving, you could do that.

oh, i got your point. Thanks a lot for the help! I really appreciate it.


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Will using python for rendering speed up the process?
I have a very basic setup for blender. I have wrapped a video around a sphere as material, and positioned the camera at its center. I now plan to move the camera around. The camera is set to the equirectangular mode.
When I render using the GUI, it takes about 4 minutes per frame to render. Can this time be reduced if I proceed to do this using a python script? If so, is there a significant difference?

Assume you mean  rendering in background mode  Where blender -b file.blend -f 1 renders frame 1 in background mode.  No python necessary, might get some time improvement with no GUI.

@batFINGER Thank you for the prompt response. I actually didn't ave any specific rendering mode in mind. I just want to reduce the rendering time, and therefore asked whether using python would speed up the rendering process or not.

If you want to speed up render times, consider "How to speed up render times" as a question,.  Is rendering in bg mode quicker for your blend?


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When a wrap a video around a sphere, how do I get rid of the mesh effect?

As can be seen, there are squares visible on the rendered output. I want to get rid of that and want the video to be smooth. How can I do that? Or what settings am I missing out on?

set the mesh shading to smooth (toolbox > tools > shading) doesn't work?

@m.ardito It worked. I had forgotten about this option. Thanks a lot! :)


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Can I wrap a video as material on a blender object?
I am new to blender. I want to wrap a 360 video around a sphere in blender. I tried doing so but instead of wrapping the video, only a single frame was wrapped. Can some one please help me as to how I can get the video to play on the sphere?

Yes I did. Didn't seem to help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xTzJIaKQFY This was the link I used to map the video. It explains for an image, but I simply selected an mp4 file instead.

In Cycles, in your Material Image Texture Node, make sure you enter the Number of Frames and the Start Frame of the video you want Blender to extract.  Movie should be selected automatically.  Check the Cyclic and Auto Refresh  checkboxes (Note: You must be in Rendered Mode to see the frame advance with Cycles.).

Auto Refresh:  Automatically refresh images on frame changes.
Cyclic: Start over and repeats after the last frame to create a continuous loop.

In BI, it's the same process but it's under Textures (the gif above was rendered using Blender Render). Note: Texture and Material Mode seem to work fine with frame advance in BI as well as Rendered:

Hi! Thank you for the answer. But i am still facing a few problems. Even after I do this, the video doesn't play. Is there something I could be missing, I'll just write down what ever I've done so far.

Add a UV sphere.
Marked seam along a longitude.
UV unwrapped it to a rectangle.
Added the material from the Material Image Texture Node.
Entered the required no. of frames and ticked the two options.

I still do not see anything happening. I used a mp4 video.

@AbhyudayPuri - Are you using Cycles or BI?  Are you displaying in Rendered mode or Texture/Material mode (must be rendered)?  Do you have the Offset set to "0"?  I tested with MP4 and it still works so I doubt it's the format.

I am using Cycles Render. After adding the video as material around the sphere, I was viewing it in the object mode. I did put the offset to -1. I also rendered the video by using the animation option, but the output didn't show any movement. Is there something I am missing?

@AbhyudayPuri - I don't really know what else to say.  I've done this with multiple videos and formats in both cycles and BI, this is a known process.  Maybe it's a compatibility issue?  I'm using 2.78c.  Here's a working .blend with an MP4 video for you to try: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s6awryf4234g8em/movie%20wrap.zip?dl=0  Just press Shift + Z to go into Rendered view and then click on the timeline pane to move to different frames.  You should see the material update with each frame.

okay. Thanks for all your help! I'll try the process again. I really appreciate it. :)

Hey @bertmoog, I got that working! :D I really appreciate your help. Could you help me with one last thing? I want the blender camera to be able to move and view the video playing on the sphere, and then render that as my final output. How can I do that?

Great. Thanks a lot. I have accepted this answer. Very well explained. :)

@AbhyudayPuri - So glad you got everything working :)

One problem that i face currently is, as is even scene in the video that you've wrapped around the sphere. There are square patches which are very easily observable. How can I ensure that those do not appear in my final rendered output? @bertmoog Could you help  me with this too

@AbhyudayPuri - I'm not sure what you mean by "square patches".  In the video itself or on your object?

As you can see in the video that you have uploaded, the mesh lines are still visible. That is what i am referring to as square patches.

@AbhyudayPuri - Just enable Smooth Shading or add a Subsurf Modifier to the mesh or both.  If it still looks "blocky" after that, it's probably compression artifacts in your video.


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Armature does not follow the model
I have constructed a small pipe. Then I have managed to bend the pipe, with an armature and, I have made it, an active rigid body. The problem is that although the model falls properly on the plane, however its armature stays in its original position.
Any help would be appreciated.
Kind regards,

You could make the armature follow the mesh with some tedious tricks but it looks like you use the armature to bend the mesh, so there will probably be a circular dependency here (a parent can't be the child of its child), but what exactly is your goal here?

My goal is for the bones, to fall along with the object, through gravity simulation.

sure, but what for? what is the whole animation for, etc?

The whole animation is a prototype. I need it in order to create the necessary physics for animating a belt for the quiver, of the sword of Leonidas. I want it to fall along with its armature, on a rock, instead of animating it by hand.

A bit complicated work around and won't work 100% of the time:
-Add a second pipe (or any object), have that pipe copy the location of the first one via the object constraint copy location. Don't render it if needed
-Use the bone constraint in pose mode to copy location of each bone to the second object
-The first pipe is still parented to the armature but now can move via rigid body physics.
Can get you results like this and fiddling more with the constraints should enable better results:

Weakness of this mode:
-You will have to remove the armature deform modifier of the first object, after the physics simulation is done remove all the constraints and only then be able to use the armature to modify the mesh again. You can also apply the armature modifier.
Another option is to parent the armature to the second object but this will make stuff even more prone to busting and the only advantage is that you don't have to X out the armature modifier.
The problem here is the circular refference as rigs/armatures can't have physics. The only answer that comes to mind is weird constraints usage that won't give you the best results always.
Also please try to include Blender files and which version Blender you are runing when posting questions as that can help massively.
Best of fortunes!


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Sculpting with Dyntopo and mirroring
I'm having a major issue with creating the Ogre creature in a Blender Course. I created the arms, legs, torso and head. Added subdivision and mirror modifers to all to create the arms and legs on the other side of the torso. When I click on Dyntopo, it gives me a warning message, I click ok and one of my legs disappears and the visible one is polygonized. So instead of rounded, it's back to an asymmetric polygon. I can't seem to figure this out. Pleas help. Thanks.

Hi and welcome. I would apply the modifiers first. Hover the mouse over the modifier and press Ctrl+A or use Apply from the dropdown menu right next to the modifier's name. The modifier on the top should be applied first.

Thanks.  Tried to apply and all it did was make the existing mirror modifier disappear.

You shouldn't wonder that after enabling Dyntopo it makes your subdivision and mirrored geometry disappear. You might ignore the warning message, but at least it's a hint there could be a problem with modifiers... after enabling Dyntopo your Subdivision Surface and Mirror modifier both should display a warning, too: "Not supported in dyntopo". And because they are not suported they don't affect the mesh anymore.

But by the way, after you leave Sculpt Mode and go back to Object Mode the modifiers will work again. It's just that dyntopo is a destructive method which is actually changing the mesh, whereas the modifiers are non-destructive as long as they are not applied. Dyntopo cannot work with a procedural mesh as it needs real geometry to sculpt and remesh. Also the general Sculpt Mode doesn't sculpt the subdivided mesh as long as the modifier is not applied. It just don't give a warning because it works with the existing geometry before subdivision, it doesn't have to generate new vertices.

Thank you for all your help.


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Fill Irregular Area
I have searched similar problems but I was not able to figure it out. I am trying to fill this area. Ideally, I want there to be a small indent so you can see the outer area is raised compared to it.
Sorry for such a silly question but I am very new to Blender.
I have tried closing it via edit mode, boolean operators in object mode, smoothing and filling in sculpt mode and separating the area and re-meshing it.
The closest I have come is the boolean but the edges are very bad and I am very unskilled with Blender.
Thank you very much
Hole attempting to fill (but I want the inside fill to be inset a bit)

Terrible attempt

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

So you want the inside fill to be similar in curvature/shape as nearby the hole I'm guessing?  I might duplicate the object, in Edit mode remove most of the vertices/faces except enough to be a bit larger than the hole,  then "fit it" just insider the hole.  You could then join the objects.

One method would be to create one or a series of new faces based on the loop of vertices around the opening...
In Edit mode, select two adjacent vertices along the opening. Then Select >> Loops >> Edge Loops.
Then Vertex >> New Edge/Face from vertices.
You can try doing this in sections (deselect those you don't yet want to fill) if you want more faces to work with.

Thank you very much.

@Josh Hello and welcome. Please don't reply "Thanks" as an answer or comment, instead upvote the post that helped you. If you feel it completely solved your issue consider marking it as accepted.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos --- I work for points... that's why I'm so poor !   LOL

Here's a second method.  I took a part of the first object (duplicated and removed lots of vertices), and then used a Shrinkwrap modifier that I could then join when fitted properly.

I used Nearest Surface point, from Inside.  There may be other choices that are better for you.


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How Do I move Vertices in The UV Editor?
I would like to reposition parts of the mesh after I unwrapped it on the texture I imported, but I don't know how. I can scale and select them, but can I not move them? I'm not familiar with this new method of adding texture.

Okay... I found an inconvenient way to do it, but I hope there is a better one. That little arrow in the upper right corner of the UV Editor opens to show X and Y adjustments which lets me move them.

Just use the move tool in the uv editor panel just like you do in the 3D viewport... The tools menu is hidden in the screenshot but you can open it by pressing T while the mouse cursor is hovering over the uv editor panel. Or you can click on the little arrow tab on the left side of the uv editor panel.

@AlexandreMarcati Thank you so much! That's exactly what I was hoping for and couldn't find. I didn't know T hid that.


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Object unwrap is completely wrong, and weird
Made this object using cloth physics, converted to mesh,  decimate>unsubdivded it by 2 steps. The first images are what it looks like before unwrapping.

After I mark the seams and unwrap it, everything is wrong. I chose to make the backside of the pillow one cap and the front facing side the other with the sides connected. After the unwrap The small sides dominate the UV space and the mesh inside uvs collapse in on each other. Any ideas of what I'm doing wrong?

Which unwrapping method you are using? From what I see in the screenshot where you placed the seams it should unwrap okay if you simply use the default method with U > Unwrap.

Select the faulty parts and try doing U > Reset first and then try to unwrap as you wanted to do.

Hey peeps thank you for the replies, I ended up figuring it out! I forgot that I needed to reset the scale before I unwrapped! In object mode I just needed to hit ctrl+A and select scale. After that my seams and proportions all came out perfect. Anyone know if I need to set this as SOLVED, and how to do it?


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Why is there a black shadow on my baked image?
not sure how to explain this so apologies if this doesn't make complete sense, but I am having the hardest time with my baked image. For some odd reason, there is some black shadow circle on a part of my baked image that I have no idea why it is there? In the view, there is no shadowing like that so I don't know why it shows up when it's baked. There is also some weird light strip too, which again is not shown in the original.

If someone knows how to get rid of these issues I would be so appreciative because I'm ready to give up in frustration.

Probably can be matched to the occlusion that comes from where the parts are close together between the upright leg and the arching piece where it would be bolted together or welded.

Hi! I'm very new to blender so I apologize for my ignorance but I kind of understand ambient occlusion, kind of not also, but how would I try to fix this? Do I need to change certain things with ambient occlusion? Thank you for your helpful comment!

The place where the two objects touch, that prevents rays from touching the surface so the image comes back as dark or black. If you were to bake them not touching at all with more distance and then move them back after the bake, then you'd get the UV mapped texture without the black areas.

@CraigDJones Hi! Apologies for this super late response but I appreciate your help! I figured it out after looking at your comment and other one here. Thank you!

This is likely a result of the ambient occlusion image. If this doesn't show up in the final render then it probably isn't an issue.

Hi! I'm actually converting this to a game (The Sims 4) so I need the baked image to be as clear as possible. I'm also having difficulty with the baking of the legs because they also look quite blurry? So, these two problems are making me go mad trying to learn how to fix them.

If the Sims gives you the option to add reflection (metallic/glossy) shading in game, it is probably better to remove all reflection when you bake in blender.

My point was that if you can't see the black spot when the image is wrapped on to the mesh, then it shouldn't be an issue, right?

@EdwardHurley Hello! So sorry for this very late response but yes, the sims does have that already build into it however the objects end up looking, well, not very dimensional and I wanted mine to at least look a bit more realistic. The baked image is what the program will assign to it so the baking is very important to get right. Thank you for your comment as it helped me figure this out!


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Using subdivision surface cuts up my object?
Let me just preface by saying that I'm very new to blender and I'm sorry if I don't use the correct terminology. I hope that I'm making sense with how I'm describing my issue.
So I have no idea why but whenever I use the subdivision surface modifier it cuts up parts of my object? I have no idea why and would like to know how I can fix this since I really need to use it for round parts of the object that need it. I did already use the edge split modifier and that helped a lot but now I would like to use the subdivision surface modifier. I already have tried doing smoothing on it but didn't give me the kind of help that the subdivision surface does for it. I did also try to separate the object and that did work, however, I need my object to be only one (sorry, I don't know how to explain this?) and splitting it up caused me a lot of trouble to fix it. Or, if there is another way to smooth my round top and bottom (besides bevel) then I would be so appreciative.
Here are some photos (Top is when the modifier is applied, bottom is in edit mode and the top sides are what I'm trying to smooth out):

Without seeing your blend file I can only make an assumption, but it appears as if you have a double-vertex edge on your cylinders. I can create a similar look by creating a circle, deleting half, duplicating it, rotating the duplicated half 180 degrees, joining them, extruding the shape, and then applying a subsurf.

Try going into edit mode, change to vertex mode (press 1), select all vertices by pressing A, right clicking and selecting Merge Vertices -> By Distance.

See if that resolves your cylinder issue.

Edit:
The issue is that you have an extra edge loop which has been folded over. You can either merge those vertices at both the top and bottom of each cylinder, or recreate the geometry with a better plan.

Okay so I did those exact steps but now it looks like this (https://i.imgur.com/6jUcTIc.png), so I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I can upload my blender file if you want to take a look at it?

Yes. Please upload your blend to Blend-Exchange

okay I have it here: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/AQXvPDoX

Please see my edit above.

thank you so much! That did the trick for me. Appreciate your help!

Please mark this question as answered if you don't mind.


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Help with extruding handles on vase
. Hi, I'm having some problems when I'm trying to extrude sides of a vase to create a handle. For one, I tried extruding faces and first inverting then doing a bridge edge loops, so that didn't work out for me because it looked very messy and not the shape I wanted for my object. Second, I tried BlenderGuru's way of extruding like the cup handles in his donut tutorial and that also did not give me good results. I would like to have a rounded handle like shown below. Should I just make a separate mesh then join it to my main mesh? I'm unsure how to progress from here. So now I am quite stuck on how to do this and if anyone could point me in the right direction I really would appreciate it! Photos below. Thank you.

You do not need that much polygons. Create simple geometry and add a subdivision modifier on top: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdivision_surface If your polycount would be way lower it's pretty straight forward to add any handle you want...

@brockmann Hi! Yes I definitely have too many, I was doing the shape by path and subdividing to get the details I want. I did just try to make a lower poly version and still am unhappy with how it's turned out. I'm not sure why I just am failing at making these handles.

In my opinion you should work with much less vertices:
Create your shape:

Cut a hole, extrude and round with LoopTools > Circle:

Extrude a bit and tilt the extrusion:

Symmetrize:

Select the 2 circles and bridge with CtrlE > Bridge Edge Loops, play with the Operator box parameters:

Edit: Your circles are not correctly tilted, you need to slightly rotate them so that they bridge the right way:

Also don't leave the inner faces:

Hi! When you say cut a hole, how exactly would I cut it in the exact middle of the vertices? I still am not the best at cutting shapes but have been using boolean. Your instructions are very clear I appreciate it.

select one vertex only, delete it, it will create a 8 vertex hole, select these 8 vertices, extrude inwards, then right click > LoopTools > Circle (you need to enable the LoopTools addon)

Okay thanks for the info about looptools. I think what is catching me is the rotating, the mesh is starting to look very weird (vertices not lined up like how yours are, mine are spiraling) and I guess I will just practice it more to understand how to make the handle. Your instructions and picture explanations are very helpful regardless.

what do you mean by vertices not lined up?

Okay nevermind I think I've figured it out by playing around with the rotation settings. So now I have done symmetrize and bridge edge loops, but of course it doesn't look all that great, so how would I 'play with operator box parameters'? I've been going through the different editing settings in the bridge edge loops 'pop-up box' but not getting the handle like how yours is. I apologize if this is easy information, I'm still learning bit by bit.

it's a bit hard to say without seeing what you've done  ;)  remember to tilt the 2 circles a bit before doing the bridge, then you can control the parameters like the curve shape with the Smoothness value and the Number of Cuts

Hi, right sure, I have a ss for you here if you have the time to check it for me (https://i.imgur.com/juoKUxc.png). Yes I did tilt them a bit and with the symmetrize but I'm just stuck on how to make it curve upwards? What I'm seeing is that it is curving inside of the mesh so I don't know how to make it curve the other way (ss here: https://i.imgur.com/Rw8bLob.png)? I understand now what you mean about the smoothness value and cuts. Very confused by it's going inside and not out.

could you please share your file? https://pasteall.org/blend/

Hi, sure, here: https://pasteall.org/blend/04c25daf2ff54ff48a67018c32ab3acc

I've edited my answer, I hope it's clear, the bridge will look for the shortest way between the selections


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How would I make these object legs?
I'm having the hardest time figuring out how to create the legs of this bowl. I tried to create the legs from cylinders and attach them but it doesn't look good at all that way. I've tried making handles for cups etc and I've had no issue but I'm kind of stumped on doing legs this way. Any help is appreciated!

Here's one possible way:

Start with a round cube (quadsphere preset) from Add Mesh Extra
Objects add-on.

Delete top half of the object

Select groups of faces that will make up the legs

Change pivot point to individual origins with
Ctrl+. (period)

Run loop tools circle operator on the selected faces W >L > C

Extrude by nomals with Alt+E then adjust geometry as you need.

Isn't the OP bowl 3 legged?

@RonJensen the answer is intended to be useful for any user, including the OP. The workflow can easily be adapted to 3 legs. :)

@Timaroberts thanks so much for your explanation! I've been playing around with it and have been able to get the look I'm going for so far. Much appreciated!

Perfectly good answer, UV'd,  just adding:  for the 3-legged case, a 1/3 segment of a UV hemisphere,  arrayed in rotation, would be a better starting-point for your method.


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Align Rotation of Instances to Instancer Normals
I'm working on a geo node setup, and I'm stuck on the following problem:
The Z rotation of the runes should be aligned to the normals of the curve circle that's istancing them. An example would e.g. be an engraving on a ring.

I have tried multiple things, such as
This
Or
This
but those didnt work.
Thanks in advance

You should try to connect "Rotation" output from "Curve to Points" node with "Rotation" input from "Instance on Points" node.

Here is my more complex answer for very similar question:
Unable to rotate instances individually in Geometry nodes
And here are several other questions and answers about rotating something along curve:
Geometry Nodes - rotate point along curve tangent
Align object along curve (Geometry Node 3.0)
Accessing "n+1"th point instance in geometry node

Alas I have only one like to give. Thank you for this answer